The Cat Came Back?

Warning: This entry may not be suitable for sensitive readers.

I was nearly to work this morning, was wending the s-curves between the Lone Elder Store and Martin’s Town and Country furniture, when a cat ran out in front of my car.

As always happens in situations like this, time slowed. From the right of my peripheral vision, I spotted a blur of motion. I turned my head slightly and slowed the car from around 35mph to I-don’t-know-what. The blur resolved itself into a long and slender cat — orange and white with subtle striping, beautiful — racing at top speed at an oblique angle to the road. Into the road. I smashed the brakes, but even then I knew it was too late.

I hit the cat.

My car scraped over the top of the cat and a small something flew across my windshield. The cat made no sound. There was no hump or thump. No yowl. The car simply scraped over the top of the cat. My stomach fell. I felt momentary panic.

There was no traffic approaching me, and there was not traffic behind me, so I slowed to look for a place to pull over. (If it were my cat, I’d want somebody to do the same.)

Suddenly I was startled to see, in my side-view mirror, the cat — seemingly whole, but who can tell? — continuing to race away at top speed, across the road, leaping a ditch, and then dashing into the alpaca pasture. Surely it didn’t survive?

I didn’t stop. How could I find the animal now? I drove on, my stomach sickened, hoping that the cat’s people find it soon and take it to the vet just down the road.

Be well, little cat. Be well.

I haven’t hit many animals before, but it does happen from time-to-time, especially out in the country.

The biggest thing I ever hit was a dog. I was fifteen and had my learner’s permit. Mom and I were driving to Oregon City along back roads at dusk on an autumn evening. We came over a rise at moderate speed and a black lab ran out in front of the car. I didn’t even break — there was not time to react. “Should I stop?” I asked. “I don’t know,” Mom said, but I didn’t. I drove on, shaking.

On the drive to Costco today, I saw a more pleasant animal sight. A blackbird, glossy blue-black in the sun, had picked up a plastic produce bag — presumably for nesting material — and was attempting to walk with it, but it kept tripping over the bulky load and dropping it. Very funny. That bird probably thought he had hit the jackpot!

The Death of the Magazine

I’ve received some killer deals on magazine subscriptions lately. My business identity has found its way to publishers’ mailing lists, and I’m being offered “business rates” on publications like Newsweek and PC World and The New Yorker. Like a fool, I’ve been signing up for $10 and $20 annual subscriptions, sometimes for multiple years. “These are offers I can’t refuse!” I tell myself, not understanding that in most cases they are offers I should refuse.

You see, the magazine is a dying medium.

Magazines aren’t dead yet, of course; certain periodicals thrive and prosper, and will continue to do so for decades. Magazines like Harper’s and National Review and National Geographic and The New Yorker are filled with feature-length articles, the kind of stuff that you can curl up with in your favorite chair and devour on a Sunday afternoon. These kinds of magazines still have a future. (Kris wants me to point out that cooking magazines have a future, too.)

I’m more concerned for magazines like PC World and Macworld and Newsweek and Time — magazines filled with timely information. When I leaf through these publications, it’s like I’m living in a time warp. I’m literally reading yesterday’s news. (It’s no wonder that most of these magazines have robust web sites that actually contain more and better information than the print editions.)

The latest issue of Macworld arrived in my mailbox today. It’s all about the awesome new MacBook Pro. Too bad this was news in February. Macworld used to be a thick, dense publication, full of in-depth reviews and useful columns. When I started reading it in the late eighties, it was the primary source for Macintosh news. I looked forward to it every month. Now MacWorld is a lightweight hundred pages or so, most of which are ads. There wasn’t a single piece of useful information in the new issue. It’s a good thing my subscription was free, or I’d feel cheated.

My subscription to Newsweek, however, wasn’t free, and I do feel cheated. I thought I was getting an awesome bargain at $20/year, so I signed up for three years. That’s right: I’m a Newsweek subscriber until 2009. What kind of idiot am I? This magazine is worthless. Any “news” it contains, I’ve already read about on the internet, sometimes more than a week before, and from a variety of sources and viewpoints. It wouldn’t be so bad if there were keen features — there aren’t. There are whole pages in the back of the magazine devoted to celebrity gossip, and not even extended celebrity gossip, but little sentence-length nuggets about Britney Spears and Tom Cruise and I don’t really give a rat’s ass. I feel dirty having subscribed to this magazine. I’m starting a personal finance site and I make dumb mistakes like this? Somebody shoot me.

