fphuck it, there will be one last epic paroxysm of home improvement.  it won’t be the last.

arnold became comfortable with the lower chamber sooner than expected, though he is not a big toy person.  he has new toys and he doesn’t interact with them much.  he is more about sights, people and sounds.  and treats.  a piece of wavy colorful furniture doesn’t seem to do much for him.  to put it another way, he seems to know the difference between toys and the real, non-toy things in themselves.  to put it another way, the distinction that humans make between toys and actual things is not important to a bird.  but it’s early.  this is pretty good iced cream.  I’m not a caramel person, but I don’t mind vanilla as long as there are some chocolate things in it.  it now seems inevitable that the orioles will win the AL east.  I’m not that impressed by the other teams.  is tampa bay obviously a better team?  I suppose I don’t know.  I don’t know much about the players but am vaguely aware of important injuries to yankees and uhhh a general sense that there are more talented players on other teams.  but the yankees pitching does not impress.  I don’t think pettite is going to work this time.  is there anything that menacing about the red sox staff?  what the orioles have lacked is good young players who get better and become all-stars.  and pitching of any sort.

arnold’s old cage is now a cupola on top of the new.  I took wire snips and snipped a rectangle in the roof of the new cage.  I dismantled the bottom of the old cage and sat it on top of the new cage.  it’s still difficult to get arnold to go into the new cage.  the automatic thing that happens when I bring him to the (old) cage and reach my hand around behind my head and he flees my hand and goes directly into the cage.  that thing doesn’t work with the new cage.  he just worms around and refuses to go in.  I have to place him in there by hand, and then he seems fine in there.  he doesn’t seem stressed once he’s in there.  but getting him in was hard, so I made the cupola.  he flies right in.  he has not ventured down through the hole.  he remains up top.  I saw him eyeing the hole.  it’s going to take a while for it to set in.  he’s had newspaper and piles of shit down there his whole life.

I don’t think he likes having air all around the cage.  hmm.  but he never minds having air around him when he’s out of the cage.   he is cheeping at me.  he wants out, and doesn’t realize the bottom cage is open and he can just go down there and go out.  it’s possible he’ll just never want to go down there.  I put some little pieces of bread in a dish down there.  he eyed it but didn’t go down.

arnold is in his new cage.  he resisted going in.  I had to put him in with my hand.  then he clung to the side for 5 minutes or so, pretty nervous.  then I dropped a little piece of bread in his tray on the other side of the cage, which is twice as wide as the old cage.  he then made his way across the dowel but only halfway, and then jumped onto the swing, which I located in approximately the analagous location as it was in the old cage, albeit turned 90 degrees.   the quarter turn didn’t confuse him.  he jumped onto it from the proper angle and hasn’t moved from the swing.  it took about 10-15 minutes for him to look relaxed.  now about an hour later he is more demonstrative, with a lot of self preening, biting his back, and shaking his wings.  still has not made a sound except some little nervous peeps when I made contact with the far side of the cage.  I left the front door open for a while and he was reaching his head down from the swing to figure out how much of me he could see from the perch.  now the door is closed.   the interior is about 2.5 times as high as the interior of the old cage, though he is actually a couple feet lower when he is on his perch, compared with the old cage, since the old cage was up on a dresser and this one is on castors.   this one is twice as wide as the old and twice as deep.  he has 4 dowels instead of one.   his toys have not arrived.  just the cage.  the cage arrived I think 2 or 3 days after I ordered it.  I ate a special cookie earlier.  a spatial.   that was 3 or 4 hrs ago.  I should now eat a bit of ordinary food.

I always thought there was merit in the work of… everything.  even before I got this new bag.

but now it’s clearer.  everything is impressive.  it’s just a matter of deciding what to be impressed by next.

my

man, this craft brew is talking to a whitey.

–

I like to give a reading, but I’m glad I don’t have to give another reading for a while.

I couldn’t help but notice the orioles still have baseball’s best record, albeit tied with some other teams.  though it looks like that may change, with the o’s down to the rangers 7-3 in the 9th.  will the o’s again this season have the best record in baseball?  our panel of experts decides.

I ordered arnold a beak tweaker, a cable comfy perch, a rope knot, a 30″ x 20″ x 40″ cage, a hall of mirrors, lion pinata, rope ladder and some food.

the long partyless winter may be drawing to a close.  I won’t check how long it has been until then.  better not to know.

o, to have a party of one’s own, always there, like some pepper.  we mustn’t speak of it any longer.  let us now turn our thoughts to other things.

