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Thursday, December 10, 2015

"[T]he more a person deems absolute equality among all people to be a desirable condition, 

the further left he or she will be on the ideological spectrum. 

The more a person considers inequality to be unavoidable or even desirable, 

the further to the right he or she will be. 

-- Roderick Stackelberg,  Hitler's Germany, Routledge, 1999, pp. 4–6 --

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Cat Allergy

When Jay and I started dating, I had Siddy Kitty. Jay was highly allergic to cats.  The membranes in his nose swelled, the whites of his eyes turned red, and the membrane that covers the eyeball, the conjuntiva, would swell so badly it actually hung out over his lower eyelid in a blob.  All he had to do was walk into the house.  This was a bit of a problem.  I also had two dogs at the time, but they didn't bother him.

I found some kind of stuff somewhere, I forget what it was called (it was probably similar to Allerpet), a liquid that when put on the cat did something to reduce the allergens.  I scrubbed Siddy down with it about every other day at first.  I'd put some in a bowl, sop a sponge in it, then rub her all over with the sponge.  She LOVED it!  There's no way you'd ever get her into a bath (and live), but she thought being rubbed down with a sponge was wonderful.  It was like Mommy was licking her all over with a sponge tongue.

It worked beautifully.  Jay's non-reaction was immediate, and he and Siddy got to be best snuggle buddies.

Gradually I reduced the scrubbings to every three days, then every four days, then once a week, trying to find out how long the effects lasted.  Within another two months or so, I was frequently forgetting to do it, then one day I realized Siddy hadn't been doused in months, and Jay still wasn't reacting.  We stopped, and even after we got Miss Thunderfoot, a long-hair with skin problems, Jay no longer reacted.

I have no idea what happened.  His earlier reactions were so extreme, and he said he'd always been that way around cats.  Did his allergy simply go away?  Was there a psychological component to the allergy such that when he fell in love with Siddy it went away?

I'd still love to know.

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Christman Lights

They've been going up all around here since the day after Thanksgiving.  Nugget and I have wandered around in the car looking at them.  She gets so excited.  I noticed something new this year.  In previous years I had seen nets of lights that people spread over shrubs and small trees.  This year some houses look like they have nets of lights spread over the whole front of the house, hundreds of tiny green and red lights.  I wondered if you hang the netting from the eaves, or what?  Then my neighbor across the street got them.  The front of their house is narrow, and the web covered the whole front, including across the front door.  I wondered how they'd get in the house.  Then I saw someone walk up to the door, and the lights were across his back --- oh, it's a projector!

Silly old lady.  Get with the times!

That seems so easy.  If I did Christmas stuff at all, I'd definitely go that route.

There's some weird overspill from the projector across the street.  I have seven or eight tiny dots of red and green on the north end of my house, running up the garage to the house roof.  I wonder, if you point the projector up to the sky, what would it look like from a plane?

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Squirrels

I like to give peanuts to the neighborhood squirrels.  I used to stand on the porch and call them, "Squiggy!  Squiggy!", and they'd come running for the peanuts on the lawn and driveway.  Some were getting bold enough to come within a few inches of me to beg.  Then the blue jays figured out what "Squiggy" meant, and they started showing up, within seconds of my calling.  The jays would call each other, and pretty soon it was getting nasty, with jays dive bombing squirrels and squabbling over the peanuts.  So I had to stop calling.  I just threw peanuts when I saw squirrels nearby, and stopped when I heard the first jay call.

This year there's something strange about the squirrels.  There don't seem to be many big chubby mature squirrels.  They all seem to be very small and young.  Where did all the older ones go?  Hercules says a fox has been seen, but foxes would seem to have an more of an effect on the cat and rabbit population than on the squirrels.  There's one little squirrel who has a thin scrawny tail.  I worry about him.  That stick of a tail isn't going to keep him warm when it gets cold.  I try to throw peanuts to him, but he always runs away.

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Other Stuff

I have lots of opinions on lots of stuff, but I try not to write anything that will just upset me more.  Gotta wait for it to simmer down a bit more.  But there's the van, Met Life, France, politicians, aaaagggghhh!  I'm getting annoyed already.  Need more time to pass.

[Drops mike....]
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