Journal of a Sabbatical

December 27, 2000

vroom vroom

Adopt these cats at Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society

Today's Pitiful Bird List:
Plum Island
northern harrier (1)
American crow (6)
Canada goose (78)
herring gull (3)
I-495
red tailed hawk (3)

Today's Reading: Borgel by Daniel Pinkwater, Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian by Sara Anna Emery

Roy pushes the community litter boxes across the floor making vroom vroom noises like a kid driving a toy car. The clock meows. I know I'm tired and underslept and spent 18 minutes in the drive-thru line at Dunkin' Donuts just to get a small coffee, but meowing clocks and vroom vrooming litter boxes? Is it just me or is this surreal?

Santa brought us a new washer and dryer - much more useful than a meowing clock. It's a big GE washer. I'm sure Stormy is already looking forward to finding out how the GE repairman tastes. Sandy finds fascination in watching the washer fill with water. He's riveted by this spectacle even more than by watching Roy dry the dishes.

There's a new kitten in the office, very tiny and orange (light orange, not like Sandy or Red Head). Lindsey is 12 weeks old but is so small she looks like a miniature model cat. And that white spot on her nose is just too cute. I wonder how Wilbur would take to a miniature orange kitten... no, he's just too possessive of me so I'm stuck with a one cat household. Good thing. too, or I'd become a crazy cat lady overnight.

Maggie's new too, and shy. When I reached down to move the towel away from her face she pressed herself tightly against the bottom of the cage. She's a pretty kitty with longish hair. She looks like a Maine coon. She's so hunkered down that I can't really tell if she's got that characteristic ruff or it's just the particular way she's curled up.

There goes that clock again. I look around to see who it is in such awful distress before I realize it's the clock. I just had this weird idea that we should have the dryer meow when it's done instead of that buzzer that sounds exactly like the smoke alarm. The new dryer isn't hooked up yet, so I don't actually know if its buzzer sounds exactly like the smoke alarm. It's the old dryer that freaks me out whenever anybody turns the buzzer on. Mostly it's off lately so this has not been an issue.

Miss Newburyport got liberated from the sick room already. Her URI is gone but she was in kind of a tense mood when Kendra put her back in her own cage. She sniffed around like " is this my fine house? is this my beautiful wife? once in a lifetime..." then plunked herself down for a nap. I reached in to pet her and she put her ears back. Guess she's forgotten she's in love with me. I guess this means I can stop calculating what my stock price has to be to afford a separate unit for Miss Newburyport.

Rosie came in last week. She's a love. She purrs all the time and loves to be touched and talked to. I don't think it matters what you say, just that you talk to her. Maybe I'll read her some Chinese poetry sometime. Adopt her, please, she's so cute.

Just when I thought we were done with the community litter boxes, I noticed there's one under Ellie's cage. I guess that replaces the one that used to be at the end of the credenza. It's been filled with the evil black litter that turns into cement and sticks to the box on contact with cat pee. Sure enough, I shake it to see if there's anything in it and a huge black litter mountain fails to move. I dump what will come out then scrape and scrape at the cement encrustation until I can't scrape anymore. I put some dish detergent, bleach, and water in it and leave it to soak in the sink for a few minutes. That does the trick. Roy dries it and vroom vrooms it back into its place under Ellie's cage.

As I write this I just heard a car horn beeping impatiently outside so I got up and looked out the window. It's just somebody backing out of their parking space. But Busy Body is out there with a broom sweeping up the sand. She's sweeping the parking lot with a kitchen broom. Not just her parking space, the entire parking lot. Umm, there's still ice under the sand. There is no context in which this is reasonable behavior. She's gotta be off her head.

And now back to our regularly scheduled entry.

After my ritual lunch of a veggie sub at Angelina's while watching live coverage of the Robert Downy Jr. arraignment on CNN, I obtained the ritual much better coffee with a much shorter line. In the time I spent in the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru line this morning I could have driven across the bridge to Newburyport, circled the block twice looking for a parking space, parked in the municipal lot, walked to Fowle's, bought the coffee, walked back to the car, and driven back across the bridge to Salisbury. I will imprint this on my brain so the next time the "but Dunkies is right on the way" thought pops into my head I will override it.

Two girls were standing outside Fowle's pointing at someone evidently moving southwest on State Street - I didn't see the person in question - and exclaiming "That's her! That's her! She's hideous!" Since they weren't looking in my direction, I can safely assume it wasn't me they were exclaiming over. Not like the time I came out of the rest room at Bruegger's and some woman started screaming "Oh my God!". (I never did find out what that was about, but I was fully dressed and unarmed at the time.) Inside Fowle's the folks behind the counter were talking about something that had just happened but I couldn't follow the conversation. While they were pouring my coffee I asked what the two girls outside were yelling about. One of them explained that a woman had just been in the newsstand verbally abusing the 17 year old cashier because she didn't like a magazine that was on display. I gather she lit into the kid pretty hard. Nobody told me what kind of magazine it was but it probably wasn't Time or Newsweek. The yelling girls and the mystery woman were gone when I walked back to my car.

Out on the island, the marsh was 99 percent frozen - very little open water. No ducks to speak of though I think I saw one black duck fly by high over head. Only one northern harrier today. I guess that great northern harrier show a couple of weeks ago was a one time thing. Half way through my drive by birding pass, I suddenly felt so tired I was afraid I wouldn't be able to drive home. There wasn't much bird life visible. The little brown jobbies were all hiding deep in thickets with their feathers puffed up. Only crows and Canada geese seemed to be going about business as usual. This might be the last chance I have to add to this year's Plum Island year list but it'll be more fun next week when everything I see, even starlings and rock doves, qualifies as first of the year.