Yesterday, while driving to school, my car temperature gauge said that it was 86 degrees. The clouds in the sky weren’t right, though, for 86 degrees. They were scattery thin ice crystal clouds and not big poofs of tulle water vapor clouds. Something was up, but I didn’t want to think about it because it was so gorgeous. I contemplated taking off my shirt and just wearing my hoodie because it was damned warm (the shirt was thicker than the hoodie, so it made sense in a slutty ‘Hey, I’m just a zipper-pull away from showing the world my boobies’ kind of way) but in absence of a convenient spot to do it, I refrained. Although I did consider the parking garage at school, since no one was looking, but see what the zipper logic has done to my brain? I could never have lived with myself.
Then, on the way back up the coast of Lake Michigan, I watched as my temperature gauge dropped down into the upper 70’s, then plunged in twenty minutes to 65. Predictably, there was lightening with that unstable air and temperature variation, and it was turning the fall sunset clouds into a glam rock show, flashing pink and orange with no sound. I drove through the front and made it home before the rain started. It’s 45 here now. That’s a forty-degree drop in less than 24 hours, in case anyone is paying attention. Through the beginning of this week, I was plagued by the feeling that the beautiful warm weather was just the set up for an elaborate practical joke by Mother Nature. And then today? Ha ha. I expect it to start sleeting tomorrow.
By the way, I managed to pull together some fiction for class, eleven and a half pages double-spaced. Really, I just rewrote an existing story, removing everything that made me roll my eyes. Which apparently meant that more than half of the original story was The Suck. Stories are never finished, just abandoned, said some great writer in one of my How To Be A Writer Without Drinking Yourself To Death books. I was merciless. You could practically hear the ropes pulling the words tighter. I chopped an entire character, dumped a shitload of unnecessary backstory, and combined an entire page into a short paragraph, then rearranged everything so that instead of one big flashback, it’s little fragments throughout the narration. It’s amazing how editing the work of others allows you enough distance to slice up your own stuff without too much regret. Or maybe it’s been so long since I wrote the story that I don’t remember how much I anguished over each and every plot element. I’m really blaise about the whole workshopping thing this time around too, and I think the two are connected. It was an abandoned story so maybe I’m no longer emotionally involved. Interesting psychological dynamic there.
The stupid part of this whole thing is that I didn’t actually have a story due this week. It was due next week. However, one of my classmates had the opposite issue and didn’t realize his story was due this week, thinking it due next week, so we traded and all was well. Regardless, it means I have more time to finish the story I was working on, which is a good thing because judging from the quality of my writing these days, I clearly need it.
I rely upon the cat entirely too much in the morning. My sunrise alarm goes off (gradual light, then birds chirping, then a horribly loud buzzer noise if I haven’t turned it off after fifteen minutes), then Tilly jumps up onto the bed and starts pawing at me. Or sniffs my face. Or bumps me with her head. It’s adorable. Even in my semi-conscious state, I can see that. And it’s strangely anthropomorphic because why is the cat concerned that I’m going to be late for work?
Because she wants the delicious bathroom water, that’s why.
You see, the cat and I have a symbiotic relationship. When my alarm goes off, I’m supposed to get up and go right to the bathroom, where I will turn on a very thin stream of water in the sink and she will hop up and drink from it until her little kitty gut is all distended and turgid. She’s the only one in the house that likes the taste of bathroom water. Don’t judge me. If you don’t stop looking at me like that, I’m going to start posting pictures of the cat, every damn entry. Or making entire entries that are just pictures of the cat, complete with captions that are actually my summations of what the cat is actually thinking, maybe involving a reaction to what I, the photographer, am doing.
However, this morning, after the first meow and then the first paw paw paw, Tilly just settled down against my stomach and started purring and then went to sleep. Fuck that drink shit, it’s damned dark outside, she seemed to be saying (already it begins). If I hadn’t rubbed my eyes and accidentally given myself a bloody nose, I probably would still be asleep. Man, nothing wakes you up faster than OH BY DOD BOODY DODE! SHID SHID SHID! And the fear of 400 thread count white sheets turned into metaphors. The t-shirt I was sleeping in was not so lucky, but since it was a leftover $6 shirt, I am not terribly upset about it.
Bloodshed! Drama! If it weren’t for the promise of a piping hot Starbucks mocha, the morning would have been completely ruined. Thankfully, however, unlike the cat, I can count on my baristas. It is most certainly fall because this morning, my mocha was the best cup of happy ever.
