Charlie Boy

Here he is, begging me to let him in the house, this time knocking on the window instead of just peeking.

Here he's saying he stopped to smell the roses, one very big rose, that is. "You stop, too," he says.

Charlie wants to tell you Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. "Feliz Navidad," in Spanish. "Meowie Christmas," in kitty lingo.

Peekaboo Charlie

There he is, asking me to open the door and let him in. Anytime I'm at my computer and Charlie is on the patio with the door closed, he stands on a chair and gives me that look, "Hey, Dad, I'm out here all by myself and I want to come in." So I go to the door and open it and he just looks at me but will NOT come in. We play that game four or five times and then he'll relent and trot in. "Ha ha, Dad, gotcha again."

Dreamland

“To sleep, perchance to dream,” Hamlet soliloquized. For me there’s no “perchance” about it. For the past month or so I’ve been dreaming what seems like all night—long involved dreams. I wonder why all of a sudden I’m dreaming these lengthy, complicated things. None of them are even close to being nightmares, just surprisingly complex. Sometimes I’m much younger, like back to my twenties, sometimes about forty, rarely my actual age. I try to remember them long enough to write them down but I never get around to it, and then they’re gone, like wisps of memory. Over the years my dreams have had recurring motifs. I seem to dream often about having two or three cars, never very good cars, and I always seem to have misparked them and when I look for them they’re gone, stolen. My most frequent dream involves golf. Most of them are negative in that I’m always losing my ball, or finding a bunch of balls none of which are mine and most of which are lopsided or squishy soft. Often I find my ball in a place that makes it nearly impossible to hit it, like up against a tree or some other obstruction. And often it’s either late in the evening or even at night, and I go out in the dark. And the fairways are often dark and heavily treed and crossed by deep gulleys. See, not pleasant golf associations. Rarely, I dream that I’m swinging really well and the ball is going straight and true. Much more often I’m hitting into trouble. Golf dreams, or at least golf mixed in, make up at least a fourth of my nightlife. Another dream thread involves my college attendance. I dream that I never quite get around to getting a degree, that I’ve skipped classes too often and sometimes never consulted with my major advisor, and I always feel so guilty about it. Dreams about New York City recur about once a month. Almost always there’s a section of the city I really like, with bookstores and large department stores where I can buy stuff I really like, mainly books. But there’s also a dark side I either have to drive through or walk through and it’s a section inhabited by really bad people. Always, the way home or back to where I’m staying is to the west, either by car or by bus or by rail, sometimes on foot. Sometimes I dream that I’m in a large store with many rooms and sections I have to make my way through, sometimes a series of apartments or hotel rooms that go on and on. And sometimes I dream of a girl/woman whom I’ve engaged somehow (by dates or by proposals of marriage) and I’ve neglected to call her or see her and I always feel so guilty about it. That smacks too much of my real life, leaving friends and acquaintances and girlfriends behind, neglecting to hang on to them. Then there are all the teaching dreams. I have one of these every week or so. Some of them are pleasant, involving teaching in a classroom of attentive students and really teaching them something. But mostly they involve facing a roomful, and I mean a room “full,” of inattentive students who want only for the bell to ring so they can get out of there. Nothing ever violent, just that awful feeling of futility I used to get when I couldn’t get anyone to listen to me or pay any attention to my shouted instructions for quiet. In some of them I was in my last year before retirement and I couldn’t wait to get out. Or sometimes I’ve been rehired for a year or so after my initial retirement and again I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Anxious dreams. This morning I woke up directly from a dream in which I was in a narrow stall of some kind, using a hose to scrub off either the walls of the stall or myself. I was naked from the waist down and a woman attendant seemed to take great pleasure in looking in to see how I was doing, and I was equally pleased to have her look in at me. When I got done I was suddenly dressed again and about to leave. Then I realized I still hadn’t paid her the fee. When I reached for my billfold it wasn’t there and I was just positive it had dropped out when I took my pants off. So I searched around and found a tattered brown billfold that belonged to a young girl who was there. And then I discovered that my billfold was in my back pocket, that I had simply felt in the wrong place. And I showed the woman attendant where I had reached on my left buttock to find my billfold. I paid her with a $17 bill. I mentioned that to a marine who was there and he said, oh yes, he got those all the time, and then he took one out of his billfold. It was square, light tan and blank on one side and on the other, in red ink, it said “Paid in Full.” I asked him why he still carried it if it was already paid and he said, in the service, he had to carry it even though it had been paid. I then left and he and the others wished me a good day and I said it wasn’t so good. The wind was just howling through the trees. But later on I was going to take the train to Paisano City to visit an old friend who lived there not far from the train station. What a curious world our dream world is. Maybe that’s the reality and this waking world is only a dream.

