NOW WHAT
Cindy Maddera
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I don’t really know what to write right now. My goto topic for writing material is grief and usually I have a lot of material for this time of year. I’m not saying that all is well and that I don’t have plenty of grief material; it’s just not new material. Grief is the day to day grudge of missing a person that is just my way of life. Some one posted a clip of the news footage of the Challenger exploding because it was the anniversary of the event that would haunt us generation Xers for the rest of our lives. I still can’t watch a shuttle launch without holding my breath. My grief for the last seven years has been like watching the shuttle explode every single day. After a while you just get used to seeing it all disintegrate into a cloud of dust. A moment here and there spent crying in the stairwell is perfectly normal.
To tell you the truth, the year 2019 has already started to leave a stale old taste in my mouth. The month of January has been the longest and the coldest month I can ever remember experiencing. I saw a meme last Thursday that said “why does it feel like it’s January 74th?!” I had strong feelings for this meme because, holy hell yes. January is the never ending month and I don’t ever remember it being like that before this year. Not that there’s anything wrong with January other than the obvious memories of watching Chris die and the fact that the weather is the most awful weather that causes me to yell out profanities when I have to step out into said weather. I’m just saying, let’s move along. It’s not that I have somewhere to be, but I am kind of curious to know if those tulip bulbs I planted in the front yard last Fall are going to pop up out of the ground.
I heard a nasty rumor that the temperature on Wednesday is going to be four degrees. FOUR. Fucking. Degrees.
In other news, Albus has started doing this new thing he thinks is really fun. He brings a live mouse into the house and then let's the thing go. Weeee! Josephine spent one day fixated on the drawers under Michael’s bed and then the next morning I got up to find Michael sleeping on the couch. When I inquired about his sleeping arrangements, he said “there was a monster in my room.” The monster was a mouse. The same mouse that Albus had brought into the house the day before, casually batted around with his paw and then promptly allowed to run off to safety. Michael said that Albus did eventually recapture the mouse and decided to eat the whole thing while sitting next to Michael who then struggled to go back to sleep over the sound of crunching bones. The cat eats the whole mouse. Albus repeated the catch and release game with a new mouse the very next day. Michael and I managed to capture this one as it climbed up the curtains. We trapped it in a mason jar and had a long discussion about what to do with the mouse. I don’t keep bottles of chloroform around because I’m not serial killer and slow suffocation just seemed awful. The Cabbage thought the mouse was cute and I had to agree that it was a very cute disease carrier. In the end Michael let the mouse go. He released it in a wood pile across the street.
It has been nine days since this last incident. I feel like I need one of those Days Since Last Accident signs.