Yesterday was grueling for me, and I’m not even the one who had major
abdominal surgery.  I was out in the driveway before dawn, airing
up the flat tire.  After the car was all warmed up, the windows
scraped free of ice, snow brushed off (Troopers give tickets for
driving around with snow on vehicles, because it can blow off or slide
off in chunks, obstructing traffic or obscuring visibility for
drivers.) and everything else I was taking already loaded in the car, I
put Hilary in her carrier and started out the door. 

In my gloves, I needed both hands to get the dog’s chain out of the way
and shut the door.  I set the carrier down on the icy step. 
Before I could pick it up again, it slid off and popped open.  I
was scrambling for a few moments, trying to grasp the cat and get the
carrier closed with it gripped between my ankles.  Finally, I took
her by the scruff of the neck with the carrier in my other hand, put it
in the car, took out the pillowcase I’d put inside in case she tried to
escape the carrier, stuffed her in the pillowcase, tied a knot in it
and dumped the bundle in the carrier.  After I got settled and the
car door shut, I untied the knot, closed the carrier, and let her work
her way out of the pillowcase.

After I dropped Hilary at the vet, I went to Greyfox’s cabin and woke
him up.  He showed off Frankie’s new litter of kittens, and I got
my first chance to meet Raffles and Fancy (we have a Fancy at our
house, too), two beautiful new strays who have moved in with him. 
Then we had breakfast at the Windbreak Cafe, shopped at Salvation Army,
and spent the next couple of hours in the waiting room at Mister Lube,
as they changed my oil and put Streak’s winter tires on.  They did
some grinding on my old rims, which might have fixed that crazy and
unpredictable intermittent slow leak that has been moving around on my
car from year to year as the tires are rotated twice a year with the
seasonal changes.

Physically, it was a challenging day.  I was exhausted by the time
I got to town and hours past that old fatigue wall by the time I picked
up Hilary for the trip home.  On the other hand, Greyfox and I had
a pleasant day together and I got a cheap frame at Sally Ann for the
matted Byron Birdsall print (a cat looking out a window, with a moose
looking in at the cat) he had traded for at a recent show.   I
also got enough loungewear to allow me to put off going to the
laundromat for another week or two, and two pairs of Gloria Vanderbilt
jeans:  a like-new black pair, and some broken-in faded blue denim
ones.  The big score was a t-shirt for fifty cents with a Barbara
Lavallee print of an Eskimo mother and two kids.

Dawn had been breaking when I dropped Hilary off, and it was dark
before I picked her up.  I empathetically caught a dose of anxiety
and sadness from some other people who were at the veterinary hospital
with their pets.  Hilary was still anesthetized when they carried
her out to me, and I heard no more than a few scrabbling sounds from
her carrier at one point about halfway home.

I interrupted Doug’s twice-a-week online D&D session so he could
help me prepare his room for Hilary’s convalescence.  She has to
be isolated from the other cats, and that’s the only available space
for it.  She was wobbly from the drugs, couldn’t walk straight and
kept falling on her side.  She has to wear an Elizabethan collar,
a plastic cone around her neck and head, and it was giving her a lot of
trouble with drinking, slightly less trouble eating.  Doug stayed
up all night with her, shut into his room.  When I took him some
food before midnight, he had his whole Lego collection, a gazillion
bricks, spread out on his bed.  He was cross-legged in the middle
of it all, with Hilary draped across his lap.

He was going to bed about the time I woke up today.  He reported
that Hilary had none of the expected nausea, no bleeding or drainage,
and no evident inflammation at the surgical site.  I have a dose
of anti-inflammatory analgesic to give her today, and a second dose to
give her two days from now.  Her appointment for final
immunizations and suture removal is on Monday, almost two weeks from
now.  I may be able to rest until then and be all fresh and
relatively energetic for that trip.

If you have been with me for very long, you may recall that I’m trying
to transcend dualistic judgments such as “good” versus “bad” or
“evil”.  So why, you may ask, would I use “good news” as a title
for this entry?  Let me assure you that it’s not an assessment of
the events chronicled in the news.  I don’t think we are — any of
us — sufficiently foresighted to judge whether a given bit of news
tells a story that will end up, somewhere down the timeline, being to
the advantage or disadvantage of the planet or its people.

