Grace in small and big things

Last Tuesday morning was a bummer. I had something that needed to be sent overnight to Olympia. After some minor adventures getting the thing prepared in the first place, I went up to the postal shop near work. Their sign said they open at 9, but their door was still locked at 9:10, so I gave up and drove to the post office.

Halfway through my wait in line, it occurred to me that I needed a copy of the document before I sent it. I crossed my fingers that the post office would make a copy for me, and stayed in line. When after a long wait I reached the counter, I asked hopefully. Would the post office make a copy for me? No, most certainly not.

I trekked out and retraced my drive back to the postal shop. No parking, though. I drove in an ever-wider circle around nearby blocks, finally finding an open spot several blocks away. The slush still frozen on the sidewalks made for a tedious struggle back to the postal shop.

Now open (and with a copy machine too), the shop took care of my petty mailing needs at last, an hour after I'd set out on what I supposed would be a quick errand.

Photocopy in hand, I tucked my wallet into the pocket of my jacket and headed back toward the car. About halfway back, I stuck my hand in my coat pocket to get my keys. There were the keys, but wait--where was the wallet?

I swore in a whisper for some reason and turned to retrace my steps at a run, scanning the ground for my wallet. It had just been in my hand mere moments before; it must have fallen out of my pocket when I shoved it in. Surely there hadn't been time for anyone to snatch it--

"Wait!" a woman's voice jerked my attention up. She stooped over at the intersection half a block ahead of me, where I had just been. "You dropped this!" Straightening up, she held up her coffee cup in one hand, my wallet in the other.

I thanked her with passionate relief. "I saw you through the window of the coffee shop," she said, "and I thought, 'What's that she just dropped?' So I just came running out after you."

After thanking her again, I started back for the car, wallet securely in hand. When I got there, while I was I unlocked the door a car horn beeped nearby. "Ma'am! Ma'am!" a woman passenger called from a passing vehicle, the driver slowing to a stop just behind me. "Did you get the thing you dropped back there?" she asked with great concern. I assured her that I had, and thanked her for checking.

She waved, satisfied, and her car pulled away.

I can be a little cynical about people. To have two separate folks running after me to reunite me with my dropped wallet, on a day otherwise full of frustration, was a nice bit of evidence for the way it's also possible for us to all look out for each other.

Open Letter Without Apology

To the woman I bumped into downtown this evening around 7:15, who gasped in audible terror at my touch:

I had been running for two blocks when my path crossed yours, my friend. You couldn't have known, but I had stood outside waiting for a bus for an hour and a half earlier in the afternoon. My toes had gone numb, my fingers were cold even inside their mittens, and my nose had nearly developed its own tiny icicle. When I left work this evening I was dreading the chance of repeating the experience to get back home, so when I saw my bus pulling away just as I turned the corner to the bus stop, I could not allow it to escape me.

I trotted awkwardly down the iced-over sidewalk after the departing bus. The right combination of traffic lights would let me catch the bus at its next stop in three blocks. The bus was still in view, so I ran across the first cross street as my pedestrian signal changed. Clumsily, I galloped on down 3rd. Most people kept to the ice-free sidewalk next to the buildings, so I veered precariously onto the icy outer walkway several times to pass other pedestrians. Wheezing in the cold air, I crossed the second cross street with time to spare. My bus was stopped at the end of the block, and I did my best to speed up.

It was at that moment, my friend, that you and your male companion ambled out onto the sidewalk. You were strolling slowly, your well-layered arms sticking out at angles, much like those of the little brother in the movie A Christmas Story. My bus was still stopped, but its line of boarders was shrinking. You and your companion spread out to meander past other folks. A small gap between you and another walker presented itself. I darted through, and I bumped your elbow as I did so.

You sucked in air like a drowning person, like somebody in a bus about to crash through a guardrail onto a freeway below, like a seer of ghosts and demons and woe. Your enormous lungs seemed capable of inhaling more air than the cold city contained in all its core. Perhaps you were terrified, dear lady, of the clear threat I presented in my slacks and wool jacket. I do stand an imposing five-foot-six, while you were but a diminutive five-foot-five, so I understand your fright at my looming height. Or maybe you saw only the paper bag in my hand, full of leftover snacks, and panicked at the thought that I might bludgeon you to death with a Wheat Thin and a cookie.

