“What’s the formatting for these post titles? Heck if I know (or care).”
Happy New Year! Isn’t it wild that we’re in the year 2023 already? I can’t believe it’s been 2023 years since the invention of time, when John Time, from Liverpool, England (back then it was known as Spleenpool, before Big Soccer changed the name to honor their favorite and most treasured organ) first looked around and said “I don’t like this entropy thing at all, and I will be having no more of it.” But little did he know that the gradual decay comes for us all, and each year we mark it with fireworks and a worldwide party in a doomed attempt to stay the hand of John Time, gardener and executioner of the cosmos. Hurray?
This matters not, in the end. We are one more (calendar) year on this earth, and one more rotation around the sun. And nothing feels any different from last year. 2020 and 2021 were disastrous nightmare years, and 2022 was largely pretty tame in comparison (unless you live in Ukraine and also Pakistan/South Sudan/Iran/Afghanistan/[insert another country beset by humanitarian crises here] or are immunocompromised or have a uterus or are vulnerable to the negative impacts of the increase of prices causes by corporate greed, like roughly 90% of people realistically are). Funny how living through a global pandemic and a failed insurrection can make most other things seem “tame,” especially when they happen “somewhere else.” Hmm.
But let’s not get into all that. Yet. I didn’t even touch on climate change, after all, and how it feels like the world is actively ending. The fucking Mississippi river dried up in some places. I watched the Minnesota river drop what felt like six feet over the course of one summer. We went fishing at the beginning of the summer and then again at the end, and you could walk out past the places we had been catching fish two months ago. Not that circumstantial or anecdotal evidence is proof of trends, mind you, but when the rest of the dogdamn world seems to be having the same problems, for several years in a row, things start to add up. America is a country run by oligarchs and corporations that control 99% of the wealth and cause 99% of the problems, and we’re going to come screaming to a halt as soon as climate disasters (and every other disaster) start to pile up more than they already are. An equitable future will require a grand redistribution of wealth and power. Seizing the means of production, if you will.
But, like I said, not getting into that yet. I don’t have the time, and unlike last week’s post, I didn’t prepare this one in advance. So I’m writing it when I really should be going to sleep, but here I am anyway. And let’s make it easy, shall we? I’d like to share with you an update on my cats in the form of several pictures of them I’ve collected recently. A nice and gentle ride into the brand-new year of 2023. That sounds nice, right? Right?
As a quick reminder, I have two cats, named Alex (whiny baby/black cat/lump on stilts) and Julius (Garfield/orange cat/walkable breadloaf). They are enormous. Between the two of them, they eat six cans of wet food a day (since dry food makes Julius vomit) and collectively weigh more than thirty pounds. They are larger than some breeds of dog. And they never stop complaining. Ever. Like clockwork, Alex will demand food at 6:30am. I haven’t slept well since August.
They like each other, at least. Alex will groom Julius sometimes, though Julius doesn’t typically reciprocate. We theorize that this is because Julius is suffering from some combination of deafness, dementia, and kitty PTSD from his past life where he was hunted by a sausage-shaped dog any time he’d leave the closet. We suspect this because sometimes he will stare into the space behind the dresser, into the darkness between spaces, and scream. He has seen the abyss, and it torments him.
Over winter break, I opted to have my dad (thank you!) watch the cats while Cheyenne and I were away from Minnesota. This was (hopefully) kinder and more cost-efficient than boarding them, but not necessarily easier. Sure, we could have asked one of our friends to watch them in MN, but ten days away is a long time to watch someone else’s cats, especially over Christmas and New Year’s. And boarding would have been so stressful and not very sanitary. Plus, my dad charged me $0 to take care of these cats, since they do two things; 1) eat and 2) poop. And he’s home a solid amount of time! So they got interaction! However, the downside to having my dad sit on them was that this meant a six-hour drive to and from Illinois, and they yelled the entire time. Both ways. And, also like clockwork, Julius shit in his carrier within the first twenty minutes. Both ways. Much like my junior year of high school, Julius has never been in a car without shitting himself.
