Thursday, August 22, 2002

A decent day: Far too long since I've done anything that could remotely be called a good deed or something nice for somebody, at least I made a gesture (I mispronounce gesture with a hard g; it drives her crazy) to ease my mom's mind a fraction on her moving day, down from the winter-snowbound boondocks of New Hampshire (and the big house that was a challenge even for her and Dad when he was living) to her new condo closer to us in Simsbury, Connecticut — when we were there for the closing last Friday the power company upset her by saying they'd have to send somebody out during the week, i.e., couldn't just throw the switch at their end to turn on the electricity (although they'd done so to turn it off earlier that day after the final inspection), so having the family gift for dark scenarios she'd been convincing herself she'd manage the drive down only to spend her first night with no power and customer-service wrangles by pay phone, so I got up early this morning and drove the 90 miles there and reset the breaker box and confirmed the power company had been there and phoned to reassure her the lights and refrigerator and toilets were working and left a supermarket vase of flowers on the kitchen counter and orange juice and coffee cake in the fridge and jumped back in the Blue Turbot and drove back down, drinking Diet Pepsi and listening to dumb old CDs (Abba and Katrina and the Waves, if you must know), and got to work only an hour late and was unable to complete a product review before taking a vacation day for the movers tomorrow, but at least got some content on the site by writing a column that turned out okay.  Just had sandwiches for supper as Cooper the cat and I are having our last bachelor night together — my wife is at her mom's this evening, rendezvousing with me and the movers at my mom's new place tomorrow, and we're going to adopt my sister's cat Amelia in a week or two.  Family, ideally, goes on, even far from ideally and even when I don't do nearly enough.  I'm telling Cooper how we'll welcome his cousin Amelia, though he and I will still be manly pals — actually, I've been telling him since he was a kitten that Girl Cats Are Bad News, but I meant strangers, and he's 11 which the cat Web site says is the equivalent of 61, and I might as well be, and one of us is fixed. 9:20:50 PM    commentplace ()