Zotaku

Rainy Sunday afternoon. When it rains here Seventies rock just magically starts playing in this house. Eight track meteorological magic. Perhaps it’s a curse. Maybe some K-Tel records died here under mysterious circumstances.

Thought about going for a walk, but I know this neigbourhood so well that I know what I’ll see. Perfect lawns, maintained by red faced dads assisted by sulking adolescents dressed in sideways baseball caps and oversized NBA jerseys.  Middle aged women riding vintage Fifites bicycles in the middle of the street, pretending they’re in Amelie while apoplectic SUV drivers rage against their steering wheels behind them. Farther west I’d hit the two bars and two coffee shops, each filled with denizens from opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. One will be filled with patio yakking about the playoffs or this morning’s golf round, gold chains chinking against their pint glasses. The t’other will be men in ironic beards, ironic T-shirts and desperate sexual need trying to convince the arty woman across from them to come back to their apartment and watch Melancholia. She will pretend to listen before going on about her latest book her book club is reading and how goooood it is and such a wonderful book oh my god.

So maybe I’ll just go into the backyard and watch the squirrels Wallenda across the power lines, leaping into my trees like someone made them a bet.

So I made this INSANE resolution to save more money. So I would stop buying a coffee every day, I would get more books out of the library, that sort of thing.  Not that I burn through cash, but I do have this Protestant guilt about buying anything that is solely for me and not for the house or the family.

Of course proclaiming this is like a spell asking for disaster.

Cat tears his ACL. Massive vet bill while they determine what was wrong, since cats have yet to speak English or even point towards a related Wikipedia page. Then the computer develops a problem that requires bill with three numeral places. Then the AC in the house stops working, and the friendly technician who just left—working on holiday OT—informs me that the coil is frozen and that I may have a freon leak. He whistles when I ask about the bill if that’s the case.

So now I’m making this resolution to spend all the money I have on anything stupid. Pokemon cards, curly straws, biographies on Ace Frehely.  Maybe that will stop the madness.

My cat has a torn ACL and has to spend the next six weeks in a cage. This morning I was at the vet’s, looking at X-Rays on three hours of sleep. Being told that he had just somehow managed to fall just right to damage a ligament, that there was no sign of cancer, and that for some fibres to start to form I have to limit his movement now.

He is howling. He won’t eat. He glares at me as if this is my fault, or he looks at me like I’m punishing him.  I’ve sat and petted him and wished he understood English.

Six weeks.

Day One.