Echoes in a Hollow Space

30 Oct
Get out your hankies. The 20 year old toddler:  http://yhoo.it/16mrLa8 

31 Oct
SHAME: We got home from the doctor late and I’m so exhausted I’m sitting in the house with the lights out hiding from the trick or treating kids. I usually love having them but it’s been a very stressful few weeks.

1 Nov
The Sears robot is still calling to say I need to reschedule the repair appointment for the dishwasher. I’ve called the Repair Desk several times. After complaining again to them that I don’t need repair I got yet another call from the repair scheduling robot and a tweet from SearsCares. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that SearsCares breaks down to Sear Scares. It’s been my experience with them lately.

2 Nov
Compassion fatigue.

3 Nov
The Amazon Prime goodie bag went into the dumpster along with a box of other clutter. The need to purge the Room of Doom is strong.

3 Nov
Having posted about my virtuous purging of junk I then opened a box of crap I ordered from American Science & Surplus:  http://www.sciplus.com/   They’re sort of a depository for unwanted but interesting junk. Kind of like my house. Left hand, right hand.

6 Nov
Color outside the lines, but read between them.

6 Nov
I shall rename myself The Great Phlegmingo. I’d really like to stop coughing now, weeks after getting the cold.

11 Nov
Another epic starring Bird, this time whistling Blue Danube and imitating my mother and I coughing:  http://bit.ly/1buZWwd 

11 Nov
Every once in awhile, after not reading one of your novels for a long time, you surprise yourself with how much you like it. Mostly it’s cringing, though.

16 Nov
Why do people adopt children only to abuse them or “give them back” when things get challenging? It sickens me.

17 Nov
The only thing worse than watching jury orientation online is watching it at the court house.

17 Nov
Sears now claims they never got the plumbing invoices I sent October 29. I think sarcasm is in order, don’t you?

18 Nov
I postponed jury duty because my legs are not up to the hilly walking conditions in downtown L.A.

18 Nov
In other science news: You are what you eat may not be just another outmoded hippy slogan: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/11/18/244526773/gut-bacteria-might-guide-the-workings-of-our-minds …

19 Nov
You know what I don’t need? Someone who doesn’t know a thing about the day to day of my life giving me advice about what I “should” do.

19 Nov
I stayed home from work today because my knee was in such bad shape I needed to sit with ice on it for as many hours as I could stand. It’s somewhat better.

20 Nov
Some days Mom is victorious over the microwave. Other days it is beyond her and I get these phone calls asking me to diagnose over the phone. On those days, I wish to be shot in the head. But not really, Universe! I’ve got too much to do.

20 Nov
I just bought a mystery solely because the detective is named Pamela Thompson.

21 Nov
Well, I’ve had my Christmas miracle. My mother apologized to me.

21 Nov
The only thing certain in this world are death, taxes, and Kardashians.

22 Nov
Dear PJ: you cannot hide the similes by using “as if” instead of “like.” We can still see them.

23 Nov
Apparently I needed to be punished more. My knee was just starting to get better and I fell at Ralphs and wrenched it worse.

26 Nov
Mom went back in the hospital this morning. She either has an infection or a persistent virus. Either way she’s spending the night for tests and evaluation. Thanksgiving seems cursed as something happens every year. But she seemed better tonight.  I hope that direction continues. (She came home November 27 and has been strong and doing well since.)

28 Nov
Hope y’all had a great Thanksgiving. Ours was great. Carl cooked the entire meal and brought it over. Delish–and a wonderful surprise. I have the best friends in the world.

29 Nov
Mom remembers her dad going for supplies by horse and buckboard wagon to Watson UT when she was a kid. It’s now a ghost town.

30 Nov
My fantasy of buying a small smart TV lasted all of 24 hours before I got real. Too much other important stuff to spend the money on and we don’t need fripperies. Got caught up in Black Friday madness without even shopping. But sometimes being a responsible grown up sucks.

