Dotty Parker

pop top pup

There is some discussion in this world about dogs in hats. I've taken a few pictures of dogs in hats to make the guilty habit of some swanky fellas (are there girls too?) even more guilty.

Here's a new one. Pop cap dogs.

Sprocket had some kind of wound on her head. It was next to her ear. We didn't notice it being there, but we are noticing that it's healing.

Sprocky has a scab on her head.

Odd things, scabs on dogs: they take the fur off with them. Sprocket is at that bizarre stage where half of her scab is liberated. Beneath it is a patch of bright white skin with a few hairs growing back.

It's not as gross as it sounds. It's actually kind of funny. You don't even know it's there unless you happen upon it. And when you do, she tips her cap.

Pops the top.

ghost train

BrilliantEditor and I dropped off his car and then walked home. We don't live in a very walkable area, but we found a trail that would take us home. It took us past home, but walking back wasn't too bad.

The trail we were on is the old railbed for a railroad company that BE knows the name of, but I don't. Even so, the flatness and the constant width of the trail kept reminding me of where we were.

We walked by a few clearings, most of them peoples' backyards. The path got pretty mushy and the grass was wet. My shoes were very wet and my jeans were wet up to my knees. We started looking for a way off the trail, but were foiled by the non-branching nature of a railroad bed.

On our way, though, we found that there is an old building. My first thought was, "These people are so damned trashy. I hate it." But BE was looking at it and thought it was a water tower. Thinking that I was so clever, I said, "Why is it up off the ground? And why is there are window?"

Well, turns out BE is right. It was a water tower. For steam trains. That's the part I didn't get. The reason I believed him, though, was the width of the boards used to make the water tower. I swear they were wider than a foot. That's wide, indeed. That's, in part, what made me believe him.

You don't get boards that wide anymore. No siree.

Then the ghost train blew by me, stopped for water a bit later, and tooted its whistle to say goodbye.

um, vacation?

I've been slacking off here. On the blog, I mean, I've been slacking off. I've been moderately productive in other ways. Garden ways and laundry ways and gathering ways and sorting ways. There's not a lot to show for those ways, though.

There is stuff to show with the gardens. Laundry, however, isn't really a show and tell event. "And here are my socks. These ones are from the Queen of Colonie. I wore these argyle socks together even though they don't match!" Not a lot of sustainable conversation. And really, does anyone want to know the origin of my socks or the kind of laundry detergent I use or if I use fabric softener or why I don't take things out of the dryer when they're still warm so they don't wrinkle?

Frankly, darlings, I don't want to know those things about you.

I went to the used book store looking for some specific books that are meant to be for gifts. I like used books, although the stores make me sneeze. There was an awesome gardening book with this woman in a 1960s era dress potting a lipstick plant or something. It looked swell. And there were some completely awesome planters. Kind of egg shaped and white and plasticky.

Yum.

I don't have a lot of containers. I don't have a lot of places to put containers inside. Keeping them outside in winter isn't the best thing for them. They get angry and crack.

At any rate, I started talking about how I'm slacking off. I want to apologize and promise that I'll get better. Instead, I'll apologize and say that I constantly think of things to write, but don't write those things down and certainly don't write them here.

I will do my best, my dears.

meetin'

BE and I went to Quaker meeting this morning. It's the kind of meeting where you're there for an hour and someone may or may not speak. We had four this morning. Three were great. One, who happened to be sitting next to me, was snore-worthy and pompous. I felt torn about thinking those things, however, as another person who spoke emphasized the importance of tolerance.

Yeah. Tolerate this.

Working the magic of positive thinking can be difficult. This morning I was reminding myself to be thankful for the world and the sunlight and the people around me. When I got to the kids I was cool. They were being kids, but after fifteen minutes, they go outside and they stop clanking around so much.

Well, they're supposed to go outside.

As you might guess, a couple didn't. They were pretty good, but they were pretty distracting. Which means that I need to practice being focused and they need to wear socks and be tethered to a post. Socks with foam rubber all aroudn them. Maybe moon boots. A post that's been upholstered in silence material. Perhaps with a pretty kid pattern with ladders and jungle animals and paths. I might sit next to that, though...

when you're happy and you know it, clap your hands!

When you're in mourning for the Prez, buy some stuff!

