Month: June 2022

I’ve recently been seeing the word “woolgathering” in use again, in a number of places. It’s something that I never heard used as a kid, but read more than once; I’m pretty sure that Judge Dredd would say it on occasion, in one of those moments where the quasi-transatlantic nature of the comic became all-too-visible. (I mean, come on; what tough future New York cop would describe himself as woolgathering?)

For those unfamiliar with the term — I suspect that’s most anyone who might chance upon this post — it’s dictionary definition is straightforward: “indulgence in idle fancies and in daydreaming; absentmindedness.” To woolgather is, I guess, just meandering around mentally, thinking of whatever comes into your head and following it wherever it goes. It’s what I do here all the time.

I’ve become a fan of woolgathering lately; or, rather, it’s something I’ve learned to appreciate more fully. My current workload requires me to create cohesive, extended arguments on a daily basis, to research things and excavate the truth, and then curate everything into the most easily-understandable, almost certainly briefest version of events for whoever happens to be reading. It’s something that, to put it mildly, requires a fair amount of concentration.

At the same time as doing that, though, I need to be thinking about what’s next — planning future pitches, paying attention to whatever might be fodder for a story for another outlet, or whatever. My brain doesn’t get the luxury of solely concentrating on one thing for any extended period of time, because there’s always, always, the next thing to think about. So, I gather wool. I let my mind go where it wants, every now and again, and see what happens.

It’s an odd idea, to consider allowing your mind to wander to be not only a skill that you can develop, but one that can be productive. In both cases, though, that’s true for me. Woolgathering has become a necessary part of my process, even if the name for it sounds particularly casual and rustic.

I still think there’s something amusing about my missing the 20th anniversary of my arrival in the US as a permanent resident. It happened back in March sometime — I can’t remember the date offhand, but it was somewhere in the center of that month — and, although I was aware that it was coming ahead of time and casually, aimlessly, told myself that I should probably do something to mark such a momentous occasion, I missed it entirely when it actually rolled around. I was too busy with the day-to-day of life, and making sure that more important things were taken care of.

Putting it like that suggests that there was something else of great import happening at the time, some kind of event that was distracting me. Surely, after all, I could only miss the 20th anniversary if another Big Important Thing was taking up my headspace instead. That’s not true, though, to the best of my admittedly faulty recollection; March was simply another month, like so many other months in the last year or so, where the everyday is so packed and busy that things that… well, aren’t really important fall out of your head to make room for the good stuff.

That, at its core, is why I’m so amused and delighted by forgetting the me-getting-to-the-US anniversary. There was a time, and there was a me, not that long ago that would have hyper-focused on marking the date as some truly important, necessary thing to pay attention to, something meaningful. Now, though, I’ve become someone who’s too busy just living life — loving those around me, taking care of them, doing work that makes me happy so I can help support them — to reliably keep track of such things. I am, ironically, doing the really meaningful stuff so much that I’m forgetting about the self-indulgent faux meaningful.

There’s no way to say goodbye to a pet, not really. Everything feels emotionally overwhelming, and you try your best in the moment, wishing that they understand on some level, hoping that your very presence and the physical affection you’re offering is, on some level, reassuring and enough to bring them some level of happiness at the end.

Ernie’s death came quickly, thanks to the vet’s skill, but it was the last part of a week that had been more difficult and, I suspect, more stressful and upsetting for him than he could have imagined.

He’d had oral surgery on the Tuesday, to have 25 teeth removed; they’d rotted in his skull over the years, under the gums, and were causing him pain, so it was decided that they had to come out; he went in nervous in the morning, and came out doped up and drooling that evening. The surgery, they said, had been longer and more extensive than anticipated, but they expected a full recovery.

I did, too; after all, his brother Gus had something similar happen last year, and he was back to normal in a day or so. That wasn’t the case for Ernie, however.

He spent hours on the Wednesday whining and crying and vomiting; there was so much vomit. He sounded so unhappy, on a primal level. I called the vet, and was told this was normal the day after a major surgery, as bad as it seemed, and that I should call the next day if he hasn’t improved. By Thursday morning, he couldn’t stand up and was still refusing food and now refusing water. The vet agreed to take a look.

