A Big Pickle

Here’s a blog I think is very witty: I Blame the Patriarchy. A quote from her FAQ:

“I don’t mess with a blogroll because I read all the same liberal-ass blogs as everybody else. Also, blogrolls appear to raise awkward social issues which, as a spinster aunt attempting to lead a stress-free life of leisure, I prefer to avoid.”

Last week was very busy and stressful at work. By the end of Friday, I was quite looking forward to going to see my acupuncturist. It was extremely pleasant, as always.

On Saturday I walked to a pet store in Noe Valley to get 150 pounds of cat litter, which I brought home in a cab. Then I went to Rainbow and then I did my weekly cooking.

I had decided I had to see The Censor again, so Tom and I went on Saturday evening, and to Ananda Fuara beforehand for dinner. I’d warned him not to say “Ewww” out loud during the play, as I feared that’s what he would do when he saw the glistening turd, but it turned out I needn’t have worried; he didn’t turn a hair. As we were leaving, I realized why when he said he enjoyed the play but he didn’t get the part about the pickle.

You probably remember the brouhaha about the smoking neighbor and me getting in trouble with my building manager and all that. As it happens, since then that neighbor has become an absolutely model citizen (so it was all worth it, as far as I’m concerned). If she is smoking anywhere in the vicinity, it’s not detectable. I think she’s actually moved out and let a relative take her place, but Tom, who lives on the floor above mine, says he sees her.

Since then, I’ve had a couple of interactions with the building manager for other reasons, and they have been fine. Last week or so, she actually sent me an extremely kind note. I appreciate that we seem to be able to take each interaction as a fresh start.

A young couple moved onto my floor several months ago, really nice people. A couple of months ago, they let a friend step out their kitchen door into the trash area to smoke. Ten apartments have windows onto that area, so when someone smokes there, anyone whose windows are open will share in the experience, and probably even those whose windows aren’t open, as the two buildings in question are not exactly airtight.

I subsequently left them a note asking them to ask their guests to step out front to smoke. They didn’t respond and have never mentioned it, but have continued to be friendly, as always.

My last acrimonious discussion with the building manager, a couple of months ago, featured her saying she thought it was fine for people to smoke in the trash area. I said I thought not. She said, “We’ll just see about that,” or words to that effect, and then I never heard another word on the subject, so I concluded she had found out I was right.

Last weekend, I was in my kitchen and found it filling with smoke. I opened my kitchen door and there was a guest of the neighbors, smoking. I said, “Just checking to see where the smoke was coming from,” and she said she’d put it out. That suggested that the couple had decided to ignore my request.

When Tom and I got home from the play Saturday night, the young couple were having a party and people were smoking in that area. I opened my door and saw a fellow sitting on the stairs right outside my door, cigarette in hand. I told him it’s a no-smoking building and that he was filling my apartment with smoke. He was blatantly rude, swore at me and threw his cigarette at the building manager’s window.

I made ready to write a more strongly worded note to the neighbors, but then I remembered the ill effects of doing that last time, so I sent the building manager an email instead, which I dispatched with a certain amount of trepidation, given that our worst fights have started more or less that way.

It was 3 a.m. before I went to bed, as I spent much time composing a note to the neighbors and then the one to the building manager. I felt lousy when I got up the next day, and had the impending-doom feeling, too, as I was pretty sure I was going to get an unpleasant response. She might even say that she’d found out it was perfectly fine to smoke in that area.

It was helpful to notice I was feeling apprehensive and just let that be: a thought, a clutching in the stomach, so be it. Also, if 10 previous horrible emails haven’t killed me, probably the 11^th wouldn’t, either.

The Censor

Tonight, as mentioned, David, Lisa and I went to see Last Planet Theatre’s production of Anthony Neilson’s The Censor. (Tom was gone on a bike ride and probably wouldn’t have enjoyed this very much, anyway.)

Yesterday evening, I told David on the phone that Last Planet Theatre’s motto is “Difficult plays for difficult people.” He said, “Well, you’re difficult.” Just as I was going to agree, he graciously went on, “And I’m difficult, but what about Lisa?”

