Boredom Thoughts

 We had two nice rainless days in Oregon.   

I mowed the back lawn on the first.   I weed eated the back lawn, I should say, because the grass was too wet for the electric mower.  To mow grass with the electric mower I now have, that has a mow span of like a foot is all, and very low power capacity, grass has to be totally dry.

The second day, I set out to build sides on the metal pergola in the cat yard, the one that had the allegedly water proof roof, that wasn't water proof at all.  I got it water proofed, by sliding a piece of vinyl remnant between the canvas plastic roof of the pergola and the cat wire netting.  

Anyhow, I didn't get far on the turn-pergola-into-shed for the cats for the winter project.  Instead I switched over to trying to take down the maple shoots from the top of the ten foot stump.  They grow through the cat yard wire and serve to keep that trunk alive and from completely rotting.  They've done that for all the years since the massive but dangerous maple was cut just below the cat wire level, leaving that 8 or so foot stump for the cats' pleasure.

I cut them and remove all the dead branches and leaves each fall but its a terrible project on my neck and shoulders, working from a ladder, arms overhead.   And I have to wrestle that horrible old chicken wire too.  That took me a good share of the second good day, until I finally made myself quit, and took off to the park to feed the kitties there.   

I find no joy in the park anymore.  There are too many cars and people and free roaming dogs and too much emotion that comes with the park and all the suffering of animals that has gone on there, for me to find any joy left in it.  I'd love to find the true park cats, who are but a handful, a new safe barn home, and never go back myself. 

But then what would I do with myself?   Since KATA quit, I don't have anyone around here helping cats that I communicate with routinely.  I used to be facebook message friends (we really never saw one another outside of brief encounters) with one KATA person but since they've quit, we have nothing to message about anymore and even that scant contact I had is now gone too.  I struggle to find any human contact or people who are not patronistic and/or backstabbing.  

At least going to the park gets me out of the house and dressed.   The block where I live has become depressing to me.  The cul de sac has so many vehicles associated with the houses now, some huge, it seems like a giant parking lot.  There is no relief from the car and concrete culture to be found and I need relief from it.   But at least I don't live in a jammed together apartment building.   

I've decided not to seek help paying the increasing city water bill.  You have to go beg to a nonprofit for help, fill out forms, disclose all your finances, basically bare your soul and its just too humuliating a process for me to think about.  Damn this city for making it necessary, by adding fees to the water bill and not just making a water bill pay for water.  

Today, once again, it is pouring.  Pretty soon the weather people and state people will try to remind us we're in a state of drought, even when the rain is pounding, has been for months, and the water is whooshing by their shoes in rivers as they speak, making everyone laugh and talk about government lies.  Perhaps reserve your drought lectures to the great unwashed for summer.  The drought lectures sometimes I think are merely to keep us conserving water so the big tech companies that use massive amounts of water, like Intel in the metro area and all those data farms in central and eastern Oregon, can get all the water there is left on earth.

I feel more and more like a dinosaur, like I'm too old to fit anywhere in this world of concrete and trendy little shops and sporty clothes and wall to wall people and nothing, nothing, nothing.   I'd like to go sit by a lake, a real one, not one that's drained nearly to nothing every fall and always carries a scent, like a memory, of gasoline dripping boats and jet skiies.