He was a man; this much we know for certain. Many of the other details have been lost to history. We do not remember his name, if he told it to us, nor have we any remembrance of hair color or style, age range, or build. Of one other detail, however, we are both now sure: he drove a light blue Honda Civic. It was parked at the rest stop, thirty miles west of Tucumcari, where we stopped, in the rain, to fix a loose windshield wiper blade.

When we arrived at the rest stop, I surveyed the area and decided it was probably safe. In addition to our car there were several other cars, as well as a few semis. At this point, there is a bit of discrepancy in recollection. Robin will tell you that the blue car was already parked in the lot when we pulled in, a few spaces away. However, the way I remember it, the blue car arrived after we did. But, whatever the sequence of events, the car was there and its lone male occupant got out.

The man approached us, after exiting the restrooms, and inquired as to whether we needed help. Robin, standing outside the car, conversed politely with the man while I, sulky, sat inside the car and pretended he didn’t exist. Now, I must explain my lack of attention starting from this point. You see, in those days it seemed to me that guys paid an inordinate amount of attention to Robin. Whether this was truth or merely my cynical perception, when I saw the man approaching I thought, “Here comes another one.” I assumed he was trying to hit on thin, blonde Robin, out here in the middle of nowhere, and not-thin, not-blonde me didn’t appreciate it. That is why when he walked up and began talking to Robin, I completely tuned out. I didn’t look at the man, I didn’t say anything and I didn’t watch when he walked away and got in his car. Fortunately, Robin was a little more alert than I was that night.

The man seemed eager to engage us in conversation and kept talking long after most people would’ve walked away. He was from San Francisco, he said, after seeing our California license plate. He asked where we were from. (Robin, being appropriately vague, gave him the name of the largest city in our county rather than the towns where we actually lived.) Well! By great coincidence, he’d just driven through there not too long before, on business. I wondered why he wouldn’t just go away.

Even then, annoyingly, the small talk continued; Robin wrestling with the wiper blade and saying, “Mmhmm,” politely, and me refusing to acknowledge his existence. After a few moments, he did start to leave, only to stop. “Are you sure you don’t need any help? I have a screwdriver in my car.” (A screwdriver? For a rubber wiper blade? Sure, and if you’ve got  butcher knife why don’t you go ahead and bring that over, too?) Robin brushed aside the offer and the man returned to his car, sat inside momentarily, then departed. Minutes later, Robin had succeeded in forcing the wiper blade into submission and we were back on the freeway, as well.

There in the slow lane, life was still uncomplicated and innocent. So, when we found ourselves approaching the man and his Honda Civic, a few miles down the road, Robin said, “I’ll honk my horn when we pass him, and you wave, to say thanks.” She did and I did, a grumpy jerk of the hand without even looking at him, our chivalrous fellow Californian. I was glad to be rid of him. But then we weren’t rid of him. Although we had come up fairly quickly behind him, passed, and then continued at that rate of speed, he was now catching up to us again. What occurred next was a bizarre game of leap frog, with the man zooming up to pass us then moving over and slowing down so we would go around him again. Robin, more alarmed than I, made a mental note of the Honda’s license plate and said, “That’s enough of this. I’m getting away from him.” She took off like the proverbial bat exiting Hades. As we sailed down the road, we decided that we would welcome a highway patrol pulling us over so we could tell him what happened. We also began to realize how slowly that blue car must have been driving after leaving the rest area in order for us to catch up to him at all. He’d had about a five minute head start. Creepy? Yes. However, as far as we could see, the man didn’t seem to be pursuing us. Perhaps….perhaps we were only paranoid. Sure, he must have been driving under the speed limit in order for us to catch him on the interstate. Certainly he meant no harm. Things like this didn’t happen to us. It was a movie script. It was a “Dateline” episode.

