Back in august I wrote about a broken circle.
I finally dug a hole. He is resting in the back yard, in a sunny spot in view of the bird feeders.
I will have to get an appropriate plant or perhaps statuary.
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Category: Maudlin
Almost exactly 8 (!) years ago I posted about giving up the cats so we could travel to Cairo.
http://www.cairochronicles.com/jack/?p=26
And then 3 years ago I posted about getting Roscoe back.
http://www.cairochronicles.com/jack/?p=412
Today he leaves us permanently.
The vet will be here shortly to help usher Roscoe P. Coltrain over the rainbow bridge.
I keep telling myself he had a great run.
He was found 17 years ago, an abandoned feral kitten, too small to even lick milk from a bowl.
He was bottle fed until he figured out the whole eating on his own thing.
He has had several brushes with illness and always managed to dodge the bullet.
This time there were too many bullets.
I am going to miss the little bastard terribly. Going to the bathroom will never be the same.
Goodbye little man.
About 3 years ago, I posted this
It is happening again.
We were in our favorite place in Egypt, Dahab last month.
We were staying with our dear friends, Nina and Mikas, at their extremely cozy guest house, Dahab Coach House.
We dive with Sinai Divers Backpackers and have loads of friends there: Pritesh, Kasia, Yvonne, Vivienne, Shadi, Khaled, Synthia.
And we realized that, well, we have to start saying good-bye to people. Again. I am not good at this. I like to just slink off.
There is a Seinfeld episode that goes something like this:
George decides he wants to break up with his girlfriend. He finally works up the courage to sit her down and explain that it just isn’t working out.
He goes through a lot of the cliches: “it’s not you, it’s me” “time to move one” etc.
She stops for a minute and says: “No”.
She does not allow him to break up with her.
As we were attempting to say good-bye, our friends in Dahab said “”No, this isn’t good bye. You must come back one more time before you leave”
I felt like George, in that episode.
And so it goes.
We are trying to figure out how, in the next 8 weeks, we are going to pack everything up, wrap up all the loose ends for both our jobs, co-ordinate a cross-the-world-relocation, AND sneak in at least another long weekend with our friends in Dahab.
It seems that the dust in my eye here is just as bad as the dust on that street in Vancouver.
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I went to the bathroom all by myself!
Usually, one hears that from a toddler. It is usually met with great fanfare on behalf of the parents.
In this case, it is an occasion for some angst.
For the last 9 years, we have had a cat. Roscoe P. Coltrain is his name. He had many quirks. So many that we used to say “He’s retarded, but he is ours…”
One quirk was he likes to drag socks, sweaters, t-shirts, uhh, unmentionables, out of the laundry basket. He liked to drag them into various parts of the house and curl up in them, purrrring loudly.
Another quirk:
When we first got him, his food and water lived in the bathroom. Whenever someone went into the bathroom, he would run in and eat and PURRRRR really loudly.
Houses change, things get moved. His food and water are now in the downstairs bathroom, that doesn’t get a lot of use. At least not by humans.
But he still always followed people into the bathroom. It didn’t matter where he was in the house. He would hear you and come trotting in.
He would do it in the middle of the night, middle of the day. It didn’t matter.
When he had been outside, and we let him back in, I would swear he would look at me as if to say “I hope you didn’t go to the bathroom without me…”
He liked to roll around on the rug and have his head rubbed. His purrring was audible in the bedroom next door on a quiet night.
He and our other cat, Maia, went to a new home yesterday. (It would have been impractical to take them to Cairo).
While we know that they are going to a good home, and we know that they may not have even survived the quarantine and travel stress and we know that this is for the best….
Still.
This morning I went to the bathroom all by myself….
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The Beginning of GoodBye
A few weeks ago, we attended a large gathering at a friends home in Vancouver(the original one).
It is a yearly event that is held around the end of June. There is lots of food, drink and laughter.
The party is on a Saturday night. Sunday morning is spent lounging about drinking coffee and laughing with a few stragglers. We usually end up leaving around noon and drag ourselves back to Seattle. We are often reluctant to leave.
This year …this year it was harder to leave than usual. We realized that this was the last time we will see many of these people for 2 years, or more. No one spoke of this, but it was there.
Additionally, our friends that host the party will probably be moving in the 2 years that we are gone. We have been going to their home for parties 2 or 3 times per year for 9 years or so.
When we left on Sunday morning, we both realized that it was probably the last time we will visit them in this home.
No really, it was just dust in my eye.