They warmed up to my dad, eventually, which you think they would have done sooner since he was the one who initially held on to them after we repossessed them, IRS-style. But by the time they did, it was time to take them home. The ten days of Christmas break/New Year’s celebration went by exceptionally quickly for me, which was a shame because I like seeing friends and family! And not working! But the park district isn’t paying me to sit around, get drunk, experience unexplainable alcohol-induced sweating, throw up red wine six hours later, and play Mario Kart, so back to Minnesota I go.
I did have a good time, though! I got to see lots of other people‘s cats, including my sibling‘s cat and my cousins‘ cats. I watched the Weird Al Yankovic movie (because of course I did), got Outback Steakhouse chicken strips with my grandmother, went to my aunt and uncle’s house for my mom’s side of Christmas and won at pool, went to a different aunt and uncle’s house for my dad’s side of Christmas and made a baby cry (unintentionally, this time), visited college friends in Chicago for pizza and spicy nachos, played an exceptional amount of Mario Kart, visited the Brookfield Zoo Christmas lights and bothered a lion (which is just a bigger cat, really), and had a new year’s eve celebration and, for once, no one vomited all over the bathroom floor (the tradition is broken! Yay!). Plus, I’m sure I did more than I’m neglecting to mention here.
Seeing friends and family is always the highlight of vacation, of course. Especially now that I live up in Minnesota, where I have to plan out things weeks (preferably months, even) in advance if I’m ever gonna hope to see anyone. Because that drive may be easy, but it is killer at this point. I’m so tired of driving those same damn six hours. It’s pretty, at least. Prettier than the drive from Chicago to Champaign, Illinois, at any rate. Wisconsin has more than just corn; it has corn with hills in it!
It’s kind of weird to think that, over this vacation, I saw family and friends that I haven’t seen in over a year. In some cases, I haven’t seen a lot of folks since the summer of 2021, which is crazy! Sometimes, that’s because they moved away, too. Other times, they had a child and I lived in Minnesota, which are two incompatible experiences. Minnesota has no children. As soon as they enter the state, they grow a bear and put on a flannel and become tiny lumberjacks. No one wants tiny lumberjacks running around their house! They just cut everything down to size.
What else did I do? I mean, I played a surprising number of board games. Ate a distressing amount of mac and cheese, smoked meats, and coffee (though any amount of coffee is gastrointestinally distressing to me). Received, as always, an unsustainable number of books. Cleaned my room, only to have it filled with porcelain birds. Went to a bar (just the one). Did other stuff, I guess. I don’t know, there was a lot! I always feel like I do a lot over these vacations and, simultaneously, do very little. And I never feel like I can remember enough of it.
Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe I don’t need to remember everything. Maybe just knowing that the time was spent with the people I love is enough, and that I appreciate their presence and am grateful for them in my life. Because as John Time marches ever onward, memories will fade. Sometimes, memories will disappear entirely, often against our own will. But whatever that memory is of, it still happened. It still mattered. The action was taken, an event took place. People met, celebrated, and spent time in each other’s company. I did that. Even if I can’t remember it as clearly now, even as clearly as I want to remember it. As the past is unreachable to us, you cannot unring those bells, you cannot unshit the cat carrier.
Happy New Year. Here’s to 2023, which I hope will be a prosperous and healthful year to you, whoever you are reading this. And I hope you enjoyed the cat pictures.
Post-blog note: Can you believe I made it this entire post without making a single “send pussy pics” joke???? Isn’t it great that my humor is tasteful/evolving/fun for the whole family? Isn’t it weird that I felt the need to bring it up anyway? Isn’t it wild that I’m forcing you to consider this concept now? Past-me wrote that, and the past, like memory, is devious. Send bobs.
1 thought on “Quick and Easy Cat Pictures for the New Year – Photobomb”
Comments are closed.