I get email from a place where I can buy remaindered clothes for super-cool bargains. One of my favorite skirts came from there. It was listed as the wrong color so the original catalog couldn't sell it--too many returns. But I don't mind. I like both colors--the advertized and the actual.

This is the email I got from them today:

How bizarre. It seems to me similar to selling cotton candy at a funeral. The phrase, "beautifully packaged" is used twice. Is that what I should look for in a collectible? Should I be looking for collectibles that are politically meaningful? Should they have an emotional appeal, too? Should I be touched by Grenada's stamps? Is it really a feature that they are recognized by every postal authority in the world? Isn't that what defines a postage stamp?

I suppose I shouldn't expect so much from a discount place.

I've been reading about Reagan to try to understand why I have such a knee-jerk reaction to this guy. For reasons I had been unable to explain, I felt a need to distance myself from anything about him. I always want to skewer him on his own ignorance. I want to make him less than human.

So I've read about him and listened about him on the radio. People who saw him often, who worked with him, can recite great stories. I read an article in the New Yorker by his authorized biographer, Edmund Morris. I also heard him speak on the radio. He tried very hard to be balanced. I, of course, listened and read for what was horrible.

In trying to look for goodness, I did find that he was very devoted to maintaining his ideology. His memory was impeccable. He was called a statesman.

The eternal rumor of his mental fogginess is dispelled: "In all the years I observed Ronald Reagan until 1992...I never saw any sign of cognitive dementia," wrote Mr. Morris.

My friend the Queen suggests that I don't remember Reagan the way she does. I'm younger; I don't remember how the world was. She says that he inspired her with his speeches, that what he said was real. Although I rail against this interpretation, she sticks to it.

When I read the following paragraph, though, I wondered if, God forbid, I could be wrong: Children respond to sincerety rather than to smoothness, and, having watched [ Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush] adress young audiences, I can report that Reagan was distinctly the least successful. He talked just as he did to adults...and with benign indifference to whether any child understood him, as long as the applause was general.

Is it possible? Is the Queen right? Alas, I suspect it is true. I must admit some defeat. I didn't understand what was going on. I was reponding to the man. I don't dislike Reagan because of his politics.

I just dislike him.

In The Nation this week, Jonathan Schell (who Reagan likened to his would-be assasin John Hinckley) writes, "Let us not speak ill of the dead. Instead, let's remember the nuclear-abolitionist, peace-minded Reagan forgotten by his hagiographers."

Schell says this after feuding with the fellow and his policies for years. I say good for him. A big hearted man.

I am not as kind a person as that, however. While I can remember the vague promise of a farewell to nukes and some warm happy words that would make everything okay, I also remember Star Wars and all that other junk. Therefore, I shall lift bits and pieces from the New Yorker article that make me feel righteous and indignant. It will help me sleep well tonight. These are from his authorized biographer Edmund Morris in the New Yorker.

For all their emotional awkwardness, one cannot imagine [Carter or the elder Bush] ignoring their first grandchild, as Reagan did for two years, or walking away from the brain-damaged James Brady with nothing more than a cheerful, "Hi, Jim."

Jane Wyman, his first wife, left him for boring her.

grey feet

If you were a hobbit, would your foot hair turn grey when you got old?

If you were a hobbit, would you have foot hair on the bottom of your feet, too?

Sprocket might be a hobbit. She has hairy feet, you know. Top and bottom are both hairy. Although Sprocket is only three or four (I can never remember and she doesn't try to remind me) she had greying hair on her chin and the bottom of her feet.

The chin I was willing to let go as something that she'd been dying all this time. She'd been using Grecian formula or Just For Dogs hair coloring to keep us under the impression that she was youthful and spritely and that she therefore needed much more feeding than other dogs as she was still a puppy.

The bottom of her feet, though, that's just kind of strange, isn't it? Grey, fuzzy hair sticking out between the pads of her feet. It's started growing now, too. Before she seemed to have these trimmed little feet, but now she's a bit of a mess.

Her toe nails are growing quite long. Trying to clip them is becoming more difficult because of the fuzzy toe hair.

Hobbits must have a relatively easy time clipping their toe nails as their foot hair is sparse enough to not get in the way of the clippers. Dogs, though, they don't have such an easy time.

