~ Monday, April 9, 2001 ~

 

11:12 p.m. It's back to the really pretty flowers, for their recuperative values. There's a price there, in the background, and remember -- it's per stem. Feel free to look, however.

I heard on the radio a couple of days ago that depression is fast replacing heart disease as the number one killer of people on the planet. Of course, vast chunks of the planet have depressed populations for obvious reasons: war, famine, strife, natural disasters, war, famine, strife.

And then there are the people who are depressed and feeling guilty on top of that because they have no real reason for being depressed -- they just are. Thus the flowers. They have no scent in person, so you're not missing too much.

Today the house next door to us was tented, and I'm assuming that deadly termite poison was sprayed or daubed or waved about. The tent is huge and heavy and improbably striped in a gay swatherie of blue and yellow. The tent has been used over and over and so it's patched here and there.

The men attach it to anything they can find -- in this case, they hammered it into the wooden fence that surrounds the property. They left a hole at the top for the TV antenna to poke through and then, after a few hours ... wouldn't you know it. The wind picked up.

It's been flapping the tent all day and the big-leaved banana palm has already worked its way through another hole at the side and I'm hoping the poison isn't totally and entirely blowing this way. I've closed all the windows, just in case.

It's a known fact that any termites who survive and the ones who've managed to remain on the outside of the melee pack up and go to the next house on the block whenever there's a tenting. I hope they don't wake me up later on tonight with their stampeding centipeditness.

Already, the big white housecat who walks back and forth on the top of the fence has bolted into our house while Igor was talking out the garbage. She is very upset at the state of her former home. Odd that we've had both canine as well as feline visitors here in just the past couple of weeks. Odd, but nice.

Tomorrow, first thing, I'll take a picture of the tent if it's still in place. It should be, I think, which is why I'm being so casual about it. In fact, I can't imagine why I haven't taken more than one nice shot of the thing by now ... that's odd, too.

Note to self: take photo of tent tomorrow. Put out fresh bowl of milk. Take photo of kitty. Don't breathe too deeply.