Letter eighty - Day one-hundred-and-ninteen of your vacation

Dearest J,

Tomorrow I drive home to my parents.  Thursday will be home alone for two days.  I got her new food, it's a different and double the price, that shop didn't have her usual brand.  She loves the new food, walloped it heartily.

She is sitting next to me on the same chair now, cleaning her face...and behaving.  This morning I think she buried her favourite toy (of the moment) in the litter...by accident, maybe?  I threw it out.  The toy was a purple hair scrunchy that I gave her.

Had dinner at your house.  Mama wanted to give me a Sarong, told me to pick any I want from a fat pile of sarongs, all presumably vintage.  I picked one out because of its softness in the material, being well-worn.  It was the only one in the pile that is a ready-to-wear sarong skirt.  Mama made the skirt with hooks, it's exactly my size, she was my size, she said.

February is not `empty' after all.  I have a dinner gig on the 5th day of Chinese new year.  Then on the 16th another one.  There are three more dates in February that am waiting for client's confirmation.

Your wisdom for my singing is slowly showing even more nowadays.  You told me to always include operatic numbers in my wedding gigs.  Yesterday at a client's lunch meeting, the family hiring me to sing at a birthday dinner do had asked me to consider singing an operatic number at the performance.  Last week at another dinner gig the event planner (Bebe my friend) had asked me the same thing.

You are truly very well-loved.  It's in the air...I was at Tristan's birthday do at your house and people spoke of you with so much fondness and love.  Aileen's mom told me she dreamed of you just the other night, you were eating her new year biscuits, the love-letters.  She said you ate non-stop with a big smile on your face, telling her it was yummy.

I half dread the new year but am happy to just step up to whatever's ahead.  Anyway I think I look forward to seeing my parents, I haven't seen them since the funeral.

I got very emotional after leaving your house earlier, coming home to pack for tomorrow.  I felt a lot for your parents and Alex suddenly, suddenly re-living their moments of pain and what they must have felt.  We can't tell the future but I hope we remain as family for a long time to come.

Thursday is staring at me again, from this chair.  It seems to be what she does most of the time when am home with her.  Am really curious about what goes on in her pretty little head.

Poor kitty, the next two days would definitely see a lot of fireworks round the house here...I hope she just, be strong and huddle under the sofa bed.

OK, I better pack now so I can get to bed soon.

Miss you.  Love you lots.

B