I see him out there almost every morning. I figure it's part of his routine--he gets let out probably around 7:30, when his people are up and about, and he heads over for his morning drink of water. Just like how food always tastes better when eaten outdoors, outdoor water probably tastes better than the water he has at his own house. The grass is always greener, etc.
He's a big tabby cat that looks like an inflated version of Pyewacket. He's about twice her size, but he's the same color, with the same markings. I think it's funny how all tabby cats tend to look so much alike, and it always reminds me of the way Down's Syndrome children, in general, resemble each other more than they resemble the other members of their family.
Anyway, I ended up not opening the door because I didn't want to scare him off, and if it didn't scare him off, I didn't want Pye and Dinah coming to the door and seeing him and getting all upset, like they tend to do. Although I don't think this particular car upsets them; I haven't seen the one that does--a long-haired gray and white cat--lately.
Dinah's still acting weird to Bob about half the time. Sometimes she'll let him pet her when she's lying in a chair, and one night I brought her up and put her in his lap and she stayed, purring, but other times she'll growl at him if he gets too close, or hiss at him if she passes him in the hall.
When I had Pye at the vet on Saturday, I asked him about Dinah (when I called the other day, I had talked to his associate, but the one I saw on Saturday was our "real" vet); he basically said, "Cats are weird."
He said it might be a territorial thing, or it might be related to the fact that it's Spring, and the windows are open, and there are strange cats outside, and strange and exciting smells, and, well, cats are weird. He said if it got really bad, he could test her hormone level and maybe treat her if it's off, but he said he thought we should just wait awhile and see how it goes. Like most things, I guess.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
Some years ago, urban shaman Donna Henes conjured up a three-week ceremony called
"Dressing Our Wounds in Warm Clothes." Equal parts performance art and healing ritual,
it was staged at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center on Wards Island, a scrap of land that
also hosts a sewage disposal plant. In its ambition, the event rivaled Mother Teresa's
well-publicized toilet cleaning at a leper colony. I bring Henes's noble act of creativity
to your attention, Sagittarius, because you'd be smart to draw inspiration from it.
The astrological omens suggest it's a perfect time to salve your worst boo-boos with
artful ingenuity.
~ Free Will Astrology
That was my horoscope for last week. I liked it, particularly because I entered a knitting phase last weekend. I never know, really, what sets me off on one, but I was in the bookstore looking at magazines, and I'm always tempted by the knitting magazines, but I seldom buy them anymore since I know I'll never actually make anything in them.
But I love reading the articles about people who knit, and I picked one up ("Family Circle Easy Knitting"), and it had an interesting-looking article about Tyne Daly, so I went ahead and bought it. It was a wonderful article, well worth the price of the magazine, because Ms. Daly has the same feelings about knitting that I do, apparently. I have a pretty short attention span, so I finally learned that it doesn't make any sense for me to start a sweater or some other large project, because I'm going to lose interest pretty early on.
I really just like the whole process--picking out yarn, looking at needles and patterns, and just knitting. I don't necessarily have to produce something wonderful, although that's a bonus.
Knitting, to me, is therapeutic. The act of taking what amounts to two sticks and a piece of string and turning it into a piece of fabric or a garment is pretty amazing in and of itself, but there's something about the act of concentrating on handwork that I find soothing and rewarding. I like to do simple patterns that I can memorize and not have to agonize over; I just like to knit.
I spent an inordinate amount of time over the weekend looking for free knitting patterns online and transferring them to my handheld (copy from web page, paste into Word, save as RTF, then synchronize through the WordSmith conduit from the Mac to the Visor) and creating databases in HanDBase for yarn, needle and pattern inventories. I was tickled to find this: PDAs for Knitting, a collection of Knit List postings about how knitters use their PDAs.
"There's a rhythm to knitting that can settle the spirit and quiet you down,"
she observes. "It has a calming effect, almost like yoga. Your finger memory
is automatic, so you can let your mind wander, and at the end of the day you have
a lovely result. I can knit and watch TV, or talk to people, or just clear my mind."
~ Tyne Daly, "Life's Little Rewards" (by Glenn Plaskin, Family Circle Easy
Knitting)
On Sunday I made a little cap, and I've started a cardigan--a little one, probably for a doll or a bear. Like I said, the product isn't really the point, it's the process.
