This is fine.

I consider myself to be a pretty upbeat, optimistic person, but this morning I read a post about being prepared for emergencies like possible rioting due to civil unrest and it made me feel a bit like this:

And a little bit like this:

So, anyway, let’s think of other things. Let’s not think of how I’ve been Kondo-ing everything, including donating all my extra towels and sheets, and working to NOT stockpile up on things, etcetera. EVERYTHING IS FINE WE ARE ALL GOING TO BE OKAY WORRYING DOES NOTHING EXCEPT DRAIN STRENGTH TAKE DEEP BREATHS HAKUNA MATATA.

What I really need to do is adopt my husband’s attitude of No Matter What Happens The Next Day Basically Everyone Will Just Get Up And Go To Work. Whether or not this is true, it’s good for my mental health, serenity now serenity now serenity now.

Speaking of serenity, Facebook Memories reminded me that it was three years ago today that I found mouse droppings in my kitchen. So, it was only three years ago that I had complete nervous breakdown and considered burning the house to the ground to start fresh, but really just cried a lot and spent hours disinfecting everything, buying pantry staples, and transferring all said foodstuffs into impenetrable glass and stainless steel containers. Three years! How time does fly. We haven’t had a mouse issue since and my mental state is much, much better for it. Serenity now.

I’m so glad we have the Facebook Memories feature, or the anniversary of that incident would have passed unmarked. What an age we live in.

Today is Picture Day at the junior high, and it is also the day the grade sevens start their swimming module in phys ed. Maybe the school gets a kickback for Picture Retake Day, I don’t know. I do know that grade seven gym is in second period on Tuesdays, so the likelihood of them all getting their photos done prior to being in the pool seems small. It doesn’t really matter to me, since my short-haired son looks pretty much the same no matter what happens, but I feel indignant on behalf of all those who might take pains with their appearance, only to have those pains be for naught. I think I would have ohmygod literally died when I was that age, because how could we ever have teased our bangs to appropriate height in the small amount of time given for changing? How could we have reapplied our coloured mascara and crimped our hair in only ten minutes?

To be totally honest, I never did have coloured mascara nor a hair crimper, but oh, how I wanted one. I had to be satisfied with a Toni home perm.

Some brief updates: the carts are gone from the alley. I repeat, the carts are gone. They have either died in their gang turf war and their pieces are buried in the gravel, or someone took them away. We will never know the answer.

What I do know, however, is that there was an unknown black cat in my backyard yesterday. Jake and I were walking home and Barkley started lunging and pulling on his leash like nobody’s business. Nobody, that is, but the strange cat that was sitting in full view near our back door. Jake offered to go shoo it away while I held Barkley, and when he turned around it had disappeared. We looked all around and couldn’t see it, so we concluded it hopped over the fence. To be safe I put the going-insane dog in the house, and Jake and I followed suit. As we emptied his backpack and chatted, Jake suddenly yelled “THE CAT CAME BACK!” and instead of answering with the very next day as would be my instinct, I ran to the back door. We looked again and the cat was gone. We were just about to go inside and question our sanity, but Jake found it hidden underneath a potentilla. It escaped over the fence and we watched it scurry away, thankful for a few things: that Barkley was still in the house, albeit having some kind of dog-stroke, that there was a cat and it wasn’t just our imagination, and that it was GONE. I don’t know whose cat it was but I don’t need a) Barkley to attack anyone’s beloved pet, or b) Barkley to get scratched by some unknown cat and therefore get Cat Scratch Fever, which I assume is a real, tangible threat.

I mean, I have enough to worry about without that. Civil unrest, for one.

I’m not a cat person by any means; I never know what cats are doing, I find their sudden movements startling, and I much prefer the straightforward, tail-wagginess of dogs. However, it’s too bad that cat didn’t show up on my doorstep three years ago. I could have saved myself several bouts of hysteria.