As the man remained absent from our rearview mirror and we approached Tucumcari, our stop for the night, we began to think that maybe he’d just been playing around. Bored on a long cross-country trip, maybe? All things considered, however, we felt it best to get off I-40, so we took the first available exit. It was a long, curving off-ramp that looped around in a u-shape. As we got halfway around the “U”, I turned in my seat and looked back over my shoulder at the freeway and saw a sight that gives me chills even today, in this moment, 18 years later. The light blue Honda Civic was exiting behind us. We’d left it in the dust on the freeway and yet, somehow, the man had caught us. Robin floored it coming off the exit and we rocketed down Tucumcari’s main street. As we swung into our hotel parking lot, which, providentially, was close at hand, we cut the lights and engine and ducked down. When we peeked above the dash there was the Honda driving, driving so slowly–half the speed allowed on the street–and the man was peering intently out the windows.

Being ducked down as we were, we didn’t see exactly where the car went after he passed. All we knew was that when we popped back up the car had vanished and, relief of reliefs, it wasn’t in the parking lot with us. We decided to run for the office to check in. When we got out of the car I noticed that several blocks away, on the same side of the street, there was some sort of light-colored car parked facing our hotel. It was a gas station parking lot but the car wasn’t anywhere near the pumps. It was too far away to tell exactly what color it was and the glare of the reflecting street lights on the windshield prevented me from seeing if there was anyone sitting in it, so we were never sure if that was our pursuer or not.

Once inside the hotel we informed the manager’s wife, who checked us in, what was going on. She was surprised and disturbed by the story. Thankfully, we had especially chosen hotels to stay in that had access to the rooms only from inside the building. Indeed, the only way to enter the hallways of this particular hotel was by going through the front door and coming in contact with the desk clerk, or by having a key to open the back door. We thought we were being safe when we made those reservations, but we never realized just how crucial such safety measures might be. We went back out to our car, with the manager’s wife keeping an eye out from inside, drove around back, and locked ourselves into the hotel with no further sign of the blue car or its occupant.

The next morning we packed and loaded up the car, still keeping a watchful eye on our surroundings. We drove around the side of the building. Robin went inside to check out and I remained behind, cleaning out the car. After ten minutes, she still hadn’t returned so I went inside to see what was delaying her. I found Robin in conversation with the manager’s wife, and what the woman had to say was chilling.

Fifteen minutes after we’d checked in a man had entered the lobby. The manager’s wife felt he was looking for something and he inquired about rates, even though the rates were on the marquee outside. Strangely, he had approached on foot instead of by car. When he left she shrugged it off and went back to work. A minute later she looked up….the man was back. Where could he get something to eat? She suggested the prominently-marked Denny’s, blazing with lights, just a few doors down. The woman was disturbed enough after his second departure that she encouraged her husband to close and lock the lobby doors and windows, an uncommon procedure for them.

With the now certain, unassailable understanding that the man had come for us, we drove across town to pick up breakfast to go. While at McDonald’s, Robin called her parents back in California and gave them a rundown on the situation. She also gave them the man’s license plate. (They, in turn, passed it on to their next-door-neighbor, a highway patrolman.) With assurances that we would be careful and call them as soon as we reached Oklahoma City, we once again resumed our eastward progress, with its unchanging landscape of tarmac, vehicles, tarmac, vehicles.

Somewhere in Amarillo, a driving lifetime away from Tucumcari, we had been lulled into bored complacency as we hurtled along the freeway in the middle of three lanes of traffic, keeping pace with the car around us. Suddenly we were catching up rapidly to the car ahead of us in our lane, and Robin was slamming on her brakes. “It’s him!” I looked, open-mouthed, incredulous–but not at the car. I was looking at Robin. You see, in my fit of pique at the rest stop and on the dark, rainy freeway, I had wrongly perceived the color of the Honda Civic. My mind recalled it as silver and the car now in front of us was pale blue. Robin, though, knew. She knew that we had dodged a bullet only to be fired upon again. She recognized the license plate number of the car that had been keeping up with traffic until our approach, when its speed dropped to under the posted limit.

