I stepped outside, and the streetlights were on. To the west the clouds were clearing, while the sun was fighting the brooding sky in the east. Everything felt a little different. As I walked to work, zipped up in my light windbreaker, sweating from the suffocating material, the rain slowed then stopped.

Took care of Chaos over the weekend. Karen’s off in Toronto for a month, and Aaron went to visit Greg (who joined the reserves). Chaos is getting a lot bigger, and even though he’s not quite an adult yet, he’s getting more and more difficult to lift.

I’ve been thinking about a second cat, ever since Shirley suspected that her cats were giving her children allergies. We were playing around with the idea of me adopting one of them (the younger male), and she already told her kids that one of the cats may be going. Unfortunately, she found a bald spot on him, and needs to get him checked out first. If the vet visit goes alright, then we may do a one-month trial, to make sure that he gets along with both Dolly and Nala. I’m still not sure if I’m up for the commitment though. Dolly is enough of a handful already, and I seem to be getting busier every day.

(This took four months to write)

I was kicking back on the couch with John
with the lights out and the music on.

Wut wut.

Anyway, we were stoned out of our skulls and it was Naked As We Came by Iron And Wine. We sat there, listening to the dulcet notes of a lone guitar lead into Sam Beam’s sugary voice, soon to be gently rounded off by his sister, Sara, as the harmony. A summer-morning-during-harvest song, or dancing in the middle of a cool rainfall.

She says ‘If I leave before you darling
don’t you waste me in the ground’
I lay smiling like our sleeping children
one of us will die inside these arms

Eyes wide open
naked as we came
one will spread our
ashes round the yard

And we sat there, listening, remarking to each other about how morbid it all was, yet so beautiful.

Even John was moved, but how could he not be? One of them would die but there was solice in the fact that it would be in the embrace of the other, as if neither one would want to die any other way, doing anything else.

And it felt like, for the first time in my life, John could understand a completely different side of me.