Ah, I was scheduled to work at the hospital last Sunday, but instead I took that day to go for a run, fix the dishwasher and go to Sunday night dinner. I was relieved to not go into the hospital. We drive by the hospital on the way home from Gene and Bette’s, you can see it from the freeway and as we passed by, Jeremy held my hand and said, it was nice that you were able to stay home today and now I get to hold your hand now instead of waving at you as I drive past you on the freeway. It’s a funny thing, being too busy, being busy, just right, being relaxed, being too relaxed. It’s hard to always be in the just right place. As I go over to the too busy side, I’m overwhelmed. As I go over to the too relaxed side, my anxiety tends to flare up where I have intrusive thoughts that are not helpful. I mean thoughts about things I can not change (how I’ve broken the earth for Vince and Edda and their summers will be 104F) or things that are totally out of left field (omg, I think I’m going to lose my left foot). Why, why, why can’t I be in the middle?
We got Max’s ashes in the mail a few days ago. I was not expecting the paw print. Honestly, the paw print really touched me. I look at it and think – yeah, I never trimmed her nails. She never let me touch her toes. Ruby would let you massage her feet no problem, but Maxi was a sensitive soul with sensitive soles. Normally, I wouldn’t have asked for Maxi’s ashes back, but when Emy was taking care of Yeager in 2002 and Yeager passed away, she asked to have Yeager’s ashes back. And so when Ruby passed away in 2016, I thought I should ask for her ashes back too. And now I have a little pet cemetery. Or a little pet mausoleum.
Yesterday (Monday) was Kitachi’s last day. Over the weekend, Alice, Sofi and Mike worked a couple hours on this puzzle to leave just enough to finish on Monday. We started this puzzle before the pandemic and when we went into lockdown, I set the puzzle aside for the entire time waiting for us to reconvene. And after we were all vaccinated and could go over to each other’s houses, we only did it once or twice. So I thought it was fitting to finish off the puzzle on Kitachi’s last day. And we did! About an hour’s worth of work for us and we got it done. Not a single piece was lost over the last year, and Sofi and Kitachi got to put in the last pieces.
I know Edda is not too thrilled in this photo, but it’s just because she’s already ready for bed. One last tuck into bed from Kitachi and big hugs to send her off onto her new adventure.
