We have a cat who, the moment a man is seated on the facility, climbs into his underpants puddled in his trousers between his feet and parks there, grooming herself. It's the only time she has any interest in clothing.
No use shutting the door on her. She'll muscle her way in.
She's impervious to and uninterested in feedback. This is simply part of What This Cat Lives To Do.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Postit Past Tempus Done Fugit
Half a century ago my mother and brother developed a fondness for those itty aquatic frogs one could buy in aquarium shops selling fresh water tropical fish and supplies. I thought they were cute. They didn't grow to more than an inch long.
No matter how the tank was lidded, those little buggers would get out of the tank clamber down off the table the tank was on and crawl off.
I once found one dead in the middle of the living room, a little smudge of soft gray clinging to a frond of cream carpet pile, his tiny forleg over one eye as if he were searching for a break on the horizon of a vast sea of wooly dry arctic. Another was found on the dial to the telephone in the back hall. He was on his back, draped over the hole to the number 8. One expired clinging to the outside of the toilet bowl in the bathroom off the back hall. Others escaped and were never found.
There had been both male and female frogs in the aquarium, so they didn't wander off because mates were unavailable. The aquarium was always clean. The frogs were well-fed. The habitat had dozens of inviting crannies to hide in, varied textured pebbles and plantings to climb over and through, neat gullies to explore, lots of hiding places under the water and fronds to peer through. They weren't too warm or too cold.
However, nearly all of those those frogs seemed to compelled to make break for the Great Beyond. Most of the time, they were caught and gently returned as they climbed over the lip of the tank or were slime-slithering down its glassy side. Everyone did a frog count and a recce every time they came into the den or even passed through it. Yet, escape they did. I always wondered what those little amphibian Vascos were searching for. Maybe they required a change of scenery. Maybe they were suicidal.
Of course their little corpses stank. It was never an overpowering reek. Their decay process didn't pervade the entire room they died in. Some got as far as the kitchen. Often the smell of death was so imperceptible, so transitory, that it went unnoticed or its source was never located. Frog-passage was no more than a secretive little whiff of something rotten somewhere, an invisible exclamation mark that would appeared under one's nose as one walked down a hall or past a closet door. One didn't really become aware of it until one had passed the point at which the whiffette had entered one's olfactories. Often backtracking failed to pick up a repeat of the exclamation.
After a few years my mother and brother got tired of finding corpses and schlepping to the Fish World to purchase spares. When the last one died in the habitat, possibly of loneliness or boredom, the tank was converted into a terrarium for my mother's never-ending campaign of orchids and rare or difficult to grow hairy plants with exotic colored leaves.
My mother passed away in February, 2007. The following September I went to Texas to pick through its remains, after other relatives had ransacked it. All the plants in the house were gone, except for a few dying condiment jars of ivy, which she was always rooting, though she'd run off everyone she could have given them to.
I was emptying the three closets in the den. At the very back of one, wedged between the round molding on the wooden floor and a junction in a corner, was a tiny mummified frog.
There was that leathery little frummie in the farthermost corner of its universe, a closet that hadn't been emptied out for 3 or 4 decades in the room in which the aquarium had been thousands of froggy life cycles before.
The purpose of that closet hadn't hadn't changed in 5 decades. I have changed in five decades. I left my habitat 15 years prior to that trip, only visiting 3 times in the interim.
I went from 59 years of age to 13, in a split second.
That entire week was a series of what could only be compared to acid flashbacks. Finding the frummie was a mild one.
No matter how the tank was lidded, those little buggers would get out of the tank clamber down off the table the tank was on and crawl off.
I once found one dead in the middle of the living room, a little smudge of soft gray clinging to a frond of cream carpet pile, his tiny forleg over one eye as if he were searching for a break on the horizon of a vast sea of wooly dry arctic. Another was found on the dial to the telephone in the back hall. He was on his back, draped over the hole to the number 8. One expired clinging to the outside of the toilet bowl in the bathroom off the back hall. Others escaped and were never found.
