Meet me in Cognito, baby,
Of course we'll have to color our hair.
The best thing about life in Cognito
Is that everybody's nobody there.

Tom Robbins

---

Not asleep yet. Reading usually knocks me out cold (warm actually), but not so tonight. Tried valerian, so far no real effects felt.

It could be because my apartment, unless I run the space heater at full blast, is about 55 degrees. I shit you not. (And trust me, with my shit being what it is these days, being on the not end of things is where you want to be.)

Really. I could leave the heater on all night, but that's a ton of electricity. I could leave the propane-fueled fake woodstove on all night, but Suburban Propane have anal rape down to a meticulous science, and they're probing further every week. The worker who was supposed to have installed a wall heater in my living room yesterday never showed. At least it appears he/she didn't, as there is no wall heater. This was news to my landlady today.

I'm probably cranky and restless because the worker was in my neighbor's apartment. How do I know? Not because there is evidence of work (oh, none whatsoever), but because he/she locked the deck door and now I can't get into the apartment to feed my neighbor's cats and rats, over whom I have been given sole supervisory and custodial powers until the 31st.

I called the neighbor, who is in Louisiana. She called the landlady's cell phone and left a message. Later, because neither of us had heard anything, I called the landlady myself around 2pm. She was dismayed that the door had been locked, and even more dismayed that no work had likely taken place. I knew to plead my case from the poor animals' points of view; imagine those kitties going hungry! She said she was going into a place where she couldn't talk on her cell, but she'd call me back.

You are correct, sir! No call back. I left another message in the eight o'clock hour, expressing concern for the kitties and ratties, and could she please call back and let me know when she'd be over? I even committed to being available until 11pm should that suit her schedule.

Apparently it didn't, because it's 12:03am and she never showed. I have to leave the island tomorrow and won't be back until the next day. It'd be nice if I fed the cats and rats before they have the opportunity to slide into day three without food.

Bonus information: someone closed the downstairs bedroom door. The cats have been known to hide under the bed when people arrive. If they are stuck in the bedroom, there will be excrement to clean up. I'm so hoping they fled to the upstairs bedroom, the one without a door.

One more call to her, promptly at 8am this morning. I'm on that 10:35 boat, damn it, and I need someone to get the fuck over here and let me back into the apartment.

Like Dickie Goldwire, I thought a sandwich would help. Unlike our friend Dickie, however, I added pastrami to the two slices of fluffy white bread and crust-to-crust whisper of Best Foods Mayonnaise.

The sandwich is now in my gut, working out a detente with the pyloric sphincter. Someone get Pastrami his passport, would ya?

Either that, or help him go . . .

. . . in Cognito.