Acting on instinct, Robin floored the gas pedal and streaked past the car on the left. We were doing eighty, again praying to be pulled over. We seemed to shake the Honda and then shot down an off-ramp, hiding in a grocery store parking lot until we were sure the man must’ve passed. Cautiously, we crept back onto I-40 and maintained the speed limit. A mile down the road–so far, so good. Had he continued east, assuming we were ahead of him, hunting for us? He must have. Except….he hadn’t. We rounded a curve in the road and our jaws dropped, for there, sitting on the side of the highway, was a light blue Honda Civic. And our stalker, the man, our very own homegrown psycho, was standing by the car watching the passing traffic. No time to think or form a plan; remembering a piece of advice I’d heard regarding being followed, I locked eyes with the man and stared him down as we passed. “I’m not afraid,” the look said. “We’re onto you.”

It was our last encounter with the man in the blue Honda Civic.

Had my brief, drive-by confrontation with the man really worked? Was it serendipitous car trouble that prevented him from following us? We’ll never know. But the lesson we learned, the reality that sucker-punched us in the gut as we looked back over our shoulders and saw the car following us off that Tucumcari off-ramp, was this: be aware. Pay attention to your surroundings. Robin did, those two days in the southwest, and it very well might have saved us.

So for anyone who’s not up to speed I will give a brief summary. Jesse Carmichael, hippie keyboardist extraordinaire for Maroon 5, is missing in action. Oh, he’s not actually missing in the sense that no one can find him. I mean he’s literally missing in action–music action. Since January 12th, Jesse has missed all of the band’s public appearances and performances. This includes a gig at the House of Blues in L.A. (which, incidentally, is where the band lives), the Super Bowl, the Grammys and, today, Mardi Gras, where the band was Grand Marshal for the Krewe of Endymion parade.

We know that Jesse is not sick, nor does he seem to be depressed. We know this from Twitter, where Jesse has been tweeting cheerfully, as normal. At the time of this writing he is in Berkeley at a conference on craniosacral therapy. (Told you he’s a hippie.)

I should also point out that this is not the usual m.o. for Maroon 5. They first hit the scene ten years ago, and, as far as we know, none of the band members has ever voluntarily skipped band functions. There may have been some absences for illness or other unpreventable issues, but to just decide not to go, not just to one event but several? It’s unprecedented. (FYI, the band is not currently keyboard-less. They have been touring with a second keyboard player, PJ, and he has been there in Jesse’s absence.)

Needless to say, this has the Maroon 5 fan community in an uproar. I think what is bothering people (including me) the most is the utter silence from both Jesse and the rest of the band. All of them are merrily sailing along as though things are completely normal; as if they haven’t suddenly misplaced a nearly-six-foot-tall ginger-haired piano player. Not one of them has said a single, solitary word of explanation or even just plain acknowledgement that Jesse isn’t there. Are we supposed to not have noticed? News flash, boys: WE NOTICE. Do they think we’re stupid?

You know, I’m not one of those types who thinks that because someone gets famous he surrenders all right to privacy. I don’t think celebrities owe fans all the details of their lives. But when you are in a band that has been playing together for more than fifteen years, and has been on the popular music scene for a decade, and has millions of devoted fans, and one of your members suddenly stops showing up to work? Yes, you do owe some sort of explanation. Even if it’s a lie. I mean, if you, as a “regular” person just stopped showing up to work one day, there would be people demanding an explanation, right? That’s what really gets me. Okay, so maybe he’s having personal issues. Maybe he’s questioning whether he wants to continue spending his every spare moment being in a band that’s as busy as Maroon 5. And maybe he’s not ready to share that with people. Fine. So make something up. Play it down. Just SAY SOMETHING. Say that 2011 was a really long, arduous year for the band (it was). Say Jesse wanted to take an uninterrupted month off to relax before things really kick off again this summer. Don’t simply ignore the fact that he is not performing with the group any longer! How can they just pretend things are copacetic? I don’t think we, as fans, have the right to intimate details of Jesse’s life, but I do think we are owed some sort of answer to our questions…even if it’s a fib or has a publicity spin put on it. We are loyal fans, we support them, and we love Jesse. We truly care about his well-being. Do you know, when people on Twitter first started realizing he was MIA, he hadn’t tweeted in several days and we were honestly worried about his health. I was upset all day when I finally clued in what was going on and no one had heard anything from Jesse. Just poof...no explanation from the rest of the group, who were at the Grammys, and no word from Jesse. I had actual, genuine anxiety about his welfare and I know others did, too.