My title is an expression of my approval of and appreciation for a certain news source, The New Standard.  I have had a link to their site for a couple of years, and the daily New Standard Dispatches emails are the only news source I read regularly.  I also get news from NPR, and second-hand through Greyfox from ADN. 
Often, when a particular story catches my attention and leaves me
wanting independent corroboration or more detail, I’ll go to Google
News and search out several sources.  Out of all the available
outlets, The New Standard is the one that I think does the best job of
focusing on important issues, and doesn’t just serve as PR flacks for
government and big business.

Today’s dispatch is what motivated me to write this post.  It
contained several interesting stories including one on the protests in
Turkey over the Pope’s visit there.  This photo grabbed me. 
I must admit it wasn’t the photo’s theme that provoked my
imagination.  It was that figure with covered mouth at upper
left.  Amidst all those women, that one with the prominent brow
ridge and heavy hand, looks like a young man.  Hmmm….

Another story today, on expanded reporting by the FBI
of minor criminal histories to prospective employers, interested
me.  I see that one as having some unpleasant unintended
consequences later on.  As it becomes more difficult for minor
criminals to find legitimate employment, more of them will become major
criminals.  Families of those who don’t resort to crime will live
in poverty, be dependent on charity, and those children then become
more likely to resort to crime and/or drugs.  If the planners
behind that move on the part of the FBI had in mind some form of social
darwinism, I’m guessing it is going to come back and bite them in the
butt.

---

FFXII update:
I defeated the Vyrall yesterday and received my bounty plus a dragon
scale, a KEY ITEM whose usefulness I have not yet discovered. 
Until I finish up my hunts for all the Rank V marks now available, the
story line is left hanging this side of Giruvegan.  There was a
time a few years ago, when I would have fallen for the characters’
sense of urgency to get on with their story.  Doug and Seph taught
me that the story line won’t go on without me, the train (in FFVII)
won’t leave the station until I’m on it, and the side-quests are
sometimes more fun than the mainstream playline.

 
 

Since Thanksgiving was a special occasion, and it occurred to me that
the Xangaspam being sent out by many people to all their friends and
subscribers was something akin to Xmas cards, I did not routinely
delete my subscription to any of those with holiday wishes.  Now
that the holiday is over, I’m going back to the routine.  Except
for a choice few friends and some others I might spare on a whim, I’ve
decided not to stay subbed to spammers.  I have too many
subscriptions, anyway.  Getting to the ones way down in the
alphabet to delete them takes some time… less time with every
“message all” message I receive.  That’s a blessing.

In response to my previous entry about the fire on top of the woodstove, benevolentMitch
described my lifestyle as “rugged”.  I wasn’t sure exactly what
the word meant, but it did have some pleasant associations for me,
because my father used to describe himself as a “rugged
individualist.”  I decided to look up the word and see just what
it meant.  I found more than I expected.

That’s me, fershure:  awesome, badass, and insane.  Doug and
Greyfox tell me so all the time, and they know me better than anyone
does.

Rugged Individualism is something else entirely, a socio-political buzzword:

Silver_Alexis
commented that the 2 men in her house were amazed at my progress in
FFXII.  I have been pleased with it and slightly surprised to be
doing so well without a player’s guide.  Doug has added a new word
to my vocabulary — really a new sense to an old word: 
“farming.”  I do a lot of farming in this game, running about in
areas where the enemies are right at the upper limit of my abilities,
earning experience and loot which can be exchanged for Gil, which in
turn is exchanged for the best available equipment. 

This afternoon I spent a couple of hours in the Cerobi Steppe, fighting
Shield Wyrms and flying Charybterix, both very challenging, right at
the upper limits of my capability to defeat.  Now, I’m in
Balfonheim Port, where I spoke to a Viera Wayfarer and got a contract
on a Vyrall, supposed to be out there on that same steppe.  I hope
that while I’m fighting it, I’m not blindsided by any Wyrms or flyers,
nor by the Hunter Stalker that is rumored to be slipping up behind
hunters as we are engaged with our prey.

Time to get back to it, I suppose.  Seeya later.

It’s Saturday, so as soon as Doug gets up he will be on the computer
for his semi-weekly (Tuesday and Saturday) D&D sessions. 
Greyfox has a holiday bizarre today (yeah, I know they spell it
differently, but this is Alaska and we don’t give a damn how they do it
Outside), where he will be in his full Turkish rug-peddler mode (some
of his ancestors were Ottomans), hawking knives, swords, blowguns and
crossbows for Christmas gifts.

