A dissection

Under our window this evening, two youths skinned and dissected a raccoon.

Who were these youths? Were they the two young Mormon missionaries who live downstairs (Elders Henderson and Parker)? We couldn’t tell. We’d never seen the missionaries out of uniform.

We’d seen them meeting other Mormons in the parking lot to ride bicycles around the neighborhood. We’d seen them sitting for hours in a parked car, surfing the Internet with their phones. But, always, they’d been in uniform.

Whoever the raccoon skinners were, their activity unnerved me. Don’t raccoons often have rabies?

And how did the youths procure the raccoon? Did they kill it? Had it already died?

And then there’s the matter of Rascal, Sterling North’s book about a boy and his raccoon, which I’d bought just last week at Goodwill. Hadn’t these young ruffians read Rascal? (Well, I haven’t read it either, but now I’m going to.)

And isn’t it a bad sign when youths cut up animals for fun?

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Karin will take our kitties to the vet’s tomorrow. Jasper’s mouth sores have returned, and little Ziva has a bleeding paw.

The housing search

Ecuador lost, 2 to 0. Our chances of winning this World Cup are trickling down the drain.

I didn’t work today, so Mary offered to drive me across South Bend to visit the different apartment sites. I told the landlords that the city was evicting my wife, my kitties, and myself to build a fire station. The landlords sympathized. Near the end of the tour, I visited a cheap place not far from IUSB and very close to the river. I reported about it to Karin and she approved. Tomorrow, before I go to my job, I’ll turn in our application to live at that site.

An impending life-change

Today, Karin went “out on the town” with her little sister, Brianna. I stayed at home. Karin and Brianna were going to eat lunch at a buffet that I suspect of having made me ill (with vomiting and the like) not long ago. Also, they planned to visit the kitties at the Humane Society. My own eagerness for going to the Humane Society has been weakened since Ziva came to live with us. Two kitties are enough for me.

This time, Karin took to a large, orange-white male. She photographed Brianna holding him.

“He looks like Jasper,” I said, examining the photo.

“I guess he does,” said Karin.

(Notice, also, Brianna’s blue eyebrows.)

We aren’t going to adopt this feline. This isn’t our impending life-change. No, the city has decided to tear down our building to make room for a new fire station (you can read the news here). We’ll have between 45 and 50 days to find somewhere new to live. This affects me most – our current building is very near to where I work, and I don’t drive – but it’s bad for both of us. We won’t find a cheaper rental. We won’t be compensated by the city: We’re renting month-to-month, and the city isn’t kind to monthly renters. We may have to accept an unfavorable new lease.

I often ask for prayer for Ecuador. Please pray for our country to defeat Colombia on Tuesday. Pray for Ecuadorians to elect a good president on April 2. But pray, also, for Karin & me to find a decent place in which to live.

Grammar and style

At IUSB, some iffy tutoring requests.

An adult student wishes me to review one of her Facebook posts. Is it my job to do this? I’m not sure. But I do do it; I tell her I’m glad she’s getting help with her writing.

This opens up Pandora’s Box. Next shift, a guy asks for help to write a text message. A text message.

“I need to know if the grammar is exactly right,” he says.

“It’s a text message,” I tell him. “The convention is to take shortcuts with the grammar.”

“I’m very concerned about using proper grammar. I need you to advise me about the semicolons.”

Indeed, there are many semicolons in his brief text message.

“Each of them is grammatical,” I explain. “But, stylistically, it’s odd to have so many in such a short passage. I would keep this one” – this is stretching the limits of good advice, but he seems extremely fond of his semicolons – “and change these others into periods.”

He is grateful to be told something.

“On the other hand,” (once I get going, it isn’t easy to stop) “grammatically, this passage, here, isn’t a complete sentence. But stylistically that’s all right because sentence fragments are allowed in text messages.”

The light bulb goes on. Grammar isn’t style. We may have accomplished something, after all.

After work, I go to Karin’s apartment. “Bad news,” Karin says. “When we get married, we’re going to have to find somewhere else to live. My landlord has a friend he wants to rent the downstairs to.”

Fair enough.

“Oh, and after he told me that, he found out that you do go to work. ‘John-Paul has a job?’ he said. ‘He has two jobs,’ I informed him.”

“I wish you’d told him earlier. All this time, he’s been assuming I’m a deadbeat.”

“Well, he may not have assumed,” Karin says. “He may have heard it from my dad.”

“I should ask my bosses to write some recommendation letters to your dad.”

“Yes,” says Karin. “Your bosses seem to like you.”

Los regalos

December is just beginning, and already we’ve erected our Charlie Brown Christmas tree and put gifts under it. Why are we so “Christmassy” this year?

Because of David. Some weeks ago, he sent us his wishlist. (Life in Houston must be very dull.) Since then, we’ve all been posting wishlists. I’m not sure how effective those lists will turn out to be. For example, I can’t buy what Mary asked for; I mean, not without withholding the Gift of Rent from her.

She, on the other hand, has been buying quite a lot of gifts. Useful gifts. Salutary gifts.

She bought a storybook for her little niece.

She’s going to buy gum surgery for her husband. (These holidays, poor Martin will subsist on liquids.)

To me, she said: “I won’t tell you what I bought you — it isn’t what you asked for, but it’s for your benefit.”

Edoarda & Stephen bought a bookcase for me, which is nice, because now I’ll be able to bring more of my books up from the basement. Stephen gave some old shoelaces to Bianca.

Home improvement

Today at IU I tutored someone who said, “I don’t think you should be getting paid to do this.”

Um.

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Wanna be my housemate/flatmate/roommate? Or know of anyone else who might want to be? My lease expires at the end of August. I’d like to stay around Keller Park, but that’s negotiable.

Funny, I care more about living near to my church than about living near to my job. (Yes, I’m very pious, but the main reason is that on Sundays the buses don’t travel.)

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More orbiting around those twin suns, Sabby. Their magnetism is irresistible. Last week I was with the male Sabby, the architect, and he was like, “I found some cool stone artifacts in the river. Let’s go haul them out.” And so we did that. I can’t remember what every cool stone artifact was, but one was a part of a century-old balustrade (I think the male Sabby said). We brought them to Sabby’s house and the male Sabby put them away. I’m not sure what he’s going to do with them. (His wife, the botanist, is like him: she’s always collecting leaves and flowers and things, which is a little strange and endearing.)

Then I saw their very old reel mower and felt a sudden compulsion to mow their lawn. And so I did that.

Then this week I was in Sabby’s kitchen, which they’re remodeling, and I had a sudden longing to help them to strip the floor. And so the next day I did that. I helped to tear out a thin layer of sticky stuff and a thin layer of wood and I pounded the exposed staples deep into the bottommost wood layer (see, I don’t know any of the technical terms). It was very extraordinary of me and I’m a little surprised. The female Sabby got me to help her to cook, an activity which wasn’t so extraordinary for me but which felt less effortful than usual.