I suspect that newspapers are near an end, too. Why should I pay nearly $300/year for delivery of the Sunday New York Times when I can get most of the content on-line for free? (And if I want the really good stuff, I can subscribe to Times Select for $50/year.)

Newspapers won’t actually die until there are quality localized news sites to replace them, though. Here in Portland, there’s nothing that fits the bill. Oregon Live sucks: it’s difficult to navigate, doesn’t seem to be run by anyone local, and has an atrocious archiving system. The only site that comes close to a local news source is ORblogs, a local weblog aggregator, but it’s not actually the same thing as reading the paper.

Magazines and newspapers used to be the way we kept in contact with the world. Ten years into the digital revolution, the internet is finally putting the old media to rest.

Insomnia

My prolonged illness has thrown my sleep routine out of whack.

I was exhausted today, so I took two naps — one midday and one in the evening. When it came time to actually go to bed, I wasn’t tired. I tried to fall asleep, but I wasn’t observing any of my bedtime rituals: I wasn’t wearing my CPAP mask, I hadn’t taken my melatonin, and my mind wasn’t calmed.

I lay there staring into space.

Toto crawled over me, searching for the best nesting position. Kris snored. As often happens when I cannot fall asleep, my mind drifted to death. I imagined dying in a car crash. I remembered the day Dad died. I wondered who would die first, me or Kris?

Disconcerted, I went downstairs to the library and read comic books for two hours. Toto came down to keep me company, perched on my shoulders, wrapped around my neck and purring. I read X-Men. I read Star Wars. I read Superman.

At midnight I went back upstairs and crawled into bed. I could not sleep. Kris was still snoring. My sinuses were stuffed. I lay there trying to imagine what kind of superhero I would be if I were a superhero. Would I run as fast as the wind? Would I fly? Would I read minds? Would I sleep?

I got out of bed again and this time took some melatonin. Why hadn’t I done that in the first place? I checked my e-mail. I sat in front of the television and flipped from one informercial to another. There seemed to be some sort of Brendan Fraser fest coordinated between channels. And a Kevin Bacon fest.

I turned off the television and tried to fall asleep on the futon, but a heavy truck lumbered down the road and stopped at the neighbors. I heard Curt come out and talk with the driver. The truck began to beep beep beep as it backed up. For the next fifteen minutes I heard the scrape of shovels and gravel. I could not see from the window, but it seemed to me that the neighbors were getting a dump truck load of gravel at one in the morning.

Eventually I fell asleep. All night I had to contend with Nemo, who wanted to be curled at my side on the narrow futon, and Toto, who wanted Nemo to die.

I’m not particularly well-rested this morning.

Texas Ranch House

For the past four nights, Kris and I have watched the eight-hour PBS series Texas Ranch House. Like the other “House” shows before it, Texas Ranch House transplants a group of contemporary Americans into a particular historical era — in this case, the Texas frontier of 1867.

At the start of this show, a Foreman, a Cook, and a group of about half a dozen Ranch Hands prepare a homestead for the arrival of the new Owners, Mr. and Mrs. Cooke, and their three daughters. The Cookes bring with them a single retainer: Maura, “a girl of all work”. Over the course of 2-1/2 months, the Cookes and their employees are responsible for making the ranch a viable business. In the short-term, this means rounding up and branding as many free-range cattle as the Cowboys can find.

As always happens on these shows, though, the task is complicated by strong personalities and by the participants’ refusal to discard 21st century notions in favor of modes of thought and work that are appropriate for the era in which they’re pretending to live. And, as on previous shows, certain personality types drive me nuts. This time it’s Mr. and Mrs. Cooke who create a perfect storm of self-centered obliviousness destined to doom the ranch.

From the start, Mr. Cooke is unable to maintain the respect of the Ranch Hands. They feel he’s incompetent, and not true to his word. He fires his Foreman within days. He fires the ranch Cook soon after. (Though, to be fair, he deserved to be fired.) When another Ranch Hand quits, the initial work force has been decimated, and Mr. Cooke continues to struggle with bunkhouse morale. Matters are made worse because the Hands feel that Mrs. Cooke is actually running the ranch, and because Maura the “girl of all work” feels oppressed by gender roles, and because Mr. Cooke is pathologically incapable of making and owning a decision. (The Ranch Hands seem to do little to make things better on their end.)