There had been both male and female frogs in the aquarium, so they didn't wander off because mates were unavailable. The aquarium was always clean. The frogs were well-fed. The habitat had dozens of inviting crannies to hide in, varied textured pebbles and plantings to climb over and through, neat gullies to explore, lots of hiding places under the water and fronds to peer through. They weren't too warm or too cold.
However, nearly all of those those frogs seemed to compelled to make break for the Great Beyond. Most of the time, they were caught and gently returned as they climbed over the lip of the tank or were slime-slithering down its glassy side. Everyone did a frog count and a recce every time they came into the den or even passed through it. Yet, escape they did. I always wondered what those little amphibian Vascos were searching for. Maybe they required a change of scenery. Maybe they were suicidal.
Of course their little corpses stank. It was never an overpowering reek. Their decay process didn't pervade the entire room they died in. Some got as far as the kitchen. Often the smell of death was so imperceptible, so transitory, that it went unnoticed or its source was never located. Frog-passage was no more than a secretive little whiff of something rotten somewhere, an invisible exclamation mark that would appeared under one's nose as one walked down a hall or past a closet door. One didn't really become aware of it until one had passed the point at which the whiffette had entered one's olfactories. Often backtracking failed to pick up a repeat of the exclamation.
After a few years my mother and brother got tired of finding corpses and schlepping to the Fish World to purchase spares. When the last one died in the habitat, possibly of loneliness or boredom, the tank was converted into a terrarium for my mother's never-ending campaign of orchids and rare or difficult to grow hairy plants with exotic colored leaves.
My mother passed away in February, 2007. The following September I went to Texas to pick through its remains, after other relatives had ransacked it. All the plants in the house were gone, except for a few dying condiment jars of ivy, which she was always rooting, though she'd run off everyone she could have given them to.
I was emptying the three closets in the den. At the very back of one, wedged between the round molding on the wooden floor and a junction in a corner, was a tiny mummified frog.
There was that leathery little frummie in the farthermost corner of its universe, a closet that hadn't been emptied out for 3 or 4 decades in the room in which the aquarium had been thousands of froggy life cycles before.
The purpose of that closet hadn't hadn't changed in 5 decades. I have changed in five decades. I left my habitat 15 years prior to that trip, only visiting 3 times in the interim.
I went from 59 years of age to 13, in a split second.
That entire week was a series of what could only be compared to acid flashbacks. Finding the frummie was a mild one.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Que tal, quetzal?
From when I was born until I was 3-1/2, we lived in NJ and got FEET of snow in winter. My parents hated it. I was confused by it. Why did they hate that pretty stuff?
Snow was just a fact of early life. I "unlearned" that fact after my folks transplanted us to Dallas. Growing up in NE Texas, snow was the enemy, and ice was a more common enemy than snow. Both were dangerous to drive on and people acted like idiots when either precipitated and remained. Winter in Texas was mostly after Christmas and it was mostly dry nasty cold or wet nasty cold, but not that much ice or snow nasty cold. I liked the cold, but everyone else in the family thought cold was nasty. Thanksgiving and Christmas in NE Texas were, as often as not, crisp and chill, but not cold. They were at least cold enough that decorating a tree or wearing overcoats and a winter wardrobe weren't out of place.
For a couple of years during highs school, I was living where Christmas comes at a warm time of year. Both of those years, my aunt and uncle took us to the Llanos for Christmas. Bogota Colombia is high in the Andes and even "summer" isn't particularly warm. For Christmas, my uncle liked to go to the lowlands, to a town called Fusagasaga because there are these hot springs there which are reputed to be very good for what ails one. One supposedly both drinks the mineral water from the hot springs in Fusa and one sits in the hot springs, boiling like a knockwurst in the water which is even hotter than the humid tropical air of the town itself.
I didn't like Fusagasaga except for the hotel in which we stayed.