Maybe that's why Sprocket's toe hair is going grey.

false alarm

Went to Cayuga Nature Center again today. It rained all day. Hard. I got very wet. It rained through my two layer jacket (that I thought was water resistant), my long sleeved over-shirt, and it began to go through my t-shirt, too. I put the wet over-shirt back on, trying to delay the soakage. I do believe my scientific experiment was successful.

I had a brush with failure today, however. It wasn't clear cut, this failure, but it makes my stomach feel strange when I think about it.

I had five more groups of kids today. Some of them were great; some of them were, uh, not great. No matter how smart or how not smart they were, though, behavior was a big problem. It seemed to me that the smart kids tended to pay attention for a while and then they all lost focus at the same time. It's annoying, but it's easy enough to get them back on track.

When a group had distractions and different people noticed them at different times, it was impossible to get everyone looking in the same direction at once. That's something that bothers me a lot, people not paying attention when someone is talking to them. Pay attention in class, and mess around some other time. I sound like my father.

The last group of the day was either even less focused or I was more tired, or perhaps both. Judging by the teacher accompanying them, the first possibility is definitely a part of the equation.

I'd spoken to a couple of kids in the first three minutes of our stream-related seminar/activity. They started looking at me again, but I think their brains were on Swedish gummy fish rather than crayfish.

When Linda (the other stream team member) started talking, I started watching these kids like a hawk. I descended rapidly, closing in to cause fear and if fear was not enough, talons became exposed and they felt my wrath!

This was working pretty well. It would have worked better if we had more time to implement it. I had a slight derailment, though. Two of the three kids I'd scolded earlier were sticking their finger against the back of another kid's head.

They were poking him in the head!

Inappropriate behavior! This hawk came swooping in with talons out. I grabbed kid number one by the arms and said something like, "You don't need to poke him in the head." I was squeezing his arms a little, enough so that I could feel his muscles. I probably shouldn't have done that. Continuing in my arc, I brought my hand over to student number two's hand and got in the path of pokiness.

Kid number one looked up and to the side, not meeting my stare, the way my dogs do when they're being submissive but still ignoring me. He said, "But there was a bug on his head." Kid number two said the same thing.

I felt the wind go out from under my hawk wings. I retracted my talons. I said, "I'm sorry. I didn't realize that was what you were doing."

Part of me feels guilty that I accused them of something that they weren't doing. Part of me is irritated that their behavior causes me to think the worst of them. I'm completely puzzled by how a bug would be removed from someone's head by pointing one finger. I'm embarassed that I jumped to the wrong conclusion.

I really want to blame someone for making me feel like a stink head. The teachers were sympathetic. They weren't terribly helpful, although most tried to be. Some of the kids, probably most, did their best. I'm not sure there is anyone to blame, though.

From my false alarm, however, I am going to draw this conclusion: I'm happiest when people listen to what I'm saying. If inspiring the desire to comply, even accidentally, helps my cause, I think I'll go with that activity.

First, sixth grade students.

Next, the world!

the war rages on

You must know by now that I think war is a bad thing.

I must confess to continuing to engage in the poison ivy, oak, and sumac war, however. I have no excuses for my behavior. I believe that my wholesale killing of these plants may be regarded as genocide. On my own property, I will behave as I want in regard to my plants.

The above named three must die.

On other people's property, however, I have no control.

None.

Today I went to the Cayuga Nature Center to help Dave Gell of the Black Locust Initiative run the program about water quality and stream life. Ten or twelve kids and I talked about evapotranspiration (are you impressed? big word!) and erosion and how the health of a stream can be determined by the organisms found in the water.

I was learning how to run the program from Linda Speilman, who's on the Cayuga Nature center page if you care to look around, and learning how to identify stone fly and may fly larvae.

This was all swell until the crane fly larva showed up. Ewwwwwwwwwwww. So gross.

I do not like squishy invertibrates. Slugs, for example, give me the heebie jeebies. So crane fly larva are maybe three inches long and the thickness of a pencil and slightly segmented, as if they have loose rubberbands around their bodies. So disgusting. (I'd put in a picture of one, but I don't want to look at them now. I'm getting ready to sleep.)

The also brought me a leech.

Not good for me. Too many doses of the willies in a day is bad.

