March 2003

Words don’t like forcing. When pushed, they fight back with kick and claw and bite, resulting in nothing but torn-up papers and cramped hands. Finished sentences rarely result, and the ones that survive their troubled gestation usually prove to be truly ghastly infants.

The past week has been tough. The next few will be tougher. I am approaching the one-year anniversary of Dad’s death with something deeper than apprehension but differently-flavored than dread: knowledge conveys its literal meaning, but precariousness conveys its resonance.

It’s extraordinarily rare that I talk to anyone about what happened last year. Even now, a year later, I don’t have the mental distance or emotional stability to do it, so I leave the words hanging, swinging, between my lips and another’s ears.

The mirror tells me I am not fundamentally different.

* * * * *

It must be spring. My hands smell like varnish.

We don’t really know the cause, but pseudo-scientific tests have confirmed that my brain has turned to mush. The prevailing theory has to do with the undoubtedly mutagenic chemicals in the varnish, but I have a sneaking suspicion that three nights of forcefully-applied iambic pentameter might have something to do with it.

As I crossed the state line I realized I'd missed the grand turning-out of the lights, the unknown but somehow pre-determined moment when all of the good citizens of Alabama realize it's time to go to bed, and turn out all the lights. There hadn't been many lights in Tennessee, but in comparison, Alabama was utterly dark. I took the state line exit onto the back roads, and did not see another car (or an open gas station) for the rest of the drive. It is difficult to tiptoe into a sleeping house while excited; excitement leads to bouncing, and bouncing while on tiptoe generally leads to Bad Things happening. It took well over an hour to calm down enough to even think of sleep.

When we pulled up at the restaurant to meet the crew for Sean’s dinner, everyone who was already there ran toward my car. “PLEASE tell us you brought your camera. We all forgot ours. You’ve GOT to see this Saturn.”

“Uh-oh,” I said. “Where’s the car?” They pointed me off to the left. Before I even saw the car, I saw the glow.Glow is a bad sign. It’s the ricer equivalent of a cancer symptom. The appearance of a glow indicates severe ricer issues - ones that, as we well know, can only be dealt with by liberal usage of a digital camera.

UPDATE: - see the bottom of this post.

I’ve tried to make it as easy as possible for people to subscribe to cat.net’s RSS feed. I’ve updated it to RSS 2.0 (in other words, bit the bullet about the standards argument and just upgraded the silly thing). It’s available in the same place it’s always been: domesticat.net/syndicated.php

(For those of you who are interested, the feed for geek-chick.net can be found at geek-chick.net/syndication.php.)

Death does not take reservations; it comes and goes of its own free will, leaving the living to tend to the resulting disruption.

I am still tending.

So it’s been one year. I can look at my watch and remember where I was. A year ago by the tickings of this watch, I was at Colter’s. I showered. I had been instructed to get some rest. While I slept on Colter’s bed, Jeff worked on Colter’s computer.

The future hung over us, shadowy and low. We knew my father’s death was imminent; the oxygen saturation of his blood had begun to drop the day before. Previously, his mask had provided him with eighty percent oxygen. We knew that moving him to 100% oxygen would not save him - nothing would - but if it kept him comfortable, that is what we would do.

But - no. That is not the way to remember.

Motto in this house: “Stupid people are everywhere, and they always take their car with them.”

We went for dinner tonight with friends and, at the last minute before leaving the house, I grabbed my camera. I wasn’t expecting anything to photograph, but every now and then, the residents of Huntsville surprise me. We agreed to head back to our house for an evening of socialization. Since Byron didn’t know how to get back to our house, Jeff offered to ride with him.

I would take the car back by myself.

What do I do when I’m not coding? Lots of things, considering that I’ve been doing almost no coding lately. (All of this week’s requests for code have been met with what can only be described as derisive giggling on my part.) Not sure why, but right now, when the brain stumbles onto the word code, I suddenly find myself with an immediate need to be in the living room, clipping recipes out of old Penzey’s catalogs.

In other words, not a good sign for the code output.