Hobbes Lives!

It’s against my long-standing blog policy to correctly name anyone in my house who’s not dead. But the orange cat isn’t in my house and I want you to get the graffiti right.

So, yes, big news. The orange cat is not dead! That motherfucker went to the vet and got blood drawn like a champ and his numbers are, in the vet’s words, “incredible.” No sign of any kidney problems, which is apparently remarkable in a cat his age. The vet was blown away that he’s never had any medical problems in his whole long life. And, indeed, this is the first time the Butcher and I could recall ever taking him to the vet for anything other than maintenance crap.

So, if it’s not physical… well, she’s not sure it’s not physical. She’s testing his blood for thyroid problems and she does think his arthritis probably sucks. But that can all be fixed with medication. Which, get this, you can just rub on the inside of his ear. No trying to shove fucking pills down his throat.

But she thinks he may be getting a little senile, he may just not be adjusting to not having the Butcher around, since he was primarily bonded to the Butcher, and being old and slow, he may be feeling overwhelmed by the other animals, especially the dog.

If only there were a pet-free house where his favorite person lives…

Oh, wait.

So, the orange cat lives at the Butcher’s house now. And we’re going to see how that goes. But judging by all the adorable Instagram photos, I think it’s going to be good for him.

I can’t tell you how relieved I am that he’s alive and that we could make an easy switch in his life that makes him happy.

Moving Through Molasses

This week has just been slow. And very busy. And a lot. I have gotten a lot accomplished at work, including the hard thing I was worried about. But my mind has been on grief. I feel forgetful and scatterbrained. And slow. I’m still working on this afghan. It’s just taking me a long time to get through the join. And I don’t feel like I’m working on it less than usual. I feel like I’m just physically slower than I normally am.

I haven’t gotten any work done on the bombing manuscript this week. I’m just not in the headspace for it.

The thing about having this dying being in my house is that it’s just so sad. Not just because he’ll be gone, but because Sadie is gone and my grandma is gone and my uncle is gone and the people who built this house are gone and the dachshund I grew up with is gone. Everything, eventually, slips away until it’s your turn to be the one that disappears.

Friday, Then

The cat’s vet appointment is Friday morning. I don’t have anything profound to say about it. Last night, he went outside and he didn’t come back in and I went looking for him. He was just in the garage, curled up by the back door. But I thought of all the times when Sadie would be standing in the yard, unable to come up with what she should do next, and the cat would walk out there to get her and guide her back to the house. Or all the times, after Sadie died, when he would go for walks with me and then wait for me in the far field to make sure I got home okay. And there I was, going to look for him, making sure he got back to the house okay.

I’ve lived with him his whole life, except the first four weeks of it. If I bought a cat today that lived as long as he’s lived, I’d be 61 when he died.

I hope he haunts me. Because I’m going to miss him. According to my math, I’ve spent 40% of my life with him. The Butcher has spent half his life with him.

It’s Fitting

Y’all, I have to make three Third Man afghans. The one I’m almost done with? Let’s say “circumstances” and, yeah, the person’s not going to want it. So, it’s going to a poet. And I will be making an afghan with no yellow or black in it for the person who was going to get this.

This is a weird town where the circumstances of some genius you don’t know affects your evenings for the next month or so.

But I find some poetic justice in ending up making three Third Man blankets.

A thing I’m really enjoying, though, is that I’m trying all different kinds of things, different color changes, different techniques, because, if it’s too hard, I just do one of them.

I have a very, very important work meeting this morning. Then this afternoon I need to find my guts and call the vet about the orange cat. The Butcher came by to see him yesterday and he, of course, perked back up. But, sadly, not enough for me to be fooled.

I think part of my dread, if I’m being honest, is I’m afraid that the vet will say, “Well, we can do x and see if he improves” and x will involved me trying every day to shove a pill down his throat so that he and I can both come to hate each other and then he’s still going to die sooner rather than later, because he’s 18. But what kind of monster wouldn’t try shit to see if it helps? It feels cruel to say, no, I’d just rather kill him now.

And, my god, I don’t. I want him to just die peacefully in his sleep or die in a car accident where he’s the driver and we’re all left wondering how the hell that happened.

