Caterwauling

Got an employee survey. Which I was going to ignore. But …

I had just gotten out of another useless meeting with “Stomp! The Musical.” More of her yelling at us and creating tasks that have no bearing in reality. More hypocrisy. More fucking aggravation.

One person even hung up on her. Like I used to hang up on her.

So I opened up my employee survey.

One of the questions is about team building activities. They asked if we wanted to do a walking challenge.

I said nope, I witness a daily walking challenge and I am sick of seeing people’s “O” faces splayed across my monitor.

I assume they have my IP address.

If not, I am 100% sure they know who would write that.

Problem is, I didn’t think about who’s reading the survey when I hit “send.”

The typical workplace would fire me for answering an anonymous survey that way.

I am hopeful my workplace would say well it’s an anonymous survey. We asked for this.

With any luck, the person reading the surveys would say yo, sit your ass in a chair during calls.

Not that it would make said person’s meetings any more organized or any less infuriating.

And that’s the thing. If you’re going to be a pain in the ass, don’t be annoying too.

I mean, everyone else is saying it. I’m just in a position to say it directly.

Hope I continue to be in that position, is all I’m saying.

I sold my Bitcoin. Which is an automatic indicator it will go up from here.

Needed to pay a credit card in front of a trip. Not that it can afford all the things I am about to buy. But at least a few days in NYC are covered.

I used to be concerned with having a round number in my bank account. Which I reached once and only had for about two days. Then the bank started calling me every other minute, telling me to hire them to manage my money.

So I took that cash, wiped out my credit card debt, and the solicitation calls stopped.

My Disney habit is A Lot. But needed. You have medication and therapy; I have mouse-shaped treats.

My NYC habit is A Lot. I kind of think my annual-ish trips are probably getting to be too much. But sitting around my apartment, whilst the more economical option, is also the more depressing one.

This is also the year I go back and honor my ancestors. Specifically, buy a gravestone for my grandparents.

I have some Unclaimed Property that I’ve waited 20 years to claim. Am hoping that it will be enough to cover the gravestone. But I really have no idea.

Either way, it was my grandfather’s property/money and it would be my honor to spend it on him.

I’ve pondered this throughout my life. These people I came from, spent every dime (and they didn’t have many) giving me a good life.

Yet as I finally started to make money, they barely got to benefit from it.

Gram never saw me do much with my life. Just worked jobs that paid me as badly as they treated me.

Grampy got to enjoy me taking them out to dinner and meeting them in Breezewood.

It’s a dumb little road trip for most, I imagine. Just a truck stop town. But for us, it was a day we got to meet midway for a meal and go back to our lives.

Part of me is thinking about driving to Pittsburgh. Or, who am I kidding, I would take the Auto Train for some absurd sum.

Honestly, a round trip on the Auto Train is the same cost of a rental car for a week. And I would love to zip around Mount Washington with my Florida plates.

Fuck, I’d park right in front of Fetterman’s house to sport my favorite bumper stickers.

Anyway, I don’t have enough Bitcoin to fund the full Pittsburgh odyssey I have in mind. That’s because I sold my Bitcoin at the absolute bottom.

Why I get into this shit, I have no idea. But I do have a dinosaur bone I’d like to sell at some point. I know that’s at least worth a one-way trip on the Auto Train.

My thought process is that this is the year of full circle. Say a proper goodbye to Pittsburgh.

Not say goodbye for now to NYC. After I finally get to see Brooklyn and a few other places. (I will always want to do Christmas there again. At the Palace. With the Gossip Girl package that gives you the Chanel No. 5 as your welcome gift. Manifesting this.)

But certainly try to get my fill and set my sights on other destinations I haven’t seen yet.

I was hoping for that Bitcoin to pay off. Maybe sit my ass home and buy some more if this truly is the bottom.

That’s an important lesson I’m learning as an investor. I always load up when a stock craters. Dollar Cost Averaging, yo.

That works with Apple. Hasn’t worked so far with other stocks. Or the dinosaur bone.

