When freckles move

    I woke this morning with something like a mosquito bite on my left thigh. There had actually been a mosquito flying around in here (dangit) so I was somewhat expecting a bite, but not on my thigh. That would take a pretty dedicated mosquito. So I looked at it and thought I saw a little spot. Figuring what it was, I picked at it and got the spot and put it on the kitchen counter. I got a flashlight and looked closely; the spot had legs and they were moving.
    So I clapped it in a sealable plastic bag. It's a second or maybe third instar deer tick, less than 2mm across all told. A dangerous citizen indeed. I've been taking Facebook advice all morning ranging from "get it and yourself tested immediately!" to "just ignore it." The clinic that I used back when I was a more dedicated hypochondriac no longer has an ask-a-nurse line outside office hours, nor any answering service whatever unless you have an emergency and want to page the resident. I wasn't feeling very emergencyish, so I'll call Monday. My friend who had such a miserable time with Lyme disease says testing is seldom accurate anyway and my best move is to find a doctor I can browbeat into giving me the doxycycline just in case. It could happen, but as SC isn't a Lyme hot spot and as I'm not as hypochondriac as I used to be, I'm not too worried.
    The subject line is from famous advice to hikers. After you get home, take your clothes off and check yourself over carefully. Any freckles that move, those are ticks: get them off! I seldom bother checking anymore; I never was much good at spotting damned things, and have too many freckles.

Right eye trouble

    As I mentioned at the time, the other day (Tuesday), I had flashes in the vision of my right eye while out on a walk, which I thought was precursor to a migraine. Last night at a movie, I had them again. I don't have much experience with migraines, but I don't think they hang around for two days without ever actually breaking out.
    The other thing going on in my right eye is floaters. They've been floating around in my vision since Tuesday, too. I assume they'll go away by themselves like they always have in the past, but they're starting to get on my nerves. (The optic one, especially.) It looks like an eyelash or eyelashes, but then it always does. No idea what is in in fact. Looking at my eye in the mirror doesn't reveal anything. I don't know if the floaters and flashing are connected. If either persist until Monday, I'll see a doctor if I can get an appointment.
    Last night, outside cat never showed up to eat his cat food at all. I'm hoping that this is somebody's cat and they just developed the good sense to keep him inside. I'm not too worried, but I miss the little booger. I'll just change the blog name to Writing When The Invisible Cat Lets Me.

The ladder stayed with me

    I had many weird dreams last night. Mostly I was solving murders, not surprisingly since I was playing old-time radio mysteries all night. But there was also a novel. Or a business document. It kept changing back and forth. I wanted to drop it off to some kind of authority figure, a boss or an editor. But I had a cover note to explain it, and a cover note to explain the cover note, and a cover note to explain that and another one to explain why the first cover note didn't apply anymore, and I was having a lot of difficulty getting all this and the manuscript in order. Apparently, the Marx Brothers are writing novels in my dreams.
    There was also some business, perhaps connected with solving a murder, with a loft that I was trying to get up to. A loft like a hay loft, not a loft apartment, though I think it was more like an attic. It was reached by a red rope ladder, but not the usual rope ladder. This was just a red rope with rungs every foot or so; the rope was running down the middle of the rungs. Somehow, the whole thing stayed rigid if you just stretched it out. But the weird thing is that the thing sort of imprinted on my brain. When I dozed a little this afternoon, I found myself picturing it again. Maybe it's because I never made it up to the loft.
    Meanwhile in real life, I'm still waiting for my kitty to turn up. He appears in the night and eats his cat food and vanishes. Or maybe it's an opossum. Well at least the wildlife is well-fed!

New cat anticipation

    This cat has an intuitive grasp of what days I can and cannot take him to the vet, and shows up only on the latter. I'm all in on adopting him, assuming he's cleared by the vet. And I'm no longer that concerned about getting him into the cat carrier. Yesterday evening when I was headed to Drinking Liberally, he followed me out to the car and when I got in he hopped on my lap and crawled around for a while. So I think he's pretty comfortable with me and I can probably sucker him into letting me throw him in the carrier. Knock on wood.
    I'm so charged that I went to the pet supply store twice to pick out a new kitty condo, kitty bed, etc. All I need is the cat. Darned smart cats!
    I'm glad to say that I never did have a migraine yesterday. The birthday edition of Drinking Liberally was at a pho place. I had hot tea as well as pho; both probably helped. And it was joyous, though they ate all my cookies again. Darned smart liberals!

