Reading: A Severed Head

Moving:

House and Garden:

Yule:

5 November 2002: Voting Day

It's supposed to get all the way up to 50 today. I am going to walk over to the park to vote and then drive to work so I can mail some packages at lunch. Bah. I would have got up by now but someone is dozing on my lap, all tucked and fluffy.

I would like to get a spring tension rod for the bedroom doorway so we can hang a thick curtain overnight. That should help at least a little to keep cold air in the bedroom.

If Blake wants to tuck within an hour of waking up, I wonder whether he had a decent night's sleep in the cold. He turned seven in August and we should have a few years yet before we have to coddle him as a geriatric, but if he can't handle a 55-degree night even now in his prime then we should sleep him in my study, which probably the warmest room in the house. But it's in the basement, where he doesn't like to be by himself. He might think we were punishing him (when he throws a tantrum and the bathroom isn't dark enough, we put him in my study).

Or we could get a heat lamp, but that wouldn't be any good for overnight undercover.

Once at the vet I saw a 22-year-old lutino cockatiel named Sunny or Lemondrop or something like that appropriate for a yellow bird. Thinking of Willa grooming Doña as she got old, I asked its human if it could still preen. You can brush a cat but I can't think of a tool besides a beak that can clean, tidy, zip, and arrange feathers. She said the bird could preen mostly but couldn't balance reliably. Blake gets into some odd contortions to preen all over, like when he lifts one leg to preen his belly. That would be very sad.

Okay. He's woken up and is having his breakfast. That means I can get up and brush my beak and go to work.