In any case, your desperate gasp lasted so long you may not have heard me cry, "Excuse me!" as I passed. But in case you missed what followed, I want you to know this: with barely a second to spare, I caught up to my bus. I boarded and sat wheezing, my lungs aching from the cold. Oh, my voluminously-lunged friend, my haste in our encounter had rewarded my joints with a blessed reprieve from another long wait in the cold.

And so you see why I am not even slightly sorry for bumping into your own elbow joint in order to do so. Your overly dramatic inhalation was wholly without result. I am free of remorse, my friend. Free of remorse--and warm.

Ta, and happy holidays,

Thel

Seattle snow adventures

We went to bed last night while the snow was still falling thick outside--huge snowflakes illuminated in the glow of the streetlight, so many of them blowing sideways in the wind that we could hardly see the houses across MLK. When we awoke this morning, we had an inch or so of snow on our block, and the sheet of ice coating our street gleamed.

It's not much by the standards of many wintry locales, but for Seattle it was stupendous. Any little thing seems more glorious, in this Pacific Northwest native's experience, when it takes place against an icy, snowy backdrop. So today I had two "adventures" in the snow:

1. Having run out of time during our busy day yesterday, this morning my best-beloved and I still had some basic grocery needs. Eyeing the slick little hill of our street, we opted to walk to the grocery store, about a mile and a half round trip. We each wore a little backpack for hauling home our supplies. Sidewalks proved treacherous for most of the way, so we tramped along their margins in the snow where footing was more secure. Mittens and scarves proved useful, and wearing my bicycling headband under my knit cap helped keep my ears safe from the bitter wind that was blowing. We were out for about an hour in the cold, and although it was just a little jaunt, the setting made it feel like a true expedition.

2. Coming home from work tonight I had two bus routes to choose from. I hopped on the first one that came along, forgetting that it was probably rerouted at the hill behind my house. Sure enough, the bus stopped short of its descent back into the valley. "This is it," the driver said; "they aren't sending us down that hill."

We last three passengers disembarked and began trudging down the steep-ish hill. The roadway was clear and dry, while the sidewalk was frozen over; keeping an eye out for cars, I opted to walk in the street instead of skidding down the sidewalk. The newly waning moon loomed in the clear sky above us. We paused to let a couple of police cars go wailing and blazing up the hill past us to calls unknown.

We all had made it about two blocks down the hill when we saw a different bus heading up our very hill. I grumbled under my breath about the apparent contradiction between drivers' attitudes, but I should have had more faith. The next thing I knew, the bus we had just left made the turn and headed downhill after us.

When she caught up to us, she stopped and opened the door to let us back on. "I guess we can make it down after all!" she said. "They told me before just to stop at Cloverdale, but I saw that other bus coming up and I went, 'All right, I'm going to go get my people.'" Chains rattling all the way, the bus inched down the hill. The lovely driver let me off just a block from home, and I walked back to coziness and warm food waiting.

Grace

Tonight we went to a friend's dinner party in Tacoma. There was much laughter and easy conversation with friends and brand-new acquaintances. As the twelve of us sat around the dinner table eating dessert, I looked at the faces around me, at these women whose decisions to live their lives with authenticity have taken more courage and grace than I can imagine or summon. These are some of my heroines, I realized: women who have been through the wringer and faced uncountable experiences of ugliness and discrimination, and who yet are able to be present with grace and joy, laughing and telling stories over an apple tart.

After dinner we drove home through the falling snow that was just beginning to accumulate on the grass and trees, and I hoped I could look back someday and be satisfied that I had lived my life with that kind of grace and bravery--to be ready to name hatred for what it is when I see it; to be able to know and manifest my true, core self; to be willing to laugh as heartily as ever at the end of any day.

Later we let Chloe out to snuffle, surprised, in the skiff of snow that had gathered in the yard. We watched the snow fall fast and heavy outside. The arctic chill was beginning to deepen, but we turned up the furnace and put an extra blanket on the bed. Maybe if I practice meeting this prosaic challenge with grace and good cheer, it will become easier to do the same with more serious challenges.

