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Ramona's self control
Wednesday, January 22 2020
This morning after I drove through the toll booth onto the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge, there was a Ford F-150 pickup in front of me with a COEXIST sticker, which one never sees on pickup trucks. As I got closer, though, I saw that the letters weren't comprised of religious symbols (as they usually are in such stickers). Instead, the letters were made from the line drawings of various firearms. Well played, fly-over country!
Today was yet another cold one, which made perfect sense given that this happened to be the day of average "peak cold" for this region. Peak cold is important to anyone who spends a considerable amount of their time gathering firewood and building fires, since it is the day after which, on average, days gradually grow warmer. In the weeks after peak cold I have mental tic where I calculate the number of days back to peak cold, double it to get a length of time n, and then tell my self that I am coming out of the year's coldest n-length period of time. So if it's been 15 days since peak cold, I will tell myself that I am coming out of the coldest month of the year.
I celebrated the day beginning with 150 milligrams of semi-recreational pseudoephedrine to help with the weekly meeting with the Ukranian outsourcers and then added a road beer on the drive home. When I got home, I immediately took the dogs for their evening walk. This time I took them up the Chamomile Headwaters Trail, where I quickly lost them. Then I heard barking, and when I looked in its direction, one of Crazy Dave's berserk Australian shepherds was yapping at me. Then, like the chickenshit he is, he vanished like a spectre. Eventually Ramona and Neville joined back up with me just in time to re-encounter Crazy Dave and his three nutty dogs down on the Stick Trail. Neville ran ahead and was friendly to them (as she is to all other dogs), but Ramona hung back. The fur on her back was standing straight up, making a six-inch-wide dorsal stripe, and she was shivering with whatever emotion causes her to want to attack dogs whom she doesn't like. Still, Ramona exercised good self control and never actually attacked, though this required a brief alliance between me and the good angel that sits on one of her shoulders. As for Dave, he was never closer than about 200 feet away, but he was surprisingly friendly. By that I mean that he actually waved at me and said something that wasn't a stream of obscenities.
I had another meal of noodles tonight, but they had a weird flavor (perhaps from olives?) and I realized I might actually be growing weary of pasta. So I froze whatever was left in the refrigerator.
I then relaxed into something of a The Act marathon. The episodes improved a lot once the character of Nicholas Godejohn joined the story, though that was also at about the time when I began feeling the effects from some two-year-old marijuana that I had eaten. Calum Worthy, the actor playing Godejohn, did an excellent job inhabiting the body of an awkward young man afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome. In fact, some of his mannerisms reminded me of some of mine, which cut a little close to home.
I also downloaded and watched the HBO's documentary Mommy Dead & Dearest, which featured interviews with Gypsy Rose Blanchard as well as others caught up in her amazing story.
COEXIST imagined with guns. Not a great picture, but the light was wrong.
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