Last week was my summer vacation, the only week until Christmastime when I don’t have one or six classes running.
Here’s what I did:
- Deep cleaned the downstairs, including taking every single Simpsons piece off the shelf and dusting it.
- Appeased my neighbor, while upsetting the cats.
Several months ago, a neighbor asked me to keep Thoth inside. He sometimes poops in her garden. He’s friendly, so he likes to say hi, which is why she thinks it’s him.
I’m not saying it’s not him, but the neighbor thinks Thoth is the only cat who ever goes into her garden, which I find hard to believe. We have many strays in this neighborhood. And unlike Thoth, who approaches every human, the strays don’t like you to watch them use the toilet.
We’ve been keeping Thoth inside for over twelve hours a day, encouraging the neighbor to spray him, to use cayenne, etc.
She sent a message recently to ask if we’d walled him completely off yet. In the last three months, she hasn’t seen him, but there’s been poop in her garden once.
Once.
In three months.
So I paid hundreds of dollars last week to have a task rabbit guy come into my house and put up chicken wire around the patio fence. Thoth is like a velociraptor in Jurassic Park. He’s testing the fence, finding the weaknesses. And he has found one, which we have to fix somehow.
He’s also crying and pouting. He really loves saying hi to the neighbors, which I know cause they text me from blocks away to say he’s hanging out with him and that he’s wonderful.
He’s beloved in the neighborhood, except for that one neighbor.
- I got myself a present.
A decade ago, when I lived in a place with a yard, I had a hammock, and I loved it.
I don’t have one now. Instead, I have a few feet of dirty concrete surrounded by chicken wire.
But I bought myself a hammock, and the redwoods give a lot of shade. Lying on it with me has been the only time Thoth is happy in the last few days.
Now that home is home, the office, the classroom, the restaurant, the gym, and cat prison, there might as well be a work hammock.
- I got a Covid-test, treatment for my bursitis, and an endoscopy. The third thing took way too long, and took too much out of me, and my hand is still terribly bruised, but as least all the tests were negative.
- I judged Prized Writing essays, I answered emails, I did some last minute prep for the class that started this week.
- I watched Keith Lowell Jensen’s stand-up.
- I saw my seniors do their stand-up comedy send-off fundraiser. And felt so proud I got teary-eyed.
- I made ribs three different ways. (Chinese-spiced sticky ribs were the best.)
- I let myself have the night off from cooking on Sunday.
- I anticipated my very first CSA basket ever, from the UCD Student farm, which I picked up yesterday.