Everything after that is a blur, really; multiple discoveries of bad news — his kidneys seemed to be failing, his blood sugar was far too low, his stomach distended, the nodules on his liver — and no real understanding about why or what was the reason for the sudden, shocking downward turn. I felt helpless and heartbroken with each new call. As he was checked into a hospital for constant care, I knew on some level it was the end even as others told me that he could still get better.

Friday morning, 6am, I got the call that nothing had improved and that they still had no idea what was happening. I asked if he could survive without this level of constant medical intervention, with IVs and anti-nausea medications and everything, and was told that he still hadn’t tried to eat or drink anything at that point. “If this was your dog, what would you do?” I asked the vet.

Two hours later, I was in a small room with him. His tail wagged when he saw me, the first time his tail had wagged since Monday. I held him on my lap as the vet offered the three injections, and told him that I loved him, that I’d miss him, and that he was a good boy. I hope he knew, somehow, that all three were true.

Like most people on social media, judging by my feed, I fell for the siren song of Wordle some time ago. How could I resist? There’s just something about the appeal of a quick, daily, word game that lets you think Oh, I’m so smart, I guessed “rouge” on three attempts on a regular basis while also giving you the space to ignore the pure luck factor of it all. (Look, if you start off with the wrong word, sometimes you’re just fucked.)

The problem with Wordle, though, is that there’s just one word a day. That’s not enough for the truly obsessive need for distraction that lives inside my brain, dear reader. I needed something… more. I needed Quordle.

As the name suggests, Quordle is Wordle, but you’re simultaneously guessing four different words at the same time; you get more passes to make that happen, of course — nine instead of six — but that’s not the only change that’s important. No, with Quordle, there’s a “practice” setting that lets you play as many rounds as you want, instead of just one round a day. And that, let me tell you, is a game changer.

Quordle has become what I do if my brain is feeling restless, but I’m not ready to handle anything particularly requiring true focus just yet. If I have my iPad to hand — for some reason, I only play it on my iPad, which feels like a sign of true obsessiveness — then I’ll just play a quick round, and then almost certainly play a second before remembering I should probably be doing something else instead. It’s something that happens almost every day.

Moreover, it’s something that in a strange way has made me… slower and more methodical outside of the game, perhaps? For the first three passes, I’m throwing out whatever words I can think of to get letters on (and off) the board, but then I stop and start being analytical and deductive; I become a consonant Sherlock Holmes, trying out combinations in my head, however unlikely they seem. It sounds ridiculous, but Quordle has taught me the value of doing something similar in my writing and self-editing, as well.

I’m aware that the game is, perhaps, a timesuck and something I could and should pass up in favor of more worthwhile pursuits. Eventually, that may even happen. For now, though, I just need to figure out if any word could start with an X and then have a U as the next letter.

The cat had entirely, utterly disappeared. There were three of us looking for him, running through the three-level house and checking all the rooms as quickly as we could, and he was nowhere to be found.

We were preparing for an inspection of the house by the landlords, and already relatively excited, by which I mean stressed and exhausted; although we were pretty confident that everything would be fine — we take really good care of this house! We make small repairs ourselves, without complaint! —there was just a feeling of, listen, you never know when things can go south unexpectedly, that made us nervous. Both Chloe and I have become suspicious of relying on good feelings and good fortune over the past year or so.

With the landlords due in thirty minutes or so, the plan was for her mom, visiting from out of town, to take the cats during the inspection to ensure an orderliness and calm that wouldn’t otherwise happen; but one of the cats had utterly vanished. He’d been around for a first attempt to go in a crate to be carried out, but he’d resisted and run upstairs; we watched him go… but he was nowhere to be found upstairs. Nor, it turned out, was he downstairs, either.

We searched the house maybe four, five times with no luck. He was simply gone, but that was impossible, too — he couldn’t get outside because doors and windows were shut. Things had reached the point where we were starting to find it simultaneously funny and genuinely insane-making; how can a cat disappear so completely? Did he even exist in the first place, or have we been hallucinating him all these years? Was this the end of a cat version of Fight Club? All the while, the clock is ticking down and the landlords’ arrival is getting closer.

Reality was restored when he was discovered inside a box spring, having burrowed himself in there at some point without anyone noticing. The inspection went well, and all was good in the world, but for the rest of the day, I kept remembering what it felt like when he was simply nowhere, as impossible as it was.