I have been making swift progress in FFXII, probably largely because I
don’t have a player’s guide to show me where all the side-quests
are.  I have been taking every Clan Mark hunt I was offered, and
have defeated all my current marks up through Rank IV.  The only
Rank V mark I attempted, a few daze ago (all spelling errors are
intentional [maybe, unless some misteaks slip by me] so get used to it)
was the Trickster Chocobo, and it wiped me out.  Today, more buff
and better equipped, I have started on the fives again, emboldened by
my defeat last night of the Vorpal Bunny, my last Rank IV mark.

In real life, the cold snap that had been forecast to end a couple of
weeks ago has deepened.  From teens below, it has progressed into
the minus twenties.  Not wanting to jinx things by even thinking
it, but unable NOT to entertain the dreadful thought, I suppose it’s
heading for that spot where Fahrenheit meets Celsius, forty below
zero.  Brrrr!

Wednesday’s trip to Willow for the old farts’ feed was delayed briefly
because I was apparently half asleep when I went back to the bathroom,
where a long extension cord snakes in from the now-vacant water heater
compartment, which opens to the outside.  I made that trip to
switch on the power strip into which that outdoor extension cord is
plugged, to power the engine block heater that’s plugged into the other
end of the cord.  I guess I forgot to flip the switch, because a
few hours later when I went in to check after being unable to get the
engine to turn over, the power strip was off.

The tire inflater sat there plugged into the car’s cigar lighter outlet
and attached to the air valve on the tire while I let the engine block
warm up some, put a hot charge in the battery, and did a heap of
thanks-giving for the power grid.  We spent fifteen years off the
grid, as some of you know, before we moved in here to housesit shortly
before the end of the last millennium.  After about half a dozen
premature and unsuccessful tries, the car turned over fast enough to
fire, and the inflater puffed up the tire and I was on my way. 
Ah, the wonders of modern technology!  I used to have to haul a
wok full of coals from the woodstove out and put them under the engine
to warm it up — sometimes, on really cold days, it took two or three
woks full (and really challenged the woodstove to keep up with demand)
to get the car started.

We had a minor, smoldering, smoky fire on top of our lo-tech woodstove
last night.  For years, ever since we’ve lived here, we have had a
big, heavy, cast iron griddle on one side of the flue pipe, and on the
other side a big enamel cookpot and an old coffeepot filled with water
for the convenience of pre-heated water on hand.  We only have to
heat water for washing up in the summer when the woodstove becomes the
coldest object in the room. 

The griddle doesn’t get hot enough for cooking, it’s just there to
extend the flat surface a bit, and to attenuate the heat some for a
smaller cookpot of water that’s usually just warm enough for hand
washing or plant watering.  We use the front portion of the
griddle to preheat the frozen firewood before we put it in the
stove.  It’s a bitch when you need the heat and happen to put the
fire out with cold wood.  Anyhow, I was telling a story, wasn’t
I?  A chunk of very dry, old, rotting, punky wood got hot enough
there to start smoldering, so we tossed it out in the snow, held the
door open for a while and let some fresh cold air in while we let some
smoke out.  I stayed close to the floor and inhaled Albuterol
until the smoke cleared.  No permanent harm done.  When we
opened the door, the indoor temp had been about 59.  When we
closed it, it had only dropped about five degrees, and the tropical
houseplants had survived yet another minor crisis.

For days and daze I have been considering the things for which I am
thankful in preparation for a Thanksgiving entry.  The first
thought that came to mind is that I’m thankful for everything.  I
heartily appreciate the fact that I am still alive after having been
given such a poor prognosis and having gone through so many serious
crises.  The main reason I am glad to be alive is that I live on
such a wondrous planet, one that still supports life despite everything
we have done to upset the ecological balance.

Okay, that would have been a pretty short Thanksgiving blog entry if I
left it at that, so I turned my thoughts to more specific areas related
to the season and the holiday.  I feel sincerely grateful that
there won’t be a herd of people coming here expecting me to prepare for
them a delicious feast.  That is an indication of something else I
appreciate.  Not too many years ago, I had a great deal of ego
invested in preparing and hosting delicious feasts for big
crowds.  I really don’t need so much ego.  I feel better
without it.

Immediately after that thought, it occurred to me that I was thankful
that nobody would be expecting me to travel any distance to gather with
a bunch of people and “enjoy” a “delicious” feast.  I simply do
not generally enjoy crowds and many people allow smoking in their homes
and they and their guests often use alcohol and other drugs that render
them less than sensible and less than pleasant company.  That’s
how it always was in my family when I lived within range of them, and
it’s how it is with most of the people I have called friends. 
Beyond that, there are many food substances, such as wheat and sugar,
that are nearly ubiquitous in other people’s cooking, and which I
usually try to avoid because they tend to make me ill.