Again with the water moccasins

    I will be brief. I will explain why momentarily.
    Today I went out to walk the Timmerman Trail. I had a clever plan; I would stay on Old State Road rather than picking up the trail where it crosses the road the first time, instead jumping on when it crosses the second time, thus making a longer, still pleasant walk. Unfortunately, shortly after I got on the trail, the vision in my right eye started flashing, probably a sign of incipient migraine. (That's what the one migraine I ever had was like, decades ago, anyway.)
    So I cut the walk short at half a circuit and returned to the car. I still had some errands to run so I ran them quickly, and went home to lie in the dark. That is what I will return to doing if I can come to the point quickly here. (Bets?)
    Unfortunately (this still isn't the point) an amazing thunderstorm came through, knocking out the power and knocking over a largish tree in my yard. Then it was time to go get Dad and the longest train I've ever seen came along just before I reached the tracks on Huger Street, slowed and slowed and ground to a stop. I persuaded the people in the next lane to let me out and was able to pick up Dad with only a slight delay, although for once he actually had to wait for me. It looked like we were driving right into the storm, but it had passed and Margaret's house was totally clear, even though she said the yard had been flooded minutes before.
    But that still isn't the point. When I got to Old State Road again on Timmerman Trail, I met a couple of SCE&G employees who had recently laid down their large packs which looked to be power leaf blowers. Also I had been hearing something like power leaf blowers. They told me to watch out for that snake, that it was a copperhead, not to let it bite me and that they were about to kill it. It was a water moccasin, quite small and just basking. And I really wish I had told them so and suggested that they just go blow their leaves somewhere else and the snake would go away in good time. But I can see their point of view. If somebody did get bitten, SCE&G (the power company building the park) would get sued. And if they got bitten, they would be very very unhappy themselves. So sure, I understand their position. But it still was sad. OK, back to my sleep mask!

What's a word for "bloviate" that rhymes with "cry"?

    My blog entry for my birthday should be "It's my party and I'll (something that means bloviate but rhymes with cry) if I want to," but I'm stumped. Ah well, I didn't have that much to bloviate about anyway. I woke up so brainless that breakfast nearly defeated me, to such an extent that I started thinking that senile dementia hits like clockwork at the EXACT age of 52. But I've been functioning a little better since, and the yawns suggest that I might be a little tired. Also the little cat visited again and ate and drank and crawled all over me, and this was big fun. I still don't know if I'll ever be able to adopt him, but if he wants to be my outside cat, he can. Tonight I'm going out with the family for my birthday, which will also be fun I hope. So maybe not the most productive day in history, but a nice one.

English sucks

    I was on my way to Sumter on, not surprisingly, the Sumter Highway, also known as Garners Ferry Road. I passed an intersection with Old Garners Ferry Road. And it occurred to me that that is an unbelievable quantity of ambiguity to pack into just four words. Is this the old road to Garner's (the correct spelling, except on road signs) Ferry? Is it the road to the old ferry of Garner? Is it the road to the ferry of Old Garner, whereas Young Garner has a different ferry? Because I'm an English speaker (more or less) who lives around here (more or less), I'm reasonably sure that it's an old stretch of the road to Garner's Ferry, replaced by the road I was riding on. But can you really know?
    I was going to Sumter because the irises at Swan Lake/ Iris Gardens always peak around the time of my birthday. Also they have an Iris Festival. I dig that Goo Goo Dolls number, too, but I'm not sure I would have a whole festival for it! Anyway, the irises were very lovely and the swans were okay as well.
    Later, just to pile it on with the English sucks theme, I would see banners advertising a sidewalk sale and a parking lot sale. I wonder if I could get a combo deal going?

The power of a good deed

    The door from the outside world to the waiting area at the dialysis facility is power-assisted. You're supposed to use a button either inside or out to open it. Operationally, this doesn't necessarily happen. There's a pushbar on the inside, so people going out don't really have to bother with the button. And the door frequently doesn't close properly, so people coming in often don't have to bother with the button either.
    Today, it was closing properly, and this was a problem. Because what it wasn't doing was opening properly. It would open maybe a quarter of the way and then close itself again. With the pushbar or the handle, a person could override this, of course, but it wasn't exactly what anyone was expecting. As one of the patients in the waiting room said, somebody could get hurt.
    A lady with a walker was trying to get out of the clinic part to the waiting room and was having trouble with that door just because doors are heavy things to move with a walker. I ran up and opened and held the door for her, and then went and opened and held the door to the outside, too, since there's no way she would be able to cope with that. Another lady with a walker came after her from the waiting area, so I held the door for her, too.
    The door is set up so that after a while (15 seconds, say) the power assistance gives up and the door should close itself. This happened while the first lady was going out and I had to hold the door open with muscle power (such as it is) until the second lady made her way out. And somehow-- that fixed it. Door stopped trying to close itself partway open, but worked perfectly normally again. People had been holding it open before, of course, so I have no idea why this time would do the trick. I did hold it open longer and farther open than most people had; maybe that was it. But I like to think that it really was the power of the good deed.

