return to the cat café
For an evening during a visit from Ivan, I spent less time with him last night than you might expect. We'll more than make up for it tonight, when we'll be together between 5 p.m. and probably about 10 p.m. at minimum. Last night I spent about an hour with him.
There were three things he told me over the past weeks he wanted to do while he was here this visit: go back to Neko Cat Café; have dinner at The Marrakesh Moroccan restaurant; and see Suspirira. We'll be doing the latter two night. Neko Cat Café was yesterday.
It was my third visit there, and I have to hand it to them when it comes to customer service: after the email half-off coupon disappeared from my phone and I could not get home first to retrieve it from my desktop computer, the guy at the bar was able to look me up in their loyalty program and still give me the discount. So, the hour that normally costs $10 only cost me $5. That's literally all I spent there. I didn't get a drink or even leave a tip of any kind. I did get a cup of water.
I've been there twice before, once last November (also with Ivan) and once last December (with Laney and Jessica), both very soon after they first opened. I know Ivan went back as well, before he moved out in February, although I don't know how many times. He didn't get anything to drink either, and he also had the same coupon to use; we really just kind of sat around for the better part of an hour, occasionally petting one or more of the nine cats currently residing there (only three of them the same as from the group from a year ago, I was told). Shobhit has regarded this as a waste of money from day one, but what does he know? I found just sitting in a room with nine cats to be notably relaxing, to be perfectly honest. Shobhit later asked if I thought it was worth it, and I said, "It was certainly worth five bucks."
Ivan was there a bit less than I was, actually, as he evidently misjudged how early he should leave the condo in order to walk there on time. True to form (for 2018 Ivan, anyway), he asked me to take a bunch of pictures of him with cats, once he finally arrived, probably around 5:15 -- and then he had to wait behind a few other people in line to pay. I think I got about 12 pictures of him, most of which are too repetitive for me to keep in the long run. I didn't bother to post any to social media and have yet even to bother uploading any to Flickr, although I will, along with the five or six other shots I got of the cats. One of those is a selfie with the cat named Mimi who spent a lot of time sitting on the windowsill and looking out the window at the sidewalk, the level at which the window is located (the location is sort of in a half-basement area in its building).
Mimi was Ivan's favorite, probably because she spent so much time licking his hand. He asked for lots of pictures of that. He later asked me to send him my pictures, and I just sent him all 20 of the ones I had on my phone. He didn't post any either though. He doesn't organize photos the way I do so I have no idea what he even wanted with them in the long run, really. (I don't think he even cared that much that I organized and captioned his European travel photos, but whatever, it still makes me happy to have them available for reference, perhaps even for him one day.)
I needed to return my book to the library, yesterday being the due back date; I still haven't paid my overdue fees and my balance is $14.99 -- above $15 and they don't let you check out any more books. I haven't paid it yet because I remain rather over budget. Ivan went ahead and walked with me to the library, but he said goodbye at the door and we parted ways.
So, I read the last page of the book, returned it, and then walked home on my own. I have no clue where Ivan was the rest of the day; there was some Halloween-related event, again in West Seattle, that he had considered going to but I don't know if he did. I may ask him tonight but he has a habit of being cagey about how he spends his time, no matter how benign the activity. Shobhit was convinced he might wind up staying the night, probably with some guy, elsewhere; I was pretty convinced he could come home -- and he did, albeit after I went to bed. I did wake up and hear him saying something about having a slice of Shobhit's birthday cake.
So, the rest of my evening was spent at home with Shobhit. We made a big salad for dinner, which proved rather tasty; also we ate the rest of the rosemary focaccia bread that we got with the Bakery Nouveau coupon when we got his cake on Tuesday. Shobhit sliced that, put Kalamata olives and butter on them, and baked them. They baked for a tad too long (that was my fault, as I suggested 15 minutes and should have been good with a few minutes less -- I just always felt like 10 minutes wasn't long enough) but were still super tasty.
And we watched two episodes of Succession. By the time that was done, and all the leftovers and dishes were put away, it was past 10:00 and time for me to get ready for bed.
Hey guess what? I slept wrong last night and my back has been fucked up all morning! When I was at my doctor appointment last week and mentioned suddenly getting aching muscles in a way I never used to, he suggested just taking over the counter medicine like ibuprofen or Aleve. That honestly never occurred to me, mostly because for so many years I have associated the bottle of Aleve I have in my bag at all times with the semi-frequent headaches I've had all my life. But a pain reliever is a pain reliever, right?
Well I can officially report: Aleve tends to be pretty effective for headaches. It hasn't done much at all for my back today, which at times has had constant (albeit not excruciating) enough pain that I've occasionally been nauseated. What a pain in the ass. Or the back, rather. It's one of life's great ironies that apparently your body breaks down in direct proportion to the wisdom you gain with age.
It seems to feel slightly better all of a sudden just as I finish up writing this, though, so maybe I'll just hang onto that for a while.
[posted 12:14 pm]