Breaking With Tradition

It's a (minor) Christmas miracle!

For the first time in living memory all the presents were bought, wrapped and shipped (without needing special overnight postage) in time to be received by Christmas Eve. Technically, there were no guarantees on the "receiving" part but the Post Office's assurance of "should arrive by" is sufficient since most of the intended recipients won't gather at the intended receiving location until the 27^th. And their presents will be waiting for them!

And we've been getting our presents from them over the past couple of days so it seems to be happening in both directions.

This has not occurred in our family in well over a decade, probably closer to two. We have long accepted that Christmas tradition consists of rising early on the morn, gathering around the lit tree, eating a hearty breakfast, watching a parade and a football game or three and then opening presents day by day as they trickle in over the ensuing fortnight. Anything arriving by New Year's Day is considered on-time. It's usually only the pets that ever find anything for themselves under the tree.

This year, we'll do it all in one sitting.

It's going to feel like a very short holiday this time around.

Cats' Christmas

We had a feline family fight a couple of weeks ago. Mom Jasmine and Mittens started a ruckus in my brother's room one night. It sounded loud and angry and serious. Paribanour surprised me by immediately leaping out of her chair and running into the room where she broke up the fight and chased Jasmine back into the living room. All the tails were bushy and all the fur was bristling for days (Paribanour gets a cool, spiky, Mohawky thing running down her spine when she's all het up). Jasmine and Mittens couldn't stand to be in the same room together and even took meals apart. They've finally gotten over whatever it was (or maybe just forgot) and have started grooming each other again. Might be the desire to share the space under the Christmas tree.

The Christmas tree is up. And decorated. So far the cats have knocked down one ornament and that was probably my fault for placing it too low. They have not been playing with the tree although Mittens has claimed the space right against the base as her nap area and both she and Jasmine take turns snuggling up around the penguins or, when they desire to not be seen, tunneling under the tree skirt.

There are a half dozen largish wreaths on the dining room table waiting to be placed and I found Jasmine curled up inside one this morning. She looked both comfortable and cute so I left her there. For now.

This holiday season kind of snuck up on us thanks to the warm weather. We've had the air off and the windows open continuously pretty much since Hallowe'en (with one exception for a week of torrential rain mid-November). The cats, for the most part, are behaving themselves around the screens and not clawing holes even when there is some animal out there in the night darkness whimpering under the mango.

Mittens, the littlest one who had the big adventure, is the exception. She's a climber and can not resist working her way to the very top of the floor-to-ceiling screen by the front door. She makes a fair amount of racket in the process whereupon I go out to investigate to find her at or above eye level, looking like one of those plush toys with the suction cups on its feet that people stick to their car windows. I look at her. She looks at me. I quietly ask, "What are you doing?" She puts her nose against the screen, looks at me again, and slowly climbs back down. Repeat every third day.

The Hallowe'en candy is gone, except for one Reese's cup I've been hoarding, and not counting the three bags my brother stored away in a closet thinking (erroneously) that they'll still be there for next Hallowe'en.

The Thanksgiving leftovers are gone, except for four containers of turkey soup, and not counting excess food that didn't get cooked and is just waiting its turn in a normal meal.

The penguins are out and the cats are (now, temporarily at least) on their best behavior.

Let's do Christmas!

Is This What Democracy Feels Like?

I have been voting now for near on fifty years, ever since I was old enough to register. I have missed maybe two or three elections in all that time. Never before have all of my choices/candidates won. In fact, the vast majority of my candidates over the years have lost mostly because I do not vote a party line in any election and usually go for the third (or fourth) party candidates. Also, recently I've tended to live in very lopsidedly one-party states. The only presidential candidate I ever voted for who won was Barack Obama.

Imagine my surprise when the returns came back this week from Tuesday's local election.

All the candidates I chose won. Admittedly there were only three of them, but still. Every charter amendment I voted for passed and the ones I opposed lost.

I'm not quite sure how to deal with this strange sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, but I doubt it will survive next year's election.

