Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Okay, that ~10 hour sleep I had this morning/afternoon did me some good. Muscle pain levels are in the annoying-but-mostly-manageable range, and I feel more alert and awake than I have in a couple weeks -- it feels like I'm thinking clearly instead of trying to push thoughts through a fuzzy acrylic blanket covered with dust. Alas I have a fairly bad headache and I'm still dizzy, so I don't know how long this blessed feeling-like-my-brain-is-my-own stretch will last before the headache and dizziness take their toll on my stamina and I get groggy-tired again, but let's see what I can manage to get done while this window is open. Not going shopping tonight, despite needing a few things, 'cause I'm sure that'd burn spoons too quickly. But if I feel as good tomorrow as I did an hour after I woke up today, I'll try to make it out to a store or two then.

I woke briefly around noon and fell back asleep, and I remember that I woke up out of a dream in which I was teaching in a largeish school (a public high school, I think), and was frustrated by not being able to hold the students' attention ... so I started teaching in verse, and they all dug it, and they remembered stuff better for quizzes. I woke after a conversation in a hallway with an administrator who asked me whether it was true that I had taught an entire lesson in iambic pentameter.

"No, I never did that," I replied.

"Really. Because I've overheard several students talking about it."

"I'd never do that. I only switch to iambic pentameter when I get stuck and can't continue in the meter that I started the lesson in. I never start with it. I prefer dactyls."

The weather has been confusing. Chilly yesterday, frost warning overnight, really warm this afternoon. Perrine's extra winter layer of coat is coming out in clumps. She'll jump up on the bed to ask for treats or attention or the brush, and there'll be a bit sticking out two to four centimeters at some crazy angle from some part of her body, which come right off in my fingers when I grab it. Then she sniffs at it as though I'm offering her a toy.

Unsurprisingly, she's been asking to be brushed a lot lately. But she's taken to playing a little power game, trying to make me go to her with the brush, instead of coming within easy reach. She asks for the brush, I pat my lap if I'm sitting or my chest if I'm lying on my back, and instead of coming over she just asks again more emphatically and tries the to do puppy-dog eyes. Or she comes over, accepts a few strokes with her usual squirmy, purr-ful enthusiasm, then walks just out of reach and complains that I stopped. I'm half-annoyed and half-amused. If she insists on staying in an inconvenient spot (out of reach or at a funny angle for my arm), I put the brush down.

I haven't had to cut any mats out of her coat in the last few weeks, I think (my sense of time is unreliable right now, more so for memories of stuff that happened on extra-dizzy days). I don't know whether this is because the springtime shedding lets proto-mats come off as clumps before they get a chance to mat, because of something else, or just random. I haven't been brushing her that much more, I think (though I did wrestle her into keeping still long enough to comb out one small mat that was forming last week) -- and during the winter mats appeared even when I'd recently brushed her.

I'm still amused at how large a chunk of fur I can cut off of her without making a noticeable difference in her appearance (nearby fur sort of leans over to fill in the void), but I'm happier not having to use the scissors.