No. Really. (or) Fucking Cat: The Sequel

Will you look at this?

Do you see what I'm saying about this cat? My cousin used to be my arch nemesis. You know, the one my grandma always compared me to?

Susan, you know she met her husband in church. Maybe if you went to church more you could find a nice boy like him.

She did not meet him in a church. She met him in a bar. In fact She was the one who took me to visit her at college one weekend and got me into this bar called the The Front Porch, snuck me in with her ID and let her frat boy friends get me completely wasted. I was sixteen. I got so drunk that one of the nice frat boy friends took me back to the car and sat on my freezing feet (at my request) while I passed out until She was ready to go home. The next day, She took me to watch a football game at the same friends' house where we drank more beer. I believe that was the day I learned about "hair of the dog."

This trip was often referred to as the time A.N. tried to save me and show me how important getting a good education was.

So, not only did She have Grandma completely snowed, She contributed to the delinquency of a minor (not that I was an unwilling participant), She flat out lied about how She met her husband, and I lived with constant remarks about how She was someone to look up to and I should try to be more like her. She is also the one I mentioned before who outed me about my tattoos and broke my mother's heart. Arch nemesis. She has been dethroned by a little 5' x 8' gray cat named, Mittens. These photos are what I collected this morning. When was the last time I collected? Last night. Chulo is still in the trenches, doing all he can to destroy Mittens strand by strand. Sometimes he struggles, but I just force him to let me open his mouth and pull the wad out, and he goes right back in. That is a good dog.

Fucking Cat

Erica and I bought this rug recently. We ordered it in January. It was backordered until March. We got offers from Crate and Barrel to cancel the order because it was taking so long. But dear Smoking Baby did we want it. So we waited.

We've had it for three months now and every since it came in the door, I have hated this rug. For one, I hate the color. The photo is from my phone, so it's not super precise with tones, but it's a grey rug in a room of greens and oranges and I just feel like it's too light or something. I hate it.

Now, I do love the texture. It's super comfy and I sit on the floor a lot more than I used to. I even take naps there occasionally.

Of course, it's wool, so I end up having an asthma attack most times I do, but still. This isn't my problem with it.

This is the problem:And this:See those fur balls? They're absolutely everywhere.

This rug sheds so much that I started calling it Mittens. You know like, "Aww. Mittens!" as I pull a strand off my clothing or a sloppy, gross wad out of Chulo's mouth when he can't work it out himself. It's like having a cat. A cat that I really, really despise. Whenever I'm picking up the wads, I'm usually mumbling, "Fucking cat."

I feel like we might as well have a Golden Retriever. I get asthma from Golden Retrievers. God knows they shed like maniacs. But they're Golden Retrievers. Anyone who knows a Golden, knows what I'm talking about.

I knew this Golden Retriever once -- Casey. During the early nineties, Casey adopted an injured quail -- eventually dubbed Dan, of course. What kind of animal, bred to retrieve dead animals, adopts a live, injured quail and loves it back to health? At least that's the story I remember. My friend, Jay, who was Casey's owner may remember a different story (probably the accurate one -- I have a tendency to amend history in my mind), but that's what I think happened. I definitely know Casey had a quail during Dan Quayle's Vice Presidency and his family named the quail Dan. And, to me, that's story enough.

So, what I'm saying is that Golden Retrievers are way more worth the extra effort than this fucking feline rug that spreads its fur not only all over the interior of our place, but it trails into the hallway. I've found pieces in the yard. There are strands on my shirt right this very minute.

And now, Mittens, cat I never wanted, has developed the mange.Obviously, Chulo hates the rug as much as I do. He's the cause of Mittens' mange. He has begun to methodically rip the rug apart strand by strand. Erica thinks it's a conspiracy. She likes the rug. Or so she says. I believe that she hates the rug as much as I do but just has a harder time admitting that we simply made the wrong rug decision.

God I Love Disco Fries

I am so frustrated right now. I'm upstairs on my laptop and I can't get the wireless signal from Erica's router which is about 20 feet directly downstairs. It's not even around a corner.

To add to that, because i rarely take advantage of all my technology has to offer, i haven't even loaded the Office Suite on the new Air. I'm doing this on, eek, Text Edit.

My friend Sparky gave me about 6000 Japanese Pop Songs (He officially won friend of the month.) Are they on my laptop? Nope. Do I work the cardio while listening to Harajuku girl bands? No. I listen to the same songs I threw on my shuffle from crap I had downloaded for various meeting themes at work.