At first I was simply concerned and sad at the implications of this hiatus. Now some time has gone by, and the guys have had numerous opportunities to offer an explanation or, hell, just acknowledge the elephant in the room, yet they choose not to do so. I am still concerned and sad, but I am also angry and disappointed. Adam always goes on about how grateful he is to the fans and how much they (the band) love us, but is this gratitude? Showing us, very clearly, that we don’t matter; that we aren’t even worth a made-up excuse? Treating us like we are stupid and haven’t noticed the enormous hole where Jesse’s rig has been every show for the past ten years?

Since we have ruled out illness and personal tragedy (thank goodness!) there are only two potential explanations, the way I see it. One, Jesse is merely exhausted after their whirlwind year last year and wanted an uninterrupted month (or however long) off. Jesse is a very chill person; I don’t think he buys into the whole “rock star” thing, so I can see how it might wear on him. He might feel like he needs some time off to pursue some of his other interests. Maroon 5 had a packed schedule last year and it’s shaping up the same this year. I am not sure they ever had much more than ten days straight at home all of last year, so I can see how it would be hard to schedule any leisure activities. However, if the explanation is as innocent as that, then why not make an announcement? I’m sure there are plenty of people who have shown up to the events he’s missed, wanting especially to see him, so why not let them know he’s simply on sabbatical? No, I’m afraid the apparent gag order points to something more sinister; namely that Jesse is considering separating from the group for good…that he’s taking this time away to think about it, and the band is holding his spot and refraining from making any sort of announcements until he is 100% sure on his decision. (I do think if he’d already left for certain they’d have made the announcement.)

What does this mean? Well, I can’t say for sure what it’ll mean for Maroon 5. I do think it will change the band dynamic. Jesse and Adam are best friends and have been since junior high. Jesse is so creative and offers so much to the creative process. It will change them, for certain. As for me, it will change my feeling about the band, as well. As fascinating as I find Adam, I go to see Maroon 5 live to see Jesse just as much as I do Adam. I am not sure my heart would be in going to see them if there was no gangly, red-haired hippie behind the keyboards. I just don’t know. I don’t like it. I don’t think it will be good for the band. Selfishly, I don’t think it’ll be good for me, either. As I told Robert the other day, “It’s a good thing the Beatles were broken up before I was even born.” I get entirely too attached to and invested in my favorite bands and I take these things very hard. But until we have some news one way or another, there is still hope, and I’m going to hold onto it.

Big shout out to my Twitter pal, D., who wrote about this same issue on her Tumblr. If you’ll read it you’ll see that I am not the only one who feels this way. I agree with everything she says.

1) Maroon 5 loses out to Amy Winehouse & Tony Bennett. Seriously? Okay, they only had the biggest song of the ENTIRE YEAR, but give the award to the dead lady because you feel bad and it’s the only thing she was nominated for. Up yours, Grammy voters. It’s not just that my boys lost; I don’t condone pity awards.

2) Jesse Carmichael, Maroon 5′s piano/keyboard player (and my other favorite, alongside Adam) was not with the band tonight. This has caused GREAT consternation amongst “Marooners” on Twitter, along with wild speculation. Normally I wouldn’t pay much attention to unsubstantiated theories but it is really weird that he wasn’t there to perform. If they’d merely been attending as nominees, maybe not such a big deal. But not playing with the band? Plus he hasn’t tweeted in two days. It’s a bit unsettling. I hope we hear from him soon. Jesse is a wonderful guy, insanely talented, extremely chill, with a lovely soul. He’s a darling and I don’t want to think of seeing Maroon 5 again without him.

1) Parenting through intimidation DOES NOT WORK. All crap like that does is make the parent feel big and strong and superior. It does not fix the kid’s behavior. All she’s going to do is go more underground and hide even more stuff from him.

2) Parenting through humiliation also does not work. It may appear to yield immediate results but not for the long-term. Again, it merely makes the adults feel superior and relieves their angry feelings but it has no benefit to the child except resentment and mistrust. And, NO, I’m not saying you shouldn’t discipline your kids so they won’t become upset with you. It’s about the way you do it. There’s no reason this couldn’t have been taken care of within the family and it would’ve been just as effective. If you can’t rely on your parents to have your back, who the hell can you rely on?

