Promises Promises (or: Tying up Loose Ends, Part 1)

I've noticed a certain macabre bent (or at least a bit of a downer) in the last posts. And I spent the better part of the last hour trying to figure out what to write about. I mean, it's a bit like relationships, right? You start out all excited, and there's SO much to talk about, and you feel so witty and showing off a little so that your new lover can see just how clever you really are...And then comes the day when you realize that it drives you crazy when he leaves his socks on the floor, or whatever petty thing he does that has always really driven you crazy. So I was going back through my posts and realizing that I've made a few promises here and there to continue some train of thought that needed more than a really super long parantheses. And what is it to me, you ask, oh kilobytes per second reader? You probably don't even remember (or haven't ever seen) those posts.

And then I got to thinking: is it merely an anal sort of perfectionism that nags at me to finish those thoughts? (Valid point.) Or is it related to this fundamental feeling I have always had that if you are creating a thing, be it a drawing, a story or a blog, it ought to be done to the best of your ability, tedious or not? I can't leave things I make unfinished (or at least when I do I always feel slightly ashamed). (This is the feeling I couldn't articulate well when it was necessary to raise our backyard fence to prevent our dog from climbing/jumping it. We have very little spare capital to be buying nice looking fence material. So we settled for chicken wire and stakes. And part of the reason I got so irritable and frustrated was because it was so UGLY, and I guess I equate ugly somehow with unfinished, and with slacking and laziness and not caring. Which wasn't fair, since we started out knowing we didn't have time or money to make it pretty, but there is just something inside me that balks and drags its feet and stomps and says 'that's wrong! You shouldn't do it that way!' So this is my way of explaining/apologizing to my boyfriend for my grumps that time.) Hey, this IS coming from a girl who once made a sculpture back in college in February in the woods in NY with 88 balls of twine. (I have to keep reminding him sometimes.)

Combine this with a feeling of inadequacy whenever I get my alumni magazine, which always seems to be filled with people who write, casually and breezily, things that go like this: "Well after helping build my NGO from scratch I'm moving on to the backwoods of Appalachia where I plan to teach the impoverished sustainable agriculture and how to build generators out of pine trees and rubberbands." Or: "Such-and-such has a new film showing in NYC that is making people who wear black in Manhattan applaud." Somehow "I'm sticking thermometers up animals' butts and still don't feel much like a doctor," doesn't seem very glamorous. So I'm driven to fill this inadequacy with things I can do, like keep my promises to my fractionally small readership. (This desire to keep even small promises also makes me think about the fact that I have a great deal of deeply ingrained ethics that might have me keeping company with much more conservative minded individuals, though I suspect they would never know, not being able to get past the whole nose ring, pro-gay marriage thing. Things like: if you're going to bother, you might as well do it right; hard work is good for you; saying "NO" is necessary when raising children; and a little pain and hardship in your life helps you stop being such a selfish pain in the ass. I can't understand how somehow these have been coopted as 'moral values' that only christian republicans understand, and if you're a lefty you're lefty [pun intended] with soft squishy lovey never experience anything bad or your life is scarred forever theories. Now I shall sit upon my soapbox self--we all have one--and squelch her. BACK! Back in your box!)

Now. You are, at this point, tapping your foot or looking at your watch or whatever and saying, OK, but what about those promises? (You see, I've got you all excited now.) Alright. First of all, I have made rather a lot of them, and so I think this may happen to be an installment plan thing (see how I have cleverly arranged content for my next posts so that I can draw on my original enthusiasm rather than have to come up with new topics?) The first one was made in May 3rd's Ambulatory post. I promised you a picture of an alpaca from my father's 1956 American college dictionary:





I have also included a bonus , (for a dear friend of mine who really likes them), a picture of a tarsier. I'm very impressed that this dictionary has the tarsier in it at all, much less a drawing of one. The dictionary has this to say about the tarsier:





tarsier (tar' si er), n. a small arboreal primate, genus Tarsius,
sole representative of a suborder, Tarsiodea, found in the U.S.
of Indonesia and parts of the Phillippine Islands, with enormous eyes.

I love the enormous eyes bit. So wonderfully random! And then there's the alpaca. Here's what the dictionary has to say about the alpaca:


alpaca (al pak' e) n. 1. a domesticated sheep like South American
ruminant of the genus Lama allied to the llama and the guanaco,
having long soft, silky hair or wool. 2. the hair. 3. a fabric made of it
4. a glossy, wiry, commonly black woolen fabric with a cotton warp.
5. a rayon and alpaca crepe, with a viscose and acetate rayon warp.
[t. Sp., from paco, Peruv. animal name to which the article al has
been prefixed.]

Hate to be the guy that had to write that one. Viscose and acetate? Sounds like the seventies. And they left out the vicuna! I love the vicuna, they look like they are the racing high octane version of a camelid. Here is what I know about alpacas:

1. They are the short ones. Llamas are taller, and don't have quite so fine a fleece
2. They are all camelids. Camelids are ruminants. Being ruminants (see sheep cow goat), they ruminate (eat their food several times by re-chewing the material in their first stomach compartment), have no top teeth (betcha didn't know that), and like living in herds. Technically, they are slightly different than your average cow, more closely related to the camel (hence the whole "camel"id thing), and they have only 3 stomach compartments vs. the cow's 4, unless you are a fractious anatomist and like to cause trouble ,(you'd be surprised at the amount of controversy there is surrounding anatomy: the dog's cecum causes brawls every year in freshman anatomy).
3. They make a delightful short humming noise, that gets faster and louder when they are anxious and they can really scream bloody murder when you restrain them and they don't like it.
4. They do spit, but not that often. Don't be one of those annoying people who looks at one over a fence and freaks out because it might spit. Frankly, you're not worth it unless you are actively pissing them off. Do you curse at people you've never seen before for no reason? (If you said yes, remind me not to ever meet you on the street.) Depends on how much they're handled and just how much they don't want their temperature taken. Just don't stand in front when they're really mad.
5. They're stronger than they look.
6. They are some weird new fad in this country and I can't really figure that out, despite their very large limpid brown eyes and big bangs cute thing.
7. Their venous blood is as bright as their arterial blood, they have really thick skin, and they clot a lot faster than other animals (important when taking blood).
8. They hate their feet and back touched, and really don't ever seem too impressed with people, even if handled a lot. In fact, as far as I can tell they only like having their chins scratched.
   
9. They have the longest sexual act in the domestic mammal category (up to 90 minutes). If you get reincarnated as an animal, consider the alpaca or llama.
10. When they lay down, it is called cushing. Just remember when you sit on a cushed alpaca to keep her from moving while on a wheeled cart because she won't walk down to the scale, they ARE stronger than they look.
    

There you are then. One promise fulfilled. I had fun getting here, even if it was a long time coming.