Early end of summer night. Crickets in abundance, all singing hymn #67, if you count and add 40.
By the way, for all those “celsius is so much more logical” people, here’s the formula: “To convert cricket chirps to degrees Celsius, count the number of chirps in 25 seconds, divide by 3, then add 4 to get the temperature.” Or just look at the thermometer. Or your watch. Or your phone. Or don’t look at anything at all. Cue the Chicago song: does anyone really know what temp it is? Does anyone really care? (ABOUT TEMP)
I think I’ve mentioned before how stupid that song is - you ask someone if he knows the time, and he says does anyone, really? Who cares? We all have TIME ENOUGH TO DIE
Okay thanks for giving me a rejected Bond movie title but you have a watch on your hand, if you wouldn’t mind
Birch is sitting on the lawn, stoned; we gave him some tranks to facilitate the evening soak of the bad paw. It's a new therapy to help the mystery of the hobbled gait.
Let us turn back the clock to 1 PM this afternoon, and what I apparently banged out in a done-with-it mood:
EARLIER
I had enough. I’d had it up to here (indicates a space above my head, which, given my height, is about where most people are starting to feel as if they might have enough) with everything, specific and non. Birch’s lameness was weighing on me; he had not seemed himself at all in the morning, sluggish, leaving half his food for later, not wanting to jump up on the bed. I knew we had a vet appointment in the afternoon and I was catastrophizing everything that could lead to, and how I could bear it, but it would just ruin my wife. I mean it would ruin me too, but you have to bear these things and go on, and just store it away in the room of black days. The office was, of course, empty, save a few. I did not want to go to the gym. It seemed a dull routine, and indeed it has become just that, a means of staving off decrepitude and maintaining the current state rather than the concerted project of improvement it was in 2023.
So I left. Came home. Dog’s okay; bounded downstairs to meet me and get his treat. Sitting outside now in a fuming mood. Why? Why fuming?
Because I am absolutely sick to death of everything. There. Got that off my chest. Now to phone the vet and see if if we can get in early.
BACK TO PRESENT We could not. So I worked while the rain pounded, took a nap, had a mad dream about going to the vet, then went to the vet. Good ol’ Doc Kathleen, was happy to see Birch, and sad to hear I had retired my column, of which she was a great fan, along with her husband.
“I didn’t retire,” I smiled. “They killed it. But we have a grey duck mascot now.”
She was dismayed and said she would write a letter. She dismissed the previous diagnosis of tick-induced lameness, since the antibiotics did nothing, and he had no other symptoms. “Is he anorexic?” She asked, and I just gestured at his well-fed self. “Lethargic?” No. So she manipulated the leg, and got a sharp snapping reaction upon pressing one pad. Could be a burr, a sliver, or a fractured toe. To rule out the last one, X-rays at ruinous cost. This mean taking him to THE BACK, which for dogs who know this place is Room 101. He dug in and had to be dragged.
Waiting now on the X-ray results. In the meantime she suggested we soak his foot in Epsom Salts. I have a bag of the stuff left over from my 2020 bout as El Sortoe, a gruesome interval where I had to wear a restraining boot IN THE WINTER, hobbling on the ice, waiting to fall and crack my butt bone. Gah, what a year.
Anyway. My general mood of energetic loathing of all and sundry moderated, a bit, but I’m still left with going back to the office tomorrow with the sense that something was well and truly severed today. And there wasn't any particular reason.
The Fair began on Thursday. I am not going to the Fair. Part of me is a bit glad I don’t have to, because the whole process of driving and parking and queuing and bussing and doing it all in reverse for four or five days was a pain. But I miss the stage. I miss being someone they wanted to do the stage.
I was at a public school library. The librarian asked me what purpose I had here, and I held up some envelopes and said “shredding,” because there was a wall-mounted shredder in the bathroom. I noticed that one of the letters was from my dad; it had his handwriting. I’d grabbed these at random from my desk, but it seemed as if it was alright to shred this one. She showed me where the slot was, and I began to shred the envelopes. One of them, alas, came out of the shredder in the form of bright patterned checks, such as you’d see advertised in the Valu-Pack mailings.
Just as this happened two toughs entered, saw the checks, presumed there was money involved, and moved my way. The smaller of the two backed me again the wall by putting his hand on my throat and making sarcastic remarks; I soon had enough of this, and peeled his hand off my throat while telling him he was a big stupid cliche, acting like this. The other one, taller, muffled a laugh. I followed them out of the bathroom and out of the library, berating them for their poor choices in life and limited options. When we came to a blue and yellow squashed sofa on the street, I said that this was going to be you, dragged around by people who really don’t like it, used until useless, and then discarded. By now they’d had enough of me and left.
And now, a related feature that will provide some Friday amusements:
I do like seeing the AI conjurings of 1974 office tech.
The panelling is oddly spaced . . . but maybe it was like that.
Gal can't catch a break. Of all the people who lives in your building.
And that's it for Fridays! Ha ha kidding, of course it's not.
Remember,
we're working up from the bottom.
This style of vocals, I think, is . . . an acquired taste.
My reaction to this style is uncharitable.
Now we're done. Substack up at 10 AM for those who subscribe; some Lucre, which is one of my forgotten favorites. Have a great weekend! Come Monday we have another go at it.
