Annoying Boy has apparently installed a Yoga Detector in his minuscule brain. Yes, I finally pulled myself away from my graphics programs to go do a little more yoga before Lin came home and dinner needed to be made. I had no more than crossed my ankles and planted my butt on the floor when the doorbell rang.

I did peek out the window this time, because I couldn’t believe it would really be him on my porch again punching the doorbell button … repeatedly. It was, so I un-paused my DVD, planted my butt back on the floor and ignored the obnoxiousness of the doorbell ringing … and ringing … and ringing. Not quite five minutes worth this time, but all the same, too much doorbell ringing.

I know when Lin gets home, Annoying Boy is going to be all over him. I better call and warn Lin about that. Then I better get started on dinner. All that yoga and housework (and doorbell ignoring) has left me feeling quite hungry.

Annoying Boy started ringing my doorbell shortly into my yoga warm-up routine. I heard him blathering to someone, so I didn’t even have to peek out the window to know it was him. I kept breathing, stretching, and relaxing. He kept ringing the damn doorbell …. for the entire five minutes of the warm-up routine. Five minutes of near constant doorbell ringing. Dude, get a clue. If you think someone is home, and they don’t answer their door after the first two times you ring their doorbell they obviously aren’t going to answer the door … like maybe they are too busy doing something else to stop and talk to someone who only wants to nag about lawn mowing, or maybe they just don’t want to talk to you at all.

Then I heard him blathering again to the unknown someone (turned out to be Broom Woman) and was able to determine he was going on about how the pollen from the Dandelions is going to kill him because of his allergies. Dude, get another clue. In order for there to be Dandelion pollen, there would have to be Dandelion flowers. There aren’t any yet. There aren’t even any flower buds yet. Thus … there is no Dandelion pollen coming from my yard. If he wants to gripe about something in the area causing allergy problems, he should get a gander at the level of Oak pollen floating around in the air today, and then he should demand all the Oak trees in the area be chopped down. Like the one in their front yard. We don’t have any Oak trees, but I would be more than willing to loan him our chainsaw, if he wants to get right on chopping down their tree. That Oak pollen is killing me!

Here’s the really stupid thing about griping about allergens in your neighborhood. You could eradicate every single one of them in a ten block radius, and it isn’t going to change the state of your pollen allergy suffering. It’s in the air. The air moves. With the cool front and storms blowing in today, we are probably seeing pollen from several states away. Amazing how the wind and pollen work together that way isn’t it?

Furthermore, did you know you can buy Dandelion seeds? Yup, several of my gardening catalogs offer them for sale. I can’t imagine anyone having to buy Dandelion seeds, because the things just pop up in my yard every year, even when we keep a handle on removing them as soon as they come up, and there aren’t any visible ones in the area. Once again, the wind is to blame, likely aided by birds. Though this does give me a grand idea for what to do with the front flowerbed. I’m thinking a whole garden of Dandelions would be awesome! They have lots of uses. I’ve eaten them and made tea with them, and they are better for you than spinach. Taste better too, in my opinion.

Yes, I think a whole flowerbed of specifically-planted Dandelions is just what we need at Casa de Orb. Maybe I should add some other natural and useful weeds to the mix … like thistles, the leaves and flowers of which are also edible. Though I haven’t eaten any thistle flowers, I hear they are like little artichokes. Sounds tasty! And just to make it look a little more colorful, I could toss out some Texas wildflower seeds as well. One thing is for certain … these plants would grow well in our poor soil. I’ve seen proof of that with my own eyes. Another certainty? It would thoroughly annoy Annoying Boy. For that reason alone, I believe I am going to beg Lin to help me rip out the current batch of weeds in the flower bed, till the dirt, and maybe toss in a bag of fresh loam. Then all I have to do is collect some weed seeds and start planting!

My gods, that is such a delightful and evil plan, I think I may just do it.