3) SHOOTING something? Really? Teaching your kids the solution to problems, specifically interpersonal problems, is SHOOTING something? Wow. Awesome message. I’ll have to remember that threatening my teen with firearms is a viable parenting tool in a few years from now.

3) All that guy did was read the daughter’s Facebook post, get his poor widdle-bitty ego bruised, get pissed about her cursing and knee-jerk react to force the girl back down into her “place.” It sounds to me like the kid is stressed out about school and maybe other things. But I suppose talking to her and trying to figure out the root of the problem would be too much effort. Teenagers put on a front when something is bothering them, and that sometimes includes the “I’m a big badass” act. Just because she says those things, or sounds whiny, doesn’t mean she actually feels that way or believes her life is so bad. Maybe she’s tried talking about her problems and is not being heard.

4) If the kid really is spoiled and ungrateful, gee….how’d she get that way? I sincerely doubt they have a bunch of angelic kids and one “bad” one, like she was just born that way. Sounds like this guy’s trying to close the barn door after the horse is out. Parents are usually to blame for these specific types of character flaws (selfishness, greed, ingratitude). You want her to get a job? So make her get a job. Don’t just half-assed suggest it and then call her lazy when she doesn’t follow through. She’s 15. She needs to know exactly what’s expected of her and sometimes that includes either/or choices. (“You need to have a job by the end of the month or we will no longer be paying for your cell phone and it will be cut off,” for example.) Make her do it or shut up about it. Don’t pussyfoot around and then hold it against her.

5) Other parenting tactics that don’t work: Calling names. Swearing. You’re supposed to be the mature one in the relationship and you should be able to express yourself without belittling the kid. See previous point about it being your own damned fault she’s like that in the first place. You have no right to tear her down and treat her like she’s a bad person when she wouldn’t be that way if you’d done your job a little better.

6) I absolutely loathe when adults pull that “When I was your age I had eight jobs AND made all straight As in school AND built my own car from scratch AND got a Master’s degree at the same time.” Well, congratu-bloody-lations. You should be proud. What you also don’t mention is your dad ran out on the family when you were two, you were on public assistance, your mom had to work two jobs and some weeks you went to bed hungry because the money had run out. You did those things because you had to, not because you thought it was a jolly good time, or because you thought it would build character and you were just that responsible. You didn’t have a choice; you did what you had to do. Hillbilly dad wants to divorce the kid’s mom, take off, never pay child support and plunge them into abject poverty, I’m sure she’ll end up being as totally super-awesome as he was. Or he could just get over himself and realize that their situations are probably totally different and that’s a GOOD thing. (Note: I’m not saying that was this guy’s situation, specifically, since I don’t know; I’m just saying that usually when teenagers have to go above and beyond like that it’s because they have no choice and they are in fairly desperate circumstances, and who would want their kid to find herself needing to do things like that?)

7) Telling someone how to live her life and criticizing her for the choices she’s made WHILE YOU ARE SMOKING A CIGARETTE? Are you fucking kidding me?

At any rate, here are my current ringtones.

Default: Moves Like Jagger – Maroon 5 (Oh, come on…like you expected something different?)

Madalyn: Sweet Child o’ Mine – GN’R

Johnny: Super Mario Bros. theme music (original)

Robert: Star Trek: the Next Generation theme

Mom & Dad: Home Sweet Home – Motley Crue

I should add that the default is about to change, as it does every year around this time, to the BC Clark jingle. It’s just not Christmas in Oklahoma without it. My mom’s will change to her favorite Christmas song, “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Vince Vance and the Valiants.

By the way, not to be content with micromanaging my own phone, I have taken over others’ phones, as well, and assigned myself ringtones. When I call Robert he hears “California Gurls” by Katy Perry, and when I call Madalyn she gets the Glee version of “Just the Way You Are”…..not in reference to me, but to remind her that’s what I think about her every time I call. (For anyone unfamiliar: “When I see your face there’s not a thing that I would change, ’cause you’re amazing  just the way you are. And when you smile the whole world stops and stares for a while, ’cause, girl, you’re amazing just the way you are.”)