“Right, she’s not very difficult,” I said. “In fact, she’s about the least difficult person I’ve ever met.” David concurred. I actually now and then ask myself, “Would Lisa say such-and-such?” If I can’t picture her saying it, it’s probably not the right thing to say.

The program for the play quotes Neilson, the author of The Censor, as saying theater is “about putting people through something.” This certainly did. One couple walked out in the middle.

There are just three characters: a film censor, a woman pornographer, and the censor’s wife. And there are three extremely courageous actors to play them: John Andrew Stillions is The Censor, Erin Gilley is His Wife, and Emma Victoria Glauthier is Shirley Fontaine, the pornographer.

The pornographer has submitted a film of which 35 minutes will have to be cut for it to be approved, the censor tells her. Last Planet’s production of this play makes liberal use of pornographic films, projected on a transparent screen. Sometimes we just watch the films; sometimes the actors stand behind the screen and talk to us through the images.

The pornographer sets out to seduce the censor in the most direct way, undressing in his office. Meanwhile, the censor’s wife is having a series of affairs that she tells him all about. Her lovers are interested in meeting the censor to discuss the situation; they want to be friendly with him, not his enemy. The wife is frustrated that the censor doesn’t want to do this and accuses him of refusing to communicate.

The censor has a series of extremely provocative meetings with the pornographer; he assumes she is trying to seduce him so that he will write a favorable report about her movie. One day she asks him to have intercourse with her—she has brought a red blanket for this purpose, which she unfurls upon the floor, and a black beaded pillow—but he stuffily insists that for him, sex is about love, and that he is incapable of having sex where love isn’t present.

The pornographer asks the censor questions about her movie, helping him to think about what must underlie the seemingly straightforward images. She is an astute psychologist. Of one image of a sexual act, she asks something like, “Can’t you see that the man’s previous girlfriend was Asian?”

She realizes that the censor is in fact impotent and she figures out why (it has to do with his parents’ relationship). She figures out that he has a fantasy he dares not tell anyone and what that fantasy is, and then she makes that fantasy real—this is all done explicitly on stage—it involves a good-sized, glistening turd—sorry this blog mentions turds so often—and they have explosive sex.

The censor, naturally enough, falls in love with the pornographer and is distressed when it seems she’s going away. He says he still can’t see what underlies the images in her film. “You will,” she says.

Near the end, there is a scene where the censor’s wife is saying she wants him to meet her latest boyfriend. The censor is in tears—quite a lot of tears—over what is happening in his relationship with the pornographer. The wife tells him to calm down, that they’ll work it out. She assumes his distress is because of her affair.

At the very end, the censor is watching a pornographic film (as are we) and his face suddenly lights up: He finally sees what the pornographer meant him to see (at least, this is what I think she meant him to see)—that sex that touches the deepest, perhaps sacred places of desire is love, because for it to be that way, one person has to see the other, has to see into the other, has to see what is needed, and that seeing, that attention, is an act of love.

The wife, who is the official Sexual Person and Free Spirit, can’t see her husband at all. She doesn’t have the faintest idea what is going on with him or what he wants, and thus he is impotent in that relationship.

It’s only the pornographer who is able and willing to see the human being before her.

Just the Beginning

Friday after work I went to see my acupuncturist. I told him that Thelonious is on Prednisone and expected him to say, “That’s terrible stuff,” but after I added that I wasn’t sure it was going to do more than suppress symptoms, he said, “Comfort.” As for me, I told him I couldn’t think of any more symptoms and that I was there for general health and well-being. We chatted about earthquakes and drag racing (plus he put needles in me).

I came home afterwards, turned on my PC, and snatched up Steve Hagen’s book. I read the instructions for seeing the cow, and I saw the cow, but even then it wasn’t like a bolt of lightning. The next couple of times I looked at the picture, I still had to kind of work at it.

This morning I got up early and did a couple of little projects and then went over to the East Bay to shop for fabric for baggy pants. It’s been hard finding anything good in recent years, even at Britex (and if you do find anything at Britex, it’s really expensive). A coworker recommended Poppy in Berkeley, so I took BART over there.

