monday afternoon

I am sitting next to Drew, listening to the slow and rhythmic hum of a guitar being tuned. We are recording, but a lot of recording is hurry up and wait--for me, anyway. Well, for this particular song, anyway. Because see, this is a song that I wrote on a bus a while ago and though it could be played just fine on the piano it lends itself to a guitar, begs to be played on a guitar, really. Thus, Drew is playing it.

And I wait.

To sing.

Which is kind of my favorite part anyway.

And there are all sorts of cables that need to be plugged in and right clicks to be made on the laptop in order for everything to be just so, and while I've offered to help, there's not really much I can do other than sing, which is what I am waiting to do.

And other than go make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which is what I just did.

And in case you were wondering what it was that was happening right now, Drew is repeatedly playing the low E and it's sounding just like a low E should, good job, Drew.

Yes, I know I should totally be a sportscaster, what with my fascinating ability to give a rousing play-by-play. If the whole performing thing hadn't worked out, that was absolutely my Plan B. With, ah, tour guide being a close Plan C, given my penchant for knowing exactly where I am at all times and if you've never met sarcasm before, consider yourself good and acquainted now.

You know what else is happening right now?

Well, after taking our cat Taliesin, who has been sporting 5 dreadlocks on his back for a while, to the vet, we had the audacity to buy him a really cute black and silver collar along with a name plate that has our number on it and yeah, the whole idea of it was for him to wear it around his striped and furry neck. We decided to do this because our other cat, Percy, did a heck of a disappearing act about two weeks ago which involved us scouring the whole house without a hint of her little self and then organizing a search party of two outside for about a half hour.

In the pitch black of night. Looking for a cat who happens to be the same color as the pitch black of night. Cute, right? They match. How adorable.

I was praying and crying while Drew was chasing down stray cats, calling them Percy-girl and beckoning them to come back to our house when it turned out that they had never even been to our house in the first place. Oops. Finally, we were sure that she was gone gone gone and the whole time we were kicking ourselves because even if a kind soul did find her, they'd have no idea who to contact because she had no collar.

It was a happily-ever-after kind of story because Drew eventually stopped back in our house and found Percy-girl sitting contentedly on the couch, paws crossed, lazily yawning as if to say why ever would anyone be out at this hour? Why ever, indeed, Percy; why ever indeed. But all this to say, we went to the pet store and got each of our dear pets collars and some ID. Just in case.

But well, maybe the timing was bad, because after taking Tally to the vet where he had his dreadlocks shaved off so that he now has a bald patch in his normally glorious fur and suffered through two shots, we put a collar around him.

And he's mad at us. Really really mad. Hiding mad. We can't find him anywhere and 18 lbs of orange and white fur is a lot to hide, I think. We are trusting that he will come out from his hiding when he is good and ready to face his adversaries beloved masters.

So that's what's up with me. I'm recording. My cat's mad at me. Oh yeah, and I recently threw out a spider. No, he wasn't dead, but he was in the litter box and had all those legs that spiders tend to have and so I scooped him up along with the clumps and out he went into the garbage behind our house.

And I don't regret it one bit.