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odd doggy urination
Saturday, May 28 2016
I got a clear view of a male Baltimore Oriole today. He flew down out of the canopy (where they spend most of their time invisibly) and perched on a dead branch on one of the White Pine trunks. And then he probably caught a caterpillar from the ongoing infestation and disappeared.
Gretchen went yard saling with Nancy and Sarah the Vegan (she was looking for furniture for the new brick mansion). Meanwhile my most pressing chore was to mow the lawn. The grass had grown nearly knee-high since the last time I'd mowed it, and the north end of the yard had never been mowed at all in 2016. So I layed out the 100 feet of extension cord and rolled out the GreenWorks 120 VAC mower. As usual when I mow, there was a constant evacuation from the long grass of Garter Snakes, Wolf Spiders, Daddy Longlegs, and, in the moister areas, probably frogs (though I didn't see any). Usually the snakes evacuate the areas I enter well before I get there, but it seems one of them must've dilly-dallied and them rose up from beneath the blade, because I found his or her sliced-up remains, complete with a number of disembodied white organs, each the size and shape of an olive. The risk of accidentally killing animals in the course of my day-to-day existence is one of my sources of background anxiety. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it reinforces that background anxiety.
I'd taken a 50 milligram dose of Vyvanse, though I found its effects were much less noticeable when I was doing physical work out in the yard. (The work wasn't arduous, but the unusual summerlike heat and humidity made me sweat profusely.)
Meanwhile, my colleague Da at The Organization was reveling in the departure of Meerkat (the much-loathed former head of the IT department). Da had set us all up to use Slack (the ultimate app for "teams" — not "teens"). Whenever I came in from my mowing, drenched in sweat and flecked with grass debris, I'd rejoin whatever conversations Da had started. The Vyvanse had me feeling chatty and accepting.
At some point today, I made some further investigations into why the Subaru's MP3-playing stereo had such bad radio reception. I removed some trim from around the window containing an FM antenna printed on it to see if it was hooked up correctly. In doing this, I found a device that was clearly an RF amplifier. Such devices need power, and I wondered if that power was supposed to be provided by the blue wire labeled as being for "extending the antenna." So I tore apart the dashboard again and hooked up the blue wire. Sure enough, the radio reception improved enormously, and I was now about to receive five or six stations. I still couldn't receive any public radio stations, but the only radio I really listen to is whichever one plays the contemporary dance pop.
Late tonight, as Gretchen was going to bed, she noticed that Neville had urinated in his dog bed while lying in it. Neville then got up and tracked urine from his urine-soaked paws onto our bed, leaving paw-shaped wet spots everywhere. He'd done something similar last night, but we hadn't been paying attention enough to see all the evidence as a cohesive whole. Normally Neville pees outside like a proper doggy gentleman, so what was going on in this weird aberration? My theory is that he likes the feeling of soaking in his own warm urine, and that he's been doing this in the doggy bed because it is generally dish-shaped. After the urine gets cool, he gets up and goes somewhere else. Perhaps he started doing this recently because being wet at all is something that only really feels good in hot weather. Gretchen thinks this theory is incoherent, but it's the best explanation so far for the evidence at hand.
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