At the stop before mine, a woman of about 55 with long grey hair, neatly dressed, got up to leave the train and as she passed me, she told me that I wasn’t making anyone laugh and that I was arrogant and obnoxious. Getting angrier and angrier, she spat that I was a stupid fool and that that was “just the beginning.”

I have many judgments about the people I see. I might think, “Good, get off the bus and take that boombox with you,” but I won’t voice a criticism to a stranger unless I am positive that, by any standards, the stranger has done something egregious that threatens me personally. Even then, I don’t call the person names (though I did once threaten to kill someone who gave every sign she was about to hit me with her car deliberately).

So this person must have felt I had so obviously transgressed that a scolding was necessary, and since I was pretty much just sitting there reading my New Yorker, I concluded that she was mentally ill, though her appearance (before she opened her mouth) didn’t hint at it.

I like to read the New Yorker’s long pieces of reportage, but my memory is such a sieve that one paragraph after I read a person’s name, I completely forget it, and so never have any idea who anyone is who is being discussed. I read the pieces anyway, assuming some stray fact or other will probably be retained, but it’s like wandering in a dreamscape, so I have just started circling all names when I first encounter them and that is helping tremendously. It helps me remember the name to begin with, and if all else fails, I can easily go back and see who the person was.

I walked from the BART station to Poppy and found a disappointingly small collection of cotton prints. Many of them were charming, but too big. I told a worker there that I was interested in small prints and she suggested Stonemountain and Daughter Fine Fabrics (yeah, that’s in Berkeley), which specializes in cloth for quilting. I was pretty sure I had been there before and found nothing, but since I was already in that general area, it seemed like it couldn’t hurt to go by there again.

I actually had not been there before and they have a vast collection of small prints. Nothing I actually completely loved, but I’m a bit desperate at this point, so I bought six pieces of cloth that I think will be good enough. It cost probably half what I would have spent at Britex, or less. One piece of cloth has large goldfish on it (not at all a small print). That’s going to make an eye-catching pair of pants.

I had lunch at a Thai restaurant and came home and took a short nap. I woke up to find Thelonious sitting right near me on the bed, looking at me. She doesn’t like sustained eye contact, so after I’d looked back at her for a moment or two, she looked away and affected to have spotted something very interesting over her left shoulder and then over her right shoulder. Then she stood up and hopped off the bed. I put my head back down and closed my eyes. The next time I opened my eyes, she was sitting in the same spot, looking at me.

I was going to take the bus downtown, but it got to be 13 minutes before I was supposed to be there with no sign of the 26 Valencia, so I took a cab instead and met Lisa and David at Ananda Fuara for dinner. Afterwards, we went to the latest Last Planet Theatre production, of Anthony Neilson’s The Censor, which I thought was incredible and the best Last Planet production I’ve seen.

After the play, I was sitting in the Civic Center Muni station when a man backed up to me and lifted his shirt, revealing a fresh abrasion and bruise on his back. He asked how bad it was. He said he had been mugged by several people upstairs who had taken a chain his father had given him more than 30 years ago. I told him he wasn’t bleeding and that I was sorry to hear about his father’s chain. I was sort of glad when he got on the next train, which wasn’t my train.

I Am So Happy!

I just Googled “steve hagen” cow picture and it led me to the blog of someone who posted an entry saying he was reading the same book, knew the picture was a cow, but couldn’t see it. That entry inspired ten comments (several saying, “Yeah, I can’t see the cow, either”), one of which explains how to see the cow! I can’t wait to get home and try it. Well, I can wait, but it will be a relief when I finally see that dad-blasted cow. I’ll bet that’s the last time Steve Hagen puts a picture in one of his books. I have learned from this experience: If I ever write a book, it won’t have any pictures in it besides a nice photo of myself at 14 in a leather editor's visor looking for Doritos in Amy's mother's kitchen cabinets.

By the way, the commenter who finally was able to see the cow first Googled pictures of cows. Let the record reflect that I tried this technique myself, though not with the book available.

August Solon

Thelonious is now eating like crazy and hasn’t vomited in a week. I know this is probably just Prednisone-related weight gain, but it’s great to see her looking better. Come to think of it, I don’t know if the Prednisone is meant to fix the underlying problem or if the entire goal is to suppress symptoms, including weight loss. I’ll have to ask Dr. Press.

