Friday, January 11, 2002
And then there are the days when I don't have to invent things to do to avoid writing. Shit just happens. Today, the cat mysteriously vanished. We thought she'd fled the apartment when Jennifer went downstairs to investigate a crater the water works people were digging in the street. No water in the apartment, because underground pipes froze, apparently, and as they thawed, water burbled its way up to the surface and spewed through the blacktop. So, big hole and the water stops working. And the cat vanishes. And we spend the next hour and a half searching for her fat, furry, dumb ass, all through the apartment, the building, the parking garage, and on three different three streets. There I am, walking up and down the stairs and the hallway, shaking a box of Purina Senior, calling the cat ("Heeeere kitty-kitty-kitty-kitty . . .), and meowling at the top of my lungs. Remember the scene where Brett is looking for Jones on the Nostromo, right before the alien nabs him. It was sort of like that.
And then the building's fire alarm goes off and a fire truck filled with firemen shows up and we're simultaneously escorting them through the building (they had no keys) looking for the switch that had been pulled and looking for the stupid cat. Perhaps, thought I, the cat had pulled the fire alarm. Maybe she was signling the mother ship and the great feline invasion was finally at hand.
We searched the roof. The firemen looked for a fire that wasn't there. A light fixture in the third-floor hall beside my door suddenly crashed to the floor and shattered.
When your day's going this well, you don't have to worry about the writing. No one's gonna blame you for not getting anything done in this sort of chaos.
Anyway, finally the cat was found under my bed, hiding in a box of Salammbô t-shirts that she'd crawled into, but couldn't crawl back out of again. The firemen shut off the alarm and went away in disgust. The water works people filled in the crater and went away, and the water in the apartment flowed once more.
Now I go to bed. May tomorrow be boring as hell.
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