So, I’ve been in a bit of a funk, which is why I’ve been a little MIA this last week. Watching the world’s-greatest-cat-that-ever-was-in-all-the-land get older and sicker has been really weighing on me. He’s had several trips to the vet and is, most likely, on his 9th and final life. He’s really only eating when I give him an appetite stimulant, which isn’t good. I find myself down on my hands and knees by his food saying, “Look Satch, Mommy likes the food. Don’t you want to eat the food? Mmmm, you would really love this chicken stew,” and trying not to gag at the smell. While this would be incredibly hard on its own, for some reason I’m linking all this with my dad, because we’ll most likely end up having to coax my dad to eat as the dementia progresses. We’ve watched the staff do that with other residents as they neared the end. I feel like this whole not eating thing is a taste of things to come (A “taste?” Did you see what I did there? See how I laugh in the face of pain? Cough.)

Today between teaching classes, I went down to the haunted attraction we’re building to bush hog the parking pasture. In case you’re not familiar with bush hogging, it’s like mowing with a tractor in really high grass. And you bounce a lot, which is really hard on your boobs. You could film it with close-ups of bouncing boobage and market it as farmer porn and call it Haywatch. All was going fine, I was inhaling large quantities of bugs and grass seed and pollen and such, bouncing around getting whiplash and choking on my own breasteses, and silently gloating that I was squishing all the fire ant hills, when suddenly I looked down in front of the tractor and saw that on my last pass, I’d uncovered a dead baby fawn. It was the tiniest, cutest little deer I’d ever seen, about the size of a cat, which immediately made me think of how I’m probably going to have to bury Satch soon. And I thought I’d killed the poor little thing (that was way cuter than Bambi, by the way) and immediately started bawling. Upon closer examination, it was not squished or cut up in any way, and I would have seen any parental adult deer bolt out of the grass, so I think it was already dead and I’d just uncovered it. But it was still awful. Especially when I had to dispose of it. It did not make for a pleasant afternoon.

On the plus side, though, on my way home from teaching tonight’s class, I’m pretty sure I saw Sasquatch entering Dollar General. I guess even Sasquatch likes a good bargain on his q-tips. I swear, I haven’t even touched the bourbon…yet.