It was the first hotel I'd ever been to in my life in which you had to keep the toilet paper on the dresser, because you could sit in the toilet and have a shower at the same time. The showerhead was in the middle of the room. The bathroom light was a bulb encased in an outdoor style fixture which didn't allow water to get into it. The beds were saggy soggy thin mattresses on thin metal strips, with spotless sheets and worn out cotton pillows, BUT there were hammock hooks and a hammock slung on one of the two hooks which one could use instead. And boy those hammocks were comfortable, airy and a lot easier to sleep in than the beds!
However, what made the hotel spectacular were the parrots. The owner of the hotel had a few dozen macaws at the hotel. I think that originally they had been captured or hand raised and kept with their wings clipped, but they had the run of the joint and they flew, so they were no longer "captives" birds.
And they were both pestiferous and wonderful!
That first Christmas in Colombia -- and the next -- I sat in 119 degree sulphurous water in that resort in the Colombian lowlands outside of Bogota, drinking Fanta or cold beer. The air outside of the springs was 103 and humidity outside of the baths was 85%, so there wasn't much difference between being IN the springs or out of them.
I fed most of my breakfast to the macaws at the hotel every morning, and spent most of the day with the parrots chewing up everything of mine they could get their claws or beaks on, happily yelling at me in Spanish, and joyfully soaring from perches to my back or waddling around after me, when they couldn't hitch a ride on a forearm from place to place, because they knew I'd cadge fruit for them from the kitchen help... and I did. I fell in LOVE with 1 to 3 pound birds in loud vibrant feather suits with even louder voices, distinct personalities and a surprising range of behavior.
I siesta'd with macaws. I lunched with macaws. I sang Christmas carols to macaws. I got groomed by macaws. I had macaw crap in my hair. I lost a sandal to macaws. I had enough dropped feathers from macaws to make a full fan.
I shared my salad, bread, fruit, fruit juice, lettuce, fried plantains, potato chips, peanuts and yucca with macaws. I showered with macaws if I let them in the room, and I did. Macaws pulled things out of my purse, gnawed holes in letters, dented and punctured post cards, and snapped pencils in half. Macaws climbed the juke box and sang along with selections people made of music in it. Macaws clung to the nets on the tennis courts, chewed up the pingpong paddles and fought one another over pingpong balls.
Macaws unwrapped my Christmas presents. Macaws were my Christmas presence. For years afterward, I'd think in vivid blue and red and gold, when Christmas came around, not in red, green, gold and silver.
You haven't lived until you wake up in a hammock on Christmas morning with a one macaw on your chest shitting on the sheet and trying to pull it off your arms and another hanging upside down clinging to the mesh your butt's in flapping his wings and yelling "hola! Que tal, quetzal?"
Snow was just a fact of early life. I "unlearned" that fact after my folks transplanted us to Dallas. Growing up in NE Texas, snow was the enemy, and ice was a more common enemy than snow. Both were dangerous to drive on and people acted like idiots when either precipitated and remained. Winter in Texas was mostly after Christmas and it was mostly dry nasty cold or wet nasty cold, but not that much ice or snow nasty cold. I liked the cold, but everyone else in the family thought cold was nasty. Thanksgiving and Christmas in NE Texas were, as often as not, crisp and chill, but not cold. They were at least cold enough that decorating a tree or wearing overcoats and a winter wardrobe weren't out of place.
For a couple of years during highs school, I was living where Christmas comes at a warm time of year. Both of those years, my aunt and uncle took us to the Llanos for Christmas. Bogota Colombia is high in the Andes and even "summer" isn't particularly warm. For Christmas, my uncle liked to go to the lowlands, to a town called Fusagasaga because there are these hot springs there which are reputed to be very good for what ails one. One supposedly both drinks the mineral water from the hot springs in Fusa and one sits in the hot springs, boiling like a knockwurst in the water which is even hotter than the humid tropical air of the town itself.
I didn't like Fusagasaga except for the hotel in which we stayed.
