Six years of ugly and stinky

    I enter my seventh year with Amelia the cat, her ninth or so. I have no idea why; never have I seen such an ugly and stinky cat. (In case you haven't heard, every day is Opposite Day at my house.) She hasn't noticed that she's aging. As far as she can tell, she's still a kitten. I wish I could give her play dates. She is terribly bored and pitifully eager to play, but I just don't have time anymore to give her as much kittyball as she desires.
    (Kittyball is a fascinating sport. You take a number of little foam rubber balls about the size of ping pong balls but decorated to look like soccer balls. You kick the kittyball across the floor. The kitty either chases it, bats it back, pounces it or ignores it. Better still is arena kittyball. It requires a well-madeup bed. You throw the kittyball on the bed. She chases it like a maniac. Someday, I'll get it on video.)
    Fortunately, the kitty brain is flexible and forgiving. She's up on the Kitty Condo watching some kind of Important Kitty Business out the back window. I guess I'll let her stay. I guess she'll let me stay. Another ten years or more if I'm lucky.

Brain freeze

    I don't know what's wrong with me. Or rather, I know exactly what's wrong with me, but I don't know how to fix it. What's wrong with me is that I hate winter. Not per se; I kinda dig the cold weather in a way. I hate how much the heat pump dries out the air in the apartment, and I hate trying to counterbalance it with humidifiers. I'm forever getting it too damp, so damp that no amount of heating will make it feel warm. And I can never get comfortable enough to sleep well.
    Hence the brain freeze. I can't think a lick. If these little epistles are getting littler and littler, in length and in quality, you have my apologies. Hoping for a brain thaw very, very soon. I'll just think about radiators.

Sure is pretty here in the Atacama Desert

    Hell, I remember when it used to rain sometimes. In fact, I have an old meteorology book that assures me that I live in a monsoonal region. Of course, that could mean that this is the dry season. Except that it used to be the wet season. And we don't actually have any wet season anymore. Just a hot season (8 or 9 months) and a less hot season. But it sure is pretty. I'm a fool for blue skies, me.

Thinking about letting the crazy go

    For years now, I've been using bottled water, either purified or distilled, instead of tap. This isn't totally crazy; my tap water is chlorinated to the point that it smells like a pool. Still, I could use a filter on the tap. Actually, I do, but just for my humidifiers and for pasta. But but but... this morning when I changed out the bigger humidifier, the remaining water again smelled like a pool. Of course, I haven't changed the filter on the tap in a year. That just might have a bearing.:)
    Point is, would I rather have fluoride and chlorine (or flourine and chloride) in my water, or PVC? Answer? Neither! I guess the brilliant move is to buy a glass pitcher and a distilling set. Or, you know, quit worrying about it and just go back to drinking tap water. In other words, let the crazy go. But who knows? Maybe it isn't all that crazy.

Cold snap

    The high on New Year's Day was 75. It hasn't exactly stayed that way. High yesterday in the 50s; today it's in the 40s. I am NOT liking this trend. However, it couldn't be more beautiful, and it's been that way all year so far except for the latter half of 1/1 when it was highly overcast and foreboding. The rain, if it fell, fell somewhere else, however.
    Tonight we get a hard freeze. I hate it only because Dad is likely to have an uncomfortable ride to dialysis tomorrow. Also the tea olive on Whitney St. just bloomed and I'm sad that the pretty smell will probably be frozen off prematurely. Then again, the way the weather's been going, it'll probably be 70 degrees again by the end of the week. So there's that!

Boy I'm dumb (x3)

    Apart from the whole inability to communicate in English thing, I've had a number of reminders lately that my status as a genius might in some ways be less than set in stone. As I've mentioned, I have narrow feet and have been unable to find narrow shoes to go with them. So I've been trying to tie my laces real tight (OK, very tightly. See what I mean about that inability to communicate thing?). Yesterday, the laces popped. As I have a lot of old shoes around that I haven't donated to thrift stores yet, I just recycled the laces from an old pair.
    Sneakers and walking shoes have this little slot on the tongue that you're supposed to run both laces through. The idea appears to be that this will keep the tongue from lolling around. But it also prevents you from tying the shoes particularly tightly. I skipped it, and magic: suddenly I could tie my shoes tight! Genius I tell you... if I'd thought of this three years ago, say.
    Even I'm embarrassed to admit the second thing. For ages now, I've been rinsing my dishes rather than washing them with detergent. Hell, it seemed sufficient, and I didn't want the taste of soap on my dishes and in my food. But the drain rack got just unbelievably foul, presumably from grease dripping off poorly cleaned dishes. So as part of my New Year's resolution not to be an idiot anymore, I've started washing dishes properly. Drain rack looks a lot cleaner, but then it takes a while for it to get really scummy. Maybe it'll turn out that detergent doesn't really make a difference. I'd be at least a little relieved to find that I'm not a total idiot.
    But not that relieved. The third thing? I completely forgot it. And I used to be fairly smart.
    One non-idiotic idea is to get Dad's dialysis days changed so that he and Margaret could go to the dances at the Senior Center on Friday nights. We've seen that he has no energy after dialysis, so Fridays would be a no-go at the moment. I'll have to see if it can be done, and how easy or hard it would be for them to be able to go on Fridays anyway. Anyway, it's a fun idea.

Real type of thing

    George Clinton's show on Main St. last night was fairly awesome, brilliant and colossal. It was a hoot hearing it with a few tens of thousands of my closest friends as well. If there has ever been a crowd that large on Main St. in Columbia I can't imagine when it would have been. The parade used to get a fair turnout, and Veron Melonas' Main St. Jazz brought a good number in every year for a while as well. This was more like Simon & Garfunkel's Concert at Central Park on a small scale. There might have been 100,000 there last night at some point.
    George didn't let us down. He pretty much stuck to the hits, unless "Maggot Brain" wasn't a hit. Phenomenal guitar solo, though. He played a short set from a little before 11 until a few minutes before midnight. Then there was a countdown and phenomenal fireworks (behind the building I was next to, but still). Then George did a second set. I promised myself to stay until "One Nation Under A Groove"; he did it second, after "Maggot Brain." I'd been on my feet for four hours, so I bailed. But an awesome time was had by all.
    Meanwhile, the weather is so gorgeous as to be unbelievable. Most beautiful year ever, so far. If this be armageddon, make the most of it.