Oh, Saturday.

Okay, so here’s part two of the weekend’s events.

Saturday morning was the same routine as usual, wake up and head to the gym together.  We get home from the gym and Ben says he has a missed call from my parents and then I look at my phone and I have three missed calls and four texts. Instantly, I’m struck with terror and the thought that my grandpa has died (In April he got a pacemaker and his body had difficulty adjusting.  He was only out of the hospital six nights during that entire month).  Thus, I’m fearing the worst so I make Ben sit on the couch with me and hold my hand as we call my parents on speaker phone. I already have tears in my eyes before they even answer the phone

Sure enough, the conversation starts off “…we have some really bad news”…followed by “…Darby is dead”. Whew, praise the Lord, hallelujah, it’s the family cat not Gramps!! That’s what’s running through my head and out of my mouth comes “Ohhhh”. My mom says it sounds like I’m relieved and I say that honestly I am because I thought it was going to be Grandpa. 

At this point, I should tell you that I friggin’ hated Darby, but only because she hated me first.  We always had a pet cat growing up and I never got along with them.  I’m just not a cat person.  With cat’s in the past, I had no issues. We avoided each and things were fine…but Darby was different.  My parents got her from a family friend while I was away at confirmation camp in 8^th grade.  I get dropped off at home after camp by my friend’s mom.  No one is home.  I got to my room to unpack and there’s this cat there. Ummm, it was not there when I left.  From that day on, when I so much as walked in an adjacent room or looked at Darby, she hissed back at me.

So, when my parents say that Darby-cat is dead…well I’m not overcome with emotion.  Of course I feel badly because she was the family pet for the past 12 years, but I’m not attached enough to be upset.  Darby stopped eating in the past week and when my parents took her to the vet on Saturday morning she died in their arms.  Of course they called my sister first to share the news (my sister always referred to Darby as “her pet”).  She said that she’d cried when my parents told her and that my parents were crying when they told her.  She’d decided to have my parents bury Darby that day, instead of waiting for my sister to come in town (Ha, I wasn’t even invited for the burial). 

Later I called my dad, who is taking it the hardest, to apologize for my initial reaction and to let him know that while I didn’t connect with Darby, for him to lose her is similar to how I will feel when we lose Oscar and is unimaginable.  It’s a day I’ve already thought about and am dreading. 

So I suppose I should share a picture of Darby with you, but unfortunately I never liked her enough to take any.  But if I had, I imagine it’d be similar to this:

If you’d like to see more of what Darby looks like, just google images of “hissing cat”

So that was our morning.  Saturday afternoon was the flying lessons I’d bought Ben for Christmas 2010.  We’re in the car and about to get on the interstate (it’s an hour drive), when I have a missed call and a voicemail.  It’s too windy for flying. Ugh.  Bummer!  Now we’re in the midst of rescheduling.  Luckily, the voucher was supposed to expire this week and they’re extending it until the end of December.  With holidays and parties coming up, we only have one weekend that we’re available to I hope they can squeeze us in!

However, the one good thing about the flying being cancelled was that now I had time to go utilize that 60% off two items Gap coupon…which is going to lead into another post because I did a lot of shopping this weekend.  Stay tuned.