Sweet William stole a grape this morning. He grabbed it off the counter and tore into it right away, his little pupils dilating and contracting so rapidly that it looked quite comical – in, out, in, out, whoooo! Attempts to take the grape away ended in threats of violence so I gave up and watched him devour what looked like a reddish-purple bowling ball in his tiny talons.
I wonder if he’ll regret it when the excitement wears off and he’s left with an aching gut. Or will he feel fine, smug even? One thing is for sure he’ll be doing you-know-what like Niagara Falls soon enough. Imagine eating a 5 pound watermelon for breakfast. My guess is, you wouldn’t want to stray too far from the small room. And I wouldn’t want you sitting on my shoulder.
28 February 2009
24 February 2009
Conures With Socks
It's not surprising that parrots, or birds in general, don't wear socks. How would they perch, and wouldn't their nails get caught in the fabric?
If socks weren't so ergonomically challenging, Bug could use some in the winter--sometimes when he steps up, his feet are cold. And then I feel bad that his whole, small torso's shivering. Occasionally he steps in his poop, so the socks scenario gets further complicated. Toed socks with grippy bottoms like those slippers one can buy?
His species is from South America, where birds don't need footwear if you live in the jungle. Sometimes he stands on one foot, the other tucked into the electric green of his vent feathers. Whether he lives in the land of snow or tropics, I am pretty sure that behavior wouldn't change. Up here, however, it probably serves to warm his little phalanges.
My own socks, my favorite Smart Wools, have taken a turn for entropy this winter. I've lost about half my pairs to the Rift Phenomenon: the heels wear out where the thicker heel stitching transforms to the thinner vertical material at the back of the heel. Which then equals: a hole.
I can't seem to throw these broken socks away. They cost a lot but I don't darn, like my grandmother did. Wouldn't the repair create a line/scar that would rub the skin like a too tight pair of shoes on the heel, where you'd have to wear a bandaid?
And sometimes Bug bites my socks and creates his own new holes.
I guess we are between a sock and hard place.
If socks weren't so ergonomically challenging, Bug could use some in the winter--sometimes when he steps up, his feet are cold. And then I feel bad that his whole, small torso's shivering. Occasionally he steps in his poop, so the socks scenario gets further complicated. Toed socks with grippy bottoms like those slippers one can buy?
His species is from South America, where birds don't need footwear if you live in the jungle. Sometimes he stands on one foot, the other tucked into the electric green of his vent feathers. Whether he lives in the land of snow or tropics, I am pretty sure that behavior wouldn't change. Up here, however, it probably serves to warm his little phalanges.
My own socks, my favorite Smart Wools, have taken a turn for entropy this winter. I've lost about half my pairs to the Rift Phenomenon: the heels wear out where the thicker heel stitching transforms to the thinner vertical material at the back of the heel. Which then equals: a hole.
I can't seem to throw these broken socks away. They cost a lot but I don't darn, like my grandmother did. Wouldn't the repair create a line/scar that would rub the skin like a too tight pair of shoes on the heel, where you'd have to wear a bandaid?
And sometimes Bug bites my socks and creates his own new holes.
I guess we are between a sock and hard place.
20 February 2009
Lunch
When I was about 12 years old my mother gave me a diary and told me to keep my secrets in it. It was tiny -- no bigger than a birthday card, no thicker than my two fingers. Two fingers of secrets. It had a cloth cover with brightly colored flowers all over it, altogether too jolly for the darkness I wanted to unload. But it did have a lock, which gave its contents, no matter how frivolous, an elevated importance and made writing in it a clandestine act. I wrote in it furtively, hiding under my bed, and never committed anything I didn’t mind my brother reading. It was a flimsy lock.
Sister Annette made us keep a journal in our senior writing class. When I asked her what the difference between a diary and a journal was, she told me that we would get class credit for writing in a journal and she didn’t care if we kept a diary or not. And a journal doesn’t have a lock.