So I’m trying something new and just yeeting the losers. I can always buy them back. Or buy something more promising.

Something tells me there’s a real life lesson in there, as well.

One of the hardest things about being a motherless daughter is having no one to talk to about her.

Yesterday I heard a sonic boom and the electricity went out. It came back an hour later for two minutes. Another boom, it was out again. So, I went out for pizza and Ross shopping.

Found a great shirt. I know she would have wanted me to have it. Took a photo instead.

I sent it to her but no “I <3 being a Ross hoe with you!” arrived in return.

I sent it to Kelly and Jim. They appreciate $ROST for other reasons. But I did say I would have sent this to Mom. They got it.

I also saw a “Rock Star” sign at the pizza place. Totally Grampy.

But the real reason I wrote today was because I remembered a conversation with Mom that touched my heart.

When I met Cocoa and Belly out at the Target parking lot, I named them Lily and Wally.

She insisted Cocoa was a Cocoa Puff. And that Bella was too pretty to be a dumb boy’s name.

Later, when a vet told me Bella was a Wally indeed, Mom surprised me.

She said she shouldn’t have talked me out of what I wanted to name my kitties.

She said it wasn’t her place, when I was the one who was going to be raising them.

I told her it was no big deal. She chose correctly. They responded to those names. And they were far cuter than whatever I thought of in the dark.

But thinking about it now, what an incredibly generous thing for her to say. To even think about how that might have affected me.

Cocoa will always be my Puff. I called her “Cuteness” half the time anyway. And Cocoapotamus. Cokie. Coca-nut.

And Belly … well we watched a lot of “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” So Bella + Wally = Belly, our beloved TV character.

Magic was her name too but there was never a doubt that if I got a black cat, that would be its name.

Magic is indeed a spell. For as much as i correct him, I like to think of it as calling more magic into my life.

In any event, this all just reminded me how damn lucky I really was.

It also gave me another insight.

Which was that she got to see me become a mom.

And she loved the mother I became, because I learned everything I knew from her.

My Nicole’s dad died before Jim’s dad died. And before my Mom died.

What a shitty fucking May-June 2025 we had at work.

Nicole and I got to talking today about my next NYC trip. And how she got robbed on her last trip there.

Which was crazy because she grew up there. And her dad was NYPD.

She said she could just hear her dad being PISSED that she took a designer purse with a magnetic clasp. One that was easy for a pickpocket to open.

She said she could just see him giving her the stinkeye. And how, even though she’d heard The Talk a million times before to watch herself, she clearly needed it.

So she gave ME The Talk. Take the tiniest purse. Keep it in front of you. Use your phone as a credit card. Don’t give anybody an opening to steal from you.

I said wow. I haven’t had anyone give me The Talk in two years. How nice, actually, to have it.

I remembered rolling my eyes as Mom was giving me The Talk even in my late 40s. Be careful. Get home safe. Text me when you get there and when you leave. Text me along the way. Love you, baby.

Now, nobody cares when I leave the house. When I get there. IF I get there.

Even though I, too, know to wear my crossbody bag tight and not carry anything other than an ID and one card, I need to hear it.

It’s easy to think that since you’re invisible most of the time anyway, you’ll be invisible everywhere.

It’s not easy to remember all the times your momma told you to be safe — not because she didn’t think you’d be wise and on the ball — but because others may be MORE so.

Nicole struggles with her very spirited daughter who doesn’t understand she can’t do everything she wants to do.

And I said the same thing to her — it’s not that (daughter’s name) is untrustworthy. It’s that others who may be driving or drinking or otherwise making stupid choices are.

That’s what my family told me. It’s not that they were overprotective and wanting to steal my joy. They trusted me on the roads and at parties just fine. It’s everyone else, they worried about.

It’s funny how that shit doesn’t make sense when you’re 22. But at 52? Ohhh I GET it now.

I wish I had recordings of their words. I could really use them right now.

But now I’m the voice of reason nobody younger wants to hear.

Wild how that happens.

