Halloween Planning and the Return of a Beloved Gym Mystery (with pics)

Right off the top, I want to apologize for the sudden scarceness of posts on the site. No, I didn’t get too “Hollywood” for this blog, despite what the buzz on the Internet may say. The actual story is that it’s late September which means I’ve been in full-blown preparing for Halloween mode for the last … I don’t know. July? Since July. All of this planning and such has finally begun to eclipse my devotion to my other favorite pastime: writing nonsense on the Internet.  

                Some years I handle my spooky season business a little bit better than others. This year not so much. I’ve got three trips to the hardware store invested into my Halloween costume (making a T-800 arm, dressing as Arnie from Terminator: Genisys). I’ve also got some designs worked up in my brain for new homemade outdoor decorations. It’s just, it’s a lot. I don’t want to say planning a wedding was easy compared to planning Halloween … so I’m just going to leave it at that. Hahaha kidding … or am I?

                Anyway, so even though blogs are light right now I still love you all to bits and pieces. And that is precisely why I felt it was imperative to interrupt my Halloweenings to share this news with you.

                So, remember my classic blog post from August 29 entitled “Gym Mysteries: The latest and most adorable new chapter?” Here’s the link in case you don’t. The long and the short of it was I walked out of the gym one morning and saw a cat napping in the rear window of a car. This sent me off on fits of wild and rampant speculation about the true nature of the car’s owner, life in general and cat’s place in it, etc. Then I didn’t see the cat anymore, Halloween took over my life and that was that. 

Gym Mysteries: The latest and most adorable new chapter

Not actually "Car Cat." Courtesy: www.calautomuseum.org

I’m going to pull back the curtain right at the start here and tell you I had no blog topic for this week. As late as Friday morning, my plan was to take maybe ten of the roughly 12,000 pictures I took during my honeymoon and do funny captions. Spinning pure gold here at The Cheese Life. That was the plan – it may still be a future plan, so if that sounds like fun, stay tuned – but then on Friday morning, inspiration struck in a familiar location: the gym. Well, more accurately in the parking lot of the gym.

                There I was, crossing the parking lot to my car, my old grade school and high school backpack full of dirty clothes on my back. The morning had the chilly feel of Fall, by the way. As I was walking passed a seemingly run-of-the-mill, plain old car, it happened. I noticed four things which gave me a blog topic. This blog topic. I will now relate to you the four things I noticed, not in the order I noticed them, but in a calculated order based on dramatic effect.

                So, the first thing I noticed –and this was actually the first thing I noticed – was two open Tupperware containers were sitting in the back window of the car. This seemed an odd place for Tupperware, and upon further inspection I noticed they also contained little bits of food. The back window of a car seemed a very strange place for containers of food. Front window or passenger seat, those would make sense. Someone was eating and tossed them there when they got to their destination. I get that. Back window, that’s a hard place to reach from the driver’s seat, maybe whoever it was, wasn’t traveling alone.  

                That brings me to the second thing I noticed – not really the second thing this time, dramatic effect: the car had a handicapped tag prominently hanging from its rear view mirror, but it wasn’t in a handicapped spot. It was actually parked across from the handicapped spots outside of the gym, all of which were empty. While the car was close, many of the empty handicapped spots were even closer. Again, odd. Maybe the tag is for a relative who wasn’t traveling in the car that day or the person just wanted to challenge him or herself.

                Now we come to the third thing I noticed – but not really: Not one or two, but all four of the cars windows were slightly open. Just ever so slightly. Now, I usually leave my back two windows cracked when I get to work to air out the towel I use at the gym, but never all four. Also, the day, as I mentioned when I set the scene for you earlier, wasn’t hot. All four windows cracked was certainly overkill on a day like that, when even in direct sunlight, a car likely wasn’t going to get all that stuffy.

                And now the last thing I noticed: but not really: There was a full-sized adult cat, white with a few black and brownish spots resting on the car’s dashboard. My mind couldn’t process what I was seeing. I reeled. The cat paid me no mind and continued lounging.