 

A Night on the Town

Mittens, the little clone of her mom, stepped out last night. Technically, she fell out. She (or her sister or her mom) managed to tear a hole in the screen at the base of one of the dining room windows and she went through. I believe accidentally although I can't be sure. She likes climbing screens and can frequently be found hanging by her claws at human eye level, or higher, in the front foyer. (When I confront her and ask, "What are you doing?" she just looks over her shoulder at me and slowly climbs down backwards.)

The front door and several windows were open because Rainy Season is over, despite hanging on long enough past its scheduled end to completely ruin any chance of seeing the last Super Blood Moon Eclipse, and temperatures at night have dropped to the point where air conditioning is superfluous. It's nice to let real uncanned air in finally.

I didn't realize Mittens was outside until she tried to get back in the front door and her sister, who also didn't know didn't recognize her and started hissing and growling at her through the screen. Mittens was already scared at finding herself out in the world, her sister's reaction didn't help at all, and when I tried to open the front screen door she freaked out and ran (stopping just long enough to try jumping back in the window which didn't work).

After securing Paribanour back inside, I left the front screen door open and placed some food and water in the foyer to entice Mittens back in. I figured it took the better part of three hours before coming out of my closet after her adventure with the paper bag and it might take that long for her to calm down again.

I spent those three hours wandering around in the dark calling, "Here, kitty, kitty," knowing full well the futility. She is completely unequipped to deal with the world. The most she's ever seen out the windows are birds and squirrels. She has no concept of dogs, opossums, hawks, alligators, coyotes or cars. I hoped she would stay on our property and hide in the nearest underbrush and, if that's what she did, she did it well because I couldn't find her.

Jasmine and Paribanour, meanwhile, were acting very tense and alert. They knew something was wrong. In the end, they started staring out the glass doors into the lanai and when I turned on the light there was Mittens . . . who ran again when the lights came on.

So I moved the food and water from the front foyer to the lanai.

Five minutes later Mittens knocked on the front door to come in. (She does that. The other cats, when they're in the foyer, just gaze longingly through the side window hoping to catch a human's attention when they want in. Mittens has learned to knock.)

At first she was a little skittish and the others a bit standoffish. She was still excited and had, I suppose, picked up a bunch of outdoor smells which unnerved the other two. Eventually everyone got over it and I was able to tell my brother a humorous story when he got home.

All the windows will remain closed until repairs are effected.

Crikey! What a Bunch of Cheapskates!

I was at the library, which is one of the early voting locations, and decided to get my civic duty over with.

There were seven or eight volunteers and poll watchers there to serve me, the lone voter (although I had seen other people going in and out earlier). The ID-checker-man said my signature on the electronic card reader thingy looked just like the one on my license which I'm not sure was a compliment but it did allow me to go and get my ballot.

I voted "Yes" on all the charter amendments except for lowering the veto requirements and lowering the referendum requirements. I also voted for the non-ideological, non-Tea Party candidates for council, at least as far as I could tell in a non-partisan, no-label election.

And I was shocked (shocked, I say!) to discover that the change in how elected city officials' pay would be determined means that the $36,600 and $32,600 salaries listed in the amendment will represent a 50% increase over what they're being paid now! Are you kidding me?! This is the tenth largest city in the state by population, almost 155,000 people, and we've been paying these guys between $19- and $23,000 a year to run the place?? It may have been a part-time job when the city was first incorporated but it sure ain't now.

Well, I did my part. Now we'll just have to wait until after the official election day, this Tuesday, to find out just what kind of tightwads the rest of the neighbors are. My hopes are not high.

Ignorance Under the Law

Confession time. When I moved to this city I never took the time to sit down and actually read the city charter. In fact, I never read the charter of Salt Lake City when I lived there, nor of any other place I've ever lived. Every incorporated municipality has one, right?

Has anyone read their city's charter or incorporating documents?

Ever?

And I don't count lawyers hired by or contracted to a city who must read it as part of their jobs, nor lawyers for people who might want legal recourse against a municipality. I'm referring to real people.