She told us we could write anything at all in our journal as long as we “wrote with new eyes.” We were forbidden to write about anything ordinary or to echo the thoughts of anyone else. By way of example, she told us we could write about the curve of a tree or the veins on our grandmothers’ hands, except we couldn’t now because she’d just mentioned those two things. But the biggest rule was that we could not write about ordinary things, that we could not -- repeat, could not, write about what we had for lunch. Just knowing that made me hyper aware of food. I became obsessed with the grainy texture of applesauce, the burnt sienna halo of the grease surrounding the sloppy joe meat, the salty, crunchy hammocks of fritos in the frito pie. I kept all of these observations locked away from Sister Annette. Being so contrary, it’s little wonder I didn’t become a food writer.
If Sister Annette were around now I’d love to ask her what the difference between a blog and journal is. I have to imagine she’d tell me that you don’t get class credit for a blog and the ban on writing about lunch is lifted.
And a blog doesn’t have a lock.
16 February 2009
There's Nothing More Pathetic Than a Remorseful Glutton
If psychiatrists don’t have a caloric scale to gauge their patients’ level of depression, they should. For those who want to quantify emotion, it makes perfect sense. Think of how much easier it would be for doctors to keep records.
“How are you feeling today?”
“Lousy, Doc. Half a strawberry cheesecake and a plate of nachos.”
“Real cheese or velveeta?”
“Real.”
“Ok, that puts you at 2800 today. That Ben & Jerry's and brownies binge had you at 3300 last week. I'd say we're making progress."
Even worse than stuffing your face to feel better is eating instead of exercising. To refine the system, let’s say that eating in the place of exercising throws on a multiplier. For example: scarfing eight chocolate chunk cookies instead of running = (8 cookies x 200 calories each) x 2 = 3200. That all adds up to a pretty crappy day.
Of course we all know that eating a half dozen doughnuts and a chili dog will only makes us feel worse in the end, but that doesn’t stop us. Doesn’t stop me, anyway. I’m not the sort to puke, so all I can do is try to suck in my gut and curse myself with every lard laden burp.
For the record, I did not eat a chili dog today. But that’s all I’m going to say. That, and, considering the way I feel right now, Elvis must have really felt like shit.
11 February 2009
Master of Monotony
Call it the winter blues, call it ennui, call it the dull bewilderment that sets in when suddenly your time is your own, call it what you will, but I’m bored. I know, I know, only boring people are bored. So I admit it: I’m boring.
Case in point -- I went to a baby shower the other day and ended up talking with a group of people I’d just met about internet providers. Seriously. We might have had plenty in common but not one of us could break the ground, so we sat around and shared anecdotes of poor service and high costs. It was about as fascinating as cleaning the lint out of the crevices of a computer keyboard (which I just finished doing). How did I become so dull?
The past few years have been sucked out of my life by the study of a tedious topic the way an unfortunate astronaut is shot into space from a faulty airlock; neither time nor astronaut ever to be recovered. But that’s no excuse. I now have leisure, so I should be laughing all the way to somewhere, yet here I am, down in the doldrums. Action is what I need – something to jar myself out of the morass of my existence, so with failing imagination, I decide to take a class.
Idly I peruse the non-degree class catalogue from the local tech school. There’s an amazing array of classes on offer, but none, not surprisingly, that really grab me.
Classes I will not be taking:
Harmonica 1 and 2 (Blow in! Suck out! Make noise that only pleases you!)
Kentucky Rifle Building (With a follow up class in whiskey chuggin’.)
Making Lefse 1 and 2 (Why?)
Legal Expense Insurance (I just fell asleep reading the course title.)
Negotiating Across Cultures (Don’t be a jackass!)
So maybe I won’t take a class. Maybe I’ll just take a nap.
08 February 2009
Like a Brooch, Only Bigger and Biting
His feet like the pin of the clasp.
Or like an electric green prom corsage. Me, the Never Attender of the Prom, now has a living bouquet of brilliant feather.
