Fiendish

You fiend.



Graffiti on a Crunch walk.

I had an idea a few months ago to have a "CAF-FIEND" mug and here's why I didn't do it: The inversion of the EI in caffeine to IE in fiend was too much for my over-educated, overheated little grammarian brain.

That makes me think of this one time when this man I was dating (in my early 20s) told me that I was "over educated." (I remember thinking: What does that mean even? And in the end deciding that it meant that he was threatened by my being smarter than he was.) And that makes me think of this other guy who told me (again we were dating, again in my early 20s) that I was "almost too independent." (Like he was giving me a warning or something--but not the warning that he thought he was giving me, I'm sure. That relationship ended not long after and now he's living in Denver, having married the ex-wife of a friend of his. Yes, he helped to break up their marriage by sleeping with her.) From that I learned, in my early 20s that what men generally want are dumb, dependent women.

Is that true do you think?

That makes me think of a blog that I read from time to time called I Blame the Patriarchy, a blog designed by a woman called Twisty Faster "to accommodate the exploding demand for more, more, more radical feminism on the Internet." I love it, but I don't get around to reading as often as I should because it makes me that peculiar mixture of crazy and angry that happens whenever one is exposed to the truth about the lives of women in a patriarchal society. (Also I've been in many many many heated discussions in the comments section of that site with women who refuse to see that minority women and feminism are at odd for a reason--for many reasons actually. It takes a lot out of me to argue with feminists about the racist behavior of feminists.)


But I don't want to think about it right now.

Instead I'll tell you about the little hummingbirds who have found our little hummingbird feeder. There seem to be two of them, both with little black heads and sleek greenish-gray bodies. I would guess--but obviously I don't know--that they're juveniles. Probably that's because mostly they act like little juvenile delinquents, as is the habit of hummingbirds.  They're little jerks sometimes, aggressively territorial. Actually, that's not always true though. On one of my last mornings with Crunch we were walking in the park very early and I saw four hummingbirds hunting for insects in the grass. It was very interesting to see them hunt. They would hover a few inches above the grass and then suddenly dive and snatch at their prey.They paid no attention to me and Crunch.

Most people think that hummingbirds survive on the nectar they get from flowers and feeders, but in fact many birdy-studying biologists say that the high-energy nectar is used primarily to fuel their search for the insects that make up the bulk of their nutritional requirements. (Did you just learn something?)

So maybe I should take a page out of The Book of Hummingbirds and say that the many sugary Sonic lemon-berry slushes I've had in recent days have been mostly to fuel my hunt for more nutritious fare--like, say, the pizza we had for dinner tonight.

I think I'll go with that.

Six huge military helicopters just flew overhead. Where are they going at dusk, I wonder. When I see them I'm reminded of how close I live to a military base (and how that used to worry me when I was a child because I knew that in the event of a nuclear war, my city would be one of the earliest targets) and how we actually are at war. 

I try not to think too often of that.