Yesterday evening I finished Melissa Bank’s earlier novel, The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, which I’m sorry to say is pretty awful. (On the other hand, the author photo is way better than the one for The Wonder Spot.) Clearly, she is improving by leaps and bounds, so I will certainly read her next novel, which I imagine will be fantastic.

I got an email from Sir Dave yesterday which said, in part:

“John Yoo, Berkeley's pride and joy, is the august solon who opined that ‘It would depend on why the president feels he needs to do that’ when asked if it would be legal for Bush to order a child's testicles crushed in order to force a parent to talk.

“I submit that if John Yoo thinks a measure is radical, it probably is.”

I heard John Yoo on KQED not long ago and was surprised to find that he sounds just like a regular person.

A coworker of mine was griping the other day about the same guy who inspired me to put my finger on my phone’s release button a few weeks ago. He was wondering how we’re going to let the managers know how terrible this guy is. I said no matter what group you work in, you’re always going to work with someone who is incompetent and that we shouldn’t torture our colleague.

“Why not?”

“Well, he is a human being.”

“Did you fall and hit your head?” asked my coworker, somewhat unflatteringly.

He explained that if I wanted my normal personality back, I would need to fall and hit my head again.

I’ve turned down the corner of the page with the picture of the “cow” in Steve Hagen’s book (in which he italicizes the word “see” every time he uses it) and have been checking now and then to see if I can see the cow. I meant not to read another word until I could see the cow, but I have to do something in between attempts, and it’s handier to read that same book than to pick up another book, so I’m reading it.

He discusses the three kinds of dukkha, the third one being the dukkha of being. I think that’s what Ezra Bayda is referring to when he discusses “the anxious quiver of being.” I think I experience it as a kind of claustrophobia: I’m trapped on this train that goes in only one direction, never stops, and ends with my death.

Steve Hagen says if you want an immediate glimpse of this third form of dukkha, you can ask yourself questions like “Why is there something instead of nothing?” I thought that was rather clever, because that question induces so much anxiety—really, the feeling that my mind is going to snap—that I have to say, “It’s impossible that anything is here, and yet here it is—the bookshelf, the bus, trees—and that’s all there is to it, and I’m not going to think about it any more.”

I’ve only really thought about it two or three times in my whole life because it gives my head a very unpleasant feeling and causes a general queasiness, or maybe more like a distinct fear in the pit of the stomach.

How was there ever nothing? Was something always here? How could it always have been here? It seems like it has always to have been here, because how could something come from absolutely nothing? Ooh, that’s a yucky feeling, to see the impossible all around you. Excuse me while I get a crisp brown rice cereal treat.

I’ve been thinking lately about how to give money to organizations anonymously. There are a lot of groups to which I’d like to send money, but I don’t want to see a lot of junk mail in my mailbox, from the entity I gave money to plus their ten best friends.

Over the past several months, I have written or called everyone who has sent me a piece of mail I didn’t want and asked them not to send another, and now almost every piece of mail I get is something I actually want. Several days of the week, I get no mail. I hate the thought of having to stop a hundred new sources of junk mail. It looks like USPS money orders might be the way to go.

However, maybe the average nonprofit wouldn’t bother to cash a small money order. I put a question on Craigslist about it and immediately got a note from someone indicating his or her willingness to receive my money (“I know this isn’t exactly what you were talking about, but …”).

Well-Concealed Cow and Junk Food Reviews

I began reading Steve Hagen’s book Buddhism Plain and Simple last night, which is on the dry side. Early on, there is an image whose subject can’t be immediately identified. It sort of looks like a man lying down, but not definitely, but the author says that if you keep looking at the picture, it will become very obvious, beyond any doubt, what it is.

I looked for about 15 minutes. I turned the book this way and that, I squinted, I crossed my eyes. No clue. Finally, I had to go look at the answer: it’s a cow. I went back to the picture. For the life of me, I could not see a cow.