Déjà vu Death

I feel so strange today. I keep having déjà vu moments, like an itch at the back of the brain. I keep thinking about death, but not really thinking about it, just this strange feeling that I’ve felt this before. Rosalie is working. The cats are sleeping. And I’m here at the computer, listening to Ian Shaw sing strange songs, watching the trees bouncing around in the wind out my back window. The sun is shining, the temperatures are unusually low, and it feels more like a fall day than a mid-September day in the Valley. And there it is again, that feeling of death in the air. I’m feeling my age more and more lately. I keep remembering all the people I’ve known who've vanished. My mother and father, my sister Helen and my brother Dick. The many people I used to golf with here in Sun City West dropping away. The actors and actresses who were my favorites, the writers I’ve admired. I think about Bill Pilgrim, my old friend who left me and this earth when he was only thirty-eight. I think about Chuck Cavallero, my old music-writing buddy whom I left over fifty years ago, who fell to cancer ten years ago, news I had to find out via the internet. William Cullen Bryant’s “Thanatopsis” all over me:

“So live, that when thy summons comes to join / The innumerable caravan which moves / To that mysterious realm where each shall take / His chamber in the silent halls of death, / Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, / Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed / By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, / Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch / About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.”

I still have so much to do and my time is running out. I need to shake off this odd, oddly painful feeling that the season is dying, that I’m dying along with it. I need to shake off Bryant’s “drapery” and get on with my life no matter how little I have left.

Wound Report

What a lovely day in Arizona, no valley of the sun today, just nicely overcast skies and cool temps. And it will stay this way for the rest of the week. We love it, Charlie loves it because he can now spend as much time out on the back patio as he wants. He likes to keep a wary eye out for the coyotes. He doesn’t quite know what they are, but he knows he should be wary.

I saw my surgeon today. He wanted to see how the two holes in my left calf were doing. He was happy to report that both were doing well, that my 3-year wound seemed to be entirely healed. I was happy to hear his report. I felt so good about it that I went to the golf course and hit balls to see if I could still do it. I’m happy to report that I could. They aren’t going as far as I’d like them to, but I was at least able to hit them in the air and fairly straight. Now I’ll be able to get back to the game as soon as it cools off a little more. It will be very nice to get out of the house again. Rosalie thinks it will be very nice to get me out of the house again.

Quick Weekend

Another weekend rushed by me and here I am on another Monday. The Diamondbacks continute their downward spiral and thankfully have less than twenty games to go. The Cardinals won a nail-biter to start their season. Rory won another tournament in not quite a runaway but at least a rapid trot. Tiger continues to play well but not quite well enough on weekends. And Charlie got his first look at some coyotes that pranced through our backyard. He wasn't too impressed, just some big dogs with extra-long ears. These are the same three coyotes that regularly pass through trying to scare up a rabbit or two. They must be siblings and are large enough to scare me as well as any unlucky rabbit. But not Charlie. He doesn't know any better.

Memoires & Isaac

Ah, yes, memoires and memories too often can be enlarged either deliberately or unconsciously. And no matter how much we try not to, we tend to inflate those moments and happenings in our lives. Maybe not as large as a whale, but certainly bigger than a minnow. I tried very hard to get my memories and moments right, to preserve them for my own sake as well as for my children and their children. I’ve said before how much I regret that my dad didn’t do the same for me and my siblings. His early life would have been very interesting, and I miss that connection with him. Maybe next time.