But I’m having a hard time figuring out how to know what medical interventions are “worth it” even if it makes him unhappy and what’s just saying “let’s be miserable together until we have no other option.”

He’s had a nice, full, long life. I don’t want him to suffer. So, I guess I’m hoping the vet will say something clear like “hey, we can give him this pill and all this will clear right up and he’ll be pissed at you about the pill, but he’ll get another five years easy,” in which case, hell yes. Or he’ll say “everything we can do is going to make him angry and afraid and won’t make him better. It’s just buying you a few more months, but they won’t be good months.” And then it’ll be clear.

But I’m afraid it’s going to be more nebulous, and I won’t know the right thing to do.

But, also, he’s outside right now, and I’m so relieved because it means he isn’t in here peeing on things without me realizing.

Stripes

If you’re not a crocheter, I don’t suppose anything about these two hexagons looks particularly hard, but these were, in fact, two of the  hardest things I’ve ever crocheted. In the one on the left, each stitch in the increasing rows is a different color, which, in real life means that each stitch is two different colors. Like, to make a double crochet, you wrap the yarn once around your hook (a yarn over), you put your hook through the piece where you want your stitch to go. You grab the yarn with your hook and pull it through your piece, then you grab it again and pull it through two loops on your hook and again, grab the yarn and pull it through two loops on your hook.

The important thing for this discussion is that the loop that’s on your hook to start with is the top of the stitch. So, the last thing you do on the stitch before becomes the top of your next stitch.

So, if you want your stitch to appear to be all one color, you need to build the stitch before it so that the last thing you do is draw through the color of the next stitch.

It’s a hard and weird rhythm to get into. And your yarn twists like a motherfucker. The one on the right involved carrying the black in the yellow stitches, which you can kind of see if you look too closely, and tucking in a lot of yellow ends.

I think the orange cat is dying. Or, rather, I think when I take him to the vet, the options are going to be “do a lot of shit for him that will keep him alive a little longer, but he’s 18” or “let him go.”

He’s peeing everywhere. He’s always been a spite pee-er, and I assumed the murder of my Roomba last week was in retaliation for some imagined slight.

But this morning, he peed on the floor of my room and he looked up at me wide eyed and confused. I just don’t think there was any time between “you need to pee” and “you are peeing” for him.

It’s the Butcher’s cat. The Butcher is out of town for his anniversary.

Since the cat doesn’t appear to be in any physical pain (though who can tell with a cat), I’m not doing anything today. I want to wait until the Butcher gets home tonight and talk things over with him. I don’t mind taking the orange cat to the vet alone, but I don’t want to spring it on the Butcher. If it’s not an emergency, I don’t want to take the cat to the vet without telling the Butcher that’s what’s happening.

I just want to cry about it, but I also am filled more with dread than sadness.

My heart is breaking. I just assumed he’d go out in a fight or an explosion. I didn’t prepare for frail and afraid.

Working on the Other

If you constraint is “this motif, these two colors,” how can you keep it not boring for yourself? Also, I love that solid yellow motif so much that I kind of want to marry it.

A lot is going on here. I’ve got a lot of work stuff–moving warehouses, planning a book launch, getting a catalog out, getting a bunch of promotional postcards done, etc. This weekend I have to get my emissions tested, do my taxes, write a blurb for one book and a forward for another and go grocery shopping. Plus I wanted to pick up the sticks in the yard, but we’ll see if I get to it.

And April is full up. One weekend my cousin and her family are coming. Another weekend my parents are coming. I’m speaking to a women’s group about Fort Negley. I possibly have some other shit I’m just not looking at my calendar about right now.

I get this feeling that some stuff has happened this spring–the Fort Negley decision, the Post gig (even though it wasn’t the first time I’d done it), the Times interview–that makes my life slightly different than it was before, in ways that I don’t fully realize.

And it’s fun because I have a bunch of good friends with whom I can just be honestly “What the fuck?” and “This is so fucking surreal.” and they laugh and are delighted with me. And some of them are also doing delightful, surreal shit and I’m so happy to be able to help support them how I can.