Day 2

I was looking forward to Holidailies. I'm working two jobs right now and only home for an hour in the evenings, but I figured that would just hone my speedy stream-of-consciousness writing. Everybody likes poorly constructed navel-gazing at the holidays, right? Plus, I rationalized, at least on the weekends I could construct nice long posts.

Then I woke up yesterday morning with what felt like a tennis ball in my throat. A tennis ball covered in velcro. And phlegm. I managed, barely, to get out of the house for a little bit of gift shopping, and then I came home and pretty much collapsed for the day. I did a bit of knitting, but after an hour or so even that took too much effort.

Today was pretty much the same way: all couch and blanket and whimpering. Man, I hate cold season. I'd had grand plans of putting up the Christmas "tree" and hanging ornaments this weekend. I suppose they can wait until next weekend.

Since this is such a lame non-entry, here, have a picture from happier, healthier times. This was taken on one of our recent Port Angeles trips.

Braggy Blogger

As of today, I've ridden my bicycle over 500 miles in the last 8 weeks. For some cyclists, that wouldn't be much of a milestone. For me, it's pretty darn cool. I've noticed that the same hills whose slopes used to make me want to vomit, fall over, and cry (Beacon Hill, Jackson, MLK, I'm looking at you) aren't the obstacles they used to be.

In fact, these days I tend to prefer riding up over Beacon Hill to travel to and from work: the streets are wider, and the views are enough to make me forget all about my sweat and toil. Every time I cross the Jose Rizal Bridge and see downtown spread out below me, Elliott Bay and the Olympics in the distance, or cruise south down the Chief Sealth Trail and gawk at the panorama of Mount Rainier and Lake Washington, I fall in love with Seattle a little bit more.

(The steep streets behind Interlaken Park, among others, continue to make me want to vomit, fall over, and cry, so I still have plenty of room for improvement.)

Caucus Chaos

Hey, slap a sticker on my jacket, I caucused yesterday!

This was my second caucus; since we moved across town last year, this was my first time caucusing in our current precinct. There were 21 of us in our precinct: 20 for Obama, 1 for Clinton. The lone Clinton supporter was delightfully good-humored about the fact that the percentages, when applied to our allocated number of precinct delegates (7), gave all the delegates to Obama and none to Clinton.

I enjoyed the hands-on feel to the caucus; I liked chatting with neighbors about politics for a few minutes, hearing voices raised passionately in other precinct caucuses smashed into the same elementary-school library. I was impressed by how many people crammed into the building. And when the caucus organizer asked people to raise their hands if this were their first time caucusing, probably about three-quarters of the people present raised their hands, to whoops and applause from the rest of us. It felt very personal, and intimate, and very much like the core root of democracy.

Still, just as in 2004, I was a little taken aback by how chaotic and disorganized the process was. When I showed up at the elementary school where 7 or 8 local precincts were meeting to caucus, I was told we were all gathering in the cafeteria to begin. In the cafeteria, folks were sitting in their precinct groups, but the signs were taped to tables and thus invisible from a distance. It was all but impossible to squeeze through the crowd of hundreds of people in order to find the right precinct. And I was one of the lucky ones who had already registered to vote and had known my precinct number! If you didn't already know it, you had to go scrutinize a single map taped to one wall, and there were reports that the map was incorrect, anyway. I'm still unsure whether I was supposed to have shown my voter registration card to anyone; nobody asked to see it.

And I must admit that as much fun as a caucus can be, I still don't quite think it gives everyone a voice. I think of that lone Clinton supporter in our precinct, whose choice is not represented on a statewide basis. His fraction of a delegate doesn't get to combine with the other fractions of delegates; they all just get rounded down and shunted out. So I guess a statewide vote would be a bit more fair, after all, even if it doesn't cultivate a sense of community the way a caucus can.

Anyway, I caucused and volunteered to be a delegate to the county caucus in April. That will be a new experience! Then I walked back down the hill to sit and cuddle with my Chloe. She had her knee surgery on Thursday, and it went as well as can be expected. Her entire leg is shaved, hip to ankle, with a long line of staples holding her surgery incision closed. It looks bad, but I know she should be getting back to normal just in time for sunny weather and outside play!

