'Are you hungry? It's time for food.'
Our old brown tabby wakes from her slumber at the word food. She chuffs at me while I get up off the bed and head for the kitchen. She's old and battle worn, one of her ears split and curled from her battles when she was young. Now she's old fat and docile.
It's time for me to eat too.
Her claws clack on the wood floor as she runs past me towards the kitchen. I grab her dish and empty and clean out this mornings unfinished food. She rubs against the corner of the kitchen wall enthusiastically in the same place everyday. I have to wipe the wall down or she'll leave a stain from her face on the corner if I don't. I set the food down and she happily eats. Our younger cat saunters into the kitchen and looks at her bowl.
"Oh shit" I say loudly, "I forgot to cook more chicken for you". Because we spoil our cats this one only eats dried food and chicken breast. She's long and lanky, I wish she would eat more. She follows me into the garage as I pull a frozen chicken breast. I have unthawed salmon in the fridge I need to cook today. I can do both at once. I pull out a small pot and place the breast in to boil. 'Your food will be one in about an hour okay.' She looks at me and then her bowl and walks away looking judgmental.
I check my phone for music. I could connect it to the Bluetooth and play music from the sound system in the den. I don't feel like doing that. Despite the over a thousand songs on my phone I know there isn't something that I really want to hear on it. I feel like symphony music. 'Soundtracks?' I think to myself. I noticed I hadn't used my SiriusXM app in ages despite paying for it. My father uses it all the time, I really just have it for him. 'Why not?' I again think. I don't feel like preparing a track listing myself so I'll try Cinemagic, I haven't listened to it in forever.
I turn the app on. I know I had it saved to my favorites since forever. It's not there. Apparently they took it away. Damn it. Well....I can turn on the PC connected to the TV and just put the genre to random on soundtracks. I turn it on and it clanks and whirs to life. It's an older PC, I think to myself that I can't even remember when I bought it. Not long after Mixtape Girl and I were married. We only used it for streaming shows before Roku's and Apple TV was a major thing. Only music is stored on it and not really updated, but it'll do.
Windows 8 turns on. A clumsy but inventive system I will admit. Looks nice but the execution is not there. The media player is Zune which will give you an idea as to just how old the system is. Though not updated the music player opens reliably and takes a few moments to load all our old albums. I search through soundtracks and pick Lawrence of Arabia. Why, I don't know but I get through the overture and first track before changing albums. I can't think of what to listen to. Braveheart maybe. Again the first two tracks then change. Thomas Newman's Road to Perdition seems like a good continual option to listen to. I don't want sad music, I just want something I can ignore.
I take out the salmon and slice up fillets. Seasoning with garlic, onions, and spices. I run out to the garden and pick some fresh rosemary and thyme to infuse with the butter to baste the fillets in while they cook. As I set them to pan fry I chop of zucchini and onions, grapes tomatoes and spinach and set them aside to cook in the pan drippings of the fish.
While I chop up the vegetables I think of all the events that have happened since I was on here last. So much has come and gone. Mixtape Girl lost her dad last year. Not from COVID, but a freak accident in the driveway of her parents house. She hasn't quite been the same since. Her mom didn't take it well either and is trying to cry herself to death literally. It's a weird situation. Her mom hurt herself accidentally on purpose and now is in need of constant care. Mixtape Girl spends the working day there, usually 12 hour days to care for her mom and her other handicapped sister. She worries that she's abandoning me. I tell her I'm fine and I'm not going anywhere. Fortunately we work from home now and can work from anywhere so her working from her parents house isn't a problem.
She oversees the myriads of therapists coming and going everyday to assist her mother. Today she texted me a picture of the giant imaging van that came to take x-rays of her mother. They can come to you now, who'd have known.
The salmon is sizzling nicely and its time to flip. I take the opportunity to flip the half frozen chicken for the other cat in the pot as well.
I've spent these last couple of years in confinement, or what seems like it. After all that happened I decided that I had take better care of myself. I'm in the best shape of my life, but it seems like a moot point for some reason. I run now. On a treadmill but I run. I've never ran. Weight lifting, Zumba, a little bit of everything. I just want to be healthy to take care of Mixtape Girl and the rest of our family.
I get dinner ready as I know she'll be tired when she gets home. She usually sits down and falls asleep after eating. Lately we just watch TV in bed when she gets home and she's out in a few minutes. The two cats always accompany us. Somehow between the cats and Mixtape Girl they manage to take up an entire king sized bed leaving me a sliver of an edge to sleep on. I don't mind. Even on days she stays over with her mom I confine myself to my sliver of the bed.
Eventually I start to think about this blog. I should revisit it tonight I tell myself. So I do. I turn back to the SiriusXM app. I still can't find anything I like. Initially Al Stewart is singing Year of the Cat when I turn it back on, but that's too much. I end up on the Spa channel. Again it's just something I can ignore.
So much has changed and so much will continue to do so. There's no point to this post but I just needed to write something today. I kind of miss writing. I think I'll try to be back.
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