Missing my kitty

Well, it's been two weeks and one day since Mr. Fluffy Underpants died. My sweetheart. Yesterday I attended a virtual Pet Loss support group. That was helpful, I think. On the downside, it made me start thinking about Chester a lot more, and that made me depressed, grouchy, and sad. So that's hard on the fam. But I think I need to "process" my grief, so probably all these icky emotions just need to happen. Sorry, family. It'll pass.

The photo is awful, it's right after he died. But I need to look at it, otherwise I forget he's dead, or get confused about it. This is so obviously a photo of a dead cat -- the mouth is open. Cats don't normally have their mouths open unless they're eating or yawning.

This morning I got angry with Rocket Boy about something that wasn't important. I said I was going OUT, and I stomped out of the house and drove off in my car. I decided I would take 75th/76th out to Gunbarrel, because the farms out there would look pretty. Maybe three minutes into the drive I'd forgotten all about my fight with RB and was thinking about Chester. And crying. 

It's been a while since I did a normal blog post, so I have to remember how to do it. First, a coronavirus death count. 209,448 as of this afternoon, according to the Times. The last time I posted about this was 9/15, so a little less than 3 weeks ago, and at that time it was 194,235. That means 15,213 deaths in 19 days, or almost exactly 800 deaths every day. And of course, President Trump is in the hospital with Covid-19, after intentionally ignoring all the recommendations about masks and social distancing. It's impossible, simply impossible, to feel sorry for him. I've tried. The best I can manage is "Get well soon," but I don't even feel that very strongly.

Trying to think what we've done in the last couple of weeks that I could report on. We had another picnic out at Heil Ranch, last week I guess it was. Oh, yes, it was Tuesday, I remember because we got home a few minutes late for the dreadful first Presidential Debate. I wonder if Trump was already feeling the virus that night, and that's why he went so crazy. Anyway, it was a nice picnic. I wasn't feeling up to par, so Rocket Boy put the whole thing together, made hardboiled eggs, etc., and it was nice to get out in the woods for a bit. It was fairly late when we got there, maybe 5:30 or so, so there were very few people around, just a few hikers and bikers and runners, but mostly people coming down off the trail and going home. We didn't see any interesting wildlife, just a Steller's Jay, I think. Oh, and some deer as we drove out of the park.

Another thing we did last weekend was stage a Barbie wedding. Although I originally treated all the dolls as teenagers, this summer I started to think that some of them looked older. That led to the creation of families, as I acquired Skipper and Stacie dolls to be the children. Each family has its own bookshelf in our bedroom, though in my head they all live in our neighborhood, modified to Barbie size. I lie on the bed and look at them and imagine their lives. 

Anyway, two of the dolls wanted to get married, but I didn't have a jacket for the Ken doll. I finally ordered a handmade one from an Etsy seamstress in Newfoundland, and it arrived last weekend, so we had the wedding. The bride's old girlfriend officiated (she's a Universal Life minister). The bride's attendants were her daughter (via a sperm donor) and the groom's daughter from his first marriage (his crazy ex-wife, who I also own, wasn't invited). Surfer Dude Ken, who is the stepfather in a family of his own, was the best man. The vegetable at their feet is meant to represent fertility, and indeed, the bride and groom have already had two more children (I had bought the babies previously, but didn't want to open them until the bride and groom got married).

What else? We're having nice weather, with occasional smoke to remind me of the terrible fires in California. But our skies are mostly blue, and the nighttime temps are in the 40s, and it's cold and lovely when we wake up in the morning. Everyone's sleeping better as a result. The trees are starting to turn, even though many of them were messed up by that snow we had a few weeks ago. We wished we could have gone to look at fall color in the mountains this weekend, but the kids had a lot of homework and I'm so low energy. Rocket Boy managed to take Kid B to the Botanic Garden this afternoon. Here he is, wearing his mask.

Rocket Boy is probably headed back to St. Louis next weekend. That'll be hard on the kids. We'll try to bring him back again soon.