God I miss my family.

That was a line in the very first “White Lotus” episode.

My beloved Murray Bartlett advised Lani to be a pleasant but interchangeable face as a staffer at the resort.

Be helpful, but don’t stand out.

I had an Aventura Adventure yesterday.

Where I was the only non-rude person I encountered. And despite my tan, still the lightest person around for miles.

It started off great — a friend had told me to grab a certain wine he’s fallen in love with.

Only the North Miami Total Wine — just south of Aventura’s — had it online.

Unexpectedly, they had three dusty bottles — of the 2015 vintage. AND they were on sale. Score!

I drove up to the Aventura store for yuks. It was twice the size and had half the stock of the smaller, older store.

Decided to go to Kura Sushi for lunch. I have gone to the Wellington one. It’s a sushi-go-round.

I loved the Welly store. But this one, no one greeted me for the 10 minutes I stood there.

Finally I downloaded the app and made a reservation — for 20 minutes from then. THE STORE WAS EMPTY.

There’s too much good sushi in Miami to waste it on that nonsense. I canceled and left.

Had an amazing Cherry Matcha at the mall. Got Laduree macarons — earl grey, raspberry and caramel, my favorites.

Was going to get Cuban Nachos at Sanguiche, but I thought, Serafina. Always a winner in Miami and New York, right?

Well. Let’s just say the service was SO BAD, I ordered my pizza WITH a box since no one was waiting on me at the bar.

The wild part? I was sitting next to the damn manager with her laptop and seating arrangements. She did not see the bad service, nor notice me losing my mind as time ticked by.

Finally, a good 60 minutes in, I flag down the bartender to say check please. He says, “I’ll check on you!” and goes off to do whatever he’s doing. Which I don’t know but it wasn’t serving any of the five bar patrons.

Another 20 minutes go by, I leave all my cash under my long-empty glass.

I felt bad about it, but then I remember ICE agents are murdering people in broad daylight again and lying about it. So, I shorted you a tip. Woo.

I wasn’t done with the mall. Wanted to get some Japanese ice cream. To go with the Japanese perfume and makeup I bought earlier.

There’s just something about Japanese milk, I tell you.

In any event, that’s not even the most interesting part of all this.

I went to walk into Victoria’s Secret, and a family would have rammed into me with their two strollers if I hadn’t jumped 10 feet.

The employee with the thick Spanish accent saw that. We got to talking about how rude people are, and how you have to look out for yourself.

She made some weird comment to me about how people treat me for the way I look.

Like bitch, I was dressed up for my adventure. Was she making a commentary on me being fat?

Nope, because of my skin color. If you can believe that.

She said you know what color the rudest people are? I said boy do I — white people.

She said oh no white people are the BEST!

She gives me this whole story about she’s from Mexico but she is AN AMERICAN. And THANK GOD for this president.

I said gonna have to stop you on the president thing. Though against my better judgment, I kept listening.

She said America is GREAT because it’s NOT a melting pot. We don’t need other people’s rudeness and crappy culture here. Go have your culture in YOUR country.

I’m like … and you’re from …?

She said Mexico but SHE emigrated legally.

Like gonna stop you right there, hoe.

My nail tech is the same — from Vietnam. But married a citizen.

Who had the resources to do it legally. And he votes for tRump. Oh and he hires undocumented guys to do construction.

(My nail tech HATES trump, so we’re friends.)

My friend who had the wine recommendation said this lady of leisure (the Victoria’s Secret lady, to be clear. My nail tech has a full time job, her business AND an infant) probably has to lay under some 66-year-old limp-dick white dude with a fetish for Latinas.

I said to him, isn’t it sad that WE vote for cunts like THAT to remain in our country. And she doesn’t want ANYBODY ELSE here.

The hallmark of a Republican woman.

The funniest part? Someone shoplifted some shit while this lady was talking to me.

Alarms were going off everywhere.

I said don’t you have to go deal with that?

