Ahhhhhhhh

More or less sums it up. We never got the storms, but the air is literally 25 degrees cooler than yesterday. What a jump for a day.

I planned to skate at lunch today but the weather planned that I wouldn't skate. It pretended to rain. It dripped a little here, a little there. Just enough to render skating impossible. I took a walk instead and photographed statuary on Fountain Square.

I have a crush on statuary. I don't know what it is. I dream about statues. The Tyler-Davidson statue on Fountain Square in Cincinnati is this big bronze monstrosity that's been leaking into the parking garage beneath it for years. In August, they're closing Fountain Square and renovating it and moving the statue. Which is very weird and a lot of people who live and work in Cincinnati have strong feelings about it, but having gotten emotionally involved in local politics before, I decided to stay out of this one. Really, what's the point of City Council holding a town-hall style meeting to determine the public's feelings on what to do with the Square if all that will come of it is that City Council will discover the public is in total disagreement with it, but it decides to move forward with its agenda anyway? I declare shenanigans on the whole thing. Get your broomstick!

It's been cloudy all day. A moody sort of day--just barely enough to get you thinking about fall, right at the end of July. I was listening to "Good News for People Who Love Bad News" incessantly last fall and a few of the songs from it have been flitting through my head today. Funny how there are always songs I associate with fall--I assume this happens to many people. You listen to certain music during a certain season every year, you keep coming back to it.

This is the kind of thing I love to look at. It makes my eyes feel good in my head. It makes me glad I can see. My eyes like this so much that I feel it in the bottoms of my feet. It's difficult to keep myself from touching this statue. The fact that there are hundreds of people milling around the Square every day at lunchtime isn't necessarily enough to stop me from it, but the threat of getting water from the fountain splashed on my camera is enough. I was standing in the half-arsed drizzle trying to shield my camera from the mist as I used it and my left peripheral vision suddenly turned green and I turned to see B standing there watching me take pictures. "I knew it had to be you," he said, standing there in his green shirt with his green eyes, holding a fast-food cup with a straw. "I saw you across the square and I thought, I bet that's J." We stood there talking about Harry Potter for a few minutes. I took a few more shots.

I didn't look at the pictures until just a little while ago when I moved them from the card to the computer, and this one made me smile. I didn't realize it at the time, because I took the picture from about twenty feet away zoomed in while I was talking about time travel and luck potion, but there's a bug in this statue's ear. And it kind of looks like he realizes it. But, he's a statue, and he can't move to flick it out. All he can do is stay there in his frozen position with the water dripping down his bronze skin, staring at the bricks of the square, thinking the thoughts that give him this expression of bemusement. He is frozen mid-word. I think about what he was saying when his movement was distilled into this unmoving form.

Kiva's ear continues to heal. When I cleaned it out tonight, there was far less gunk in it. I only put a small amount of Neosporin in there, figuring that Steve's going to lick it out anyway. I'm surprised at how quickly it's healing. Maybe the dog spit is doing some sort of trick on it. Thanks to all who left comments about it; my mind is more at ease.

This evening, I called my parents and asked them if they wanted to go to Glenwood Gardens with M and I and our dogs. We met them there and within about two seconds my dad and I were arguing and snarling at one another over stupid shit. My father and I--if you take the same basic personality type and double it, and you make one a Catholic republican and the other a Buddhist democrat, well, that sums up our relationship, with the inevitable complications of parent vs. progeny. Sometimes, even though we care about one another and understand one another all too well, the only way we can communicate is through arguing and butting heads. We worked it out more or less partway through the walk, and were able to enjoy the rest of it.

My parents are having lunch with my brother and his wife on Saturday. The psycho wife. With major issues. Who has not let my brother see any of us since they got married in April. Except we were allowed to see them to drive down to Lexington to pick them up at the airport and drive them back to Cincinnati at the end of their honeymoon. I don't know what's going to happen. We haven't dealt with family shit like this since us kids were in high school twelve years ago. And this is not like anything we've ever dealt with as a family before. None of us has ever married/gotten together with someone who decided we couldn't see our family anymore. I am beyond shocked and hurt--first that my brother's wife has done what she's done, and second, that my brother has allowed it to happen. I never would have thought it of him.

That's all the further I'm going with that one tonight.

M's birthday is tomorrow. On the schedule is dinner out and a visit to the tattoo parlor. We'll see what that brings.

Off to bed. Too much statue in one day. It's all so overwhelming!