And, if you don't do cardio, you should know, there's a thing about cardio. You really need a beat. And I've got work stuff then all this mellow Digable Planets style stuffabout contemplating abortion and fascists (they're some heavy dudes).

hey beautiful bird i said digging her somber mood
the fascists are some heavy dudes
they don't really give a damn about life
they just don't want a woman to
control her body or have the right to choose

So. My inspiration possibilities are: either be reminded of a (surely painful) national sales meeting of one of our clients, ponder the fate of my womb (and yours ladies), or there's TV which offers a bunch of crap (news, sports, current events -- all things I'm not into) or it's plug in to Paula Deen or the Barefoot Contessa. Both of whom use butter or sour cream (or both! With mayonnaise! Paula's favoritein every dish they prepare. And they are both huge fans of carbs.

You know when people ask those questions, "If you could only have two foods for the rest of your life"? My answer is a toss up between cheese and pork or dinner rolls and mashed potatoes with gravy. There is nothing like a carb dipped in a another carb covered with gravy. Are you people familiar with disco fries? Jesu'Christo, is that delicious.

Back to the point. My frustration. It's not just the wireless issue. It's the fact that I have come to a place where I am fucking fed up with this bullshit family drama. Fed the fuck up.

My mom is currently a train wreck. Seriously, thank god there are no paparazzi in Fitzgerald who like to track train wrecks. The weekly Herald-Leader (out every Wednesday) would be blowing up with pictures of my mom's life. It is what it is. And the unfortunate thing is that the train is screeching toward the washed out bridge and there is nothing any of us can do about it but wait for the splash. Arrgh.

So. I've stopped talking to her. As my sister says, "I gotta do me." Then again, now I talk to my sister non-stop. I'm moral support. In Al-Anon, it's called doing service. And I have a unique insight into her situation that I know is invaluable to her right now. So, although I can not separate myself from the situation completely, I do get to stay up-to-date, and my sister keeps telling me thank you for helping her. So that's really nice. Amy and I had been estranged for the majority of our life which we've realized was nurtured by our mother -- and our grandmother in a way. And, in one of my life lists I wrote after seeing the Secret, hearing Ellen, etc., I wrote that I wanted a better relationship with my sister. (Proof that you should be specific. More like, "I'd like a better relationship with my sister based on pleasant and amenable circumstances for all involved." Next time ...)

Because I have a mortgage these days (as well as a trip planned for a week in Nevis!) I can't afford therapy, so I don't have that outlet. The love of my life, Erica Jill, has listened and comforted and sat and rubbed my head while I dripped snot onto her pants. One time was while we were on vacation in Italy and it happened on the bathroom floor. Pretty. Probably not what she was hoping to do on her European vacation. So I feel she's really done her share. Since she and I got together both my grandmother and my aunt died and my Mom suffered through breast cancer and I discovered the depth of my emotional issues and found a way to find my emotional side and let it out. So I totally cry all the time.

She's SO lucky to have me!

And, as you all know (since my readership consists of mostly my friends) there has been discord in the royal family so HRH and I made a mutual break, divided the estate evenly, and have moved on in different directions. HRH got to keep all the Doors and Janis Joplin albums and I got the pool boy.At least the separation was uncontested.

It's been quite a year for me. And I'm coping. But these last couple of days have been kind of hard. The breakup with Mom has been particularly difficult. In essence I've orphaned myself in a total of two phone conversations. One with my dad when I was twenty-four and one with my mom last week.

I really wanna end on a happy note, but right now, I got nothing.

Ooh! Wait! Things are looking up -- I've got five bars on the Wi-Fi!

Recycle, My Ass.

In the city there are two free newspapers: AM New York and Metro. They come out every weekday and I love them. I love them so much that I will cross the street to get them if necessary. New Yorkers hate to cross the street. Especially if it's an avenue. That's why there can be practically identical bodegas on opposite corners and they'll both thrive. We're just always in a hurry and there's always traffic and that slows you down. At least that's what I think it is. Maybe we're just lazy fucks. Anyway. That is not the point of this story.

Every morning between AM New York and Metro, I have three sudoku games and two crosswords. I occasionally will flip through the rest of the papers, but it's rare. If I see a piece on Amy Winehouse or something, then I'll read it, but otherwise, I do the puzzles on the way to work and when I get off the train, I throw the papers away.

Of course, I feel a pang of guilt when I do it, but I keep doing it. Sometimes on holiday Mondays, Metro doesn't show up at the stands I pass. I don't know if they take those days off, or if the delivery guys are slacking, but it upsets me. I like my puzzles. I look forward to them and the timing is perfect when I have all of them -- if I get a seat that is. Otherwise, I don't make it through them all and I have some left over for the ride home. Yay!So, anyway. I am personally responsible for ten newspapers per week being thrown away because I want to do crosswords and sudoku and I just hate those puzzle books so much. There's something different about doing the puzzles in the paper. I dunno.

