I slept an awful lot last night although somewhat intermittently. Today I felt so much better than I had in some time, which I contribute primarily to last night’s IV rehydration measures. Our day was a restful and cozy one hiding from the battering storm outside and cooking – muffins loaded with golden raisins, coconut and coconut flour, cranberries, pecans, pineapple, apple, and carrot. In addition to my regular work I’ve taken up a new hobby: drinking (water) and peeing. I’ve always hated to pee – I would have been blessed to be born with the (mythically) larger male-bladder or perhaps the convenience of a real-life stillsuit.
We had a standing invitation tonight at my mother’s for dinner. When she invites us thusly it’s usually a welcome affair, not least of which as it’s so very rare for me to get a homecooked meal that I am not 100% making or at least largely instrumental in providing. Tonight we arrived at my mom’s bearing a winter salad with apples and pears and cashews and homemade lemon poppyseed dressing (and I brought some of the abovementioned muffin recipe, baked into a tidy loaf). She served us fettucine alfredo, roasted butternut squash, local (and delicious!) cranberry sausage, and of course wine and iced lemon water and our salad alongside. Dessert was a turtle sundae in chocolate cups with a cinnamon swizzle-stick. The kids loved the chocolate cups.
My mother’s living room was decorated in the boughs and ornaments and LED lights she typically puts out every year, the last few years with my kids’ help. She had a new art piece on the wall and a watercolor on the desk next to fresh poinsettias. She’d recently treated herself to a new MacBook Pro and has been giddily getting used to it; tonight the kids helped her with her tabbed browsing problems and soon it was BIEBER FEVER streaming radio while the kids showed us their dancing moves and I drank eighteen glasses of water. After a bit Phoenix was soon drawing quietly and Nels was cuddled up next to Grazdma in my father’s favorite armchair, their sock feet entangled and their arms around one another. We talked about Christmas plans and artwork and local gossip and life in our HQX and my wistful wishes for a sewing studio in one of our practically-derelict and empty for-rent rooms downtown.
Upon getting home at about 10:30 it began to dawn on Ralph and I that the persistant cat yowling we’d heard off and on during the day was not from a stray or the intermittent cries of our CLOWDER members asking to be let in from the rain off and on today, but from the one cat we hadn’t seen for several hours – little Hamilton. Ralph went out to investigate (we are currently under a flood warning for the area) and heard her cries from under our flooded foundation – we’re talking a foot and a half of rising water. Ralph brought out a light and extension cord and took off plywood sections and peered around until he finally found her – as it turned out, safely (but unhappily) resting on the I-beams. Since she was unwilling to do anything but yell and look worried he tried a variety of solutions and ended up putting one plank down, then a second plank to help get the cat onto the first plank, and then crawling around and calling and coaxing her amidst the wild windstorm. And yeah, the cat finally made her way in (after a bunch of fakey attempts) and came inside and started inhaling food while I ran a hot bath for Ralph who was thoroughly soaked (the cat was pretty much bone-dry). What was funny is how he went from so upset at the thought of the wee one drowning, to realizing she was entirely safe and doing that cat pain-in-the-ass thing where you can’t exactly just walk away and ignore the situation, but it’s entirely inconvenient to attempt to remedy it, too, and by the end he was simultaneously completely relieved she was safe and also entirely aggrevated.
All’s well that ends well, I s’pose.