Annoying Boy needs to get yet one more clue: If you are that deathly allergic to Dandelions (which, I might add I seriously doubt he is), you probably shouldn’t be reaching down with your bare hands and pulling them up out of my lawn. He broke them off at the surface anyway, which does no good whatsoever. If you leave the tap root, you still have a Dandelion. It’s just going to take it a while to re-sprout leaves.

In closing, I would like to say that in the future, anyone, other than a delivery person bringing me exquisite gifts, who rings my doorbell for five straight minutes gets smacked in the head. That just goes beyond ridiculous. My house is not a mansion. It takes less than 15 seconds to get to the front door from anywhere in the house. I heard the damn obnoxiously loud doorbell the first time. If I haven’t answered, there is a reason. The reason in this particular case is not wanting to go from a relaxing exercise session to a stress-filled session of listening to Annoying Boy gripe about my yard with his whiny, nasally voice, sneering mouth, and leering eyes. Even if I had felt like dealing with him, I wouldn’t have answered the door in my yoga clothes anyway. He doesn’t need to get that good a look at my body. He stares at me enough as it is, and I hate the way he looks at me. Gives me the chills, because there is something not at all right about him. My gut tells me so, and I tend to listen to it on things of this nature, since it so rarely lets me down. That’s the main reason I will never let him in this house and why I don’t answer the door when he’s at the door and Lin isn’t here. I simply don’t trust him at all. He makes me feel unsafe, even when he’s bothering me out in my very public front yard. It’s the look he has on his face when he thinks no one is watching that makes me think he is totally psychopathic. Better safe than sorry, I say.

I think I’ll go do some more yoga. The new routine I did today (Exalted Warrior) was very nice, but some of the poses were a bit too challenging for me, so I had to skip them. I think I’ll put on one of my really easy routines and go relax some more.

I decided that instead of sitting and watching yoga while recording it to DVD, I actually wanted to DO some yoga today. First, I wanted to force myself to do the dishes, so I promised myself that as soon as the sinks were empty, I would reward myself by hopping into my yoga clothes, popping in my DVD, and spending 30 minutes torturing my muscles.

I got the dishes done, put on my yoga clothes, and went to the living room. First I had to pick up all the cat toys strewn all over the rug. While doing so, I noticed the rug needed to be vacuumed, so I did that. Then I saw the floor needed to be swept, so I did that. Then, the floor looked so nice, I had to clear some clutter off of various flat surfaces and do some dusting. After all of that, the living room looked good, but I was too hot, sweaty and tired to do any yoga!

So now I am sitting around in my yoga clothes waiting for my light lunch to digest a bit, drinking an energy drink, and hoping this will give me enough energy to enjoy my yoga reward. There’s a new warm-up routine on one of the shows I recorded recently, and I’m eager to try it out. It looks so wonderful and stretchy in all the right places.

But even if I don’t get motivated to exercise, at least I got a bunch of much-needed housework done … and I remembered to take the trash out to the curb last night, so the trash crisis at Casa de Orb is over, for now.

Wanted to mention an upcoming event in Austin I think is worth making an effort to attend.

Audio Inversions will be playing at the Austin Museum of Art on April 2nd. I have no idea what sort of sound to expect beyond knowing they will be playing a selection of songs from contemporary composers on classical instruments.

AMERICAN ORIGINALS PROGRAM:

Proverbs of a Cathedral Builder by James D. Norman
for brass quintet

Spirit Realms (Three Meditations) by Dan Welcher
for flute and percussion

Cineshape 1 by Amy Williams
for flute and percussion

Violin Concerto by Lou Harrison
for violin and five percussion
featuring Stephanie Teply, violin

It sounds like it will be an interesting program!

Additionally, for your $10 entrance fee ($7 for students), you will get a chance to see the art exhibits which are normally closed to visitors on Mondays. The exhibits currently showing are America Starts Here: Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler, an overview of their public art works and some in-museum installations, and The Paper Sculpture Show, which is hard to describe, but it involves paper, so you know I’m interested. You can read the promotional information about them at the AMOA site, if you are interested in learning more.