To these internal conflicts, the producers of Texas Ranch House add external conflicts.

One day two of the Ranch Hands (and their horses) are “kidnapped” by Commanche Indians. In 1867, these men would have been killed, but for the purposes of the show, the Commanche leader comes to Mr. Cooke to barter. He’s willing to trade horses for some of the ranch cattle. He’s also willing to trade Jared, a Ranch Hand, for cattle. (He’s already let the other Ranch Hand free.)

Mr. Cooke is eager to trade for the horses, but not for Jared. “I refuse to trade for human life,” he says, as if this is somehow a noble moral principle. He is unable to view the situation from the point-of-view of the Commanche, or of the Ranch Hands. The Commanche chief tries to give him outs, but he doesn’t take them. In the end, the swap is made, and Mr. Cooke performs complex mental gymnastics to convince himself that he’s not trading for Jared’s life. (This incident further damages his reputation in the eyes of the Cowboys. Does their Boss not value them enough to save them from danger?)

The Commanches pull a fast one on Mr. Cooke, trading him one less horse than he believed he was getting. He doesn’t bother to count until they’ve ridden away from the Commanche camp. (This isn’t the first math mistake he’s made. This man, who is a hospital accountant in real life, initially calculated that he’d need eighty cattle to make his mortgage payment whereas the real number was closer to 200. At the end of the project, when the Project Evaluators deem his books “indecipherable”, Mr. Cooke’s excuse is that he doesn’t have a caluculator.)

In the final episode, the repercussions of the Commanche incident become apparent. In order to make the mortgage payment, Mr. Cooke must sell a certain number of cattle to an Army Outpost. His Cowboys drive 131 head of cattle to the designated location, where they discover that the Army will only buy the 86 animals that are ready for slaughter. The Buyer is a nice guy and gives Mr. Cooke a good price ($25) for each animal. He then lets Mr. Cooke convince him to buy the remaining cattle at a reduced rate ($18/head). It’s obvious to everyone but Mr. Cooke that the Buyer is playing along to give him a good deal for the sake of the project.

Rather than reward his Workers for their performance, when it comes time to settle payment, Mr. Cooke is a complete asshole. He takes delight in being a skinflint. The Cowboys are hoping to purchase horses from him, but he asks exorbitantly high prices. “I’m so proud of you,” his shrew of a wife coos after each cowboy has marched away in anger. (I kept thinking of Iago as I watcher her machinations.)

Mrs. Cooke is especially proud when Mr. Cooke re-negs on a deal he’d previously struck with Jared. Before the Commanche incident, Mr. Cooke had sold a horse called Brownlow to Jared for $25 (to be deducted from his final pay). Jared loves Brownlow. When settlement arrives, Mr. Cooke claims that Jared lost the animal to the Commanche and that the horse rightfully belongs to Mr. Cooke again. “I had to pay to free you,” he says. Never mind that in negotiations with the Indians he had made a huge deal about how he wasn’t trading for Jared’s life, how the very idea was abhorrent to him. Jared is shocked. He says that he’s going to take Brownlow because the horse belongs to him. “I’ll beat the shit out of you if you try,” says Mr. Cooke.

“I’m a man of my word,” Mr. Cooke told the Ranch Hands at the start of the project. “Honesty and integrity are important to me.” Except for when they’re not, apparently. The film editors have done a fine job of showing us what Mr. Cooke actually says, and then revealing how he often goes back on his word later, sometimes doing the complete opposite of what he had promised to do.

After the settlement, Mrs. Cooke convinces her husband to actually fire Jared, even though there are only two days left in the project. He does. When Jared rides off on Brownlow, the other Cowboys leave with him. Mr. Cooke doesn’t beat the shit out of anyone; he stands by with his family, accusing Jared of being a horse thief. Pot, kettle: black. He seems completely unaware that if this were 1867, he would have just doomed his ranch to failure. How’s he going to prepare for winter with no crew?

