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December 8, 1999 |
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cornered |
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Adopt these Cats Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society Today's Bird Sightings:
Today's Reading: The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman, Autumn from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau edited by H.G.O. Blake
Copyright © 1999, Janet I. Egan |
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As I write this entry I am trapped in my condo. Well, actually just my car is trapped in its parking space. The Russian lady's son-in-law, who used to block me in all the time when he was visiting her, now lives next door to Pajama Woman. He has his own parking space, yet he still parks illegally at the end of the courtyard and blocks me in. Lately he's been leaving just enough room for me to get out if I turn the steering wheel really hard and back up very carefully. That would have been possible tonight except that Pajama Woman's son is parked on my back walkway. I mean his car is not even fully in the parking lot. It's over the curb and up on my walk, his mother's walk, and part of the lawn. Granted I never did well on the spatial relationships section of IQ tests, but even a crash test dummy could see that my car is cornered. One of those guys has got to move his car for me to get out. So I'll just stay in. There's nothing I need that's worth a confrontation with these guys tonight. I think there must be come kind of discontinuity in the
space time continuum today. Not only did I manage to get a
bagel and coffee at the Amesbury The place was a zoo today. Of course that was partly my fault. Kendra had reminded me last night to bring in the Goo Gone to take the obnoxious adhesive from the labels off the litter boxes. This has been an ongoing pet peeve of mine for some time. So Kendra had this idea that a kid who has to do a community service project for school and has chosen to do it with us, could take on removing the adhesive as a project. I now seriously regret having ever mentioned Goo Gone as a possible solution to this problem. The fumes drove Bonnie out of the office. She moved her chair and the health records into the main room and used the big yellow bucket as a desk. The community service project kid's face and hands turned red. Everybody was all in a dither. I've probably poisoned everybody, human and feline. I think I'll try steel wool next time.
And yes FileMaker will run on the office Mac, so that's one technical problem solved. I finished reading The Subtle Knife over lunch at Angelina's. (Notice how fast I can read Young Adult novels.) Now I can see why Andrea is in such a hurry to get the third book. It's such a cliffhanger! The weather was so perfect today that I spent the rest of the afternoon - until dark - looking for birds and walking on the beach. I poked around in the tide pools at Sandy Point, sat on a rock staring at a small flock of oldsquaws - the funniest looking members of the duck family, and then headed back into town for a short browse at Olde Port Book Shop and some coffee at Fowle's. I couldn't stay at the book store while there was still light so I continued birding at Salisbury Beach. I thought my luck was changing when I spotted a northern shrike as soon as I got there, but that was the only interesting bird I came across. The seals were a whole 'nother story though. It was low tide so they were basking on the rocks in the river by Butler's Toothpick. I counted 106 but I think there were actually more. They were extremely noisy - barking, moaning, all manner of vocalizations. I've never heard them so loud. One big male was lording it over some others on the same rock and they ended up sliding back into the water and swimming off someplace. Lots of activity going on; they weren't just stretched out on the rocks sunbathing. It got dark and I came home. It gets dark way too early these days. |
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OK,
I still can't think of anything to say, but legions of
readers are clamoring for a return to their daily dose of
humor, birds, feline body fluids, and blonde coyotes. And
that's not even counting my family.
Dunkin Donuts in under 10 minutes, but I got to the cat
shelter a half hour earlier than usual. That didn't seem to
help though. I was still not done with the dishes and litter
boxes at 11:00.
The
sink did its Wednesday morning dysfunction again. The top
popped off the trap when I took the strainer out of the
drain. I had a bucket under there already just in case, but
the floor got a little wet anyway. When Roy and Giggle Girl
cleaned out the trap and put the cover back on, the sink
still wouldn't drain. Giggle Girl unclogged the pipe with
her hand several times while I let the remaining water out
of the sink a little at a time. She did a great job and it
worked fine thereafter. I'm told this only happens on
Wednesday, so I'm starting to get a complex about it.
I
still found time to pet Jaguar 'til he purred, and encourage
him to live forever. I got Shanti to come within a whisker
of my hand too. Great progress. I don't think I photographed
all of the new cats because it took me so long to get the
new Chloe (Chloe #2) to look at me. Libra and Muffin were
easy to photograph. And check out those Siamese blue eyes on
Libra!