Reconciliation with the House

Well, in keeping with my journalistic standards - it's raining :D

Me, Rob & this house have had an ongoing war since we've moved in here. We don't like it & it doesn't like us. But in light of Rob's new quest for spirituality, and the possibility of me wanting to stick w/the County if I actually pass my background check, we're thinking of ways to try and reconcile our relationship with the house.

Everything is always based on so many ifs though.

If I do end up at the County for about a year, the m.i.l. might reconsider selling us this house, getting us out from under her thumb. Ownership leads to comfort and greater security. We would know we were staying and the house would know we were staying.

We haven't seen a scorpion for a year now. We quit spraying for the food bugs & we haven't had plants in the yard (other than weeds) for almost three years now.

So I'm thinking maybe it's time to start investing in a container garden. Even if it's just a lemon tree or two. I'd also like to do some things in the back yard, like Cretan-Minoan-style tilework or murals on the pure white walls. And a stone labyrinth on the ground. I can see stylized dolphins & octopi and turquoise blue waves back there quite easily. Any painting would have to be if we owned the place, but I could put a couple of outdoor braziers for when it's not too windy, or one of those earthenware chimneys. And a birdbath. And bird feeders. I don't care if all we get is pigeons & doves.

I also need to thoroughly top-to-bottom clean this place, which beginning Monday, means a room a day til it's done. Dusting, wiping off counters, pulling the fridge out from the wall, everything. I'd start tomorrow but I work. I should have started the week before last but I didn't have the whole County job thing looming over my head at that point.

And then I need to cleanse the house. Sage and salt water. Offerings to the lares and the household deities. I told Eleggua and Santa Muerte that if they got me through the County's door I would keep them in candy, candles, cigar and tequila for the rest of their lives. In retrospect, I should have said 'the rest of my life'. I am not on familiar enough terms with Santa Muerte to threaten her by saying, "If you don't get me this job with the County I will smash you on the garage floor and sweep you out into the gutter!" If I threaten Eleggua (which I have been known to do on occasion, and it makes Bob laugh - but Eleggua & Bob fuck with each other anyway) he just puffs up & says, "I'm made of concrete, I'd like to see you try!" If I could draw I could make a whole comic strip about the misadventures of Coyote Bob & Eleggua. Eleggua forgets, but I left his predecessor on the bank of a muddy canal in Metairie. (If a concrete head could flip someone off, I'd be so flipped off right now.)

We need to start doing more celebratory seasonal things again. I've neglected the holidays since I stopped being so Wiccan all those years ago, and Rob hasn't cared one way or the other, but there are things we can do to celebrate yearly changes without whipping out the athame.

We need to open the curtains more during the day when we're actually up. We need to play more music in this house - more background music, less background t.v. And we need a fountain or fish tank... something watery, while still being low maintenance.

But for now, I need to go to bed. While it's still raining.

Parasites Again

During my last class on Ecology, I learned that certain parasites can affect the behavior of their hosts in order to further the parasites ability to breed and complete its lifecycle. The most notable affects fish - the parasite causes the infected fish to behave in ways that make the fish more vulnerable to predatory birds. The parasite needs the birds to host its final developmental stage.

I just read an article (Return of the Puppet Masters about the toxoplasma virus transmitted by cats. It's estimated that approximately half the human population is infected with it. It tends to make an infected person, male or female, more self-reproaching and insecure. However, men become jealous & paranoid and defensive while women become more open-hearted and outgoing. If a person is badly infected - usually an infant whose pregnant mother passed the toxoplasma to them or someone w/a compromised immune system, they can develop schizophrenia. Now, rats w/a toxoplama infection become less sensitive to the scent of cats - and rats are an important host for the toxoplasma's life cycle. The cat passes the virus into its feces, a rat ends up eating something infected from the cat, the rat becomes less wary of cats, the cat eats the infected rat and the toxoplasma life cycle continues.

But why would this virus initiate changes in humans? In women I can understand - a more warm-hearted woman would be more likely to be a cat person. So are suspicious, jealous men more likely to have warm-hearted and outgoing women in their lives, who are also cat people? Therefore providing the toxoplasma host with a warm bed & plenty of food and kitty litter? I just don't see suspicious jealous men being more cat-people than normal guys. Most guys I know are jealous, suspicious and self-reproaching, which makes me wonder if all the men I know have been infected by toxoplasma.

Apparently, many drugs used to treat schizophrenia can push the toxoplasma virus into submission - and a drug used to treat a toxoplasma infection can alleviate the symptoms of schizophrenia.

This whole thing was started by me wondering what else a Burmese python could eat besides rats and its owners. I went from the Burmese python diet (small rodents to large mammals, fish, lizards, other snakes, birds, small children) to wondering if ball pythons could be safely fed other types of meat - which yes, they eat birds, lizards and small mammals. However, a ball python fed chicken would be more likely to carry and transmit salmonella. A lot of zoos feed their big pythons road kill. Nice, huh?

Oh, and I was also trying to determine if in Buddhism, animals could be reincarnated as humans. They can, and humans can end up as animals. In the Tibetan Buddhism cosmology, a human soul is more desirable than an animal soul. Personally, I think otters have it easy. They crack open seafood on their bellies. I would so like to come back as an otter. I'm just not sure how badly I need to fuck up my karma to just end up as an otter and not, say, a cockroach. I'd say I'd like to come back as a pet dog or cat, but with my luck I'd end up a pit bull being used for dog fights, or a stray cat with no tail or something. Used to think I'd like to be a dolphin in another life, but the oceans are so polluted... ugh. I really wish there were some decent Buddhist resources here in Las Vegas to answer questions like this for me. "Pardon me, revered Master - how bad do I need to screw up to come back as an otter and not, say, a pit bull used in dog fighting?"

(Ok, an aside from Cash Cab - all the inside numbers on the roulette wheel add up to 666)