cats and other monsters
Nov. 16th, 2008 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dchenesThis coming week starts Part 3 of the Great Cat Food Quest. Part 2 has lasted for the duration of six pounds of horribly expensive prescription cat food, which has proven that Snip is allergic to something in Purina One chicken and rice food. I hope she's allergic to wheat or corn, as opposed to chicken and/or rice. However, we shall see, because Part 3 of the Quest consists of horribly expensive wheatless and cornless chicken and rice food. At least I don't have to go to the vet's office to get that.
I've always been pretty good at differentiating between things I need and things I want. I need new contact lenses. I want glasses with my current prescription, and a haircut, and linen for the next embroidery project, and a new rice cooker, and a couple of albums from iTunes. I also want to do silly things like go on a spree in an Armenian grocery store, and have my apartment cleaned once a month. I can live indefinitely without all the stuff on the "I want" list, and I can live for another month or so without new contact lenses. But it's no fun at all to have to shout down the instant gratification monster all the time. The things on the "I need" list would make me feel better if I had them, but that's not a legitimate excuse to run up the credit card balance again. (Too bad I would hate being a kept woman, assuming anybody wanted to keep me in the first place.)
Having sung alto in every chorus I've ever been in, I seem to have developed the ability to sing harmony with things that don't have any, or find harmonies that aren't there already in things that do have it. Last night I spontaneously started singing harmony with Latin plain song, the whole point of which is that it hasn't got any harmony. What earthly use is a superpower like that?
I've always been pretty good at differentiating between things I need and things I want. I need new contact lenses. I want glasses with my current prescription, and a haircut, and linen for the next embroidery project, and a new rice cooker, and a couple of albums from iTunes. I also want to do silly things like go on a spree in an Armenian grocery store, and have my apartment cleaned once a month. I can live indefinitely without all the stuff on the "I want" list, and I can live for another month or so without new contact lenses. But it's no fun at all to have to shout down the instant gratification monster all the time. The things on the "I need" list would make me feel better if I had them, but that's not a legitimate excuse to run up the credit card balance again. (Too bad I would hate being a kept woman, assuming anybody wanted to keep me in the first place.)
Having sung alto in every chorus I've ever been in, I seem to have developed the ability to sing harmony with things that don't have any, or find harmonies that aren't there already in things that do have it. Last night I spontaneously started singing harmony with Latin plain song, the whole point of which is that it hasn't got any harmony. What earthly use is a superpower like that?