Isaac seems to have moved sluggishly north and wasn’t as strong or devastating as the weather people were forecasting. That’s good. Still, that’s a lot of water to deal with from the rain and storm surges, lots of people flooded out again. I still wonder about people who keep building and rebuilding in flood zones along rivers and ocean coastal areas. I guess that’s their business, but when they expect state and federal disaster funds to bail them out, it’s partly my business. I don’t agree with the dispersal of such funds and especially don’t agree with how much of those funds is wasted on incompetent, bureaucratic mismanagement. We’ll see what the totals are in a few weeks.

Charlie & Squeakie

I know, I know. It’s like the new parent who just has to show everyone pictures, telling them he’s got the most beautiful, smartest, cleverest child ever born in this world, and the pics come out in an endless stream like photos from a very large steamer trunk. I guess in this age of instant video, it would more likely be cell phone videos of this oh so bright and wonderful child. Well, Charlie is, he really is, the most astounding, clever, different, wonderful cat ever born in this world. He really is. Just look at all my pictures. From what I’ve read about Cornish Rexes, he’s probably not a pure-bred Rex, ears too small, coat not quite as rippled. But like any bastard offshoot, he’s probably better than the puries—tougher, less effete. He has all the other characteristics, though. He’s a born gymnast and should be going to Rio in 2016. And he could probably make the US soccer team from the way he can foot-bat his stuffed mice around. He seems to sleep less than other cats I’ve known, spending much of his time underfoot or watching to see that we don’t go anywhere without him. And he’s decided he most loves our screened-in back patio where he can lounge around or sit on one of his various perches to watch the backyard critters perform for him.

And earlier and earlier, he now wants someone—me—to get up and open the back door so he can go enjoy the patio in the dark of night. At first, it was 6:00 a.m., then 5:00, then 4:30. Last night it was 2:00. I held out for fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes of his leaping onto the bed, landing stiff-legged on my stomach or back to let me know it was time. But one can only take so much of that. So I got up and opened the door for him. At 4:30 he returned to his leaping to tell me he wanted some company on the patio, to tell me to get up and join him. I didn’t. He gave up.

Enough of Charlie. What about the elder stateswoman of the house, our 14-year-old Squeakie? Do we totally ignore her? Certainly not. She’s still our darling, just not as eager to run and play as Charlie is. But she had her moments in the past. See, see, you wanna see some pictures?

-Ologies

Last week I was scheduled to confer with a urologist about my elevated psa count. According to my primary, the count had gone from 3.6 to 5.2 in the year since it was last checked. Not an alarming high at 5.2, but the rise in one year was a warning flag. But then I had my blood checked again and the count was 2.8, lower than it had been a year ago. Go figure. So I cancelled my date with the urologist. He'd have been my eighth specialist seen since my medical world came tumbling down, my eighth “-ologist.” About the only one I’ve missed is a proctologist. But then, most doctors have a secondary specialty in proctology, shoving their too-high bills up our rectums. And tomorrow I’m going in for a colonoscopy, my last ever, I hope. I wonder what “-ology” is on the end of the specialist who conducts colonoscopies. So I go to the internet and find out. Amazing what information is available on the net. Usually, it’s a gastroenterologist who does colonoscopies. That would make my ninth “-ologist.” I’m not looking forward to it. I guess I might be looking backward to it, considering where they’re going to stick their camera. Many years ago, right in the doctor’s office I remember having what was called a rigid sigmoidoscopy. Oh, my, was it ever rigid. It was an examination of the first part of my colon, as far in as the rigid scope could go, and was it ever painful. At least they now put one peacefully to sleep for the modern version. So, today, at 4:00, I begin to drink four liters of my prep stuff, a little more than a gallon, eight ounces every fifteen minutes. That means about eight glasses in two hours, punctuated with rapid flights to the commode. Just one joyful medical experience after another.

