A cowardly, anonymous, individual hurls a vindictive, obscene, insult at me, but, after surveying the bigger picture, I find comfort in my afternoon coffee; a cat forces me to take a break

When you blog, you know that sooner or later, some cowardly, anonymous, person lacking the guts to even identify him/herself is going to slam you bad, hit you with an obscene insult - even call you a dumbass. Well, it happened to me today, on my walk.

Remember that car that I found stuck in the snow two days ago? It's still stuck in the snow and someone took advantage of that fact to scrawl an insult to me in the mud stuck to its doors.

I wonder who this person was? What did I write that upset him/her so?

I reject this criticism. I'm not the dumbass here. Whoever wrote this - that person's the dumbass. 

It isn't too smart of the owner to leave this car sitting here for days, either. I've seen a lot of cars lose all their windows and get trashed this way.

Of course, that's assuming that the owner left it here. There are other possibilities.

I had hoped that I would meet someone to photograph on my walk today, someone who could tell me an interesting story, but I saw only person my whole walk. That was a jogger, and he crossed an intersection more than half-a-block behind me.

If I hadn't have turned around at just the right moment, I wouldn't have seen him at all.

I didn't even see a dog.

That's mighty unusual.

I did see a squirrel, dashing through these trees, too tiny to show up in a photograph.

Given the time of year, that seemed a bit unusal, too.

And I saw a few ravens, but none came close enough to get a decent photo.

Later, as I drove Margie to get a burrito, I saw a surveyor, through the dirty windshield of my car as I came to the four-way stop at Lucille and Spruce streets.

Some of you who visit here have been reveling over the fact that it is colder where you are right now then it is here. You might want to pay attention to this guy - particularly his feet.

Those are bunny boots that he is wearing. If you are going to be out for awhile and you can find some, they will keep your feet warm.

But if you wear them for several days in a row and you are in the cold all the time, then their linings will become saturated with sweat and the cold will gradually penetrate and freeze that sweat and then these boots will become pockets of frozen hell.

So if you are going to be out for days on end, what you want to do is have two pairs of boots, so that one is always drying out.

"Bill! Yesterday... where were you?" Carmen asked sternly after I pulled up to the window. You will recall that she closed the Metro Cafe down for four days over the New Year's weekend and that she had expressed great fear that I would abandon her for another coffee house.

And then, yesterday, Margie took the car to Anchorage so that she could return Kalib to his parents, so I had no transportation.

"You could have walked!" Carmen said. "You always walk."

And it's true. Metro Cafe is only two miles from my house and I could have walked.

"Yeah, but I have to listen the NPR news on the radio at four," I defended myself. "I can't listen to it if I'm walking."

"You can get one of those things and put an earphone in your ear," Carmen said.

Well, she had me there.

She told me that she was having an open house at 7:00 and that a candidate for governor was going to be there. She told me I should come by, take a few pictures, but I had to decline, as I had too much work to do.

"You work all the time, don't you," she said.

"Pretty much," I said.

That's Rhonda who was serving the coffee so Carmen could prepare for the open house.

You will recall that I had a proposal that I had planned to spend the three-day New Year's weekend putting together - a proposal that could make a significant difference in my life, or could eat up three days of my time for nothing.

I barely managed to touch it all weekend long, for reasons already explained.

So after I got up yesterday, I said, "I can do it in one day."

I then worked into the wee hours and realized I couldn't. (In fact, it is the wee hours again. Today is over, tomorrow has already come, but it still feels like today.)

So, this morning I said, "I can finish it up today."

Late in the evening, I was working furiously on it, when Pistol-Yero positioned himself by the keyboard, making it very hard to work.

"Get down, Pistol-Yero," I said.

So Pistol-Yero got down - onto my lap. He forced me to take a break.

And now, at this very moment, another cat, the black one, Jim, has just stepped onto my lap and I am forced to reach around him just to put my finger-tips on the keyboard.

I guess I am done for the day.

Tomorrow, I will finish that project. That will be three days - just like I originally planned for, just three days later.

I yield to exhaustion

This picture is from yesterday, not today. Today was sunny and I took some sunny pictures, but am too fatigued to transfer them from the camera into the computer.

Early this evening, after taking a ride in the car going nowhere but back home again, I helped Margie take a seat on the couch and prop her injured leg up on an ottoman. Then I sliced an apple and a pear into a bowl, sat down, placed the bowl between us and shared the fruit with her as we watched the local news.

It was my intent to then come out here, read through my unposted, final Inauguration entry, see if it made any sense and, if it did, post it.

But as I ate my fruit, the tabby cat Pistol-Yero climbed onto my knee and then spread himself out across my lap. I did not want to disturb him, so I stayed put as CSI-New York came on. I figured that I might as well watch it so that the cat could get some needed rest, as he had only gotten about 16 hours sleep so far today. I repeatedly closed my eyes and opened then again to see how the story had progressed and then one time I opened them only to find that the program had ended without me knowing how. For A Few Dollars More had taken its place.

The cat still dozed. I could not budge him, nor could I budge myself. So I stayed put, opening and closing my eyes until Clint Eastwood drove off in a wagon filled with the corpses of the 27 bad guys he and Lee Van Cleef had just killed.

The cat was gone, but another, the black cat, Jim, had taken its place and now snoozed soundly.

I did not want to disturb this cat either, but I knew I had to take action before The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly began, for I could not allow myself to be pulled deeper into spaghetti, but the movie began instantly, and who can get up once those images flash onto the screen, accompanied by that sound track?

Not me. No way.

And the black cat was sleeping. On my lap. There was nothing I could do but sit there and doze in and out as people murdered each other onscreen and then got justifiably killed.

My trip, and all that we have been through, has caught me. I am exhausted. Fatigued. Too exhausted to read my final inaugural post. It will have to wait.

It doesn't matter. The Inauguration is history. Even if I still remain behind, on the National Mall, as President Barack Obama is sworn into office, the world has moved beyond that glorious moment into the myriad of crisis that beset us. Part of solitary me wants to remain there forever, in the midst of two million people, because that's how wonderful it was.

So maybe I will take forever to finally post the final post. Once I put it up, the experience is truly over.

Cats meow at me, 

begging to be fed. 

I must feed them, 

and then go to bed.