I'm FREEEEE!

Well, almost. I'm still putting together numbers for the Oktoberfest budget spreadsheet (we did pretty well), approving invoices, and planning a volunteer thank-you event. Oh! And I spent most of yesterday cleaning up Oktoberfest remnants (actual physical things left lying around) from Town Square, because they're picky that way. (Okay, I'm loathe to mention that the time and effort it took to take note of the broom leaned up against the door outside our staff office and compose an email about it was much greater than what it would have taken to just unlock the door and stuck it inside. But I'm sure going to think it.)

I'm gradually getting back to the real work. Promise!

I know, I know…

Yes, I know how long it's been. Yes, I have things I'd like to write about. No, I won't be doing that any time soon. And here's why:

Do you see that countdown timer on the upper left? I'll be back in that long. Oh! And please come to Oktoberfest. (Bring money!)

Learned something

I learned two things this morning already. Well, three, really.

First, composing a blog post on my iPad gives it some funky kind of default font that doesn't seem to correlate to anything that happens on the desktop version of Blogger.

Second, all my years as a typesetter have left me unable to ignore funky font problems. Must. be. fixed….

And, finally, I've lost pretty much all the html skill I ever had. I just re-entered that last post, because looking at the html gave me not a single clue about how to fix it. Yeah, I'll have to do something about that sometime.

Saturday night, or what passes for it

I spent a rollicking Saturday evening doing an inventory of my knitting needles. (Because I find, over and over, that I need an actual, correct and complete tally of them, that's why. Sometimes I spend time searching for needles that meet particular criteria when I'm not absolutely positive that I even own them. Or I find myself thinking that I need to buy some needles that are [fill in the blank] size or whatever, when, for all I know, the very ones I want are stuck up in a closet somewhere in my house.)

Anyway, that's what I did tonight. Two questions:

     1. I'm a wild woman, just wild, aren't I?

and

     2. Does anyone have any idea why I thought I needed seven—count 'em, seven—Knitpicks 24" cables?*

I'll be over here, seeing the error of my ways.


*See the 'thought I needed to buy…' thing above. Point made.

Yes, I'm still here

I should have been an attorney so that I could write legal documents! I love writing precise, careful wording to convey an exact meaning. I'm not real big on confrontation, though, and I understand it's part of the job description. I guess that could be a problem….

(Can you tell from that that I've been doing Oktoberfest stuff?)

Not West Nile

I got bitten by a mosquito last week. If you don't live in DFW/North Texas, it may seem silly to even mention it, but our area was West Nile Virus Central last summer. Texas had a third of all the cases in the U.S., and the majority of them were in the Metroplex.*

So a mosquito bite is something to notice.

Not only that, but I got bitten while in the area of Tarrant County's first 2013 West Nile-positive mosquito (they trap and test them, that's how they know). See?

The good news, of course, is that most people who get West Nile Virus don't even know it. They never have any symptoms at all. And for a long time, it was only people with underlying health problems or compromised immune systems who developed the serious neuroinvasive form of the disease. But a young man with no health problems died from WNV last summer, so obviously no one is completely safe. The CDC and Texas Department of State Health Services continues to stress that the best way to avoid getting sick is to avoid getting bitten.

So much for that.

Anyway, today I started feeling queasy. And my stomach was a little upset (I won't go into detail about that part). I remembered my mosquito bite, and quickly looked up the incubation period.

3 to 14 days. Uh-oh.

I was all ready to go into full I've-got-the-vapors mode, assuming I was deathly ill and just praying it wouldn't advance to neurological impairment…when I looked up the symptoms. The mild symptoms are:

• Fever
• Headache
• Body aches
• Fatigue
• Back pain
• Skin rash (occasionally)
• Swollen lymph glands (occasionally)
• Eye pain (occasionally)

Uh, nope. Well, except for fatigue, which could definitely be explained by the fact that I stayed up 'til 1:00am reading, then woke up at 6:30 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. The queasiness could possibly have been caused by that Grande Iced Hazelnut Macchiato I guzzled down in about three minutes flat this afternoon. (I fervently desired caffeine, because of my lack of sleep. Vicious circle, I guess.)

Anyway, it looks like I do not have West Nile Virus, and hoorah for that! I think to celebrate I'll go enjoy some all-American pizza while we stream 1776.

Happy (and healthy) Independence Day to you and yours. Don't forget your DEET!


*Total 2012 number of human cases of West Nile in all of Texas was 1,868; in the ten-county DFW area, 966. Total number of human West Nile deaths in Texas was 89, 35 of them in the Metroplex.

"Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits"

That's a quote from, depending on who you believe, Satchel Paige*, A.A. Milne or Bloom County. It's come to mind here recently, often, because of our cat Izzy.

Izzy became something of a tank some years ago. At the time we had a very elderly cat, Hobbes, who had been a member of the family since he was about three weeks old. He lived to 19 years and 5 months, and those last couple of years he was very thin. We put food out for him everywhere he liked to hang out, in the hopes that anytime he felt like eating there would be food nearby. The last six months or so that Hobbes was alive, Izzy, who was quite young at the time, discovered all those bowls of food. She discovered, too, that she could manage a bite or two from every bowl. Every time she passed them. Or, say, came within fifty feet of them. And…whoosh! Tank.

Fast forward some, and now she eats low-calorie, high-fiber prescription food. The other cats eat regular old cat food, so Izzy gets to eat in a different room, by herself. We feed the dogs and other two cats in the kitchen, then escort Izzy to the master bedroom, put her food down and close the door.

For a long time, we could go back about ten minutes later and she would've finished eating and be waiting by the door to get out. Here lately, though, we put her in the bedroom and she starts eating. She stops, though, after just a couple of minutes, comes to the door and waits for someone to come back and keep her company.

That's really all you have to do, just be in the room with her, though she appreciates a little bit of petting, too. One of us goes back in the room, closing the door behind us, and she finishes eating. It wasn't too bad when she only took three or four minutes more to finish. Now, though, she's taking eight or ten minutes.

So lately I've had eight or ten minutes, three times a day, to sit and think. Or, as the saying goes, just sit.

It's actually very pleasant, if I can keep my mind off of what I should or could be doing. It's quiet and cool and comfortable. If I can still my mind to match the calm stillness of the room, it's a very nice break, in fact. I guess this might be what meditating is like, though meditation is something I've never really been able to do. (Never really understood what it is, exactly, to tell you the truth. Do you keep your mind blank? How? Isn't that sort of like telling yourself to not think about elephants?) Anyway, it's not a bad way to spend a few minutes, though it's starting to stretch a little beyond my patience. I tell myself that Izzy, while a cat of many quirks**, is pretty low maintenance, and being forced to sit quietly for less than a quarter of an hour isn't too much to ask to improve her health.

This is what happens when you're attuned to your pets and very aware of just how psychologically complex they are. But I may still start leaving a book on the dresser.



* For some (other) very fine Satchel Paige quotes, see here. My favorite, I think: "I never threw an illegal pitch. The trouble is, once in a while I would toss one that ain’t never been seen by this generation."

** She also goes nuts over bed mice.