Needle rising on the crazymeter

A few updates:

Despite many protestations against being labeled a vegetarian, the tiny wannabe omnivore has stopped lovingly discussing her love of meat so much. She will only eat the occasional bite of chicken (“I tasted it”) and will not even allow beef near her plate (a platter of incoming meatloaf was met with waving hands at school). She needs to taste a fish, she says. But otherwise she mainly picks around the meat of dishes they serve at school, and I think that’s what she wanted to do all along. She eats the salad but eschews the chicken, eats the noodles but pushes aside the chicken, takes the turkey off the sandwich and eats cheese and mustard on bread.

Last night’s bike ride at dusk (my first in nearly 2 weeks because of the diabolical heat) could be described less romantically than in my previous post, as roughly 30 seconds of it involved me skirting down the street screaming at the top of my lungs while a giant dog chased me down snarling until I was finally riding with one leg in the air (I’m trying out for the circus if this teaching thing doesn’t work out). The owners insisted that he’d just gotten out and that “he’d never hurt anyone,” a fact lost both on the dog and me as I stood there shaking it off for a moment (after he found another dog behind a fence to amuse him). I offered to show the owners the scar on my leg that reaches all the way from one side to the other of my calf from when I was previously attacked and that quieted them down a bit. The dog is a dog: I gave him a couple of dog cookies but would have rolled up a newspaper and whacked his knucklehead owners on the nose if I’d had one available.

The kid had me up all of last week (no posting to this blog; too busy drooling face down for up to 3 hours!) with a horrendous cold that left her with dark circles under her eyes and Steven and I weak with worry (when she approaches me and 1) admits she’s tired and 2) says she loves me I worry she might be on death’s door). She hasn’t been sick in a year but ran a fever just in time for Steven to get to stay home while I went to a family event. It was 103 degrees when I left at 4 pm. What a week.

My father finally saw a movie for the first time since his accident. “You must see this movie, it’s absolutely wonderful, it’s funny, it’s just great, really (Steven, who he was addressing), you should see this movie.” Sex and the City. I will leave you with your thoughts.

Descending into pure madness:
Last week during our visit with my father it was 108 degrees, so I suggested an abbreviated outing that would only include Taco Bell and frozen yogurt (the usual stops: I know, I know). Usually we have to visit a pet store as well, and because we were loaded to the gills with air conditioning and frozen yogurt (which is rising like a Phoenix from the flames here in L.A. a decade and a half after it virtually disappeared) we went anyway. Big mistake.

We were there for the usual half hour (*yawwwwn*) where the child climbed on the carpeted kitty towers pretending to be a cat, my father lusted after dwarf hamsters, a snake, a few new birds, you get the picture. Real fun. Finally we exited into the convection oven and we didn’t make it 4 steps before my father spotted a baby bird that had fallen from its nest. Given my history of finding birds and his history of…acquiring them, this was probably inevitable. Back to the pet store to get baby bird food and a syringe. To my father’s credit, he’s kept the little guy alive against all odds (at least if he passes it won’t be from dehydration out in 100+ degree heat).

And then he went to a bird show last weekend, which is akin to taking an alcoholic to the Beer and Distilled Spirits Show. He came back with a new cockatiel, ostensibly for the remaining one, who I warned might not like it. She made good on that offer and by the next day ANOTHER cage entered the house. Can’t keep up? Allow me. Thirteen birds: 2 cockatiels, 1 wild bird, 2 parakeets, 2 finches, 6 canaries. Seven cages. And a dog that still won’t walk on a leash and pees on a diaper when not peeing on the couch.