But then I’ve also gotten some… I don’t know what to call them… connected people who have decided it would be fun to connect me with people who can help. And that’s nice and cool, though I have some anxiety about whether I have the right or enough social skills to handle that.

And then there are people who don’t know me or don’t know me very well, but they like what I’m doing and they sometimes tell me and that’s awesome.

Then there are the folks who come sniffing around. The “you’ve had some success I want to benefit from” folks. And it’s really hard, sometimes, to tell them from the folks I’m having positive, but new-to-me interactions with.

But other times, when now I’m worth your time, now I’m someone you’ll deign to talk to, it’s pretty damn obvious.

It continues to be amazing to me how often people demand that I have no history, no memories. That my job is to continue to be a blank slate upon which they can project their fantasies which I, then, in order to be perceived of as “nice,” must go along with.

 

Progress

A thing that dawned on me this morning as I was walking the dog and thinking about our fucked up society, in which a white kid who bombs black people is just, so sadly, troubled and a black people who get killed weren’t “angels,” as if you have to be an angel to deserve to live, is that a really fucked up thing about racist societies is that racism becomes the tool through which the dominant culture gets positive cultural change.

Like, say, white people are supposedly perfect. We don’t do anything wrong. If we’re doing it, it can’t possibly be bad. Say we beat the shit out of our kids. And everyone is starting to notice that white children are really, really fucked up by it. But you can’t say it, because it would imply that something white parents were doing was really fucked up. And yet, obviously, good people want to stop child abuse.

Well, then, we need strong child abuse laws because those black people are so violent toward their kids. Look how they treat their kids. Where are the fathers in their houses? Etc. Etc. Etc.

And then, because the social good–stopping abuse–is so great, the cost of scapegoating black people seems worth it to the non-black do-gooders.

Which then reinforces the bonds of racism.

One Down, One to Go

I finished one of my Third Man afghans.

I’m hoping the other one will go fairly quick.

I also had two afghans delivered yesterday. One was in person, so I got lots of hugs, and the other was by mail. It was wonderful. I like making beautiful things that people love.

I’m still very busy and stressed at work. But when I talked to my dad about it last night, he was actually supportive and lovely. Is this what him not in pain is like? I guess I forgot.

I’m trying to be mindful of all my therapy lessons, to take time to name my feelings and not just put my head down and power through. I think it’s helping.

I’ve also been trying to fiercely guard my downtime and only agree to things I know are going to be nourishing. I still feel kind of paralyzed by busyness.

Isn’t This the Plot of E.T.?

You guys, last night the new kitty (who isn’t really new anymore, but nicknames are nicknames) was in the bathroom closet, hissing and spitting. I went to look to see why this was happening and she had removed the access cover to the tub plumbing. She was hissing at the pipes.

Someone was meowing angrily back at her from somewhere inside my house, like literally, in the innards of my house.

I assumed this was Old Grouchy.

But then Old Grouchy came into the bathroom to see what everyone was so worked up about.

So, I guess some other cat is in the bowels of my house?

I assume it’s the other orange cat, who’s been running away when he sees me all winter, because I don’t know of another cat in the neighborhood at the moment.

But they’ve been fighting with him all winter. Not physically fighting, because they’ve been in the house, yelling at him out of windows. But yelling at him.

Was it all an act while they were secretly finding a place for him to stay in the house?

The pipes run into the crawlspace and it’s pretty clear to me that there’s enough space around the pipes that a cat could get from the closet into the crawlspace. But, in order for a cat who has heretofore been outside my house to get into the crawlspace, I must have a way into my crawlspace that isn’t as secure as I thought.

But I went out and looked this morning and damned if I can see where it would be.

Anyway, it’s fucking weird. My house may have a third cat. That lives in my walls.

But, honestly? It’s also delightful.

I mean, I’m sure there are going to be some drawbacks I’m not thinking of right now, but, if he isn’t trapped, and he doesn’t seem to be, then I guess it’s okay. No harm, no foul.

Woman

Sometimes I read news stories and it makes me feel like there’s some component of being a woman that I just don’t have. Like, I can’t for the life of me understand how someone ends up being a Trump mistress.

Like, I guess the folk wisdom is that women are attracted to money and power, but they just seem like such obvious frauds. If I ran in those social circles, I feel like I’d be “sick” a lot and miss parties they were going to.

