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Wayne asked me, "So, Julie, in the past couple weeks did you do any paintings I should know about?"

"I've got several new canvases but they're crap. It's kind of like how my Mom never has any sharp knives in her drawer."

He looked at me kindly. Sometimes you have to be patient, draw a person out. "Oh? And how's that?" he asked in a calm voice.

"Um, well, it's like, we sharpen her knives every time we visit but she's got some mindset going that she shouldn't have functional tools. Like, all her screwdrivers have rounded tips."

"I see," he said. "I'm not sure how this relates to your paintings."

I saw that he still didn't get it. "Well, there's lack of skill, of course, but you're always going to be less skillful than your vision calls for. It's that I think the hardest thing about painting, about anything, is getting past the dysfunctional stories you tell yourself. You just have to keep painting, or doing whatever, and hoping that some day you'll overhear yourself telling that destructive story, and get yourself to stop. And then your paintings will be better."

"Hmm," he said.

For Halloween, I went as John Saxon. Here's the assignment sheet:

Mathematics is not difficult. Mathematics is just “different.” Very different. Extremely different. Understanding just how different will be of no help whatsoever in performing what we, in the trade, like to call “doing your math.” Your task is to work all the problems on this page. Do not skip any problem, or you will remain stupid for the rest of your life. They say everyone makes mistakes. Don't. Please do not cheat, do not lose your pencil, and above all, do not have fun. You may begin.

1. Even with a crowbar, they were not able to fit all of them into the box. If the train left the station at 7:00 traveling at warp speed, what is the shoe size of Madeline Rain in square kilometers? Remember to check your units!

2. Before lunch, Freeda Crow had to simplify by adding everything in sight and taking the square root. She remembered that the tangent to a circle shares only one point with the circle. What was her answer?

UR2Gd2B(True)=x

3. In two years, Melanie will be half as old as the least common multiple of the least common thing you can find in the mudroom. Use the distributive property to find her point of no return.

4. The area of a rectangle is large. The length of the rectangle is teensy. Explain why Peregrin need not find more than five prime numbers less than his age.

5. If Zach’s name begins with an “A” and Adrian’s name begins with a “Z,” how many letters can be used to divide an apple pie into seven equal parts? Do you like apple pie with plenty of cinnamon, or do you prefer it tasteless? Show your work.

6. What value of Naomi satisfies the equation on page 112 of that book that’s kind of red, that your mom once read to you when you were really little and you probably found in the library, unless that was the library at the school you used to go to? a) b) c) d)

(This space unintentionally left blank)

Spidrons.

Wordsmith and knitter.

Extreme knitting.

I have really profound thoughts (you gotta believe me) day in, day out. But they are kind of like fish. Scaly, no doubt. Silvery and quick, never there when you try to catch them.

I'm reading Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons aloud to The Spink. A sample passage:

So I said, well, I was not quite sure (what I liked), but on the whole I thought I liked having everything very tidy and calm all round me, and not being bothered to do things, and laughing at the kind of joke other people didn't think at all funny, and going for country walks, and not being asked to express opinions about things (like love, and isn't so-and-so peculiar?). So then she said, oh, well, didn't I think I could try to be a little less slack, because of Father, and I said no, I was afraid I couldn't; and after that she left me alone.

I'm reading Neropolis by Hubert Monteilhet to myself. A sample passage:

The last day of the Nones was the Nones proper and the last day of the Ides was the Ides proper. But the last day of the Kalends was only the eve of the Kalends of the following month, a bizarre incoherence in the system which was all the more troublesome for the fact that you had in any case to count backwards to calculate the date.... So, after the Ides the days of one month bore the name of another, the end of December, for example, always being calculated from the first of January. However, the day before the eve of the Ides of March was not counted as the second day before the Ides but the third, because the Romans had got into the habit of including the day from which they were calculating ...

I took the Banana of the Sea and The Spink took the Pickle of the Sea, both bunged-up kayaks that we never take more than swimming distance from shore. Java ran around on shore. We messed around, singing to seals, calling the dog and feeding her cheese, and admiring the sunset.

