1465 More Yesterday

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

I forgot two things that happened yesterday.

When I was crossing the bridge over the Hudson, from Dutchess (yeah, that's spelled right) into Ulster county, at a hair after 1 pm, two police cars came tearing across the bridge, lights flashing, sirens on, high speed, headed for Dutchess. A little further on, there were two more.

Four police cars screaming east across a long bridge into the next county.

Now if police are coming in mass from a county across the river, how many police on the east side of the river responded? Seems like something big and unplanned went down. I'm intensely curious. I may never find out. The Poughkeepsie paper pretty much ignores the rural northern part of the county, and the Kingston paper - well, it's across the river, we don't exist.

When I passed Piper's office going home after the museum at 6:30 pm, Piper's car was there (he usually leaves about 4:30). He always knows everything that's going on, so I parked in a lot up the street, but when I walked back, his car was already gone.

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The membership office at the museum is on the second floor in the back, on the Rondout Creek, overlooking the marina. The windows and back door (in my office) were open yesterday because of the heat.

The Sloop Clearwater was moored against the dock right outside (man, the mast on that thing is TALL!! The sails are HUGE!! How does the ship stay upright?) Anyway, they were varnishing the decks, and the fumes were coming right into my office, and I got sooooo high.
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1464 Back to the Museum

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

First, a kitty update. Jasper has doubled in size in the five weeks I've had him! He couldn't possibly be as old as everyone thought he was. He wants to eat constantly. He still doesn't meow. He "eee"s and trills. (Say "purrrr" while vibrating the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth, and that's a close approximation of the trill.)

Miss Thunderfoot is still in a snarling growling chasing slapping snit. She shows no signs of accepting Jasper's presence.

I went to the museum today. I haven't handed off the membership data base to the new staff guy yet. He's anxious to pick it up, but I want to write a cookbook for him, so today while processing checks and stuffing envelopes, I wrote down every detail of every step, and typed it up this evening.

Daughter and Hercules closed on their new house today. Saturday is moving day (they hired professional movers) so I'm going down to visit Thursday and Friday to help as I can. I'll spend Thursday night with my other friend.
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1463 Vengeance

Monday, September 3, 2007

Picked up along the way somewhere: "While 82 percent of women say they have 'sought revenge' against a previous significant other, only 19 percent of men responding said they've been the victim of acts of vengeance from a previous significant other."

There a very large disparity in those numbers. The 82 seems too high, and the 19 seems too low.

On the 82% of women, one possibility is that seeking revenge is not the same as inflicting revenge. I have at least two exes upon whom I would have liked to have poured wrath. One of them would have been so easy - a short call to the IRS, and his ass would have been grass. I toyed with the idea for a long time. I got a lot of satisfaction from thinking about it. But I didn't do it. I also got a lot of satisfaction from thinking that I'm a better person than he was. So am I part of that 82% or not?

On the 19% of men, that seems low because almost every divorced man I know (and almost every man I know now is divorced - at least once) feel that the ex-wife got vicious and vengeful. Outside divorce, on the other hand, it's possible that the women were very sneaky, and the men didn't realize the source of bad things that subsequently happened to them. Like if my ex had been audited, he'd have never known it was I who reported him.

The other possibility is that it's the 19% of men who are deserving of revenge from the 82% of women!

I have a friend who has had some scary problems with women. He's been seriously stalked by several, and suffered some frightening acts of revenge. I have to wonder why he seems to be a lightning rod for female anger.

Does he lead women on, play them, make them think there's more to the relationship than there is? Does he lie to them? (That will guarantee anger!) Does he lead them into thinking about and planning for a wonderful future together, and then they find out it was all fantasy? Or is he simply drawn to the crazies?

Anyway, he's one of the 19%, and he himself alone accounts for several of the 82%.

When women act unreasonably time after time, there's got to be a reason. I wonder if he takes any responsibility for it.

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I switched from the (groundwater-based heat pump) A/C to (oil furnace) heat last night. All summer long water from the well has been running through the A/C, and now that's cut off. The only time the well pump runs now is when I turn a faucet on.

Since a few hours after I turned the A/C off, the water has been full of silt. It's so muddy I can't see through 2" of water in a glass. I let the kitchen sink faucet run for a while last night and it cleared up after a while, but the mud is back in full force today. You won't believe what it does to the toilets! I bought some bottled water to drink while I wait for the silt to settle down, but I'm desperate to do some laundry. I have enough clothes to go five weeks between laundry in a pinch, but I'm pushing six now, and I don't have any clean sheets left, and I'm down to holey stretched-out underwear.

(Yeah, I know. Extreme. I hate doing laundry. It should be easy because my laundry room is next to the kitchen, not in the basement, but I hate it anyway. I've been known to buy more underwear so I could put off laundry. When I do get around to it, I dedicate a day and do 8 or 10 loads. (I get away with so few loads because I have an oversized washer.))

I don't understand why the silt appears AFTER the A/C is turned off. Seems like it should be muddy when the water is being roiled.
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1462 Tired, or something....

Sunday, September 2, 2007

I'm tired. My legs feel heavy. Roman told me Friday that my bounce had been gone for a few days. He said "You're not smiling. Well, you're smiling, but not big smiles, not like usual."

Yeah. I don't know what's wrong. Maybe it's that the summer is leaving, and I hadn't used it up yet. Maybe it's that two of my friends are sad and one is stressed, and there's nothing I can do, and it's bringing me down. I don't know.

I feel like I want to curl up in someone's arms and suck my thumb for a while.
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The past week was a bit busy. I had lunch with friends three days, dinner once, took a friend out for lunch for his 60th birthday (another of those three-hour lunches), and spent a full day (16 hours) and one evening helping a friend move boxes and files, and a huge file cabinet, from Long Island to Poughkeepsie.

There was other stuff in there, but durn if I can remember what.

I've been exercising my arms. I'd lost a lot of weight, and I hadn't realized I'd lost muscle, too. (From lifting and exercising Jay that last year, I had a lot of muscle.) So with age and mass loss, my skin doesn't fit any more. After 50, it doesn't tighten up very well on its own. I had big swinging sacks under my upper arms, and my shoulders were getting very small.

I've been doing simple stuff, like

• hoist a bottle of green tea up and down behind the neck,
• shoulder rolls with wrist weights,
• the kind of half-pushup where you lean at an extreme angle against a countertop and push back and forth,
• stand with your back to the counter, hands behind, and lift and drop your body,
• stand in a doorway and push against the frame in various ways,
• raise your tail off the chair by lifting on the arms of the chair.

It's starting to show results. I'm slowly filling my skin.
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