But! By the end of the day I could look at them without jumping or inhaling really quickly. That was good. And I'd learned to tell the difference between stone fly and may fly larvae (may fly larvae have gills on their back segments).

But what does all that have to do with my war against poison plants? Well! The entire place was overgrown with poison ivy. Both sides of the path all the way to the stream and sprinkled about along the soil near the stream.

I have survived without incident. I do not think my students did. I like to think, though, that if they listened to me, they are now rewarded with no itchiness. And if they didn't listen, well, it's not my fault and maybe they should listen to someone like me.

As I got in my car to leave, poison ivy brought the battle home. I was parked next to a tree that was slowly dying. Growing from the trunk of that tree was...

Poison Ivy.

I have to give it credit for tenacity and subterfuge. But it didn't catch me this time. I will continue to do my best to evade its capture and to destroy its forces.

oh! the indignity!

Things come in small packages. Notice I didn't say good things...

I received the letter from Binghamton Unversity yesterday, and an emailed version today (so tacky). Here's how they signed it:

Cordially,

The Graduate School
Binghamton University

Cordial? My ass that's a cordial letter. La la la! Oh! By the way, sweetie. You won't be invited to the party!

I do love how they try to ameliorate the news:

After reviewing your file, the School of Education & Human Development has
denied your application for admission to the Master of Social Work program.
Admission to the Graduate School here is competitive, and each academic
department and school establishes its own admission requirements in addition
to the general academic standards of the institution.

So what's the deal? They make a blanket statement that has no connection to the previous one. If it said "...general academic standards of the institution. You don't happen to be what we're looking for." I could respect that. Instead
they picked some stupid sentence from the front of the application and slapped it in there. Cowards.

Yes, this is what I do when I'm annoyed with someone. I pick apart their grammar until I feel superior. But what's wrong with that? I am superior.

They wrote that they "denied my application for admission." Well, no. they denied me admission. If they'd denied my application, I wouldn't have gotten an interview. Dolts.

And what does this mean?

An official letter with the decision notification will be mailed to you
shortly. * I hope that you will be successful in finding other avenues for
pursuit of your educational goals

Yes? Send an unofficial letter? Then an official letter? Like I want to be denied twice. And the last sentence, whoooeeeeee. That's my favorite, I think. It feels like it says, "Keep looking, honey. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out."

So I'm pissed off, I think. It doesn't help that the poison sumac (It wasn't the ivy, although I found two more patches of it in the yard. Bastard poison ivy.) on my face and neck looks like I had a fight with a cat. And that it's itchy.

But! We are going to the lake today. That is cool. It's father's day, and it's thanks to Socks that I remember. And the dogs will be happy and Sprocket will run away from me and the cute boys next door will not be there which is fabulous since they have a harem of perfect looking college women. One of whom didn't even know how to tie the strings on her bikini and thus lost her bottoms.

I wanted to pull her aside and explain that it's the idea that it might come off, not the actuality. Oh well. Drunk on lite beer. Not even light. If you're going to do it, go for the gusto. Just drag around a bottle of grain alcohol and live with the certainty of much more time in the gym. And bring a dixie cup.

Am I jealous? Am I in a bad mood? Do I think that there's an entire class of people who I don't want to get to know because I might find out that I like them?

Yeah, you be the judge.

I do know, however, that anyone who signs a rejection letter with "cordially" will be forever categorized in my mind as a fool.

just kids playing pranks

BrilliantEditor sent me this article which you really must read.

Two thirteen year old girls decide to drive around a little bit, but they panic since they don't know how to drive, and they crash into an airplane causing $2 million in damage.

Does collision insurance cover that?

iraqi tabacky

Maybe I can get over my political stuffins if I make a wee joke over it. The words, "With the looming oil crisis..." have started to begin many of my sentences. If I said, "With the looming tobacco crisis..." instead, it wouldn't be so bad, would it?

If it were a war for tobacco, I could sit back and sniff importantly, "I don't smoke right now. I quit when I wanted to quit, mostly. These people have no backbone!" Who these people is unclear to me since a war for Iraqi Tabacky hasn't been shown to be in the immediate future.

