Dr. Libby worked on my neck again and it’s much improved.  I can turn it up and down, side to side, I can sleep on it, most of the time it doesn’t hurt.  I do the neck exercises, the ankle exercises, some of my back exercises, etc etc etc. And I find exercise boring, very boring. He said my ankle is healing well and that I can try out leaving Das Boot off during the day for short periods of time.  I have been removing it after supper, around 8 pm and so far no problem.

Reading all those manuscripts for both contests used up most of my work time.  Now I’m back to writing poems and it’s like the dam burst.  I wrote four new poems this week.  I am also dealing with queries from my friend Elton. He is translating WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME into Brazilian Portuguese.  He was writing about me in graduate school when he came to Wellfleet to interview me. We hit it off.  He submitted to myJune juried poetry intensive workshop – he writes poetry in English as well as in Portuguese.  He got in and we had a good time there.  When he returned toBrazil, he began translating that novel. All the time he was getting his PhD, politically active, writing, then teaching full time.  It’s a slow process but he is about 3/4s  through.  It’s a novel with a lot of words I invented, so no dictionary can help him not infrequently. 

It bemuses me that WOMEN ON THE EDGE OF TIME gets all the attention and it continues strongly, but HE, SHE AND IT that I consider far more relevant to this time and our situation is mostly ignored.  I think that has much to do with the two major women characters being quite Jewish and having a strong connection to a Jewish community clled Tikva – hope. 

We had an actual snowfall that gave us an inch and a half of real white stuff here early in the week. It was beautiful but soon gone. There’s no trace of it left, although the weather people predict another snow on Monday next, Presidents Day.

I resent Monday holidays. I still have to do the wash and put things away.  If they did Friday holidays, that would feel meaningful.  That would be a real long weekend.  Mondays are drab no matter whether they call them holidays or not. Mondays I usually work with Dale.  If it’s a holiday, we usually do Tuesdays, but that’s not always possible for his schedule.

Saturdays I write my blog and make a grocery list for the week.  Of course, we’ll need occasional cartons of milk or veggies, whatever, during the week, but the vast bulk of the weed’s shopping, Woody does on Saturday morning.  We have always done that Sundays, but because he goes to Coco Fit Club on Sunday mornings, I was without my boot while doing the house wash and the other Sunday chores. By mid afternoon, my ankle would be throbbing.  If he goes on Saturdays to shop, there’s no rush to get out of here.  For instance, this morning I made French toast for breakfast. When my ankle heals, he’ll go back to getting up super early on Sundays and leaving here before I get up. He almost always wakes up while I’m stillsleeping. Even if he accidentally wakes me, I usually fall back asleep for an hour or so.

Copy cat is a true phrase. Cats learn by watching and then imitating each other.  If one cat finds something fun or interesting to do, the other cats will try it.  I have a cat toy that features a mouse running around in a track.  It’s programable to behave in different ways.  Xena learned how to turn it on.  Within a couple of days, Willow learned that trick and does it often. Schwartzie tried to do the same yesterday, but he is super long haired and his paws have lots of fur on the bottoms. He could not get the button to push. He tried for a fair while and then he hit the object with his paw and sulked off.  Bad toy!

There are advantages to having very long fur.  If he annoys the other cats, as he sometimes does, no one can bite him.  All they get in a mouthful of fur.  On sunny days in winter, he asks to go out on the sunporch. His fur keeps him warm.

I have a poem about not having  fur. If we had fur, think how much money we’d save on clothing.