this time, inside a mallow

... it's next to the hibiscus.  But it cheers me.  I need cheering - all day I was haunted by last night's dream (something that rarely happens, much though I dream - I usually think of them as very welcome free novels) - in which I was clinically depressed: really, catatonically, hospitalized depressed.  And I was woken up mid dream (blame a cat), and I've remained in that state all day.  So gazing at the beauty of petals and stamens is restorative (more restorative, at any rate, than watching USC lose volleyball matches in Milwaukee, doing much admin, or trying to write - slowly, slowly - a keynote for Leeds in - eek - a fortnight's time.  If anyone thinks that is LOTS of time, I have another to write for the subsequent week, and that one is currently a paragraph long).  But before then - I find myself dreading going to bed tonight, since I don't really want to fall asleep, this time.  So maybe I'll meditate on a mallow, first.

solidarity at the vet's

Since we weren't in Santa Fe this summer, Moth and LucyFur didn't get their regular check-up.  The Village Vet, close to us, has had one vet leave, and the other's only there a couple of days a month - and we don't know the others ... so back we went to Dr Carlsen, our very favorite vet (I'm speaking for Alice and myself - not necessarily the cats) - whose only drawback is that he's on the West Side.  (This meant, mind you, that this was the longest car ride that Alice has had since early June - and hence should come under the heading of a Triumph for her).  Yes, we do have two kitty carriers.  The minute we opened them up, in the examination room, Lucy climbed straight in to be with Moth - there is safety in warm numbers.  Since they were both adjudged to be a little overweight (though otherwise in excellent health), there wasn't a whole lot of space in that carrier ...

evidence in black and white

The last week or so, there's been a mystery in our back yard - a smallish, but rapidly enlarging, shallow hole.  On close inspection, it seems to be an uncovered ant hill.  What eats ants?  I mean - ant-eaters, but that seems unlikely in semi-urban Los Angeles.  So I set up a trail cam, and after a couple of nights of capturing waving leaves (I couldn't quite get the angle right), the mystery was solved - a very handsome skunk!  There was also a possum that came and sniffed around, much earlier, and a field mouse that wanted nothing to do with it.  Not the best of photos - they are screen shots from videos - but mystery solved ...

the morning after several nights before

well, who knows when?  But I always suspect game days for making the car park elevators less than savory in one way or another, so let's blame Saturday.  You'd think - unless this was the aftermath of some very strange breakfast - that Facilities would have a quick peek into elevators on the morning after a long weekend?  It seems like a sensible precaution ...

watching RBG

I was so grateful to CNN for putting on the RBG documentary as a Labor Day treat.  We'd not been able to see it when it was in the theaters - that coincided with Alice's diagnosis - but here it was, beamed into my own study ... Hard to know what was the most impressive part - I mean, obviously, her impact on women's rights issues - but beyond that - her press-ups?  her work ethic (hard at it until 4 a.m.? that puts the rest of us to shame ...) her dry sense of humor?  her capacity to enjoy everything, seemingly?  her clarity and principle?  I felt Alice wince gently beside me when we learned that she didn't miss a day in the courtroom because of her chemo - from which one surmises either that she was fortunate in her timing, or else that she didn't endure taxotere.  What a woman.  And meanwhile, the White House refuses to release - what? 100,000 pages of records pertaining to Kavanaugh's service there.  Please, RBG, keep doing those press-ups; doing sit-ups with volleyball throws; lifting the weights ... we need you.

a shy spider

I really don't know what this is.  I went to look at the African Lilies, which are on their last fading legs (stalks?), and found (a) that they are covered in ants (but so is everything in Los Angeles, this summer), and (b) that there were a couple of really unusual skinny spiders, with long thoraxes striped like marrows, feasting on the ants.  Does anyone know what they are?  Peucetia viridans, the Green Lynx spider, doesn't quite have these stripes, and anyway has lighter legs.  The Green Spider, Araneus juniperi, has very similar stripes, but a much rounder body, like a gourd or water melon.  It was incredibly shy and nervous, and of course I had no idea if it was friendly to humans or not, so I was hardly going to pursue it further - but even with a pretty good image, I can't find anything that looks like it on line.  Of course, in fall, I end up labelling everything that I don't recognize an Orb Spider, but that seems a bit of a stretch, this time.

a quiet Saturday evening

- the early part of which was spent on Alice's bed watching volleyball streaming from Florida.  Not a good day for Alice - it's true what they say - chemo treatments #s 5 and [I'm projecting to next time] 6 might carry with them the promise that you're reaching the end - but on the other hand, their after-effects suck, bigly.  I'm sure she would have cheered up a little if USC (ranked 7!) had beaten the unranked University of Central Florida.  But, whatever: we didn't block at all well, and our passing was patchy, and and and.  Moth (watching Cindy Marina serve, here), was both glued to the screen, and horrified by our performance - as well she might have been.