Karin’s quiet birthday; a mermaid; return to Puffin Rock

Happy birthday to Karin: treasured wife, adored mother, possessor of immeasurable intrinsic value. Witty, dreamy, pretty, kind.

Somehow, Etsy knows that it’s Karin’s birthday and that I’m married to her.

Here, have some ads in your email.

Thanks, Etsy.

Curiously, a lot of the ads have to do with the Zodiac. But the ads don’t seem to know what Karin’s sign is. I don’t think she’s one for embroideries and wall hangings of Scorpio the scorpion.

It’s not that she doesn’t appreciate kitsch. She bought me this skeleton of a mermaid, for the Halloween season.

Tonight, we watched the final episode of Cat Hospital, and then Karin put on Puffin Rock for Samuel (and for the rest of us; we needed a change from Samuel’s YouTube videos). It’s been many months since Samuel watched this show, which used to be his favorite. He seems to have forgotten a lot of it. He resisted it at first, but now he’s deeply invested in the story. He supplies a running commentary.

Oona is so bad!

No, Sammy, Oona is good.

Oona is good. Mossy is so bad!

No, he’s just silly. And hungry.

Mossy is so silly!

Yes.

So, this bodes well. Lately, he’s been downright distressed when we’ve played his old shows or read his old books. He seems to have intense, nostalgic, none-too-happy reactions to things from his past.

But we need him to come to terms with the past, because soon it’ll be time for Daniel to be exposed to these shows and books.

Last night, I went out to buy milk; when I returned, Daniel had learned to raise himself into a sitting position. Since then, he has been practicing sitting up, and tipping himself over onto the floor. Thunk! His poor little head!

Cat hospital

For gentle entertainment, I recommend Cat Hospital, a documentary TV series from Ireland. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Cute kitties; cute pet owners; cute veterenarians and volunteers; cute Irish accents. Lots of greenery.

Cats look funny when they’re anaesthetized.

Sometimes, Karin & I try out a movie or a show, and after fifteen minutes we decide it’s trash (tonight’s disaster was The Staircase, with Toni Collete and Colin Firth). To recover, we watch a nice episode of Cat Hospital.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I finished reading The Premonition. I got madder the more I read. Is it very widely known that the Trump administration flew illegal immigrants from Texas to California to strain California’s public health system? I guess it is (though perhaps the story wasn’t previously told with quite the same emphasis). I’d never heard of this travesty; then again, lots of important news gets past me.

In this book, this episode is just an aside, a minor misdeed.

The book really is about the characteristic failings of bureaucracies. Two chapter titles summarize a couple of the key points.

“The L6”: The person who is capable of solving a problem is buried at the sixth level of the hierarchy (give or take a couple of levels).

The person at the top is pretty useless.

“Plastic Flowers”: Lots of effort goes into “dressing up” a bureaucracy, hiding its deadness, making it look nice. Making the top level look nice.

I already have another COVID book on my docket: Peter Baldwin’s Fighting the First Wave.