Movie Memories

Films have been such an important part of my life. I know in my September and November years I've been going to a lot of movies. But, in fact, I've always gone to a lot of movies. And remembering the oddest things about them. I can see Gary Cooper in Sergeant York licking his thumb and then transferring spittle to his rifle sight, giving his little turkey call, then picking off Germans who stick their heads up to see what’s going on. I can see that unpleasant bar where Ray Milland lost himself in Lost Weekend, but even more vividly I can see the shadow of the bottle he’d hidden in the overhead light fixture in his hotel room. I can see Alan Ladd and Van Heflin laboring over that tree stump in Shane. Also the shootout in the bar with nasty Jack Palance. And the final scene with Brandon De Wilde calling out to the receding horse bearing the wounded Shane into the setting sun, “Come back, Shane! Come back!” I still shudder when I remember that final scene in The Innocents, when Deborah Kerr kisses the dead boy Miles. You must remember, films in 1961 didn’t take up such issues as sexual relationships between adult governesses and their young charges. The shocked silence as we all exited the theater was memorable. I remember the acknowledging salute his pursuer gave to Cornell Wilde when he successfully escaped him in Naked Prey. I can still see that open book flipping its pages in a ghostly breeze in The Uninvited. Other odd remembrances involve the audience rather than the film itself. Sometime in the Fifties, I was seeing Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and midway, a guy several rows in front of me, issued the loud and surprised comment, “Oh, he’s im-PO-tent!” You had to be there. Another time, Rosalie and I were attending a high school play, and someone in front of us was telling a seatmate how much he liked the music from "Guy Guy" (Gigi). Such silly things to remember. I’ll probably think of a bunch more now that I’m tuned into this game.

Ho Hum Sunday

Another do-nothing Sunday. Rosalie is at work and I’m watching baseball and golf and twiddling my thumbs. I’m really tired of twiddling my thumbs. What an odd verd—"to twiddle." I’ll have to look it up to see if it works with anything but thumbs. “To toy or trifle with some object,” according to Webster. Okay, I guess you could twiddle rings or buttons or people. Next time you want to confuse someone, tell them you’re twiddling them. Good, the D-Backs just scored five runs in the fourth. Now I can switch over to CBS to see if Sergio can win one. Poor guy. Ten years ago he was going to be Tiger’s competition. Never happened.

This Thursday I’m scheduled for a colonoscopy. Oh, the joy. It’s not the procedure itself, it’s that ugly preliminary. You’d think they’d have found a simpler, less awful way of cleaning one out. Oh well, my doctor assures me this will be the last one. They don’t bother with folks over eighty. Just let the old farts die of colon cancer, I guess. And next month I’m having the rest of my uppers extracted and three of my lowers. I’ll then have a partial on the bottom and a full plate on top. And a radiant smile. And a bite that actually works, unlike this damn partial upper I now have. Now if I can just get the rest of me fixed, life will be better.

The Close of The Closer & Dreams

Oh Brenda Leigh Johnson, how I'm going to miss you. As you would say, "Thank you, thank you. Thank you so very much." Kyra Sedgwick became Brenda Leigh, and I don't see how she can ever go into another role as someone else. But then, I didn't think Ray Romano could either, and he made the transition. Major Crimes can't possibly live up to the standard set by Kyra Sedgwick and The Closer. So, goodbye, Brenda Leigh. I'm really going to miss you.

My dreams are getting weirder and weirder. And so many are only half-awake, half-asleep dreams. Last night I dreamed about Miniver Cheevy. I think I was prompted by my thinking about my old buddy Bill Pilgrim, who, in a letter to me, called me Miniver. At the time I didn't know why he called me that. And then, in my teaching career, I taught the poem "Miniver Cheevy" to my Am lit classes, even had it memorized because I'd taught it so many times. All right, so, in my dream, I thought about Miniver Cheevy, couldn't remember who wrote it, could only remember the first verse. "Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn, grew lean while he assailed the seasons. He wept that he was ever born, and he had reasons." But I kept going over it and over it in my half-dream, half-awake state. At first I thought it was from Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology (an idea which came to me in the dream). That led me to "Richard Cory," which I'd also taught enough to have memorized it, thought it too was from Spoon River. That reminded me of the old Beatles' song "Richard Cory." I remembered the first stanza and the final two lines but not the middle sections. "Whenever Richard Cory went down town, we people on the pavement looked at him. He was a genleman from sole to crown, clean favored and imperially slim." And then the last two lines, "And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head." Over and over and over again and I just couldn't come up with any other lines from either poem. Weird dream. This morning I looked up both poems, "Miniver" (1910) and "Richard" (1897) by Edwin Arlington Robinson, the bleakness, the blackness of both poems the result of hard, depressed times following the panic of 1893. And the closing stanza of "Miniver Cheevy"? "Miniver Cheevy, born too late, scratched his head and kept on thinking. Miniver coughed and called it fate, and kept on drinking." So, I guess my buddy Bill was suggesting I was too much a romantic to be happy living in a starkly realistic world.