Coppernose! Cottonhead! Hogmouth!

    So I was going to hike the Timmerman Trail this morning, but park at Congaree Creek Heritage Preserve, thereby substituting a scenic five-minute hike on Old State Road for a not terribly scenic fifteen-minute hike on from the Timmerman parking area to get to the interesting parts. Maybe Old State Road isn't that scenic either, but I like it better. Regardless, when I got there, I heard something that sounded like blasting, not surprising since there's a construction site across the road. Still, suddenly, it seemed like a good time to visit the heritage preserve instead, and it was!
    This area has been in a drought for about 20 years. I'm not sure it has officially ended even yet, but we certainly got our rains last year. Unfortunately, the trails at the heritage preserve were set up during the low-rain period. Over the last year, long stretches have been frustratingly soggy as all hell. So I was thrilled to find everything dry but the creek, for a change. Also this is a good spot for ebony jewelwings, damselflies with green bodies and black wings. (This should make them ebonywing jewels; go figure.) I had seen a bunch at Poinsett State Park last week and figured (correctly) that there would be a bunch here, too. This is what I get for being a bug fan.
    I'm strolling along and spot a pretty snake basking by the trail. I snag a photo and it vanishes like smoke. It was probably a yellow-bellied racer; moved like it, anyway. Farther along, I cross a small watercourse and meet a much less friendly snake. It shook its tail like a rattler in spite of not having rattles. A glimmer from memory told me that this is not a good thing, so I took another picture and chose a path around, rather than over or through.
    I tried to identify the snake via the Internet, risky when you're looking at a phone in bright sunlight. I thought it was a copperhead, but that proved to be mistaken. My friend William saw the picture on Facebook and said it was either a cottonmouth or a hognose. All three do the rattlesnake tail trick when ready to bite, though the cottonmouth also shows... why he's called a cottonmouth. I was just as glad that I didn't receive this demonstration.
    I dunno, I don't suppose I was ever in any danger to speak of. I just still can't get used to this new John who isn't afraid of things anymore.

Unadopted

    I haven't seen outside alien cat today. I can't really draw any inference about this until Monday, since that's been the traditional appearance day. And I guess the cat wasn't too traumatized from its brief imprisonment since it came back to eat the very food that had been the instrument of its capture. And of course, sometimes the grapes really are sour. Since I'm allergic to cats, not having a second one is probably still a good thing.
    Still, I already miss the little weasel. I change out Amelia's food twice a week, including Thursdays. Usually, I just put the excess in the trash since otherwise it would just go to the ants. This time, I put it in outside cat's bowl, and put the bowl on a plate filled with water to keep the ants away. So far, the food is untouched. It has been amusing keeping the water topped off to continue repelling the ants. I like to think that the little beast has a happy home and is getting taken care of and fed there. And of course s/he could still turn up at any point and chow down. Or some stray might. Fed strays kill fewer birds, so putting out food is a good thing. So long as I'm not creating super-ant.

Almost!

