Caterwauling

Mercury finally turned direct today.

This retrograde season has been just like going through a car wash with the sunroof open. Oh wait, did that.

I’m at the tail end of some 24-hour bug. So that’s a fitting end to all the cosmic nonsense.

I find I get sick a lot more than I used to. Probably because when I go out, I go OUT.

My friend Tony had asked in Vegas if Mom passed at home. I said yes and he said omg you have got to move.

I said no I like my place. And if you’ve seen the median South Florida rent prices, mine is well below that.

But … now that I think more about it, I am fine when I leave the house.

Like I felt yucky Friday, totally went out and partied it up Saturday, then couldn’t even keep Pepto Bismol down yesterday.

And in true retrograde form, my toilet stopped flushing after I barfed up Friday’s breakfast yesterday. On Sunday.

Anyway, how did I go throw back margaritas with no problem 48 hours ago?

Gram used to always say, “It’s the house’s fault.” She blamed the house for everything.

I wonder if that’s actually true here.

I really do like it here. I didn’t always. But it’s easy to get to Orlando or the Keys. And the airport is a seven-minute drive away.

OK, so what I like about it, is it’s easy to leave.

My second cat sitter just quit on me. She too is leaving the state. So the kids are going to be on their own for me to go to Orlando for Mickey’s Halloween Party.

In any event, if everyone is buying property out of state, is it a sign I should, too?

Though one of my people just told me she’s moving to Greece. It was supposed to be Paris but she changed her mind at the last minute.

Sounds better than Alabama, right?

I wonder if it IS the house’s fault that I only feel good when I’m out of it.

Forget retrograde. This Mercury cycle is radioactive.

Saturday started with a car wash where I forgot I’d had a passenger. So I didn’t check the passenger side window FOR A WEEK.

Anyway, I finally did it — I drove through a car wash with a window open.

Then I went to put a $10 in the bill changer, so I could buy some towels.

And it ate my $10.

I mean, that beat the week before where I climbed seven floors to my car in a garage. Only to fall over the concrete slab at the head of an accessible parking spot that they put right in front of the stairs.

And when I was backing out of my spot, I looked to ensure I had gotten all the shit that had spilled from my purse.

Well, guess who forgot to BRAKE first.

The car is mostly fine. I haven’t had skinned knees since I was 10. At least my ego isn’t bruised.

Then just now, I got a message from an airline that my flight got rebooked.

Um … what? Which one? Why?

It was one of my multi-city trips.

(Airline) changed the third flight … to the same day as the first two.

So, depart (home) at xx time. Get to layover two hours later. Arrive at third city FOR A SECOND, FIVE-HOUR LAYOVER.

Fut the wack?!

I had to go find my email and argue with the chatbot.

When I blew up the chatbot, I got a nice agent who restored order and gave me a flight credit for my trouble.

I mean, that flight credit will get me a Bloody Mary. But still.

Also I’ve spoken to DTOM a good 14 times this week. But I got a fun comment in with their boss about, “Hey they told me this but let me run that by you real quick.”

The reply was ok go push back. Like, GLADLY.

I got another fun comment in. This person keeps trying to sell us on hiring all their old colleagues from another company.

I said, “There is only one person from that company who ever impressed me. His name is (Redacted). Otherwise, that place is not exactly a talent factory.”

Then I let that sink in for a minute.

I know someone who is not invited to read this page or comment on anything about me will sit there and blow their bangs when I say this, but fuck you — I WON TODAY.

Gonna need a new nickname for DTOM.

Since the memo went out, they’ve been seated for every single call.

I feel through the screen that they are unhappy.

This is pure speculation on my part.

But when you can’t necessarily rein in unappealing but otherwise ungovernable behavior — like, me delivering good prose an hour after deadline, every damn time — you rein in what you can.

This explains so much about my past.

I was talking with Shan the other day (interesting how Wildebeest jumped straight to K — silly beast) about how we can come up with our assassin names.

I say best pet and worst boss.

For her, Jazzypants Yep. For me, I was going to go with Cocoa H.

But Shan said god that Carol was so awful to you. Maybe she’s retired or dead.

And for the life of me, I couldn’t remember Carol’s last name. I just remember she had hairspray-coated glasses and looked like Janet Reno.

Anyway, apparently Cocoa Reno is my assassin name.

In any event, Carol absolutely couldn’t rein in my friend. So she had this insane meeting with me to tell me I dressed “too Pittsburgh” and my hair was terrible and my suits/dresses were too short for how fat I was.

Or maybe she had my friend have it with me. To break his spirit a different way.

Either way, and this is a rare moment when I will pay him a compliment, but we had more talent in our pinkys than that 60,000-member organization had combined.

Ungovernable. I want that as a tattoo.

She was happy when I rolled in with flat hair and sweatshirts and a broken spirit.

The empath in me almost feels bad for DTOM. Like if you’re not the T person, who are you?

For me, Carol might have taken away the way I chose to express myself.

And that “friend” turned on me anyway. He made sure they saw this blog, where I documented all that shit, because I had to express myself in some OTHER way.

Though I do have to say, having the HR person sit there humbled at not having any clue how to deal with the “look what you made me do” — long before Taylor Swift sang that lyric — was quite a moment in my young life.

The one thing I always maintained — and have since proven true — was that I always held value that Carol et al didn’t deserve to have access to anyway.

They sure fucking didn’t pay for that talent. Most of what I gave them was “on me.”

Anyway, part of me almost wants to restore the T to the DTOM of it all. But I can find plenty of other things to head scratch about that aren’t motion-sickness-induced.

A friend called tonight.

We got to talking about her wack-ass roommate.

I had said she really does just sit around waiting for you to breathe so she can complain publicly about it.

(I read these public posts — chickie is crazy AF.)

My friend says, “She’s just like Cindy. You are in New York, or Key West, or Las Vegas, or New Orleans … and she’s posting from her couch about your posts.”

We laughed.

Then we made plans to meet up in Orlando and another city before the year is out.

Keep watching. Keep hating. Keep making shit up. Keep rotting away from the inside.

We’ll just be over here glowing and going.

Got to thinking about yesterday’s diatribe.

If parts of it were unfair.

I don’t believe people set out to make me wonder about their mental health.

But I don’t see them being entirely oblivious to their (albeit small) impact on mine.

Anyway, yesterday’s big project launch appears to be another smashing success.

I love everything I do for a living, but I would love love love to do more of THAT for a living.

There will always be fools to suffer. But some different fools would be a nice change of scenery from the usual two.