Sad Charlie

Charlie is sad, so sad. Tiger looked bad, so bad. Well, not as bad as Luke Donald (+2), Phil Mickelson (+3), Vija Singh (+3), Jim Furyk (+4), or Ernie Els (+5), but not as good as Rory McIlroy, Boy Wonder, or the other nine who finshed ahead of him in the PGA.

Charlie is shocked and open-eyed at all these weekend failures of Tiger's. When, oh when, will his hero return? No one seems to know. Certainly not Tiger. The problem as Charlie and I see it is in his confidence or lack thereof with the putter. Youth assumes every putt will go in; middle age begins to doubt; and old age knows damn well that nothing is going in. Tiger seems to be lacking his youthful optimism, and is beginning to doubt his stroke. Too many pulls and too many pushes, too many mis-reads. Charlie wants to cry.

Charlie Golf

Charlie and I are watching the PGA championship this weekend, and Charlie's decided he's as big a fan of golf as I am. He's especially fond of his big cat buddy Tiger. Here, he's studying Tiger's setup.

And here he's getting a closeup view of his bcbt.

Here he's checking the leader board. "Hey!" he says. "Where's Tiger?" I tell him, "Don't worry, Charlie, your buddy will soon be up at the top." I keep wondering if and when Charlie takes up the game whether he'll swing from the right like Tiger or from the left like Phil. From the way he bats his toy mice around, I'll bet he'll be a great putter.

A Charlie Kiss

Charlie loves the Olympics almost as much as I do. Here, he's even giving Misty May a kiss on the forehead. We were happy to see the two American women's beach volleyballers make it to the gold/silver match. And we're finally finished with all the gymnastics. Good. And now we're finishing off the volleyball and water polo and getting down to track and field mainly. Good. And tomorrow I get to watch the first round of the PGA in South Carolina on that awful Pete Dye course, Kiawah Island. And I'll be rooting for Tiger as I always do. So much to see, so little time.

Olympics, Tiger, & Charlie

I seem to be watching more Olympics coverage than I want to. I've watched all the vollyball (both beach and non-beach--go, you lovely women), all the swimming and gymnastics, water polo, equestrian, rowing, and table tennis. My eye can't quite adjust to the table tennis, though. The camera angle makes it look like they're playing on a table only four feet long. And what about that funny head to the table, almost caressing the ball before they serve. I can't wait for the track and field to begin.

The evil twin Tiger is playing in Akron this week, and the good twin Tiger seems to have disappeared. Furyk is going crazy and Tiger is just going blank. His putting is again so bad he can't contend. Will the good twin show up next week for the PGA? Who knows.

Charlie is almost a year old and has been with us for seven months now. What a joy he is. He no longer has his front claws out when he plays with us or with Squeakie. I guess he now knows how easily he could hurt us. He loves our back patio, and every morning right at 5:00 I'll feel him extend a little paw to touch me on the arm to let me know he wants to go out. So I dutifully get up and open the back door. What a funny boy he is.

A Good Day

What a good day yesterday. My anxiety about the dental plan was unnecessary. They'll do the least expensive plan and it will, in about six months, give me a mouthful of teeth (granted, most will be artificial) and a bite that actually works, unlike what I now have. The D-Backs beat the Dodgers for the second time. The lady gymnasts won team gold for the first time since 1996. Michael Phelps won his nineteenth medal to become the all-time biggest winner of medals. And I don't have any medical obligations for a week. Hooray! A good day.

I've noticed, as has nearly anyone else who's watching the Games, that nearly all the participants are really attractive people. It must have to do with the kind of food these athletes have eaten for their entire lives, the amount of physical training they've been involved in for their entire lives, for the dental work they've all had. They're nearly all really attractive people. Missy Franklin, the Colorado swimmer, only seventeen and still with a year in high school, gets my vote for best all-round person. She's tall and beautiful, personable, intelligent, and totally unselfish for turning down about a million bucks worth of endorsements to keep her amateur status so she could continue to swim for her high school team. Way to go, Missy.

