urocyon

This afternoon I picked up more formula for Punkin at the regular vet's. We were lucky they had a couple of cans someone else didn't need after all. It didn't occur to me that calling a couple of days in advance might be a good idea, but I will if we end up needing more. I had roughly £1.50 cash on me, but paying by debit card was not a problem--the regular food-sized cans were over £10 each. For the cat equivalent of Ensure. *cringe* I had to wonder if the kitten formula on the shelf might work as well, but didn't want to try it. I also had to think that the two cans of cat Ensure came to less than 1% of what we have already spent, so it's a bit silly to get balky now. :/

Since it's connected to a pet shop, I also picked up some wet food she particularly liked before (75% min. tuna, but apparently even tastier than plain tuna, to watch them), to try to get her eating again as well as possible.

I cycled to the vet's, and enjoyed it mightily.

This was actually the first time I've been on a bike in around 10 years. I stopped before the last knee surgery (cruciate ligaments are handy when pedaling), and continued to have enough aggravation from that knee that I never took it up again. Half my spare time was spent on a bike before that, though.

Obviously the cliché about something being like riding a bike was created and passed along by folks with very different large motor coordination from mine.* It took me five minutes to stop wobbling, and at the beginning I toppled over into the neighbor's fence. It reminded me of the one time I tried to operate a bicycle under the influence, ca. 1989. At least this fence was not chain link with sharp cut-off wire bits along the top!

Maybe when I was a kid, I just didn't notice passersby watching my clumsiness. It certainly didn't affect what I was doing. Today I felt very uncomfortable with three people in parked cars goggling at me on the side street. One guy was openly snickering. But, to my credit, I kept right on. Once I was confident I could, indeed, stay upright, I headed down back streets toward the vet's. The first few minutes were interesting, especially once I hit uneven pavement, but it very soon improved. I was glad I had gotten stubborn about it.

My legs could tell I hadn't been on a bike in a while, too. They're pretty tired now, but more of the same should be good for them. That quad is enough better now, I think, to step up the exercise again. I was interested to see that, yes indeed, you can bruise them thoroughly enough to get a deep hematoma that takes months to heal. Sounds like the sort of thing a cab bumper could do, all right.

On the way home, my mood had a dip. No trip out of the house could be complete without some nitwit(s) yelling unintelligible things out of a car window--or from a bus shelter, or from anywhere else out of lunging distance. These particular darlings were some of the ones who needed to satisfy their harassment needs by pulling a u-turn in the middle of a busy street to drive past again. Somehow I doubt they were screaming compliments about my cycling ability. I guess I was daring to look too happy and confident, and needed to be taken down a couple of pegs. Just considering that kind of mindset gives me the willies, but I have had to conclude that this is exactly the base motivation. And pretty base it is.

I guess I've been lucky lately, not getting much street harassment, and most of that from cars. Or, a couple of days ago, from some jerk who was actually out and about with a kid who was barely old enough to walk--and obviously counting on women not knocking up up beside the head because of that. But being hassled any is too much, and I can't just dismiss my own feelings about that kind of thing anymore. Especially now that I recognize it for the icky dominance game it is. I am still appalled at the amount I see regularly on the street here.

* Scarily enough, mine is actually better than half my dad's family's, largely because I can (and do) exert conscious control over it and slow a lot of movements down. My Nana wouldn't sit down to eat without pitching a towel over the back of her chair, for knocked-over drinks, even with nobody under 15 at the table. Occasionally someone would trip right into the laden table trying to mop up a spill. Mealtimes there were like bad slapstick, but I didn't feel conspicuous for once. I used to feel stupid, now I know it just goes along with the dyscalculia.