At the end of the project, the participants are evaluated by a team of Experts. The experts aren’t especially kind to anyone — Cooke family, Maura, or Cowboys — noting that not a single person truly embraced the roles of 1867. Nor did anyone exercise compassion or teamwork. The evaluations are especially harsh for Mr. Cooke, and rightly so. His family is appalled by the criticism, but that’s only because they live under a cloud of collective delusion. They are lazy, manipulative, dishonest, and pampered.

I feel that there is some common element that ties this show to Frontier House, but I cannot put my finger on it. (Frontier House is my favorite of this series; I just added it to our Netflix queue.) In each of these shows, a certain group of participants buys into the experience wholly, but another group treats it as a lark.

In Frontier House, Gordon Clune and his family continually circumvented the project by smuggling in makeup, trading with 21st-century families for box spring mattresses, and generally acting like asses. In Texas Ranch House, Maura — a woman I admire and whom I would love to be friends with in real life — is unwilling to do what she signed up for: play the role of an 1867 ranch Maid. She wants to break out of the gender roles. The Cooke family is indolent and self-absorbed. They constantly lay the project’s problems at the feet of their Ranch Hands, despite the absurdity of the proposition. (What? The entire group of Cowboys is trying to do you in?) When you have to fire your Forman, your Cook, when you have a poor working relationship with your new Foreman, and then when your entire staff quits in disgust, perhaps the problem isn’t with the help — perhaps the problem is with YOU.

The difference between the Clunes in Frontier House and the Cookes in Texas Ranch House is that the latter don’t seem to have learned a thing. The Clunes, especially the girls, grew as people during the experience, despite their foibles. The Cookes did not. The Cookes are, if anything, more convinced of their moral rectitude than when they started. They didn’t allow the experience to change them at all, and that’s a shame.

(One final note: During the summer, the ranch is infested with flies because nobody is willing to cart the manure from the ranch. “I guess this is something that they just had to deal with back then,” Mrs. Cooke tells the experts. Uh, no. They moved the shit away from the house, and they washed the dishes instead of letting them sit for days on end. The experts are appalled. I am, too. When I grew up, we had similar fly infestations every summer because the fields around our house were fertilized with silage. It sucked. It was gross beyond belief. The Cookes could have solved the problem; we could not.)

Here’s a collection of Texas Ranch House links originally compiled by Sir Linksalot:

Websites — Texas Ranch House
Texas Ranch House Official Site
Reality TV Links – Texas Ranch House
MooTube.com
Yahoo Group – Texas Ranch House

News Articles about PBS’ Texas Ranch House
San Angelo Standard Times 5/3/06 Fort’s re-enactors get reality check
Inside Bay Area 5/2/06 The best little ranch house in Texas
Agriculture Online 5/2/06 Texas Ranch House provides a glimpse of ranch life in 1867
Chicago Sun Times 5/2/06 Home on the range
Western Horseman 5/1/06 PBS sends two cowboys back to 1867 for its latest historical reality-show, Texas Ranch House
NY Times 5/1/06 Saddling Up for a Bumpy Ride Into 1867 on ‘Texas Ranch House’
NY Daily News 5/1/06 PBS’ ‘Ranch’ ideal for slowpokes
St. Petersburg Times 5/1/06 Here’s how the West was really won
Dallas Morning News 5/1/06 TV: ‘Ranch House’ participants tested their mettle
Seattle Times 5/1/06 1867 cowboys wrangle with 21st-century women
NY Daily News 5/1/06 ‘Texas’ cook has a beef with getting fired
Hollywood Reporter 5/1/06 Texas Ranch House
Western Horseman 5/1/06 Ranch House Cowboys
Hartford Courant 5/1/06 Living Like 19th-Century Texas Cowboys
Chicago Tribune 5/1/06 ‘Texas’ is a boring look at life in the Old West
LJ World 5/1/06 Back at the “Ranch”
Philly.com 5/1/06 ‘Texas House’ too annoying
Caledonian Record 5/1/06 Barton Man To Be Featured In PBS Television House Series
Staten Island Advance 5/1/06 PBS wrangles with life on an 1800s ‘Texas Ranch’
Oregonian 5/1/06 ‘Ranch House’ needs to rustle up emotion
Lansing State Journal 5/1/06 Reality, snakes settle in at PBS ‘Ranch’
Deseret News 5/1/06 ‘Texas’ travesty
American Heritage 5/1/06 Texas Ranch House: Is This Historical Reality?
Equisearch 5/1/06 ‘Texas Ranch House’ Airs in May on PBS
Houston Chronicle 4/30/06 No comforts of home on the range

Unaltered Star Wars Trilogy Coming to DVD

I don’t know whether to be ecstatic or irate: Lucasfilm has announced that the original, undoctored Star Wars trilogy will be released on DVD this fall.