It was the first hotel I'd ever been to in my life in which you had to keep the toilet paper on the dresser, because you could sit in the toilet and have a shower at the same time. The showerhead was in the middle of the room. The bathroom light was a bulb encased in an outdoor style fixture which didn't allow water to get into it. The beds were saggy soggy thin mattresses on thin metal strips, with spotless sheets and worn out cotton pillows, BUT there were hammock hooks and a hammock slung on one of the two hooks which one could use instead. And boy those hammocks were comfortable, airy and a lot easier to sleep in than the beds!
However, what made the hotel spectacular were the parrots. The owner of the hotel had a few dozen macaws at the hotel. I think that originally they had been captured or hand raised and kept with their wings clipped, but they had the run of the joint and they flew, so they were no longer "captives" birds.
And they were both pestiferous and wonderful!
That first Christmas in Colombia -- and the next -- I sat in 119 degree sulphurous water in that resort in the Colombian lowlands outside of Bogota, drinking Fanta or cold beer. The air outside of the springs was 103 and humidity outside of the baths was 85%, so there wasn't much difference between being IN the springs or out of them.
I fed most of my breakfast to the macaws at the hotel every morning, and spent most of the day with the parrots chewing up everything of mine they could get their claws or beaks on, happily yelling at me in Spanish, and joyfully soaring from perches to my back or waddling around after me, when they couldn't hitch a ride on a forearm from place to place, because they knew I'd cadge fruit for them from the kitchen help... and I did. I fell in LOVE with 1 to 3 pound birds in loud vibrant feather suits with even louder voices, distinct personalities and a surprising range of behavior.
I siesta'd with macaws. I lunched with macaws. I sang Christmas carols to macaws. I got groomed by macaws. I had macaw crap in my hair. I lost a sandal to macaws. I had enough dropped feathers from macaws to make a full fan.
I shared my salad, bread, fruit, fruit juice, lettuce, fried plantains, potato chips, peanuts and yucca with macaws. I showered with macaws if I let them in the room, and I did. Macaws pulled things out of my purse, gnawed holes in letters, dented and punctured post cards, and snapped pencils in half. Macaws climbed the juke box and sang along with selections people made of music in it. Macaws clung to the nets on the tennis courts, chewed up the pingpong paddles and fought one another over pingpong balls.
Macaws unwrapped my Christmas presents. Macaws were my Christmas presence. For years afterward, I'd think in vivid blue and red and gold, when Christmas came around, not in red, green, gold and silver.
You haven't lived until you wake up in a hammock on Christmas morning with a one macaw on your chest shitting on the sheet and trying to pull it off your arms and another hanging upside down clinging to the mesh your butt's in flapping his wings and yelling "hola! Que tal, quetzal?"
Nutterbutter's offerings
Every morning, there's a new cat toy on the rug in front of the fridge. Nutter's doing.
She has no interest in cat treats. OTOH, even with seasoning or gravy or marinade on meat, if offered a stringy tidbit, pork, beef, chicken, fish, from the table makes her no nevermind, she's there. Never takes more than 2, doesn't try to get ON the table, either; and doesn't demand every night.
However, during meal preparation, she'll stand, not sit in the kitchen, tail up (often it's down when she's not wanting to be noticed, which is a lot), head raised, whiskers back a bit, ears forward, SNIFFING. So, I take the pot off the burner, lay it on the rug in front of the fridge and let her SNIFF. That's all she wants.
I get something out of the fridge, she sniffs. So, I let her see and smell every ingredient. Same with spices.
Both are all over the fabric bags when I've been grocery shopping. I let them sniff every item as I empty the bags. If I don't, they go a bit nuts.
Having sniffed, they're done and they move on.
Unless of course, it's tuna.
She has no interest in cat treats. OTOH, even with seasoning or gravy or marinade on meat, if offered a stringy tidbit, pork, beef, chicken, fish, from the table makes her no nevermind, she's there. Never takes more than 2, doesn't try to get ON the table, either; and doesn't demand every night.