Of course, continuing the idea of addiction and war, there are some who might say that we have an addiction to oil. In this case I have a difficult time sitting back and sniffing in a self-important way. I can't just stop when I want. Not if I want to go anywhere. Organic grocery store or shopping mall, I need my petroleum products to get there.

So maybe I should go to a twelve step program. I will acknowledge that the problem has control of me; I do not have control of it. I will acknowledge that I have a problem and that I cannot handle it alone. Now here's the sticky wicket: I need to have a higher power to whom I turn for help.

Sure, I could choose the Christian God I grew up with. I could choose an alternate religion and go with it. But really, what God is the God of crude oil and its products? Or would it be a patron saint. St. Christopher, perhaps? Patron saint of travelers? Or he was, anyway. But if we choose him as a patron saint aren't we just encouraging the further consumption of petroleum products?

Is there any saint who sat home a lot, possibly in the dark and cold? Using tallow candles for light, acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper, and soy-based inks? I bet Jesus would be a good poster child. Those days between Good Friday and Easter? I think he was writing on the paper, shivering under his all-natural, organic hemp robe, and squinting into the tallow driven flame.

I should ask the Queen. She would know. She's a religious studies major. She and I often don't agree on political matters. I think this is a place where we could come together. We do agree that blowing people up is generally not a good idea. So maybe she could figure out a religious figure to represent that. An obscure one so people think they're clever and superior. People are truer to their assertions if they feel smart and special about them.

I'd ask the Queen to move on, if she could stand it, into finding a saint or God for oil. If it were olive oil we could choose from any one of the Greek gods who had a healthy appetite for salad. But as it stands...the Queen needs to step in.

medical maladies

I taught a class this morning and was quite foolish and did not eat breakfast. About halfway through I explained that I hadn't eaten and needed some sugar in my bloodstream.

I came back with my peanutty delight and one of my students was talking quite a lot about me. She thinks I have diabetes. She thinks that because I drink water and I have to eat when I have to eat. I think it's normal to eat when hungry and one of the reasons I like my job is that it's flexible enough to allow me to grab some food if I'm hungry.

She asked me a series of questions that asked about symptoms of diabetes. They were appropriate questions, I suppose, but mostly it makes me wonder about why most of us feel the need to diagnose and then share the news.

I think diagnosing a problem is a normal human drive. Humans like to categorize, as far as I know. I think I read that somewhere. I think it's reasonable to categorize things. It helps to tell things apart, to determine like from unlike, safe from dangerous. It's also a good thing to share those deteminations so that not everyone has to learn first hand that something, like fire or poison ivy, can hurt you.

The place that I can't put together is why people who have been categorized feel like they need to draw others into that categorization. The woman in my class sees that I'm hungry and that I get glasses of water. She assumes not that I'm hungry and get up late and don't eat; she assumes that I am diabetic.

If I had ingrown toenails and someone who'd been standing all day said they had sore feet, should I mention that it might be ingrown toenails? If I have some incredibly rare spinal condition, would I tell anyone with scoliosis that they'll end up with a hump and scaly skin?

It's weird. People want to help each other. They try to help, too. Sometimes it works, I'm sure. Most of the time, though, they aren't right and they've created for themselves a group of people who refuse to be like them. At least for this woman, that's true. She did and didn't want me to have diabetes so badly. She did want me to have it so that I'd be like her. She didn't want me to be diabetic because she doesn't want anyone to have to be diabetic.

Perhaps the answer is simply that people want to see themselves reflected back in all kinds of ways. In me she'd see someone younger who has diabetes, who doesn't have diabetes, who is smart enough to get it checked out nice and early, who is smart enough to not worry about it yet.

At any rate, I'm not diabetic today. Maybe tomorrow. Or in the future. Or maybe the next time someone tries to get me to join their club.

comment this

I do enjoy being irreverent. It pleases me in a way that very little else does. I feel sneaky and snickery and happy. I feel that way until someone is offended and I feel really bad and start thinking that reverence is the way to go...

Thus, it is to my chagrin that I find specific posts of mine are targeted by spammers. I have one called skyhooks and stinky cabbage that gets hit a lot. And another one about Hitler is pretty popular.

