Teddy's Strabismus

As I was taking our sheets and some dress shirts to the laundromat yesterday, I passed this teddy bear sitting out on an abandoned bicycle near the high street. He looks like he has been well-loved.

Maybe that's why he's now cross-eyed!

Yesterday was a get-this-house-in-order kind of day. First and foremost, I cleaned and arranged the patio. Now that the scaffold is gone, it needed a good sweeping and then I moved all the potted plants back into their usual positions. The scaffold guys managed to leave behind a heavy metal clamp as well as a big board, but I just threw them away. It's an unwritten rule that every time a scaffold gets disassembled, parts of it are forgotten. I'm sure they're used to it.

I also trimmed the monster, which had been partly blocked by the scaffold and thus left to run wild for the past month. It's been driving me crazy, so I was glad to give it a haircut. I collected two bags of trimmings afterwards.

And of course I vacuumed inside and took care of all the potted plants. One of our rescue orchids spontaneously died. I have no idea why, except that it was never very robust to begin with. It's OK -- we have plenty -- but I'm letting you know that I do have my failures.

I also took Olga to the cemetery. No turaco. I think Olga put on some weight while I was away, so we've got some more walking to do!

I came across an interesting article yesterday about the urban myth of the school that installed a litter box for a student who identified as a cat. Have you heard this nonsense? It's a story that's been making the rounds, usually perpetuated by people who are hostile to LGBT identities. Some mother made the allegation at a school board meeting months ago that schools were installing litter boxes for "furry" students, and it was never true, but the story took on a life of its own. It has been repeated as fact by politicians and political candidates and podcasters. When we were in Michigan over the summer, Dave's mom said she heard it from someone who had a friend who worked in this mythical school. That seems to be the pattern -- it's always a friend of a friend who has personal knowledge of this situation, and yet no specific school or litter-box-using student has ever been identified because they DON'T EXIST. It's just a way for right-wingers to take the idea of self-identification to an absurd next level. It's baloney.

People are so crazy. The things we come up with! It's enough to make me go cross-eyed.