Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I made it to Bowie. I made it to Bowie really really late and very tired. (Wow, it takes a lot longer at 40MPH with stops to add water and check the tires than it does at 85MPH...) Saw my godmother (for the first time in about three decades). Saw the cousins, aunt, and uncle who came to visit over Christmas. Showed everyone stuff about Pennsic (conveniently they'd been to the Maryland Renaissance Festival on Saturday, which comes in handy for size comparisons). Showed my godmother my photo portfolio and played her the Homespun Ceilidh Band CD. Revealed how little Greek I know, but got to converse a wee bit in French. One of my cousins quietly let me know the gist of what my mother and her sisters were saying about me in Greek.

And I'll see them all again in the morning, 'cause I'm crashing here, which was not planned. Mom suggested I borrow her van for a couple of days (which will be nice -- my car is scary right now), especially since she didn't want me driving my car home tonight in the rain (not storming at the moment, but water is falling from the sky). But the battery in her van is dead. I tried to improvise jumper cables out of a damaged extension cord, but gee, that thickness of wire isn't quite "just barely enough to get away with" after all. Mom freaked at the amount of smoke from the overheated insulation. (My attitude: it's just fire ... fire is something you respect, and you follow its rules, but it's not something to fear until it gets out of control or you piss it off.) So I'm crashing here, and the battery will be dealt with in the morning.

Which means I'll probably feel like crap physically, 'cause I know the timing is going to be wrong for my sleep and I'll need to be up and about sooner after waking than is really good for me, but on the bright side, I get to spend more time with my relatives from the other side of the ocean.

(If I'd known I'd be sleeping here, I'd have brought a fresh shirt for tomorrow, and sleepwear, plus my diary, some staff paper, and my magnesium tablets. And I would've left Perrine a bowl of the food she likes, instead of a handful of food I just found out she doesn't like as much. (Well, I've got a few different brands of donated cat food, and I figure it won't hurt her to eat something different once in a while so that it gets consumed before it goes bad. She'll complain about it, but she'll eat it as she gets hungry enough.)

I also played guitar. I'd brought it along, but by the time I got here I figured it was probably too late to play it. Still, I dragged it out of the car just in case. And my godmother really wanted to hear me play. (She also complimented my voice, which surprised me. I guess I was having a good voice day. (My biggest vocal problem is inconsistency.)) It's kind of interesting to notice just how far my solo repertoire has shifted in the direction of early music these days. Some Scottish trad, some Irish trad, some middle-Eastern, a couple of my own compositions, and a bunch of pre-1600 tunes. Oh, some modern classic-rock and folk pieces are still within brain-and-finger reach, but I have to think to remember that they're there.

One of my cousins was nodding off in a chair while the rest of us talked. I was really tempted to load up a camera, but she was awake enough to voice an objection to the idea. A shame -- she probably has no idea how adorable she looked. Oh bother! I'm going to be here during daylight and I did not bring the box camera! Feh.

I just wish I could spend time with folks when I'm feeling better physically. I'm in a lot of pain right now and the numb+tingly part of my right index finger is a lot more than just the tip tonight. I have to keep reminding myself not to pick anything up with my right hand, 'cause my right shoulder and elbow are a mess. And the veerryy lloonng drive down here was uncomfortable because my lower back wouldn't allow any position to be comfortable in the car. I also wish I'd brought Perrine to meet everyone (though I imagine the two small dogs here would be less than pleased when she hissed at them ... and she'd have hated the drive). I did show photos of her, and I guess cats look a lot bigger in 8x10 prints than tey do in 4x6 snapshots, 'cause more than one person commented on how big my little six-pound (four pounds when the photos were taken) cat is. Or maybe they're just seeing the same thing that anniemal's animals saw when they looked at her...

"I roasted marshmallows over an open fire, in the woods, in a thunderstorm, naked." -- darxus, leading off his description of his Pennsic experience

So I used my mother's computer until I felt sleepy enough to try to actually sleep, then took my meds and headed for the sofabed. Unfortunately I haven't been able to actually sleep yet, due to assorted fibromyalgia pains.). Caveat: I get rambly and longwinded (and overuse parentheses) when I'm overtired. But this really is a "quiet hours of the morning" kind of entry, and for a venting scribble, I'm not going to put it aside to carefully edit (more like rewrite) later. That's not an excuse, just a warning that this might not be my most coherent essay.

When I got up from the sofabed (after Mom woke up to start her day, I discovered that the smaller of the two small dogs here is very insistent about licking my toes. (Until then I'd been wearing shoes around her.) When I try to pull away, she thinks it's a game: "catch the foot". She's already bruised my toes once with her teeth. (No skin damage; but a surprisingly solid blow given the tiny size of her head. And no, I'm not trying to find a clever way to say that I kicked her: I was pulling my foot away at the time.) I caught myself wishing Perrine were here to put the dog in her place the way she explained the rules to anniemal's standard poodle. (Then again, although this dog is a tiny fraction of the poodle size-wise, she wasn't raised by cats the way the poodle was, and might take more convincing to learn that The Cat Is In Charge. I'm not sure whether it'd turn into an actual fight or not. What I fantasized about was having Perrine simply tell the dog to behave, beastie to beastie, on strength of personality alone, no claw or tooth contact.)

Saying, "Don't do that" doesn't work. Saying, "No." doesn't work. Hissing doesn't work. Growling sort of works if I hit a low enough pitch, but then she barks at me as though I'm an intruder (for a few minutes, until someone else distracts here). And shouting "No!" really forcefully, I fear would wake all the sleeping people in the house.

I feel like speaking Cat is just a whole lot easier than Dog. Is it, or am I imagining that because of my greater familiarity with Cat? It certainly seems as though, "Don't Do That!" is much less ambiguous to cats. They may or may not obey, but they get it right away. (Though admittedly the poodle-human conversation:

"Awoour?"
"Do you need to go out?"
"[dramatic head-toss in direction of door] Aroogh"

Times like this reinforce my attitude that "although there are individual dogs I really like (and not too many I actively dislike), I'm a cat person and not a dog person." (Yes, I know that there are folks who are both -- though in my experience many of them turn out to be "animals in general" people, not specifically cat+dog people. It's possible (not sure how likely) that someday I'll learn enough Dog and gain enough appreciation for dogness to be a dog person as well as a cat person. But at least in the past and present tenses, I am not a dog person. I do identify as a bird person (okay, parrot family, starting with parakeets) but I'm really rusty at dealing with birds.)

Come to think of it, my automatic way of attempting to communicate with a new critter is to start off speaking Cat and adjust based in the animal's reactions to that, unless I stop to think about what I'm doing first.

Oh, and don't bother explaining to me that this dog's behaviour reflects insufficient or improper training. (I get that bit.) Unless you have suggestions for ways I can help that training along despite only seeing her once every couple of months, and can explain those suggestions to someone whose fluency in dogspeak amounts to a crude catdog pidgin and doesn't grok the body-language part of it (watching or acting) yet. (Not that I really want to be training her, since I could be spending my attention on other things and I'm not responsible for her; but if it makes her less annoying ...)

Time to try for sleep again. Wish me luck.