My friend Sophie is very ill, so a little over a week ago she asked if I’d sit her dog Hallie. Though Hallie is a great big bitch and has a few odd personality quirks, she is a frequent visitor to Sunset and mostly knows how to behave herself out here. Also, Axel is her buddy and she generally follows his lead, so sometime after sunrise I let them out, then go back to bed and let them in again when I get up around 9. They’re both older dogs (Axel is 10 and Hallie 11 or 12), so about three hours of running around in the dewy, dewy grass is generally sufficient exercise, and they mostly just lounge and nap the rest of the day. Alas, it was different on the night of the 4th; though Trip prefers to spend 95% of his time outside, he is terribly afraid of fireworks, so as soon as they start he wants to be inside. But even inside, he gets spooked when the noise peaks, so on Saturday night the only way to keep him from running around, knocking breakables over, was to invite him onto the couch where I could pet him while assuring him that Danger Man would protect us from the scary noises (in all seriousness, I think the TV sound helped drown out the pops, cracks, and booms). Axel jumped up right beside him, which meant Hallie spent the next several hours in an elaborate dance: stand around looking forlorn until I tell her to lie down, then look at me as though she doesn’t understand until I point to the easy chair. Then get in the chair; lie contentedly for about 15 minutes; get up to wander around aimlessly until I tell her to lie down; lie on the floor for about 10 minutes; get up again and wander around aimlessly a bit more; then go back to looking forlorn and start the cycle again. Oh, well, it was only one night; the rest of the time, dogsitting is an easy way to help a friend, and barely even impacts my schedule.
Archive for the ‘Diary’ Category
Diary #836
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, holidays, psychology, Sunset on July 7, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Diary #835
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, drugs, psychology, Sunset on June 30, 2026| Leave a Comment »
I’m pleased to report that Axel is completely off of the trazodone which the shelter had him on. When I first got him at the end of November, he was on 400mg/day, an immense dose for a 20kg animal. So I immediately started weaning him off, at first reducing the dose by 50mg/day every week, then once we were down to 100mg/day slowing the reduction to 25mg/day every few weeks. At the end of April he was down to 25mg/day, then for all of May 12.5mg/day, and then at the beginning of June I started skipping days between doses; since I saw no difference in his behavior between med days and no-med days, his last dose was a week ago, Monday the 22nd, and he’s just fine. He no longer chases the cats or snaps at strangers, and he isn’t nearly as high-strung as he was just a few months ago; about the only relics of his former problems are a tendency to eat cat shit (I know it isn’t an unusual dog behavior, but I’ve never owned a dog that did it before) and some separation anxiety. He no longer gets upset when he doesn’t see me, unless I go off in a car; when I get back, even if I’m only gone for a couple of hours, he cries and runs around when I return until I pet him and calm him down. Given that I was told his first owner died when he was seven, my guess is that the owner went off to the hospital in a car and never came back, so he is afraid when I leave in a car. But other than those comparatively minor issues, I’d say he has passed his good boy tests with flying colors, and demonstrated that he was exactly the right choice to bring into our Sunset family.
Throwback Thursday and the Playgirls
Posted in Diary, Miscellaneous, Philosophy, tagged blogging, imaginative fiction, left-right myth, propaganda, psychology, Twitter on June 25, 2026| Leave a Comment »
There is nothing as good for anxiety as feeling supported and cared for! – “Diary #625”
It’s hardly incisive criticism or inspired analysis to point out that children see and enjoy different things in a movie or show than adults do, or that young adults and older adults may enjoy different things about the same show. –
“The Eye of Childhood”
Art cannot exist as handmaiden to politics. This is not to say that art cannot be political; “Guernica” is art. But if the artistic impulse does not precede the political one, the result is mere propaganda. Artists can make political statements, but partisans can’t make art. – “Tweets Aplenty”
Grief, loss, and pain are transmuted [by the brain’s alchemy] into art, much like a compost heap transmutes organic garbage into humus for growing new plants. – “Diary #782“
Diary #834
Posted in Diary, tagged drugs, psychology, Sunset on June 23, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Well, I was wrong about the daisies two years ago, because though there are only a few this year, my allergies still reappeared the night of June 1st and have continued since. Fortunately, I got help last year to figure out a proper over-the-counter meds regimen, so within a week or so I had it mostly under control (though my eyes were still bothering me pretty badly until the latter part of last week); I’ve stopped trying to figure out what exactly is causing it and just resigning myself to this being another reason to dislike summer. Usually, I can start stepping down the meds in August, and be back to normal by September. Alas, “normal” ain’t what it used to be; one of the reasons I’ve stopped trying to figure out what environmental factor I’m allergic to is that I’ve had to recognize that my body is aging rapidly, as I always expected it to. What I mean is, I enjoyed excellent health through my forties and the early part of my fifties, then about four years ago that started to change; I figure the allergies are just a part of the whole constellation of physical ailments that have now become part of my life, including anemia, fatigue, diminished physical strength and flexibility, and increased back pain. Given that the latter is due to five fractured vertebrae incurred in a severe car accident in April 1995, and that I learned to manage it well enough that it was only an occasional problem for the past 30 years, I really can’t complain that is finally returning in the last act; I just have to accept it as another way that my body is not merely suggesting I slow down and take things easier, but rather leaving me no other options.