She’s like enh, whatever. I said no really, you were at the door, you’ll be held accountable. She said ok fine but come find me when you’re done browsing.

I ran the moment she turned her back.

Anyway that tropical kabuki line came to mind for several reasons.

One, how fucking rude everyone was to me.

Maybe it’s that whole “older white woman” syndrome where no one even sees us. Maybe that’s why the gaggle of people just about killed me. Like I was a damn ghost to them.

Two, don’t fucking welcome me into goddamn Victoria’s Secret and tell me how happy you are with the pedophile, adjudicated rapist, grifter who used the office to enrich himself while he literally shits himself on camera.

Fade the fuck into the background, Conchita. Suck that limp white dick and pray you don’t get deported. They’re killing citizens, you know. You ain’t SHIT to that president.

It’s a shame that the only person I wasn’t invisible to, was her.

I got to thinking about my last post. About how Mom’s hands petted my cats, and now they are even more precious to me because of that.

I’ve probably written that I still have a drink in the fridge that was Mom’s.

Just a bottle with a straw in it. And maybe she didn’t even touch it, as I was holding it for her to drink from. But it’s going to stay in this house as long as I do.

I picked up that bottle yesterday and I felt an absolute electric current of love wash over me.

She must know I still think of her energy being attached to that straw.

How funny — I have hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of possessions in this hovel. Yet somehow, that little bottle is the most precious among them.

I have a colleague I used to really like.

His wife, whom I also loved, got into a very serious car wreck.

Her health declined so much, they sold their family business and moved two counties away. They’ve since sold that house and moved two thousand miles away.

I don’t enjoy interacting with him anymore. He’s very stone-cold sarcastic and it’s not even funny.

I ghostwrite for him, among several others. And that’s not even my job. I’m a department head.

Any questions I ask are met with silence or sarcasm. Or absolutely circular nonsense.

I miss the days of hanging out on the weekend with him and his wife. Of darkening each other’s doorways with stories and wishes and how we’d make that place better if anyone would listen to us.

Even K-money said some of the stories I tell her now, don’t even sound like the same person.

We agreed it’s grief. He’s a caregiver now. It’s hard to be everything to everyone. Shit, it’s hard to be ANYthing to ANYone.

Happy to be nothing to no one. Now THAT I’m good at!

Shan’s going through some stuff too. I told her about something I read.

Which the TL;DR was that grief is a 24/7 job. You wake up sad. You go to bed sad. You go through every life activity sad.

Like, I love these furry little dipshits in my house, right?

It occurred to me the other day that my Momma petted them. That she knew my babies, and she loved on them.

And the fur that my hands touch … HER hands once touched.

That’s a small comfort when you know you’ll never touch your Momma again.

I may grumble about work sometimes. But first of all, who doesn’t? And second of all, it ain’t NOTHING like the bullshit I’ve either posted about or killed myself to NOT post about over the years.

But they’ve let me go from being a shitty caregiver and worker to just being a shitty worker.

Same with my friend. I’m not saying he’s a shitty caregiver and worker. But I am saying that he’s going through Some Shit and I imagine I’m not the only one trying to keep things running that I shouldn’t be wholly responsible for.

Like, I hired Grant to help him. Grant fucked me over so bad — I got the company owner to pay him way more than the role was worth. Then Grant took another job two months later.

Then I hired Karen to help him. She was cheaper than Grant, but I just thought she sucked at her job because I rewrote everything she turned in.

After I fired her, I realized trying to get a truly helpful thought out of this guy anymore is trying to squeeze a turnip.

But still, I write the weekly newsletter, and I do it in two hours vs her two days.

I was told I had an attitude about this product. It was in my review the week before Mom died.

Yes I did have an attitude and I was also spending more time working than caregiving and now I drown in grief about how bad a caregiver I was.

And yes this product still ruins every Friday of my life.

So to hear two years later that my attitude is still there but has improved, I was gobsmacked.

Like, a THANK YOU would have been the correct answer here.