Frustrated, and despite the late hour, I went up and knocked on Tom’s door. He looked at the picture. He couldn’t tell what it was. I told him it was a cow. He couldn’t see a cow.

Fortunately, Steve Hagen has a website. I sent an email today begging for a cow-spotting clue. In the meantime, I put that book aside—I’m going to feel vaguely resentful until I see the cow—and started Gil Fronsdal’s The Issue at Hand, which is a collection of his transcribed dharma talks.

In non-dharma reading, I just finished Melissa Bank’s The Wonder Spot, which I loved, the first half more so than the second. In the second half she kept mentioning people I hadn’t heard of, and I wasn’t sure if it was just because I’d forgotten them already (entirely possible) or if it was a literary technique. Also, the first half contained long stretches of narrative, whole stories leading into other stories, whereas the second half was presented more as brief vignettes. The change of structure was a bit unsettling.

But I certainly recommend it, if only for the line where the mother says to do something with the dog and the little brother says, “Please don’t refer to Albert as ‘the dog.’”

I’m now reading Help: The Original Human Dilemma, by Garret Keizer, which is about how humans help each other or not.

When I was a teenager, I used to find it restful to open the refrigerator door and just stand there gazing into the depths, probably with my mouth hanging open, until my mother came along and said, “Close the refrigerator door.” (I told you I had a terrible childhood.)

The same soothing effect can be had, it turns out, in the cookies and candy aisle at Whole Foods. I like to go over there (not without mixed feelings: the place is full of yuppies!) and just look at all the items, and read some labels, and buy anything I haven’t tried before that looks like it might be good.

I tried a Goldie’s Premium Carob Bar yesterday and liked it, though some of its appeal comes from its not containing sugar or caffeine: healthy! I suspect I won’t want another after about the fourth one.

Country Choice Organic Sandwich Cremes Duplex are sandwich cookies with one vanilla side, one chocolate side and vanilla crème in the middle. (Both vanilla would be fine as far as I'm concerned.) The cookie part is not overly sweet, so they compensated with extremely sweet filling, which is also a bit too soft, so that the overall cookie is a bit too soft. Not bad, but I probably won’t buy them again, though they appear to be vegan.

Nature’s Path EnviroKids Organic Animal Cookies (vanilla flavor) are extremely terrible. They taste like chalk with a bit of cinnamon added. I suspect they added the cinnamon so the cookies wouldn’t taste like just plain chalk. I’m going to go so far as to throw these out (i.e., put them in the compost bin).

If something isn’t very good but it’s not terrible, it usually gets eaten fairly quickly: “Uh oh, these aren’t very good—I’d better finish them right away.” I suppose that’s the exact opposite of having a little bit of something that’s really good. I keep hoping to become the kind of person who prefers a simple piece of fruit for dessert, but so far I still prefer a whole package of passable sandwich cookies.

On to another Nature’s Path product, now with a bit of trepidation: Organic Lemon Poppy Signature Series Cookies. Same thing: chalk, this time with lemon flavoring and poppy seeds. I’m going to compost these, and then I suppose I’ll be kicking myself when we’re in the heart of the global-warming-caused famine: “If only I could have those Organic Lemon Poppy Signature Series Cookies back!”

New Morning Graham-Wiches in Honey Graham & Peanut Butter Crème flavor: good. We’ll have to see how they compare to some other peanut butter sandwich cookies I have at home, which are so good I've bought two packages of them lately.

Maybe I should just rename this whole blog Junk Food Review. It’s just like Vegan Lunch Box, if Mrs. Vegan Lunch Box were to eat packaged food full of grease and sugar all day, which she might well do if she aspires to be large and surly.

Original Research

A story about Wikipedia in the most recent issue of the New Yorker says the site prohibits original research so as not to end up with reams of material on people’s pets.

After the dismal experience of giving Thelonious her first pill this time around, I decided to try the various pill-giving techniques I’d seen and read about online, and thought I’d dispense immediately with the ridiculous one shown in the video where the guy put his hand under his cat’s jaw and the cat’s mouth popped open for easy pill insertion.

