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It was the only case in history where a tree doctor had to be called in to spray a person
Basically, I'm not sleeping anymore. I don't fall asleep until well after it's light out, no matter what time I go to bed, and I can't even stay asleep that long, but I'm sleeping much later into the day than makes me comfortable. I'm losing time and I don't have any. I'm barely functional and I have so much to do. My dreams are just a lot of nightmares now. The last one that wasn't actively bad was Goya.
Last night I watched The Cat from Outer Space (1978) with Autolycus. I don't think it was a very good movie, but he seemed to enjoy it. He curled against my chest the entire time and watched the screen intently, occasionally reaching out to touch the moving figures. I kissed him between the ears and told him I loved his little batwings and his too many claws and he did not need a spaceship to be alien. I've never had a cat who liked watching movies before—I don't know what he gets out of it, but he settles down immediately as soon as he sees voices and movements on the screen.
Night before last, I was almost run over by a driver who was paying such careful attention to his GPS that he was ignoring the road. I was in the middle of the crosswalk. A car came barreling toward me. I looked out to make eye contact with the driver, as you do before advancing further into their trajectory, and his head was bent away from the road entirely; he couldn't even see me wave. I stood in the middle of the crosswalk so that he would not hit me. He didn't, but that's because I didn't move. As he swung up the cross-street, I saw the little green pointer tracking across the top-down map on the handheld screen he had stuck to his dashboard. I called![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel and shouted to get the adrenaline out and then continued to my bus stop and hoped the driver met with some kind of non-fatal, extremely stupid road accident: some of those orange-striped sawhorses in the street marking a detour, for example, that his navigation system didn't tell him was there.
Speaking of things that GPS cannot replace: the Knowledge of London. I admit I had heard of this tradition, but assumed it had died out sometime in the twentieth century. I'm actually really happy to know it hasn't. I am not surprised that psychogeography thrives in a city where cabbies are required by their profession to master a constantly changing memory palace.
I did not know either that the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry has been working for years to restore the American chestnut, developing a blight-resistant strain through crossbreeding and genetic engineering. (My mother knew they were trying; she didn't know they had succeeded.) The first generation of American chestnuts with resistance equal to the Chinese chestnut is now growing. Now they have to be approved for introduction into the wild. I understand the caution: no one wants to hypercorrect a forest. But in five years, I truly hope it will be possible to plant a chestnut in our front yard or at least sponsor one in Pennsylvania somewhere.
If you have not already read and heard "Salamander Song," the poetic-musical collaboration between Rose Lemberg and Emily Jiang that went live yesterday as part of the Strange Horizons Fund Drive, take the time. It is worth it. And then, if you have not already, please donate. There's the other half of Ann Leckie's story still to go!
It's been a week.
Last night I watched The Cat from Outer Space (1978) with Autolycus. I don't think it was a very good movie, but he seemed to enjoy it. He curled against my chest the entire time and watched the screen intently, occasionally reaching out to touch the moving figures. I kissed him between the ears and told him I loved his little batwings and his too many claws and he did not need a spaceship to be alien. I've never had a cat who liked watching movies before—I don't know what he gets out of it, but he settles down immediately as soon as he sees voices and movements on the screen.
Night before last, I was almost run over by a driver who was paying such careful attention to his GPS that he was ignoring the road. I was in the middle of the crosswalk. A car came barreling toward me. I looked out to make eye contact with the driver, as you do before advancing further into their trajectory, and his head was bent away from the road entirely; he couldn't even see me wave. I stood in the middle of the crosswalk so that he would not hit me. He didn't, but that's because I didn't move. As he swung up the cross-street, I saw the little green pointer tracking across the top-down map on the handheld screen he had stuck to his dashboard. I called
derspatchel and shouted to get the adrenaline out and then continued to my bus stop and hoped the driver met with some kind of non-fatal, extremely stupid road accident: some of those orange-striped sawhorses in the street marking a detour, for example, that his navigation system didn't tell him was there.Speaking of things that GPS cannot replace: the Knowledge of London. I admit I had heard of this tradition, but assumed it had died out sometime in the twentieth century. I'm actually really happy to know it hasn't. I am not surprised that psychogeography thrives in a city where cabbies are required by their profession to master a constantly changing memory palace.
I did not know either that the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry has been working for years to restore the American chestnut, developing a blight-resistant strain through crossbreeding and genetic engineering. (My mother knew they were trying; she didn't know they had succeeded.) The first generation of American chestnuts with resistance equal to the Chinese chestnut is now growing. Now they have to be approved for introduction into the wild. I understand the caution: no one wants to hypercorrect a forest. But in five years, I truly hope it will be possible to plant a chestnut in our front yard or at least sponsor one in Pennsylvania somewhere.
If you have not already read and heard "Salamander Song," the poetic-musical collaboration between Rose Lemberg and Emily Jiang that went live yesterday as part of the Strange Horizons Fund Drive, take the time. It is worth it. And then, if you have not already, please donate. There's the other half of Ann Leckie's story still to go!
It's been a week.
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Wow, I've never heard of abrupt onset of delayed sleep phase disorder. Usually it's a lifelong thing. (I've had it since childhood, though I didn't really accept it and stop fighting it until I was in my 20s.) Sounds like a nasty case of it, too. :(
If you'd like any advice on treating/managing something like that, I'm glad to offer what I can.
