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December 31, 1997
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how the weather isThe wind continues to howl. Every once in awhile a snowflake drifts by, but it would be a serious exaggeration to say it's snowing. The power stayed on last night and I stayed asleep until the alarm went off at 7:00. a black hole in Amesburythe quest for dark roastI actually got up at a reasonable hour and would have been on time for work at the cat shelter except that I stopped for coffee at the Amesbury Dunkin Donuts. Bad move. I stood in line for 15 minutes. Maybe 20 minutes - I sort of spaced and went into an alternate reality when the guy in line behind me decided to cut in front of me - like it made a big difference. He complained the whole time about how this is the slowest Dunkies in the world. Maybe it is. Time seems to go into a black hole there. I've noticed that before. I'll be cruising along with plenty of time to spare, stop at the Amesbury Dunkies, and get to the shelter way late. Anyway, I got my Dunkin Dark Roast so I was at least partially caffeinated for washing dishes and litterboxes at top speed. a black hole in Salisburypumpkin's lamentI heard Pumpkin yowling as soon as I got to the back steps. She did not sound happy. Roberta didn't believe I could hear Pumpkin from outside the building, but she's a loud unhappy kitty. Pumpkin took up residence in the bottom left hand corner of the closet - right next to where we keep the clean litterboxes, dust pan and brush, and litter scoops. Anybody who wanted a clean litter box risked antagonizing Pumpkin. Apparently the outburst I heard was her response to Roberta's wanting a dust pan. a digressionDigression: I never heard the brush that goes with the dust pan referred to as anything but a brush my whole life. Roberta insists that it was called a foxtail when she was growing up and therefore, since I also grew up in Massachusetts, I must have called it a foxtail. Brush or foxtail? the litterboxesAnyway, I started washing stuff right away. Apparently no laundry got done yesterday, and some of the sick room litterboxes from yesterday were still waiting also. I was cruising, feeling like I might even be able to keep up. Then I went to the closet for something and noticed someone had peed on the remaining clean litterboxes. The large ones for the group cages. Roberta blamed Jaguar, who was asleep at the time and is terrified of Pumpkin so probably would not have gotten that close to her. The pee stunk. I washed those two boxes immediately and then went back to the rest of the stuff. Somehow I got behind. More litterboxes, more dishes, from every corner of every room. There are 13 cats in the sick room and I swear I washed 26 litterboxes from the sick room. A group of feral cats with ringworm are in a separate cage in the socialization/conference room. Katrina cleaned their cages - for which she had to be fully gowned and gloved. I wore gloves and used bleach for their dishes and litterboxes. For good measure, I used bleach on the sick room stuff too. Normally, I only use bleach for the rabies quarantine room stuff. Nothing seemed to be getting clean. Plastic litterboxes are very hard to get really clean. The cats scratch the plastic, stuff gets embedded in the scratches, bacteria can lurk there despite scrubbing. I can scrub and soak and bleach and still sometimes stains remain. Actually, the hardest box to clean is one of the community litterboxes. It's big and old and very scratched. No amount of soaking helps. I finally decided I should just go to Petco before my next shift and buy a new one to replace it. the laundryThe laundry is taking over the place. The closet was practically empty. The laundry room floor was invisible. To close the window, it was necessary to climb a mountain of dirty laundry. I wanted to take it to the laundromat in Newburyport, but Roberta says the woman who runs that place watches you with video cameras and kicks you out if you wash anything too dirty - like greasy work clothes or apparently, cat shelter laundry. It's the cleanest laundromat in town. No wonder: people only wash clean clothes there! self absorbed whiningwarning to postfeminists: explicit mention of menstruationI was exhausted when I got home. To top it off, I got my period - which should have been a relief since I've been feeling premenstrual for what seemed like forever. I just felt like slinking off to bed and pulling the covers over my head. Not the right way to celebrate the new year. new year's eveI made plans to pick up Nancy at South Station and then either take the T to Boylston Street to watch the First Night parade or go to a movie. It's beastly cold and I am reluctant to go to First Night even though my friend Caryn has a huge sculpture in the parade this year. later than same daya black hole on 128a plan does not come togetherI was about at the Montvale Ave exit on I93 when my car phone rang. Nancy missed her bus. The RIPTA bus took 40 minutes to get from Hope Street to the Bonanza station due to gridlock in downtown Providence. Meanwhile, I've been listening to the traffic reports and 93 is backed up past the Somerville housing projects so I'd never make it to South Station even in time for the next bus, never mind the one she was gonna take. So I impulsively decide to drive to Providence. I got off 93 south, got back on going north, got off at 128 south and proceeded to drive relatively slowly in dense but still mobile traffic. I noticed a really dark cloud looming to the south. I mean this cloud looked like a solid wall. I kept hearing reports of snow squalls. In fact there had been one in Wilmington shortly before I drove through there and the roads were icing over. Sand trucks were out in force. The car phone rang again. Nancy suggested I might want to reconsider driving to Providence. I told her about the black cloud and the fact that the traffic on 128 was slowing down to a crawl. I decided to get off at 4 & 225 in Lexington, thinking I could just head north on 4 to 62 and take back roads home. Wrong. I spent a half hour on the ramp. Yes on the ramp. When I finally got onto Rt. 4 itself, I was moving at 5 to 10 mph for what seemed like days. By the time I got to Rt. 62, I could have gotten to Providence under normal circumstances (who knows how long it would have taken me to get there today). Rt. 62 was remarkably uncrowded and remarkably ice-free. Not only that, many of the houses in Bedford had outstanding lighted caribou displays. I finally got home several hours after having left, with nothing to show for it but a headache. How people live in places where the traffic is like this every day is beyond me. So we're each spending New Year's Eve in our respective hovels with our respective cats. How spinsterish. completely unrelated to anything aboveFor your web browsing pleasure, from the same people who brought you Todd Napolitano, a rousing academic discussion of the future of narrative: What happens to people's language skills when they go into academe? | |
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