Category Archives: Thoughts

Journal – Sick kitty and pasta

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I had a rough day today. Kato kitty is sick. I took him to the vet and he has bladder stones! Poor kitty. She gave me meds and special food to hopefully break them up. When I got home, I was all stressed out by the cats being stressed out, and Don started asking me a lot of hard questions about the decisions I’d made, and I was like, wait a minute, why didn’t you go with me? FROM NOW ON you go with me to the vet.

Then I got extra tired and needed a nap, as I will do when I’m stressed. When I woke up, the concept of giving the kitties separate foods and giving Kato antibiotics every day for a while wasn’t unapproachable at all. Everything was fine and I was capable again. We administered the drugs without any trouble, and Kato likes his new food.

I used to be repressed, to the point where I didn’t have feelings about much and didn’t know what I wanted. I’m much better now, but still have some room to grow. I am a little startled by how upset I got over Kato’s sickness. This is a good thing for me, though. Since I’ve gotten in touch with my emotions, I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with something horrible like a pet dying. I guess I’ll have to wait and see. Maybe I’ll throw a big fit. I threw a small fit today. Don was alarmed, lol.

Here was a nice thing about today: a Brioche Burger Bun with Butter and Blueberries. I like to do this instead of jam. It feels healthier and has a nice fresh flavor.

I also had homemade pasta with seafood and sausage, but it’s two days old, and for some reason, it tasted 100% like Spaghetti-o’s. There was a lot of love in that pasta, I made it for my dad and brother’s birthday, spent over $30 and four hours on that meal, Jessica’s kids and I made the pasta by hand, and it turned into frigging spaghetti-o’s? What kind of a world do we live in where injustices like this can happen?? At least I know it’s more nutritious but I still have to make my way through another serving. It’s a little bit funny though. Maybe if I warm it up right next time it won’t be so bad.

Well, that’s all the guts I have to spill.

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Cute Spider

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Yesterday, on lunch, my friend Hannah and I met the cutest little spider.

I’ve been reading Dragonball to her on lunch. Reading Dragonball aloud is the most hilarious thing. You should definitely try it. It’s very important that Hannah has a firm background in the classics, so I’ve taken it upon myself to educate her in this regard. Needless to say, she is a very patient friend.

As I was screaming at her, the spider came up to us. He stood on our table and always had at least one foreleg outstretched, like the pinky finger of a tea drinker. Often he had two legs out. He was so dainty. The pictures Hannah took give him scary black spikes on his legs, but he actually had fluffy clear spikes.

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If I poked at him, or if the camera got too close, he would do fast little parkour hops and bank off of the thing in the most alarming and stop-motion way. Have you ever noticed, some spiders move in stop-motion? Especially jumping spiders.

We decided he was looking to catch a fine breeze and let him use our table, but he was really extra and distracting. Dragonball was pretty much a bust that day.

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Just drivel

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Last night I drove to my sister’s to give her ham. (The ham was amazing by the way. Rich, savory, smoky, salty meat magic. So much better than your average pale water-logged drowned-corpse store-bought ham.)

Unfortunately no one was there. We’d missed each other! She was in town, where I’d just come from. Curses.  They were in the middle of getting their house fumigated for brown recluses. So I did the normal thing: got in through their garage, held my breath, and made a ham deposit in their fridge. The fumigator guys were long gone, but nobody was supposed to be in the house for another three hours. I’m fine, I’m sure I’ll be fine. I’m no brown recluse.

Then I drove back to town and met the same sister for ice cream. The drive was so ridiculously pointless, but we hadn’t been able to get ahold of each other until it was too late.

Still, the ice cream was nice, and her kids are lovely little people, if you don’t mind people who hang their whole weight from your neck and giggle insanely at their own poop jokes. We all made faces at each other while we ate our ice cream. Now we all know exactly who can do the Elvis lip and with how many sides of their face, who can raise which eyebrows, etc. I let them benefit from my greater age and wisdom and taught them a few things. As a child, I practiced these things in the bathroom mirror with the vague premonition that they would come in useful one day, and lo, they have.

Then I went for a run. My app refused to work so I just ran without it, and it was one of the nicest runs I’ve had all year. Why was I timing myself again? What horrible things we do to ourselves without even being aware. It’s easier to enjoy a run when you don’t have to meet some kind of arbitrary deadline. And it’s easier to get yourself out the door when you know you will enjoy the run. You will be a happier runner if you don’t worry about all the little scientific aspects of running, and being a happier runner who follows the dictates of the body will make you a healthier runner. This is Tao. By not working hard at running, I’ll be a better runner. No more running app for me.

Then I went to the grocery, picked up some bread and blackberries, went home, made the most delicious grilled ham and cheese sandwiches with the ham I’d smoked. I also threw together a blackberry cobbler and accidentally gave it way too much biscuit crust which took forever to cook. Everything was delicious. The beauty of life is directly proportional to the beauty of the food, and today my friends, life was beautiful.

Then I went to bed early in an attempt to get up early. Got a wild hair up my ass and composed a villanelle which took hours and then it was late. My lifelong struggle has been to get up early. I’m wondering if I can use what I learned from my run today to help me get up early in the mornings. I want to get up early in the mornings. So… I’m just going to stop trying. See where that gets me. There’s no easier experiment.

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Laundry Cycles

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“After enlightenment, laundry.”

I love this proverb. It means several things to me:

  • No matter how much you try to think your way around it, the material world exists and must be dealt with.
  • When you attain enlightenment, you are finally capable of handling reality.
  • After you attain enlightenment, you’ll inevitably get brought back down again to square one.  Everything cycles. Laundry cycles. Heh.

I have a poem about cycles. I’ve referenced this concept before in other poems. Let me dig it up and see if it’s still any good.

…Hm. It’s not perfect but it has its moments. I’ll post it anyway. Maybe I’ll rewrite it one day when I’m not half asleep.

 

Death is like a birth

The quiet room

The person in pain

The inevitability

The climax

And the uselessness of those standing beside the bed

Their helplessness and inability

All you can do

Is hold the hand of the dying

And wish them speed

And wish them peace

And do the best you can

To make them comfortable.

 

The breathing labors

The breathing hitches

A moment of silence

And then someone cries.

 

Death is a birth

Out of the dead

Springs new life

First the microbial and bacterial

Then the insects and things without spines

Then perhaps a mammal will take choice bits

And a bird scavenges what’s left

Only bones and ligaments remain

A mammal breaks into the marrow

Insects and spineless things clean up the ligaments

Bacteria and microbes break down the bone

And we rejoin the earth

To become once again a plant, an herbivore, a carnivore, a human, a plant.

Everything in cycles

Cycles within cycles

Death within birth

Birth within death

Life in cycles

Crescendoes, abatements

Everything has been done

Nothing is ever finished

Everything corkscrews

DNA

Planets

Everything

And we are so dizzy with it

As we die,

Birth,

Die,

Birth

 

Of course this has been noticed before

The wheel of time

The Mayan calendar

The Golden Spiral

And it will be discovered anew

By the next generation

Forgotten

Discovered

Forgotten

Discovered

Ham.

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Okay, smoking food is the best thing ever. You play with fire, then you sit in the shade and drink lemonade and read a book for hours, with occasional breaks to play with the fire again. When you’re done, you have a beautiful meal.

I did not know this. I’ve only ever smoked a few things before, all of them small. But today I am smoking a ham.

Ham. This usually doesn’t sound good but one I’ve wet cured and smoked myself? Oh mama, it’s gonna be good. It takes hours.

My lemonade is all gone. The flies are landing on me. I’ve forgotten how to blink.

Haaaaam.

 

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