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It feels like my brain has forgotten how to sleep. Since there is no evidence in my family of fatal familial insomnia, however, and that's just a scary and implausible thing to spend time worrying about, I am assuming it's an effect of the appalling stress I've been under and that if I can get my life to calm down a little, I'll revert to my normal state of nocturnal and mildly insomniac. I haven't slept easily for most of my life, but I think this is now the worst it's ever been.
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Oh, that's cool. Thank you! I will watch it this weekend.
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Consequently, I lost a few hours last week due to watching Leverage with him so that he wouldn't whine about his boredom at
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You are an excellent dog parent.
(How was Leverage? Both my mother and
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I enjoy Leverage a great deal. It can get a little "samey" after a while, but it's generally smart and spirited and gleeful.
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I think it's an outgrowth of the way they climb all over our computers. If we settle in the living room to watch something on my laptop, Autolycus comes running and sometimes Hestia as well. (She watched most of Byzantium with me.)
You might enjoy Monica Edwards's The Cats of Punchbowl Farm (which is light memoirish reading, and mostly avoids twee).
I recognize her name, but I've never read that one. Thank you!
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ETA: Esper Scout are pretty damn good, too.
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If SUNY-ESF succeeds with chestnuts—if they are allowed to plant them in the wild and begin the process of discomfiting the maple, which has gotten very comfortable these last hundred years—they plan to apply the same strategies to Dutch-elm-resistant elm trees. I hope they do.
"Salamander Song": impressed!
Tell the internet!
(I am very glad we were able to publish it.)
Esper Scout are pretty damn good, too.
I'd never heard of them before last night! I really like the single.
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Shit. I mean, I'd more or less grasped that from previous posts, but still. I am so sorry.
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Thank you. I am working on the theory that it's stress-based and will improve if I can get my life to be less horrible, but it's pretty difficult right now. This week has been very hard.
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Thank you.
And I hope that ridiculous driver gets an expensive ticket at the very least.
It was so blatant! He didn't even glance up as he turned! I am genuinely unsure if he ever noticed there was anyone in the crosswalk as he blew through it.
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Very glad you weren't hurt. Very sorry you're not sleeping. I so hope your life gets substantially less awful extremely soon.
Maybe Autolycus is birding the shadows? Cats are wired for flicker.
The Knowledge is a thing of beauty.
Nine
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Thank you. We went to a very good concert movie last night, which didn't make me sleep, but was a lot of fun.
Maybe Autolycus is birding the shadows? Cats are wired for flicker.
He doesn't try to hunt them, is the thing. He just watches and every now and then tries to test their reality. Actual shadows, reflections of light on a wall, he'll go crazy over.
The Knowledge is a thing of beauty.
I am so happy it's still alive.
The Knowledge
with huge maps (I don't know why they are all male, but I've never seen a woman doing it). Unlike your GPS person, the knowledge-getters MUST be alert to their surroundings, so I never feel imperiled around them as a pedestrian, even though the maps take up lots of their viewing space.
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That's really cool!
The article indicated there are Knowledge girls as well as boys, so maybe they just don't use motorbikes.
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I get that a lot on my dead end street, some GPS systems show it as a through street, and they barely see the barriers at the end of the street and the trees behind it. One day, I will get to see someone actually drive through it into the field, that is, if they get past the trees.
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Take pictures!
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I kissed him between the ears and told him I loved his little batwings and his too many claws and he did not need a spaceship to be alien. --That's lovely and true. I'm glad he enjoyed the film. (It's a fun one! )
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Oh, man. That's sad. I didn't realize they grew and died young; I just thought they'd stopped growing!
I'm glad he enjoyed the film. (It's a fun one! )
He liked the flying scenes a lot.
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It's such a good poem! I hope they collaborate again.
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That's great.
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Blight-resistant saplings are available in limited quantities now. Their website has some information I don't think is covered by the SUNY site.
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Cool! Thank you.
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My dreams are just a lot of nightmares now. The last one that wasn't actively bad was Goya.
is not a nice thing to hear *hugs* Strange/outright awful dreams do seem to be contagious right now, and I don't know what to make of it.
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It can stop going around any time it feels like it! Nightmares are obviously not the worst plague ever, but they feel like a supremely unnecessary one.
*hugs* appreciated and reciprocated if desired.
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But yay the American chestnut! I had lost track of the progress on this. I did a project on it in college and went on several field trips to the Harvard Forest in Petersham where you can see the trunks of the diseased trees send up shoots that seem fine every year but when they grow and the trunk splits...sadness. So I am very happy that someday I may be able to visit healthy, happy chestnut trees. :)
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Thank you! I am glad I didn't, too. I don't think it would have helped.
I had lost track of the progress on this. I did a project on it in college and went on several field trips to the Harvard Forest in Petersham where you can see the trunks of the diseased trees send up shoots that seem fine every year but when they grow and the trunk splits...sadness. So I am very happy that someday I may be able to visit healthy, happy chestnut trees.
I had no idea you had studied chestnut trees! That's really cool. I am really looking forward to their return.
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I wouldn't say I studies them, but I was a geology major & my advisor liked to take us on field trips to the Harvard Forrest and weep over the sad stumps. I'm so excited! (I seem to have a tree thing: my parents got me a Metasequoia glyptostroboides for my 21st birthday...)