Addicts

By the way, I've baked five more loaves of bread since I reported to you two weeks ago. Six loaves of homemade bread in two weeks...I'd better start riding my bike to work again soon.

Knead? No need!

Several years ago my parents moved into a much smaller home than ever before, forcing them to downsize considerably. They took many loads of stuff to Goodwill, held a yard sale or two...and surreptitiously sneaked things into the trunk of my car whenever I visited them during this period.

I believe that's how I ended up with a rusty ancient 12-inch cast iron Dutch oven--I think I found it in the back seat of the car one weekend when I was unpacking after a trip to Oregon. I was too amused to get rid of it, and I suspected it had been in the family for too long to let it go, anyway. Mr. Thel and I hatched cheerful schemes of taking it camping to cook over a fire.

Since our tiny kitchen had no available space to store the hulking blackened thing, we stored it carefully in a corner of the garage. Naturally it sat there for the next two years. When we moved into this house, it migrated into a corner of the basement. There it sat all year beneath a growing pile of cardboard and camping detritus.

Recently someone (probably Kimberly) reminded me about the No-Knead Bread Recipe from the New York Times over a year ago. Everyone on the internet loved this bread recipe so thoroughly that I wanted to try it for myself...but my crusty, rusty dutch oven deterred me all year.

Yesterday I finally clomped down to the basement and dug it out. I was quite afraid that I'd pull the lid off and find a seething mass of black spiders inside, but was pleasantly surprised to find its sturdy innards completely insect-free. I hauled it upstairs and cleaned it out. Still unsatisfied with the weirdly tacky texture inside, I put it upside-down in the oven at 500 degrees for almost two hours, which seemed to do the trick. Last night I mixed the ingredients for the bread; today I baked the bread.

Now, I already liked baking bread. I don't even mind kneading bread all that much (more of a deterrent for me is the gluey floury mess afterward). But this loaf --this effortless dome of crispy, crusty, chewy goodness--is the best bread I have ever baked. Friends, I'm afraid it may not last until morning in this household.

When I called my mom to boast about my perfect bread, she told me that this particular dutch oven came from my great-grandma Mickey's house. It's probably been in use for over 50 years. Somehow knowing that, and feeling that link to a great-grandmother I hardly had a chance to know before Alzheimer's disease took her away, made my second slice of bread taste even more satisfying.

Unwarranted Pessimism

I just spoke to the most pleasant, helpful customer service representative at the Seattle Municipal Court. That's blogworthy, right?

A man who bought a truck from us a year and a half ago never transferred the ownership into his name, and instead ran around without motor vehicle insurance, driving negligently and leaving the truck abandoned on the street, according to the helpful online ticket lookup system at the Seattle Municipal Court online lookup page. His tickets unpaid, they were sent to collections--where they were filed in my name.

I didn't find out until a month ago, when I decided to check my credit report online. I had a hunch about the likely source of the tickets, but I dreaded making the phone call. See, the thing is, I didn't file my seller's report within the five days mandated by law. I have spoken before of my inadequacy in the personal paperwork department; this is the very thing I was talking about. Since I filed my report belatedly, I was grimly afraid that somehow I would be legally liable for everything the purchaser did with the truck. When I had originally tried to file the late report, that's what the woman at the Department of Licensing indicated. Then she yelled at me for asking too many questions, and when I burst into frustrated tears (oh internet, do I overshare?) she hung up on me.

So I postponed any further investigation like a champ! Until today, when the little voice inside of my insisted, It's the last day of the year--gird your loins and call. Maybe it's all parking tickets that...all...happened to blow away from my car, anyway. Unlikely, sure, but best find out.

I called. I spoke to the nicest woman, who regretfully informed me that I'd have to pay the ones that the new owner incurred prior to my actually filing the seller's report, but was happy to tell me that all I needed to do was send them a copy of the seller's report to dispute the others.

Internet, this is awesome news. Yes, I'll have to pay $150 for tickets I didn't incur. But better $150 than $1000! And oh, I can't tell you how relieved I am to learn that I won't actually be liable for vehicle violations that villainous man makes in the future. This silly little nightmare of mine can finally be laid to rest.

Happy New Year, indeed!

