The Corners We’ve Turned

...in the Year of the Panicky Demick. A not-so metaphorical State of the Apocalypse.

I would have had a post out days ago but Blogger refused to accept my photographs. I like my blog illustrated, like a magazine. It helps break up my text, provides a sort of sidebar while illustrating my main thesis and...look, I like my pictures, all right?

I’d wondered if this was the end. I was even thinking of making a post to that effect: “Blogger won’t take my image uploads, so stay tuned until I figure out another platform, which is probably never, because frankly this thing wasn’t that much fun to begin with. Just in case, and most probably, Goodbye.”

At last it occurred to me to attempt uploading photos using the new Blogger interface that I’d tried a month ago and found detestable, a load of change for change’s sake that didn’t fix the problems with formatting and required a learning curve figuring out where all the buttons were, besides. Sure enough, New Blogger took my photos just fine. I could try and learn to endure New Blogger, but it doesn’t work with my smart quotes plug-in.

Therefore, I’ll be flipping back and forth. Trust me, I don’t hate the big tech companies, Microsoft and Google in particular, because it’s cool.

Not even halfway through and we’ve seen the sun set on so much this year.

One of the sharpest corners we’ve had to navigate is the fate of the Blue Porch Kitty Committee. It’s a sad tale that requires its own post, but the précis is we’ve been brushed harder by the darkness than I expected this year, even knowing we had to euthanize elderkitty Otis, even knowing we’d been getting by far too long without incident regarding the outdoor feral colony that called our front porch home.

What was once a steady complement of nine cats, then eleven cats, is down to six. Angel has been so depressed by the poisoning deaths of his fellow toms Ginger and Spooky he refuses to re-enter the very yard he grew up in. We have some kittens in the garage that may yet grow up to fill out what’s left, but we’ve contacted the local cat shelter and we hope they get around to taking them away soon, as well as fixing as many of the un-fixed cats we still have around.

We found the opening through our foundation under our porch where the cats were getting in to have their babies. After a couple of winters without incident we’ve had to fish one dead kitten from the crawlspace, as well as the body of Ginger Tom, who needed a dark and lonely place to die. Heartbreaking and unsanitary are a heck of a combo. 

We already knew we had to renegotiate how we handled the feral colony we inherited with this house in 2016. We used to leave part of the skirting under our porch open so the cats would have a safe place to go in the event one of the many dogs running loose in our town made an appearance. Again, we were renegotiating. If they needed shelter they could duck through the cat door we’d installed in the side of the garage.

Last week all that wood latticework, much of it rotten or soon to be, was torn out. My wife raked decades of debris from under the porch, including one entire newspaper dated 1981. My son then went underneath to make sure both vent/access squares in the main foundation were covered. 

This bit of home improvement alone was a milestone. But the party being over for the Blue Porch Kitty Committee weighs heavy on our hearts. It’s not a mere metaphor; for years we enjoyed a festive atmosphere among the animals lounging about our porch. With the deaths of Ginger Tom and Spooky, who were kittens only two years ago, chasing each other around the poplars in our front yard, it’s as if the music stopped, the lights came on, and it’s cleanup time. Naturally, we’ll feed and take care of who’s left. It will never feel the same, though. Because it isn’t.

This is the core group as of yesterday evening, 30 May 2020. Angel, not pictured, blessed us with his presence for the first time in a while, but he refused to come into the yard. He used to be one of the most aggressive eaters and never missed a meal. I couldn’t even tempt him with chicken.

Today, the last day of May 2020 will be the last night my son spends here at our house. He’d quit a deteriorating situation just as the lockdowns were getting going this spring. My wife and I never thought to ask if he was looking for something else, especially as there didn’t seem to be anything else with all the restrictions in place due to the pandemic panic.

Besides, we knew boredom would get to him long before the lack of cash-flow became an issue. And so it came to pass he was interviewing via webcam with a company out of Kansas. They took all of one hour after the interview to make their offer. It’s the kind of respectable, living wage with benefits his father never knew, and he’ll be doing it at age 23. 

He will, of course, have to move back to Colorado Springs. The seats are out of the back of the van and we’re moving him there tomorrow. Cynthia and I will be empty nesters again for the first time since January 2017, when he moved in with us for lack of opportunities in the Springs. Now the polarity has reversed. He learned his trade here, but the money is over there. 

It is at once a cause for joy and mourning. I’m going to miss having my son around, even if we only talked to each other maybe twice a week because we both prefer to do our things at our computer workstations, his thing being electronic music composition and video game level modding. (He was also out of town a lot on his last job. Hell, out of the entire San Luis Valley. That says something right there. He could not stay.) His moving out the first time in 2016 as we left Colorado Springs for Monte Vista was a prime cause of my writer’s block that year. I didn’t know it until he moved in with us in Monte in 2017, and I was making coherent sentences again.

We’ve had some lovely pre-sunset Golden Hours, with a few post-sunrise Golden Hours that made me glad I was awake for them.

For what it’s worth, I do not expect to suffer from that kind of block again. I’m not the same man I was in 2018, let alone 2016, and thank God for that, too. Despite the melancholia stinking up this post it must be understood that, with the obvious exception of Blogger, all of these changes had to happen. Otis T. Cat was old and I would have had him put down sooner if I’d known then what I understand better now. We’d enjoyed a smooth ride with the feral cats outside for years. We knew we had to clean out and close up under the porch. The murders of Ginger Tom and Spooky, as well as the stillborn kittens, forced us to do something we should have done last year, if not the year before that.

Meanwhile, the great social experiment in how much suffering governing bodies can inflict upon vast populations in the name of a so-called emergency continues. It’s obvious this Chinese Coronavirus isn’t stacking bodies, nor will it ever outside of the nursing homes several governors and health officials have forced actual sick people into for safety. But the governors and the local health officials are enjoying themselves too much. So what if one business after another goes under? So what if families go bankrupt? 

So what are we going to do about it? 

I, for one, have had all worry and care about this stupid panic bludgeoned out of me. I’ve come to appreciate that there was much good among the bad this month, and that’s where I’ll put my focus. I got my old laptop up and running again. I finished reading some books I’d put off. Best of all, I solved the problem of integrating Agnes’ and Elyssa’s backstories and made massive progress with my novel. That’s a post all by itself which I hope to get around to tomorrow.

With respect to those who have taken personal hits from the Great Pandemic Panic of 2020, I can’t help smiling to think that, for all everyone’s hollering about in the media, including and especially the Internet, it’s been nothing more than a minor inconvenience for me. Passages and transitions, changes as painful as they were inevitable, are how I’ll remember this year. It just so happens that all the notable, life-altering corners turned since Otis T. Cat’s passing in March were turned this month.

I’m grateful to be here for it. That said, I’ve lost all enthusiasm with arguing about wearing a mask in public. I miss my cats; I’ll miss my son. I still have a novel to finish. I can only do so much. 

Don’t miss the kittycats for the trees. Back by poplar demand!

All photographs Copyright © 2020 by Lawrence Roy Aiken. All rights reserved.