We sit in the our office, one on either side of the wide double desks in the middle of the room, checking email before heading off to bed. That is, checking email and surreptitiously glancing off to one side, toward the cat tree that is swaying and creaking by the door. Sebastian is inside – nearly 11 years old and usually one more prone to sitting and napping (when he isn’t yowling aimlessly down the halls) – but tonight, he is happily ensconced in the little box at the top of the tree, chasing his tail. I am willing to bet that if I walked over and placed my hand on his chest, I would feel the steady rumble of a purr. He does not often break into kitten mode these days, not at his age, and so this is too much fun to not watch. He stops briefly, to wash his face and pretend that he’s being perfectly mature and dignified…before that tail taunts him again and he’s flopping down, pink toes peeking over the side of the box edges, paws swiping at that sleek white rope that taunts him, never quite within reach, but always with a death grip on his furry butt.

********

We go to the local bakery for lunch with my parents. The talk turns to the wedding – the issue of the seamstress, favorable comments on friends involved or attending.

“Now that we don’t have anything to plan,” my mother notes to Richard, “I think it would be nice to have your parents up here to play.”

At the reception, when he was to dance with his mother, and I with my father, we started out like that – me trying desperately to find the three-beat for the waltz in the music from the fiddler – but then when it came time to switch, without any planning, I paired with his mother, and he with my father, and we waltzed on. Shortly thereafter, our mothers were doing a dramatic tango step across the floor, arms outstretched.

Too bad our families don’t know how to have fun. Even worse that the two families don’t get along (grin).

********

We’re sitting at the table, eating breakfast. I happen to glance outside.

“Oh, there’s four socks left on the line. They weren’t dry before.”

Richard pauses in eating and assumes a dramatic look.

“I could write an ode to socks. Four lonely socks hanging on a line.”

“Mmm hmm.”

“It’s the sort of poem that should be read at poetry readings in clubs.”

“I see.”

And he says I’m the weird one.