I'm heading to court today. My father — who I haven't spoken to in nearly 30 years — has this odd habit of dragging me into some kind of legal mess every decade or so. Once he even filed something just to check if I was still alive. Naturally, he never shows up himself; it's always his representatives. This time it's over roughly seventy dollars. I got the lawsuit from him back in October, and while the letter from the court was on its way, I was imagining all kinds of possibilities about who might be suing me. When I found out it was him again, I actually felt relieved. I have amazingly fucked-up relatives. I think a lot of people have stories about their parents, but I really hit some kind of insane bingo — not a single one of my relatives turned out normal. They're all like characters from some crazy American reality show. To give you an idea of how bad things are: as soon as my father filed a lawsuit against me, his sister started sending my mother pictures of cats, and my mother began telling me about those cats in voice messages and every time we met in person. Today there wasn't a single cat. My mother is convinced that this is a SIGN. A sign of what, exactly? But I wouldn't be surprised if those cats didn't exist at all.