2 Dec
The guy in the Pinocchio suit stares into the abyss of his existence and despairs. Disneyland, 1961: pic.twitter.com/yPVGRvSkH0

2 Dec
This article encapsulates the caregiver situation quite well: http://bit.ly/1avcAck

The loneliness of the long distance carer. May I just add, **** you Amy F. Grant and Katie F. Couric, and anyone else who talks about the “privilege” without understanding the facts of working class people having to deal with this.

4 Dec
RIP Willis Ware, brilliant engineer and lovely, lovely man.

5 Dec
The resolution to a plot point that has been hanging unsolved for years finally came to me in the shower this morning. Unfortunately, I was in the shower, couldn’t write it down, and I was so busy after the shower I forgot, and now I can’t remember what it was or even which novel.

5 Dec
Adorably awesome! Lea Salonga and Darren Criss sang A Whole New World together at a bar: http://bit.ly/1kfEmiB

6 Dec
RIP Irreplaceable Nelson Mandela.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/nelson-mandela-becomes-first-politician-to-be-miss,34755/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=Default:1:Default …

6 Dec
I put on an episode of Finding Bigfoot last night. Mom fell asleep just after it started and woke just as it finished.

Mom: What happened?
Me: They didn’t find him.
Mom: Oh, okay then.

8 Dec
I keep buying books I haven’t got time to read.

8 Dec
And after two years of living as if this is a temporary situation it’s finally setting in that this is probably a long haul. I’m okay with that, but it’s a necessary shift in perspective that may allow me to handle things better.

8 Dec
“It’s not the Calvary coming to save us, ” said the sportscaster. Which is a whole different save than Kobe returning to the Lakers.

8 Dec
I read so slowly these days that I can go from comfort read to comfort read. No more waiting for release days. *sigh*

9 Dec
People and ghosts in rooms talking. *sigh*

11 Dec
Hurray for heated mattress pads!! My poor mom has been freezing, but she’s snug now.

11 Dec
Is the big reveal ever worth playing the reader? Does that answer ever have a yes? Why is there air?

12 Dec
Baby Pygmy Marmosets pic.twitter.com/eODml0ov3H

And now for something completely different… The Marmoset Song: http://youtu.be/4oiLfTnrC40 

12 Dec
When Mom gets really down she threatens to stop dialysis and I have to josh her out of it. Today would be one of those days.

13 Dec
I love it when people driving Smart cars make a really big dick traffic maneuvers. I originally said “really idiotic traffic maneuvers” but VRS decided to go with big dick and I left it that way.

13 Dec
Dear Sir: Most sentences should not be a paragraph long. Less is more. A tortured use of punctuation does not remedy this problem.

15 Dec
RIP to the great Peter O’ Toole.

16 Dec
Sears finally kept their promise. They’ve sent me a check to cover my plumbing costs for the Abominable Dishwasher Incident. Thanks, Sears.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

16 May
Man, are there a lot of people who are terrified of mature women. If they can’t be sexualized in a cliché way they must be mocked & crushed.

 Mature women: http://bit.ly/10BoP22 

16 May
And in other news, Jon Hamm’s camo wad still has the most clicks on my Bitmarks. Although “Kindness” by Naomi Shahib Nye is a close second.

Camo Wad is the name of my next band. That or Ironic Sexualization.

20 May
Ricky Gervais says, “Atheism is a belief system, like ‘OFF’ is a TV Channel.” That’s because he confuses his belief system with fact. He can’t disprove God any more than believers can prove God. When it gets to the point of foaming at the mouth, as it does with Mr. G, then we’re dealing with emotion, not rationality. Emotion is the core of a belief system.

20 May
I try to pretend things aren’t hard on me in order to save Mom from feeling bad, but some days, I’m so tired and it’s so hard the mask slips. And I always feel so much worse when she gets a glimpse and feels bad. Guilt is my constant companion. Not a boon companion, either. Not trying for sainthood, just trying to be humane as much as possible. It’s really hard.

22 May
My friend, M., wonders if insurance companies have special classes for their workers on making well-crafted “mistakes” that delay payouts. I certainly believe JOHN HANCOCK LIFE INSURANCE OF THE BUNGLING IDJITS do. I am informed that this scenario was a plot element in The Rainmaker by John Grisham. Which only tells me there are many people who have had my experiences with insurance companies, alas.

