Adding Competence to Kindness and a Pledge in Everyday Ramblings

The Willamette river up close and personal on Wednesday.

So much attention has gone to Diego over the last six months and Carlo has been due for a booster shot and check-up so that was the focus of the day yesterday. As Charity helped me take Diego down for the ultrasound, she knew the way to the vet in a town south of here and offered to take me with Carlo yesterday when we were on the above walk.

Also, I think she wanted more cookies. :)

I had made the cookies Tuesday and handed her a small cookie tin full of them Wednesday morning and she had a couple before our walk and approved heartily. She put the tin in her car and when we got home, she got them out, ate a couple more and then looked at me with sad eyes and asked if I would hold them for her because otherwise she would eat them all.

It is the nature of cookies.

I was, as is prudent, unable to go in with Carlo so we waited for the vet to call and wandered around. She notices things I don’t see, like makes and models of cars, we saw one of those $100,000 Tesla’s (yes, it is that kind of neighborhood) and what shoes people are wearing and I notice completely different things like how people move and their posture and class markers.

If you don’t think class is alive and well in America, forgive me for saying, you would be mistaken. It is one of those forbidden things to talk about that get rolled into other “culture war” topics.

Carlo and Diego go to a very high-end vet.

He’s fine. I need to keep checking his weight regularly, but we are not going to modify his food intake because it is more important that Diego puts on weight than Carlo takes it off. They are both on board with this plan.

I do need to give him some medicine in his ears twice a day for 10 days. We need to come up with a schedule for that.

With the disruption of the pandemic these little routine things we used to do in the before-times take on extra significance and are such a relief to get done.

The close call Mrs. Sherlock had with Covid shook her up. She was terrified she had passed it on to her closest people (including me) and concerned about the revisions to her will that weren’t all in place.

Like pretty much everywhere in the U.S. our caseloads here are off the charts and people are dying. Excuse my language but this is some serious shit. The spike now is because of Halloween parties. Really? Sigh.

It makes me slightly crazy that the leader of our country is doing nothing, nothing for the people who are suffering from this awful disease. And all the people who are going to lose loved ones while he fumes and obstructs. It is unconscionable.

The picture of the President-Elect and our Vice President-Elect talking to the big screen with the new expert task force literally made me cry. It has come to this; competence makes me cry.

We have a big storm on the way, and it is not exactly pleasant outside right now. Yesterday, instead of doing the things I need to finish transitioning the yoga classes from pay per class to a subscription model, I went online to the library and ordered 3 murder mysteries in e-book format and then bought a copy of this new historical novel that has good reviews The Eyes of the Queen. My intention is to hunker down, get a few things done and then read.

The next few weeks are my least favorite time of the year. The goal is to get through them without any harm.

The logging of my food intake and sharing my weight is going well, the progress is in the two steps forward, one step back range. I am making better choices but certainly not ideal ones. The trick is to be with what is. And be okay with it.

I am not okay with the spread of the pandemic. This is alarming.

It is like voting, so many people did it for the first time here in this recent election. Wear a mask! Just wear a mask. I am not talking to you all, I am just venting. It is not inevitable that this slide into more cases and more illness and more suffering and death occur.

We each can do this. We each can make a difference.

Today I pledge I will wash my hands, wear a mask when stepping out, stay an appropriate distance away from others and will keep my hands off my face. I don’t think that is too much to ask.

Last updated November 15, 2020