You may lose hearing in the ear nearest if he screams while adhered. He has yet to bite a cheek, an ear. But one flinches a little each time, deep down. Parrots can be irrational, emotional. They would love the opera if they could go.
He likes my left clavicle/shoulder for attachment. Swinging by one or two feet as I lean over the sink while brushing my teeth. He makes whooshwhooshy noises in mimic, and bobs his head in delight. We can't seem to capture it on camera--he will not perform on command.
Yeah, he's the boss of me. And I let him.
But the 18 year old cat is downstairs crying (in fear? pain? confusion?) with more regularity--sometimes 3-4 times an hour. I have the two dogs to walk, one who likes to bite the other in the face when she's excited, which is most of the walk--trying to take down the world in her sphere. And then there's the 15 year old, overweight, arthritic cat, too.
So I let myself be bossed by all of them. I know, I know.
But each has a spark you cannot turn away from--
Or like an electric green prom corsage. Me, the Never Attender of the Prom, now has a living bouquet of brilliant feather.
You may lose hearing in the ear nearest if he screams while adhered. He has yet to bite a cheek, an ear. But one flinches a little each time, deep down. Parrots can be irrational, emotional. They would love the opera if they could go.
He likes my left clavicle/shoulder for attachment. Swinging by one or two feet as I lean over the sink while brushing my teeth. He makes whooshwhooshy noises in mimic, and bobs his head in delight. We can't seem to capture it on camera--he will not perform on command.
Yeah, he's the boss of me. And I let him.
But the 18 year old cat is downstairs crying (in fear? pain? confusion?) with more regularity--sometimes 3-4 times an hour. I have the two dogs to walk, one who likes to bite the other in the face when she's excited, which is most of the walk--trying to take down the world in her sphere. And then there's the 15 year old, overweight, arthritic cat, too.
So I let myself be bossed by all of them. I know, I know.
But each has a spark you cannot turn away from--
02 February 2009
To Friend Or Not To Friend
At first I thought I was too old for this FaceBook thing. Well, that’s not altogether true. At first I didn’t understand what the hell it was. Second, because of the first, I thought I was too old. When I was eventually able to wrap my 45 year-old brain around the concept, I figured it was simply a ridiculous waste of time. But I kept hearing my friends tell stories of finding people from their past-- roommates from college, buddies from high school and distant cousins. I was intrigued, and besides I’m not that damn old. Proving that I’m a savvy citizen of the modern world I moved past my confusion and scorn.
I got on-line and filled out the form, indicating that I wanted to link to a few of my closest friends. That’s what I thought, anyway. I have no idea exactly where I screwed up, but somehow I clicked something that told FaceBook to send an email invitation ‘to be my friend’ to EVERYONE IN MY EMAIL ADDRESS BOOK. That’s right, everyone who exists in my email landscape was sent a message from FaceBook inviting them to check out my web page and be my friend. Bankers, business contacts, distant acquaintances, people I don’t particularly like, and people I never want to speak to again all received this amiable overture. It’s like sending a wedding invitation to everyone you’ve bumped into in the last few years, and the last few years have been a bit rough.
Naturally I was so embarrassed I considered changing my name and moving to a remote jungle village where the electronic world couldn’t follow me, although that’s probably not possible -- I wouldn’t be surprised if you could pick up a wireless signal from a treehouse in Papua New Guinea. There was nowhere to run. This was worse than my white pants incident of the 9th grade, and it’s hard to get worse than that. Picture me, a chubby, self-conscious kid, hiding in the girls’ bathroom during biology class with a miniscule offensive dot on the very center of the crotch of my pants. You probably couldn’t see the damn thing with a microscope, but who could take the chance? I had to do something, so I took off my pants and washed them out in the sink. Miraculously it worked, but then of course I ended up with wet pants. Spot free, but wet, which was not as bad as before, but still a serious problem. And of course, I was also standing in the bathroom in my underwear. Utterly desperate to avoid embarrassment, I did what any resourceful high school girl would do; I grabbed my pants by the ankles and started swinging them over my head to dry them in the breeze. After a short while I became confident that I’d be back in the hallway, free of stains and dampness by the end of the hour. I got comfortable, forgetting that what I was doing was totally weird and sat down on the edge of the sink, whistled a jolly tune, and continued to swing my pants around and around like a lasso. That’s when Sister Sandra walked in.
