Syllabus #83

What's going on in your world?  Anything joyful or exciting?  Or has 2020 continued to surprise and delight you right down to the very bitter end?  That's what it's trying to do over here.

Last week we had some outgoing mail stolen.  I actually watched it happen, and was so confused about what I was witnessing that I didn't fully process what happened until the thief was back in his car and driving away.  Unfortunately for my neighbor but luckily for me, the guy hit both of our mailboxes and she happened to see him, too.  

After she came over and we had a brief exchange of "Can you frigging believe this shit," I knew I wasn't having some Rear Window-style hallucination from too much time locked in my house.  Validated, I called the non-emergency police line like a goddamn Karen.  The rest of the day was a blur of too much time spent on the phone filing a police report and contacting the bank to get a new checking account.   Now I have no checks so I hope I don't owe anyone money!  Y'all take Venmo?

But wait, there's more!  Changing my direct deposit information for work kinda fucked up my paychecks.  I mean I'll still get paid but it's going to be a hassle for a couple pay periods.

Andplusalso, our kitten's butthole is falling out. 

That isn't entirely accurate, but we sure thought so for a minute.  See, and this is TMI, she's had various intestinal issues since we adopted her from the cat rescue, because she had picked up a parasite from one of the other cats there.  We thought we had it all sorted out after a few vet visits and various medications.  Between our three animals, it's gotten to the point with this vet where, when I'm sitting the parking lot during the no-contact appointments and they call to collect payment, I'm like why don't you tell ME my credit card number, YOU SHOULD KNOW IT BY NOW.  

At any rate, the other day, I found myself reading my 16-digit card number over the phone yet again, rendering payment for a vet tech to shove her fingers in my cat's anus.  Her glands needed to be expressed, badly, because her poop has been too soft to uh, milk her anal sacs, according to what I learned from PetMD.  I wish I never had to type that phrase.  Milk her anal sacs.  Forgive me.  So tiny kitty had adult human fingers in her teeny tiny poop chute, and we are modifying her diet to firm up them shits.  We thought all was well.   

A few hours later, conveniently 30 minutes after the vet closed for the day, we noticed that her anus was livid red and bulging outwards in an alarming fashion.  Then a poop just fell right out of her when we picked her up.  So we put her down.  And Freaked. Out.  We love this cat so much and she is the one tiny pinprick of joy in this entire dumpster fire of a year.

Luckily, our friend who is a very patient vet tech accepted a disgusting, NSFW text of a kitty balloon knot and talked us off the ledge.  And today, that little brown eye is nearly back to normal.  Waking up to the joyous discovery that my kitten is not suffering an anal prolapse is the best thing that's happened to me all month.  

You'd look a little surly too 

It's entirely possible that I share a link every week with just the comment, "Well this is devastating," and who am I to argue with tradition?  

WWFPD, y'all?  What would Finnish People do?  That's what I ask myself when I'm trying to stay warm, eat pickled herring, and dust every food with cardamom.

Holiday dispatches from the 1918 pandemic.  Ho ho hold my barf pail.

We got a whole generation of toddlers who will grow up to be as socially awkward as me!  

Analog Reading:

How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi.  It's good, it's very good.  It's a lot to digest so I'm reading it slowly.

When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole.  Sweet Fancy Moses, you guys.  I stayed up until almost midnight one school night, plowing through this book.  I know I'm a snob about what I read, and don't usually gravitate towards thrillers, but I definitely want to check out some of Cole's other books.  Just, holy shit.  The thing is, while this book was wildly gripping, packed with entertaining dialogue, and expertly paced for maximum suspense and questioning of characters hidden secrets and motives, the plot was devastating.  It follows Sydney Green, a 30 year old Black woman living in a historically Black neighborhood in Brooklyn that is being aggressively gentrified, which turns out to be...an understatement.  The true horror, though, is that while certain plot elements towards the end take a hard turn and become a little too far-fetched and not really in keeping with the realistic tone of the first 3/4 of the book, the premise is an utterly realistic representation of the horrors wrought on Black communities by racist power structures.