Blogging & Medical News

I just love Non Sequitur. So often it shows reality more real than reality itself. I'm laughing at myself, the blogger who, like the unclothed gentleman in the strip, would resort to a loudspeaker on a streetcorner if I didn't have the Internet.

This morning I went to have not one but two orders for blood-draw, one for my primary, who will see me next week, and one for my nephrologist (the oh so exotic Dr. Rai), whom I will see (I will be looking at her more than she will be looking at me) next week also. And then this afternoon I'm going to see my young student dentist for a deep cleaning and a conference about what plan I would like to pursue for my future dental health. I'm not looking forward to this meeting, since they're going to outline some serious financial plans involving implants and bridges. And I'm just too old to pour a fortune into my mouth. What I'd really like them to do is extract all my remaining teeth and build me full dentures. I could live with that, and I'm sure that wouldn't be nearly as expensive as what they want to do. Oh, these rusty years.

This 'n' That

I read magazines from back to front. Always have, always will. I'm not sure why I started reading them this way. It may be that most of them have interesting editorials on the back page. It may be that the magazines I read regularly, Time and Entertainment Weekly, reserve the back sections for film and book reviews. Does anyone else have this same strange proclivity?

God, it's hot. We've lived here for almost eighteen years, so I should be used to the July/August heat. But this summer it just poops me out. Maybe that's because I'm now eighteen years older than when we first arrived.

Tonight, the Olympic opening ceremonies are on (tape delayed, of course), and I look forward to the whole extravaganza. Even the archery should be intriguing with an armless man who shoots with his feet. This month's Sports Illustrated (near the back, naturally) had a bit about how much technology has created improvements in equipment--new Speedo swim suits that fit like skin to make bodies even more streamlined than in the past and custom-fitted caps and goggles, electronic sensors in socks and vests of taekwondo combatants to register blows, a $15,000 lightning bike for U.S. cyclist Taylor Phinney with an extra-stiff carbon-fiber frame, an electronic timing system for track and field races that can slow down finishes to 2,000 frames a second and even down to a millionth of a second per frame. Whoa, that's slow. There are lots more improvements, but you get the drift.

Gun Control

Three letters that say better than I can what I feel about gun control. This from Nigel Reynolds of Prescott: “The horrific shooting in Colorado will cause people to argue about the Second Amendment and to discuss whether gun control is too lenient or ir irrelevant. Unfortunately, things won’t change, whatever is concluded. Incidents like this will continue. Why do more children drown in backyard pools in Phoenix than in Minneapolis? Answer: There are more pools here than there. Why do these shootings occur in America nearly every year but are rare in Europe? Same conclusion: The number and availability of guns here vs. there. Unpleasant bottom line: Get used to it.”

And this from D. Richardson of Phoenix: “I am a gun owner. To be honest, I’m not even really sure how many guns I own—several, from pistols and shotguns to muzzleloaders. I have a loaded sawed-off shotgun right beside my bed. I call it my last line of defense. All that being said, I see no reason why your average citizen should have an AR-15 with a 100-round drum. Or a 9 mm Glock with a 30-round clip. Or any assault rifle. If you want to own one, have it registered and keep it in a safe at a gun range where you have to check it out and then back in after use. How many bullets do you need to defend your house? Or kill a deer? Or a rabbit? Hunting is legal and needed. When I hunted doves, the law said that I was only allowed to have my shotgun loaded with three shells at a time. Three was always enough. Let the military or the police have the heavy weapons. I’m fine with that. And I’m not afraid in the least that “liberals” are going to take my guns. What is going to cause our guns being taken away are idiots like the guy in Colorado who has such easy access to extreme firepower. Maybe possessing a weapon that shoots more than six times without being reloaded should be a crime drawing a minimum of one year in jail. No exceptions. Just a thought.”

And finally, this from Jeff Rovner of Tucson: “When the U.S. Constitution was written, our nation was bloody from battles and massacres. The government had no choice but to allow citizens the right to bear arms and fight for their lives. Today, fortunately but painfully, we have freak accidents and rare occurrences of homicide. I, a 19-year-old, can walk with bad intentions into a Walmart and walk out with a weapon and ammunition. To the United States government: Make it more difficult than that.”