However, during meal preparation, she'll stand, not sit in the kitchen, tail up (often it's down when she's not wanting to be noticed, which is a lot), head raised, whiskers back a bit, ears forward, SNIFFING. So, I take the pot off the burner, lay it on the rug in front of the fridge and let her SNIFF. That's all she wants.
I get something out of the fridge, she sniffs. So, I let her see and smell every ingredient. Same with spices.
Both are all over the fabric bags when I've been grocery shopping. I let them sniff every item as I empty the bags. If I don't, they go a bit nuts.
Having sniffed, they're done and they move on.
Unless of course, it's tuna.
THIS is baggage!
Best line in a television drama in 2007. "She doesn't have issues, she has a lifetime subscription." Heard last night on a rerun of something from this year.
Deja Eau
For a minute, I almost smelled the hollyberry air freshener that Mom used to order from Fuller Brush and use to gas the house at holidays.
Misperceptions
Having been accused of wishing dead someone I loved dearly and who broke my heart in more ways than one, when I wished that person release from being trapped in a body that would not obey and being at the mercy of people who were paid to care for that body but NOT for the person IN the body, I'm leery of wishing anyone ill.
It's not about the threefold law, but because I can't even publicly breathe a sigh of relief when some truly shitful individual kicks off. It's simply perceived as "additional malice."
It's not about the threefold law, but because I can't even publicly breathe a sigh of relief when some truly shitful individual kicks off. It's simply perceived as "additional malice."
Chinks
We *all* have vulnerabilities. That comes with caring about something, even one's own self.
The response to discovering a vulnerability isn't to stop caring. A kinetic response is to accept and acknowledge one's vulnerabilities and plod on.
The response to discovering a vulnerability isn't to stop caring. A kinetic response is to accept and acknowledge one's vulnerabilities and plod on.
Practical Partitioning
I want ALL religious institutions out of ALL contracts and ALL civil and criminal law in this country. ALL of them.
Period.
No exceptions.
Amend that. On this earth. Anywhere.
Period.
No exceptions.
Amend that. On this earth. Anywhere.
Tourism
Sometimes it occurs to me that if we come into this earth for a purpose, it may be some people's purpose in this life encounter interesting people and focus some attention on them.
It's really immaterial whether or not a "supreme" being or any kind of invisible friend really exists. Nevertheless, I do think that we need to find something within ourselves to impel us positively and productively, to inspire us to be part of a caring, inclusive and mostly humane and respectful community every day that we live.
If coming across people like that is one's purpose in life, then what?
Does one lose oneself in the general noise promoting them, or simply appreciate them as a casual tourist?
It's really immaterial whether or not a "supreme" being or any kind of invisible friend really exists. Nevertheless, I do think that we need to find something within ourselves to impel us positively and productively, to inspire us to be part of a caring, inclusive and mostly humane and respectful community every day that we live.
If coming across people like that is one's purpose in life, then what?
Does one lose oneself in the general noise promoting them, or simply appreciate them as a casual tourist?
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Hamsters
I'm right up here less than 200 miles as the crow flies from the Canadian border and people go completely ape at the word "snow" if they live on Puget Sound. The Sound prevents snow from falling much or accumulating much along its shores.
Yet if one drives only 15 miles inland, particularly since the Cascade Range literally lines the Eastern edge of the Sound, in some of the area, (it's a huge fat aneurism of slightly-less-salty-than-the-Pacific-Ocean water with an openings to the Pacific only at its northwest and southwest mouths, the most violent being the former -- the strait of Juan de Fuca) -- and you're in snow up to your armpits. The Cascades trap most of the moisture in the air and snow falls and falls and falls off and on all winter. However, the biggest concentration of human population is down out of the roughest parts of that range and in the foothills and the valleys, all of which pour into Puget Sound.
I live at 1,000 feet altitude, in a town south of Seattle. Parts of Seatle are nearly 1,000 feet altitude. However, drive 14 blocks west of those parts, and you're at the water's edge. That's a thousand foot drop in altitude in under 2 miles.