Wildlife Rehabilitation

My mom spent a few years as a volunteer for a wildlife rehabilitation organization. All I can remember about it is the time she caught a bunch of baby mice and swiftly dispatched all of them so as to feed an injured owl she was nursing back to health. Plus I remember that she spent a week away up north somewhere just after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, helping clean the oil off of sea birds.

This morning Mr. Thel burst into the house and informed me that he and Chloe had just spotted an injured red-tail hawk down the street, flopping around on the ground. He found a large cardboard box and a couple of old towels to help capture it; I helped by tippety-tapping at the computer to find a nearby wildlife rescue group. It turns out that PAWS has a wildlife center open 7 days a week up in Lynnwood. Mr. Thel donned bicycle gloves to protect his hands and together we went back to the bird. The hawk was alert and definitely opposed to being captured, but Mr. Thel successfully managed to place a towel over it and gently transfer it to the box without much fuss. The bird's halfhearted struggle (and the way it sort of flopped over on its head in the box at first...) made me even more concerned about its condition.

We brought it back and left it in the driveway for a few minutes while I staggered about trying to find my glasses and get dressed. PAWS is across Seattle from us, but Sunday morning traffic was light and we were there in half an hour. They have this whole compound up there; I'd known of them as an animal shelter but had no idea they did rehabilitation and release of wildlife. The woman at the wildlife center transferred the injured hawk to their facilities and assured us that a vet would be out to take a look at him tomorrow or earlier. "When I transferred him to the cage he immediately clutched at it with his talons, so that's a good sign," she said. She took our address and the location where he was found, and said that if they can heal him they'll release him back here where he came from. "We'll send you a card to let you know what happens to him," she promised.

December 4

What Thel Saw

1. On my blog statistics. I had more visitors yesterday than any other day in Heavy Duty Power history, y'all. This pleased me until I realized that at least half of them were due to my excerpting a big chunk of news from KOMO's website, leading people interested in storm updates straight to this scraggly little corner of the internet. Oops. Sorry about that. But if you like occasional pictures of a wily German Shepherd, or rambling about about riding the bus through Seattle, do stick around.

2. On the bus. Scratched in a plastic panel, amidst all the gang graffiti and illegible scrawlings, is a well-done rendering of Homer Simpson's head.

3. At Real Live Preacher, some words that resonated with me:

Are you just ornery enough to stare down an empty universe and say, “I DEMAND that there be meaning in these skies.” And then you stare real hard and angry right into the Milky Way. Then you laugh because of how small and silly you are. You laugh at yourself, but you keep staring. You ARE going to stare down the universe.

I might stare for awhile, but then I crumple away and slink off in anger and terror. Still, something makes me keep coming back for another attempt at bending the universe to my will. Smart.

4. At home. Unfinished knitting projects compete with Robin Hobb's Tawny Man< series for my attention. Guess which group won? As if I could set down book 3 of the Farseer Trilogy and not be impatient to move on to see what happens next.

5. On the bus again. A boy of about 2 years plays with his sister, closer to 4, while their mother tries to get some paperwork finished. He darts away once too often, and mom has sharp words for him. She makes him sit still in his seat, and he sobs at the injustice of being unable to run up and down the aisle any longer. Then--I wasn't staring, I could see their reflections in the window--his big sister gathered him up into her arms, tucking him up onto her lap and patting his back soothingly while he cried softly. Aw.

Books and lists

I need to update the list of books I've read this year, languishing at midsummer's point there in the sidebar. I'm fairly sure I've surpassed my year's goal of 50 already, thanks in part to my belated discovery of Diana Wynne Jones. Though I'm past the age at which I should have read them, I have still fallen in love with her young adult novels.

A fun thing about the last year or two has been realizing and embracing the fact that I adore well-done fantasy writing. Aside from a handful of best-beloved series from my childhood (Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Susan Cooper, Loyd Alexander, and Madeleine L'Engle spring to mind as the reigning quintumvirate of those years, although Robin McKinley and Patricia McKillip shouldnt' be left out), I'd somehow managed to miss most of the genre for the last decade or so. Thinking about it now, I can't imagine what kept me away...probably some sense that it was a childish interest best put away as I became an adult.

Well. You know. Fuck. That. Shit.

