The other night I also had no idea what to do for dinner & then remembered I'd won a $25 gift card from Pizza House for suggesting the Ann Arbor Fiber facebook page to people. Turned out I couldn't get it delivered along with a pizza it'd pay for, but it didn't seem too much to drive to the South U area for free pizza. (Half pineapple and ham, half feta and tomato, onions all over.) I don't get to the store much with my kitty duties (and the one whose health is of concern), but, lo, there's food anyway. Juli brought me pizza and fettucini the other night.
Today Beth brought in kitten food, and Darla brought in a scale I'm borrowing, for monitoring little guy.
Another line of storms are about to come through. Tornado watch. The map looks like the turbulent weather is queuing up along I-94.
[Here the sirens went off, and the sweaty humid round-up of felines began.]
[thus, it's...]
later
Dang, weather. I was thinking about tornadoes after the touch of earthquake. After taking shelter a few weeks ago, did I spiff up my tornado shelter? No.
I'm been looking back at some Pema C these past few days, after telling
kohkae how somebody (sprig5) sent me a copy of When Things Fall Apart a few years ago. There are videos of Pema online, too, I just found. Today I'm visiting the idea she speaks of of exposing ourselves to annihilation over and over again. But not by not going in the basement.Here's a quotation I sent on to B, found when noodling around to link her to some starting point:
"There is a common misunderstanding among the human beings who have ever been born on earth that the best way to live is to try to avoid pain and just try to get comfortable. You see this even in insects and animals and birds. All of us are the same. A much more interesting, kind and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our curiosity is bitter or sweet. To lead to a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passionate, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is, how we tick and how our world ticks, how the whole thing just is. If we are committed to comfort at any cost, as soon as we come up against the least edge of pain, we’re going to run; we’ll never know what’s beyond that particular barrier or wall or fearful thing."
Lanky gained an ounce during the storm. He seemed to weigh about a pound a little bit ago, after 14 or 15 oz earlier tonight. I just looked at my notes from his weighing at the shelter vet's* on Monday, though, and that said 1 lb. 1.5 oz.
*the vet. :)
At this point I'm chalking it up to the scale's relativity (I did zero it on the conservative side), and planning to watch what it says over the next few days. If it goes down on the same scale, additional measures will be called for. Darla said this scale's not accurate enough for her engineer spouse, who needed a fancier digital one for measuring food ingredients. But this one looks fancy enough to me. And I'm gonna love it if it starts saying Langston's bulking up, or just getting something to cushion his bones a bit, give him a little energy.
I accept, Pema, that there is pain in kittens who have that expression I keep having come to me, the mysterious and terrible "failure to thrive." In whatever variation. I'm trying to prepare not to run from that pain, should it come, without thereby living in anticipatory dread.
Meanwhile we could be hit by a bus tomorrow, as the saying goes, or the earthquake could be much worse, or any number of permutations of que sera.
