I really don't feel like writing tonight. You'd think that I'd be more interested in doing this, but, yeah, don't feel like it. Lori, Rachel and Ben were sick last night and so we didn't get a lot of sleep. They did better today, but I stayed home to stay with them. For one thing, it allowed Lori to spend some time resting herself. They didn't show any additional signs today which was good. And I seem to have escaped it myself. Which is good, I have a lot to do tomorrow.
So I hung out with the children today, played, read a lot in the book I'm reading. I feel like I'm halfway through the book and I'm still not sure what I think of it. It started as a legal drama and then moved into the tunnels under New York where they're working to build new tunnels to bring water into the city. I think that if I lived there, I would be much more fascinated by it. But, because it's a fiction book, I've been moving through it quite quickly.
I've still been stalling on taking care of more Carol stuff. I did remove all the upcoming reminders from Remember The Milk for her pills and brushing and stuff, but there's still more real stuff to do. There's a partially eaten bag of food that I guess the rats at the dump can enjoy. There's also two unopened cans of soft food. My original idea was to ask the vets if they could just give them to the next person to have a cat diagnosed with kidney failure, but then I couldn't bring myself to do it, and I'm sure it would have just been a pain in the neck for them... they'd either have to set them on the counter and wait, or someone would get tired of them being there and just put them back on the shelf and sell them again. Although at this point, I'm not sure I care. I guess I shouldn't let the food go to waste. And then there's the cat boxes. Now that we're down to one cat, we don't need two cat boxes. I and Carol moved into the new apartment a week or two before we got married. Morticia came over at that time, too. That gave Lori a quieter place for packing and stuff (though I wonder if it made it lonely). But ever since then, I've been cleaning up after more than one cat, and at one point, it was four cats. But now there's one, I think it's safe to go back to a single litter box. We will also start saving money on cat litter.
I do think that Cash is a little sad, he seems to be a little bit more mopey. But, he's also enjoying the freedom - we've been allowing him upstairs a little more and he's even been willing to stay around Rachel and let her pet him. But I think he does feel a little lonely, especially when we make him sleep alone in the laundry room. I had caught him a few times near the end there snuggled right up against Carol. You sometimes wonder if animals know this kind of stuff. If a dog can smell cancer, perhaps that's not too far off for an animal to know if another animal is on their way out - smells, sounds, actions that are more apparent from their level.
Today kind of ended up feeling like "a Saturday without anything." I have kind of wondered what that is actually like. I did a little laundry washing and folding and putting away, but I didn't do a lot of chores tonight, and I didn't go anywhere until really late in the evening. I did also do some work, checking the Blackberry throughout the day, talking on IM for a little while with some of my staff and sitting down at the laptop for a few tasks that needed to be done today. But tomorrow, the real Saturday, I think Lori has something in the morning and then we have something in the evening, and then between those two things, I need to run to Home Depot and buy a lot of bark and then lay out a lot more weed block and pour out a lot of bark in the front yard. Maybe also some more gravel for the path. The part I've already done looks great, but it was the easy part - it was relatively clear, since all we were keeping was the rose bushes I was able to just clear the rest, pansies, weeds, etc. But now we're getting into areas with other plants that are closer to the ground. They're going to be more difficult to work around.
And then tonight I had to run an errand - we were out of milk. It was really nice driving in the car after dark, and then walking around the grocery store remembering when I had to do all my own shopping and I could buy whatever I wanted. (Might explain why I was in better shape until I went off to school.) But tonight, I bought only what I was on a mission to buy, no deviations, no Cadburry eggs (actually, only because I didn't see them near the register). And the weirdest thing of all, they wanted my phone number for their little loyalty program and out of thin air I pulled up a 6 year old phone number from the house in California and it was right. I was amazed. I couldn't remember that number while we actually lived there. Before we had children, in California, we would take walks late at night. Moreso when we lived in Los Angeles, before we moved out to the real deep suburbs. There was great places to walk, lots going on. One time we saw Eddie Murphy hanging out the side of a taxi on a flatbed howling and barking and cheering us on. (If you've since seen the movie - Nutty Professor - it wasn't late one night but daytime and he was cheering at two dogs procreating in a grassy neighborhood, not two 20-somethings strolling down a sidestreet in front of closed storefronts. Ah, the power of movies.) But, yeah, now the only time I find myself driving at night it's because there's a screaming baby. Of course, last time that happened, he stopped crying after 30 minutes and I drove around for another hour and a half. Lori wasn't exactly thrilled with that, wondering where we were. But it did allow me to see a part of Seattle I'd never seen - West Seattle, where you can overlook downtown and where people are out walking and jogging and riding bikes in the middle of the night. I told Lori she can expect more of that with a next child - me taking long drives - and I would later take Lori back to that same area when we were on an anniversary sans children so she could see the wonderful views I had enjoyed that night.
But now, the fake Saturday is coming to an end. Lori still not feeling wonderful, dragged herself upstairs after the show we were watching ended and I guess I ought to be heading up myself if I want to do any more reading tonight.