June 19th is my last day. I’m walking down the road to Jericho Beach Tuesday night and thinking “This is nuts. How much more pondering do I have to do to know I don’t want to be doing this anymore?” I phoned Katie and told her, and she provided consoling words. Then I turned the corner and there was the biggest rainbow I’ve ever seen. I’d post the pics but rainbows need a good photographer and a hefty lens, neither of which I had. Then I enjoyed the show at Jericho (Brighter Lights Thicker Glasses, and I can’t recommend them enough) with Peggy (after playing John’s Song and That Godforsaken Hellhole I Call Home), and then came home and told myself I’d sleep on it. And I did, and I went to my brother and said, “I’m quitting my job today,” and he said “Great!” and then I went in and told NewBoss and then everybody in the building knew and I had a stream of miserable engineers and unhappy techs come by and ask if it was true.
Why? Because John died. I knew, after Brian C. quit, that something very fundamental was gone and not coming back. I knew I was not giving it my best. And time’s winged chariot is outside my front door honking. I have an immense list of stuff I want to do and no energy or heart to do it as long as I’m working full time.
Daughter Katie came over last night so I could help her with her job hunt. I fed her and Jeff chicken thighs in mixed herbs and bouillon, peas, asparagus and tater tots. Mike came over.
While they were here, Miss Margot jumped up on the keyboards that I have negligently and sloppily left in the living room, and I turned them on, and then Jeff coaxed her into walking up and down the keyboard a couple of times. Katie and I knew, and Jeff and Mike did not, that the keyboard splits and is percussion sounds on the left and piano on the right. So we were laughing – I laughed until I was gasping for air, and we were all crying and hooting in a most unseemly manner – because she walked to one end of the keyboard sounding like she was trying to compose the climactic piano music for an artistic horror film from the sixties – and then she parked her butt on two keys and just sat there, eyeing us with something resembling resentment and puzzlement, her butt making a chord the whole while, for at least a minute, possibly longer, while Jeff tried everything to get her to walk up the keys. Then Mike did something that got her attention, and she walked toward the other end, writing a very beautiful and unusual song as she did so, and I ran to get the camera, and all I got was her walking on some percussion and dismounting with a “Bam-dum KISH!” exactly like she was finishing off a comedy sketch. It’s not long enough to post and the light level is very low, and I’m SCREAMING with laughter and shaking the camera. I wish I could have gotten the whole thing, it was just about the most amazing thing I’ve seen lately. And it happened in my living room. Katie, wiping her eyes, said that was the hardest she’d laughed in a very long time. Miss Margot is a really remarkable animal. I mean, a cat who eats oatmeal?
You know, if I quit my job, I could train Margot, the clown cat. I wonder if I can get a false nose fitted for her. No, some ideas are better left unrealized. Hey, I DID quit my job! But taking a year to train a clown cat, THAT has income possibilities. I should set the house up for camera operation in every room. Oh, Jeff!? Wifi webcam throughout the house? I know Miss Margot won’t be little and cute forever.
I need a root canal. I hope I can make it through the weekend. The poison from the abscess is affecting my jaw and tongue.