Yeah, I'm Just Poetry in Motion

Eric inspired me to set down some of my internship/residency experiences in haiku form. You might notice a pattern. (Okay, a pattern besides the 5-7-5 haiku thing...)

Little Pomeranian
-----------------
Ate sago palm seeds.
Liver fried, no hope for life.
It went home and died.


Barn Owl
-------------
Broken wing all fixed.
Shattered again in flight cage.
And then I killed it.


Great Horned Owl
-------------------
Barbed wire stuck in eye.
Took eye out, but fungus grew.
And then I killed it


Labrador with heart-base tumor
-----------------
Biopsied tumor.
Bleeding, gushing blood, yet lived.
"Sample size too small".


Juvenile Egret
----------------
Out of nest it fell.
Almost every bone broken.
And then I killed it


Okay, on a different note, since nobody believed it was a picture of K-poo that I had (oh-so-skillfully!) superimposed on the dog's head in the last post, I give you the original below.


It's not the best-quality photograph (probably due to bad lighting), but it really is K-poo. So there.

The Mind is a Terrible Thing

So I went to the hardware store to get diatomaceous earth for the garden, and also to get a few other things (like a replacement valve for the sprinklers that have been one hassle after another since we put them in). While I was there I got a wheelbarrow, PVC stuff (purple primer, glue, connectors, blah blah blah), a couple hibiscus plants, and a set of pliers. I had even written a list since I needed more than two things.

So what did I forget? Diatomaceous earth, the very first thing on the list. Sometimes I wonder where my brain is...

The hibiscus plants have been planted in front of the gigantic stump in the front yard. The original plan was that the ivy would grow over the stump and cover it from view. However, the ivy is not liking full sunlight, so the yard currently consists of 1) patches of about seven different types of grass, 2) dying ivy, and 3) bare patches. Some of the bare patches have composted manure heaped on top of the cracking earth. This looks about as good as you'd think it would.

The diatomaceous earth was supposed to protect the last surviving sunflower plant.


Just so you don't think I have a completely black thumb, this is a lavender plant in the garden. The bees love this thing.


And this is what artichokes look like if you don't harvest them. The bees really like these as well.


And finally, K-poo had the temerity to complain about my choice of Spock pictures in the recent photoshopping post. Is this one any better?

"um... the new Spock is hot." (*)

Okay, rvan, are you happy? I have Photoshopped something...very badly, but I've only had Photoshop on the computer for less than an hour.

(*) The title is an email I received from K-poo, in its entirety.

School's out...

... and apparently the kids have nothing to do.

Not a Wise Purchase

We had a thunderstorm last night, a fairly rare occurrence here, and as I was waiting for the thunder-phobic dog's Benadryl to kick in so I could go back to sleep without her panting, drooling, climbing on top of me, and clawing at my face, I was thinking about the differences between the Louisiana shown in the HBO series "True Blood" and the Louisiana where I spent 54 weeks in exile.

- I can understand all of the characters on the show when they talk. Two illustrations of my experience:

1) My next door neighbors had a boy who was in first grade. One day he offered me ("Miss Theresa") a "pay-ya". He repeated it no less than five times before I figured out he was talking about a pear. That's not an accent, that's a speech impediment.

2) At the hospital all of the doctors (and all but one student (who was from out of state)) were white. All of the custodial staff were black. I honestly couldn't understand anything the janitors said. Those guys worked hard, if somewhat ineffectively (eg, they pushed around these huge floor buffers for two hours every morning, but no one ever cleaned the floors first, so there was a fifteen year buildup of dirt and floor wax in all the hallways -- once I found a dead little Mediterranean house gecko that had obviously taken a few turns under the buffer), but I can't see any of them getting another job that required any speaking skills.

- Nobody on the series is driving around while drinking. I used to see people driving while taking swigs out of an bottle in a brown bag. While driving drunk was technically illegal, the police didn't seem interested in enforcing that. Driving in Baton Rouge at night was scary.

On the plus side, it meant that people were used to avoiding the impaired. That worked in my favor as I was driving home one morning on the fourteenth straight day of fifteen-hour overnight shifts. I woke up as my car was going across two lanes of traffic. Nobody around me seemed particularly bothered. The shock of it kept me awake for the rest of the way home -- I was too tired to care much if I lived, but there was no way in hell I was willing to die there.

- Nobody on the series is blaming everything on the hurricanes. I moved to Baton Rouge (which actually didn't have much storm damage) less than a year after Katrina hit. Turns out there was absolutely nothing that you couldn't blame on the hurricanes. "Since Katrina and Rita..." was the start of every explanation from corruption in the government to roads that hadn't been repaved in fifteen years.


On the other hand, the series is about vampires, so maybe they're not really claiming it's all true...

My Inner Child is in Charge of My Diet

It turns out that there's a reason they tell you to make a list before going shopping. This is what I bought this evening when getting groceries for the week:

Easily Justified
-----------------
Lime Water
Almonds
Eggs
Bagels
Cheese
Cream Cheese
Apples
Potatoes
Raspberries
Blueberries

I Could Make a Story For It
---------------------------
Peanut Butter - it's for either the dog or me, whoever uses up her jar first
Frozen Pizza
Diet Coke - just one small bottle



What the Hell was I thinking
----------------------------
1.5 L Jose Cuervo Lime Margarita Mix - There were children in the store
Double Chocolate Brownie Mix - I need my chocolate
Good & Plenty - How can you say no to this odd mixture of crunchy sugar and chewy licorice?
Hershey's Chocolate - I need my chocolate
German Chocolate Brownies (pre-made) - I really, really need my chocolate.

So then I came home and had two German chocolate brownies and a Diet Coke for dinner.

I feel ill.

Thirty is the New Thirty

My baby sister K-Poo turned thirty today, which makes me feel a bit old. Her friend Leslie threw a champagne brunch for her on Sunday in Oakland, so I drove to K-poo's apartment and we carried six bottles of champagne to Leslie's. Here's what I remember:

- K-poo's studio apartment is cute, but small. Really small. The two best points of the size are that she can't possibly accumulate a lot of stuff, and she could cook breakfast in bed for herself.

- The biggest drawbacks of the studio apartment are that she lives on the fourth floor and there is no elevator (which is fine unless you're carrying heavy stuff), and the crown molding stops about one inch from the ceiling. K-poo tried to feed me some line of crap about that being on purpose so you can hang picture hooks from the top of the molding since the walls are plaster, but that would drive me crazy. Just ask her. I spent twenty minutes complaining about it.

- The margarita glasses that I painted turned out well (I think) except for the one on which I tried to paint a J-24. Apparently representational art is not my strong point.

- In K-poo's email, she said that Leslie's apartment was "literally around the corner". Now I'm not arguing that it isn't within walking distance, even burdened with multiple bottles of champagne, but to get there you go out of her apartment, up the hill, around the corner, then down a street that changes names three times before you get to Leslie's apartment. Obviously we have failed to teach the meaning of "literally". I blame the California schools.

- Leslie's apartment is positively spacious compared to K-poo's, which is good since there were about ten people there. Naturally I'd never met any of them before, but I'm such a social butterfly that it didn't matter. No, actually, it was fine, they were all really nice, if young.

- As with every party, I eventually ended up slouching in a corner talking to the gay guys.

- On the way back I remembered why I hate driving into Oakland. Freeway on-ramps and off-ramps are never at the same spot, which means you need to look up how to get to a place, and also how to get home from the same place. I cut the same person off three different times in my quest to get onto the correct freeway since nothing is labeled well and last minute lane changes are the only way to avoid being completely lost. Oh well.

Anyhow, Happy Birthday K-poo!