So, on day two, I sat on my bed with Thelonious and petted her and spoke to her soothingly. I didn’t wrap her in the towel. I put my hand under her jaw and lifted her head. Her lips parted just slightly, I inserted the tip of the pill shooter, and—ping!—the pill shot down her throat. She didn’t even have to swallow. The whole thing (after the petting) took five seconds and was completely free of trauma. I couldn’t believe it. The same thing happened on day three. On day four, she was pawing at my hand a bit, but the pill still went down with relative ease.

She hasn’t vomited in days, her diarrhea hasn’t returned, and the Prednisone seems to have greatly improved her appetite. In fact, she looks much better after just a few days.

However, it’s a powerful drug with lots of potential side effects, and I am concerned about her taking it. I’m a little worried that it’s making her feel strange, that she’s thinking, “Goodness, I just don’t feel like myself lately.” When I see Dr. Press next, I’ll ask if we can try tapering off after awhile.

Friday evening, I got a call from my friend Amy, who has just moved to Bend, Oregon. We had a good long chat.

On Saturday I went to a couple of fabric stores in the Mission and to Freewheel, where I bought two more Jandd grocery bag panniers, which are really excellent. I’m going to put the two new ones in my closet and in ten years when I need them, I’ll have them, unlike what usually happens, which is that I can’t find a good replacement for the item that has fallen apart and I’m kicking myself for not getting another when I realized how excellent it was.

That’s what happened with my Nashbar Townies, which are similar bags that I used for years for grocery shopping. Then one of them finally gave way, and I ordered several more only to find that the quality had declined to the point that the bag could not be used for grocery shopping. It was way too flimsy, though it’s OK for day-to-day transporting of a backpack.

I then bought a Jandd grocery bag pannier that was extremely sturdy, but whose outer edge tended to droop down, making it so you couldn’t fill a brown paper grocery bag all the way to the top. The bag would get sort of cut in the middle—it developed an hourglass figure—and whatever was in the top half was in danger of falling out.

The latest incarnation of the Jandd grocery bag pannier solves that problem. The only itsy-bitsy thing it lacks is a Velcro loop near the top to put around a portion of the rack that the bag is attached to. With such a fastener, if you accidentally kick the bottom of the pannier while riding, you can’t dislodge it from where it's hooked on.

On Saturday evening, I watched three movies, one with Tom: Mr. & Mrs. Smith; The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio; and Blast from the Past. I wanted to see the latter because it has Christopher Walken in it, but my favorite of the three was The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio. What an extraordinary person and mother Evelyn Terry was, at least as portrayed in the movie. It was also visually pleasing and a reminder of the sexism of the 1960s—even the milkman feels free to lecture this mother of ten.

There was a very funny thing about playing Scrabble on my new favorite radio show, Prairie Home Companion, on Sunday, where a bad guy says, “Oh, looky here, I just happened to get seven letters that spell ‘zeppelin’: z-e-p-p-l-i-n.” The Garrison Keillor character challenges that, but it turns out “zepplin” is indeed in the bad guy’s dictionary. The bad guy gets nearly 200 points and G. Keillor loses his turn.

Then the bad guy says, “Oh, looky here, I just happened to get seven letters that spell ‘Cuisinart’: k-w-z-n-a-r-t,” and adds with satisfaction, “That’s good playin’.”

Sunday afternoon I made green split peas and buckwheat, and washed and chopped veggies for the coming week, and roasted potatoes and made a vegan version of Rice Krispies Treats, with Earth Balance instead of butter, Suzanne’s Ricemellow Creme instead of marshmallows (marshmallows contain gelatin, which is made of melted cow’s feet, or something equally disgusting), and Erewhon Crispy Brown Rice Cereal instead of you know what. The result was quite satisfactory—the initial impact on the tongue is just right, though the vegan version is a bit more crumbly than the cow-killing version, so the chewing experience is a bit different.

Soggy Pill and Vegan Marshmallows

I took Thelonious to the vet yesterday in a cab. She had lost one pound and five ounces since the beginning of June, so even though most of that is probably due to her ordeal with the antibiotics, Dr. Press recommended that she have an X-ray and ultrasound to rule out a large cancer.

