Greetings from Meadowlark Gardens

I had lunch plans on Friday that I canceled so that our oldest cat, Cinnamon, could see a vet, because she's been sneezing since we got back from the Extended Stay. I was very excited to have found a vet that makes house calls, because Cinnamon completely freaks out in the carrier and I was afraid that taking her to the vet would be worse for her than the reason she needed to see the vet. So I waited...and I waited...and after three very aggravated phone calls, the vet and assistant finally arrived. Long story short, like my own doctor, the cat doctor is great but her office sucks.

Because I spent so much of the day waiting for the vet, I did not get out of the house before 6 p.m., though at least the latest laundries are done and I got a certain amount of work done on the computer that I'd been putting off to clean stuff up. My parents took us out for an early dinner for our anniversary at Trapezaria, so I had lots of excellent taramosalata, tyrokafteri, and hummus plus some grape leaves, potatoes, and baklava. Later we caught up on The Handmaid's Tale which made me shout at the TV. I'm still way behind on photos so here are some from Meadowlark Gardens in Virginia:

Greetings from McCrillis Gardens

I would say Thursday was a relatively quiet day, continuing to sort, discard, and put clothes away, with a trip out to Target to return a sweater that was falling apart despite the fact that it still had tags on it and a stop at A.C. Moore for a decorative storage box. I would say it except that five newspaper employees were murdered in my state capital in a mass shooting -- two days after pro-rape pedophile apologist Milo Yiannopoulos called for vigilantes to kill journalists because the media has it coming.

So, yeah, still angry, tired, bitter, fed up. Plus I decided I really needed for Cinnamon to see a vet because she's been sneezing a lot since our sojourn to the Extended Stay, and I had to cancel lunch plans with friends tomorrow. We watched Molly's Game, which was nicely diverting and Jessica Chastain is great (plus I like Michael Cera as Evil Tobey Maguire better than I ever liked Tobey Maguire). Here are some more older photos, from McCrillis Garden in the spring:

Greetings from Carderock

I have nothing but gripes, exhaustion, bitterness, and political rage -- I am ready for the Jurassic World in which genetically modified dinosaurs eat the entire executive branch and a significant portion of the legislative and judicial branches -- so rather than go into detail about how many shirts I folded today, describe how I locked myself out because we forgot to put the house key back on the car keychain after leaving the latter with the dealer, or summarize the first episode of the fifth season of Endeavour which needed more history of Faberge eggs and less violence against women, here are some photos from Carderock a few weeks ago, so I don't miss an entire summer of loving the great outdoors.

Greetings from the Road to Annapolis

Tonight my excuse for distraction is watching primary election results around late-night comedians (because I needed to know both what Fallon would say about the Bigot In Chief's tweets about him, and awesomely enough, Fallon, Colbert, and O'Brien collaborated on a skit about the Bigot In Chief). It was mostly a shitty, shitty news day courtesy the Supreme Court, which believes in Muslim bans and lying to women about abortion rights. And my candidate for Congress did not win, in part because she was running against a guy who spent more than $10 million of his own money on his campaign; I like most of his positions but I'm uncomfortable with both the lack of political experience and the shopping-for-a-seat campaigning.

We Democrats nominated the more progressive of the top candidates for governor, and although I don't like some of the things he said as a Bernie Sanders surrogate, I don't know that center-left Baker would have pulled votes away from our fairly popular, moderate Republican governor as much as Jealous will get younger Democrats to show up in the fall, which is crucial for a Democrat to retake the governor's mansion. Anyway, voting was my major expedition out of the house after spending most of the day putting the upstairs back in some semblance of order (more clothes, books, and things are getting removed for donation, so things aren't all going back where they came from).

We went from there to pick up the van from the Toyota place so hopefully now all our vehicles will run as expected, and my catsitter neighbor stopped by to pick up the carrier she had loaned us to take the cats to and from the hotel, so I got to be social for a few minutes. I also got to watch this week's The 100, which was about as distressing as usual, and Succession, which makes everyone on Billions seem like a really nice person and devoted family member. I don't even know how I feel about Russell Crowe playing Roger Ailes for Showtime, I'm sure he'll be great but I don't want to watch a show about Ailes and Fox! Current mood:

Greetings from Westworld

One day I'm going to have enough energy for poetry and fun things to say, but this is not that day. We had no new personal disasters, but my Thursday lunch date canceled because of the death of a family friend. My bedroom is about half put back together not counting clothes -- everything we own needs to be taken out of bags, folded, and put away. Adam's room is about 2/3 put back together and Daniel's room has a bunch of Maddy's stuff, so not even close. And hey, the car tire is fixed and the van AC is getting fixed overnight!