    The small cat situation to date: Two weeks ago, on a Monday, a small cat turned up in my yard and whined at me but ran away before I could feed it. One week ago, on a Monday, the same small cat, tabby with fangs, turned up again and this time most emphatically let me feed it. Two days ago (bet you can guess what day that is without having to count back), my small friend turned up again and again happily tried to eat me out of house, home and cat food. And has stuck around ever since. I had the door open an inch for New Cat and Amelia to interact. New Cat hissed a little and scratched sort of half-heartedly. I think they could get along should I ever let New Cat in.
    Because stray cats can have feline leukemia, I can't let this cat in without a vet trip first. Also, I'm warned that male cats can give scratches that could mess Amelia up badly. And of course this might be somebody's very food-crazed pet cat. So the little weasel needs to be captured and taken to the vet.
    This morning, I put out the cat carrier with a bowl of cat food inside. My little friend wasn't falling for that. However, the whole top snaps off of the cat carrier and when I snapped it off, the little sucker went for the food. And was snapped in. Unfortunately, I hadn't practiced the maneuver beforehand and I messed up the door. I could prop it shut, but couldn't actually latch it. Having gotten used to a cat who won't even open a door when it's only partially closed, I thought that would be sufficient.
    It wasn't. While I was on the phone with the vet's office, the small cat (now named Houdini) escaped. I'm not sure it's going to fall for that trick again. But when I'd gathered the cat food in the usual bowl, it did come back and eat it. And hung around on the porch for a while. I opened the door an inch again, and while Houdini and Amelia didn't quite ignore one another, neither would approach either. Good sign? Bad sign? I just don't know.
    So I think we're at an impasse. I can't take the cat in unless I can have a vet check it for a microchip, feline leukemia or other bad stuff. I don't think I can trick it into the cat carrier again. And heaven knows I don't have the space or the histamine tolerance for another cat. So why do I think Houdini's moving in soon anyway?

Home again

    Dad and Margaret are finally home from their lengthy motel stay. As before, if you're curious about the reason, shoot me an email, text or telegram, or you can wait until 2024 or so when I can publish it. Suffice it to say that as far as we know the problem is solved and won't recur. If you hear about another motel stay at some future date, you'll know that that hope was mistaken. But let's hope it isn't.
    I had great, awesome, majestic dreams last night but didn't write them down quickly enough. The only one I remember, I was mostly sleeping (I mean, in the dream). I was beside a waterway that sometimes was a creek, sometimes a river, sometimes a river running through a (fairly majestic) canyon, while I was in a cabin or sometimes a lean-to. People tended to troop through (or possibly troupe) but didn't generally wake me up. Boy, I hope I didn't cure cancer or find the lost chord in the other dream!

Further unpaid advertising

    My friends at Aldi have been on a crazy gluten-free jag the last couple weeks. Since I'm also dairy- and soy-free, a lot of the offerings don't do me any good, but a lot of them do. One is a brownie mix, coincidentally having the exact same ingredients and package directions as the GF brownie mix from King Arthur Flour. Difference is that Aldi's is $3 while the king's is $7. The brownies are really good! I suspect that they would be even better if I used some oil other than sunflower seed oil; I'm thinking of getting coconut oil some time soon.
    It would be nice to think that this will be a permanent offering at Aldi, but judging by past performance, this is very unlikely. However, they have restocked the GF items and so far the stock has grown rather than shrunk. So at least this limited time offer won't be selling out too soon. King Arthur will just have to wait.
    Also, my endless hunt through the thrift stores of the land for clothes that fit may have found me a winner. Kohl's has a house brand named totally unpretentiously Sonoma Life + Style that made an all-cotton medium shirt that actually fit me. So I made another endless Goodwill hunt and found another, which also fits pretty well. So shortly I may be hustling over to Kohl's to buy out their medium all-cotton shirt counter. It could happen. Williams-Sonoma Life + Style would have been a deal-breaker, but just Sonoma I can probably live with.

But we're NOT. BITTER.

    Saw a bumper sticker that read, "National Championship Without Probation." Now this could refer to either of South Carolina's NCAA baseball championships in recent years. But I suspect it goes back to that time when Auburn had a quarterback named Cam Newton, the Gamecocks played them in the SEC championship, getting beat by about 80, and Auburn went on to win the national championship.
    The supposition is that if Newton hadn't been allowed to play, we would have easily won the SEC and then the national title. Or if their title was disallowed due to probation, we could at least stake a claim to deserving the ring. But things didn't turn out that way. Although their coach didn't survive too much longer, I don't think they ever actually got any kind of probation or even punishment. But boy were we sure that they were going to go down. But we're not bitter.
    As best as I can tell, the bumper sticker is no longer for sale anywhere, which isn't too surprising either. But it undercuts the possibility that it's about baseball.