Not so savvy then, not so savvy now.
The FaceBook debacle is the electronic equivalent of being caught in my underwear, only this time in front of upwards of a hundred people – friends, acquaintances and enemies alike. But life goes on and so do millions of signals zinging through cyber space so although I don’t think I ever looked Sister Sandra in the eye again, I hoped that this time the constant bombardment of messages would distract my ersatz friends and they’d forget about me and that stupid invitation. After a few weeks I recovered enough from the extreme embarrassment of the techno- faux pas to open my FaceBook web page.
Now that I actually look at FaceBook, I’ve got a few problems with it. Most notably, I was right: It is just plain silly. For one thing, it encourages the use of ‘to friend’ as a verb. Not to befriend, but ‘to friend,’ as in, “Hey, I friended you and you didn’t friend me back,” meaning I sent you an invitation to join my network of friends and you have not accepted my offer. Ok, so I friended you is a little more efficient use of words, but it's still a horrible bastardization of a lovely language right on par with spelling light with an ite. (Lite beer makes me want to puke in more ways than one.)
Next, people I don’t know or barely know have ‘friended’ me. Initially I felt guilty, like a horrible FaceBook snob if I didn’t accept. Then I noticed that a lot of these people have more than 1000 friends. They don’t really want to be my friend they’re just using me to jack up their numbers. These FaceBook whores will friend anyone.
My last major issue is with the people who over FaceBook (I call them OFB’s). OFB’s feel the need to cast their frivolous thoughts out indiscriminately, like the way a drag queen tosses colored beads at a Mardi Gras parade. For those of you who are unfamiliar with FaceBook, each person’s website has a box at the top of the screen with a sentence for the participant to fill in and then post for all their friends to see, so that everyone knows what they are doing or feeling or about to do or just did. For example, when I open my webpage I am encouraged to complete the sentence, Jonesy is______. I fill it in occasionally, but am utterly incapable of being earnest. I say things like, “Jonesy is counting to ten.” Or “Jonesy is contemplating all the trouble in River City.” But some of my friends (and I use the term loosely) complete this sentence every freaking 15 minutes. They post compulsively, as if they just can’t help themselves, like the way some people play slot machines. “So-and-so is laughing.” “So-and-so wants to have another cup of coffee.” Wow. Riveting stuff. Don’t these people have jobs? Lives? Real friends? I barely even know these OFB’s and I’m not sure why but they annoy the hell out of me. Sara says I should unfriend them. Sara’s always right.
On the positive side I’ve connected with several people I’d considered a part of my distant past. I’m prompted to call or email my actual friends so we don’t lose touch. I get the occasional chuckle from some silly comment. And, I am reminded that silly can be good.
Jonesy is finished writing on her blog.
I got on-line and filled out the form, indicating that I wanted to link to a few of my closest friends. That’s what I thought, anyway. I have no idea exactly where I screwed up, but somehow I clicked something that told FaceBook to send an email invitation ‘to be my friend’ to EVERYONE IN MY EMAIL ADDRESS BOOK. That’s right, everyone who exists in my email landscape was sent a message from FaceBook inviting them to check out my web page and be my friend. Bankers, business contacts, distant acquaintances, people I don’t particularly like, and people I never want to speak to again all received this amiable overture. It’s like sending a wedding invitation to everyone you’ve bumped into in the last few years, and the last few years have been a bit rough.
