My Evil Thoughts

Welcome to where I air my evil views, proud, uncowed, unbowed, and absolutely evil, superficial, and ignorant. Get used to it. To return to the main blog page, just click here.

Words on a Screen

One of the hardest things to do is to resume blogging after a period of silence. It's gone beyond my life being unbloggable. Actually, my life is never unbloggable. It's selectively bloggable. Picking out the pieces that can go on this blog is distasteful, and then one falls out of the habit of writing reportage. It's easier to write fiction. Then it is easier not to write at all. One makes graphics for Second Life textures. The avie has a great spring wardrobe. I wonder what there is that is left of me.

Right now I sit in a prison of fatigue, sleep deprivation, and IBS run amuck with a dash of perimenopause thrown in. I don't want to do anything drastic. I'm just not into personal drama. There is no need for it. Twelve hours of undisturbed sleep I find utterly tantalizing, but I know the work involved to get there is too much of a challenge.

And what makes matters worse is that I'm an ingrate at heart. This just means I am honest. Gratitude is a nauseating sensation one step above or below relief. I know that I got a great deal on a hotel room (a suite no less!) for a conference I'm going to in May. I managed to cook off most of the vegetables in the fridge last night, in spite of coming in late. I lost my keys but got replacements made. I managed to hear a women's Megillah reading for Purim and reschdule a medical appointment. I know that I did not run out of medication (Yay! Yay! Yay!), and that my turtle, Joie, has a new, huge basking light in her tank. The hamper can close. Sometimes it gets a bit too full for that. There are sundries in the house that I ran out of way too long ago. I managed to find the Toms of Maine deoderant at Wal-Mart last night etc... And it all means nothing.

I am grateful for finding Hertzel stretched out against my side, his soft belly fur against my nightgown this morning. He had his long legs stretched out over my shoulders. His green-gold eyes were closed in sleepy, feline, contentment. He does not pester to wake me. He likes snuggling way too much. And yes, he was purring.

I am grateful Lysistrata nuzzled me standing up on a chair last night. I love the way she boofs her head against me and lets me kiss it. I like the smells of cinamon and peppermint I sometimes find among the no-smell, clean cat, fragrance of her classic tabby coat. Yes, I burrow my nose in my cat's coat. It is a great place to hide.

I am grateful that Joie, my juvenile (no longer a hatchling) red eared slider turtle, seems to be eating well. I think she has started to try vegetable foods. She likes Chinese celery which is mostly leaves and very pungent. She's OK with curly endive, but she prefers the celery and she prefers hard boiled egg whites to hard boiled yolks.

I've had animals before who adored hard boiled eggs. Feeding hard boiled eggs to Joie makes me think of my late cat, Stingie or Sting which was her real name. I couldn't open a jar of mayonaise without seeing her try to get to it. If I peeled a hard boiled egg, she would look for the peel in the garbage and wonder how I could break an egg and remove everything so efficiently. I would give her a piece of hard boiled egg because it was unfair not to share. I wonder now if Sting's mother, who was feral or at least indoor-outdoor, ever raided nests and knocked the eggs to the ground for her young. Sting was separated from her mother at three weeks of age, and I hand reared her, so the craving for eggs must have been instinctive. There is something profoundly sad about a cat not raised by a proper family dreaming of the high flying food.

Lysistrata and Hertzel both ate palmetto bugs when they were younger. I think Hertzel can still eat them. Lysistrata had her two canines pulled three years ago, due to inflamed gums. The teeth protruded from her mouth. I thought it was a deformity. The vet said otherwise. They put Lysistrata under for ten minutes and sedated her for half an hour. They inserted an airway so she did not need antibiotics after the surgery and she had no stitches.

I've never seen a cat bounce back from dental surgery like Lysistrata did. Georgia, when she had six teeth pulled required soft food and antibiotic drops for a week. Georgia hid from the medication and I'd have to lock doors to keep her from hiding under the bed. I would find her in the upstairs hallway at my house on Tracy Street in Utica, New York and I would corner her and put her bobsled style between my legs. It was all over once she was overpowered, but she could make herself hard to catch. I did not mind paying bills for a more modern method of surgery for Lysistrata, but her palmetto bug eating days are through. Only, a real cat fanatic worries about her pet's inability to hunt cockroaches. Oh well, I think the fun of hunting is in the flushing out of prey as much as in the eating of it, as if that is any consolation.

Georgia, Evander, and Sting, my cats from New York who are all dead now, never ate palmetto bugs, but they did play with them. This was true even of Georgia whose favorite food was butterflies. There is something profoundly weird about a cat with half a wing sticking out of her mouth. Eating palmetto bugs is much less jarring. I think Hertzel can still enjoy them, but they are not as prevalent in Atlanta as they were in Columbus or in Lee County Alabama which was probably one gig American cockroach. Sorry, if you left pet food out at night it turned into a live, arthropod buffet. Only the humans minded. I'm sure the cats were just as happy to eat something they had to hunt. There is nothing like fresh killed.

Oh well, I guess I can still write and maybe it is not as hard to pick out that which is bloggable from that which isn't. Let me get back on track.

Eileen H. Kramer March 9, 2012