April 21, 2020

After a night of frustrated reading and books slamming into noses, I woke up this morning(?) at 11:15 a.m. and walked my dog to the vet. Maude has been chewing her hindquarters like the dickens and rubbing it on concrete, so I have decided that it’s time to have her anal glands expressed again. (Feel free to look it up on your own.) A new blessing for my human readers: be grateful that you are lucky enough to have your anal glands tucked safely away inside of you; elsewise, you’d be right there with Maude dragging your rear across my bedroom carpet.

I stretched my hammys in the parking lot during Maude’s appointment, pining after the germ-infested benches outside the door. In light of the epidemic, my veterinary clinic stopped allowing people into the building. The current procedure is to park, call the front desk, and then wait for a vet tech to unlocks the building’s front door and comes out to collect your pet from the car, like a carhop at a high security doggy drive-in. To my disappointment, the “curbside appointments” alluded to in their corona emails did not entail someone with scrubs and a mask coming out and squeezing Maude’s anus right there in the passenger seat — or in my arms, in my case — but I suppose it’s more hygienic this way. I said goodbye as Maude was led away, and paced until her return.

On Saturday, our friend will be moving back home to be with their family for a little while. We gathered around in the parking lot of their apartment this afternoon to say farewell, for a little while at least, and drop off some coveralls and a Switch device that I don’t understand.

Castle sat on a yellow curb next to a dumpster and recounted the plot of the movie Shopaholics. The five of us who had come to visit fanned around them as they told a tale of a fifty-dollar hotdog, and dirty parking lot children on bikes wound in and out of our quarantine bubble as we talked. I haven’t seen a street performance in a while, and I’m glad it was a piece by a friend seeing as it might be a while before I see another one, even though I have never had problems with paying for too many things when I go into a store.

It is hard to say goodbye, and have people far away. My own mother lives in England as of a few weeks ago. My brother lives in Minnesota, and will be off to Guatemala soon. My father lives… not.

Dad stays in an urn by my window, but he doesn’t cause too much trouble. He has stayed with me in his urn for the last two years, like a congenial genie in a deep slumber. Rent free, I might add. Who’d have thought, in 2020, that Thomas Job Jensen would be mooching off of his youngest son during the pandemic? Loser!

I am feeling particularly aware of the joys in my life lately. Faced with such a dismal global situation, I can appreciate that I have thus far endured less than severe disruptions to my world. I have a home to support and be supported in, I have family on the other side of my telephone, and I have a father in a jar. I miss my Dad, but, more than three years out, it is nourishing that I still miss him. What could I wish for besides that which I have already had? Other than a resurrection, and infinite chili, I suppose, but that will have to wait until I figure out how to get my dusty daddy to grant me wishes.

Stay safe, everyone, and eat your carrots.

P. S. Let your friends at DPC know if you would watch a television show called Genie Dad…