Like, how do you not look at them and realize they’re just going to constantly be mean and a pain in your butt?

Nice

I had a really lovely weekend hanging out with friends and not fretting about work. I went and hung out with my nephew, who is really working hard on figuring out how he might crawl in the future. He’s kind of got the notion that, if he moves his hands, he might move, but so far he’s just kind of pushing himself backwards.

And he rolls over like a pro, now.

I also think he’s on the verge of understanding that the baby on the screen of my phone is him.

And look at Fort Negley out there being beautiful and free.

Things Don’t Change

So, the dude who led the mob that beat up that couple in Brentwood got arrested for attacking his wife and father-in-law who were pissed at him for having an affair with his father-in-law’s new wife.

Ha ha ha.

But also, I can totally see racist groups in the 50s falling apart in the same way.

A thing I’m curious about–though not curious enough to really dig into it–is how you can behave these ways and still believe yourself to be “supreme.” Like at what point do they think the moral superiority is going to kick in? Or do they think that carrying on like this is better than whatever “they” do.

There are parts of racism I get–really well, too well. I get the woman at the coffee shop who is looking for a place to sit and who demands a black woman whose cup is almost empty get up and give her that spot. I get how tempting it is to believe that some people just aren’t as smart as other people and it’s genetic and race-based. I get the systemic racism. I get the positive feedback loop it instills in white people which makes itself very hard to even recognize, let alone stop. It’s hard to turn away from pleasure.

And I get the “I hate you” racism. The “let’s go beat up some black kids” or “let’s go scare those Asian kids.” Again, it’s the pleasure of the bully.

But “I’m better than you” is a claim that must, I’d think, be constantly tested. It has to be perpetuated by comparison (which is how systemic racism plays into it). But obviously the comparison must often show you that you’re not all that. None of these white supremacists are as good looking as, say, Idris Elba. If they have a superior social structure, why are they beating each other and fucking around on each other? If they’re so great, why do their lives suck?

How do they look at their own lives and convince themselves that this is the evidence that they are superior? I just do not understand it.

The Times and a Kong and an Afghan and a Cat

Here’s the Times article. “Nashville historian.” Lord. That is awesome and makes me laugh. I don’t know shit about Nashville. Everything I learn is a known fact on a mountain of unknown facts. Well, to me, anyway. But I’ll take it.

Nashville historian.

In unrelated news, a couple of Sonnyboy’s friends bought him a Kong and I remembered to bring it home yesterday. I put treats in it and put it on his bed and he was so disappointed. He just sniffed at it and sighed dejectedly and then laid down next to it.

I felt so terrible! Who doesn’t like toys?

But finally, he figured out that he could get the treats out of the Kong if he just moved the Kong around. BUT he then just dragged his bed with the Kong on top of it around.

Finally, when I was getting ready for bed, I heard him in the other room finally getting it.

This morning I put more treats in there and he carried it around the house to show me multiple times, so I think he likes it.

But man, I so understand his initial reaction. “Oh no! Something new and unknown?! I hate new and unknown things.” Same, dog. Same.

I just have one square left on this afghan. I had a reason for putting off the borders of all the squares until the end but I can’t remember what it was, but I’m going to trust I had some good reason and keep with it. And I am going to have so many ends to tuck. I weep for the amount of ends I have to tuck.

The Times

A reporter for the New York Times interviewed me about Fort Negley last night. I don’t know if I’ll be quoted in his story or if he just wanted someone who could dump a lot of background information on him, but I dumped what I could.

And then I freaked the fuck out. I mean, I’m sorry, but what the fuck? How is this life?

They tell you “Act like you’ve been there,” but I haven’t. I don’t know people who have. I don’t have any idea what you do when the Times wants to talk to you.

For all I know, maybe George W. still looks at his wife in wide-eyed wonder every time someone from the Times wants to talk to him. Maybe freaking the fuck out is what people who’ve been there do.

The gulf is so big. The kind of person I am. The kind of life I’ve been able to lead.