26 May
Life is good. Bird is sitting on my shoulder and hasn’t pooped yet. This will probably change soon.

26 May
“We do not decide to believe or actively change our minds.” —Dennis Gaffin, Running With the Fairies

28 May
Our neighbors in the back have chickens. I find their “bwoks” and “cluck-cluck” oddly soothing. Of course, there’s no rooster.

29 May
Pope Francis: Even atheists can go to Heaven if they do good.

30 May
Just found in Australia—giant, florescent pink slugs: http://yhoo.it/10KWkjS   If you wrote this in a fantasy, people would laugh at you.

31 May
Greenies Pill Pockets saved my life. I have to give Min pills twice a day but she thinks it’s a treat!

31 May
Celebrity gossip makes me so damned weary. It’s all smoke and mirrors.

31 May
In case you missed this Awesome Thing from CC Finlay: “My son sent me this comic about old super-heroes. Read it all the way to the end.” http://imgur.com/gallery/h2my0 

2 Jun
I had the weirdest dream about the Magic Castle last night. Instead of being in a large Victorian Mansion it had been Disneyfied into a theme park, so instead of being able to enjoy an intimate exposure to magic and magicians, and those lovely bars, you were lost in cavernous spaces and large groups of people. I got separated from the people I was with and couldn’t contact them because the Magic Castle staff wouldn’t allow cell phones. I spent all my time searching for my companions and feeling left out instead of enjoying the show.

3 Jun
I wish Google Images had a -no -crappy -pastel -art setting.

3 Jun
Feeling extra glad this week that I didn’t get involved with Game of Thrones.

4 Jun
Another intense dream last night, a thriller: chases, betrayals, assassinations. The details are fuzzy or I might try to write it. Eh. Who am I kidding? Although at least two of my seven completed novels started their lives as dreams. Back when I was still a real writer.

4 Jun
Is it just me or does the Miami Heat’s logo look like a flaming butternut squash?

4 Jun
Reviewing a very old ms. I realized I’d used my least favorite cliché line in all of writerdom: a character not realizing they’d been holding their breath. Curse those double realizations!

5 Jun
Be careful who you diss because you might end up working for them. God help me. I don’t need this crap on top of everything else.

5 Jun
Sequestration sucks, and nobody’s doing anything about it. Everyone says, “It doesn’t affect me. Why should I care?” You know what? It will roll around to you eventually. We need to insist our Congresspersons get off their butts and do something.

5 Jun
I got this from someone on Twitter but can’t remember who. You literally are the stories you tell: http://nyti.ms/18XF82k 

6 Jun
Never say never. Unless, of course, it’s to say “Never say never.”

7 Jun
In the waiting room while Mom has a routine outpatient procedure. Routine, nothing to worry about, but I still do. She came through just fine. We were home by one.

7 Jun
I picked the right day not to go to work. In Santa Monica. SM College is an alma mater of mine.

11 Jun
Weird: is that memory fragment something I saw on TV or something I dreamed?

19 Jun
Things you have to be really old to remember:

“Calgon, take me away.”
Bubble Up
One Step Beyond
Carbon paper and mimeograph machines

21 Jun
I once circled a scene for three months. I couldn’t figure out why I was stuck until I admitted I didn’t want to do what had to be done: break my protagonist’s heart. Once I admitted that to myself, it came unstuck. Still not fun to write, but at least the story progressed forward. It doesn’t take me nearly as long as three months anymore. I assume. Once I write again.

21 Jun
C: Why do people act so damned weird?

Me: Because they lose track of the fact that life is short and our time here is very limited.

21 Jun
I’ve been researching retirement options that last few weeks. They are: slim, none, and hahahaha.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

These guys have been at the bird feeder all week.

They have one of the strangest calls I’ve ever heard: like a baby dragon. Or a hawk on acid.

It’s quite unnerved the wild finches, sparrows, et al. All the little birds have kept away from the feeders since they’ve been around. I have to think it’s that call that’s frightening them—too much like the hawk, I suspect. But no worries because these blackbirds are seed eaters.