Diary #833
Posted in Diary, Philosophy, tagged animals, Grace, Oklahoma, psychology, Sunset on June 16, 2026| Leave a Comment »
After talking to a large animal vet back in November, I knew Jonathan didn’t have much time left, but I wasn’t sure exactly what the end would look like for him. He’s had a couple more of those fainting spells, but on those occasions I was able to help him up. But last week he was uninterested in his feed, then on Thursday our neighbor who borrows barn space from us came by and found him lying on the barn floor, refusing to get up. It was very obvious he was suffering, so the neighbor offered to have his son-in-law, who is good at such things, come over to put him down. A few years ago, we rented an earth-mover to do a few things, and Grace dug a big hole out front we were planning to use to put a transplanted rhododendron in. But due to miscommunication, she dug the hole much too deep, and due to other issues we never got the rhododendron, so we’ve had a pit large enough for a llama out there ever since. I therefore accepted the neighbor’s help, and he used his tractor to bury Jonathan in the pit. He had a good life, and it was his time, but it’s going to seem rather strange to have no llamas around for the first time in 20 years. And now that Trip and Speck are the only two beings left who moved here with me from Oklahoma, it does contribute to the strange yet not upsetting feeling that my world is contracting, as it so often does as we move slowly toward the day when we, too, must pass.
Diary #832
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, video on June 9, 2026| Leave a Comment »
This has got to be the most timid brood of pullets I’ve ever had. They’ve been completely out of the nursery for three weeks now, yet every morning when I check on them, they’re still perching in a tight little group on the roost with the turkey. So every day when I come back in the early afternoon to throw out some scratch, top off their water, and collect the eggs, I have to shoo them off the roost and out the door so they can at least start getting used to the adult hens. It isn’t like the hens are being aggressive to them, either; I haven’t seen a single instance of pecking. But within a few hours of my shooing them out, they’re back on the roost. So I reckon I’ll just need to keep on this way until they finally join the flock, which I’m hoping will happen at least by the end of the month.
This Too Shall Pass
Posted in Biography, Diary, Philosophy, tagged drugs, Grace, holidays, psychology, Sunset, Thanatopsis on June 5, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Trauma, like everything else, is typically effaced by time. The anniversary of the events of Memorial Day, 1995 still affected me deeply at the 24-year mark, but once I moved to Sunset full-time the following year, those old serpents began to grow quieter; last year they were overshadowed by the death of my best friend, and this year the anniversary was marked by little more than unpleasant memories despite spending it alone, which in the past was a bad idea. The weathering away of the aftereffects of trauma appears to have been mostly the result of a combination of time, therapy, and daily cannabis usage, but I can’t discount the contributions made by age, wisdom, and perspective. Those who fear mortality are fixated on the fact that all good things die, ignoring the fact that bad things do as well. Spiritual immaturity obsesses about the former to the exclusion of the latter, but the insight which comes in the fullness of time, assuming we allow it to, brings the realization that this is not only as it should be, but as it must be. And, if we’re fortunate, the recognition that this is not only good, but beautiful.
Diary #831
Posted in Diary, tagged Grace, psychology, STEM, Sunset on June 1, 2026| Leave a Comment »
What you’re looking at here is the ring which joins the plumbing of my hot tub to the heater; the flashlight is necessary because even in broad daylight it’s pretty dark in the basement. As I learned three years ago, when there’s a leak it’s typically because a two-dollar rubber o-ring needs replacement. But my body has aged considerably in the past three years, so it was much more tiring and unpleasant than it was last time, and I experienced nearly as much anxiety around the process as I did last time despite knowing exactly what needed to be done. That’s how it has been with nearly every technical problem since Grace died; even when it was something she could no longer do (like crawling under the floor or climbing up on the roof), I could rely on her technical expertise to guide me, and because I had faith in her ability I wasn’t as reluctant to attempt things I’d never done before (like welding a steel structure together). In contrast, I now experience considerable anxiety every time something technical needs doing; I even put off changing the main water-system filter for the entire last year because I was worried something might go wrong (I finally did it recently and of course it was fine). About 30 years ago my friend Frank said that tragedies are multiplied by the inconveniences they spawn, and I’ve had the truth of that ground into my heart every time I have a technical problem, because every time it does and she’s not there to fix it herself or tell me how to fix it, I am reminded of the huge Grace-shaped hole in my life.
Diary #830
Posted in Diary, Miscellaneous, tagged animals, recipes, Sunset on May 26, 2026| 1 Comment »
It’s that time of year when y’all are starting to get tired of pictures of chickens, so I instead present something completely different: pictures of eggs. A few years ago I was given four ornamental chickens by friends who decided to stop keeping poultry, and I’ve been surprised that elderly (they’re all at least 6) chickens not really bred for laying are nonetheless still laying more than the much-younger blacks, who have been extremely disappointing layers. One of the Ameraucanas is starting to peter out; she now lays only sporadic, tiny, vestigial eggs. But one of the blacks laid this enormous goose-egg-sized monster last week; I’ve included a normal large-grade egg and one of the vestigial eggs for comparison. On Friday night I decided to make eggs in a frame for dinner, and I used the giant (which turned out to be double-yolked) and three of the tinies (which had no yolk at all); that’s how I typically use eggs whose size grossly departs from the norm, because they’d throw off the amount of liquid in a recipe, but that doesn’t matter when one is merely cooking them straight. Plus it’s kinda fun.
Diary #829
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset on May 19, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Sunday was graduation day for the pullets. On Saturday night I left the nursery open, and when I went into the henhouse on Sunday morning only one of them was still in there; after shooing her out I removed the chick feeder, water bottle, heat lamp and timer, so from now on they’ll come and go with the other chickens, on a natural daylight schedule. It’ll probably be a few weeks before they start to follow the flock, and they’ll generally keep to their own clique until they start laying sometime in July. I can’t yet tell whether the turkey is a tom or a hen, but she’s bolder than the others because despite being two weeks younger, she’s already noticeably larger. But in any case, by September the hens will all be one flock (plus the turkey), and on the first day of autumn the timer-controlled heat lamp will go back on, and the cycle will begin again.
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