I see why the myth of meritocracy is so important. The reality is nuts. The myth makes sense of a world that makes no sense. This shit just happens and you can kind of draw a line between “I did this” and “this happened” but I know a lot of people who are also doing “this” and “this happened” is not happening for them.

I am so very, very lucky.

And I can’t shake the feeling that I’m getting away with something. Not in this particular instance, but overall. That I was supposed to be a miserable, lonely outsider trying to be okay in some small Midwestern town. And somehow I escaped. And no one ever came to drag me back.

I was in college when I first read Adrienne Rich’s “Song” and I still think about it all the time. It still is deeply meaningful to me.

The Vet

We met and tried to play with a day old lamb. We barked at everything. Something happened in the back room that caused everyone to laugh, but I didn’t see what it was. And then he wrapped me in the leash and jumped through the railing and he thought that was great fun.

And then I had to go get my oil changed and when I got home, he’d pooped and thrown up all over.

So, what I thought had been an awesome, low-stress trip to the vet had apparently not been. But once he got that all out of his system, he napped and now he seems to be fine.

I really love that I get to take him to a vet where they all love him.

Also, I wrote a lot on the bombing book. Book. Manuscript. Whatever. It feels really good to be writing again. And reading. I was reading through this book yesterday and I literally was like “what’s this feeling?” and it was enjoyment. Pleasure.

Which is not a feeling reading has given me since the election.

But here’s the thing that brings me peace about writing. Even if no one wants to publish it, I can give it to the library and a better historian than me can find it and find it useful.

Pray for Me, Dear Readers

Today I take the dog to the vet by myself and with him having only a cursory walk.

I don’t know much about lap-sized afghans, but I want to make two of them for the folks at Third Man Books.

I have 4/6 of one done:

Also please note that these are the same squares with the same yarn and that is, indeed, how different that yellow can look. Which is why I had such a tough time–and still believe I might be wrong–matching it to the Third Man yellow.

Remember how I told you I wanted to do a motif from the goth afghan that was the flower from the one and the background of the other? I decided to give it a go for the other lap afghan:

I may do a few with the center being the same color as the petals, just so there’s a little more variety. But we’ll see.

Sitting and Crocheting

I know it’s not the clinical diagnosis of “introverted,” but man, my life one-hundred percent improved when I read the internet meme definition of introverted as being someone who is drained by group events and recharges by being alone.

Because I had a wonderful time yesterday seeing friends and talking about music and just being a person in the world and I could have easily gone to bed at 7:30.

Anyway, this is the new afghan I’m working on.

Vague

I remain somewhat frazzled with work. I wouldn’t call myself an emotional eater, but last night I had a salad and four Reeses’s Eggs for dinner. This morning I wondered if I would have been better off having a salad, one egg, and a Xanax.

It’s a weird thing to adjust to. I’m used to my anxiety being, on a scale of one to ten, at a baseline of five with easy spikes into the 15 range. Now being at a baseline of one or two, with spikes that only go to ten, it’s sometimes hard for me to recognize “Oh, this is a lot of stress and anxiety.” because it’s so much less than how I’ve lived up until now.

So I flounder around in this haze of “something’s not quite right, but I feel okay and functioning so I don’t know what it is. Maybe I’m still hungry? Maybe even if I’m not hungry, it would still be awesome to have candy for dinner?”

Which, don’t get me wrong, I am all for having candy for dinner if that’s what I’m choosing. But doing it because something’s off and I’m just trying to feel better isn’t how I want to do things. At least not without recognizing that’s what I’m doing.

Hiccups

There’s a lot going on in my work life that I’m stressed about, but feel would be not cool to talk about, though it bums me out because the whole point of a blog is to complain about things you don’t quite know how to deal with.

But meanwhile, last night, the dog had the hiccups. Like, big, unpleasant ones. And so he began to do this huff. Not a traditional pant, but like breathing out really really strongly, like huh, huh, huh, huh. And he did this for about thirty seconds and his hiccups stopped.

Now, you hiccup because your diaphragm is spasming. Basically, it’s like a bad cramp in any other muscle. Part of the muscle is contracting while the rest of the muscle isn’t. So, in order to get rid of hiccups, you have to get your diaphragm back to normal. Most of the time, it passes, like any cramp.