If I ever get my MacBook it will have Garage Band on it and, I’m told, I’ll be able to make my own ringtones. Make. my own. ringtones. You think my phone is customized now. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

It’s even better to have a friend who also watches, with whom you can gently skewer said show afterward.

**”H50 Bingo” = EW’s Five-0 Bingo

It’s the little things.

That picture? That was my reality Thursday night. Sixth row, center, for one of the best concerts I’ve been to in a long time.

I saw Maroon 5 back in July and didn’t have a great experience. When I was able to snag a seat so close for this show I had high hopes and expectations for a wonderful night and they did not disappoint. I was close, y’all. The picture doesn’t do it justice. Damned iPhone. I was closer than it looks like I was and I could see all of the boys’ faces very well, and it was heaven.

I have been to a lot of concerts. I have seen musicians who looked like they wished they were somewhere else during the performance. On the flip side I’ve seen musicians who appeared to be having a good time entertaining the crowd. But I have never seen anyone who came close to enjoying himself onstage as much as Jesse Carmichael did last night. I’ve never seen someone standing on stage playing and being present in the moment like that. He just seemed so into the music and happy to be alive, right there with us. It was an absolute joy to watch and it touched my heart. He’s a brilliant musician and then to see him being so invested in the performance and taking such delight in it was very special. I wish I could spend some time talking to Jesse because I feel like he’s got a really positive outlook on the world and seems like a genuinely good human being.

I would’ve been happy just to watch Jesse perform but….then there was Adam. Oh, Adam. No matter what was going on elsewhere around the stage, my eyes kept being dragged back to wherever HE was. The boy is compelling. He smiled a lot, which is unusual for him and probably part of why I kept staring. I got a whole different vibe off him than I did at the Paso Robles show. He seemed friendlier, more engaging, more relaxed and like he was having a good time. There was a girl in the general admission section with a sign that said “How” on it (one of their songs). They haven’t been performing it at all – but Adam sang a verse and a chorus just for her, while she bawled. He was simply lovely. And, God have mercy, those eyes. I was close enough to see them pretty well. He’s absolutely beautiful. You have to wonder when you see people on t.v. – do they really look like that in person? They may have twelve tons of makeup on, or be airbrushed in pictures. In Adam’s case, he looks in person just as he does on television – or possibly better.

The only complaint I have is that the show was too short. I could happily have gone for another hour, at least! But was I did get was a thrill. You know how I know it was a good show? When the band left the stage for the final time I had that moment of, “No! Wait! Take me with you! Please!” I haven’t had that since I saw Paul McCartney. I’d have given a kidney last night if they would’ve just agreed to let me stow away in a cupboard in the tour bus. Tonight I felt jealous of the people in Dallas who were watching them perform. And I felt sad that the tour is almost over and that I don’t know when I’ll have a chance to see them again.

Worth every penny. And then some.

(One last random, odd thing I noticed is that the guys’ sizes ran true to expectation. Sometimes you will see people on telly, then you see them in person and they are utterly and completely wee, and you had no idea they’d be that way. Not so with Maroon 5; they all looked as I’d expected.)

Om nom nom.

The other item? It won’t show up until Christmastime.

Like Moon Pies, only not disgusting.

All this is is merely a way of saying how thrilled I am about the season. September through December is my absolute favorite time of year, for reasons far too many to enumerate. Suffice it to say they are not all snack food related, despite what my outward appearance may attest.

For some reason I always feel like I have to justify myself and my purchases so allow me to impart, to one and all, the following information:

1) My current hair dryer is pushing 20 years old. I brought it with me when I moved to Oklahoma from California in 1996. It was not new then. It was my mom’s before that. Its plastic housing is cracked and every time I turn it on I think I have it set on low by accident. It’s not. It’s on high. It takes approximately eight hundred years to dry my hair with it.

My diffuser....let me show you it.

