4 June 1999: Waiting for Lucky

Blake's fine. The vet ixnayed my idea for a fecal smear or a crop swab. I realize the latter is way invasive and if he thought it wasn't indicated, then nifty. But to think the former is unnecessary means that he was that certain Blake's track is clear and free of parasites and that this isn't a chronic problem. I guess I was just used to it with Percy. He is in perfect health, a cool bird, as the avian vet himself said, lean and muscular and probably just has an allergy to whatever was in the new seed mix I gave Blake Sunday morning. The foam was something or other birds' crops produce when they're irritated, and a strong healthy bird is in no danger of asphixiating when regurgitating. Percy did because he already too weak. Blake wasn't weak, not when he was flying around the examination room with only two primaries on each wing.

I skated for about an hour in the evening. I think I have slowing down figured out, but the know-how about stopping abruptly still eludes me.

I hope I again run into a woman I met last week. Last Friday was my second time and I guess I have improved a bit in the twice since. Anyway, I was trying to turn through a loop of sidewalk and couldn't make as tight a circle as I needed so what the hell, grass works great. Grass-->knees--> hands, the three-point stop. Also I called "Fore!" to a woman walking her dog nearby. She came over and started giving me some pointers, which I need(ed), and I got to meet her dog.

Lucky is a black and white mottled cocker spaniel she got at the Dumb Friends League. Chris said the dog had only been there a day, which explains his name (he's not a Beckett character). She told me his previous family had given him up when they had a baby. "What," I inquired, "will they do with this first baby if ever they have a second one?" She hooted with laughter, "That's exactly what I said!" It would seem we have similar senses of humor. In a twenty-minute conversation she said two things that make me suspect she's the elder of two sisters, though: and you know what CLH says about that.

First she mentioned a sister in a context where she might have mentioned more siblings, if they existed, so I assumed two sisters. Later she said she injured her ankle recently and hasn't been walking Lucky as much as they both would like, so she'd been having her sister do it. Rather than asking. Totally an older-younger sister thing.

And as long as I'm talking about things that happened several days ago, and about sisters to boot, CLH called me at work Wednesday morning. I have this phone voice with which I record my voicemail message. It is cultured and low and calm--well, I'm sure about the latter two; I attempt the first--and it's also my Restrained Voice, used in preference of ripping someone's throat out. One midsummer morning RDC was driving and I was in the front seat and CLH and someone else were in the back, and RDC and I were trying to navigate somewhere or other and getting frustrated with each other and next thing I knew the Voice emerged and CLH immediately used it to mock me: "Oooh, watch out, she's pissed off and using the Calm Voice now." Which was hysterical, and I would have laughed if I hadn't been pissed. Which made it even funnier. Which is the spinster's usual effect on me.

So anyway I answered the phone--we're back at last Wednesday, keep up with me here--while swallowing the cough I had been just about to cough before the phone rang. Which made me sound like I was evoking Calmness. So she tried to be a business call, but it's hard to make up an industry question when you're not even sure what the business is. So we were laughing immediately, and I was doing busywork at my desk, labeling envelopes, so I could even chat and not feel like I was wasting time.

Labeling envelopes. Yes, I have a professional job, really, most of the time. Our labels are printed on tractor-pull paper, 36 up, three columns of 12 on a perforated sheet. The trick is to fold down an edge of backing until the ends of the labels pop up, use the edge of your desk to rip them off the backing, and then one-two one-two one-two stick 'em on the envelopes. Much more efficient than peeling labels off one at a time. I love helping out on mass mailings because such assembly-line work allows the illegitimate blood of Henry Ford that I am sure courses in my veins to boil hotly. I hate helping out on a mass mailing that's not set up efficiently. Another midsummer morning I was helping someone with a mailing, assembling a packet that had six or so parts, some single sheets and some stapled, and I turned all the separate pieces around so I could grab the stapled bits from their stapled ends--more efficient than to grab one ply of a set. I was yelled at for putting upside-down components into packets before I showed that since all the components were upside-down, my finished packets were just fine. The yeller was even madder that I wasn't wrong. Tough noogies. Such are the small victories of the administrative assistant.

But heh. I'm not one of those anymore. "Twenty-four hours a day, I wanna be promoted." Hmm. That's not how the Ramones sang it, is it?

I was tired and grumpy as work closed on Friday and I griped at a coworker that I wished I didn't have to bike home. Then I got the sausage affixed to my nose in the following manner: another coworker and I were on our way home. She had crossed the first major street and I was a quarter across (which means right in front of two lanes of cars) when my entire body thudded down- and backward and I was straddling the pannier across the rear tire, exclaiming "Yoikes! and away!" like Daffy Duck trying to be Robin Hood and crashed into tree after tree after tree after tr.... The bike saddle lay on the street, and the opposing light was turning yellow. I got most of the pieces--the bike itself, the saddle, two plates, a bolt and a nut--before I had to clear out. I waved the saddle at my bike pal across the street and looked at my bike with the stem sticking out like a proctologist's nightmare.

This was perhaps the clearest indication yet of the weight I have to lose.

My friend came back to my side of the street, commiserated, made sure I had change for the bus (since my pass lives in my backpack), shared my appreciation for RTD's putting racks on all the buses, and tootled off. I went back to the bus station to wait 20 minutes for the next bus. I called RDC to tell him what was going on and he said, "Don't forget your helmet this time." He's so helpful.

He is, actually, helpful. I took the bus no problem and he and I went to Performance in the evening and bought me a saddle for women, with a hole through it for my pubic bone. That ought to be pretty cool. Of course, now he wants the male one.

The salesman was so perfect he had to be gay. He was insouciantly helpful and called us "cats" as in "I'll see you two cats later" and charming and cute as a wee button and witty and his only flaw was that he hadn't shaved his legs in several days. Since this is merely evidence that he does in fact shave his legs, it's not even really a flaw.