I think it was Lois McMaster Bujold's novel Paladin of Souls, plucked in idle curiosity from a shelf at Third Place Books about 3 years ago, which deftly reminded me of how much delight, satisfaction, and beauty there is in fantastical literature done well. Since then I've been bolder about picking up fantasy books I've never heard of, and trying them out. As with anything, I've had varying success with that approach; some extremely popular books just aren't my cup of tea. But then there's Neil Gaiman, and Diana Wynne Jones, and Bujold, and now Robin Hobb (whose Assassin's Apprentice just swept the evening away from me...), Philip Pullman, Susanna Clarke...

It's nice to stretch out more comfortably inside my skin. Openly relishing the fantastical is one way I'm getting more comfortable in here. It's jolly good fun, too.

The view from my office, three weeks ago

It's barren now, but this tree turns such a determined yellow in the fall that I frequently mistake its brightness for sunshine even on the gloomiest of days.

Into the grey

With the second Windpocalypse of the season behind us, we are well on our way into the heart of winter around here. Solstice is nearly six weeks away, and as always I find that facing three months of short days makes my spirits sink a bit.

I don't mind chilly, wet weather. In fact, I prefer it to hot, dry weather. You can always throw on another layer of clothes in the winter, but there are only so many garments you can remove in the summer (and sometimes removing them all leaves you wishing for still more layers to peel back). It's the brevity of the daylight hours, combined with the prospect of finding most of those daylight hours sodden and grey, that makes me quail.

But then I always shake myself sternly as I begin to wilt and whine, mid-November, and remind myself of three things:

1. Long, dark evening hours provide you the perfect cover to do the things you most enjoy--knit, read, journal, drink hot sweet beverages, squirrel around on the internet, etc. Indoor activities, you know. During these months nobody questions the notion of spending hours curled up in bed with a good book; the same practice in June gets you a scornful sigh.

2. 'Tis the season of three-day weekends and holidays aplenty, starting with today's federal holiday and lasting through February.

3. Even the dimmest days tend to have long enough dry spells for a brisk walk with Chloe, or around the block at work.

I had a lovely reminder of that last point today. A windstorm blew in, pelting the windows with rain while the winds banshee-wailed at the front door. Chloe had the world's fastest potty walk in the rain this morning, and then we hibernated in the living room with the aforementioned reading materials and tea (Chloe satisfied herself with a bone and a nap). I worked on my revised mitten, curling my toes inside my slippers, and began to feel those first pangs of the rainy-season blahs. But by midafternoon the wind had blown a hole in the cloud cover, the sun came blazing out dazzlingly on all the wet, and I spent the better part of an hour romping outside with Chloe and a tennis ball. My bright new rubber boots, as hoped, made running around in the tall, wet grass a satisfyingly dry-footed experience. So even on a stormy day, we were able to gallivant in the sun with the brisk winds no more than a nose-nipping nuisance.

The wheels on the bus go round and...wait. Hold on. OK, we're moving again...the wheels--wait, just a minute...

Someday I would like to take a journey to the Fantasy Land where dwell the writers of the bus schedules.

I took the bus up to Northgate tonight, so I had to make a transfer downtown. I managed to catch my connecting bus, but at that point reality branched sharply away from the lovely dream printed in the bus schedule. This particular bus only runs once per hour on Sundays, so there were approximately twenty people waiting at each of its downtown stops. Now, in Bus Schedule Land, each downtown stop is finished in under seven seconds for perfect timeliness. In Reality Land, unfortunately, most people require more than three tenths of a second to climb aboard the bus and find a seat. Thus before we had even left the downtown core we were running ten minutes behind. On a Sunday evening.

The difference in worlds was compounded by the Schedulers' apparent assumption that each bus travels in a wondrous warp along the surface streets, magically gliding through uniformly green lights and unclogged interesections at ten miles per hour faster than the posted limits. The real bus was constrained by the need to wait at stoplights, yield to pedestrians, and of course to stop at the bus stops where people waited to board or exit the bus.

And so a trip which in Schedule Land could be accomplished in about an hour, took in reality more than 50% longer.

The thing is, I wouldn't be as cranky if I knew ahead of time what I was getting in for. An hour and a half to Northgate? Okay, that's all right, I can deal. But don't tell me I can get there in an hour and then snicker in your sleeve when I, trustingly relying on the fantasy printed in the schedule, make plans accordingly.