I
had been carrying that gratitude around in my heart and mind for a few
days when Greyfox called and put a little kink in it for me by inviting
Doug and me to meet him today, Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving,
at the community center in Willow for the holiday special buffet. 
Every Wednesday throughout the year the Susitna Seniors serve lunch to
a bunch of Valley old farts.  We affectionately call it the old
farts’ feed, and are pleased and probably prouder than the honor
warrants to be among their number.

Doug declined, not being overly fond of either turkey or old farts, and
after I told Greyfox the ironic story of my seasonal thankfulness that
he’d just challenged, he assured me that he had no expectations and I
was perfectly free to decline the invitation.  He recited a long
list of foods, including turkey and the trimmings, salad, fruit salad,
ham, and pies of pumpkin, mince and pecan.  Sometimes, I don’t
appreciate being tempted with forbidden treats, and sometimes I find
myself grateful for the temptation and inclined to indulge.  What
better excuse than Thanksgiving can there be for violating dietary
restrictions?  Unless something goes horribly wrong, in a few
hours I will air up my flat left rear tire, fire up the car that has
been warming on the engine block heater since I got up today, and go
meet my sweety for the old farts’ feed.

Tomorrow on Thanksgiving, as yesterday and today, I will be thankful
for pure clean water, fresh from the earth and not from any sewage
treatment plant.  Yesterday, Doug and I went to the spring,
filling Streak’s hatch and backseat foot well with jugs and buckets
containing about seventy gallons of water.  One of the first
things I did with that water last night was to shampoo my hair. 
The hair is long, but I have the technique mastered so that I can get
it clean with about a gallon of water.  Conservation on such uses
means a longer period of time that we have all the tea, coffee and
drinking water, and water for cooking, that we want, before we have to
load those jugs and buckets in the car and go to the spring again.

Since I had forgotten to stop for fuel when I went to the vet last
week, I began yesterday’s water run with a trip up the valley to the Y
at Sunshine for gas.  While I was paying, one of the clerks
exclaimed, “It’s ZERO!  It finally made it up to zero.”  It
was the warmest part of the day, an hour or so past noon, and everyone
present smiled in appreciation of the fact that the temperature had
gotten out of negative numbers. 

At the spring, I knelt on a folded throw rug to insulate and cushion my
knees as I filled the water containers.  The only mishap was when
my gloved hand slipped as I tried to pry a frozen-on lid loose from a
five gallon bucket, and I tore a couple of nails loose.  I have
trimmed them short, and although the fingertips are tender it’s nothing
I can’t deal with.  By the time we got home with our water it was
about two and a half degrees below zero, and during the night it dipped
into double digits below.

It’s about nine AM now, the sun hasn’t risen but dawn is breaking, and
I am thankful for the light.  It could be worse.  We’ve
driven to Thanksgiving dinner at a friend’s house, after dark in the
evening, when it was minus thirty-six.  I won’t have to air up
that tire in the dark today (as I’ll need to do next week to get Hilary
to the vet for spaying by 8:30 AM), and it should still be daylight
when I drive home today, all the better to see moose on the road before
I’m right upon them.

One last thing, an update of sorts on the “traction pants” entry about
my trying to sleep in a pair of soft, loose, old corduroy pants that
grabbed the sheets so that I turned over in the pants instead of the
pants turning over in bed.  It has been a while since I went to
the laundromat, so I’m short of comfy loungewear.  Yesterday after
the water run, I put on (with thermal-knit long johns, of course) a
pair of satin pajama bottoms Greyfox had found in the dumpster at
Felony Flats.  Unlike the well-worn corduroy, these things, in
midnight blue with a red pinstripe, appear brand new.  I’m wearing
a red polar fleece v-neck with them — looks spiffy and feels luxurious.

The problem is that now I have a friction-free butt.  Last night,
in Couch Potato Heaven, I kept uncontrollably slipping down into an
uncomfortable slouch, and when three cats lay down between me and the
back of the sofa, they effortlessly shoved me over the edge.  I
don’t recall any difficulty during the night with rolling over in bed,
but right now on this ergonomic office chair, both my knees and my
bottom are perilously slippery. 

That’s it for me for now.  I’ve got about three quarters of an
hour before I have to start preparing the car for the trip to
town.  That might be enough time to find some presentable clothes
to wear, and get into them.