I wonder what the trigger is. I would bet that Hitler isn't a common search term for finding pornography or Atkins diet information. So why would all those spam-o-rific messages be landing where they are? Hmmmm. I just don't know about that.

all grown up

BrilliantEditor, Tex, and I went to the Dryden Dairy Day on Saturday. BrilliantEditor and I watched the parade and Tex joined us for the festival afterward.

The parade was very small-townish. That's appropriate since it is a small town. BrilliantEditor could give you all kinds of Dryden small town information here. You can find almost anything about Dryden there.

There were lots of emergency vehicles. Lots. There were three kids with go cart things and they wanted to really drive them, but they were denied. You can only drive three miles an hour in a parade. So the kids would drive, start to speed up, almost run underneath the hay wagon in front of them, and then jam on the brakes. The man with them had on an ugly hat with a feather (plastic/straw cowboy variety), but although he had an ugly hat, he did care about those kids because he walked next to them telling them how to slow the heck down.

There was a float that went by that had line dancers on it. There were maybe ten people up there (five to a line) and only two looked like they really liked line dancing. One was a woman who had the hip action going on. The other was an old guy who might have been teaching the class or just joining the group so that he could pick up chicks who had the hip action going on.

The authenticity of the boots was dubious, especially the white slouchy ones with leather tasselly things. Nevertheless, we let the truck towing these dancing fools pass by without incident.

The only incident that occured was with a musical band of small children who were walking behind a horse who must have had a tummy ache. The horse demonstrated that he was ill. It's not funny really, but it got very funny when they scooted to the side of the street still trying to play their instruments and have their hand over their noses at the same time. They made funny faces, too.

I would have done the same thing, but I don't play an instrument and I'm not a small child.

I got an ice cream cone for a quarter (strawberry), voted on what kindergartener did the best job coloring (what kind of sick-o teacher forces a kid to enter a coloring contest? I voted for the most interesting interpretation of a cow.), and saw a man who weaves coasters and coverlets. He was pretty cool.

Now you know. Dryden Dairy Day. Second Saturday in June. Every year.

Be there or your bones might go soft and your teeth might revolt.

Calcium. Yeah.

shrek, too

We went out to see Shrek 2 tonight. It's quite funny, I think. There are lots of silly references to other movies, other fairy tales, the first Shrek movie. I liked it very much. It's v. fine.

so much activity

I went to the doctor today to see about fixing up my thyroid some more. It's getting closer to normal (she didn't give me numbers) but she thinks three more months before we really know what's going on.

I started thinking, "Am I going to die earlier than I would have because I'm taking medicine? Am I going to live longer? Will I live a shorter time and have my quality of life increased? Or a longer time full of general malaise?"

I know these are meaningless questions as there's nothing to compare it to anyway and what difference would it really make in my life?

I started asking those questions and shutting them off and going through all kinds of information and experiences all in my head as I sat on the exam table holding my sandals on with my curled up toes.

I want to shut off the thoughts, but there's a morbid curiosity and then there's the scolding I give myself that I shouldn't even bother to worry or think about such things.

And then I saw Dr. Phil on the cover of Good Housekeeping magazine. I don't like Dr. Phil. How great can he be if he only has a first name? He's a doctor and he doesn't use his last name? What a dope.

His headline said, "Dr. Phil knows what you want!" or something like that. I know that I want some answers to difficult questions.

I'm also up for random questions without answers:

Will I live longer if I take this medication or if I don't?
What would I do if I were Princess Fiona and was married to Shrek?
Why are there signs for handicapped stuff that have the wheelchair going in both directions?
How many times can I turn my computer on and off before I break its ability to turn off and on?
Should I worry about that?
Should I leave my computer on more often?
What would happen to my skin if I had a giant blow drier instead of a towel?
Would I get all scaly without exfoliation?
Would my skin get really dry?
Would it take me longer to dry off?

Dr. Phil doesn't know about me. He doesn't have all the answers.

He doesn't even have a last name.

Dope.

rainy days

Yesterday it was ninety degrees outside. Today it's less than seventy. What's that all about?

Hot days always make me tired. It seems like an effort to walk anywhere or to look up past your shoes since the sun is saying hello in a most insistent way.

I also sunburn a lot.

So yesterday I didn't garden, but I did run around town a lot. And it was hot.