I walked home and locked my door to keep any more cats from escaping. It was the first time in sixteen and a half years that I’d been in my apartment without her being there, except for maybe one other time when she had an ultrasound when I must have left her at the vet’s and come home to get my bicycle to ride to work.

I pretended she was gone for good and saw how every room had reminders of her: her food and water in the kitchen; her litter box in the bathroom; her stuffed-toy collection in the living room, along with the cat nest and the cardboard box she likes to sit in that once held ten reams of paper; the extra bags of cat litter in the closet.

In an hour, I walked back to retrieve her. The tests had ruled out any large cancer, leaving as likely possibilities irritable bowel syndrome or low-grade lymphoma. The only way to be sure is with a $1600 endoscopy, but, as it happens, the two conditions are treated almost the same way, anyway, so Dr. Press said to start Prednisone. The office visit and tests cost $440 (plus $10 for cabs). Good thing this didn’t happen during the era of working at nonprofits.

Her belly was wet with something or other and she smelled like a hospital patient, not bad, just not like herself. In the evening, I felt something rough on her stomach and thought maybe the wet fur had become stiff when it dried, but it turned out it was her bare belly with a little bit of soft stubble. It would be nice if they mentioned beforehand that they were going to shave her, just so the owner won’t be startled or in case the cat is about to be in a beauty contest.

I must now give her a pill each day. I’ve been reading about it online and saw this video where a guy gently tips his cat’s face up with a hand under the cat’s chin. He puts the pill in a pill shooter (see below) and touches the cat’s mouth with the rubber tip. The cat then obligingly opens its jaws gapingly wide and the owner pops the pill in. The whole thing takes five seconds. Obviously a doctored video.

At my place, I wrap Thelonious in a towel and grip her between my legs. I already have the pill in the pill shooter, which is a plastic tube with a plunger and a rubber tip which temporarily holds the pill. I grasp Thelonious’s head from the top and pull it back, worrying that I’m going to break her neck. She frantically frees her front feet from the towel and starts clawing in all directions. I rewrap her in the towel several times, getting more flustered and upset with each iteration.

There is yelling and swearing. I consider hiring someone to come over and do this task.

I wrap her very snugly in the towel, worried that I’m cutting off her air supply, as the towel goes right up to her neck, though it’s no tighter at her neck than anywhere else. I pull her head back with my left hand, using the tips of my fingers to part her jaws a bit, and try to work the tip of the pill shooter in at the side of her mouth with my right hand. She tries to chew the tips off my left fingers, though I’m sure not in a spirit of malice.

The tip of the pill shooter sort of goes in. I push the plunger and let go of her, hoping the pill went down. It didn’t—she spits it out on the floor. After a couple more tries, I flush the soggy pill down the toilet and go get another pill. This time I remember to hold her jaw closed after pressing down the plunger—worrying that I’m holding too tightly and hurting her—until she seems to have swallowed. Then I let go and examine her for signs of a broken neck and cry a little bit.

Last night was horrible, but presumably it will get easier and my technique will improve. I imagine I will now have to give her at least one pill every day for the rest of her life. I called the vet’s office this morning to see if it would be OK if I gave her a small fish treat after each pill, and they said that should be fine. (She eats prescription food and I didn’t want to interfere with her therapeutic regime.)

In other news, I think it would be very nice if Whole Foods would carry vegan marshmallows.

Lovely Firm Turd and Enrique’s Journey

I stopped giving Thelonious the Tylan on July 13, and also stopped the wet food, and figured her diarrhea would clear up, but it didn’t. After a lifetime of eating dry food, she suddenly decided she vastly preferred wet food (maybe it’s like the difference between broccoli and potato chips), so I had to start putting wet food out, along with her bowl of dry food, though I feared it was the wet food that was causing the diarrhea.

She has been eating very sparingly lately. She is almost not touching her dry food, and while now and then she will suddenly wolf down some wet food, many times I come home from work or wake up in the morning to see that she has not eaten any wet food whatsoever.

Therefore, nothing has been coming out of her other than pee, for days now. Last night I heard her scratching in the litter box and walked in to see a lovely, round, firm, perfectly shaped turd, for the first time in more than a month. I was so happy. If the diarrhea is gone for good, it must have been caused by the Tylan rather than the wet food, or maybe she just needed to get used to the wet food.

