Margaret’s busy day

Margaret and I got a late start after a rough evening at work. Margaret wasn’t at work, of course, but she waits up for me (or says she does), has tremendous sympathy when I stagger in, and never wakes me up in the morning after one of these awful nights. I cannot say the same of Maria, who ignores me till early morning and then expects her breakfast on time no mater what. I suppose that is just the way of cats. I had a lot to do, and Margaret was determined to help with all of it. Since I had a deadline with the library – it closed at five (I told you it was a late start), I decided to go there first. I needed to get a movie for Dakki and me to watch in the evening. As soon as we pulled into our parking spot at the library, Margaret knew just where we were. She started quivering and squeaking - “Dogs are allowed in there. I know they are because I’ve been in there before.” As I was poised to close the car door, with her still in the car, she became more imperative and struggled to jump out. So in she came. I picked up the books I had ordered, checked them out with the automatic checker-outer, and found that there was “a problem with one of my items.” This meant that I had to have an actual person help me. There was a huge checkout line with only one poor woman juggling requests for the bathroom to be opened, the demands of the telephone, not to speak of checking out people’s books. Everyone was telling Margaret how cute she was, and with all this, I forgot to ask for my movie – the main reason I had come. It was not in the usual pickup shelf, but behind the desk from whence one had to ask for it to be fetched. Next we went to the grocery store. Margaret knew she was not welcome here, so she didn’t bother with her “Please may I come” routine. I did my shopping, forgetting the main ingredient for Dakki’s and my dinner. When I tried to start up the car, I couldn’t get the key to turn in the ignition. Margaret had joggled some knob or switch to lock the ignition, thus foiling car thieves. Unfortunately, the one foiled was me. I know that there are secret things to do when this happens, and I did all of them that I could think of, but alas, to no avail. I even looked at the instruction booklet. In desperation and feeling quite pathetic, I called Ken, the knower of all things. While I was talking to him, Margaret, no doubt feeling guilty, threw up on the seat next to me. Blech! Ken told me how to start the car, and as I was talking to him, and Margaret was throwing up, the stereo came on with a tremendous blast of Bach, giving me palpitations. Thoroughly shaken, I drove home, realizing as I stepped into the kitchen with my spoils, that I had not gotten squash or the movie. Fortunately, I had enough squash for my recipe, and Dakki picked up the movie. Margaret is a real cinéphile, and had fun watching On the Waterfront with Dakki and me. I thought it was going to be awful, but it was very good. Karl Malden was obviously preparing for his big role in Pollyanna – much more my type of movie. We were going to watch The Battleship Potemkin also, but were too done in by the waterfront mobsters to deal with cruel czarist overseers.
Here is Dakki settling in to watch the movie. She looks like she thinks I should turn my heat up.