“Hey, Kelly? Weren’t you supposed to start writing about a week ago, give or take?”
“Why yes, Anonymous Internet Voice, I was!”
“Well, you didn’t. Why not?”
“It’s a bit of a story, Anonymous Internet Voice, but pull up a virtual chair and I’ll tell you all about it…”
Okay, cutesy conceit dropped, but the point remains. I was supposed to write. I didn’t write. What the hell happened to writing? Well, a record heatwave for this early in the season turned me into a puddle of Not Doing. I don’t have central air in my apartment, and only my bedroom has A/C. (In this photo, Toledo is helpfully illustrating that it’s so hot all his bones melted.)
In fact, it was so hot that, when I wasn’t trying to keep myself cool, I was trying to cool down the cats.
However, I discovered that a wet clothe on the back, much like a leash, leaves kitties forgetting how to walk. So Zeus went for the Supercat look, instead. Very chic.
When the heat finally abated, I found myself suffering the usual side effects someone with a chronic nerve pain condition finds themself in after a 45 degree temperature shift in less than two days: pain. That pain manifested itself Sunday in a migraine, and I spent much of Sunday night throwing up. Because bathrooms are always, always cool refuges of icy tile – and why is that? The rest of your apartment can be an oven, but laying on that bathroom tile is like large paving stones of ice. But I digress. I was in the bathroom retching, and Zeus was in the bathroom with me. Zeus was very concerned – and oh, how sweet, I thought.
Silly me.
Zeus was concerned, yes. He was apparently concerned that I was hiding food or something from him, because during one of the moments I wasn’t holding on to the toilet for dear life, he stuck his head into the toilet to see what was going on. Now this, in itself, may have been fine – if I had been done vomiting.
I, however, was not.
And that’s how I found myself, late Sunday night, washing a cat while every tilt of the head or shift of the shoulder made waves of nausea roll through me. This was not on my list of things I wanted to do…ever.
Aside from mildly wounded dignity and irritation at a fierce ear-cleaning Monday morning, Zeus is fine. I got a healthy amount of sleep the last two nights, and am largely feeling better. Does that mean I’ll be better about posting? Probably not for another week – we’re heading into a heat wave that makes last week look like winter, and my poor, going to die in the heatwave, father, is coming to visit at the end of this week. The savvy reader might well point out that we’re rolling in to summer, when the heat is going to get worse and more frequent, to which I can only say point to you, and hopefully habit eventually wins out.