February 4, 2012

One mystery is solved. Our big opossum lives under DJ’s deck. I saw him sauntering there as calm as morning light. He is very dark, more black than gray.

Ecstatic morning writing, one short play written from nothing, one completed from a languishing idea, one rounded out and brought to fulness. Then I went to the studio and met a big calm dog and her mistress, and painted in my own space in perfect joy. A mother and daughter visited for a while, What they commented on was the Pepsi crate I had brought to carry things in. “Now THIS,” said mom appreciatively, her back to my paintings, “is an antique!”

Making chili for DJ’s Superbowl party.

Titus is sick. Blood in his stool, irregular bathroom habits, using the floor for the first time–well, in all my history of cats. He eats with relish, but I notice–for the first time-- how his sides concave a little, as though he were starving. Panic rises up like a wall in my brain, and other thoughts flee. God did well in not allowing me to be a father. The emergency vet says it will wait until I can make an appointment with my regular vet, and I suppose it will. I shuffle backward through my journals to determine how old Titus the Cat is. He and Conrad came to live with me in September, 1999. I have now to turn my mind elsewhere--