I gave up on Robert Frank’s Luxury Fever, which I could not get into, possibly because almost every single line was footnoted, and went on to Sonia Nazario’s Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Journey to Reunite with His Mother, which I couldn’t put down. It’s about a Honduran boy who travels by himself, in the most brutal and dangerous conditions, to try to find his mother in America. Mothers, often single parents, in Mexico and Central America leave their children behind to go to America to work, sending money home to ensure that their children are fed and educated. The parting is painful and the mothers intend to save up money and come back in a year or two, but most of the time, it ends up being many years. The children’s lives are improved by the money and gifts sent from America, but they miss their mothers desperately. To get to their mothers in America, they hop on trains where they are routinely beaten, robbed and raped. Many are killed or lose limbs; being robbed by the police is common, and there is the constant threat of being arrested and sent home.

Enrique makes eight attempts before he is successful. By the time he reaches his mother, they have been separated for 12 years. Alas, the reunion is not what either had hoped for, and this is often the case, as the parent and child barely know each other by the time they meet again. The child is enraged at having been left and rejects the mother’s attempts to tell him or her what to do, while the mother is acutely aware of everything she has missed and feels that her sacrifice and financial contribution are not being appreciated.

It’s a heartbreaking book and an amazing feat of reporting by Nazario, who actually went and rode on the trains herself, among other things, to get a firsthand experience.

Enrique leaves behind his girlfriend, who is pregnant with their daughter. The plan is for the girlfriend, Maria Elena, to join Enrique in America. By the time the daughter is three and a half, Enrique and Maria Elena have become quite distant, though he sends money and they talk on the phone now and then. Maria Elena has become, of course, very attached to her daughter and decides she can’t leave her. She tries to screw up the courage to tell Enrique she won’t be coming.

But in the end, Enrique persuades Maria Elena to join him. He says it will be the best thing, in the long run, for Jasmín. There is a photo of Maria Elena with Jasmín in the book; she is the most darling little girl. Enrique says they will save up money together in America and return to their daughter soon. Maria Elena can’t bear to tell Jasmín she is leaving. When Jasmín hears that the family is going to the bus terminal to drop her mother off, she insists on coming along. As the bus pulls out, Jasmín waves both her hands and yells over and over, “Adios, mami.”

A Happy Turn of Events

Not two minutes after I posted the below entry, my phone rang and it was the building manager for the bike-rack building. She was extremely gracious and apologized for the delay in returning my call. I told her what was on my mind and she was receptive, but said she was having trouble visualizing the setup, so I offered to meet her at the bike rack right away to look at it together.

When I got there, she was with one of the guys who works in the garage, who had, judging from the expression on his face, been telling her I was out of my mind. The building manager introduced herself and shook my hand. I seized the opportunity to extend my hand to the garage employee.

The employee said that the rack is rarely fully occupied, which is not true, though at that moment, there were only three bikes there out of a possible seven. There was a truck in the car space, but parked so as to leave plenty of room. I was glad it was there, as a visual aid. It would have been better if the bike rack had been crammed with bikes; not sure why it wasn't.

I showed her how, if the six outermost bike spaces are full and there is a vehicle parked right on the white lane, as was so often the case before I spoke to the nice lady last year, you can see the one remaining bike space but you can’t get to it.

The garage employee said that if they have to use that car space, they’re careful not to go beyond the line. But if there is a van parked right along the white line and you have the innermost bike space, once you put your bike bags on the bike, there is not enough room to get out.

The building manager didn’t like the idea of putting a cone in the car space permanently. I mentioned to her the city’s five-foot guideline, but I said that what we were looking at was perfect; if it was that way all the time, I’d be thrilled. She gave me her card and told me to get in touch if I need her help.

She asked how long I’d been in the building and I said I don’t actually work in the building, but in an office building half a block away. She may have been wondering why I park my bike in her garage when I don’t work in her building. In fact, if any car can park in a given garage, then so can any bike, legally speaking, at least here.

So that was a very fortunate development and now I don’t have to think about any of these fights anymore, at least for now!