Dangermond.org

I was thinking a lot tonight about what it means to have integrity and whether it is valuable.

I asked someone today to describe what their daily life looked like because I was trying to see if by visualizing what my daily life looks like and comparing it to what his looks like that he could make a quick assessment. I told him to keep to the working part of it. Is it me or has the world changed enormously in the last few years? Because my life doesn’t seem to have changed much from a work-a-day perspective, my daily life today looks pretty much the same way it did 8 years ago, only I’m wiser, more experienced, but not really calmer, no more certain, and not in any fashion am I behaving eel-like.

The other morning, I rolled over and before I could say good morning, T said, “I know today is go, go, go.”

May 21, 2008
Taurus (4/20-5/20)
You have been intrigued by someone from a different culture for quite a while now, and today will give you a wonderful opportunity to get to know them better. You can charm them in a way that no one else can. Conversations often make the best education, so settle in for a long chat with this person. You will have a lot of questions for them, but they are likely to have just as many questions for you. Learning how different people live their lives can help improve how you live yours.

Today hasn’t been an EEL day for Flower EEL or Wise EEL – only Queen EEL is living the high life, albeit a somewhat reduced version as she is in jetsetter mode again. EELs watch Eurovision – right now they are in round one and the clip below is the Israeli contestant singing a prayer for love.

I went by my mother’s yesterday to bring her some Turkish cookies. Jake couldn’t wait to get there because he knew once she had seen the box of cookies, he’d finally be able to get one. When we got there, a young Hispanic man was sitting in a chair under her stairs reading a Spanish novel aloud. It struck me as the oddest thing – he was intent on what he was reading, almost like it was a prayer book, but it wasn’t – he was saying things like, “Y ella lo miro y….,” some steamy Spanish romance.

People used to read aloud – reading to yourself is a rather modern phenomenon. Still I can’t imagine visualizing while reading out loud – even though I love to hear someone read to me – I miss that about school – listening to poetry – to passages from novels where each word falls heavy into each sentence and forms an idea, impression, or image never known until that moment.

My mother said who would have told the story this way – Loca is scared of Bam Bam? But that is what is going on around here. Today we shared the same space, Loca on an leash of course, and distracted by food in her dish, but Bam Bam didn’t come cruising across the room to beat up on Loca. Arlene is an innocent bystander – they’ve learned to move through the same space with distance.

Our routine in the morning has expanded – this one gets fed, before this one comes out of the kennel, that one gets walked, before this one gets fed. It has its own rhythm.

Target Sucks!
Backstory: shorts bought on Saturday for $17.99, no receipt because a friend got them for me.
Scene: Clerk says she can only give me $12.99 for the shorts, I cannot exchange them because the price has gone down to $14.99, but they are running a special later in the week for $12.99, so that is all I can get is a $12.99 store credit.
Redemption: None! Target sucks – I tell clerk I won’t shop there again – she says she doesn’t care.

GNO Cyclery Clerk Sucks:
Backstory: friend picks up bike shorts in my size but they don’t fit, have receipt, but no tag.
Scene: Clerk says no way we can do anything for you because you took the tag off. Sorry. Gives me a look like I’m a piece of shit even though I spend money there all the time.
Redemption: Female clerk walks up and says can I help you? Takes shorts, gets me new shorts, same price, she says, even exchange. I’ll shop at Bayou Bikes even though second clerk was human.

Dina’s Alterations – Not a clerk but an angry seamstress. Why is she always so angry?
Backstory: taking two capri pants to stitch up moth holes, ambivalent about going to this seamstress down the street because she’s so mean.
Scene: Mean woman says “why you want to fix these pants, cost you $5, not worth it.” I said I don’t care if it cost $5. She gets angry, says, “they no last.”
Redemption: She clucks a couple of times, and says she’ll do it. Hates me, I can tell.

Jammeh said he will cut off the head of any homosexual that comes into his country in an effort to rid the world of homosexuality. Stupidity knows no bounds.

It’s Loca who is now worried about Bam Bam.

I was trying to teach Jake how to say words that start with S – I was teaching him what my father taught me because I too had the same problem. I went around saying “pagetti” and “neaky” and “top” for a long time till my father said to just say s then the word – so it was s pagetti, then s neaky, and then s top. It worked. While I was going through a repertoire of words that start with s and how to say s first before the word, Jake was trying to tell me about R’s bat mobile and I couldn’t hear him, so he thought I didn’t know how to say it, so he said, “Repeat after me, bat – mo – bile.”