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February 14, 1997
Go easy on the chocolate and the champagne but eat lots of those little hearts with the messages on them. They're made in Massachusetts.
St. Valentine was a martyr. Actually, he was at least 8 of them. Supposedly 8 churches in Rome have full body relics and one has a head - hmm, that would be 9. Why he (they?) is in charge of love is not clear.
The kids are just getting over the flu. The roads are solid ice. This must be Friday. We skipped piano today as Elizabeth didn't feel up to it. Both girls just flopped on the couch most of the afternoon. Driving home was a challenge but at least the rain wasn't freezing onto the windshield like last time. The trees looked spooky and road was a little slippery but the highway was ok.
My knee has been bothering me for 2 days. I thought whatever it was had healed. Now I look at last year's entry and see that my knee hurt then too. I was considering a doctor... Back in my twenties I was diagnosed with arthritis but then my knees stopped bothering me for years. Even now this doesn't feel like it did then. It feels like it did when I fell on the wet floor last year. These days I just hurt for no reason. It's like the aches and pains from my arm have started to migrate around my body looking for a vacation spot.
The only theme I can pick up on in today's entries is the weather. But heck that's what one writes in February.
I spent a little time tonight trying to navigate all the way around the Open Pages ring. I didn't get that far. I got tired of reading text on the screen. I can't read yellow text on a white background so I changed the background to "default" and discovered that one site I thought was just graphics actually had white text. I find a lot of text hard to read against gray background and almost any graphic background pattern drives me crazy - I just can't pick out the text. I feel like I'm reading Wired, which is nearly impossible to read with that high gloss paper and pink text on orange background. This is not an indictment of on-line journals. It's just a thinking out loud about how to set my preferences so I can see the text and still get the effect the author intended.
So set the wayback machine to 1996 then 1995 and enjoy your journey into the library of the peanut butter belly of religion.
Snow is coming down steadily. We're supposed to have 3 to 5 inches by tonight. The floor at the Coffee Connection is wet and I slipped and fell. My knee hurts. Maybe I ought to have it looked at. I hate to go to doctors. I hate anything medical. I fear doctors. I fear hospitals. Yuck.
Anyhow, it is snowing and my knee is screwed up and I'm depressed about having to pay alternative minimum tax of [actual amount deleted]. I can't believe it. That's a 3rd of my "fortune" - my nest egg. I feel so stupid. Oh well, gotta pay it. No choice.
So today I overslept after a nice early morning cuddle with Wilbur. He was purring up a storm. I went back to sleep and slept til 8:40. By the time I got to the shelter it was 9:30. Just as I started cleaning, Dawna had a seizure. She twitched for 2 1/2 minutes. It was definitely a seizure. It was not an anxiety attack. Anyhow, she didn't feel well and went home. Sheila came in to help clean and moved through like a whirlwind. I felt like a stick in the mud compared to her. I limped around and couldn't bend down to do the low cages.
Cindy got adopted! She's been there for a couple of years and has all kinds of special needs. I'm so glad she got a home for the last years of her life. It will be nice for her to have some comfort in her old age. Cindy is a mellow sweet cat who likes to sleep and watch people do the dishes. She always liked to sit on the counter while I washed dishes and litter boxes.
Stumpy is still there. Maybe no one wants him because he has not much of a tail. It is even shorter than Wilbur's. At least he has a tail which is more than Jaguar has. Poor Jaguar. No one wants him. He is unfriendly, pees in inappropriate places and has no tail. Other than that he's gorgeous. His long white fur practically gleams in the sun. When he sits by the window in his basket he could be a model for a cat food ad. He's the picture of coziness. Jaguar is the dominant cat at the shelter. He has fended off all challenges from the likes of Wilbur and Clyde and even Helga (the little bitch!). Nobody can stare down Jaguar. He patrols his territory warily checking every corner for threats to his dominance. He sniffs every cage, the barrels of litter, the community litter boxes, the linen closet, the laundry room...
The laundry room is really Faith's territory. She tolerates an uneasy truce with Stumpy. Faith sits in a cat bed on top of the dryer or on a pillow near the laundry room window. When she first came to the shelter she tried to get out the window. She pried back the grate and was working on the screen when I caught her. She howled at the window for weeks but finally accepted being indoors with dozens of other cats. Faith pees outside her litter box and it drips down onto the cage floor and runs out onto the floor. When she was in the middle row her pee dripped into Dottie's food dish. Finally she got moved to the bottom tier of cages so even though she still drips it only soils the floor.
More cats seem to have missed the box today than usual. I kept coughing from the fumes. It doesn't usually bother me, but between Faith and Anthony the stench really got to me.
Peanut butter. Why peanut butter? There are peanut butter stains on my jacket from a bagel I ate on the way to work on Friday rushing as always I didn't notice the peanut butter oozing out all over the place.
Place for peanut butter.
This is silly.
Brown cup on the table group writing in the library surrounded by books on religion and we're writing about peanut butter.
I'm so tired tired to my bones letting go to somewhere in the peanut butter library section of herbal tea
watch band
clip
glasses
pen cap
wrist brace
red mud
sneakers
green Monterey Bay aquarium sweatshirt which for reason reminds me of the Baltimore aquarium where the poison dart frogs live in glass cages as frogs all over the world are dying and no one knows why - the ozone layer? air pollution? water pollution? Republicans in Congress who don't like the frogs and send them bad vibes?
This is too surreal when is the mind going to flip out completely on Valentine's Day in New Mexico. If Georgia O'Keeffe were here now today's weather would remind her of Lake George not the kind of weather she moved here for.