I'm literally 20 feet below (in altitude) but 200 feet in actual distance from the top of this little ridge.. and here -- for 3 blocks of town property -- we're on the the last ridge of the mountain before the land slopes down to Puget Sound, some 2 miles as the crow flies from our bathroom wall or a right and then a left turn from our front door.
I've been stuck in here on black ice and snow when one can literally slip slide a block on black ice and get onto dry or damp but thawed streets.
I'm right at a point where we can get snow and a block away it'll be raining.
Still, behind me, the ridge drops off into the Green River Valley, and you have to drive another 8 miles before the ridges are back to back going up into the body of the Cascades. There are 3 towns, all surburbs of Seattle, counting the town in which I live, between the Sound and the body of the Cascades.. which are 70 miles dense, before they drop off into Eastern Washington, which is dryer and in summer hotter than the Western part of the state.
In Seattle and suburbs, when people hear the word "snow" on the weather on any Seattle TV station, they react like a huge cage of hamsters into which someone has dropped a pit bull.
Idiots. Squeaking squealing stampede.
When there's going to be snow in Snoqualmie or White pass (the two most travelled high passes inland from Seattle, where there are quite a few ski resorts and thorugh which are the main roads to E. Washington and farm country if one goes DUE east, instead of going south and then turning East) the TV jerks mention it as if it's going to fall IN Seattle and in all these towns right on and along Puget Sound. They posture and mug for the cameras as if it's going to accumulate and stick *in these towns and imply that everyone's going to lose power and -- OMIGOSH, STARVE!
::eyeroll::
Hamsters.
People dash to their cars, haul ass to the nearest stores and empty the shelves; batteries, canned goods, milk, bread, crackers, soup, and toilet paper. Forget lamp oil and wicks or candles or fireplace logs. Those are gone already. They'll buy those huge 24- and 36-roll bales of rolled toilet paper because some talking head on TV said "snow".
Frakking hamsters.
Yet if one drives only 15 miles inland, particularly since the Cascade Range literally lines the Eastern edge of the Sound, in some of the area, (it's a huge fat aneurism of slightly-less-salty-than-the-Pacific-Ocean water with an openings to the Pacific only at its northwest and southwest mouths, the most violent being the former -- the strait of Juan de Fuca) -- and you're in snow up to your armpits. The Cascades trap most of the moisture in the air and snow falls and falls and falls off and on all winter. However, the biggest concentration of human population is down out of the roughest parts of that range and in the foothills and the valleys, all of which pour into Puget Sound.
I live at 1,000 feet altitude, in a town south of Seattle. Parts of Seatle are nearly 1,000 feet altitude. However, drive 14 blocks west of those parts, and you're at the water's edge. That's a thousand foot drop in altitude in under 2 miles.
I'm literally 20 feet below (in altitude) but 200 feet in actual distance from the top of this little ridge.. and here -- for 3 blocks of town property -- we're on the the last ridge of the mountain before the land slopes down to Puget Sound, some 2 miles as the crow flies from our bathroom wall or a right and then a left turn from our front door.
I've been stuck in here on black ice and snow when one can literally slip slide a block on black ice and get onto dry or damp but thawed streets.
I'm right at a point where we can get snow and a block away it'll be raining.
Still, behind me, the ridge drops off into the Green River Valley, and you have to drive another 8 miles before the ridges are back to back going up into the body of the Cascades. There are 3 towns, all surburbs of Seattle, counting the town in which I live, between the Sound and the body of the Cascades.. which are 70 miles dense, before they drop off into Eastern Washington, which is dryer and in summer hotter than the Western part of the state.
In Seattle and suburbs, when people hear the word "snow" on the weather on any Seattle TV station, they react like a huge cage of hamsters into which someone has dropped a pit bull.
Idiots. Squeaking squealing stampede.
