When my grandfather died my mother said he had come into her bedroom and touched her on the shoulder.  I’ve been having the same experience with Lucky, my old blind and deaf cat who continued to live with me until he began to look emaciated and I had him euthanized (which I regret).

He was a brave soul and snuggled up to me on the bed.  He learned the path to his food and litter box nearby, and on blind faith would jump back up onto the bed.  Recently I have felt the bed jar a little from time to time and briefly feel he is coming to snuggle again.  I wonder regretfully if it isn’t only my muscle spasms?

I came across some instructions that may be of use to you, sometime, like they were for me:

HOW TO GET OUT OF THE BATH TUB WHEN YOU’RE OLD

1. Beginning on your bottom, use the side of the bath to pull yourself onto your side, then onto your hands and knees.
2. Holding onto both sides of the bath, push yourself up onto your knees only.
3. Hold onto the side of the bath, closest to the exit, lift your knees off the bath floor, so that you are balancing on your feet.
4. Continue holding onto the side of the bath, and bring one leg over the side of the bath.
5. When you are safely standing on that leg, continue holding onto the side of the bath, bring the other leg over the side of the bath so that both legs are outside of the bath.
6. When you are safely standing on both feet, let go of the side of the bath.
7. Towel dry.

CAUTION:

1. Never do what I once did,  stand sideways in the tub with your back against the wall and slowly slide down the wall.  I was trapped for two hours, until I figured which way my various limbs worked.

LISTEN

There is a great unease in the land.

The ginkgo shed its tears of gold

last night, November 24 it was, the

age-old communal obeisance to its

surrounds, root systems and their

fungal networks continuing to fortify

together with next of kin,  in the presence

of change in the air. The oldest living fossil

stirs.

Jill Dennison via Dr. Rex:

How does Trump know so much about so many things? Explaining his disagreement with scientists on climate change, Trump told the Associated Press: “My uncle was a great professor at MIT for many years. Dr. John Trump. And I didn’t talk to him about this particular subject, but I have a natural instinct for science.” 

Photo by Nancy Romans – Not Quite Old

Evolutionarily speaking, human nature seems to be approaching the boiling point.  Just a few decades ago the movies portrayed glamor pusses with leading men whispering uncertainly “No,” and then melting into their arms.  Anyone old enough to recall this?

Now spoken words can get a man or woman fired.  I heard one of Rump’s sons say into a microphone from a podium, “If women can’t take it at work they should stay home.”

Will the #Me Too movement really change things or backfire?  I would have “Me Too”-ed if I’d understood how to do it.

Headlines above the Ohio anti-choice bill article read “Forced Motherhood.”

There was no headline “Forced Fatherhood.”

Our president has been revealed to enjoy using his prestige to fondle strange women, uninvited.

Incest survivors are haunted by the memory that their body responded when they knew it shouldn’t.

Some female sex workers enjoy the power they have over men.

The news reported that a man charged some women of raping him.

David DeSteno and Piercarlo Valdesolo, psychologists and authors of Out of Character: Surprising Truths About the Liar, Cheat, Sinner (and Saint) Lurking in All of Us (2011, 69) , reported on an experiment in which ovulating women  in a lab were asked to smell a number of men’s  unwashed t-shirts and asked which man’s scent they preferred.  “We know, it sounds a bit strange, but believe it or not , the ovulating women overwhelmingly preferred the smell of men who had more symmetrical features [and therefore were more genetically fit]. (R. Thornhill and S. Gangstad,  Human Nature 4 (1993) 237-69.

The mind is loaded with mechanisms meant to ensure that  our genes are passed on, and the urge to have sex with an attractive (and thus genetically fit) stranger is one of them.” lbld, 68

Work by Mattie Haselton at UCLA  indicated that when ovulating, even relatively demure women will dress more sexily…ibid, 70

There is a new movement of men called “Incel,” in which men who are unattractive to women commiserate sadly and angrily, even aggressively:  “Incels are members of an online subculture who define themselves as unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one, a state they describe as inceldom. Self-identified incels are mostly white, male, and heterosexual.” Wikipedia

What’s one to make of all this?  I don’t think it’s a harmless Lysistrada, especially with the current “might makes right” philosophy afoot.