3/13/2023

There's a fox in the old neighborhood and I am concerned. I fell asleep on the couch then woke up because I thought I heard one of the cats wheezing. I couldn't find anyone wheezing and all the cats were in good health. So I looked out the front door and saw a fox sitting in the middle of the street. "You best not be harassing cats in this neighborhood. All these cats are under my protection." The fox was nonplussed.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw something dark race through the neighbor's front yard, I figured that was a cat, then the fox took chase. Carefully navigating the stairs, my knees and muscle in my left buttock are acting up making me slow, I slowly pursued the fox yelling at him. "You harm a hair on any cat and you are a dead fox" was the long and the short of my admonitions. Eventually I had the fox across the street at a house with no cats, lunged towards the fox to the best of my ability, and then went back inside.
I made sure Leah was fully aware of the vulpine situation, exhorting her to not let the cats out at night nor allow them to stay out overnight. Thomas the Tuxedo and Stormy are at risk and foxes mean fucking business. On the bright side at least there's no coyote.

On Sunday morning I packed everything up, reverted the house as if I was never there, left notes detailing the chores I accomplished for Leah which includes replacing the spotlights for the back yard, and my reward was getting my ticket and parking pass for Summer Isle Burn in June.

Hell yeah.

Then I went to a local cat rescue for my first day of volunteering, Leah was there as well, and I got my right index finger chewed up by a black cat named Chimera but it's all good. The other cat who caught my attention was a very large black cat named Odin who loves being petted, but after a while he began giving me play bites which escalated into bites where Odin positioned his mouth so his rear teeth were doing the biting and it could've hurt as bad as Chimera's bites.

After that, Leah and I went for a walk on the Asbury Park boardwalk. Following that she parked on my street in the 'hood and I drove us to the Blue Swan Diner where she treated me to breakfast for dinner.

Back in my room, I put away my laundry, swept the floor, and had a long talk with one of my friends on the telephone.

Can you believe it? The motherfucking telephone!?!?

an old dream from 3/13/2015

Last night's dream involved me attending my astronomy club meeting. In the dream world, it wasn't an astronomy club but a mushroom club. Bunch of middle-aged and elderly people talking about mushrooms, rather than stars. What kept being brought up was "cryptospora" or "cryptosporidia".

Cryptospora is a type of Brassicaceae, populated by cabbages and mustard plants. Cryptosporidia is a germ that causes gastrointestinal distress.

This critter came on my radar while reading the first few pages of Roy Vincent's Listening to the Silences, an account of his mental illness, feeling presences, and hearing voices.

tl;dr: His bout with cryptosporidia was misdiagnosed as 'chronic anxiety neurosis', leading to hardcore, unnecessary treatments (ECT, insulin shock therapy, benzos, and tranqs) that may have precipitated his schizophrenic symptoms.