Oh goodness, it’s Thursday already. I’m not certain exactly what happened to yesterday. Yes. Yes I am. Sit back and I’ll tell you.
On Tuesday, I ended up preparing two complete dinners. Esteban decided that he wanted to be a pissy snit and didn’t like salmon. Fine. I made him some kind of burgandy roast thing in the crock pot. He really enjoys meat which is cooked until it becomes somewhat paste-like. I don’t mind cooking such church lady fare for him because I start it in the morning and don’t have to deal with it. I wish other things could be accomplished in such a manner. I appreciate the efficiency. In reality, I’d rather have everything be like Age Of Empires, where you create little villagers and then tell them to do a task, which they do ceaselessly until they have deforested an entire continent or whatnot. That rocks. I think I need some house elves or something. And when they are not toiling away picking up my errant panties or scrubbing the gook out from behind the toilet, they could make lovely cookies because I would only employ runaways from the Keebler tree.
I got home from work and then set about making a lovely spinach and spring green salad, one for dinner and a second portable for lunch today. Then I created a maranade for the salmon and pulled the grill outside. I then started to snap the green beans when suddenly–weirdness–my cellphone rings. I answered it and it was Chauffi. Whom I adore. Thus began a new episode of “Touched By A Diarylander”, in which Chauffi and Weetabix talk in real life for the first time ever. It was very moving. Esteban was slightly jealous. He sniffed “You never talk to ME for two hours!” Well, that’s because I live with you, silly. And he was exaggerating, anyway.
After a delightful conversation about nothing in particular, other than the fact that I don’t have a penis and Chauffi narrating where he was in San Francisco, I grilled up my salmon and ate a delightful Operation Hottie meal. I was far too full to touch the salad, and had ample food to bring as a smug healthy lunch with me for the next day. Go me! Go Operation Hottie!
Several of my coworkers were absent yesterday. I was so incredibly busy that I never even finished writing my entry. I ended up being a martyr and eschewing my lunch hour. Then I fled an hour early to swim at Poolapalooza 2002. I spent a good hour floating on my floatie blue raft, which looks like a waffled mattress pad and then swam laps and did other rather athletic things. I’ve now painted my toenails Electric Blue to match the floatie and they received rave compliments. I do have to agree with my toe fans. They are extremely cute, especially when situated in the pool environment. And my skin is taking on this entire golden healthy tone that quite frankly unnerves me. I’m too healthy lookin’. It’s this entire country club personae that doesn’t befit my hippy child background. When the gangsta-turned-McDonald’s-employee took my money for my Diet Coke this morning, he said “Mmmhmm… girl! You gettin’ DARK!” and then he handed me my change, his arm decorated with prison tattoo of a crooked tombstone and the inscription “In Memory Of Dee”, written in enormous caps.
Kind of a yucky moment this morning. I got up early to water my tree and when I was in the garage getting the hose, I noticed a large package in the mail. It was from our veterinarian. And that’s when I remembered:
Chelsea’s paw print.
A few nights ago, Esteban and I had been having a discussion, a rather heated discussion, about something or other. Must not have been important because I can’t recall any longer. Anyway, in the middle of that, I started to think about Chelsea. How I’ll never pet her again. How the last time I touched her fur, she was sitting on the vet’s countertop, amidst blood splatters, making sad meows. I felt my throat tighten up right then, in the middle of Esteban explaining his side of the argument, but I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want him to think that he was making me cry because I was frustrated or mad at him or that he was making me lose control and also because I shouldn’t have been thinking about things like Chelsea’s death when we were arguing about whatever-it-was. And I didn’t want to make him upset either. He’s been doing fairly well so far and I think it helps him to see that I’m being strong.
So I swallowed it. I swallowed it all. He never knew.
And when I was holding the little clay disk upon which they had written Chelsa (sic) in swirly script, and attached a little strip with a preprinted message presumably from the pet, combined with a tasteful card showing the setting sun, signed by the young vet, the one who told me that it had been ok to cry in the office and had made a movement as if to hug me but then pulled back when she tried to maintain professional distance… well, it was just too much. I lost it, completely, at 6:30 in the morning, standing in my garage holding a dripping hose, while sprinklers went off all around the neighborhood and a woman jogged down our street. I could only think about how the paw prints had been made after she had died and how that little preprinted anthropomorphistic message was probably one in twenty printed on a single 8×11 sheet and then cut apart by a bored receptionist and that 19 other pet owners were standing by their mailboxes crying when they opened their bulky package and received their clay disks.
I stuffed the package under some unopened mail in the garage, hoping that Esteban doesn’t spot it when he is alone. I’m unsure of what to do with it now. I think I’ll have to hide it for awhile and then it won’t be so painful in the future.
Man. This was a sneaky entry. Started silly and then got all serious and sad. Sorry. I’m not always funny. Sometimes I’m just a girl. Just a girl who lost her cat.