The Spink said that Xerxes was trying to invade Athens but waves interfered. So he had the sea whipped. We tried that with kelp but nothing seemed to go any different.

Lucky's been in the sewing room all day and Maxwell has been tormenting Java all day. They've touched noses so we think all will be well.

We've taught Java to sit reliably. She also kind of understands "come," "down," "give me your paw," and "stay." As for my pet project, "spin around," she is baffled. Progress has been hampered by the fact that she is afraid of dog treats. Offer her one and she backs off, tail between her legs and her eyes looking very shifty. We speculate that her previous owners had a heavy hand during training sessions. Praise sort of works, but too much and she gets uncontrollably excited, too little and she loses interest. An interesting puzzler. Luckily, she's very sincere and wants to help us out if she can.

For those of you who don't care about our pets, please be informed that we are reading Andrew Lang's translation of The Iliad aloud to each other and have learned all kinds of interesting ways of spitting people from guzzle to gizzard.

We sent David to the mainland to get a refrigerator and he came back with a freezer instead. Frozen grapes are great.

Adventures with Poop. Warning: Today's entry is pretty much crap.

The Spink and I reserved the afternoon to make a raised bed in the garden for peas out of some scrap lumber left by the carpenters (I write sentences like that to weed out any foreign terrorists who may be trying to understand this using only an OED and memroized bits from the Koran). Our compost bin is full, and so we needed to use some of the half-digested material at once so that we could remove the used kitty litter (alfalfa pellets instead of that commercial crap the Military Industrial Complex is trying to dupe us with) from The Spink's bedroom and put it into the compost bin.

The reason that her bedroom is full up with kitty litter is that there are three (3) cats locked into it. And the reason for that is all the backing-and-forthing caused by the new kittens and dog. Our elderly cat Marmalade has made his peace with Java. They touch noses, go "murp" at each other, and sometimes wag their tails. Java growls savagely if Marmalade sniffs her food dish, and Marmalade slashes if Java comes on too strong. But basically, they're okay with each other. The other grown cat, Lucky, is not able to deal with the dog at all. For years we thought Lucky was neurotic because she randomly picks fights with the other cats and has a penetratingly piteous yowl which draws sympathetic humans towards her, whom she then slashes mercilessly. However, when The Spink and I were looking through a cat breed book to try and decide on the Perfect Kitten to succeed Paws, we found that there are some breeds that are naturally aloof, don't like either other cats or people much, and prefer not to be touched. Having established that Lucky is simply that kind of cat, instead of a nutcase, we introduced Java to her (proving that we are nutcases), and she was horrified down to her bowels and beyond. She left home and was not seen for two days. When we found her lurking by the outhouse at midnight, she was starving and inclined to slash. We installed her in the sewing room and I have the scars to prove it.

In the mean time, the two kittens were in The Spink's room, where Maxwell, the black one, climbs walls, eats, poops, climbs other walls, poops, and eats pretty much 24-7. Cappuchina, the Siamese, sleeps becomingly or nurses on The Spink's blanket. We let them out whenever Java was in her crate, and, more recently, when Java has been restrained but visible. Java has an almost irresistible urge to pounce on things that move quickly. Thus, she ignores Cappuchina, who barely moves, but is magnetized by Maxell. By guilt-tripping Java loudly and often, we managed to convince her to merely follow Maxwell around instead of lunging at him.

Several days later, when things were stable between the kittens and the dogs, we let Lucky out of the sewing room. Poof, she was gone. We found her two days later, lurking at the outhouse at midnight, starving and inclined to slash. (Does this sound familiar?)

Well, this time, we put her in The Spink's bedroom with the kittens. Lucky was so glad to see us she couldn't stop purring, except to growl at the kittens. The Spink spent a week without much sleep because Lucky curled up at her neck at night, growling, while Maxwell divided his time equally between going under the covers, eating, pooping, and climbing the walls, and Cappuchina nursed on the blanket. And that is why her room smells like crap.