2) I, as many peole know, iron A LOT. My current iron is at least as old as my sixth-grader. The non-stick coating on the plate is coming off, it won’t squirt water any more, I can’t adjust the steam level because the switch broke off, and it leaks.

Don't worry, love. I'm coming to save you.

3) I have been owed a pair of headphones for more than a year now. In the summer of 2010 my very nice pair of Bose headphones (barely over six months old) went missing from our house while I was out of town. They either found their way into a box while Robert was cleaning out the closet and were accidentally thrown out or put into the impromptu yard sale he held, or one of the girls he had helping stole them. I know that I did not move them somewhere because part of the two-piece cord was left behind in the closet. I never would’ve separated the two halves, as I had no reason to do so (and I couldn’t have used the headphones without the lower half of the cord). I have also ruled out the perennial favorite parental explanation that they must’ve grown legs and walked away. Ever since the disappearance Robert has been promising me a new pair so I can listen to all the Beatles remasters.

John, Paul, George and Ringo live in here.

So, yep; I officially love next week. Shallow? Perhaps – but I think a good case can be made for it being well past time for an upgrade on two of those items. The third? Maybe not so much, although it does bear repeating that it’s a replacement for an item I already had which was lost through no fault of my own. And, what can I say? Music makes me happy. Being able to really crawl inside the recording and hear things I’ve never heard before? Makes me even happier. Surely that’s worth something.

No idea how to use one of these but it was totally a must. Totally.

Last Tuesday our cat, Grace, ran out the door and we haven’t seen her since. Being that she was raised as an indoor-only cat, she had no collar or tags. She has gone out a few times before and stayed out two or three days, but during those times I have sighted her around the property before she actually deigned to come back in the house. This time, I have seen hide nor hair of her and it’s been six days, not two or three. Tomorrow I will call the local shelter and see if she’s been turned in; however, she is not friendly to strangers and I can’t imagine anyone could get close enough to her to catch her.

I am left with mixed emotions. I am an advocate for animals. I love animals. This was an animal which I committed to care for and I’ve failed in that. As annoying as she’d become, I didn’t wish anything bad to happen to her. No animal deserves an untimely death or mistreatment. I don’t feel like I have any right to hope for or root for another living being’s demise. I was prepared to let her live out the rest of her natural life with us, taking care of her despite her foibles, because it was the right thing to do.

On the other hand, I am now faced with the prospect of being pet-free for the first time in twenty-two years. Since I got my dog when I was 15 I have always had at least one pet at all times; usually more. Besides the obvious hair and poop issues, having pets it also a logistical nightmare for people who travel as much as we do. It adds stress to a situation (getting ready to go on a trip) that already causes me a lot of anxiety.

There’s another thing – the anxiety I just mentioned? It really kicks in when a pet becomes ill. It’s very upsetting to me, not to mention dealing with the prospect of obtaining veterinary care when it’s sometimes not in the budget.

What I’m getting at is, after more than two decades, I am tired. I am tired of hair everywhere, “presents” on the floor every morning, the stress, the worry. I had thirteen – THIRTEEN – guinea pigs at one time, folks. It took me two hours just to clean all the cages. I spent thousands (yes, thousands) of dollars on vet care for them, ferrying them back and forth from where we live to an exotics vet in Guthrie (110 miles ONE. WAY.). I spent countless hours doing nursing care on sick guineas at home and had genuine anxiety and a legitimate grieving process when each was sick and subsequently died. It still hurts my heart to think of Cosmo, our cat who went missing a year ago, and, not only that, I still have never gotten over the death of my dog, Baby, over ten years ago.

I’m officially exhausted.

I’m exhausted from both an emotional and a practical standpoint. I am ready to not have to clean up barfed-up hairballs and crap from the floor and to not have a fine coating of hair on everything I own. I am ready to prepare for a trip and only have to worry about packing clothing and stopping the mail; maybe getting my brother-in-law to stop by just once while we’re gone to check on the house. I feel like I’ve given all the concern and affection and time that I can muster to pets and I don’t have any left. When having pets ceases to be a joy and becomes drudgery, it’s time to stop having pets.

I just wish it had happened with a happier ending. I’m sorry, Grace.