Food

Does anyone else have a passion for feeding people or animals?  I Just loove to feed my friend's critters!!!  I simply go nuts, and she has to stop me.

Well, thank you for your attention to this matter. 

Kay

Added later (May 28, 2026):  Gosh, this little cat has cornered me again.  I'm in my friend's house in downtown Williamsport.  She's on my lap, purring like fury, asking for pets!  She keeps butting my hand (while I'm trying to get this post written), which means Pet me now, please!  Loud purring!  I Just got here; I didn't do anything.  I have no idea what I do to get her into this frame of mind. 

A dog this friendly would try to follow me home.  But this cat sees me getting ready to leave, and miaows once or twice, conveying something like: come back soon!!  So this is her territory.  I'm just her principal Petter, that's all. 

Again, Caitlin Clark

I do not watch basketball.  I do like to see Cailin Clark in action, and also the Fever, generally.  Other teams may be as fun and entertaining, but not as fun to watch as the Fever for me, because I happen to be familiar with them.  Because Facebook (or Meta, or whoever) knows I like to watch clips of them, I get shown a lot of those clips, just because, you know, the algorithm!

But you know, those women seem to me, sweeter and gentler than most of us; they aren't vicious, they are quick to smile, they're articulate (that is, they find the right words to explain what they're thinking effortlessly), and generous spirited and tactful.  How did this happen?

I think it is because they're well-paid, well appreciated, and respected.  There's little or no prejudice or racism (that I can see, anyway) when they're playing; they pass to the best one they can spot, while playing, who can do the job at the moment.  They get angry, they get mad, they're briefly mean to their opponents, but I don't see it getting dragged out too long.  (Of course, we're not courtside, so we don't see everything that's to be seen.)

Has Caitlin Clark (and Stephanie White, and everybody) made basketball great again—MBGA?

Well, I'm leaving it there. 

Let's look at MAGA.  Without giving Trump too much credit, I have to admit that that slogan: Make America Great Again, is really very clever.  There's absolutely no guarantee that everyone in the movement—the GOP, the Tea Party—are thinking of the same aspects of former greatness at all!  Some of them are thinking: when there were fewer Mexicans around.  Some are thinking: when we had more disposable income.  Some are thinking: when people were nicer to each other.  (Some are obviously thinking: when it was easier to find innocent little girls to play with, too.)  And some are definitely thinking: before Obama showed them that a black president was a good idea.  (Obama really broke Trump.  Unfortunately, not enough, and not for good.)

Let's face it: halfway decent people are nice and kind, and tactful, and generous and forgiving, if they're well paid.  Now that big business has taken most of our money away, obviously we're all squabbling for what's left, and not in the mood to be nice.  So Bernie Sanders has got something.  It's not just Communism; it's a more equitable distribution of wealth. 

'Something's Wrong with Maddie'

Oh my dear god.  That title—the title of this post, as it happens—is the title of a book I bought, at a time last week when I wasn't really paying very careful attention.  I Just started actually reading it this morning. 

Piper, the main protagonist, is in a really bad place.  She's dragging herself through a very painful life as a complaints person for an internet provider.  She's lost her girlfriend recently; she's dead.  That's Maddie.

It turns out that she and Maddie were so close that Piper is all at sea in a very scary way.  She can barely hold herself together; doesn't eat, can't sleep, can't focus on anything.  Then she finds a book that tells her how to get Maddie back from the dead, as a zombie.

This is where I stopped reading.  I went back to the blurbs, finding it hard to believe that I actually paid, like, $2.99 for this book.  Then I read a few reviews of people who had bought and read the book.  The reviews were almost all highly favorable.  Apparently, once Maddie comes alive—don't ask, because I didn't read that far—she has to eat human flesh.  I think it's completely out of line for a dead person to demand human flesh, but apparently Maddie is insatiable. 

So why am I writing about this story?  It appears that these two were really super in love.  (That much I got from my reading; the author conveys Piper's devastation at Maddie's death very convincingly.)  And from the blurbs/ reviews I think I picked up that the more Maddie ate, the more human she became. 

What can I say.  I should've waited until I'd read the whole thing before I wrote about it.  Maybe one of you might be brave enough to just pick up the book and read it, and tell us how it goes!

Kay

A Helen episode I had forgotten about!

Here is the link, and I'll explain below:

Chopsticks

This is a 'page' on the Blog.  It is set at the time Helen had had her most recent, and most invasive, brain surgery, and had returned home with Maryssa, to the Primrose house (Maryssa's family home, from where they would move to the new, rented home near where Lalitha's family, and the instrument factory were situated).

I was just reading this page this morning, and I was startled at how well I had been writing at that time.  Many of the characters are illuminated beautifully by this episode, but I'm a little nervous about splicing it into one of the other stories, for fear of having to do some lengthy inspections, to avoid duplication, etc.  The painfully slow steps Helen took to become a functional adult again have been glossed over in Concerto.  This episode also highlights how Erin struggled with Helen's nemory loss.