So there we were in the garden, moving compost around and dumping endless amounts of kitty litter here and there, and doing unspeakable things with hoses and scrubbers. The Spink brought a spanking clean litter box back up to her room and returned a short time afterwards, with the report that somebody had pooped under her desk where the litter box had been. Five minutes!

But my story is not over.

After our shitty hours in the garden, we decided to go dock-jumping. We got the bathing suits, the dog, and the bicycles, and zoomed off to the dock. There, Java discovered that the otters had pooped under the dock ramp and laid her own pile right then and there. Good dog! No, wait. Bad dog!

What to do, what to do? I finally found a plastic bailer someone had left in the dock house and, disgustingly, scraped Java's poop off the float into the water. It took several scrapes because she'd spent the afternoon eating compost and was rather runny. So, the water by the side of the float was nicely speckled with dog poop. Now, the dock, the bailer, and Java's paws (she was helping) were disgusting. So, The Spink got a piece of kelp and used the fronds as a scrubber. Scrub, scrub, scrub! With water from the bailer, things were kind of tidied up, except for Java's paws and our skin-crawling sense that we had been splashed by microscopic droplets of ... water.

The Spink threw the kelp into the water. Oh no! Java was gravely concerned. Things like that should not happen. Fortunately, she is a very helpful soul. She sighted on the kelp and ... didn't jump in. Too far. Too scarely. But wait! That piece of kelp needs fixing! She wriggled around on the edge of the float and, once again, didn't jump in. It took her several minutes of adjusting and soul-wracking torment but she finally leaped in to the poopy water and got ahold of the kelp. Good dog!

The next step was to get out again, but the float is about 18 inches above the surface of the water. Java swam briskly towards our outstretched hands, swerved past them, and swam under the float. This was not a wise decision, as the float bottom is covered with barnacles, and, if she had gotten confused, she could have drowned. But she emerged on the other side, still towing the kelp, and swerved back in towards our hands. How to get her out? Not by pulling on her collar, she's too heavy for that to be safe. I finally lay flat and got her under her front legs, heaving her partway up until The Spink could take over and drag her the rest of the way.

Once Java was out of the water, pleased and wiggling, The Spink and I dove in to a carefully selected, squeaky clean area, and swam to the beach. Time to go home.

I'm writing this in the sewing room, where Lucky is sitting next to the laptop contentedly purring and refusing to be touched.

I visited a neighbor for a game of Scrabble, and brought along a piece of embroidery to keep from twitching too much during the game. When I got there, I couldn't find my needle. So, I emptied out my pack and found, in addition to my embroidery supplies (sans needle): A sandy dog leash and a bag of cubed cheese mixed with kibbles. A 256 megabyte pin drive. A camera. Half a roll of toilet paper. A garry oak acorn. Two oyster shells and a scallop. Five pencils, an eraser, an xacto-knife, and a journal. Pink lipstick. A bunch of pennies and a 37 cent stamp. A book on dog training. But no needle.

My parents gave me a recorder when I was eight and I would play it dutifully every day after school. I'm not an auditory person by any means. I don't seem to be able to pay attention to speeches, radios, or much that comes in by ear. Puns often slide past me because I "hear" speech as text, and spelling has a different set of puns than speaking does. This quasi-deafness is a bit of a problem as a musician.

After four years of playing almost daily after school, I can remember the afternoon when I finally realized why the key signatures were there. It wasn't just to make the interesting manual dexterity part of the music more interesting. It was because the music actually sounded different, and better, if you put the sharps or flats in their proper places! Wow!

After many years of teaching music, I realize just how strange that was.

Anyway, it turns out, as with so many other things, that if you work at something for a long time, you get better at it. While I'll never be mistaken for a musician, I do now have enough manual dexterity at the recorder to have almost kept up with the band for some of the tunes they played at this evening's contradance. It was really fun!

For my NBTSC readers: We've developed an entertaining new way to play Pounce. You keep playing regardless of how many kittens may or may not be helping.