Today it's raining. It only started raining an hour ago, but it looked like it would rain all day long. It was a day for planning and contemplation. I decided that plants I'd bought had been in pots for too long. I was determined to plan the garden so that I can plant it and it will look as fabulous as can be.

It took me all morning and some of the afternoon to plan the garden. (I'm still not happy with the daylilies. Where do I put orange and red when I always pick lovely cool blues and whites?) When I had completed my plan, I walked outside to get the box of daylily bulbs.

Upon the deck were raindrop spots. They'd just started. It does seem strange that I delayed until I wasn't willing to work outside, doesn't it? Still, I went out and set the plants where they would go, deciding if they were crowded or not or if they looked the way I'd planned.

I got rained on. And I didn't melt or die. That's a line I never wanted to cross--working in the rain. These things happen, though, often when you least expect it.

Like the way the rain comes just when it's supposed to.

everything

I'm thinking about starting a fabric store. I think putting all of my eggs in one basket would be a mistake, so I plan on putting one egg in several baskets and keeping the rest in the fridge.

I began making a list of fabrics and things that I'd like to carry in my imaginary fabric store. There's quite a lot of stuff to choose from. It's difficult to imagine satisfying many customers when inventory is limited. People complain about what JoAnn Fabrics doesn't have. It has a hell of a lot of stuff. People like to complain, I realize that, but what do I pick and how do I describe what I have?

I've started picking things out which means I've also started eliminating.

I came up with a slogan: We don't have everything, but we have everything else.

It's not one I'd use, but I think those wacky country stores with everything but the kitchen sink--they could use it.

ha!

righteous indignation?

Why am I not in graduate school?

Check out my last headline.

snort.

is this ride is not for you?

I must say that I am in shock. I continue to be in contact with graduate schools. Syracuse has said, "Nope." I can deal with that. I can make up reasons why that might be true. I can say that it was because I submitted my application at the last minute and submitted the supporting materials after that. The spots were just full when they got to me.

I can live with that and prefer not to be disabused of that notion.

Binghamton, however, says

Our concerns relate more to what appeared to be some anxiety on your part about the stresses that you (or any student) might encounter in a field placement. While we do our best to support students in field, it is sometimes difficult to predict how best to support a student given some of the unknowns that one might encounter.

While we certainly appreciate your strong interest and preference for the full-time program, enrollment in the part-time program would give you an opportunity to become more acclimated to the field of social work before being confronted with the stresses of a field placement. Should we offer you admission to the part-time program, and you decide to enroll, you would have the opportunity to shift into full-time after completing the foundation curriculum, provided space is available. These are just some considerations for you to keep in mind. If you have any additional thoughts or questions, please feel free to contact me.

I would so very much like to share my real thoughts and feelings.

I'm royally pissed.

I did tell her that I believed I was most qualified to determine what I could handle and that any anxiety I displayed was neither intended nor felt.

What I really want to ask, though I am a delicate flower, what about me suggests that I am too delicate to deal with going to school full time?

I also want to ask this: what the hell kind of shit is it that you'd give me a half-assed offer for a half-assed program based on what a half-assed student you think I am?

I'm obviously upset about this. I'm upset out of proportion, though. This is a letter from one woman representing the impression of two women who spoke with me for forty minutes (one of them was fifteen minutes late. Ha!).

So why the hell do I care so much?

BrilliantEditor and I were talking about it while I was trying to convert the visceral disgust and embarassment churning in my stomach into something more useful, like room for dessert.

He said something like What about this decision is making you feel so afraid and angry?

And BOING! It popped into my head. The adequate explanation of how I felt.

First, as I'm sure I've droned on about, I hate being underestimated. So before I do something, I'm very sure that I can be successful or that I can deal with rejection.

So this woman who wrote me the letter has underestimated me! I have no way of convincing her otherwise. I am neither successful nor rejected. And so I feel like a grown up at a really screwed up amusement park.

I imagine that I walk up to the scary roller coaster and get in line and wait in line and grow more and more confident and excited as I reach the turnstile.

Yet! When I reach the turnstile, the woman from Binghamton University is sitting there. She's next to the sign of the cute bear who's holding his hand up to the five feet tall mark. The little bear sign says that you can't go on the ride unless you're this tall.

I'm ready to waltz through that turnstile and wait to be put into one of the little cars, "provided space is available."

