~~ That faint blue glow ~~

Thursday, April 9, 1998

        I tried to take a nap tonight, but it was more like work. Bob went somewhere . . . oh, he went over to his parents' house. I laid down on the couch and Pyewacket laid on top of me, and I tried to go to sleep, but just as I started to drop off, the phone rang. I got up and answered it, it was Bob's brother looking for him. I told him to call his folks' house, and I laid down again. And five minutes later the phone rang again--his brother, saying that he had already left and was on his way home, and would I have him call when he got here.

        So I laid down again, and then Bob came home. He had stopped at the store on the way and bought me a red carnation, which Pye wouldn't leave alone. Consequently, she wouldn't leave me alone, either. She wanted to alternately either play with or eat the flower. Bob had gone upstairs to write a check which he had to then take over to his parents' house again. He took Pye with him this time, but as he went out to my car (since it was the one in the garage), he said that there was stuff in the front seat. I hadn't brought my purse and bag inside, and the mail was still there, too. I had brought in a couple of bags of groceries and had forgotten to get the rest of the stuff.

        So I went out to the garage and brought in my junk, and gave up on the nap. That was about 45 minutes ago. I've been working on an online resume at Careerpath.com for the last half hour, and it was only as I got to the last screen that I saw that, although I actually linked to the site from the Kansas City Star job search site, the Careerpath service doesn't search the Star. So it was pretty much a waste of time, except for the fact that anything I do toward finding a more rewarding job isn't time wasted.

        Not much else happened tonight. Pye tried to climb my legs, and since I was wearing shorts, I now have a set of three parallel scratches down both legs. They're fading now. I rubbed them with mint body lotion and except for the beginning part where she hit me, running (the only place that bled), they're mostly gone, except in certain light. She's really started biting and scratching, hard, more than she ever has before. It's scary to wake up in the middle of the night because she's attacking your toes. She mostly attacks Bob; he seems to be more fun to fight with, I guess. I don't like it, so I won't do it. I'll smack her nose and put her down on the floor if she gets too feisty, but Bob will fight with her a little bit. He'll roll around with her, where I won't. I suppose she intimidates me a little.

        I know that's stupid, but I don't want to hurt her, and I could. It's sort of hard to explain. I don't want her to get too carried away because I don't want to be put in a position where I might have to smack her or throw her down. So as soon as she starts biting, I just pick her up and set her down on the floor. We used to call it "kitty overload" with Doña--if you played with her and petted her for a long time, she'd reach a point where the sensory input was just too much and she snapped, biting and scratching. It took awhile to get to that point, though. Pyewacket's overload point is apparently much lower.

        I stopped at the post office tonight to check my box and to buy stamps. The box was empty except for a Paper Direct catalog, but I was pleasantly surprised to find angel stamps in the vending machine. I had to buy $10.00 worth to get them, or rather, $9.60, but it was worth it. It's sort of silly, I guess, to buy special stamps when you're just going to mail them away on bills, but they cost the same as the boring, regular ones, so it's a pleasure that doesn't cost anything.

        I always try to find ways to introduce pleasure into the little daily chores. Buying commemorative stamps instead of the plain ones is one way to do that. Having my orange juice in a special, beautiful glass is another. Colored diskettes instead of black ones--they cost the same, but they're more fun to use. A blue or pink bulb in the bathroom nightlight instead of a white one. If you pay attention, you can find all kinds of things that can make you happy just to look at them, but that don't add significant cost or inconvenience. I've been using a blue bulb in the nightlight in our bathroom for a couple of years, but it still gives me pleasure to wake up in the night and see that faint blue glow coming through the bathroom door.

        Small, simple pleasures.