If you don’t have anything to do on Monday night, think about stopping by. It’s cheaper than dinner out, and it’s probably much better for you too! Lin and I will be there for the concert and then wandering around the exhibits afterward, so if you find yourself at the AMOA that night, tap me on the shoulder and say hello. I promise, I don’t bite … hard.

Behind the cut is information about the composers who wrote the pieces which will be performed by Audio Inversions. Sounds very eclectic. Read over it and see if it isn’t something you too might enjoy. I know my curiosity is piqued.
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When I walked Lin out to the truck to see him off, the large black street cat from who knows where was chasing a small and slow-moving squirrel. It was so slow-moving that when Lin chased off the cat, he almost stepped on the squirrel. I figured it was probably already injured and the death of the squirrel as a sure thing no matter how far we chased the street cat, but I kept the cat at bay while Lin drove off, and then I warily investigated the small patch of brown fur hiding in the tall grass of my yard.

He was still alive, but not running away. Not even attempting to run away … just laying there in the tall grass looking at me with big baby squirrel eyes. I poked at him gently with my foot. He crawled forward about two inches. I tried to turn him over with the toe of my shoe, expecting to find some horrible wound that would present me with the dilemma of whether or not to let nature takes its course or do something about an injured squirrel, but this time, he expressed a little more vigor and hopped 6 inches away from me. Keeping the cat away, I herded the small creature to the driveway a few inches at a time, so I could get a better look at him. As he toddled ever so slowly up my driveway and towards the house, I examined him for any obvious signs of injury. Finding none. I left him to lay there on the pavement while I made a grand gesture of moving about in my yard and schppppt-ing at the street cat, who eventually moved off to a comfortable distance one yard over.

I returned to the squirrel to find him making much better progress in the direction of my Dodge. I watched as he slipped under the car, and heard him rustling about for a while. The street cat still seemed a little too interested, so I passed through the house to open the gate to the back yard. The street cats do go in there from time to time, but they are all rather timid about doing so, what with the various collections of dogs on all sides. I opened the gate and went to look under the rear of the car. I didn’t see any squirrel, but I did hear a ruckus of rustling near the front of the car moving towards the gate.

When I got back around to the gate side of the car, there he was in the corner of the gate and house, trying to climb the fence. He still wasn’t running away, but he was being far more lively … chattering slightly as I approached and flicking his tail. I reached a point he felt uncomfortable with, and he bolted to the neighbor’s yard and laid down under a tree still chattering and flicking his tail. I took one step forward, and he was gone. Vanished into the nearby shrubs.

There were no external injuries, and all his body parts seemed to be working for him as they should, only in slow motion. He didn’t seem to be behaving as though he were in pain of any sort. I guess he was just worn out. There’s no telling how long the cat had been chasing him, and you know cats like to take their time chasing things before actually killing them. Squirrels may be fast, but like sprinters, they burn out quickly. More quickly than a cat anyway.

The cat may get him at a later date, but at least not this morning and not in my yard. The last I saw of the great black menace, he was bouncing off down the road in search of prey not being watched over by humans. Sorry to have spoiled his breakfast plans.

So I saved a baby squirrel, even though I gripe endlessly about the army of squirrels we have here and how they eat everything in sight. Good deed for the day performed before 9 am. Does that mean I get to be mean, rude, and ranty for the rest of the day?

A month ago, Ronin discovered he could jump from the floor to the top of my tall stool. I have known from that day forward my work table, stove and kitchen counters would soon be conquered as well. The tall stool is only a few inches shorter than all these things, and he wasn’t straining to get up on the stool. Ronin is all muscle. Well, all muscle with a layer of baby fat.

The only thing preventing him from being on top of my most sacred of flat surfaces, at first, was simply the idea had not yet occurred to him. Then, when the idea did occur to him, he went about getting from floor to work table, the lowest of the Three Sacred Surfaces, by attempting a tricky diagonal jump from windowsill, past the microwave, to the very outermost edge of the table. The margin for error was slim for a kitten his size. The correct trajectory and speed were crucial.