I was sitting there in Couch Potato Heaven (an actual place, not a
metaphor, with my back propped against one arm of a soft old sofa next
to the woodstove, feet stretched out under two blankets and a cat,
facing the PS2 monitor at the opposite end of the couch).  I was
playing Final Fantasy XII, thinking that I really should write a review
of this game.  I said I’d do it, and that thought has intruded on
my play off and on for a week or so.  When it became necessary to
get up for food and a bathroom break, I decided to get this thing done
and over with so I can guiltlessly go back to FFXII.

First, a
little history and my credentials:  I’m a gamer from ‘way
back.  I played electric shuffleboard in the 1940s and pinball
machines in the ‘fifties and ‘sixties.  I have been video gaming
and loving it since the 1970s.  First, it was on the first
generation arcade consoles, until I got a Fairchild home system with
cartridges for things like Pong, Cat and Mouse, ESP (I was good 
at that one), and Nim.  That’s when I first got carpal tunnel
syndrome from the joystick action.  Fortunately, I found the
nutritional supplement solution to that problem (and, no, I won’t prescribe it for you
because that would be a crime — you can probably find it with a
websearch), so I can play hour after hour for days and daze, pain-free.

FF
III was the first game we bought for Doug’s first Game Boy, back when
he was in elementary school and on Ritalin.   We both found
it to be much more fun than Tetris, which had come with the
device.  It helped him withdraw from Ritalin, strapped down in the
passenger seat of Gina, our Fiat X-1/9, on the 18,000-mile road trip we
took for that purpose.  It helped me pass many hours in our tent
in
various campgrounds along the way, in the early mornings while he
slept.  Before the trip was over, I’d bought a Game Boy for
myself, so I wouldn’t have to wait for him to fall asleep before I
could play.  When we got home, Doug borrowed the first two GB FF
games and we played them for a while.

When Doug’s friend, Sephiroth,
moved in with us, he brought his PlayStation, and some games including
Chrono Trigger.  It really hooked me on the new generation of
consoles.  At the time, he was waiting for the release of FF
VII.  When we got it, I formed a love/hate relationship with it,
hating that filthy post-apocalyptic city in which it starts, whose name
I’ve blocked from my mind, and loving chocobos and Cosmo Canyon. 
I’d move to Cosmo Canyon if I could.  I bred a line of chocobos so
fast that nothing could beat them, by keeping a somewhat standard
stud-book record of my matings.  In the process, I gained a high
level of respect for the knowledge and skills of the game’s
designers. 

Squaresoft, and then Square-Enix, became
heroes of mine.  On the day that FF VIII was released, I bought
it, and the player’s guide to go with it.  We bought nine as soon
as it came out, and had Ten and Ten-Two pre-ordered months in
advance.  When the “golden oldies” of FF were re-released, we
got  Five, Six, and TACTICS
(!).  Affectionately known as Tic Tacs to its loyal fans, it
remains the premier game of its class and type for its time.  The
only thing about it that I did not like was that clunky old turn-based
battle system where the hero party stands there and takes turns beating
on a bunch of unrealistically well-behaved monsters that politely wait
their turns to retaliate.

Twelve has fixed that for those of
us who prefer more versimilitude in our battles.  (Doug says the
new system began with Eleven online, which we haven’t played.) 
Setting up “gambits” for our characters beforehand allows them to
initiate battles, move around, fight multiple enemies at once, and do
healing and buffing support magic while the player sits and watches,
has a snack, or carries on a conversation.  I have done all three,
and played the game, all at the same time, thanks to a speaker phone.

Fuddy-duddy
old reactionary turn-based purists have no just cause for complaint
however (though some of them are complaining), because there is a
simple one-click way to turn off gambits completely and revert to the
old system.  One can also turn each character’s gambits on and off
separately, so that, for example, two members of the party can be
directed in battle the old-fashioned way while a healer automatically
provides the HP recovery and status-effect relief they need.  I
play it with gambits on, and buy as many new gambits as I can as soon
as they become available in shops.  They are cheap, only 50 Gil
each, and you only need to buy each one once for all characters to have
access to it as soon as they get the license for it.

The
License Grid is similar to the grid for abilities in Ten, but different
in that there is just one grid-form for all characters instead of 
Ten’s separate tracks for each.  Basch, the brawny ex-soldier, can
be trained as a cleric, while the more feminine characters can be
buffed up as fighters if that suits the whimsy of the player. 
Eventually, with enough experience and LP (License Points, earned in
battle), all characters can fill in the entire grid and use whatever
skills the player chooses.