In response to overwhelming demand, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release attractively priced individual two-disc releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. Each release includes the 2004 digitally remastered version of the movie and, as bonus material, the theatrical edition of the film. That means you’ll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983. This release will only be available for a limited time: from September 12th to December 31st.

Now, obviously, on one level this makes my geek heart swell. These three films are a part of me. I’ve seen the original Star Wars more than any other film. (I must be nearing one hundred viewings by now.) I absolutely want to own these versions on DVD.

But what makes me angry is that I’ve already purchased the doctored trilogy, the version in which Greedo fires first, the version in which Young Anakin celebrates on the forest moon of Endor, the version in which George Lucas has flooded the screen with all sorts of little critters and geegaws. Why did I buy these bastardized editions? BECAUSE FANS WERE TOLD THE ORIGINAL VERSIONS WOULD NEVER BE RELEASED ON DVD.

For years, the studios have been milking stupid fans like me by first releasing one version of a film and then releasing a Deluxe Edition at a later date. This is asinine. To give Peter Jackson credit on his Lord of the Rings bastardizations, at least he was very clear from the beginning just how the DVD releases would occur, and he stayed true to his word.

I will be buying the new Star Wars DVDs. I don’t like to admit it, but it’s a fact. However, I’ll also be selling all of the Star Wars DVDs I currently own: episodes I, II, IV, V, and VI.

More Star Wars rants and raves at foldedspace: I am a member of the Star Wars Generation, my review of Attack of the Clones, and my analysis of Why Star Wars Sucks.

Stayin’ Alive

I apologize for being scarce around here lately. I’m still mostly in sick mode, and don’t have a lot to write about other than being sick, and that’s not exactly interesting.

Briefly noted:

I still have a hacking cough and gunk in my lungs. It sucks.
On positive side effect of my illness was a loss of appetite and a subsequent loss of five pounds. Through sheer force of will, I am eating again, though I’m not really hungry. (I stopped by for a hot fudge sundae on my way home from work today as a method of obtaining more calories; I couldn’t finish the small dish of ice cream.)
There was an afternoon this weekend, when I was still feverish and stoned out on the vicodin, when a brief walk with Kris outside was a senses-shattering experience. The birdsong, the color, the feel of the grass on my feet: everything was bright and new and amazing. It was like seeing the world for the first time.
Last Tuesday, before I realized I was sick, I started to fix this site’s layout for Internet Explorer in Windows. I’m afraid that I simply made things worse before losing the thread of my plans, and now I don’t know what I had been doing. It’s VERY likely that I’m just going to implement a new site layout, one closer to the same thing that everyone else in the world uses. One the bright side, this will allow me to post more, smaller entries. Is that good? Bad?
I’m actually working on two or three largish entries, which is part of why I haven’t posted.

Tomorrow I’ll go for a walk with Jason. I may also see some more customers. ANY human interaction will bring a desire to share stories and to write a new weblog entry. That’d be good, eh?

Totally Tomatoes (by Kris)

Just thinking about a warm ripe beefsteak tomato fresh from my garden is enough to make me drool in the depths of January. Since the harvest at that point is six long months away, I do what I can to make the wait seem bearable. In short: I obsessively shop for tomato seeds and start them indoors. Yes, I could just buy greenhouse plants in May and put them directly in the soil, saving myself the worries of non-germination, wilt, and dampening off, but where’s the fun in that? A friend recently asked me, “You mean, you start your tomatoes from seed?” I wondered if she realizes that all tomatoes are started from seed by somebody!

