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October 28, 1998 |
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a day in the life | |||||
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Copyright © 1998, Janet I. Egan |
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We're shorthanded at the cat shelter on Wednesdays for awhile because Roberta is out having physical therapy for her sprained back and neck and whatever other body parts, and Bob had surgery for a hernia. Since Nora has already moved back to New Jersey, that leaves me and Bonnie as the volunteers along with Dawna the shelter manager. Alexis and Chantal are on hold. I met the people who want them on Monday night when I was there for the Purrfect Companions meeting. Chantal even sneezed up one of her biggest globs of snot ever right as the woman was petting her, so they know what "chronic sinus" means on the special needs list, and they still want the both of them. Trevor bit me while I was folding clean laundry. He has this bizarre idea that I am a chew toy. Fortunately, he didn't break the skin. Jaguar plunked himself down in the temporarily empty laundry basket on top of the the dryer. I hated to disturb him so I piled up the wet laundry from two loads behind and around the basket until the dryer stopped. He left the basket briefly to get a drink of water and I filled it with wet laundry. He stretched himself out to his full length, perfectly balanced on the edge of the dryer next to the basket. He looked ridiculously long and thin and rumpled with his long white fur draped over the edge above the dryer door. He stayed there through several loads. Quick trip to Starbucks chat with Tom and down some coffee before going home to shower and change so I could be pristinely free of cat shelter odors and coffee odors for driving the nieces to/from piano. Piano this semester is at 5:00 and 5:30 on Wednesday afternoon. Rush hour. I try to leave plenty of time to get to Groton but I start to worry when I run into traffic on 114 before I even get to the highway. I can see flashing blue lights somewhere way ahead of me but can't figure out what's going on. After three light cycles I finally reach the light at Boston Market and figure it'll be a long trip to 495 at this rate so I turn and take the side roads to 133 to 28 to 495, which still takes a long time because other people have the same idea. Eventually I do get to Groton, get Lizzy to Reed world for piano, go back to the house to await Andrea's arrival , ferry Andrea to piano, wait with Lizzy in Mrs. Reed's living room while Andrea has her lesson, notice Mrs. Reed has a new antique ship model on the mantel next to the one that's been there for the last three years, play I spy, drive both pianists back to Groton. My nose has been stuffed up all day. Lizzy says my breathing sounds like Darth Vader. My sinuses are stuffed too. For that matter, my mood is a little stuffed up. I'm not exactly in a bad mood, but I'm not exactly expansively, generously cheerful either. I got some e-mail from the dendrologists who are briefly on the west coast between their trip to China and their trip to New Zealand. They had invited me to come along on the New Zealand trip, but I decided against it. Anyhow, they had a chance to look at their web site and had some things they wanted me to fix. I made some of the corrections immediately but need to find a missing bark photo to fix the remaining problem. Grrr. I have a couple of things to write for various news organs about Purrfect Companions, and haven't even started on them yet. I had this fantasy that I'd do it this afternoon between cleaning the adoption center and doing the piano driving thing but I figured the dendrologists had priority. Whatever. Anyway, I need to think awhile about the article for the elderly services newsletter to get just the right slant since this goes to care providers and family members as well as elders, and the other thing I have to write has to be boiled down to one short sentence. Sometimes it can be harder to write one sentence than three pages. Things done, things not done, things to do... a day in the life... | |||||