Making reality better

    I figured out what the deal is with phone pictures these days, i.e., yesterday's post. It was so blindingly obvious that I was blinded, of course. What else? The deal is that the smart phones have better screens than laptops, or at least the cheap smart phone I bought has a better (higher resolution, I presume) screen than the cheap laptop I bought. When I looked at the Nikon pic on the laptop and the phone pic on the phone, the latter looked much better. When I copied the latter to the laptop and looked at both of them on the laptop, the Nikon magically looked better. Ditto when looking at my own blog post with both pics on the phone.
    This explains why we all think we're great photographers when shooting with our phone cameras. I was always posting pictures on Facebook and feeling annoyed that they didn't look as good, thinking that Facebook was sucking away my color palette. The fact that they looked fine via Facebook on the phone but less fine via the laptop escaped me totally. Sharp as a tack, I am.
    So, this leads us to a world where our perceptions are informed by the little computers we carry around in our pockets that make our surroundings look more beautiful than they really are, and then we wake up to the illusion when we see a more accurate reflection. Sounds like a fairy tale, or beer goggles. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I like the really pretty pictures, but then I'm mad when they turn out to be less pretty than I think. I guess I could try to adjust the display on the phone to dial down the tint a bit. But I'm not sure either the I or the phone is that smart.

That whole a thousand words thing

    OK, this time I will try to upload pictures. This isn't so much about the pictures per se, or rather it is. What it isn't so much about is the subjects of the pictures per se, not least because they're identical. I crazy mad love my Windows Phone's camera, but I think it's cheating. I'll look at the picture after I've taken it and think, "There wasn't that much color in that view." In fact, even looking at the view on the phone's screen, I see a much prettier view than the view is in reality, often as not.
    When I hiked Poinsett State Park the other day with my friend Fred, I brought along my Nikon Coolpix camera. This was in fact because I was planning to shoot irises at Swan Lake/ Iris Park, but as I've mentioned, the irises weren't there so we went to Poinsett. I carried the camera anyway and shot three views with both the phone and the Nikon. And, as I say, I think the phone cheats. Anyway, I wouldn't expect a washed-out shot from a Nikon, so if the phone shot is more vibrant, I'm feeling like it's augmenting reality a bit. Let's see if I can actually upload photos. (If not, you'll just have to take my word, won't you?
    This is the Nikon shot:


    This is the phone shot:



















    Can you see a difference? Can you see anything? At this size, the Nikon shot looks more colorful. At full size, I still think it's the phone. But they're both pretty cool.
    Also, this train of thought inspired a new gag: A picture is worth a thousand words, but for you, 950. Well I liked it!

English: still hard

    I posted a picture on Facebook. Really, I know how to post pictures here, too, but it isn't such a great picture that you need to see it to understand the anecdote. One of my favorite places to walk is Columbia's Historic Columbia Canal and Riverfront Park, which I generally just call Canal Park. The canal's old towpath, now a hip walking/ jogging/ biking/ rollerblading (dammit) track, runs under Broad River Road and its bridge, which has been in the process of being replaced since about 1923, I think. They appear to be doing the work molecule by molecule.
    Point is that there used to be a ramp up to the bridge from the towpath but it's been closed for ages. Now there's also a 20-foot or so gap from the ramp to the bridge. So the picture is of this gap, and the caption was "'Sidewalk closed.' Yeah, I can see that." And the hard part is, well that sarcasm can't be captured in print, basically. But as soon as I wrote it, I noticed that a reader wouldn't necessarily get what I was being sarcastic about. It could be read as meaning that I can literally see that the sidewalk is closed, though I meant it (mildly sarcastically) that I could understand why it might be closed. I can't think of a clearer way to phrase it. I get that it isn't the most important issue in history; it's just frustrating when I can't phrase a joke. Guess I should have gone with, "Good thinking!"

And common sense wins out again

    My friend Fred is having his 45th birthday today. He lives in Sumter. I was planning to go there today anyway, because I wanted to visit Swan Lake/ Iris Gardens. The irises peak about this time of year. (There's an annual iris festival to celebrate this, which tends to come near my birthday, May 26. But the thing is, storms usually come along and flatten them in the week prior. So I thought I would catch them early.)
    I messaged Fred on Facebook when I saw it was his birthday, and he was hip for irising. However, he messaged back that the irises were not so much evident, so I suggested we meet at Poinsett State Park, between Columbia and Sumter, but closer to the latter. This is a park on the High Hills of Santee, actually quite low hills which nevertheless feature an array of vegetation from much higher elevations. Here is a place where you see mountain laurel hung with Spanish moss. It is one confused place. It's also the best place to get in mountain-type hiking in the Midlands.
    The common sense aspect is that even though it has very low visitorship, there had in recent years been an admission charge. We were pleased to find that the admission charge has gone away. We got in some lovely hiking, taking the trail around the lake, which is considerably more rugged than the trails around the lake at other Midlands park. The weather was hot but the shade was sufficient to keep it very pleasant. A lovely park that I hope I can visit more often.