And yet, this fall, we, the voters who have never read our charter, are being asked to amend it in seven different places. Because we're the ones in charge, after all.

Most of the amendments seem sensible enough:

• Change the amount of severance pay due to city officers when they get fired from four months to four months or whatever is required by state law, whichever is less. (Yes, let's follow state law, please.)
• Change the mayor's and city council's salaries to a fixed amount instead of one based on the number of registered voters. (Who came up with that weird formula in the first place? And the mayor's salary will be only $36,600 a year? Council members, $32,600. For a city with a population just shy of 155,000 people? Really?)
• Change the charter to specify that emergency regulations must be enacted in accordance with state law. (There's the second reference to behaving according to state law. How were we doing it before?)
• Bring our anti-discrimination ordinances up to par by including color, religion sexual orientation, national origin, age, handicap, marital status and/or any class protected by state or federal law. (Yay! I don't have any idea how many of those were not covered before and I wish it were possible to just say "Don't discriminate," but since people in power apparently need to be told in detail this will do nicely for now. And again with the obeying state law thing.)

Two proposed amendments, I don't know what their effect will be or what the intent really is:

• Reduce the number of signatures needed to force a referendum from 15% to 10%. (There's a fine line between allowing citizens to bypass a recalcitrant council and encouraging cranks to petition for their every little hobby horse. If we cross that line it could be nigh impossible to claw back to it. Technically, each of these amendments constitutes its own referendum, already. Just based on the published letters to the editor, I'm inclined to believe we have enough Tea Partiers in town to really gum up the works if given the chance. I'm leaning towards, "No.")
• Reduce the number of members on future Charter Review Commissions (O.K., I guess these folks have read the charter. Don't know how many are lawyers, though.) from nine to seven with two alternates. (Seems like a housekeeping kind of thing. Perhaps they didn't all get along this time. I'll likely go for it.)

And one proposal is a no go from the start:

• Reduce the number of votes needed to override the mayor's line-item veto from two-thirds to a simply majority (but not less than four). (Sorry, no. This is a power grab by the council that will enable them to get their pet projects approved at the expense of the entire city using the good-ol'-boy, buddy-buddy, "I'll override yours if you override mine," system. Our council has too many goofballs (and developers/politicians in developers' pockets) on it to trust them. Perhaps we could get more competent people if we paid them more?)

So there we are. We are charged with changing the rules by which we govern ourselves. It's kind of inspiring although it does make me wonder what else we're still doing that isn't "in accordance with state law."

Not enough to go read the damned charter, though.

She Who Hesitates

Ours are indoor cats. Nevertheless, they like to go "out," out being the screened in foyer leading to the front door which has hidden gaps somewhere down in the corners that allow smallish lizards (and, once, a baby black snake) in. The cats know they can occasionally chase a lizard, although they haven't caught one in months.

Recently, Jasmine, the mom, has got it in her head that she is the one to go out first and if she is preempted for any reason will not go at all. She will saunter, trot and (very rarely) gallop to the door indicating her wish to visit the foyer. On having the door opened for her she then stops dead pondering the commitment required to choose here or there, in or out.

The kids, on the other hand, experience no such existential qualms. They hear the door open and come running. If Jasmine makes up her mind before they arrive they will happily follow her out. If she remains racked by indecision they will scamper on past as if this were their first invitation to an incredible adventure.

Which pisses her off to no end.

If she was standing, she'll sit. If sitting, she'll glare at them until we give up coaxing and close the door. Or sometimes she'll just look at us to say, "Good riddance to them, I didn't want to go out there anyway" and then walk away.

But she does care. Once in a while, when the kids are either entering or leaving, if they are in range, she give one or the other a hiss and a swipe of her paw. But she absolutely will not go out unless she's first.

The funny thing is: the deference she demands would be hers if she were just a bit more decisive.

In a couple of weeks it shouldn't matter anyway. As the temperatures cool down and the humidity drops we'll be able to turn off the air conditioning, throw up the windows and leave the door open while we're home.