I’m having “one of those days” (or one of those weekends + a Monday),  and I hate blogging when I’m in a crappy mood because I know that no one wants to listen to me whine. Including me.

So, bearing my slump in mind, I tossed around a lot of ideas for the title of today’s blog.

I was almost going to go with “At least I can still legally drink” in reference to that Malaysian lady who is going to be flogged (is that the right word? Somehow it looks wrong written down here. She’s going to be whatever it’s called when you’re beaten with a piece of cane [does that mean sugar cane? Somehow I suspect not] because you were busted having a beer at a pool club.) She’s going to be caned for drinking a beer, which sounds pretty harsh to me.

Maybe just make her drink a hot, cheap beer?

Like make her drink an entire six pack of hot, flat, Milwaukee’s Best?

Through a funnel?

That would be a punishment far worse than caning AND it would probably discourage further beer drinking.

So anyway, not that you need me to break it down for you, but my point with that original title was to infer something like I’m having one of those days where you kind of want to start drinking – and not just beer, but the hard stuff like tequila or bourbon – at 9am, and at least I could legally do so if I really wanted to and without concerns about jail time and extreme physical punishment later.

However, that title got trumped when I went to look for a functioning tape player in the garage and came face-to-face with an in-your-face reminder that my cat, Sid, is dead. He went missing May 5 and there are often hawks circling overhead outside (and he was a small cat – 7 pounds/3 kilo) and the neighbors have told me they’ve seen coyotes in my front yard and all over the streets here and a few houses away these people are feeding wild turkeys and there’s a flock or gaggle or murder of about 30 of them, and I don’t know if those bastards kill cats, but they totally could. They’re like scary vulture looking things. They’re HUGE.

That stated, let’s face facts: That cat never missed so much as a meal in his life and here I’m going on four months AWOL, and ergo, Sid ain’t coming back because he’s dead. And somehow that exact line (the title) - from a monologue I did in high school, but I really don’t recall what it was – sprung into my mind.

Onward and upward,  in other news and in hopes of things picking up, while I was in the garage and confronted by the huge bag of special vet-prescribed cat food, I was actually trying to find a tape player (which is harder than it sounds in 2009) in order to listen to this tape a psychic made for me in November. Why would I do that?

Well, because it turns out that when I am in a slump, I also like to get kind of New Age-y and pathetic and cling to ‘your life has meaning’ and ‘you are on your path’ encouragement from a stranger who I’d never met before and only talked to that one hour out of my life.

As true testimony to my desperation, it did make me feel better. She told me while in trance and channelling my spirit guides [Take it or leave it and do with it what you will, kids. I'm not saying it's true. In fact, I have no way of knowing if it's total truth or a complete load of steaming crap, but it was encouraging and kind of fun and weirdly accurate.] that I am here with a purpose, and then she proceeded to explain what it was. So anyway, I found my old stereo and set it up and listened to this thing I haven’t heard in nine months – to the day – and at a bare minimum I found it kind of fun.

She told me that I was on the ‘Great Red Road’ and I’m not really sure what that means, but it kind of brings to mind the Wizard of Oz. Maybe because she also mentioned that some of the bricks on the road were loose, and I was inclined to tripping on them sometimes, which now makes me think of myself flattened out on the Great Red Road, with maybe a nasty gash or a slight concussion, which in turn inspires a new potential title for this post like: ‘DO NOT wear stilettos on the Great Red Road’ or ‘The Great Red Road is a bitch, but it beats the Lollypop Kids any day of the week.’

Wow. How amazing is this photo of the Red Road? I could not have come up with better imagery if I'd done this myself.

So to all my fellow travelers on the Great Red Road: Watch your footing.

And if any of you have a map and know where we’re headed, feel free to share.

Anywho, I”m sure I’ll be back to my normal self soon enough…and talk to you then!