When there's going to be snow in Snoqualmie or White pass (the two most travelled high passes inland from Seattle, where there are quite a few ski resorts and thorugh which are the main roads to E. Washington and farm country if one goes DUE east, instead of going south and then turning East) the TV jerks mention it as if it's going to fall IN Seattle and in all these towns right on and along Puget Sound. They posture and mug for the cameras as if it's going to accumulate and stick *in these towns and imply that everyone's going to lose power and -- OMIGOSH, STARVE!
::eyeroll::
Hamsters.
People dash to their cars, haul ass to the nearest stores and empty the shelves; batteries, canned goods, milk, bread, crackers, soup, and toilet paper. Forget lamp oil and wicks or candles or fireplace logs. Those are gone already. They'll buy those huge 24- and 36-roll bales of rolled toilet paper because some talking head on TV said "snow".
Frakking hamsters.
The Food Cop
At present I live in the Apartment Complex From Heck. Mind you, it's not Slum Central, but it's pretty dismal -- even after the baby diaper combo color paint job effected on it by its slumlord owner this past fall.
It used to be a pretty cute little place, tree shaded, where tenants were encouraged to plant their choice of flower gardens around some basic landscaping which had a LOT of rhododendrons, cream buildings with cute white shutters, a place where we had quarterly yard sales and used the proceeds on a tenant party, where most of the folks there had lived there a decade or longer and everyone got along and looked out for everyone else.
Well, no more.
The first week after the property was no longer in escrow, the property owner brought in an unskilled crew and a flatbed and logged out THIRTY full grown Noble firs, which paid her first year's entire mortgage on this 84-unit complex. Without permit. MATURE straight trees, none of which was in danger of damaging the buildings, none of which was diseased or aslant. There went 90% of the shade on some of the buildings. FEW apartments in this state are air conditioned. Now all the upstairs apartments which used to be livable in August will be hell in June, July, August and September. Then she had all the healthy plantings landscaping the buildings ripped out. It's just dirt now. Ugly.
Everything that was previously done somewhat on the cheap to maintain this little complex in the past is now done on the REALLY cheezy cheap. It's all about maximizing her income and putting as little as, or next to nothing, into the property. For example, the management thugs she uses, illegally raised our rent more than 10% and forced us to sign a lease or, if going month to month, we would pay 25% more than we had been paying (and that could be done only for 2 months. Sign lease or move.) So while we went in to sign a 9 month lease a month or so ago (I wanted to make sure we had a good window in order to build without being forced into another lease or huge bucks going month to month for maybe 3 or months while the house was completed and I effected our move) -- I raised hell about the garbage condition of our place, mostly wanting ONE set of new blinds in our bedroom. I mentioned the refrigerator ran at least 12 hours a day which meant IT was worn out, but I didn't expect a replacement.
The next day, the doorbell rang well before we get up (Hubs telecommutes and works an after-hours shift), and there are these two Russian or Ukranian guys who work for the management company with a refrigerator on a dolly WAY too small for it.
We scrambled to box the contents of our fridge and freezer, and they wheeled the old one out. Underneath the fridge was goo, scum. I I refused to let them wheel the other in until I used a commercial industrial warehouse degreaser in order to get the crap up and scraped off. They were pissed about having to wait for that. Remember, we didn't get a phone call, this is hours before we normally wake up, and no one consulted us about whether or not wanted a replacement.
Tough.
Next, wheel the new fridge in, forget to take the plastic off the coils on the back. I had to make them wheel it back out and get them to take the plastic off the back. I had to make them take the plastic and foam out of the interior -- and it was everywhere. They INSISTED it didn't need levelling and left with the old one.. which held MORE than the new one does.
They didn't leave us a manual for this Hotpoint (GE) bottom of the line piece of crap with 2 less shelves than theother had and NO ice maker, and it had no ice tray in it, either.
Erek and I monkeyed around and figured out how to level it, more or less.
I filled it and discovered something.
It skreeks every time one opens or closes it. There's NO place to lubricate it, and no way to get the door off the hinges to do so, either.
We've had it a month now. The cats are in heaven. Now they know immediately if there's something going on in the kitchen. They're EXTREMELY fond of the thing.