Naturally I was so embarrassed I considered changing my name and moving to a remote jungle village where the electronic world couldn’t follow me, although that’s probably not possible -- I wouldn’t be surprised if you could pick up a wireless signal from a treehouse in Papua New Guinea. There was nowhere to run. This was worse than my white pants incident of the 9th grade, and it’s hard to get worse than that. Picture me, a chubby, self-conscious kid, hiding in the girls’ bathroom during biology class with a miniscule offensive dot on the very center of the crotch of my pants. You probably couldn’t see the damn thing with a microscope, but who could take the chance? I had to do something, so I took off my pants and washed them out in the sink. Miraculously it worked, but then of course I ended up with wet pants. Spot free, but wet, which was not as bad as before, but still a serious problem. And of course, I was also standing in the bathroom in my underwear. Utterly desperate to avoid embarrassment, I did what any resourceful high school girl would do; I grabbed my pants by the ankles and started swinging them over my head to dry them in the breeze. After a short while I became confident that I’d be back in the hallway, free of stains and dampness by the end of the hour. I got comfortable, forgetting that what I was doing was totally weird and sat down on the edge of the sink, whistled a jolly tune, and continued to swing my pants around and around like a lasso. That’s when Sister Sandra walked in.
Not so savvy then, not so savvy now.
The FaceBook debacle is the electronic equivalent of being caught in my underwear, only this time in front of upwards of a hundred people – friends, acquaintances and enemies alike. But life goes on and so do millions of signals zinging through cyber space so although I don’t think I ever looked Sister Sandra in the eye again, I hoped that this time the constant bombardment of messages would distract my ersatz friends and they’d forget about me and that stupid invitation. After a few weeks I recovered enough from the extreme embarrassment of the techno- faux pas to open my FaceBook web page.
Now that I actually look at FaceBook, I’ve got a few problems with it. Most notably, I was right: It is just plain silly. For one thing, it encourages the use of ‘to friend’ as a verb. Not to befriend, but ‘to friend,’ as in, “Hey, I friended you and you didn’t friend me back,” meaning I sent you an invitation to join my network of friends and you have not accepted my offer. Ok, so I friended you is a little more efficient use of words, but it's still a horrible bastardization of a lovely language right on par with spelling light with an ite. (Lite beer makes me want to puke in more ways than one.)
Next, people I don’t know or barely know have ‘friended’ me. Initially I felt guilty, like a horrible FaceBook snob if I didn’t accept. Then I noticed that a lot of these people have more than 1000 friends. They don’t really want to be my friend they’re just using me to jack up their numbers. These FaceBook whores will friend anyone.
My last major issue is with the people who over FaceBook (I call them OFB’s). OFB’s feel the need to cast their frivolous thoughts out indiscriminately, like the way a drag queen tosses colored beads at a Mardi Gras parade. For those of you who are unfamiliar with FaceBook, each person’s website has a box at the top of the screen with a sentence for the participant to fill in and then post for all their friends to see, so that everyone knows what they are doing or feeling or about to do or just did. For example, when I open my webpage I am encouraged to complete the sentence, Jonesy is______. I fill it in occasionally, but am utterly incapable of being earnest. I say things like, “Jonesy is counting to ten.” Or “Jonesy is contemplating all the trouble in River City.” But some of my friends (and I use the term loosely) complete this sentence every freaking 15 minutes. They post compulsively, as if they just can’t help themselves, like the way some people play slot machines. “So-and-so is laughing.” “So-and-so wants to have another cup of coffee.” Wow. Riveting stuff. Don’t these people have jobs? Lives? Real friends? I barely even know these OFB’s and I’m not sure why but they annoy the hell out of me. Sara says I should unfriend them. Sara’s always right.
On the positive side I’ve connected with several people I’d considered a part of my distant past. I’m prompted to call or email my actual friends so we don’t lose touch. I get the occasional chuckle from some silly comment. And, I am reminded that silly can be good.
Jonesy is finished writing on her blog.
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