Calico Birthday

Today is Keli's birthday. She would have been twenty years old. For the longest time, I had confused her birthday with my daughter's which would have been a few days later, but having found my diary, there it was. Keli was born on the 26 th.

I called Xavier and told him I would be driving Keli's poster up to his house. It wouldn't matter if he were home or not. I would just drop it off. I was too stressed out about asking Kats too ship it, to find a correct way to wrap it according to his, fedex, standards.

Even though I have found working on this fulfilling, I have also had this underlying inexplicable stress. Perhaps my medicine? Perhaps because I totally forgot to go to the animal shelter to attend the training night so I could be a volunteer there? No... more probably all the fires. The Bonny Doon fire... I mean the Lockheed fire. Why did they change the name? even though I do not live close to Bonny Doon, the winds blew the smoke and ash southerly right across the bay. Asthma all messed up. Stress. Then, there was the Gloria fire that burned south of here about 50 miles and the stench from that was worse. My breathing suffers. Locked in the house, air conditioner on. It is stressful even going out to the car. Stressful to go to the grocery store. and discover that the air in the store is polluted, that children are screaming and running up and down the aisle, that parents are shouting at their kids. That three teenage boys are throwing a basketball at each other, that the announcements from the LOUD speaker are particularly LOUD! Stress.

I just want to get home. I want to get back to Keli, to loving her, to remembering her, to knowing how much she mattered to me as a daily presence of love and peace in my life. Now, gone.