Starting your own plants from seed allows you to choose exactly what you want to grow. You can experiment with heirloom varieties or the latest hybrized-resistant-to-everything invention. You can customize your garden to your particular climate zone or go exotic and specialize in South American wonders that hearken back to the original species. Or, go with a theme: all tiny varieties, all named after their hybridizers, all bi-colored, all Russian-types, all named after states (Oregon Spring, Carolina Gold, Alaskan Fancy, Georgia Streak, Kentucky Beefsteak, Nebraska Wedding, and New Yorker). Tomato names conjure up Country Fairs and contests of tall tales. Each hybrid a dream of the perfect tomato: early in the season, mouth-watering to taste, pest-resistance and loaded down with ripe fruit until frost,

This year, Craig B. and I placed a shared order from Totally Tomatoes, which carries about 250 varieties of tomatoes as well as over a hundred peppers and a smattering of cucumbers, melons, and squashes. There was a shipping mixup in which my shipment went astray, but the company quickly sent out another batch and they arrived in time for my February 25th seed-starting target. And a big thank you to Rhonda B. who gave me her indoor grow-lights. I think they made the difference; this year’s tomatoes look better than ever.

Lordy, but you don't know the grief that went into getting this one marginal tomato photo.

I chose eight varieties this year (leaving room for the two plants I won’t be able to resist buying at the Garden Show next weekend). And I displayed uncharacteristic restraint in starting only two plants of each kind (four seeds total, since I double plant and then snip one seedling off). Then, I actually composted one plant of each when I transplanted into pots, leaving me with one plant of each kind, ready for the garden. I selected the eight kinds based on: variety/color and days-to-crop. Here are my picks:

Quimbaya Hybrid — from Colombia, small 4-5 ounce fruits, blocky shape, 65 days
Aunt Ruby’s German Green — Heirloom green beefsteak, 12-16 ounce, with spicy undertone, 80 days
Caspian Pink — from Russia, this beefsteak has supposedly beaten the legendary Brandywine in taste trials, 80 days
Dr. Wyche’s Yellow — Golden-orange beefsteak up to 1 pound, 80 days
New Yorker — early 4-6 ounce salad tomato, 66 days
Bloody Butcher — Just loved the name on this one! High yield of 4-ounce fruits that are deep, dark red. Strong tomato flavor, 55 days
Riesentraube — German heirloom pear-type cherry tomato. Prolific, 70 days
Hard Rock — Free seed with order. 3-ounce fruits good for canning, 80 days.

Now I just need to get Jd to re-till the garden (when he feels better) and we’re less than three months away from a crop! He doesn’t like tomatoes, but he sure loves the Best Salsa Ever!

Monday, May Day, Monday

There’s been a lot of talk about this next song. Maybe too much talk. This song is not a rebel song. This song is Nuestro Himno.

Where do people get the idea that anyone wants to change the current national anthem to the Spanish version? Where do they get the idea that this is anything other than a heartfelt homage to the original? Why does this make them angry instead of filling them with pride?

This is a tempest in a teapot.

And when did the issue of illegal immigration erupt into such a frenzied debate? Was there some catalyst that I missed? Why are so many people opposed to immigrants — illegal or otherwise — who want to maintain a sense of their original culture? The United States is a hell of a lot more interesting because of the different cultures that have intertwined here.

In Bend last weekend, we talked about immigration. Sabino’s family came up from Mexico when he was about ten. He’s worked hard and now owns a successful accounting firm. He’s an asset to the community and a citizen of the United States. Ron is taking over the family nursery. The nursery employs several Mexican immigrants, mostly hard-working men who have been with them a long time. Their employees are concerned about all of the fuss. We employee several Mexican immigrants at Custom Box, too. We believe they’re legal (we’ve done the required checks), but who can tell? Our employees are great: they work hard and are fun to be with.

On Monday — May Day — immigrants around the country plan to stage mass demonstrations. This, too, bugs some people. At our office, we’re giving our immigrant employees the day off — with pay — to join the demonstrations. I hope to see other companies in the Portland-area do the same thing.

There. I’ve kept my political rant short and civil. In closing, let me share one gem of a comment from the USA Today blog entry about Nuestro Himno:

Isn’t there some sort of copy right infringement law where you need permission to sing “anothers” song. If this was an Elvis song “they” sang in “Spanish” wouldn’t “they” need permission? Someone has to own the rights to the song and they should seek legal action to settle these questions. do you hear me George?

Ignoramus.

Convalescing

I was moaning to Kris this morning about how awful I feel. “You should sit outside, get some fresh air,” she said. While I can’t say that following her advice has helped me physically, it’s made a world of difference mentally.

