the dog park

The inquisitive kitten jumped into a brown grocery bag on the counter, and I found myself intoning, "There is no jumping into bags on the counter. There is no curiosity about anything on the counter. There is no counter."
It's hypothetically possible I've been listening to too much Welcome to Night Vale, if such a thing is possible.

automatic liking - or not

I have a friend who clicks "like" on every comment I've ever made on his Facebook wall. This used to annoy me - surely he couldn't actually like every comment I make? - until I decided that was his way of assuring everyone that he'd read the comment.
So now I have to re-think that, because he wrote a Facebook post today that (though I'm sure he didn't realize it, or think of it this way) affirmed dominant male culture. So I wrote a comment that, essentially, suggested that there was another paradigm.
And guess what? My several-years-long streak of having every comment I've ever written on one of his posts get a "like" is now broken. He liked an innocuous, friendly comment I made on another post (and that was written slightly later today), so I know he saw it. He liked every other post on the affirmation-of-male-culture thread.
I'm wryly amused that something can break through his usual bland habit of "liking" every comment!

hobby store

This is going here instead of to Cranky DearReader because I'm not as cranky as I am bemused.
Here's what happened: I'm on the mailing list for a hobby store, and their latest newsletter mentioned that another hobby store, about 25 miles away, would soon be closing its store and selling online only. Today, I happened to be in the town that the second hobby store is in, so I dropped by; I thought it would be good to shop there while I still could browse their merchandise in person.
I walked around the whole store, which wasn't very large, and in the process was asked three different times whether they could help me. I explained that I was in town for the day, and that I was hoping to find an easy craft kit; I had more complicated and difficult projects at home, but I liked a quick project while out of town. They explained - and "snootily" is really the only word for how - that they don't stock such easy projects. They carried only more advanced (and more pricey) projects, and very little of their stock was in kits. (The scorn with which the salesperson said "kits" was almost palpable.)
So I thanked them and left, in no doubt anymore about why they were in financial difficulties, and bemused because this might be the first time ever that I saw a locally-owned business in financial distress and felt that they deserved it.

my sweet Boodler

I'm trying to keep it together here - the SO is here in the room, and it'll help no one right now if I cry a lot - but I'm pretty sure my sweet Boodler is dying. He hasn't eaten anything but bonito flakes since morning, and even now, he refused both bonito flakes and the inside of a roll. We just gave him some Ringer's lactate in a drip, so I hope that might help, but I'm pretty sure his kidneys are shutting down.
I don't know that I have a favorite picture of him, the way I did with Kibbee. I mean, "what do I post on Facebook?" is a ridiculous picture right now on the surface, but "how, a while from now, will I have a visual aid that reminds me how cute he was, but also of his personality?"
This will hit the SO harder than Kibbee's death did, I know, because the SO and Boo were closer. I mean, Boo has acted like a dog, and the SO his beloved owner, for over 18 years now.
The effort to keep my grief from the SO didn't work at all, so I'm signing off here to go grieve with the SO.