Son of Beyond the Return of Boy I'm still dumb

    In 3 1/2 years, I've probably used every variant of this subject line. Knowing me, I've probably used this one before, too, but who's going to type all that into Google anyway?
    So anyway, I got over my fluoride obsession years ago, though I still don't use fluoride toothpaste. Then again, I never liked the stuff and baking soda seems to do at least as well, cheaper. But still.
    Yesterday, I noticed that the indicator light on my faucet-mounted Pur water filtration system was no longer flashing. This is hardly surprising, since I had had the doohickus for years. I went to Kmart to get a new one.
    At Kmart, I noticed that the Pur and Britta faucet-mounted systems have notices on the package (Pur's is from the ADA) that they don't remove fluoride from city water systems. At the time I quit buying purified water eight gallons at the time in favor of a filter on the faucet, I really did care about getting the fluoride out, too. Now I'm not too worried about it. So long as it gets the really stinky chlorine out (which the package claims it does), I can live with it. I was just tickled that I was dumb enough not to notice this before. Of course, it's about as likely that the notice just wasn't there to be noticed before. It would be interesting to find out if this is a new thing and if so if it's a change in the product's performance or just a change in the labeling. Hmmm.

Adopted, again

    A week or two ago (it was another Monday, anyway, since I was taking the trash out at the time), a little cat came up and wanted to be my friend. Really really really wanted to be my friend, chatting and jabbering and I don't know what all else. (Even after all these years, I still am not fluent in cat.) I got a couple of bowls, one each of cat food and water, and put them out but by the time I'd done so, my friend was gone. Because of the proliferation of ants in my yard, I couldn't leave them out, unfortunately. End of story, I thought.
    This morning, I was going off on errands when the same friendly cat appeared. Seen in better light, he (I'm guessing) turns out to be a grey tabby with a big head and paws but a very skinny tail, so an old kitten or a very young cat. He also vocalized a lot, like I said. Since ferals only spit and hiss, this must be somebody's pet or somebody's former pet. Maybe when the kitten started clawing up the furniture, they put him out. Or maybe he got lost.
    Anyway, this time he was rubbing against my legs and chatting up a storm, and when I went to get food, he followed. And when I brought it out, he hadn't run away. Boy howdy! That cat demolished a bowl of cat food. Then demolished another bowl of cat food. I showed him to Amelia through the window, but her days of being worried about evil outside cats seem to be behind her. Back in the day, she was a terror, but she's been Queen of Olympia for so long that she wasn't even interested. So at least she isn't inherently hostile to the idea of a second cat.
    I went and ran my errands, and the little cat was gone. Time will tell if he will return. I'm betting that once he's found a total pushover like me, it's a total certainty. I would need to persuade him somehow to get in the cat carrier to go to the vet to see if he's been chipped, if he's in fact a he, and if s/he has any communicable conditions worse than fleas. And getting another cat in an apartment this small is a really, really bad idea given the lack of space, my allergies, and the unlikeliness I would ever sleep again. But we'll see. Anyway, I did a good deed, and met another sweetie sweet sweet, so it was a win all the way around.

We mean it, man

    I'm probably the only person on Earth who could get away to a desert island for a few hours and have "God Save the Queen" by the Sex Pistols running though his head the entire time. I rather thought I would have blogged about a similar occurrence on previous visits, but my records say that I haven't since I switched to this computer a year or so ago. I really don't think I was feeling particularly nihilistic; I believe that one of the shore birds was making a sound that sounded like the bass line between verses on the song. Anyway, that sound seemed to be what was triggering the earworm. Or maybe the birds just sing like Johnny Rotten.
    Regardless, it was a foul, terrible, unpleasant day, so of course we loved it to distraction. It rained, not hard but soakingly, for a half hour or perhaps even an hour, and the only shelter was unreachable. So we just walked up and down the beach getting rained on. It was cool, literally a little too cool, but no major hardship, and we more or less had dried out by the time the boat came to pick us up. This was another beach drop, so we spent all our time on the beach. Paul swam a bit. I actually wore trunks, but just couldn't face up to putting on that much sunscreen, so I remained covered up. The sunscreen was SPF 50; it seems to have been sufficient.
    We also tried a new place called the Taco Spot in West Ashley, also convenient to visiting my mom's grave. It was nice, too.

