So on Sunday I showed up mega-early at Eviljob to see if I could spot Mehitabel (she has a schedule, and it’s largely an early-morning one) and maybe drug her and catch her myself before they started up with all the activity over there, and I could see the little cat nowhere. I set out food and called and waited…and then waited some more…and then waited some more. After about forty-five minutes of listening to Public Radio, I still had no sign of Mehitabel and the first few people were starting to show up, so I decided to give it up for the day. Then I sat there for another twenty minutes trying to decide what to do now.
I needed to go back home and get to work; I have crap to be typing. But I just really didn’t feel like it. I hadn’t slept really Saturday night, and I was feeling out-of-sorts still, just…sad. Or something. So I went back home, made sure everyone had food, water, and Theo-Dur, and left. There’s something completely de-stressing about getting on the highway in the morning with a fresh cup of coffee and no real idea where you are going. I used to do wonderful spontaneous things like that all the time, before…well, before reality set in and I started being all responsible and stuff.
Back then was way more fun, in case there were ever to be a quiz on this stuff.
Then I decided to go visit my father; I was driving that way, anyway. Who knows; maybe I decided that way before, and was just now catching up. :-) Only, my father likes to schedule appointments for visiting—he hates surprises.
I was a surprise birth, also. How…ironical-like. :-)
He’s a bit away from me so I had a little time to think something up, but I hadn’t managed to come up with anything really brilliant by the time I got to his house, so I phoned from the street and went with my best Mr Shean (“Oh, Mister Gallagher!”), hoping he was in the mood for a joke, which it turned out he was. I was over-tired and don’t remember what my patter was, but it was damned cute. :-) Or at least I thought so. He must have thought it had some merit also, ‘cos he let me in. :-)
Well, he wouldn’t have left me out there, but he might have been grumbly. –er.
We visited for a few hours, and he was his same old self. I let him pick what he wanted to talk about (I had a choice?), so we talked (or, rather, I listened) about Gallagher and Shean, how my grandmother adored them and could dance the Charleston and the Black Bottom like nobody else, old comedy in general, World War II, the oil fields in Romania, the prowess of the Russian military, the Battle of Stalingrad, people who cannot understand time zones (specifically, one schmuck several years ago who told my father he had an incorrect memory for Pearl Harbour because my father related that he was sitting down to lunch when it was announced on the radio, while—as my father’s critic pointed out—the bombing actually occurred at seven (I think?) a.m. Yes, my father replied, however it was a peculiar custom at his school in New York City to take lunch at seven a.m. HST), Roosevelt, how America began to go downhill in the ‘50s (precisely how he would know that, seeing as how he didn’t live in America during the 1950’s is beyond me; he was in London, and he almost didn’t move back. I think that he came back and was more surprised than he would have been if he’d stayed because it differed from his idealised expectations—I mean, *everywhere* changes over time, and I think he thought it would be exactly the same—and I have also always thought that his holding of an opinion on it is like my worrying after the moral decrepitude in Mumbai. Is it obvious that this is one of his favourite kvetches?), and how now we might as well just give up because the decay in morality, language, education, and thought is unrecoverable. And the comedy is horrible; it’s not even funny. Except for Little Shop of Horrors; that was an extremely funny movie.
Yes, the one with Rick Moranis. My father is a strange guy. :-)
Sigh. And I drove all this way for this cheer.
So then we started talking about religion (he has settled down and become an Omarian, a religion he invented himself, and one which has only one member: Him. Don’t think that he’s lonely; he isn’t. He likes it that way. He has, in fact, refused to admit my step-mother), and how coffee doesn’t taste good anymore, and the people who call in to Georgeanory…errr…George Noory are psychotic crackpots (yes, both my father and I listen to George for comic relief; my mother listens because she believes…well, somewhat). And after my mentioning it, he wants me to lend him my copy of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, only I read it over ten years ago, and have no damn idea what I did with it. So I said sure, and will go buy one from a used book store for him (I would purchase a new copy for him, but he wouldn’t accept it if I did, because they charge too damned much for books these days, and the libraries are under-used. Per him.
Sigh.
And yes, the Georgeanory joke is mine own.
Butsoanyway.
So I had fun. Sort-of. And it is amazing how similar he and my mother really were, I guess. Well, they had some thoughts and traits in common. If it were to occur to her to do so, my mother would invent a religion and not allow anyone else to join. :-) But that’s ‘cos she’s insane; my father does it ‘cos he’s funny. Sometimes. In a very weird and acquired-taste sort of way, my father is a very funny guy.
So I was going to post this before, but then I got really tired and decided to post it today. Since then, I talked to scads of idiots at work, and then decided to take Romeo to get a cortisone shot because he was hacking a lot the past three days, and Dr Vet said that with his kidney function at around 2.6 – 2.8, it is more important that Romeo be comfortable (e.g., being able to breathe), and so I got him all doped-up (which seems to last almost two months for him right now), and then finished working and went to trivia.
Oh—and tried to help get another homeless dog placed somewhere (but failed because he is not cat-friendly), and was invited to a meeting of local animal rescue people by Chrissy. I feel so…appreciated, involved, and included and stuff! :-) The one tonight was, well, tonight, so I couldn’t. But I will make the next one, I think. I need to phone for clear directions to the place, though. But Chrissy did also offer up her Significant Other ‘cos he knows how to throw a casting net. Yay.
And at trivia tonight, one of our trivia people asked me (when I took a call about another cat that is a long-ish story) how the hunt for the Momcat was going (Mehitabel), and I told him that it was going like shit, and he said—with a really odd (I thought) look on his face—and said that it was a shame that I wasn’t Spiderman because if I were, I could shoot a net over the Momcat.
Well, don’t you know that I just shit?
Since I sometimes lack subtlety, I asked him where in the hell that had come from, and after he avoided my question twice, he finally ‘fessed that he’d watched Sky High (is that the name of it?) with his kids, and one of the girls threw a net like Spiderman over her gym teacher.
Ummm…ok; I’ll buy that.
.
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