If I have any objection at all to the features of this game, it’s a minor
one:  I have had to learn how to flee from battle.  Doug has
often commented on my stubborn unwillingness to run from enemies. 
I prefer to stand and fight, even to Game Over, then go and buff up
before approaching that enemy again.  After all, it’s only a
game and Game Over is not actually death in any real sense.  Even
if it were, isn’t there something dishonorable about running from
battle?  Death before dishonor, I say…or, I said.  One
battle, early in Twelve, can only be “won” by running away, so I am
forced to compromise.

Fleeing for short distances can also be a
good tactical move while power leveling and accumulating Gil for
important purchases.  Enemies drop loot that is only good for
being sold to merchants (another touch of relative realism, over having
monsters without pockets drop money all the time).  More and
better loot can be obtained by defeating “chains” of same-class
monsters.  My longest chain so far was 169 skeleton-types in the
mines.  Such long chains can only be achieved by avoiding enemies
of other types, and by leaving an area you’ve cleared out, crossing TWO
area transitions, then returning to the previously cleared out area,
upon which your chosen enemies will have respawned.  Getting
through the neighboring area without breaking the chain often requires you to hold down R2 and flee.

Okay,
now I can get back to the game without feeling guilty for leaving this
commitment unfulfilled.  I said I’d review it, and I have. 
If I have any further comments on the game as I go on, I’ll be
back.  Meanwhile, it’s back to Ivalice and Couch Potato Heaven for me.

Even as cold as it was, I would have stopped at least twice to capture
various views of the gorgeous sunset yesterday on my way home from
town, if I hadn’t forgotten to take my camera with me.

That was just one of the things we forgot.  After several hours
with the engine block heater plugged in, the car started right
up.  After it had been running for twenty  minutes or so, the
needle on the temp gauge started to rise.  Then Doug brought the
tire inflator out (we warm it up inside before using it in cold
weather, because I broke off a cold brittle fitting once at temps close
to this) and aired up the tire with the intermittent slow leak. 
That it would choose to go flat in double digit subzero weather is
almost a given, when it has chosen not to go flat on many other more clement occasions.

Doug gasped as we approached the mailboxes and cried, “The
outgoing!  We forgot the mail.”  I turned around, drove back
home, and he ran in and got the mail.  I was about ten miles down
the highway when I gasped, pulled over, turned around and went back and
put wood in the stove, enough to last about four hours.  If I
hadn’t done that, the fire would have been cold before we got home.

I took advantage of one last chance to go to the bathroom before
hitting the road again, and left the damper open and the stove door
open a crack to get the fire well started.  All the time I was
back there, I was repeating to myself, “Close the stove… close the
stove….”  Back out in the living room, I turned off a lamp we’d
left on, and dithered momentarily whether to turn off the radio. 
I decided to leave it on to comfort Koji, who has terrible separation
anxiety.

As I approached the mailboxes again, I was trying to remember whether I
had in fact shut the stove, so I turned around and drove back. 
Doug hopped out, ran in, and determined that I had shut it.  All I
forgot that time was that I hadn’t forgotten to do it.

Other than that, the trip was fairly uneventful, and the visit to the
vet was actually pleasant.  We got new blades for the Mat Breaker
comb, miticide for everyone’s ears (not the primates’, we fortunately
don’t get ear mites), wormer for the whole houseful (maybe we do need
that, but it’s just the four-leggeds who’re getting it).  Hilary,
the cat we took in, got her immunizations, a pre-op exam, and an
appointment for spaying in a couple of weeks.

To save my time, my darlin’ Greyfox met us at the vet clinic, and he
and Doug shifted bags of groceries from his car to ours, and some very
fine and practical clothing for us that he’d gotten at a thrift store’s
bag sale.  Since I had forgotten to eat lunch before leaving home
and my blood
sugar had tanked, I was especially glad that Greyfox had a bag of trail
mix
in his car.   The guys moved from my car to his some boxes of
books and videos (things he’d given us for our entertainment and will
now either sell or donate to a library), a bag containing some
accumulated mail for Greyfox, a coffee mug to replace the one a cat
broke at his place, a few books I’d gotten from Charley and library
discards that I thought he’d like, and some forms I had downloaded at
his request. 

