Category Archives: clarice

clarice, house stuff, moe, moe's mom, poop

during the past week…

i’ve been dealing with diverticulitis, which means, largely, a liquid diet, and having to shit all the time, sometimes suddenly, and (occasionally) explosively, which is VERY INCONVENIENT… particularly if it is in the morning, before a performance for which the venue isn’t open yet… 🤬😖😒😠🤬 which resulted in my having to sit in my own shit the entire day, through two performances, and pretend that everything is fine. 😵 i have had to get one of my suits professionally cleaned… 😒

i hope i never have to do that again. i would literally rather DIE than have to experience that again. one of the things that my counselor has pointed out to me, is that i have “unresolved grief” because i DIDN’T DIE when i had my brain injury… something i am still trying to wrap my head around… 😖😵

ON TOP OF THAT clarice died (she was a defective bird right from the start, so it wasn’t too surprising), but moe’s boss was so devastated by it that moe, somehow, came up with TWO parakeets (they’re actually budgerigars), which are, tentatively, named Tommy and Tony (after Tommy Chong, and Richard Anthony “Cheech” Marín), but, at the moment, are as yet unnamed. ON TOP OF THAT we’ve been experiencing an “atmospheric river”, which has resulted in widespread flooding that has included our back yard!!

251211 our flooded back yard
251211 our flooded back yard
ON TOP OF THAT, the day after thanksgiving, moe’s mom had an “altercation” with another resident of the old-folks home where she lives, which resulted in the other resident attacking her and another old lady. moe’s mom now has a severely bruised face, a black eye, and both arms in casts, which means that she can’t do important things like opening dog-food cans, which means that her dog (normally called “the unicorn”, but recently we have taken to calling her “the miniature tyrant”… her actual name is “Lacey”) has come to live with us, and we are in the beginning steps of filing a lawsuit against the facility, because the staff basically stood by, did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, and waited for ANOTHER RESIDENT to step in and convince the guy to stop attacking… 😠

i’m not sure, and i don’t know all the details of the “altercation”, but i’m strongly betting that moe’s mom had at least something to do with the start of it. 😒

and ON TOP OF THAT moe has torn her meniscus AGAIN, which increases the likelihood that she will have to have BOTH KNEES REPLACED at some, hopefully, relatively soon point in time. 🤯

is that enough?

i will be REALLY glad when the universe STOPS attacking me. 😠

clarice, pictures

this is the house i live in… 🤣

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250723 Timmy and Clarice
250723 Timmy and Clarice

we have adopted a “pet” starling, named Clarice.

she was a nestling, who was rescued from a cat by a colleague of moe’s, a couple of months ago, and, because of the fact that european starlings are an “invasive species”, if we had taken her to wildlife rescue, she would have been euthanised… and, it turns out that she doesn’t fly particularly consistently, which means that if we just released her, she would probably become someone’s lunch, pretty quickly…

so she has been going to work with moe, during the day, and we have a coop for her to sleep in, at night… but she still follows moe around like… well, like a little bird. about half of her “following moe around” is done on the ground, because she doesn’t fly particularly consistently. she flies, but it’s only fairly short distances, and she prefers flying up to things, because flying down is harder…

starlings are very smart, and can be taught human speech, like parrots. we’re teaching her to say “hello, clarice.” 😉 which is even more amusing because of the fact that i have NEVER SEEN the movie “Silence of The Lambs” (i’ve seen clips, but not the entire movie).

mozart had a pet starling.