But Binghamton woman puts up her hand and says, "Hmm, you're certainly tall enough, but we're concerned that your pants might be loose and fall off if you lose weight."

Imagine my surprise!

"We are simply not prepared to stop the ride and haul you out when you begin waving your hands hysterically and demanding that the entire ride be stopped while we find you a tailor. It's obvious from looking at you that you and your trousers will need rescuing on a scale that we can only imagine.

"Please consider the kiddie ride next door. They have a hedgehog sign, not a bear. Even though the sign is irrelevant, you and your pants might become acclimated to rollercoasters that way."

What?!

I'm so pissed. I want a shot at the big kid coaster no matter what they think of my trousers.

ain't a that good news?!

I want some good news. I don't want the stupid kitten in a tree news or the old lady doing gymnastics news. I want some damned good news.

I want to know that the good guys exist. It would be nice to see them winning, too, but I'll settle for their existence.

I want to hear about an entire inner city school do well on exams and not have it be some freak occurance or the result of some suburban school's tutoring program.

I want to read a story about all members of all religions smile and welcome each other to come on in and have a cup of coffee and a cookie.

I want the press to say, "Hey, we don't know if the next story is entirely accurate. Let us point out the possible flaws before we go any further."

I want reporters and government officials to stop using democracy inter-changeably with capitalism. And let's see some other alternatives proposed. Why not toss in despotism or anarcho-capitalism or elective monarchy? And then democracy might really sound like good news.

I want to see casinos give away all their money and go bankrupt.

I want reporting about people who are on the street using drugs get suddenly interested in community gardens. They will also want to be used for scientific testing to see if brain tissue can be regenerated or used more efficiently.

I want a doctor to say that they won't be curing cancer soon, but that if someone is terminally ill, they'll take all the pain away and put it in a box to be buried at some later date.

And this stuff will all be on the news with no hint of past turmoil or trouble. It will be reported with happiness and joy and with encouragement to tell everybody how great things are.

Oh! Happy day!

don't rain on my parade!

The IthacaFestival parade was today. I made a flowerpot costume for Florette. I will one day get my act in gear and post it here. But not today. Today I'm tired.

Today Brilliant Editor, Spring, Sprocket, and my friend Floridianne walked in the parade. We walked the dogs and waved hello and chatted and had a nice time. Spring and Sprocket were surprisingly social. Spring only growled at one dog and at no people. Not even at a people wearing a blue headband who ran up to her with arms outstretched threatening, apparently, to grab her head between his sticky hands. She didn't let hiim pet her, but she didn't growl.

Sprocket let him pet her, but I made her do that. I think she's going to sue me for reckless endangerment. I say she can stick it in her ear since she's got teeth she can use to bit him. And his parents weren't watching either, so it would have been negligence on their part and they would have to pay for veterinary costs for the rest of the year in case she had any psychological damage.

Yeah.

A walking flowerpot, by the way, does not have any negative psychological effect on either of my dogs. The like it.

bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh

I went to visit BellyRub and Erotica this weekend. We had lots of fun. BellyRub got old. He's twenty-six now. Oooooooold! Ha! Pretty soon he'll be older than I am. Double Ha! Ha ha!

We went to a Cleveland Indians game where we swore so much we drove the people in front of us away. Actually, I have no idea why they moved. I just think we swore too much.

I took some pictures while I was there. I shall share them sometime fairly soon. I'd do it now, but BellyRub gave me his cold. I suspect it's his family of pets that gave me the cold, but I'll blame it on him. I'm sure it had nothing to do with me using his toothbrush.

(Ewwwwwww. I didn't. I didn't use his toothbrush, but I probably would have gotten his cold if I had, don't you think?)

We went to a rib cookoff and I had a pulled pork sandwich. It was mostly yummy. I went to the place that had won awards for this and that thing. But I wouldn't have given it awards. Nevertheless, it was pretty good.

BrilliantEditor and I took BellyRub to this gigantic plant nursery where we bought herbs and flowers. They had a flamingo lawn ornament that bobbed its head and lit up, too. He was classy, though, because he was made of metal, not plastic.

Much fun was had, my dears. Cleveland may not sound like much, and you might get a cold, but my brother lives there with his wife and cool friends. that makes it pretty cool.