They come up from the marshland less than a half-mile from our house, but I’ve never seen them here before. Quite a wonderful surprise to look out the window and see those yellow heads.

The beautiful singer from last year has returned, too.

The peach tree is absolutely laden with fruit, fecund branches hanging so heavy I’ve had to prop them up with a ladder. We’ll be having peach cobbler very soon now. The entire neighborhood is tingling with anticipation.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

So I fought my way home last night in beach traffic from Santa Monica to Westchester. Traffic’s been ugly lately and there just isn’t any good way to pass between these two areas. I was so looking forward to getting in my jammies and finishing the book I was reading. But no. Mom had another bird crisis.

Gotten herself worked up again, too. “I hate to do this to you but she’s acting sick again and I called that bird place in Santa Monica and said we’d bring her in as soon as we could.”

“She’s probably going to lay another egg.”

“When I described to that bird place how she was acting, they said we better bring her in to make sure she’s not egg bound.”

Egg bound. Wherein a bird’s got an egg in the shoot that won’t come out. They can die from it. What could I do? I changed out of my work clothes and got back on the road, back to Santa Monica. The bird, I should note, was hopping around and acting perky by this time, but far be it from me to point that out.

Yes, she had an egg in there, but didn’t appear to be egg bound. And no, it isn’t unnatural for her to just start laying eggs now after so many years. I knew from experience that was so, but the nice vet lady reinforced it. And yes, it was probably the calcium supplements Mom had been giving her which helped her produce eggs. Sometimes they go years and years, then start laying; sometimes they go years and years and never lay. I wish Baby had been in that latter category, but alas. The nice vet lady said that if she didn’t lay an egg in the next 24-48 hours, they’d induce, and maybe later look at giving her something to inhibit egg production. She can’t do without the calcium. She had a severe deficiency last winter and stopped being able to fly. But that was another bird crisis some months ago. Returning to the present bird crisis…

Tips for natural inhibition of egg-laying: (1) Baby is to be locked into her cage. Apparently, any stimulation such as flying around the house, sitting on Mom’s shoulder and watching TV, throwing pencils on the floor and ripping paper up is right out for the next two weeks. That kind of stimulation (since she’s bonded with Mom) can bring on the egg-laying. (2) Mom must cover her cage earlier in the evening than she has been (moving from 7 p.m. to 4-5 p.m.) and leave her covered later in the morning. Apparently, the more hours of light, the more it stimulates egg production. (3) If she lays another egg, leave it in her cage. Having an egg to fuss over can also inhibit egg production.

Fortunately for at least part of this scenario, when Mom uncovered Baby this morning, she had already laid her egg. It currently resides in her cage to be fussed over.

And I sincerely hope this is the end of bird crises for the moment. Or at least, the next time Baby acts like this Mom will recognize that it’s just another egg in the oven.

There isn't much to see here. I was after the sounds, and the soft bobbing of the peach tree's leaves in the wind. This beautiful singer must have serenaded the neighborhood for twenty minutes. Sure, there are city sounds, too, but they can't drown him out for long.

A starling in a newspaper tent who refuses to whistle on command no matter how some dweeb tries to egg him on.

A cinematographer the Dweeb is not.





There's a tiny bit of him whistling near the beginning. You can tell it's him and not the Dweeb because his throat moves. The plate sitting on the TV tray are his "snacks." He prefers to be hand fed. You really don't want to know what's in the little cup. He eats those himself. Starlings are predominantly protein eaters, I'll just leave it at that.

❶ Min has learned to open the door to our suite of rooms. It's one of those bi-fold type doors, so she's learned that if she stands up at the fold and leans on it, it pops outward just enough so she can squeeze her head through the right side, and when she does that—hey, presto!—it opens even further.

The good news is, she doesn't attempt this during the day when the bird is out of the cage and flying about the house, nor at night when I'm in there with her. She apparently has no desire to go walkabout. She only attempts it in the evening when I'm in the front room eating with the roommate or when we're standing in the kitchen doing the dishes and chatting. She can hear our voices and doesn't want me paying attention to the roommate. Evenings are her time and I'm supposed to be in there with her!

