Days Gone By

I’ve been reading the last page or so of posts from 2009, trying to get a handle on where I left this things, so I know where to pick it back up.  So much has happened since then, though.  The highlights, in roughly chronological order:

I finally straighten out the most dysfunctional of my family relationships – by ending it.

My professional DMing business doubles in size, and though it is still just a lucrative sideline instead of a career, it makes it a lot easier to get by.

My wife, the incomparable Ducky-Lou, makes the absolute most of her return to college, logging a 4.0 GPA and taking home the “Outstanding New Student of the Year” award – I’m  not even kidding, that’s a real award they give out – yeah, well, just ’cause you never won one…

In the inevitable wash of hubris accompanying her scholastic honors, Rebekah brings home a pair of kittens, hands them to me to raise, and promptly disappears on a two-week house sitting gig, trusting that all will turn out well.  For a week the disarming aura of cuteness radiating from the kittens pacifies Clem and me, while Gypsy, less easily swayed, nonetheless confines himself to issuing portentous growls from his series of kitten-proof hideouts.

Around day eight or so, the aura of cuteness wears off at about three o’clock in the morning when the kittens, who have attained full vertical leaping capabilities improbably early, knock every goddamned thing off of every countertop in every house on the block, clawing their way through countless screen doors ($30 each) to do so and causing the residents to spend the next day searching for lost prescription bottles or car keys, scrubbing at brand new soda stains in their carpet, and picking up the shards of family heirlooms.  Full-fledged, unanimous hatred of the diminutive devils sets in among the remaining members of the household.

Clementine carries off the role of cancer survivor with impressive nonchalance, chewing a tumor most of the way out of her leg to bring the problem to our attention, and then sailing through the operation and recovery period as the vets finish the job and remove another mass (also malignant) from her ear.  She seems to actually enjoy the vet visits and assures me that chicks will dig her new scar, a zipper-like affair on the back of her leg.

Whew! I can feel some of the rust flaking off, but it may take a few more of these things before we are again operating at full capacity.