Front Porch Chats S2 #24

90 degree day? It’s time for a Pilsner, this one from Little Beast, and the notes on it is that it’s Czech style. Without looking it up, I don’t know what that means but what I can tell you is that if Budweiser was an improved beer from hop nose to more flavor, then that’s what you’d have in this glass.

On a day like today, it’s perfect.

I know that you know that something is wrong, right? It’s mid-May, and there’s a weather advisory for the next few days due to heat. That’s just wrong. And you just know there’s some knucklefuck who is going to insist that you shouldn’t believe your own experience.

But it’s 90 degrees in Portland and it shouldn’t be. This seems like a legit problem.

It’s a problem I’m going to put off discussing for now. I don’t think I’m saying anything new. Since I can sit on my porch and sip a very cold beer while a breeze keeps the worst at bay, well that is a pretty good day. Take your good days.

Because you just never know when you’ll get them. I’m thinking of my cat, whom I just adopted today. She’s having one of the worst days of her life, for the third time. Her owner died and she went into a shelter. Then she went into foster care. Now she’s here.

I can only imagine how shaken she is. I can see her, at the back end of the carrier, body facing away from the opening, head turned around waiting to see what the next bad thing is. I know she’s not happy, I know she’s scared.

It’ll take awhile for her to understand there is not a bad thing coming. She’s stuck on a bad day and I sympathize with that. I’ve been stuck on bad days, myself-more than once. But I have therapy, friends, writing, and beer to help me process.

All she’s got is me, now. She rightly doesn’t trust that yet, but it’s my job to lay the groundwork for her to have better days.

Which is really what our job is, as decent-striving people. Lay the groundwork for others around us and behind us, to have better days as they move forward.

The cat might not understand that. But I know you do.