He had also requested that I bring along my scissors, and while Doug
and Hilary were in with the vet Greyfox and I stood in the clinic’s
arctic entry, and I trimmed his beard with the wind periodically
pushing the door open until the receptionist got tired of hearing the
chime and locked it.  Afterward, as we were getting back into our
coats for the trip home, I expressed my gratitude for Greyfox’s doing
the shopping and meeting us at the clinic, saying that it had made my
life a whole lot easier.  He responded by saying that it seemed
appropriate, since he had spent twelve years making my life more
difficult.

Maybe my response:  “twelve and a half years…” seemed
unappreciative, but it was just a little joke and it did get laughs all
around.  Those first twelve and a half years we were together,
when his addictions and NPD ruled our lives, were not exactly unrelieved
hell.  Even though those years had their happy moments, and I tend
to find things to be happy about even in hard times, I’m glad the
addictions have been transcended and he is conscious of the NPD and
working on making it go away.  Occasionally, he surprises and
delights me with marvelously keen psychological insights.  We
actually enjoy talking about addiction and psychopathology.  What a marvelous development!

All the way home (with a stop at Pioneer Lodge for food), I kept
glancing in the mirror, enjoying the spectacular sunset in the south as
it eased from pastel coral to brilliant orange.  It’s that time of
year — seven hours and six minutes of daylight
today, and a sun that never gets very high above the southern
horizon.  The clouds all day yesterday were streaky evidence of
the high winds that were sculpting them.  The snow plume off the
peak of Denali (Mount McKinley) was massive and miles long.  In
other words, it was a beautiful day, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be
out in it for very long.

I want to blog, really I do, but after having sat here using the phone
and internet trying to track down a potential business opportunity for
Greyfox, which turned out to be the crafts-fair equivalent of vapor
ware, my hands are almost too cold and stiff to keyboard.  I’m too
uncomfortable to make much of this, almost too cold to think
straight.  as if I could blame that on the temperature.

I was tied to this phone because the cordless is too cold to
function.  Some electronic gear says in the manuals that it needs
to be above 50 degrees, and it isn’t that warm here now. 
Fortunately, the comp generates its own internal heat and the PS2 rests
on top of an old heat generating TV and near the woodstove.  The
wind continues to blow and suck all the warm air out of here.  I’m
very glad it isn’t really cold outside, just in single digits above
zero.

warweasel
wants to know if FFXII is a good one.  I have been intending to
write a review of it, and may do that when I can stand to sit here long
enough.  It’s the best Final Fantasy yet, in my opinion, and I’ve
played them from FF the first on Game Boy, to the original PlayStation
(loved Tactics and VII), and now on PS2.   Right now, my firm
intent is to stand by the woodstove a while to warm my fingers, put
some more wood in the fire, then sit back down in Couch Potato Heaven
with my back to the stove for some more Final Fantasy.

Later… probably a few days, because I’m taking one of the cats to the
vet tomorrow and may need some recovery time after that.  We’ll
see….

I had been going right along, blogging daily, until election day. 
That trip up to the polling place and to the hardware store on the
Talkeetna Spur Road did me in as thoroughly as a trip to town often
does.  Damn this damned disease!

I have work that needs to be done around here for a day or two, things
I really shouldn’t put off any longer, such as getting the rest of the
windows covered.  Today, the wind and sub-zero temps are making
this house hard to heat.  My feet are freezing.

Two people have asked me questions that are metaphysical in nature, and
I want to assure them that I’m keeping these things in mind and still
intend to answer when I have answers.  Right now the plan is to
start on the window work as soon as Doug uses a save point and gets up
to help me.  When that work is done, it’s my turn on the PS2.

This is a rant, but not a political rant.  After I started thinking about the
subject, I could see where these little interpersonal games I was
thinking about get expanded into culture-wide conspiracies, too.

The conspiracies I have in mind are the kind that occur between
lovers and among families and friends.  They can be seen both
publicly and privately.  Almost everyone involved in them will, if
challenged, either profess innocence or proclaim that the lies they
tell are more virtuous than the truth.  The only circumstances in
which I have found people willing to level with themselves and others
about such “polite” interpersonal dishonesty has been among those in
recovery from addiction or mental illness.  Everyone else is too
immersed in the illness to cop to it.

What I mean, of course, is the way in which people tend to tell other
people what they think the others want to hear.  It is thought of
as being “nice,” being “polite,” “supportive,” or even “comforting.”
  Is my meaning still not clear?  How about a few examples?

I don’t know if this particular game that I learned in my youth still
goes on, but I suspect that it might be older than civilization and as
au courant as can be.  A young woman, if young enough, might try
to make her new lover believe he is her first.  If she doesn’t
think she can pull that off, she will tell him he is the
best.   Whether her heart is truly in it, she will flatter
him with praise of his strength, intelligence, taste, and other
attributes, especially those in which he might be insecure or deficient.