Maryland's primary election is on Tuesday and at least 10 people knocked on our door today to campaign for candidates, plus the phone did not stop ringing with robocalls reminding us to vote and telling us who to vote for. I'm glad there are so many energized Democrats but exhausted from all the campaigning. We watched the Westworld season finale, which was insane (I need to find a timeline showing when The Switch happened and what happened after). I came across this photo from Glastonbury in 2007 of my kids and photoshopped two people and a bicycle out of it, so since I'd rather be here:

Greetings from Jurassic World

After a morning of unpacking some stuff and packing up some other stuff, we were going to have a relaxing afternoon and evening with Cheryl, but as we loaded the car with boxes of fannish stuff I was delivering to her, we discovered that it had a flat tire. By the time we got out in the van, I-95 had two new backups, Google Maps sent us a different way, and we really did not think we were going to get to Potomac Mills before Jurassic World started (we'd already bought IMAX 3D tickets). After a lot of honking and running through the parking lot, we did manage to make it inside, without enough time to get drinks so I was headachy and thirsty in the 3D glasses until I got distracted by the film itself.

I enjoyed Fallen Kingdom; it's pretty dark compared to the others, but I think my adrenaline was so high that I wasn't nearly as bothered by people getting eaten alive as I might normally have been. Then we had dinner at the Silver Diner in Dale City and went to see Ocean Orchestra at Mason District Park, which was lovely if bittersweet since lead singer Lisa will be gone for a year while finishing her doctorate out of state, so this is the last concert with her in a long while. They did a new song and Steve put on his Green Man garb despite the heat. We made it home without a lot of traffic, but then Paul's parents called with some terrible news about someone close to them, so there went the evening.

Greetings from Toyland

I spent most of my waking hours Saturday sorting books, Barbies, and action figures, a great many of which are getting donated and a few of which are getting sold; in fact, two big boxes and three small boxes of Star Trek books and toys have already been picked up by a recipient, and two big boxes of Barbies are waiting to depart. We did go out for a bit and I went to two Regice raids with my Pokemon social network in Cabin John Park, where there were lots of squirrels, chipmunks, and cardinals keeping us company, but that was the extent of the fun!

My bedroom closet is about half back to normal and the dresser no longer has dolls in it, though now I have to sort glass figurines so it's still a week before anything will look decent. The cats, fortunately, are excited about all the boxes, though Cinnamon is sneezing a lot and Daisy threw up twice so I'm a bit worried, though it's probably just all the stress of being in the hotel with crappy AC and having strangers in the house. We watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales as an evening distraction while getting through email and stuff.

Greetings from Somewhere

On the first full day of summer, it rained most of the afternoon and the temperature never got above 70. Which was fine, though the new comforter I went to Bed, Bath & Beyond to buy got a bit rained on, as did the new cat blanket from Tuesday Morning. Otherwise my day was laundry and really more packing than unpacking -- now that my Star Trek books are clean, I am going to give most of them away, because let's face it, I am never rereading 98 percent of them.

The cats are relieved that the beds have covers on them again, at least, and are back on their usual eating schedule. I got a few more gifts but I didn't even manage to get to a Regice raid. After a bunch of work and a quick dinner, we caught up on The 100 before putting on the disastrous Orioles game, which is still not over in the 14th after they needed three outs in the ninth for a win. Tomorrow: more attempts to get some aspect of my life in order.

Greetings from Chaos

There may not be poems for a few days while I try to get my life and house back in order. We got up Thursday morning and tortured the cats by forcing them once again to get into carriers to be placed in the car, but then to their great relief we arrived at home, which is finally less than 120 degrees upstairs. I have only seen dead bugs, and only a few of those, but there is staining around one of the bedroom outlets indicating that they were probably hiding in there (I do not want to think about the fact that it backs up to our neighbor's bedroom in the adjoining townhouse, but will hope we put in enough diatomaceous earth).

I allowed myself to be distracted for an hour in the early evening because Pokemon Go got Regice raids and, much more importantly, launched its social function that allows friending, gifting, and trading, so I went to a raid and friended most of my local raiding group, plus some out-of-town friends who play. Late in the evening, we watched this week's episode of The Handmaid's Tale, which is both harrowing and devastating; even worse than the systematic rape storyline is the freakishly relevant characterization of what happens to children torn by the government from their parents. Herons from Huntley Meadows last summer:

Greetings from Extended Stay Rockville

Up early, a few pieces of clean laundry shoved in grocery bags, cats terrorized into carriers, then we headed to our hotel room (originally meant to be two to spread out the cats) for the day while exterminators heated our upper floor to 130+ degrees. We can testify to this because when we ran home to sign off on it after they finished, it was hotter than hell upstairs. We were able to leave the cats alone for an hour because the three younger ones, who are usually our social cats, spent literally five hours hiding under the bed, while our timid old lady cat curled up on the couch, ate three meals, and only seemed moderately out of sorts.

We worked in the hotel room while half-watching World Cup games, stopped at a couple of stores for things like pillowcases, ate dinner at the BGR at Washingtonian Lake, and are now watching The Incredibles (the first one) on the Roku, which I'm very proud I figured out how to work on the hotel TV. Who knows when or if we'll get to the sequel with the whole house to put back together. Now Daisy has deigned to curl up on the bed, Katniss is inspecting the temporary litter box, and Effie is back under the bed after the air conditioner made a menacing noise. This is pretty much what our late afternoon looked like: