SquareOdds # 7: Sacramento, CA

February’s Squares Challenge is ODD.

Thank you to Becky at Life of B for dreaming up the fabulous Squares Challenge. Today, she features a puzzling feature of Portuguese villages in the Algarvian hills.

A year ago, self’s neighbors across the street took off for Seattle, almost as soon as the Governor lifted travel restrictions. Infected by their energy, self undertook a road trip of her own, though hers was much less ambitious. The Crocker Museum in Sacramento was re-opening! Therefore, self determined to be there for the opening.

She found an Airbnb that was in a converted Chinese laundry. In fact, here’s the neon sign hanging outside the structure. The sign is protected by the Sacramento historical association. It has to remain up, forever.

Another thing about the Airbnb: there was only one other guest, and she was Filipina! What are the odds? At night, the owner’s two French pugs would go scrambling around the living room. They are apparently celebrities on Instagram, with upwards of 10k followers.

Dogs on Instagram, Airbnb in Chinese laundry: Sacramento is an interesting place!

It was the perfect place to kick off a year of road trips, all over California.

Stay tuned.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #145: Getting to Know You

scillagrace is the host for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge.

The theme is GETTING TO KNOW YOU.

Here’s how scillagrace explains it:

• To look carefully, curiously, enthusiastically, enduringly, and lovingly at something changes me. I begin to feel connected to that subject. I develop an affection that fuels further and deeper observation and understanding.

There are so many wonderful examples of Getting to Know You on her blog.

Here are self’s. (Coming clean: These pictures were actually taken, not by self, but by her Airbnb host in Sacramento. Self tried, but her photos were blurry, as these two were in constant motion. Her host very kindly took self’s cell and took these really GREAT pictures. The pets are Coco and Pi. On Instagram, they have close to 9000 followers!)

Coco and Pi were such a delight. It’s been a long time since self’s had a pet. For about 15 years, she had two beagles, Bella and Gracie. They passed ages ago. And now self travels a lot more, so she worries that she can’t give any pets the attention/love they deserve.

Anyhoo, Coco and Pi are the best of friends, as you can see:

Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.

1st Full Week Under 46

How’s it been going?

Excellent!

Joe signed ever so many Executive Orders. The White House dogs have their own official Twitter account. Jill Biden posed with her dogs in a gorgeous white dress with pinafore sleeves. Janet Yellen was confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury. A guy named A. Blinken is US Secretary of State. 45 GOP Senators are cowards. Despite last night’s storm, self’s garbage cans were all present and accounted for. And she is still finding her current read, High as the Waters Rise, by first-time novelist Anja Kampmann, engrossing.

The MC’s finally managed to get off that blasted oil rig in the middle of the Atlantic, but he’s suffering from full-on melancholy because he had an unorthodox relationship — friends with benefits? — with a co-worker who got swept off the rig in a storm.

Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.

Kudos, p. 55: A Hamster

Whenever mice or hamsters enter a story — any story — self’s satisfaction quotient goes up 300%.

It happened in Dave Sedaris’s piece on how hard he had to try to kill a mouse (Self isn’t sure which collection contained the piece, she thinks it might have been Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim)

It happened in Dead Letters by Caite Dolan-Leach. Self was on the fence about this novel until she got to the section where twins Ava and Zelda adopt a small clutch of baby mice. That’s when she realized the book was a gem.

It’s happening in Kudos. Oh JOY! The hamster page is 55:

The solid fact of the hamster made all the difference. She could describe them petting it and fawning over it while its imprisonment got increasingly on Linda’s nerves, and the way it solidified their bond so that Linda felt left out. What kind of love was this, that needed the love object domesticated and locked up? And if there was love being handed out, why wasn’t she getting any? It occurred to Linda that since their daughter had found a satisfactory companion in the hamster, her husband might have taken the opportunity to round that situation out by returning his attention to his wife, yet the opposite was the case: he could leave the child alone less than ever. Every time she went near the cage he would leap to his feet to join her, until Linda wondered whether he was actually jealous of the hamster and was only pretending to love it as a way of keeping hold of her.

The Economist really messed up by not mentioning the hamster passage in their review of Kudos.

Stay tuned.

The Most Amazing Rant

Self has been wanting to blog about The Door all day. She’s been very busy. She considered several passages before deciding on this one.

Really, self doesn’t know if the narrator is for real, or whether Emerence the housekeeper is a total construct. Just read the following monologue/speech, which is apparently directed to the narrator, who has no objections:

• What are you staring at? Didn’t you see Mrs. Boors granddaughter running along the other side of the street this morning, when I was sweeping — or were you paying attention only to yourself again? The child had come for me, and I went. Well, you can believe that if I’m holding someone’s hand in the hour of their death, it’s not difficult for them to die. I washed her, all very nicely, and prepared her for her journey. And I can tell you it wasn’t easy finding the time. In between, I had done that lunch for you, for which you have thanked me so graciously. Pay attention, because this is going to hurt, but it’s what you deserve. The master isn’t going to live very long, as you well know. Do you think he’s going to get stronger on plums? And what will he take to the other side as a memento?

Well, if that doesn’t just take the cake for speeches from a housekeeper!

Strangely, self hopes the relationship continues, because it is just so toxic, and it’s been a long time since self has read about a relationship like this — not even in Rebecca was Mrs. Danvers this verbally abusive. Self doesn’t think she’s read any novel where a woman is describes mistreating an animal as frequently as Emerence does the dog Viola. She beats Viola on numerous occasions, once so badly that Viola cracks a rib.

But, self has come this far. She’s not going to jump ship now!

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Dog Training in THE DOOR

9/11 is almost over. Self is sick. She stayed in bed all day, reading The Door.

Magda and her husband find an abandoned puppy and take it home. Emerence, the housekeeper, becomes a completely different person with the dog: she is loving, she is affectionate.

Which reminds self of that long-ago time when her two beagles were still alive. She trained them to SIT.

Dogs Meeting Cute in Trieste

Someone later told self that if she just raised a finger, the dogs would sit. She didn’t need to say the word. And that was when self realized that every time she said the word SIT, she raised her index finger.

lol

And that person was absolutely correct! Beagles would sit if she just raised her index finger!

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

A Hanged Cat

This scene would never occur in an American novel, just sayin’ —

Emerence and her neighbor have a bit of a to-do over her cat killing his pigeons. She refuses to keep the cat confined to the house. So the neighbor

tracked the noble hunter down, grabbed hold of him and strung him up from the handle of Emerence’s front door. Returning home, the old woman had to stand there, under her own porch roof, while he gave her a formal lecture: he had been forced, regrettably, to defend his family’s only guaranteed livelihood, with the instruments of his choice.

Emerence said not a word. She released the cat from the wire, the ‘instrument’ the executioner had chosen over ordinary rope. The corpse was a shocking sight, its throat gaping wide.

What a creepy, horrifying scene! And in a novel whose voice is so quiet!

What other sly surprises are in store?

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Solitude: The Daily Post Photo Challenge

“Show us what being alone means to you.”
— Jen H., The Daily Post

Self never feels more alone than when she’s on the train, surrounded by people listening to iPods:

And there is something incredibly solitary about these people on a train platform:

Cats are solitary creatures: Agree/disagree? The cat’s name is Chester. He lives in Calgary:

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

The Nostalgia of Others

Of course, nostalgia is something that affects everyone differently. We’d love to know what kinds of experiences you’ve had that stir these emotions for the past in you.

— Jeff Golenski, The Daily Post

Here are some WordPress blogs whose takes on this week’s photo challenge, NOSTALGIA, intrigued self:

• Miriam Hurdle’s blog, The Showers of Blessing: about missing one’s parents
• Picture Worthy, remembering food from his childhood years in Guangzhou, China
• Potpourri, for her photos of departed pets
• The Day After, for her photo of her son and her best friend’s daughter, playing in a kiddie pool
• Jane Lurie Photography, for her amazing pictures of Friday Harbor, San Juan Islands

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Another Sentence of the Day: Self Getting Hungry!

Before school I would go for a run with my dog, Rambo, then make two large peanut butter cookies in the toaster oven and eat them, steaming hot, on the bus.

— Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies

Really enjoying this book. Stay tuned.