Men in general have a well-earned reputation for both flattery and
deception in pursuit of sexual partners.  They might speak of love
and even marriage, even if the former is a foreign concept only vaguely
grasped and the latter is nowhere in the man’s plans.  Sex is not
the only thing that men angle for, and their tactics for obtaining what
they want can be as various and nefarious as those of any woman. 
Both sexes angle for approval by professing approval, for affection by
giving affection, for praise by giving praise.

And, of course, those things happen in other relationships besides
those of mating pairs.  The tactics through which families, social
clubs, professional organizations, large political groups, and smaller
groups of poker pals, fishing or hunting or drinking buddies, gaggles
of girlfriends, twelve-step groups of all sorts, and users of social
networking websites reinforce each other’s fantasies are many and
various.  What they have in common is deception, and for many
people they are often overlain with a layer of denial that allows one
to evade feeling guilty for his or her lies.  Herd mentality, the
belief that “everyone is doing it,” aids the peace of mind for those
who are less adept at denial.

Relationships based on deception are, by definition,
dysfunctional.   Dysfunctional people will choose
relationships where their treasured delusions are reinforced over
healthier relationships where they are confronted with reality they
prefer to deny.  The degree of potential harm to those in such
relationships depends on the degrees of dysfunction of those involved.

One example, an extreme one with which I have some experience, is the
pathological narcissist and the people with whom he surrounds
himself.  Those with NPD, narcissistic personality disorder,
require more than the normal amount of reinforcement for their
delusions.  Their grandiose self-concept must be fed by the
approval and admiration of others, and they will be as appeasing,
ingratiating, and “nice” as necessary to attract admirers.  At
first, they put a new admirer on a pedestal, which can bond a
vulnerable person of weak self-esteem to the narcissist so that when
the narcissist turns on her (most Ns are male, most of their victims
female, but the opposite pattern is not unknown) and devalues her, she
will seek even harder to gain his acceptance.  Both participants
in this pathological dance can be unconscious of the pathology, both
believing that it is just “normal”, especially if they have come from
family or social backgrounds where it was common.

Narcissists also attract other narcissists, “inverted” narcissists or pilot fish,
who may lack the charisma, power, money, or social engineering skill to
attract victims, and instead will ingratiate themselves with a
narcissist and bask in the reflected glory.  Think of the plain or
unattractive high school girl who hangs around with the bitchy but
popular prom queen, or the roadie-toady who takes orders and abuse from
the rock star and enjoys the various perks from that association.

A similar pathology exists in a less obvious form among groups of 
“friends” who simply commiserate with each other over the rough spots
in their lives.  It might be a woman who assures her girlfriend
that each of the series of men who rejected her was a cad and
worthless.  This “friend” may be aware of behavior or attitudes of
the woman that were instrumental in the breakups of those
relationships, but she is too “polite” or “concerned” or “supportive”
to tell her friend about it, or the friend might have made it clear
that she doesn’t want to hear anything but supportive pap from her
friends.  Thus the friend never receives the honest feedback she
might need to alter her behavior, and is likely to continue the series
of short-lived dysfunctional partnerships.

This is a very common form of dishonesty and most of those who do it
tend to think of it as a virtue of self-restraint.  The
psychosocial damage done by those who are afraid to hurt their
friends’ feelings by telling them the truth is incalculable. 
After all, if one pulls a friend’s cover, might that friend not reject
one, or possibly reciprocate and point out one’s own responsibility for
one’s mistakes?  If that were to happen, then one would have to
rethink one’s own self-delusion and transcend some pathology
herself.  People who for various reasons opt not to tell
those close to them the unpleasant truth, or who refuse to accept some
friendly honesty, can thereby become the
enablers of addictions and fosterers of destructive or self-destructive
behaviors of all sorts. 

If you  have a friend who wants you to comfort her with lies or to
support her delusions with false agreement, do her a favor by not doing
her that favor.  People
cannot be destroyed by telling them the truth.  Illusions can be
dispelled with truth.  Pathology can be healed by facing the
truth.  If you don’t think you are strong enough or brave enough
to be honest with your friends, then you need to be honest with
yourself about the kind of friend you have chosen to be:  a false
friend.  If you need help with that, look here for a place to start.

AND… VOTE!  Vote your conscience and your principles, not your fears.