Art of the Odd

I took some time off from work today to hear Barack Obama speak in Culver City. (Or Baldwin Hills, depending on whether you get the address from my cell phone or from the neighborhood signs in the area.)

He’s an excellent speaker, with a strong presence, a refreshingly accurate grasp of the English language, and some very good ideas. But that wasn’t what impressed me the most about him. The thing that impressed me the most is that right after he took the stage, a woman near the front of the crowd collapsed. Not only did he spot it — he shut things down until she got some help. “Can someone please call the medics or 911?” he asked, as half a dozen cops stood by. Should I just go over there?, I wondered. I had a bottle of water, but I was two hundred feet away, with bodies pressed close between us. “We’ve got someone down here — probably just the heat.” We stood in the sun, waiting, until he said, “Are you okay, ma’am? No, we still need some help here. Would someone please give her some water? Are you okay? Okay, you just sit right there on the ground until you don’t feel dizzy anymore.” I watched that, and I thought of Bush, blinking stupidly, reading My Pet Goat while New York burned, and while I can’t say yet that Obama is my choice for the next president, I can say he’s just taken a huge stride closer.

It’s funny how quickly I forget the energy that comes from working out first thing in the morning. “Oh, I don’t want to work out,” I whine. “I’m too sleepy. I’ll eat some breakfast first. And work a little bit. Then I’ll work out.” And then, of course, I don’t. But if I do, then I’m juiced for the rest of the day.

Today, I did work out. And since I didn’t have a DVD I particularly wanted to watch (The Bellydancers of Cairo looks amazing, but I wasn’t up for it at 8:30 in the morning), I threw in a CD. (Duran Duran’s Greatest, if you must know. Very inspiring.) And while I rowed, I stared at the cat tree in the corner. The one I’ve been saying for months I was going to get rid of. The one I haven’t gotten around to posting on Craigslist or Freecycle. The one the cat doesn’t even look at, though she does like to lie on the windowsill behind it. “I should do something about that,” I said.

So I did. And while I was at it, I did something about the two boxes of magazines that have been cluttering up various corners since before I decided to get rid of the cat tree. Out to the curb, all of them. Well, not the curb. The lawn, to be precise. Which was the plan all along, but somehow I thought I needed to do it on a Saturday, and I never remembered Saturday morning. Or if I did, I thought it seemed like too much trouble. About an hour later, the doorbell rang. “Are you selling that cat tree?” asked the middle-aged woman on my porch. “No,” I said. “I’m giving it away.” And so she went to get her son’s truck and she took it away. The first box of magazine disappeared a little while later. The last box is slowly being nibbled away. I’ve got two corners back, six cats get a new cat tree (and a scratching post and spinny toy to go with it), and some unknown number of persons get a whole lot of Cooking Light and a few Hot VWs.

I should work out every morning.