Some days, no matter how much you get done or how pleasant your interactions are, you feel at loose ends, schnarfy and vaguely at odds with the universe. I was prowling around the house, pestering my daughter and moving small objects from one spot to another. Plonked down at the piano, picked a book of Ignaz Pleyel sonatinas at random from the shelf, opened it to somewhere in the middle, and started playing.

The answer to the 10 September quiz is that Java likes to eat things from List A, but not from List B.

Please read yesterday's entry if you haven't already. The first list there is of things that Java is afraid of. The second list is of things that she approaches eagerly. Now, what about these?

List A:

seaweed

oak 2 x 1's

foam pads

blackberries.

List B:

dog food

chips

dog biscuits

cheetos.

List number one:

children on tricycles

hand trucks

sheep

the music from "CSI"

kittens

List number two:

motorcycles

dragonflies

Cowlitz River

nylon straps

dogshit

The above two lists are related. How? I'll post the answer tomorrow.

The black one is a 5 month old male, a prowler and shoelace-gutter named Maxwell. He wrote the following haiku:

They thought I was cute

before my nose got cobwebs

and I broke the vase.

The chocolate-point Siamese is a 9 month old female, a hider and purrer named Cappuchina. She wrote:

My sister and I went to the Hillsboro Animal Control. No Siamese cats. Lots of black kittens. "People don't like the black ones," said the lady at the desk. I saw three I liked, but my Mission Statement was to get Siamese so I resisted.

As for black lab-mix puppies, sure enough, there was one, a hyperkinetic whining yapping thing that was cute, but no. A needy human who wants constant reassurance that he's a great guy would do better with that puppy. I was drawn to a very reserved hound dog, Ellie.

We took her out to the play area and watched. Ellie prowled around, sniffing as hounds do, ranging back and forth like a zoo animal. We sat in our chairs, waiting for her to approach us (dominant dogs get sniffed, submissive dogs do the approach). She didn't seem timid, just disinterested. I found myself attracted to that self-contained aspect of her personality. Presumably we'd bond in the fulness of time.

My sister has a dog and was less passive than me. She got up, approached Ellie, and stroked her. This was tolerated, though I saw her jowls tremble (Ellie's, not my sister's). Soon, we two sisters were included in Ellie's prowls. She'd come and lean against one of us and stare out at the parking lot. Was she hoping her former master would show up? Did she include everything smellable in her immediate territory?

Still no typical doggie actions. My sister offered her a kibble, which was briefly sniffed and then ignored. A tennis ball got the same response. We waited. My sister went into play mode, jumped around and threw the tennis ball. Ellie very politely jumped around once and grabbed the tennis ball. Yay! She was starting to smile, but lost interest in the ball almost at once.

"She's probably a black-and-tan," said the lady at the desk. "We found her running along Highway 6. Those hounds, they'll smell a raccoon fart from three miles away and head off. Then they're lost."

Hmm. Despite the appealingly flatline personality, this was not the right dog. If she's not that interested in people, how will we keep her home? I'm not going to introduce a roamer to an island that already has a dog roaming problem.

But, I really liked her.

Chris and Christine's wedding was sweet. Beautiful people stood around in heels and champagne glasses and sparkled at each other. I smiled graciously and circulated, my lemonade cleverly disguised in a champagne glass, marveling at the giddy high that overtakes partygoers. When could we decently leave?

David had to catch the red-eye the next morning. We were going to stay in a spare bedroom at the venue, but his ride was bivouacked at the other end of Seattle with some other island-connected people. "Why don't you just stay there," said the ride. "They're gone but made up beds for wedding attenders. It's going to get crazy here, or so I hope." She gave us a house key and a map.

The street was dark. None of the numbers on the mailboxes matched the street number on our map. David went up one dark stairway and shone his flashlight around. "Nothing," he whispered, coming back down.

I took the key and light and went back up. "Hello?" I said. "Hello?" I rang the doorbell. No answer, not surprising since it was after midnight. I tried the key in the lock. It went in but didn't turn. I went around to the side. "Hello?" Key didn't fit there either. Maybe their security sticker was just for show.

"We can sleep in the car," said David.