Just to be close to you

    I remember telling a woman that I'm easy to get along with, back when there was anyone who wanted to. She said, "You just keep telling yourself that."
    But it's true! Couldn't be easier. The first thing to remember is that the alligators in the moat are really very tame. You hardly have to worry about them at all. Granted, the piranha are another story, but if you remember to bring along a couple of steaks and maybe a steel mesh shark suit, you should be OK.
    The machine gun emplacement is fully automated now, and there have been hardly any malfunctions. Still, you might want to stop, drop and roll when you get near the front steps just to be on the safe side. Speaking of the safe side, don't worry about the land mines. Nearly all of them are fake.
    When defusing the neutron bomb, always remember to cut the red wire first! I can't stress this enough. Don't forget to practice with the lead-lined gloves beforehand; those can be tricky!
    The vicious attack cat I can't help you with, I'm sorry. I don't even know how she got in here. Scritch her on her head and you should be good to go.
    See? Couldn't be easier!
    Sorry about the Commodores earworm in the subject line. It got stuck in my head this morning (I don't know how, since nobody plays it anymore) and led me onto this train of thought. Also, it's always nice to share.

Mourning in reverse

    I don't think Mother's Day ads used to bother me. The thing about Alzheimer's or any kind of senile dementia is that you can't really mourn. Anyway, you can't mourn in the ordinary way, because by the time the person dies you're relieved on their behalf that they have been released. And you feel as if you've done your mourning already in the years that the person was slipping away. But you haven't really.
    I'm finally getting around to mourning my mother's death. The fact that the Mother's Day ads are getting on my nerves suggests that I'm not particularly close to acceptance yet. I think I'm actually doing better with my dad. This isn't to say that he's dying anytime soon, but at 93 and in his condition, he's dying some year soon. And that is a shock, and I've been fairly freaked out about it for years now. I think I'm finally coming to a point near acceptance, though. Compared to senile dementia, having somebody in declining health whom you can talk about it with them is much, much better. I guess we're all getting towards acceptance. Anyway I hope so.

Dream dream

    I guess if you can have a movie movie, you can have a dream dream. A slam-bang, pot-boiler of a dream with thrills, chills and spills. Fortunately for you, I don't remember much about this one, but that it was killer-diller. My dad was much like he is currently (as in slow, and using a walker) but with greater stamina. We were in some kind of a mall and he had to walk nearly the length of it (which he wouldn't be able to do in real life these days, but he was having no difficulty in the dream). But it was a fairly unusual sort of a mall. For one thing, there was a river abutting it. Or maybe running through it would be more accurate. And since I had a few minutes to wait, I figured I'd go exploring. But after I'd jumped out to an island in the middle, part of it collapsed and I was stuck; there was no way to go back.
    Fortunately it was a dream, so we just forgot about that immediately, and then I just had to drive around and get my dad. I think the whole place was about two doors down from my dad's house, but possibly that was another part of the dream, now forgotten. I bet it was killer-diller, though!
    It's 95 degrees outside, y'all; don't expect much out of me.:)

Decades-old mystery solved

    Or rather, decades-old mystery noticed, then immediately solved. I was relating one of my favorite anecdotes about myself. It concerned an occurrence at Penn, when I lived in a rather strange dormitory called Kings Court/English House. (As far as I know, I was the only one who called it The King's English.) It was strange only in that you could not enter Kings Court (where I lived) except through English House. This family was trying to get in through one of Kings Court's exit only doors.
    I said, "You can't get in that way. It's a fahr door." It took me two tries to correct my drawl to "fire door." I guess that's when I started trying to polish up the accent a little bit. Anyway, I always assumed that they were a prospective student and her family, but now realize that that makes no sense. We were a few blocks off of campus proper; there's no reason a prospective student would be trying to get into a dormitory by the wrong entrance when there are untold numbers of places she and her family would more likely be visiting only a couple of blocks south.
    Thus the mystery and its immediate solution: they were probably the family of a student living in Kings Court/English House. This makes much more sense. I probably should have asked. "Y'all got kin up in hair?," I can hear myself saying.