On rare occasions when I forget a pen it's misery. But once I compose myself and realize that just because I look through my bag for the eighth time, a pen will not materialize, I read through the papers and then I usually leave them on a bench in the station for someone else. Once I was screamed at by a Metro guy because I dropped my used Metro in his stand. "This is not a recycling pile!" And he grabbed the paper off the stack and threw it away. Then recently these signs started showing up on the garbage cans in the subway stations. The MTA is trying to eliminate garbage created by people like me practicing lazy green-ness. "I'm not being wasteful, I'm leaving a gift for a stranger who forgot to grab a paper on the way downstairs."

I don't believe these signs. I believe the MTA are lying bastards. There is no way that they are forcing those workers to dredge through New York City subway garbage cans to separate out the newspapers for recycling. Do you know what kind of grotesque materials go into those cans? Snotty tissues, chewed gum, vomit. Plus people drop drinks and food in there. I'm not sure, but I would guess that subway station maintenance positions don't offer pay much above minimum wage, and the MTA is having them separate the recyclable materials from bags of vomit and half eaten falafel sandwiches? I highly doubt it.

Yet. In my head I pretend that I do believe them so that when I throw the papers away at 86th street every morning, I don't have to think of polar bears treading water looking for ice floes.s

"Don't touch the fucking ball!"

I turn my head and see the coach of the outfield lesbian softball team screaming in the direction of the Little League game on the next field. I was kind of watching the game as I passed, so I knew someone had just hit a home run -- if not a grand slam, at least a triple. (Sexy show.)

I was in Prospect Park walking Chulo and Ziggy, our next door neighbor's dog who is an adorable black fluffy something and we were circling the four or five softball fields there. We watched the lesbian coach dramatically argue with the old Italian man umpire for a minute until we realized, like all lesbian drama, it wasn't going to be resolved any time soon, so we moved on. As we neared the field with the little leaguers I saw the sponsor of the home team was Immaculate Heart of Mary.(I found that picture on Flickr. I swear to god. I mean, God.)

They were playing Holy Name.
Now. Am I just being Southern, or is this completely inappropriate? It's Brooklyn, I know. Kids in Brooklyn hear and speak worse than I do. Me. And I'm sure the kids weren't representing the actual churches, but rather the schools associated with them, but still. It got to me a little. And, of course, I thought it was totally funny at the same time.

The next scene I came to was two teenaged girls sitting on a hill.

Girl 1: [Squealing] Oh my god! We could bring our books and totally hang out and just read all day!

Girl 2: [Bouncing on her knees.] That is so perfect! I love it!

Girl 1: [Pulling out a well-worn journal and her (no doubt) favorite pen.] We could invite Jen and Aubrey and Missy.

In essence they were planning my 15 year old self's fantasy birthday party. And I prayed that they got something I never had at that age.

"Dear Jesus. Please let them have nerdyness and popularity."

(Side note. Who am I kidding? This is my 36 year old self's fantasy birthday except now it would require red wine.)

Anyway, the point is I love, love, love Brooklyn in the spring. My favorite part of Brooklyn is all of the different people and the way that we're all in such close proximity that we get a chance to catch glimpses of people's personal lives. Not in a creepy, voyeuristic, Peeping Tom way, but in an almost anthropological study way. And it's different in Spring -- in other seasons it's either too cold or too hot and no one lingers the way they do when it's gorgeous outside. There's something special and beautiful about it. And it doesn't matter whether it's the man I saw on the street this morning who handed his girlfriend her dry cleaning and stomped away after she screamed, "It's just you don't know when to quit!" or the guy I saw on the train the other day who, I promise you, solved, messed up, and re-solved a Rubik's cube within two train stops.

As we were leaving the park, we passed the skater kids. I could have hung out and watched them all day. They are so adorable and teenager-ish. They're uber cool in only the way a 15 year old can be, they had all the players -- the boy who was smoking hot, the girl who was smoking hot, the smoking hot girlfriend's cool in a nerdy non-conformist way, the couple of hangers-on ... you know the scene. They all had skateboards and I believe I saw two of them actually using them as something other than a prop or an accessory. I felt myself becoming very grandmotherly and wanting to go over and hug them all and tell them how great they were. But then I was afraid that I would be ridiculed, just like when I was 15 and no one should ever have to go through that twice.

Now, I do admit we New Yorkers have our Peeping Tom side. The fact is, New Yorkers are all notorious for looking into people's windows at night. If you live in this city -- especially Brooklyn or Manhattan -- and you have windows facing a public street, you know that if have your lights on and your curtains open at night, people will be checking out your decor as they walk by. That is just the way it is. You either keep 'em closed, or you accept it.

For some people looking in windows at night is a hobby. I'm definitely a big fan.