This morning, I walked the several miles down to Lake Washington. I usually do it in the afternoon but, you know, late-summer heat wave. Plus let's shake things up a bit, Erik. Write another time. Get off your keister.

Since I walk east to Lake Washington, I was walking toward the rising sun, partially obscured by morning fog and/or mild wildfire smoke, so it looked like a big red ball in the sky. It also meant, when I got down to the lake, I got to see the light glinting off the waves in ways I didn't normally see at 3-4 PM. It was quite lovely. So I sat on one of the benches at Madrona beach and just watched the light glinting off the waves and tried to find some inner peace.

And then them.

Their noise was distant at first. A couple talking? No, arguing. It was a black couple arguing very loudly in a very white area of town—most areas of Seattle are very white, but this area was super so—but as they got closer I realized they weren't the man-woman couple I envisioned but two guys. Dave was the guy with the bag and he had something the other guy, Donovan, wanted. (They kept using each other's first names in their discourse.) I guess Dave had several of whatever the thing was. At one point they almost brokered a deal—Dave was about to give Donovan one of the things but then Donovan had to be rude about it and so Dave held back. I'm pretty sure it was beer. Dave had a beer, open, and he had more beers, but he wouldn't share them with Donovan. It was 8:30 AM. Neither man sounded drunk.

Dave wanted to be left alone, too. He kept walking and Donovan kept following. And where did Dave stop walking? Right near me, of course. He stood on the lake side of where I was sitting, while Donovan remained behind me, out of my vision. And for about five minutes they argued over me. The same words. Round and round.

I'd been sitting there trying to find some inner peace because it was already a frustrating day amid a sad and painful year. I'd woken up in the middle of the night (again) and then our kitten Maise woke me up at 6 AM (again). She's in the habit of crawling under the bed and scratching at it, like a scratch pad, to get us up, and probably because she likes doing it, too. She wants us up but not in the way cats normally want people up. It's less FEED ME than LET'S PLAY. It's the feeding that's the frustrating part. She needs gastrointestinal canned food because of a tendency toward looseness (which killed Clem), and even then we mix it with a probiotic, and even then it's only successful 50-70% of the time. As a result, the other cat, Griffey, has to have the same canned or she'll go for his. He's bigger and stronger but she's alpha. It's the oddest thing—particularly after Jellybean, who could never get enough food—but you often have to place Griffey physically in front of his dish before he'll dig in. And lately he hasn't been digging in. Lately he'll take a sniff and walk away. So it's been frustrating.

Last night Patricia suggested giving him some other canned food but then what do we do with Maise? Plus we'd tried different canned food before and Griffey didn't go for it. Patricia had forgotten that. Even so, this morning I tried one of those other canned foods, some beef puree thingee, and again physically set him before his dish. He sniffed at it and walked away. Maise, meanwhile, made a beeline for it. Something new! So I had to put it in the fridge. The kibble bowl was empty, so, at some point, I thought, Griffey will get hungry enough and we'll try again. But then Patricia got up and filled the kibble bowl and Griffey chomped through it. So we argued. The same words. Round and round.

Eventually Donovan and Dave moved off. Or Dave moved off and Donovan followed. When I left, they were still in Madrona Park, still circling each other, still reiterating the same excruciating minutiae, still drawing worried or annoyed looks from people who just wanted to walk or run down by the lake on a Saturday morning and now had to deal with all this. Hell, they're probably still circling each other, still at it, on a different part of the lake or in a different part of the city. But they helped me this morning. They helped me find the humor in it.