I refuse to shut the window

The one office window that I can reach to open without lying on my stomach on a pile of obsolete stereo equipment and a larger pile of paper faces west, and is sheltered by a large if somewhat ragged arbor vita tree, which is generally occupied by either house sparrows, house finches, or squirrels. The window is a favorite of my cat. I left it open last night. I won't be able to do that tonight; the cold front is coming in. But I won't shut it just yet. I might put on a sweater, I suppose.

I just made grilled soy cheese sandwichs for Raphael and me. They had more tomato and pickle and, in my case, onion, than cheese, but I put very thin slices of cheese all around the three-dimensional slippery ingredients, and the sandwiches did not fall apart. They were tasty, too.

David and I had lunch with mrissa and timprov today. I enjoyed it very much. It takes me a long time to get used to people, but the process is moving along nicely. It is immeasurably cozy to hang out with people whose household arrangements are like a slightly warped mirror of ours. I'm not sure why, but it is. There were college reminiscences all around, and wit from the witty members of the party (the other three, that is).

My mother is coming over on Sunday to help me put down paving stones before the ground freezes. In the meantime, I will record that I have a single anemone blooming, a handful of dark-red chrysanthemums, some daisy fleabane, and a couple of black-eyed Susans. My mother and I went walking in the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum on Tuesday, and I saw a meadowhawk, a ladybug, and a yellowjacket. They, too, are not going to close their windows just yet.

I had thought of titling this entry, "Why is my basement like hell when it is neither dark nor deep?" Suffice it to say that the cats need to go to mouse school. I found myself lecturing Naomi, "Kill or not kill. There is no try." She did not believe me. I don't want mice in my house and I wish they did not evoke so much fellow feeling in me. But hey, I love my rosebush. Mice are evolutionarily much closer to me than my rosebush.

The book is inching along. I still don't really get along with Open Office. It's intuitively opaque to me. I don't like the way it thinks about text. It doesn't care what I like. It cares about a lot of things I don't care about. It's not actually smarter than me, but it's more stubborn. However, it can't stop me from writing.

I'm still utterly flattened by the results of the election. I won't rant just at the moment, but I did have one thought. I have heard a number of plaints from Bush supporters about how Kerry supporters think they are stupid. Well, I don't think that, but I do think that they made a stupid decision at a critical juncture. I'd love to be wrong about that, but I don't think it's the way to bet.

I'll leave the window open a crack, though.

Pamela