His failure rate was 100%. I would hear him in the kitchen trying over and over again … thud [onto the windowsill] … THUD [spectacular failure]. I could even hear him getting frustrated. Ronin is one of the quietest cats I have ever owned, but he has a whole vocabulary of grunts, squeaks, and other unusual vocalizations that he mutters on rare occasions when he thinks no one is listening. I will admit to not stopping his attempts not only because I knew the feat was impossible, but also because listening to him act like a frustrated toddler was highly entertaining. Those of you having experience with frustrated toddlers know there is no mistaking the sound of frustration even when it’s in gibberish … or Cat Speak … and sometimes, it’s sort of cute. He wasn’t going to hurt himself (too badly anyway), and I knew the jump was not physically possible for him, so I just left him to figure it out on his own. He’s just too big, the table corner is quite small, and the microwave is very much in the way. All the same, he must have tried about a million times.

Two or so days ago, while I was sitting right there in the kitchen doing the dishes, Myu managed to get from floor level to work table level … without making a noise. I turned around to grab the stew pot off the stove to wash it, and there she was sitting on my cutting board, pretty as you please, being adorable. I shooed her down, noticed Ronin sitting in the windowsill, and guessed that being smaller and lighter, she had been able to make the jump Ronin couldn’t. I put a few boxes of crackers along the edge to deter any further work table breaches until I was finished with the dishes, washed the stew pot, turned around to grab the skillet, and there she was again. Myu had somehow found a way to silently go from floor to work table, and she hadn’t come by way of the window.

Doom writ itself large across the horizon. My Three Sacred Surfaces could no longer be safely assumed to be 100% cat free.

If you have two kittens in your household, and one of them figures out how to get into or onto something you would really rather they didn’t, this knowledge will be shared. Any important knowledge acquired is somehow beamed directly from one kitten brain to the other in, I suspect, a Borg-like fashion. How to get onto the work table was no different from any of the other knowledge they have passed between them.

The very next morning it was no surprise to me when I walked into the kitchen and found both Ronin and Myu stomping around on the cookie sheets on top of the stove. After an extremely long period of hand-waving, pointing, using the Angry Voice, and hissing noises (all on my part), which I would like to add only resulted in blank stares of innocence and an increase in cuteness from the guilty kitties, I finally just walked over and tossed them to the floor. I’d have said “DOWN” had I not been so winded from trying to get my point across in Cat Speak first.

Then, in an act of total defiance, they repeated the maneuver of jumping from floor to work table and walking onto the stove before my very eyes. I went and got the Water Bottle of Doom.

Squirt. [blank stares] Squirt … squirt. [one mew and continued blank stares] SQUIRT SQUIRT SQUIRT … SQUIIIIIIIIRRRRRTTT!!!!

Myu continued to stare at me, and then she flopped down and rolled over … ON THE STOVE … to beg for belly rubs. Ronin had lost interest in playing the Big-Eyed Innocent Card, and he was digging his teeth into my flexible plastic spatula … the one I absolutely must have in order to turn and serve my softly fried eggs … my most favorite spatula ever. Even with water rolling off their fur, it apparently never once crossed their minds to vacate the area. Or it did, and they felt a strong need to test their independence. You can never be sure what is or is not going on in the mind of a cat.

But really … begging for belly rubs while on the stove? Oi vey. It’s either the height of arrogance or stupidity. I’m not sure which, though it was sort of adorable, and I had to squelch the urge to reach out and rub that fuzzy belly. She’s really, really cute when she wants her belly rubbed.

They both earned a 5 minute time-out in their respective time-out rooms. Ronin goes into the bedroom, because he doesn’t go exploring in that room, and Myu goes into the bathroom, because she has already explored it all and is bored with it. Five minutes long because that’s how long it takes them to lay down, have a nap, wake up, and realize they are separated from their sibling and are ever so BORED … having long forgotten the exact reason they were locked in a room alone in the first place.

They haven’t been on the work table, stove or counters since. At least that is the delusion I am allowing myself to believe as I thoroughly wipe down my Three Sacred Surfaces before using them. It is far more likely they have learned one of the most important Cat Truths that all smart cats know:

There are things you do not do in front of the humans, but you do them anyway.