–

I went over there.  they were having a thing, due to the animal race.  in the late morning I had seen him in the back yard prepping, and he mentioned that I could attend the cookout.  he invited me to the cookout.   I wasn’t around at that time, but later, around 7 or 8 tonight, I bought a 6-pack and went over there.  someone let me in.  I went out back where the people were.  at this point I was in their back yard, which is next to mine.  I had never been in that yard.  I talked to the people.  I talked to her.  at a certain point she said you should go over and talk to him.  that seemed a bit odd.  I was not given a choice..  I went over and talked to him and the people over there.  it was fine.

it was one of those things where I barely went.  I thought of that ogden nash poem, as I often do.  the sins of omission vs the sins of commission.  that’s how I get myself to go to a party.   I was there for long enough that I began to feel like the polite thing was to leave so they could have the party they were going to have without me.  I was there close to 3 hours?  is that right?  2 hours?  I think it was close the 3 hours.  I like the guy, though I wouldn’t guess we have a lot in common, necessarily.  not sure about the vibe I got from the gal.  I thought she might not want me there.  I learned some things, of course.  I learned that the cellar there has a dirt floor and there is no access from inside.  the only way into their cellar is from the outside.  I didn’t go in there.  he says there is often water.  I got the tour of the first and second floor.  the kitchen is nice.  it’s a long kitchen with lots of windows.  the upstairs is dubious.  the use of space is dubious, as he pointed out, and I concur.  I think the architect did a shaky job of dividing up the space.  but, ya know, overall it’s a nice place.   I might have said insensitive things.  yeah, the guy was pretty cool.  oh, I had an epiphany.  I am a “quirky” “artist”.  I am a “bohemian”.  a “creative”.  this is so clear to me now.  though I shouldn’t jump to conclusions.  I may have a totally different impression of myself the next time I meet them.

I think I have a bit more privacy than I realized.  on that side I do.  oh yeah, today, after a scooter trip with some hometown friends, I happened to turn on the tv exactly when the ky derby began.  I assumed I was seeing a replay.  but it was the live derby, and I knew this because I could hear their reaction through the wall.  they were watching it, since they were having a derby party.  I wasn’t over there yet.  and even though they were probably loud, because they had made bets (I later learned) it didn’t sound especially loud.  so it seems we have some privacy.   it turns out the room where I made the 2nd attempt at a sound proof wall is adjacent to a room that is not usable as a bedroom at all, over there.  there is no place in that room, over there, where even a twin bed will fit.

because it was a derby party, the women were wearing print dresses.  some of the guys wore ties, but some wore tee shirts and shorts.

they don’t hear arnold at all.  they’re younger than me.  I meet more and more people who are younger than me.  it seems there’s an influx.

oh, I had another epiphany.  sometimes when people meet me, they think I’m a little strange, maybe a little off somehow..  they don’t recognize that I am actually very, very strange… way off.  hmm, what I’m trying to say is that people who are a little uncomfortable with strangeness tend to underestimate the extent of it, whereas people who do not underestimate the extent of it (as much) tend to be more comfortable with it.  oh, I think often when people find me strange,  it’s just because I’m very human and immediate at times, and strange.  at one point he and she and I were upstairs, doing the tour.  and we were talking about their floor plan vs mine, and he was at times asking me questions about how the two compare.  so it seemed natural to say we can go over and I’ll give them the tour, and I was actually thinking we might go right over here and I would give them a quick tour.  it would take all of 4 or 5 minutes, but she seemed to think I was crazy for suggesting that.  like, what, we’re going to up and leave the party and go over to your place for a tour.  granted they have guests over, but umm, it really wasn’t that outlandish an idea, and would have taken less time than, say, going to the bathroom.   really, it wasn’t that strange of an offer.  but seeing the reaction, I transitioned into… maybe some other time, then.

Will football eventually be illegal.  Probably not.  But the sport will probably be played by very different rules 5 years from now.  Boxing is legal.  Soccer is legal.  Soccer players head the ball thousands of time.  Incidence of brain-injury-related syndromes is higher among former soccer players, but one study found they live longer than the average person.  NFL players live 20 years shorter than the average person.  It’s a wonder that any professional football players are functional after they retire.  It’s a wonder that some live to old age.  Without question they suffer brain injuries routinely.

Even if you widen the field, reduce hard hits, and even limit player size, NFL players are still going to tackle one another and that will shorten their lives in any case.

There are other factors that probably shorten lives besides the brain injuries.  Suicides are in some cases probably partly due to the let down following retirement.  The glory high is gone.  Some of it is probably social.  You have guaranteed friends when you’re on a team, or at least a sense of belonging.  Then you retire and your social structure may be very different.  But most of it has to be brain injury, I would think.

Arnold has some notable new behaviors.  There is a discard dish where I pour out the uneaten food from his dish before I put new food in his dish.  The discard dish is in front of his cage, so when the cage door swings down to let him out, the door forms a platform a few inches above the dish.  About a week ago he found a way to climb down to the underside of the open door so he could access the discard dish, even with plenty of food in his own dish.  He seems to prefer stale food, or maybe just outdoor food.  I’ve seen him under there, eating the stale food a few times in the past week.

Today, I found him standing on the ledge made by the top of the lower window sash.  The kitchen window, nearest the hanging plant where he likes to sit and sometimes eats dirt.  He was pacing back and forth on the ledge, pecking on the upper pane as if he was trying to find a hole in the invisible glass.  He was also trying to get a grip on the two window locks.  It looked very much like he was trying to unlock the window.  I’m sure he has seen me unlock the windows many times before I open them.  It’s probably a bit of a stretch to suggest that he was actually trying to unlock the windows.  Perhaps not impossible though.  He was clearly trying to manipulate the latches in some way, but was unable to get a good enough grip with his beak.  The top of the lower sash is lower than the plant, and he usually doesn’t electively go to a lower place, especially a place that’s narrow and smooth, since he like to have things he can grip.  He definitely was looking for a hole through the glass.  That much is certain.  It was clear from the way he would peck on the window and then move a little further, and test again.