The sun is shining. The birds and the bugs are flitting to and fro. (There are so many insects in flight that the air looks like a thriving insect metropolis.) Everything is green. A warm breeze brings cherry blossoms from the far corner of the yard. The grass is quite tall — I tell myself that perhaps I will mow it tomorrow. The goddamn flicker is still chirp-chirp-chirping, as it has been without ceasing for the past three days. (Kris thinks it must be mating season.) Jays swoop and squawk.

I doze a little. I read a little in The Annotated Anne of Green Gables. When all three cats come to visit at once, I pet each in turn.

I get up and go search for Kris. I find her sitting in the yard, facing her flower beds, as if she were a Queen, and the roses and tulips and herbs her loyal subjects.

“What are you thinking about?” I ask.

“Just flowers and colors and birds and stuff,” she says. “I saw two hummingbirds in the walnut: they were either mating or fighting, I couldn’t tell.”

Something rustles the irises. “Nemo,” we say together. Nemo loves to hide in the irises. They make him feel stealthy.

I think I will spend the rest of the afternoon on the back porch, dozing, and reading, and writing. (With Toto on my lap, apparently, as she’s just jumped up and demanded that I put the computer aside…)

Here’s a recent photo of Simon. I took about twenty at this time, but this is the only one I saved. He kept flopping and rolling and twisting; he wouldn’t sit still. I’m not even sure why I kept this one, but in retrospect, it’s kind of fun:

A Visit With Doctor Comic-Book-Guy

So, yes, I am sick. Very sick. My temperature of 101.4 had escalated to 104.0 this morning. It stayed there until my eary afternoon appointment with Doctor Comic-Book-Guy. He took a reading of his own: “103.8, huh? That’s not good. Let me see your throat. OUCH!” Ouch indeed.

I was pleased that he didn’t simply say, “It looks like you have a virus. It’ll take about three to five days to run its course. Get as much rest as you can and drink plenty of fluids.”

Instead he said, “Well, this may just be a virus, but with such a high temperature, you could have an infection, too. I’m going to write you a prescription for azithromycin. It’s great stuff. If a bacterial infection is making you sick, this will take care of it. If you have a both a virus and an infection, this will take care of part of it.” He paused for a moment and thought. “Of course, it could just be a virus, in which case the azithromycin won’t do anything, but it won’t hurt to take it.”

I coughed, and then gasped with pain.

“Oh yeah,” said Doctor Comic-Book-Guy. “Take some vicodin for that cough and sore throat.”

I was too disoriented to argue.

I make the drive between Canby and Oak Grove at least ten times a week. Today it took tremendous concentration. I clasped the steering wheel and locked my eyes on the road. I drove slowly. Fortunately, the vehicle in front of me was also driving slowly. I wondered if the driver was also suffering from a high fever and dizziness.

I took the prescriptions to the Safeway pharmacy, and then wandered the store in a daze. I wanted apple sauce, but for some reason I couldn’t remember where the apple sauce might be. I did, however, find the gelatin and pudding aisle. I thought about picking up some cook’n’serve stuff, or some tapioca, but then I noticed that the pre-packaged puddings were on sale at Ten for $10. (That’s a dollar a piece for those of us not living in la-la supermarket pricing land.) Each package contained four pudding cups, yielding a total cost of only 25 cents per cup. And each cup only had 80 calories. In my fevered state, I felt like I’d found the promised land! I loaded my basket: chocolate, chocolate fudge, banana cream, lemon meringue, tapioca, tapioca, tapioca. When I had finished I noticed an old man standing next to me, staring at my basket full of pudding. I smiled wanly and made my way to the dairy department.

I was struck with the idea that strawberry milk might be the most perfect food in the world. Yes, what I needed was strawberry milk and a donut. And what’s this? The pre-packaged “bake it yourself” Nestle chocolate chip cookies were “buy one, get one free”. What a deal!

That was the extent of my shopping adventures. I had begun to sweat profusely, and my dizziness was changing to nausea. I found a chair and waited for my prescription to be filled.

At home, I took my azithromycin and my vicodin and my St. John’s wort, and washed them down with a swig of strawberry milk. And a bite of a chocolate-covered donut.