I'll Be Around

I was gonna' put up a post I started about a trip to St. Louis I had to take. Good-ish trip, ate at Waffle House, stayed across the street from a porn shop, blah blah blah. There's been a lot of shit I've been going to do. But I haven't done any of it.

And I don't think I'm going to.

I can't be assed into doing it.

I've been in a weird mood. When I'm around people, I feel fine and normal. Once alone, melancholy settles into the pit of my stomach. At first I feel like doing something, but then I just really don't feeling like doing anything.

I just read in a forum I go to a lot that one of our members died from bacterial meningitis. I didn't know him well, but in the forum at least I liked the hell out of him. Reading those words clobbered me like a widow-maker down on my head. I didn't realize how sad it would make me. But it did.

So Now We're Getting a Kitten

Monday's are never good. Seeing her lying in the road meant not only was this Monday going to be shitty, so was the whole damn week.

And it was.

She was the best of cats we've ever had. Out of the four, she was the only we actually liked on a regular basis. She wasn't one of the ones pissing all over the carpets and spraying the couches. She was friendly and always had a tail-tingle to share when she was happy. But that morning, all of that came to an end. The missus, on her way to work and me, wrestling with the girl who was in no mood to go to daycare, were going about our lives as normal. Then I heard "Oh my god, oh my god, no!" I grabbed the girl and met the missus at the end of the driveway. In the middle of the road was our kitty.

Guilt swept over me. She dashed the door the night before when I was letting the dogs in. I called for her before I went to bed; she didn't come. I knew one of us would wake up in the middle of the night and let our poor, appreciative kitty in. No one woke up.

I've dug a few pet graves in my life. My first was a small hole for a gold fish when I was four or five. I watched mom plant an old siamese in the flower bed when her time came and went. In the valley, I dug a grave for an unfortunate stray as well as one of our beloved cats. There've been more before that; remembering all of them is tough. One of the toughest was for a cat I rescued in high school. Between the anguish and the sandstone, I chipped away at the ground for nearly two hours after soccer practice to dig a pitiful two foot hole.

I found a nice place near an apple tree and started to dig. At first I was pissed at her. Why did she have to dash the door? Why didn't she come in? Why did she happen to be crossing the road at that time? When I went to grab my coffee, I asked her why, like some dumb, soft-hearted, mush-brained child. Lying in the shade where I set her, I was just met with her dead, blank stare.

The deeper I dug, the more the realization she was gone came over me. Once in the whole, no matter how square the corners were and flat the sides, she wasn't coming back. I cried big hard tears, like I did last summer on my way home from work and when I had to leave the girl and the missus every Sunday. The whole reason we brought her home was because at the shelter she crawled on my shoulder and chose me. She wouldn't leave me alone. And when we finally got her home, she thanked us with loud purrs and tail tingles. We could frequently find her lounging on the arm of the couch, front legs splayed like a lazy panther. Plus, she was sweet. She would let us scratch her belly. And she was happy.

Sitting next to her in the shade, I reached out to pet her one last time. Her coat was still soft, but she wasn't there. Her stiff little body was empty of the big life that once filled it. I wept. I missed her. I miss her. But letting her lay there wasn't going to bring her back.

In the shop I found a long and wide box that wasn't too deep. It fit in the hole perfectly. From the closet I pulled an old towel to cover her with. Once I laid the shroud over her, I never pulled it back again. I affectionately scratched her ears, ignoring the macabre gesture that it was. She was still gone. We were already past the point of no return, but it didn't feel that way until I rested the box in the hole and covered it with a few pieces of scrap lumber. In my head I said some sort of prayer for her and cried some more. With the first shovelful of dirt, I knew sadness was going to fill the emptiness she left for a long time. Who knew something so small could be so big?

We miss her and will even after the kitten comes home. The girl still asks for her and the missus and I still hope every meow outside at night or shadow moving in the corners of our eyes is her. We miss her face and her meows and her purring and how she curled up at the end of the bed and sat in our laps for affection. We miss everything about her. We know she was just a cat and we know we've both shed more tears for her than for some people we've seen laid to rest. But we miss her. We miss her. We miss her.

Aftermath

Smoke has been creating a haze since the storm two Fridays ago. Above, tardent bombers are making their way back to the base to reload and head out again. Perhaps these planes are dropping tardent on fires from other lightning storms, but it's been hazy since the Saturday before last.

One thing I've forgotten about the weather down here is its terrible beauty often comes with terrible consequences. I remember how that Friday felt; the air was thick and as each hour passed it seemed as if another layer of pressure was added on. We waited all day for it to come crashing down. And it did. First a little bit of rain fell, the drops big and heavy like the air it cut through. Thunder came only seconds after the flashes of lightning. Then came the storm. Wind and rain beat everything down. The lightning and thunder added the thrill of danger to sideways rain with some flashes interrupting the view between our house and the hay shed a quarter of a mile or so south of us. The reality of what this storm didn't occur to the missus and I until the hail came. Marble sized bits of ice beat on the shop and our deck and our house. We knew if it was hailing at our house, it had to of beat down my wife's crops as well. And the crops of her family. The thought of grain laying on its side and the potato plants beaten into the ground flashed through both of our heads.

