Major and Boomer just had some sort of discussion over my lap. she was in it, and he wanted to be in it. She hissed at him, and he just calmly looked her in the eyes and meowed at her. Over and over. Now cats don't, as a rule, use meowing to communicate with each other, but as I've said, Major is "special". She didn't know what to do with this onslaught of dialog and moved off my lap to the other end of the couch. He happily climbed into my lap and she jumped up into the window. Then he got down off my lap and left. Prick.
Lastnight, for three solid hours, I had an animal on my lap. One would get down, and another would immediately take the place. Boomer, Major, Chewy, Simon, Felix, Bagira. And when Chewy wasn't in my lap, he was next to me on my right, waiting for my lap to be vacant. I'm loved. So loved.
Part of the reason I'm not putting up the tree right now is that doc is two and a half hours late getting home. And if I put up the tree and something tragic has happened, I will burn the tree down. So, on that contingency, I' not touching the tree until he gets home safe. He went in last night for overtime. I'm just hoping that he stayed extra long. Maybe he went shopping. He needed socks and such things. And we needed dog food. And the cats needed wet food. So he's probably shopping, not one of the statistics of scooter drivers smooshed this time of year. At least it isn't still raining.
I have twitter open in the background, and I can see the list of the top ten things that are trending and I know what one of them means. I feel old. I took a couple of selfies last night, without my glasses, and i finally saw the age showing on my face that I had been unable to see until now. I don't have bags under my eyes or anything, but my eyes are deeper set. I don't really have any wrinkles, I have a lot of fine lines. And my complexion shows remnants of the teen years spent in the sun with my overly pale Swedish skin. Sun spots and such. It was really weird.
I was thinking about how this year, I will be 46, closer to 50 than to 40. And it just kind of blows me away. I don't know how to put it into words. The lost years. Both the years I can't remember and the years I've spent self-locked away. And all that time I was physically aging, while inside, I was struggling to cling to what little maturity I had.