Letter writers, well said.

Late July

Really humid today with big puffy clouds trying to rain on us, never quite doing it. The monsoon season is about half over, just the rest of July, all of August, and part of September to go. Then – WHAM! – Halloween, Thanksgiving, and here we go again, Christmas. Fleeting time.

I went to the wound center for my every-five-weeks checkup. Matt, my podiatrist, said he thought my hole was looking much improved. I was glad to hear it. Nearly three years. Wow, that’s a long time to be tending a wound. Driving there, I listened to Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring. I hadn’t heard it for much too long. I think it may be my favorite piece of classical music. And our new car is such a joy. A cherry-red Kia Optima. Why did we wait so long to get it? I don’t know. I guess we both once thought we’d live forever. Now we both know better.

After I got home, I went to the Beardsley barber shop and waited patiently for Rose, avoiding like plague the new guy on the end. I made the sorry mistake a few months ago of sitting in his chair. He never met a silence he didn’t feel compelled to fill. I think he may have become a barber just for the captive audience, poor unsuspecting schmucks trapped in his chair and forced to listen to his barber babble. The sign over his chair should read “Babble Bob.”

Haboob, Open, & Bone by Bone

Hot and sticky today after our last evening haboob and thunder storm. Dust storms are so peculiar, this wall of orange stuff moving across the landscape like some big beast about to swallow up everything in its path. And sometimes, if it's followed by much rain, one can find yellow mud everywhere, especially in one's swimming pool.

What an odd conclusion to the Open, with Ernie Els shooting a decent round to win by one over a fading Adam Scott, who shot a final round 75. How sad for a really nice young man. And Tiger just couldn't get anything going, especially after triple bogeying the sixth hole. He finished in fourth at minus 3.

I'm in the middle of a really interesting novel by Carol O'Connell, Bone by Bone. Instead of one of her Detective Mallory novels, this one is a stand alone about two brothers, Josh and Oren Hobbs, one of whom goes missing in the woods when he was fifteen. The older brother, Oren, has returned home after twenty years in the army because someone has been dropping bones on his father's front porch and the housekeeper Hannah has summoned him. A really interesting set of characters.

Introduction

I've decided to start a new blog, this one just for me. Like the tomcat in the title, I'll be able to howl as loud as I want on any subject I want.

The country, the world, is again confounded by what happened in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. What causes someone to do that? What makes otherwise normal human beings as well as misguided terrorists want to kill people, any people or what the terrorists think of as infidels? I look forward to the day when we can fix crooked minds like his before their crookendness lashes out. I don't think it will be like Big Brother infringing on our civil rights. I think we will have then achieved enough medical knowledge to fix all human problems, both physical as well as mental. I won't see that day but I hope my children or their children will.

The wind is up, and the arbor vitae are rocking and rolling. And it's hot. The forecasters keep saying we'll get rain each of the next four days, but they're wrong so much of the time, I won't count on any rain falling. Too often we get virga, a term I'd never heard of until we moved here. Virga is rain that falls but evaporates before it reaches the ground. Sometimes I feel like virga, falling but not quite reaching the ground. That reminds me of my fall when we were in Mobridge. I'd crossed the street in front of Doris's house to sit in the park for a forbidden cigarette. When I came back, I stepped onto one of the rocks acting as park curbing, not a big rock and not very much above the road surface, no more than a foot. But it was set at an angle, tilted slightly toward the road, and when I stepped off, like a dead man, I went down on my left knee and sprawled out, catching myself on both hands just before my head smacked into the asphalt. How stupid. How foolish I felt as I pushed myself upright and checked to see if anyone had seen me fall. Just like the time I was up on a ladder at the back of our house in Lakewood, New York, the ladder foolishly standing on an icy back deck. The ladder slipped backwards on the ice and I came down from eight feet flat on my face. That time I also checked to see if anyone had seen my fall from grace. I was more embarrassed than injured, just like this fall in Mobridge. I had a skinned left knee and two skinned palms, but nothing more serious. But at my age, I could just as easily have broken a hip or knee, broken one or both wrists, or suffered a concussion or even death if my head had hit the roadway. Lucky and stupid , that's me.