Aw I can't do it

    A couple of years ago, when I first started hosting Drinking Liberally, a nice young man and his nice young female companion came to a meeting. I thought they were fairly enthusiastic, but alas, I never saw them again. He handed me a business card that had nothing on it but his name. I thought this was fairly great, but then I put it on the seat of my car and never saw it again either. Until yesterday. I have no idea where it had been hiding; in the course of life, you search your car for various things and usually find things you weren't looking for, but it never turned up until out of the blue it just appeared on the floor under the driver's seat. No doubt there's some quantum physics explanation.
    Anyway, what I thought I was going to do was title this blog entry with his name, figuring that anybody who would print a business card with only his name on it would probably also be given to googling his name now and then. If he wanted to get in touch, he'd find my contact information on this blog. But I find I can't do it. For all that I am fundamentally a town crier by nature, it doesn't seem right to publish a stranger's name without his permission, even though I'm not saying anything bad about him. But that leaves me with another content-free blog entry. You'll just have to take my word that it's a cool-looking business card. Printed by Schrodinger? Well I have no way of knowing.

Aitch-ee-double-toothpicks

    As an agnostic, I don't have a lot in the way of theology. However, I'm increasingly convinced that my own eternal destiny will be decided by a committee of ex-girlfriends. How they'll be convoked is another question that fortunately is not my problem. I have a pretty shrewd idea what their decision is going to be, though. Gee, you make ONE "You don't HAVE a small of the back" joke!

What? A happy dream?

    Not that there was that much to it. Interestingly (I hope), I think that's the way the dream happened. In other words, it isn't that I'm not remembering much of the dream, but that there wasn't much dream to remember. I was a detective; my partner was a Chinese fellow. I was able to clear a bunch of young people (think the kids from "Fame," more or less) of underage singing and dancing. This is odd, of course, and not the usual thing I would expect as a result of sleep-listening to "Inner Sanctum Mysteries." What's odder is how happy it made me. I was beside myself.
    The Chinese fellow was less thrilled. Or anyway unenthusiastic. Then I had a different Chinese partner, whose name I somehow inferred from-- nothing, really. This made me extremely happy, too. It's a bewilderment to me. I guess my brain just figured (correctly) that I needed a little gratuitous happiness about now. But such peculiar things to be happy about!

Is it a phobia if the fear is justified?

    Taking Dad to the dialysis facility has been complicated slightly since I backed into the guy's pickup truck some months ago. I've never seen him again (or at least, not the pickup truck) and I've had no further accidents, but the place now permanently makes me nervous. Vehicles come out of nowhere too fast. You look both ways, and look both ways, and look both ways, and pull out, and poof! Somebody magically appears.
    It would be really great if they would cut down some of the greenery to create better lines of sight. It would be really great if they would put in speed bumps (or speed humps, as they now seem to be called). Or if people would just slow the @#$# down on their own. My common sense move is to park on the side that isn't the one most people use as an entrance. This cuts down magically appearing automobiles markedly. It's also the side with better shade, so I prefer parking there anyway this time of year. Of course, other people often figure that out, too, but I don't mind using the non-shady spots if I get to feel safer. It'll hold me until I get my robot-driven car, and then I can have phobias about that!

Not much of a gag anyway

    There's a billboard next to the Gervais St. bridge with a giant photo of the back of a car. Being the grownup that I'm not, I wanted to take a picture and caption it: "Shocked! Shocked that they're putting rear ends on billboards!" However, taking a picture while driving 40 mph in the left lane of a fairly narrow bridge is not the shrewdest idea ever. Taking a good one would require taking one's eyes off the road in a manner that would probably be fatal. So I snapped a shot with my eyes on the road instead. No idea what I actually photographed; some portion of the interior of the car, judging by the color.
    Anyway, it's not much to brag on, but I'm proud that I let it go. I like to think I would have been able to let it go even if the joke had in fact been funny. Now THAT would be a sign of growing up. Let's not rush things.

Aged cookies?

    So the Dates with Assorted Nuts cookies weren't particularly good at first. They weren't particularly good at second. Today, however, they're absolute world beaters. Did they age well? Did I have a cold for two days? Did I do a terrible job of mixing and all the flavor got stuck in half the cookies? I can't figure it. But boy do I ever love them now!
    I guess next week I'll make them the same way except for making a greater effort to mix harder. One thing I noticed even when I wasn't loving them so much was that I can definitely see why people combine dates and walnuts in baked goods. Even though I'm not so taken with walnuts as a rule, the two flavors go well together. Maybe I'll amp up both the dates and walnuts next time.
    Sorry, I had a really intelligent, deep post for today but I completely forgot it. Oops. These senior moments get ever more frequent.