My grand plans were just to see Ratatouille at the $3 theater in Shoreline, and we did sneak in just as it was starting...so I guess it worked out. However, this isn't the first time my ETA has been foiled by the bus schedule's pipe dreams. My Northgate friend was skeptical of my carlessness in the first place, and my recurring tardiness is doing nothing to convince her that buses are a useful transportation option for an adult with a driver's license. So really, the fluffy bunny fantasy travel times are helping to alienate potential riders. One wonders whether perhaps Kemper Freeman helps construct them.

Day 10

Mr. Thel and I spent Friday evening at the Little Red Studio, which was even more fun than I had expected. There was painting and poetry and dance and ritual, and nobody was pretentious (quite the opposite). I think I can safely say that we'll be back there again.

I took Chloe for a nice long walk in the sunshine this afternoon. Poor thing, she pulled a muscle a couple of months ago and now she has a pronounced limp in the mornings. She walks it off within a few minutes, but the sight of her hobbling around first thing in the morning is still quite pathetic. Last week the vet said she might be developing arthritis in that leg and recommended glucosamine, so now we're grinding up these enormous pills and mixing them in with her food once a day.

I can't believe I am reduced to telling you about my dog's pills. This doesn't bode well for days 11-30, does it?

November ride!

I rode my bike to work this morning for the first time since early October. It turns out that riding 8 miles on a chilly, foggy morning is in some ways much more pleasant than making the same trip in warmer weather.

With both lanes open on MLK finally (for all but a couple of short segments), I made it to work in about 40 minutes. I think I improved my time by crossing over to 23rd at the top of the hill instead of continuing down MLK into the Madison Valley. The latter route takes me down too far, and I then have to climb back uphill just before work. It's not much uphill, but it's enough to get me all out of breath again. By sneaking over to 23rd via side streets atop the hill, and then whizzing down 23rd, I don't have to climb at all after Cherry. I do, however, have to clutch fervently at the brakes all the way down the other side of the hill.

Satisfying the requirements of our possessions

Recently Mr. Thel bought a new computer. The old one frequently sent him into fits that involved a lot of roaring, twitching, and threatening to slam it against the nearest wall. I'm hoping this new one will merely compel him to rhapsodize fondly about its reliability, or to lovingly caress its sleek curves.

It's such a shiny new thing, though; we all seemed a little shabby by comparison. While Mr. Thel set it up in the office upstairs, humming cheerfully to himself, I felt it necessary to nervously sweep and vacuum and generally spruce up the place. I can only protest that those chores were on my list already...but yeah. You just know the next step is for the computer to begin outright ordering me to meet its demands.

Hopefully by that time I'll have collected enough of the clumps of hair Chloe sheds daily, wafting gently across the living room, that I can build myself a Clone Chloe army to defeat the computer.

Already out of things to say

I am halfway through the knitting of a second sock. The first sock was finished sometime around...March? April? Clearly I'll never be a super sock knitter. One pair a year...that's not even enough to let me build up a collection of beautiful, handknitted socks. A collection I could likely never bring myself to wear, being too aware of the enormous investment of time and energy in each sock to risk wearing them out. No, I'll frame each one and gaze proudly at them on the wall or something logical like that.

Chloe had a vet appointment this evening. We haven't yet made any effort to find a new vet closer to the south end, so we had to drive nearly up to Shoreline to get there. It was just a routine check-up and vaccination, but she ended up getting a blood test for heartworms too, so she had to endure four injections. As I helped pin her down in a corner so the vet could stab a needle in her shoulder, she looked utterly woeful. Her deep and grievous sense of betrayal was quickly left behind after a small handful of treats, though. Then we went back out to the front desk and I had to endure a painful siphoning myself when I paid the bill.

Oh, well, she's still cheaper than a kid, even if she's also far less useful. She is a total drain on society! She has no inherent value! She benefits nobody, and her living expenses are an indulgence which should induce fits of guilt in my soul!

My counterargument? Well, just wook at dat shmookum widdle boo boo face:



Also, if you should ever happen to misplace a small tidbit of, say, dried cow liver, Chloe will detect and home in on it like a meat-seeking missile. Case closed!