More Kalifornia

Yesterday,

I drive Aubrey to her yoga class, then to Vons for the only cat food Gurtie will currently eat--Fancy Feast SLICED!, beef or turkey. Picture grayish squares in translucent 'gravy' more viscose than snot---slightly less than melted plastic.

The cat suddenly hates the taste of seafood, even solid white albacore.

The warm weather annoys me. The beds of snap dragons annoy me. Snap dragons and California poppies. Everywhere. No other variety.

It occurs to me that, instead of giving a small fortune to the vet, I could've run her over with the car for free.
It occurs to me that as soon as I get home, I'll need to give her another dose of antibiotics with the oral syringe. No hold works. She is the devil. The best I can hope for is that she'll puncture a different finger this time. Typing is becoming uncomfortable. I wash my hands too often for band-aids.

All the extra snow-bird traffic annoys me. There are snap dragons and poppies everywhere I look. The flowers annoy me more than the traffic.

At the traffic light a hang-dog faced man holds a cardboard "Homeless" sign. I know there's a fair certainty he's scamming. I give him five dollars. Let him deal with the Karma. I'd give him the finger too if mine weren't so sore.

At Vons, I park directly in front of a Cadillac Escolade with an elderly woman in the passenger seat, picking her nose with joyful abandon. I call Neil's cell to tell him about her and that I saw the Poppet in the 8 ball. (seems DanGuy is responsible for that one) Get his voice mail. I'd text it, but my fingers hurt. She digs for the full five minutes it takes me to listen to my voice mails and find my shopping list. Cat food. Right.

I come back to the car with a bag of loose cans of Fancy Feast SLICED! Beef in (shudder) gravy. (They were on sale, cheaper than buying a twelve pack.) A can falls out of a hole in the bottom of the shopping bag into the store's flower bed of snap dragons, poppies and...marigolds. I sneeze eleven times, then feel around in the flowers for the can. When I pull it out, I get a little cactus thorn in my finger---one of those you can hardly see, probably just sitting on one of the flowers, waiting.
I drop the can back into the bag and look closer at the thorn, which is beginning to sting like a bitch, and the bag splits and eight cans fall into the flowers. The sprinklers click and hiss on.

My head fills with white light.

I'm Yosemite Sam. I'm a steam whistle. I'm capable of levitating.
rickin-rackin-frickin-frackin...
I take a slow, deep breath. There's no rain, there's no snow on the mountains, the air is dry and there are sprinklers hissing all around me.

I close my eyes and think about Samurai Jack. No, not Jesus, (though it seems he was a pretty amazing human, if not a little delusional--who wouldn't be in his shoes?) Samurai Jack. What would Samurai Jack do?
I take several deep breaths, sneeze six more times and retrieve the wet cans, throwing them one at a time into the floor of the car.

At the corner, the homeless man with the hang-dog expression waves a bright yellow Dominoes Pizza banner.


When I pull into the driveway at home our gardener is waiting for me. He has a Razor phone and drives a nicer car than mine. He says if I put it off any longer it will be too hot.

I must decide about flowers for the beds.