11/8/11 Sick Holiday

Home from work on election day, as my company takes the day off for some reason. I probably would have and should have taken the day off anyway, as the head cold I've been nursing for the past few weeks has kicked in with a vengeance.

I decide to take advantage of the free day to stay inside and write, but the words are coming hard today. Some days I get to my 500 words and I fall away from the keyboard feeling like I've been wrestling with something large, wild, and completely out of my control.

11/7/11 Instigator

"Any room for a little person?" I hear the cracked voice of an older woman ask, mock plaintively. The train is packed and she cackles as the grumbling commuters crammed around the door grudgingly make way. She then proceeds, in sotto voce that carries above the rattle of the tracks, to urge the people around her to punch each other in the face.

As I step off the train, she stands by the door watching all of us disembark, a brightly colored, iridescent feather on her black cap, a satisfied smirk on her face.

11/5/11 Remember, remember

The vet leaves the room for a minute to "give us some time." The first injection was administered without much fuss, and after a moment of the kitty thinking that she might go take a walk on the floor, she lays down on my lap, completely relaxed and breathing slow and easy.

We stroke her fur, pet her head, play with her paws and tail, all in the ways that she would never let us do before now, when she was conscious and able to object. Her paws twitch, as do her ears, as if she is dreaming of walking away from us, and I tell Katie I hope it's a good dream.

11/4/11 That'll work

"So Jonathan," I said, "you're similar to my wife in your rage and your restlessness and intolerance for boredom. What do you suggest for activities when we're low on funds?"

He thought for a moment. "Booze and Wii," he said.

11/3/11 The March of Sickness

I knew, as I went to bed last night, that this morning I would have a cold. All the usual suspects showed - the heavy dryness in my sinuses, the stinging, swollen throat, the shaky exhaustion - and made my dreams (once I was finally able to sleep) strange and unsettling.

On waking, however, I found myself still only in the initial stages, waiting on the further indignities to come. I ate handfuls of Tylenol, sucked down spicy and bitter herbal elixirs, gargled desperately with warm water into which I'd dissolved crushed aspirin and salt, but nothing seemed to arrest the inevitable march of sickness through my body.

11/2/11 She who is not busy eating 9-Lives is busy dying.

My cat meows plaintively at the door outside our bedroom where Katie and I lay asleep. It is four in the morning, and like the elderly of any species, she has trouble sleeping through the night. Since the majority of her time that is not spent sleeping is now spent eating, any time she is awake she has decided that she must be hungry, and she therefore demands to be fed.

I am a light sleeper, unlike my slumbering wife who manages to sleep right through the cat's complaints, and so I struggle out of bed to feed the beast, who circles my feet, still yelling, until I plop the food onto her plate with a wet splat to place it gently before her, and stumble in darkness back to bed.

11/1/11 - another morning

My high school band teacher, Mr. McEnaney, drilled into our heads that, when exiting a bus, it is always polite to thank the bus driver. Today, while getting off the B67, which I only take in direst of need when I hope to catch the earlier train into work by lopping off the few blocks between the 7th Avenue Q Train station and my house, every single person thanked the bus driver as we exited. It was very satisfying.

In the station, a man, presumably homeless, lay sleeping in one of the giant, three-wheeled baby carriages that jogging parents use to take their offspring with them on their daily run, and it seemed to fit him quite well.