But, there are tricks. The tricks that involve swallowing a large amount of something are trying to get the muscles around your diaphragm to work in unison for a common goal–getting the thing down into your stomach–which will hopefully pull your diaphragm out of spasm.

And breathing into a paper bag can work because it fills your lungs with more carbon dioxide, which is supposed to force your diaphragm to relax.

But I have to tell you, now I really, really want to try the dog’s method. Because it seems like it combines both strategies. By doing some really powerful exhales very close together, you’re obviously limiting the amount of oxygen that can get into your lungs. Plus, the very powerful exhales are forcing all your chest muscles into the same job, which hopefully gets your diaphragm on board.

It seems like it might work. I mean, it did for him. But it seems like it might for a person as well.

Dreams

I have this recurring dream lately where I go to visit a couple of my friends, who live in an apartment complex along the interstate, and are history buffs.

And the husband in the dream is all the time telling me I need to go to the restaurant–sometimes it’s a Hooters, sometimes it’s called a guy’s name–down the street, if I can.

The restaurant is located where the interstate is. Except sometimes the interstate isn’t there and, if I can figure out how to get through the tall grass and the brush, I could go to the restaurant, which I can see through the weeds.

But I never can get there. Even though I know there’s something important, or at least interesting, inside.

The Goth Afghan

I really love how it turned out.

The only thing I’m a tiny bit bummed about is that I can’t get my phone to take a picture of it that really shows how lacy it ended up. If we get a good sunny day between now and the time I wash it, I might see if an outside picture picks up that detail.

This kind of gets at it, though it also shows all the dog hair. Jesus Christ. Yesterday I made the mistake of looking at my couch in the daylight and I had to vow to never have people over until every pet I own is dead and I have all new furniture. I mean, I know it’s spring shedding season, but christ.

For my next afghan, I’m going back to the spiral pattern and I’m hooking my folks at Third Man Books up with something they can use in their freezing office. Though, by the time I get done with it, it might not be so cold in there.

Jesse Wilson

I spent all my lunch hours last week looking into Jesse Wilson, a guy from the 50s who blew shit up in an anti-government, anti-union tantrum and then I forgot all my research at work, so I have nothing to write up for my book.

But bad ole Jesse got me thinking about how things become legend, what has to happen for them to be passed down.

I don’t have a good answer for it. Everything about Jesse’s story is hilariously bad and no one got killed. And he got freed from prison, in part, because he learned to read.

Like they actually thought “Well, if this man had known how to read, he wouldn’t have tried to blow up the mayor.” I mean, I’m as pro-reading as the next person and I’m not sure that’s how it works.

But how are people still not telling this?

My other favorite part of the story is that, I guess because he couldn’t read and write, his secretary had to help him with all this illegal shit, including trying to kill people.

And in the trial, they kept referring to her as a jezebel who had all these men under her sway and doing Wilson’s bidding, I guess, because of the magic of her feminine wiles.

So, I’m expecting Eartha Kitt or Julie Newmar. I mean, I’m expecting fucking Cat Woman. Old school Cat Woman. Like, the kind of woman with hips that make you forget all reason. Someone capable of using her eyelashes to command you. The kind of woman you’re a tiny bit afraid to fuck, because you know, even if you’ve fucked 10,000 people, she’s still going to know things that will break your mind in two.

And instead, she is the plainest, most ordinary woman you’ve ever seen! It’s delightful. I mean, I still choose to believe that she was wiggling her hips and batting her eyes and based solely on charisma, it worked.

But I also deeply suspect she was a violent psychopath, just like Wilson (in my opinion), and because it was the 1950s, the best she could do with her ambitions to be a bad-ass gangster-acting nightmare was to hook herself to a man with similar ambitions and pretend she was just helping him.

And I kind of want to see a movie about her, but with her being plain-looking. Because that’s my favorite part.

The Dog Just Asked for Cat Food?

Okay, listen, for me to tell you this story, you’re going to have to accept some things that may be upsetting to pet lovers. In the morning, I give the cats wet cat food. I put some on a plate for the new kitty (who, no, at this point is not new) on the counter near her food bowl and leave a little for Old Grouchy Pants in the can, which I set on the floor, near the tipped over bag of cat food, because Old Grouchy Pants prefers not to get off the floor unless it involves getting on the couch.

