A Rainy Day

Originally Posted Saturday, May 4, 2014

There are days that just feel good, a rainy Saturday, perhaps, when the temperature cools and you are lazy, drinking  coffee and then going to the diner for breakfast before driving home in the rain to sit and read and fall back to sleep being after awhile awakened by someone in the house, an ex, who is calling your name and who wants to give you money, a rent check, and to kibitz about the day, things, the cat who has been acting strange suddenly not coming into the house but sleeping out and only sticking her head in the door to run to her food bowl to nab a snack, looking like there is a ghost in the house which scares you a bit, all this since you heard her fall from the back of the chair one early morning where she lay on the floor and did not get up so that now you are thinking she may have had a seizure which is what you tell the vet, another ex, who comes over later that day because your rent check ex tells you this is how cats act on the farm when they are dying, going off by themselves knowing something is wrong but not knowing what, but the vet says the cat looks healthy and says she could take blood but that would cost a lot of money and you say no because you know the cat is not diabetic having gone through that with the dog and the vet saying a seizure might come from a brain tumor which you know you are not going to pay to fix for a few months of chemo life so the vet gives her a rabies shot saying it will last three years and that she will probably never have to give her another one which is a weird thing but you know the cat is fifteen and the vet is probably right, and after the shots the cat acts a bit freaky but then more normally as the vet reads to you a letter from her files which you wrote when she put the dog down and it is beautiful enough to make you cry a little being about the past and the future and how it had been a bad year back then when you had lost everything from the past, the dog being the last remnant, and how you hoped to make the future, hearing it now sounding so naive in the face of what has come, then you hug and she says she will call you for dinner sometime and you say that would be fine, and then she's gone and the cat is tired and maybe just a bit sick from the medicines and you make a cup of mint tea and go through old photo files that you have never processed and that amaze you for their beauty as the rain keeps falling, you ranking and sorting hundreds of beautiful photographs that you know you can never get around to, the music playing wonderfully as you make a second cup of tea, this time a green tea with toasted rice, and then as the day fades away early under cloudy skies you go to the most wonderful market to buy a ribeye steak and asparagus for a simple meal alone, the classical music playing inside the market falling over you like a blue dream, and then you decide to buy a good bottle of wine and spend twice and a half more than you would usually spend, but this is a date night alone and you would spend more out, then the cooking and the cat and a movie and the wine which is delicious and worth it as is the entire meal and everything is sensual before an early night's retirement to the wonderful new sheets and soft music for a lullaby.