"But then we won't be able to find your ride when we wake up," I said. I went up a different set of stairs. The key worked. I prowled around inside the house with the flashlight. A stack of mail in the kitchen had the correct names. "Okay," I called down the steps. "It's them."

We slept our four hours. The next morning, I woke David's ride up. "It's a good thing you didn't try the house on the other side," she said. "Those are some nasty people."

Because of living on a non-ferry island, getting anywhere takes time. I was just sitting with an elderly neighbor who remembers her mother in Oklahoma talking about how sometimes she couldn't go to town because the river was "bank-full" and she didn't want to risk swimming her horse across. Nowadays, relying on bicycles, boat, car, and Highway Department infrastructure, we can almost always count on being able to go off-island, but, as I said, it takes time.

Yesterday we got up at 6, fed and watered all the animals, and lurched to the dock in our ailing truck. The Spink and I were supernumeraries, and as such ride free on David's boat but have to go whenever his passenger stream has a sufficiently wide gap in it. Seven a.m, today.

On Orcas, our car's front wheel issues have been solved (thanks, David), and I had the key. We drove to Eastsound behind one of those tourists who believe that since they're not at home, all normal rules of safety and courtesy are suspended. She drove in the middle of the road at 15mph, veering towards bicycle packs now and then, but mostly staying at the mathematically exact midline. Wherever it was possible to pass, she speeded up to 40, well above the speed limit. A kindly-but-firm speech coalesced in my mind, but, probably luckily for World Peace, our paths diverged before we parked.

The Spink likes stripes. We found her a pair of pants that she happily described as "extreme" and ate greasy brown things.

Finally the Animal Shelter opened. "Good afternoon! We'd like to adopt some kittens," I said cheerily to the prune at the desk.

"You can't just waltz in and expect to be given live animals just like that," she said, turning away. She gathered up a sheaf of papers, went over to the bulletin board, climbed a stepladder, and started pinning notices up.

This lady runs the shelter pretty much like that tourist drove her car. By dint of making very, very, very nice, we got to see the cats and kittens they had, but even if we had dared to select one, there was a 24-hour waiting period to prevent impulse buys. If David had been there, the magic of cross-gender interactions might have made it possible for the rules to be bent, but he wasn't. And besides, the whole reason we'd come, a devastatingly cute Siamese kitten they'd just put up on their website, was not there. When we asked, Ms. Prune said it was "not adoptible."

"Oh?" I asked in that I'm-just-a-nice-inoffensive-lady-so-you-don't-have-to-vent-at-me voice I use when dealing with the most intransigent bureaucrats.

No response.

I arranged my sweet smile (which only works if people are looking at it). "We saw your website," I said perkily. "What a cute kitten!"

No response.

How to phrase this? "Um. The website said that the kitten was adoptible. Can you tell me about that?"

"I don't know anything about what they put on the Internet," she said. And then she started talking. That kitten had been born feral and was probably never going to be adoptible. People just think they can adopt animals and then bring them back. They've stopped showing black cats at Halloween for that reason. Sick animals deserve a decent life, too.

"Well, thanks so much for your help," we said perkily, and backed out the door.

By 6p.m. we were back at home. "At least I got the extreme pants," said The Spink.

Remind me to tell you about the Animal Shelter fiasco. But, I did sort of update the Gallery.

We woke early, fed the sheep, watered the finches, made coffee and didn't drink it, and rushed off for the morning boat run. David left us in Deer Harbor and went off to Friday Harbor for a meeting. "So, do you have my car key?" I asked the Spink.

We helped a neighbor take her stuff from the boat to the road. "I saw Tycho in Seattle last week," she said. "I didn't recognize him, last time I saw him he was about half that height."

"Hey, can you give us a ride to Eastsound?" we asked her. So we helped her locate a bicycle pump for her flat tire, and the bass player showed up. He offered to take us into town since she actually was going to the ferry, not town.

The animal shelter was closed. "Um, can you take us back home?" we asked the bass player.

"I can take you to the dock but my boat may not hold the mail and you," he said.

But it did.

We got home by noon.