a morning without jen

Having no obvious topic to write about, I’ll just provide a narrative of my day. After a late night of reading a book aesthetic philosophy (chosen for its soporific effects), I somehow managed to rise early this morning. Livy did not break her routine, either, waking me up for food around 5:30 but producing the somewhat contrary result of getting herself thrown into the bathroom until I’m awake enough to feed her.

I should pause over this for just a second. Later, when I let Livy out, I had a vision of her one day catching on and realizing that her morning yowls don’t actually make the kibbles appear. But then I worried that were this to happen it would happen in the worst possible way. Livie would continue to wine with the slight difference that she wouldn’t then follow me, lemming-like, into the bathroom so that I can lock her inside. Instead, deciding she’s no longer going to play my little game, she’d evade all attempt on my part to capture her. I guess this hasn’t happen because of how disingenuous I really am. You see, when I lead her to the bathroom, I act totally awake, putting on my responsible face with a look that says “of course, I’m going to feed you, silly, just step into this small room first, and I’ll get right on it.” Once she’s safely shut inside, I throw myself back on the bed and am asleep in a flash. I guess I could complain that Livie isn’t smart enough to notice she never gets fed when she shouts for food, but then again, I haven’t really done much to set the matter straight.

After feeding the cats, which I’ve been doing since Jen is away. I set off for EVP to sit across from Brian and make several decaf runs to the carafe. Since the danishes were all snatched up, I had to settle for a Pumpkin Scone. I then discovered that the very mention of this phrase “pumpkin scone” makes Brian put on his gag-me-with-a-spoon face. To be honest, I didn’t even know he had that face within his repertoire. But really, if you can do the voice and mannerisms of a pixie serving tea in the land of the Faerie Queen, what face can’t you make? So I set out to work… work which had nothing, actually, to do with my dissertation. With Obama’s unclear political leanings, yes; with the Swiss architects who built the Olympic stadium, swiftly become known as the Bird’s nest, yes; with a writer and artist as comfortable with children’s books as he is with erotica, yes. But not a bit with Freud. I basically read the New York Times for four hours.