Edison is not better. He’s not eating a lot, but does enjoy getting petted. I have tried to go in several times to keep him company today. He seems comfortable.

Eileen ordered a portable dishwasher for us. It came today. It didn’t seem to have wheels. Weird. The installers had no clue. Eileen sent it back. She looked at the  picture of what she ordered and lo and behold: wheels! Not having wheels takes the portable out of portable dishwasher, n’est pas?

Eileen has been on the phone with Lowe’s and apparently someone will be straightening all of this out by Monday. Sheesh.

Someone on one of the Facebook feeds I subscribe to mentioned that he thought Marcus Millar picked up where “Miles” left off. So I thought I would give a listen. I like what I’ve heard so far.

I have been having a serious jones for Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, playing them, listening to them, analyzing the melodies.

I have been thinking quite a bit about melody. When I hear new music, especially pop music, my attention is directed toward the melody.

Good, interesting melodies take some craft to make up. Now that I am gradually freeing myself from the yoke of church music, I am re-approaching making up music and thinking about melodies.

Also, today I decided to take a look at Kazantzakis’ sequel to The Odyssey. This book has been sitting in my library for ever. It’s a used paperback and its  cost is marked 50 cents. I wonder if it dates back to one of my used book stores.

According to the notes in the book, I have messed in this book before, once in 2016 and once even earlier. In is introduction, translator, Kimon Friar, quotes W. B. Stanford who places this work right next to Joyce’s Ulysses. Cool. I just interlibrary loaned Stanford’s The Ulysses Theme which Friar quotes.

That’s all for today, folks.

Eileen left me a note on my blood pressure kit last night where I would see it this morning. Apparently, Edison seemed very uncomfortable to her. He was squatting as though to pee but only passed blood. She ended up moving him to the porch along with a litter box, food, and a blanket.

When I got up he seemed to be doing okay. Later I called the vet. They gave me an antibiotic shot to give him hoping that he might be suffering from a urinary tract infection. I’m not confident about how much I got inside him since the vet taught me to pinch some loose skin and inject him that way. Unfortunately, it’s easy for the needle to slip all the way through the skin and out the other side. I’m sure that happened a bit but n.ot sure how much actually got inside him.

I sat and petted him on the porch just now. He doesn’t seem that different. I think he has oriented himself to his  new environment pretty well. Eileen isn’t sure how much blood he scattered on the carpet. He doesn’t seem to be bleeding now.

We’ll have to take it a bit at a time. He may worsen, stabilize or improve. At any rate, we’ll keep him on the porch until we’re sure he’s no longer bleeding. No sign of blood since last night.

I sent a message to the kids and their spouses about this.

I finished The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen yesterday. This is an amazing book, full of brutality and insights. Plus the plot was interesting as well. Not for the fainthearted.

Here’s a taste of Nguyen.

“… we watched the three policemen do what men have undoubtedly been doing to women since Adam blamed Eve for listening to the serpent. It had not occurred to me until now, blind man that I was and surely still am, that the serpent was Adam’s own penis, which the writer of the Book of Genesis had detached from Adam and flung into the grass. From there it could rear its head and talk Eve into eating the forbidden fruit, as if Adam had nothing to do with it. And how does one eat forbidden fruit? By asking permission? Or by taking it, which, for all we know, Adam might have done and then blamed Eve? If prostitution was the world’s oldest profession, then rape was the world’s original crime.”

Eileen changed her mind and wanted to go out the Ottawa Beach Inn last night so that’soo what we did. It was a nice night to sit outside, be together, and eat.

I’m slugging away at Diangelo’s Nice Racism. I think this is an important book for American white people to read. Very helpful. She keeps pointing out the need to work on oneself and not others. I listened to a bit of Ezra Klein’s interview with Ibram Kendri this morning. Kendri pointed out that it took him twenty years to work through his own racism. It’s not something that can be undone by one workshop or book if it can actually be undone.

But awareness is important.

Self awareness is difficult but is a lifelong project for me, I guess.