Wanted to share my current favorite poem. I love, love, love the imagery in this set of words.

Enigmas by Pablo Neruda

You’ve asked me what the lobster is weaving there with
his golden feet?
I reply, the ocean knows this.
You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent
bell? What is it waiting for?
I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.
You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?
Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.
You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,
and I reply by describing
how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies.
You enquire about the kingfisher’s feathers,
which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides?
Or you’ve found in the cards a new question touching on
the crystal architecture
of the sea anemone, and you’ll deal that to me now?
You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean
spines?
The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks?
The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out
in the deep places like a thread in the water?

I walked around as you do, investigating
the endless star,
and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked,
the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.

Translated by Robert Bly

He’s so precious … when he’s asleep! For size comparison, so you can see how big he’s getting, look at one of his “baby” photos from five months ago. I’m telling you, he’s going to be a panther by the time he stops growing.

I got four more episodes of Namaste Yoga recorded to my yoga DVD. Two hours of sitting and watching yoga with my thumb on the pause button of a remote control is almost past my tolerance limit for watching yoga. Because I have been cutting out the commercials and the end credits, I still have enough room for about four more episodes. I also deleted a bunch of really advanced routines off the DVR, because I don’t care how many years I do yoga, I will never be able to do some of those poses, and I have no desire to do them. No sense recording them for posterity.

Now I have a movie, Mindwalk, recording. At least I don’t have to sit and watch it to take out commercials. I just have to keep an eye on when it ends so I can stop the recording … though I guess it doesn’t really matter since I am only putting the one movie on this DVD.

I have decided not to save the Knitty Gritty episodes either, and I will probably delete them later today after watching the few I don’t think I have seen before. They play reruns all the time, and I doubt I would ever be inspired to actually pull out a DVD of them and watch them again anyway.

And so, I am almost caught up on getting stuff off the DVR and on DVDs! We still have a few things to watch and delete, and I have to decide what to do about The Prisoner series I have been recording for my mom. Fact is, the DVR has screwed up twice and recorded a black screen instead of the episode, so I am already missing at least two that I know of (haven’t watched them all yet). I am beginning to think it would just be better to buy the boxed set for my mom and give it to her as a Mother’s Day gift. Sure, it’s $70, but I don’t think I have the patience to sit through 17 hours of the show taking out the commercials, and in order to not use a zillion DVDs, I’d have to record it in lower quality. She’d be much happier with the nice, high-quality, commercial free, boxed set. Not to mention the problem of the missing episodes, which means I would have to wait and see if they rerun the whole series again, try to catch them, and THEN finally get around to recording them, hopefully in order. I’m thinking not doing all that work is worth $70 to me.

There are about a hundred things I should be doing right now, but my head is still throbbing. It’s doing more of a low humming throb now, so I guess the aspirin is helping somewhat. I told Lin what happened and asked him if he thought I should be more concerned about having bonked myself on the head. His only reply was “Head injuries are weird.” Well, thanks for putting my aching brain at ease! He really needs to work on his bedside manner. One of these days, I’ll have to tell you how he reacts when I am choking on something. It’s a laugh riot …. unless you happen to be choking at the moment.

I think I’ll call my mom and get that out of the way so I won’t have to call her for a few days. Then maybe I can get to some of the housework. If nothing else gets done today, I at least have to stuff the last of the trash in the bin so I can wheel it to the curb tonight so I don’t forget again. Forgetting to put the trash bin out a second week would create a major crisis … one I do not wish to experience.

Just because I don’t think enough people in the age group to have received smallpox vaccinations when we were kids know this, I thought I would pass it on.

From the CDC:

How long does a smallpox vaccination last?

Past experience indicates that the first dose of the vaccine offers protection from smallpox for 3 to 5 years, with decreasing immunity thereafter. If a person is vaccinated again later, immunity lasts longer.

As Lewis Black, one of my favorite comedians, says about his smallpox vaccination … “It wore the f*ck off!”