Me, I HATE it. It SCREAMS if I'm getting milk to make us a latte. It SCREAMS every time I open or close it making a meal. It SCREAMS UUUUUUUUUUP and then dowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwn, like a whiney four year old pretending to cry in pain, but really crying for attention.
Forget to get out an onion? SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeammmmmmm.
Putting away groceries?
SKREEEEEEEEEK. SCREAM, screeeeeeeeeeeeeeam! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAIL!
Ad nauseam.
I've discovered every one of these damned things makes the same noise and there's frak-all anyone can do about it. Every neighbor with this model of "new refrigerator" in all the "retrofitted" apartments has the same complaint.
And we're all losing weight.
About Luggage
Sometimes people refer to their lives' history as baggage; as if it were something they should be happy to put down or discard when it gets to be too heavy. Of course it's impossible to do. Short a lobotomy, all that you've experienced is a part of you and will you or nil you, it's going to pop into the present.
In terms of some kinds of therapy, "baggage" is the stuff one brings with one's experiences. It's learned emotional patterns. It's the junk that keeps one from making progress in life, setting or achieving a goal, adjusting to the inevitable change in one's life that comes with existing. It prevents one from being or becoming the "most" or the "best" which a one can be. Its the burden of circumstances which are less than ideal or which prevent something desired from being accomplished. "If you find your hands are full, drop the baggage and pick up that thing you desire," etc.
Everyone has baggage. Everyone sees what everyone else is carrying as baggage at one time or another.
We come into the world with a piece of luggage. By the time we're aware of ourselves as volitional creatures, there's stuff in that luggage. As we grow and age, we accumulate more luggage. That luggage is self-hood; self-history, chronicity, experience.
Somewhere along the line, some of that luggage becomes baggage. It becomes weight, excess, burden. A lot of baggage is externally applied and acquired. Luggage is mixed in with the baggage. Usually people sort things out and can discriminate between which is their luggage and which is their baggage. Some people go to therapy to learn or further refine their discrimination, and maybe even to learn how to put the baggage down and carry the luggage as if it were full of helium instead of chronos and self-awareness and experiences.
Everyone has to carry some kind of self around with them. That's luggage, even if it's only a wallet or a fanny pack. However, the baggage, the stuff that pulls one down. that can be put in a locked room in the warehouse. It can even be stored next to luggage.
This is the stuff that's come over the baggage counter and I'm throwing it here, to decide now or later what's luggage and what's baggage.
In terms of some kinds of therapy, "baggage" is the stuff one brings with one's experiences. It's learned emotional patterns. It's the junk that keeps one from making progress in life, setting or achieving a goal, adjusting to the inevitable change in one's life that comes with existing. It prevents one from being or becoming the "most" or the "best" which a one can be. Its the burden of circumstances which are less than ideal or which prevent something desired from being accomplished. "If you find your hands are full, drop the baggage and pick up that thing you desire," etc.
Everyone has baggage. Everyone sees what everyone else is carrying as baggage at one time or another.
We come into the world with a piece of luggage. By the time we're aware of ourselves as volitional creatures, there's stuff in that luggage. As we grow and age, we accumulate more luggage. That luggage is self-hood; self-history, chronicity, experience.
Somewhere along the line, some of that luggage becomes baggage. It becomes weight, excess, burden. A lot of baggage is externally applied and acquired. Luggage is mixed in with the baggage. Usually people sort things out and can discriminate between which is their luggage and which is their baggage. Some people go to therapy to learn or further refine their discrimination, and maybe even to learn how to put the baggage down and carry the luggage as if it were full of helium instead of chronos and self-awareness and experiences.
Everyone has to carry some kind of self around with them. That's luggage, even if it's only a wallet or a fanny pack. However, the baggage, the stuff that pulls one down. that can be put in a locked room in the warehouse. It can even be stored next to luggage.
This is the stuff that's come over the baggage counter and I'm throwing it here, to decide now or later what's luggage and what's baggage.
It's perception.
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