They eat their wet cat food while I walk the dog and, when we get back, he eats whatever’s left in the can on the floor. And, sometimes, if he thinks I’m not looking, he stands on his hind legs and eats whatever’s left on the plate. But often that goes sliding around the counter and he can’t get to it.

Also, when the dog wants something, he leaps near it. So, like, if he wants to go for a walk, he goes to the back door and leaps up and down. Or if he wants to go for a car ride, he goes to the car door and leaps up and down. Or if he wants to come inside, he leaps up and down at the door.

That seems pretty straight-forward–the thing that usually happens here, I want it to happen again, so I will do my leaps.

But today he was jumping up and down kind of in the middle of the kitchen, looking at me expectantly, and I had no idea what he thought should happen there. He had his breakfast. He had a well-licked can of cat food by his feet.

Folks. Folks. He then picked up the empty can of cat food and brought it over by the counter and leaped with the can in his mouth. And, indeed, the new kitty had left a pile of wet cat food on her plate (no cat seemed to care for that flavor). Which, yes, I think put on the floor for him because I am not a monster.

But what the fuck?! Maybe it’s just the same as other leaps, but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like we’ve taken a step forward. Like, he understood that I wasn’t saying “no, you can’t have that,” but that I literally didn’t know what “that” was and so he did the logical thing of showing me what he wanted.

Is this dog ever not going to surprise me?

In unrelated news, I’ve started to join this afghan together.

I picked a continuous join that echoes the lacy parts of the motif that I love. Both because I love that lacy part and because I’m not convinced the hexagons are really the same size and it felt like I was going to get a lot of pulling and buckling that might have made me unhappy. I didn’t want to work this much on something that was, up until this point, so pleasing, to be unhappy with the end result. This gives each hexagon a little room to be not exactly the same size as its neighbors.

It’s small, too, which kind of annoys me. I want an afghan that, when I’m sitting on the couch, will cover me from shoulder to feet. Ideally, I want an afghan that, when I’m sick, I can wrap around me like a coccoon of warmth and healing. I don’t know about this size.

But in general, I love it and am very, very happy with how it is going.

Love

This has been, by far, my favorite hexagon to make of the bunch. Many others are more exciting and probably look neater, but I love the lacy petals on this so much. They’re easy to make and they look so cool.

What I would like to do is the middle of the other hexagon:

With the lacy petals of the top one and just make a whole afghan of that.

Anyway, I’m almost done with my motifs and then I’ll have to pick a join. This has been very fun and satisfying to work on, I’ll say that.

Special

I was digging into Emmett Carr some yesterday, a minor figure in the bombing story, and I’m struck by how much his active racist life–meaning, the time in which he made the papers–seemed to be about trying to be a big man. He was a Klan leader–the Grand Titan of Middle Tennessee–and he was trying to start up a Pro-Southerners group  and then he broke away from the Klan and joined some other Klan. And he ran for State Senate. And he ran to the media every chance he got.

I kind of see him in the vein of Donald Davidson. Davidson and Carr seemed to believe in the front of their minds that white people were superior to black people, in general. But somewhere, in the backs of their minds, because they hadn’t risen to the level of prominence they wanted, in other words, because they were only above average, couldn’t an extraordinary black person, if given a level playing field, surpass them?

So, by god, the playing field must be kept uneven.

But there’s another group of people in this bombing story who are violent scary assholes in many facets of their lives and so also violent scary racists. These folks leave a trail larger and longer than just their racist activism.

So, you have guys like Carr running around screaming, metaphorically, “I’m important! I’m important! Treat me like I’m important!” And then you have these other guys being all, “You’re going to be sorry.”

They feed into each other. The “I’m important!” guys will happily stand at the front of a crowd of “You’re going to be sorry”s. And the “You’re going to be sorry” guys are glad to have someone point them in the direction of some people who need to be sorry.

And I think there are rare cases, like with Stoner, where a person could be both.

But I’m looking for the traces of those “You’re going to be sorry” guys. So, after everything, I felt like I’d wasted a lot of time on Carr.