She used to just meow pitifully at the door, but now she's decided to get proactive. The roommate looked up the other evening and said, "Did I just see Min's tail walking by? I must be hallucinating." But when we got up from dinner, she popped out from under the coffee table, meowing, "Ha, ha! I fooled you guys!" She was very smug about it all.

( Pictures )

❷ Random quote of the day:

"Did it ever occur to you that making a speech on economics is just like pissing down your leg? It feels hot to you, but not to anybody else?"

—Lyndon Johnson, as relayed by John Kenneth Galbraith


The trick here? I sent this out to my quoteaphile group here at work minutes before a company-wide announcement email for a seminar on economics. Much amusement ensued on the quote list.

"See, he's saying 'hello,' " says the roommate.
"He is not. He's barking like that little yappy dog next door," says I.
"He's not! Listen. He's saying, 'her-ro.' "
"No, 'hrwow wow!' "

I suppose the wonder is not that the bird speaks plainly, but that he speaks at all.

As I've mentioned before, the roommate has a pet starling, Baby. They're part of the mynah family so you can teach them to talk. They're quite lively, intelligent birds (although they can get aggressive and mean sometimes), and good fun, but they are not an easy pet to maintain. I can't say I recommend people adopting them. They're wild birds and should stay in the wild, mostly, except that this one fell out of his nest when he was tiny and had to be hand raised. Being an experienced bird rescuer, if she'd known where the nest was, the roommate would have tried to put the little guy back with his mom because once a starling has imprinted on humans, they aren't very good at socializing with other starlings and can't really be turned loose. (Well, they can, but they keep coming back to the humans.)

The other reason I don't recommend starlings as pets is dietary. They're protein eaters--that's an essential element of their diet because can't really digest seeds and will die without it. They also eat fruits and vegetables so you have to make sure they get a good, rounded diet. Every morning the roommate has to concoct this elaborate mash of peanut butter, apple sauce, veggies, and I don't know what all else, for the bird. And she has to go down to Petco or aquarium stores all the time to buy...mealy worms.

The roommate got into the habit of saying to Baby, "Would you like some fresh bugs? How about some fresh bugs? Fresh bugs, Baby?" and etc. It wasn't long before he associated his favorite treat with the term "fresh bugs." So he started saying, "Fresh bugs! Fresh bugs!" when he wanted to be fed. Over time, this has mutated into several forms. Sometimes it's just "Fresh! Fresh!" Other times, it's "Fresh boogs!" or "Fresh buggies!" My favorite, though, is "Fresh boogie!" which lately has been a favorite of Baby's, too. "Fresh boogie! Fresh boogie! Fresh boogie!" said with wild enthusiasm.

Makes me wanna dance.

In other pet news: Min had her first vet's appointment yesterday. It was a general exam to see how her health was. She's apparently in the pink, although I've done a bang up job of overfeeding her. My tiny little cat weighs in a 9.13 pounds. ::chagrin:: I guess I'll be cutting back on the chow a bit.

Yesterday produced some trauma and some surprises. The surprise is that she's not an adolescent as I thought (I estimated a year old), but closer to five years old! She's a tiny girl and fooled even the nurses. The doctor examined her teeth and said between four and five, but closer to five. They shaved her belly to check for a spaying scar (an indignity that added to the trauma) and found one, albeit in a non-traditional place. "She's likely spayed," he said, "but since she's strictly a house cat it's not as big a deal. In March you'll know for sure. That's when they usually come in season." :-(

He also did the vaccines, and deworming. Poor baby didn't feel so good yesterday and I felt terribly guilty (not to mention considerably poorer). But she seems to be all better today. Except for the shaved belly. She was so mad at me after the vet finished with her that when I stuck my fingers through the bars of the cat carrier for scritches, she turned her head away. (Fortunately, that lasted all of ten minutes.) She's really the sweetest little poobie in the world.

Dr. Bone is a bit of a sour puss, but I think he's a good vet. That's what matters in the long run.