The next day we surveyed the scene. Our little valley was no less for where. The violence of the storm left our trees in tact and the only damage was a little tin pulled off of hay shed. On the other side of the hill, south of our place, where the storm came through, was an entirely different story. Some fields were spared. The missus's family's fields were fine. But others were not so lucky. Some potato fields were damaged from the wind; a strawberry field we saw suffered the same. Towards the highway trees and telephone poles were snapped. Wheel lines littered the ditches and were wrapped around poles. And the there were several alfalfa fields were the second cutting had been stripped to the stems. I had never seen anything like it before. Acres and acres of nothing but the spindly stalks of what was left of an entire cutting of hay. Just stems.

Those damaged hay fields have been cut to try and get the next cutting ready and growing. Now only smoke and newspaper stories about the effects of losing these crops on various markets remind us the storm blew through. Life moves on - it has to. To sit and fret about what to do and the losses is counterproductive. Just pick up and move on.

Seriously -

Who gives a fuck about Criss Angel?!?!?!!??!?!?!?! Are there really legions of fucking emo boy magic fans out there? Really? Put down the eyeliner and step away from the magic deck of cards. I'm so glad I have satellite so I don't have to look at this froot loop yelling "Mind Freeeeeeaaaak!" for his friggin' promos anymore. Holy shit. And God bless technology.

And Cameron Diaz - WTF?!?!?!? I suppose once upon a time she was 'cute', but c'mon! Pissing off Peruvians is one thing - but that starlett's star has done shone. Please gracefully exit stage left. There was too much of you in "Holiday", cluelessness is so 1997 and you're looking tired. Does anyone really think you're all that relevant? Stick to animation. I'm sick of your mug. And your beady little eyes.

As It Sets

The clouds are pink and shedding their filtered light down to the Basin floor tonight, casting everything in a rose-ish hue. Dusk here is beautiful - something I had never forgotten but am enjoying more and more.

The fat mares are galloping across the pasture and with each hoof beat stirring up the earthy smells of dirt and grass. On the breeze blowing into my office, I can smell the dryness of the heat of the day mingling with the sagebrush and juniper and horse and grass and earth along with threat of tomorrow's rain. It feels timeless and I almost believe that if I were to die right now in this moment my spirit would be okay. I'd be okay. But I don't have to worry about that right now. It's just comforting to find the occasional moment where every once in a while I feel I can be at peace with the big slumber. The rest of the time I fear and loathe it.

As the sun falls behind the mountains and hills, the blueness of the sky competes with pinks and oranges and subtle purples of the clouds. It's almost as if Maxfield Parrish himself came and painted these romantic skies. It seems as if he paints almost every sunset of the summer.

I know I need to turn on the lights. My eye sight is poor enough as it is. But the feeling in the pit of my stomach tells me not to. I need to relish these skies and this moment of tired peace. I know I will soon enough be moving around again. I almost welcome the solitude. Almost. While sometimes it feels like this life is just a personal narrative no one reads or hears, and the people around us are fixtures on some sort of stage we know nothing about, to be connected and understood is better than the inherent loneliness. I miss my family and my people and this place while I'm gone. Travel makes me appreciate all of these. Appreciate the gray of the brush and the lushness of the pastures and the drama of land not hidden by trees. It makes me appreciate the smells that cannot be replicated. It reminds me to love my girls.

The sun is down. The clouds look tired and a bit sullen. I turn on my lamp.

And Summer Is Already Gone

One thing the missus never considered when we moved down here was that our weekends would be quickly ate up by a damn near every family event that could possibly be planned. We're not anti-family - not by a long shot. But when we lived up in the Valley, the expectation of us to make it to every anniversary party, family reunion or birthday party were slim to none. Especially when the girl came along.

But now, with fences needing built and a lawn needing serious mending (how can this lawn look so bad? Those people left empty bag after empty bag of fertilizer laying around! I'm pretty sure they had a grow operation. Seriously. How can they used so much fucking fert and have a lawn that's that weedy and patchy? WTF?) an empty weekend is looking more and more rare. And it's not like we don't want to see those people or continue with our anti-social ways. We just have shit we need to get done. Add to the fact it looks like I've got more travel ahead of me this summer, July and August are going to disappear way too quickly (I so wish I could have used a clever simile just there instead. Something like "so many thongs up the butt cracks of so many drunk beach hoochies". See, it's not great nor incredibly clever, but it would have nicely tied in with the summer thing. ).

So, as I see my summer quickly swallowed whole like so many hotdogs down the gullet of that little Japanese guy that always wins those hotdog eating contests (see, told you I'm not good at these), my eye turns towards September. So far, there's nothing planned and I don't have many travel plans. C'mon September.