Mother’s Day

7:00am: I’m awake after a night’s sleep of three hours. At my first stirring, Young Chirpie Chirpington (Jasper) becomes hyper-alert and paces back and forth upon my body. He emits high-pitched noises.

Son, must you chirp so? Have you no dignity?

Ziva, the shyer one, merely pokes at my feet with her claws.

This is why it’s better for Karin to awaken first.

Zzz …

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

9:30am: One more hour of sleep, and then it’s off to our new church (we switched churches a few months ago). In Sunday School, the adults are slowly reading through 2 Timothy. As always, Paul is concerned that there shouldn’t be division among the believers, or useless arguing.

One woman suggests that there’s more useless arguing today than there was in Paul’s time – or even than when she was young. Today, people argue about things like politics. Or gender. Or the weather.

The weather? Karin & I are doubtful. Isn’t that one of the few safe subjects?

(Later, Karin’s mom suggests that the woman meant global warming.)

During the worship period, Karin & I watch over the nursery. (Due to Mother’s Day, the regular nursery worker is in the service.) This nursery has comfortable rocking chairs and a TV. Karin plays with the two small children while I download music from Spotify onto my phone.

We also view a part of Dumbo. As a Mother’s Day movie, Dumbo is appropriate, if sad.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

12:30pm: Surprisingly, it takes the better part of an hour to drive from church to Karin’s mom’s house. First we’re detained in an especially slow lane of traffic. Then we’re detained at a railroad crossing.

Calm down, Sweetie, I encourage Karin. Enjoy this nice, long, live version of “The Man-Machine” that I just downloaded.

Karin is not appeased.

1:30pm: We arrive at Karin’s mom’s house. The women sort through old photographs. I sleep on the couch.

3:30pm: We arrive at home. Karin sleeps in our bed. I sit in an armchair and try to write, but mostly I alternate between sleeping and sneezing (the night’s short rest has made me vulnerable to drafts).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Tomorrow morning, it’s back to the office at IUSB.

Happy Mother’s Day, my dear Mom.

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?

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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

I, Claudius, pt. 3

Using Mucinex. Sick since Wednesday. On Thursday, as the temperature was climbing into the forties, Martin and I enjoyed an unexpected snow day. I slept all morning, on the couch.

Tomorrow it will be truly cold, and I expect to be Snowed In again.

Shoppers have been crowding the grocery stores, buying food for this snowstorm and for tonight’s Super Bowl parties. (Ah, yes, the Super Bowl. My policy is to boycott football, but I’ll watch this game.)

Edoarda wants to read I, Claudius — Stephen and I have persuaded her. Our enthusiasm for the book is undiminished, though we haven’t read much more of it. Last night I did get through two other chapters. There were a few more poisonings, and some suicides and banishments (for variety). But not everything was awful. There was a lovely account of little Claudius’s education (in particular, of his earliest forays into historiography). Claudius’s tutors were shrewdly described.

My first Kindle purchase, for my smartphone: Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete ($0.00). Let’s see how much I read of that book.

Los regalos, pt. 2

I’m writing this with the help of my new best friend — my smartphone, given to me for Christmas by Martin & Mary.

Other booty:

• The English Constitution (Walter Bagehot);
• The Sense of an Ending (Julian Barnes);
• Essays in Quasi-Realism (Simon Blackburn);
• Hard Rain Falling (Don Carpenter);
• Hons and Rebels (Jessica Mitford);
• contact lens solution;
• socks;
• candy;
• money;
• probably, something I’ve forgotten.

So it was a good Christmas.

(I stopped typing with the smartphone long ago. I switched over to my computer.)

Ana & David have been visiting from Houston — and I hope this isn’t insulting or condescending or whatever, but they both seem calmer and more contented, having been married for several months.

Winners & losers

Well, we tried, but the contest was settled when we lost two important players. El Chivo Suárez collapsed a few seconds after the kickoff. He received treatment and hobbled up and down the field but had to be subbed out before halftime. Worse, between the minutes 5 and 10, two yellow cards accrued to Álex Bolaños. … Emelec pressed hard; got a first-half goal; waited for us to tire out; and, near the end, put in two more goals. So it was easy for them, but anyway they were the better team.

The President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, celebrated with Emelec at the Parrilla del Ñato.

Antonio Noboa, our team president, tweeted out some venom against Bolaños.

I viewed the match at Sabby’s house. The male Sabby loyally sat next to me and played a bridge-building game on his new smartphone. Sadly, his bridges kept on collapsing, and his ponies kept on falling into the gorge.