tired is the new stupid

we had a lynx at work last night! he came in near death (or as it is professionally referred, 'circling the drain'), azotemic and diabetic. he died a few hours into the shift. we all took pictures. his name was bo. the first clinic i worked at was an exotics hospital (and in retrospect, practiced worrisomely primitive medicine) and one of the clients was a woman with a thick accent and far too much money who essentially collected large cats: tigers, ocelots, bobcats, what have you. i found her reprehensible. but seeing the lynx made me temporarily eschew my 'keep wild animals wild' philosophy. bo's owner was a soft-voiced man with a graying goatee.

the sun finally came out, for the first time in about a month. it made 2 hrs of sleep seem a bit excessive. i hadn;t realized how much i'd missed it until it reappeared. today was my first after-the-overnight commute to seattle. i had been awake since 9.30am, at work from 5.30pm until 8am (and it was busy; bo was only one of several casualities over the course of the evening), and the first time i really got to sit down was in my car, driving. after nodding off and hitting the convex lane dividers multiple times, i pulled over and took a 10-minute nap in my car, head resting on the steering wheel; drove off strangely refreshed with a red dent on my forehead. it is fun to be loopy while the rest of the world solemnly begins their day. i took a wrong turn (looking for a loo off the interstate) and ended up meandering through kent, which is where all the shit that didn't fit in seattle ends up. it was a lovely sensation, knowing i had nowhere to be. this is still a novelty.

i saw my parents yesterday for the first time since they'd officially moved. their rental house is sprawling and surrounded by sodden evergreens. their furniture has not yet arrived. we sat in lawn chairs around the woodstove and actually had a very nice, casual conversation. the last few times i'd seen them (when they'd fly down from alaska) my father and i had gotten into horrible arguments, so it is a collossal relief that narrowing proximity seems to, so far, be a positive thing... at least everything isn't loaded. they both seem discontented with the move. my father was sniveling about "how much HE had given up", while my mother stood right there and didn't even blink. it is illuminating, observing their interactions. my father is very self-absorbed, volatile, controlling: the reason we get along so erratically is because i, to my shame, ended up EXACTLY FUCKING LIKE HIM. my mother, on the other hand, is able to slough things off (or be oblivious) and maintain a spacey calm. that balance is undoubtedly how they've stayed married for 32 years. i wonder how much compromise either of them had to make, if any, and when.

it is incredibly easy to fall in love, but finding someone worth staying in love with...

i am obviously very bleary.

my parents saved a stack of newsprint pads from when i took figure drawing as a teenager. it was sobering. i was not too shabby. until a few weeks ago, it had been months since i'd done more than doodle. having visual proof of how i'd let that outlet passively slither away really disgusted me. it is all open road from here, i guess.

soundtrack for today: elliott smith "from a basement on a hill" (track 3 in particular)

green tea, sludgy with aspartame. putting LPs on shelf. i have a tim curry record. it is absolutely ridiculous. i had forgotten all about it. mocking ray nagin's speech about the chocolification of new orleans on the radio. the smell of mop water. i probably smell like cigarettes and vanilla. it is time to stop babbling.