'Je parvins à faire s’évanouir dans mon esprit toute l’espérance humaine.

Sur toute joie pour l’étrangler j’ai fait le bond sourd de la bête féroce.'

Okay, so, yes, I was lying on the fainting couch, staring at the television, still drinking Champagne (on top of Benadryl, valerian, and melatonin) willing myself unsuccessfully to be as sleepy as I was tired, when the adorable and not-to-be-killed-at-any-cost Vermin made an appearance on the desky-drawery part of the gossip bench, peeking out from behind the vase.

Significant! Now I know his quadrant! His vector! His zone! So I thought strategically and placed his 2 litres of freedom (humane Diet Coke trap) underneath it! Brilliant!

Whereupon a ridiculous thunderclap struck (apparently we're under an Extreme Weather Advisory), the mouse ran and hid, the cat climbed up the balcony/landing/whatever precisely it is, ran through the bedroom, pushed open the door, and leapt onto my chest (which, accompanying the rest of me, had just resumed recumbent position on the TV-watcher's 'couch') in the living room,

and I'm as nonplussed as I was two hours ago --

except that now as part of my campaign of engendering sleepiness I have stared with unassailable vacuity at the Law and Order, or The CSIs, without any idea of what is going on or any ability to care, and now I know he is agile, and thus more or less fine. Well, physically fine: I'm not making odds on anyone's mental state at this point - his, the cat's (who almost immediately after the second roar of thunder gave up his post on me - unaccountably, from what I know of dogs, all of which is manifestly irrelevant here - to take up residence on the 'ottoman'/bench/pillow storage which lies vulnerable and unprotected beneath two windows in the 'dining room') nor, least of all, mine. I just pray that once his psychic scars are healed, the little guy realizes he loves the combination of Diet Coke remnants and Friskies Supreme Supper more than physical safety.

If I knew the slightest bit about rodent or felid behavior all of this would be so very much easier. Like, if I actually owned a cat or something. --Wait...soft...listen: is that the pineal calling? I might actually be sleepy now, knowing that the mouse cannot possibly wake me up crawling around in my mouth... I just want everybody to be happy, to go on about their business, not killing things, not defecating or dying of starvation in my house, and not going for days without sleep for fear of rodents scaling ridiculous 'bed curtains' and camel saddles and ornamental 'bed foliage' only to give me oral or otic buboes or something beyond even my fantastical imaginings. (And I can't imagine what might lie beyond those!)

'Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s’ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient.'

Now, not so much, frankly.

The Best Laid Plans...

Firstly, today was a long, long day. It was the first day the meal program I volunteer at on Wednesdays was having Tent City on the church premises, in theory adding an additional hundred or so people. That many people, it turned out, were not added, since although most of Tent City came, many regulars stayed away, some perhaps fearing we were not up to the task, and others possibly fearing they would be pressed into duty as dishwashers. As we were prepping and cooking, however, we didn't know what number would arrive, so we had to continue with the largest estimate. And we had a very generous donation of salmon. Very generous. And I cooked it all.

Without belaboring the point, one of our cooks had to leave early, we prepped the full amount but served our normal number, I scrubbed three hot flattops within an inch of their lives, accidentally poured vinegar instead of oil on a scalding hot one, and left with hair, skin, and clothes trailing a rank sillage of garlic cream sauce, fish and vinegar.

I felt inestimably cleaner after a long bath, but I was still exhausted. I lay in bed reading, but my eyes kept closing, which I took to mean I needed to go to sleep. Despite my best intentions and concerted effort, that plan fell through, so I went back out to the living room and did some work.

In time the neighbor's cat climbed in through the screen (which I neatly sliced months ago to allow him to escape bad weather) and brought with him a mouse. At first I couldn't tell if he was alive or dead, but it turned out he was living. I ushered the cat into the bedroom and the mouse into a flexible binder-thing for bills and receipts. In my altered state that was Phase One of a dimly-conceived plan which included an ill-thought-out Phase Two involving asking the mouse to go into a cardboard box from there, and a satisfying Phase Three of him doing so. It should, by contrast, have involved picking up the folder, putting it in a cardboard box, walking down the stairs, going out somewhere, and putting down the folder near an attractive stand of trees.

That was a couple of hours ago. I am still awake, now researching 'humane mousetraps' on the Web. All things considered, the one involving a two litre bottle of Diet Coke should seem the most reasonable, if not providentially revealed, choice. Plan B, that of depositing the neighbor's cat in action poses in various spots likely to contain curious mice and a good scent trail, and then nabbing the rodent once thus detected, resulted in little other than odd sounds, blank looks, and all manner of languourous poses from the uninterested hunter.

Now the cat has left, and I have a wild mouse, about whose state of health or recent conjugal activity I know nothing, in my house! I don't want the cat to find him when I am not able immediately to retrieve him, but I also don't want to wake up and find him in my bed. Or on my head, in my bed! I also very much do not want him to die of whatever injuries he might have, and be unreachable yet foul-smelling in some unfindable crevice post-mortem.

Had I only been able to sleep, the cat would have killed him, I would not have known and tried to prevent it, and although it is distinctly, horrifically unpleasant to awaken to a dead animal or bird on the floor, it is, unlike this, a readily, easily, eminently soluble problem...

I hear, yet say not much, but think the more.

Shakespeare, Henry VI, Pt. 3, IV, 1

I was going to get my nails done today, but problematically I took a nap that lasted until 22:30. That also precluded following through on any evening plans. Not that I'm saying I had any. Also not to mention sabotaging any hope of a regular bedtime or waking. Not that I'm divulging what those normally are, or even that I am so rigid as to adhere to a pattern.

I was going to steam the rugs, too. Not that I wish to indicate that I have access to water.

Although I feel a tremendous sense of liberation as to what I can or cannot say now, and while I still hope the point of writing a Personal Weblog in the first place is not having to worry about whether or not one sounds snarky, the fact remains that there will always now be a chill in the air as I imagine someone scrutinizing every post for Signs.

Which of course there aren't. And I sometimes start things and finish them later, and only then try to decide whether they should be dated as 'then' or 'now.' Although I admit that the Blackwater entry was something I encountered that same day I posted it.

No, this won't do. I really don't want this to become a blog concerned solely with the antics of the neighbor's cat and Internet snippets I find amusing or tragic. Or an extended apologia for my belief that there truly is something in between, that I do believe in a middle -- in fact a big, hearty one like the Average American Middle, and that, further, it is in that middle that I imagine most things to reside.

It's just that the middle isn't that entertaining.

For example, today I did not get stuck in any particularly egregious traffic. I missed it, in other words, both coming and going. I was moderately pleased by McCain's moderate success and what it might or might not portend, and likewise mildly bemused by Clinton's lack of the foregone-conclusion landslide. I had the intent to steam some clothes, but was slightly saddened that I had left the water in the steamer too long and came to the mildly disheartening realization that, while agitation with white vinegar inside the chamber helped a bit, a proper cleaning would require the purchase and application of a baby-bottle-sort-of brush, the undertaking of which I with the vaguest sense of resignation felt better left to another day.

I likewise awoke from my tranquil yet perhaps excessive nap with a middling discomfort surrounding the realization that tomorrow I will possibly have a marginally puffy face. This minor regret as regards the conjectured effects of my temporary intemperance in matters of adhering to strict diurnality was offset by the realization that I could simply hold bags of frozen spinach up to one eye with my arm-thigh while using the other eye to assist the fingers of one hand in painting those of the other. If the need to atone for my indolence should arise (understanding that the odds of such an arising are nearly nil), I could strap, if I wished, the bag of spinach over alternating eyes with an aromatherapeuticized silk scarf while steaming the carpets, thus rendering any discussion or internal dialogue as to the effects of my negligible profligacy on either the productivity or cosmetic arenas nil.

In addition, I was suffused by low-grade joy when the neighbor's cat came to call, as well as by his choosing to lay on my stomach. He has not, as of this writing, yet done anything to cause either consternation or ecstatic exuberance, nor has he engaged in any overtly comical 'antics.' He was a bit miffed about the weather, but did not tremble, jump on things, or make unsettling sounds, so pathos, too, is out.

I ate a mostly nutritious dinner but did not go overboard. That is to say, it was at the same time high-fat as well as accompanied by yogurt and the vegetable-seaweed condiment/nutritional powder. It was tasty, but not excessively so. And I ate a shellfish-shaped Belgian chocolate after. I did feel the merest tinge of regret that I neither had on hand a bottle of the sort of wine one would not regret popping open for just one and leaving largely undrunk, nor had sufficient motivation to go to a store and procure just such a mediocre and moderately-priced selection. I then effaced that tinge when I realized that even one glass would likely enhance rather than diminish the sleep-disturbing effects of the long nap, which realization conduced to a subtle relief commingled with a vague joy. When, later, the appropriate dose for my weight of melatonin succeeded in creating the appropriate measure of somnolence at a reasonable hour, I was pleased, but not to an extent that would have adversely affected my newfound sleepiness.

In addition, somewhere in there I bathed, and styled my hair. I did not take an extravagant Bubble Bath, or fill the tub with milk or rose petals, but I did change the blade on my razor, resulting in a closer shave than my last. As I did not use a lot of Products in the styling of the hair, it felt and looked silkier than at other times, but not, it not being four feet long, frighteningly glossy, just moderately, somewhat attractively so. And I chose a black sweater set for the day's sweater set, not out of melancholia, mind you, but because it is a bit thicker, softer, and cozier than some of the others.

See? That won't do. Who cares? I certainly don't; I can't imagine you do, either. But that is the reality of most people's days; most are fairly good, which means fairly prosaic, which means fairly unwritable. I you want something to write about daily life, you must either realistically portray, or exaggerate, or invent some kind of Challenge or Crisis for the hero to encounter and struggle against and sometimes surmount. And Proust, were he here, would no doubt be able elegantly to make my lily-of-the-valley soap evocative of much, much more than cleanliness and nice packaging, and tie it in handily and subtlely with the tiny cheap lily-of-the-valley perfume sets I used to insist, as a child, that I be given when we encountered them in 'gift shops' on family 'road trips' -- but I'm no Proust, and it genuinely felt and smelled simply like a bar of soap to me. There was very little Evocation going on in the bath, very little recherche, very little thought of any sort, frankly, other than 'which leg shall I start with this time?' A question, by the way, which I answered the same way I always do, with 'the same one I always do.'

Hardly worth the paper it's written on.

(Update 06.12.08: Still not, dear.)