I say this as it’s 8 p.m. on a Thursday and I need to finish writing this masterpiece before tomorrow … when my friend will do his new thing of sending me an AI-generated table of whatever Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan are thinking today. Information that is USELESS to me.

In any event, I don’t squawk because I know where he is. And where he will be. Whenever that day comes.

But here in the quiet of my house …

As I think about how I wish I’d just been a better caregiver and not worried so much about work … because my brain chemistry was altering and would go on to alter a whole bunch more …

I think not just about the fact that I lost Mom and could have done better by her.

But also how I lost everybody.

Mom. Gram. Grampy. Old Gram. Sia. Janna. Elaine. Aunt Lenna. Uncle Stan. Aunt Josie. Cousin Dana. Aunt Marion. Sue. Jane. Jesse. At least two Johns. Lynn. Larry. Leanne. Jason.

And that’s just the hoomins. The ones I can remember offhand.

I mean, not all warrant the deep grief. But enough do.

Then there are the relationships and friendships that didn’t make it out alive either.

Not to mention the dreams. Whether for me, for us, for them. All gone. Poof.

I was so frustrated that Mom was so damn sad. Like, it ruined my good time on more than one occasion.

But she at least had me to suck it up for. I don’t have to impress anyone. And I don’t. Impress, that is.

And I’m such an iconoclast at work that it’s hard to hold me accountable. I’m like Ken whose job is “Beach.” No one knows what that means but also no one else does it.

Anyway, as ever, I’m just sad and messed up and I don’t think there’s any coming back from this.

But is there moving forward from this?

I will literally die trying, methinks.

Had a random breakthrough today during a meeting.

A friend is thinking about coaching 20-year-old boys. Not in a gross way. His son is that age, and he and his friends need a good kick in the ass to get motivated.

My friend is an entrepreneur. He’s like I could get these dudes making like five grand a month and off their mom’s couches.

I said my dude, I would pay for you to do that for me.

He said it’s really just being an accountability partner. Reminding them that they can be successful or they can keep doing what they’re doing. Either way, just say that’s what you want.

I told him about my friend who just got the job with my title and pay — who has zero experience to my 22 years of experience in this role — which was astounding enough to him.

She called me her mentor. And I laughed. I never thought of myself as a mentor. But hey, look at the results of my intervention!

I said you know, I’ve never had a mentor other than my mom. She loved me as I was, but I did better for her and WITH her.

Now, I can sit on the couch from now till eternity. No one knows or cares.

I could lose the weight. Or not. No one knows or cares, though I am sure they know that number keeps going in the wrong direction.

I said the only person trying to hold me accountable to anything is my boss, and I am pretty incorrigible where he is concerned.

It’s not that I don’t like him. I just don’t have that same overpowering need to dance like I did for the owner. And any … call it strong encouragement … seems to have the opposite effect on me.

Anyway, I said I would pay you to be in that mentoring class.

For real though. What is it going to take for me to do my taxes, to quit the Levain cookie club, to get off my ample arse in general?

A friend posted that it’s ok to feel overwhelmed. It’s not ok to stay there. Name a goal and just do the thing. Then do another thing.

Me, I just got through a whole slew of cancer tests. That I’d been putting off for a year. Fortunately, all is well but they want me to do it all over again in six months.

Like, have I not done enough things? I never run out of things to do.

I know I keep NOT doing the things because there will always be more things.

Not to mention, things to do again and again and again until I’ve missed my entire life mired in details I never wanted to engage in.

How do I get back to a place of “yes, give me all the things so I can do them and then some”?

Especially when there isn’t much in the way of direct benefits to doing any of them?

We got an all staff Teams ping that we hired an office manager.

Today is the birthday of my favorite office manager, Sue. She died during covid. No one sent a note about that.

I have been thinking about our longtime office manager, Liz. After driving herself crazy coordinating the sale of the building and setup at the new place, she had a stroke. I’d sent her the biggest bouquet of flowers I could locate in the city she subsequently had to retire to.

I didn’t welcome the new manager. I’ll never see her. We’re fully remote except for when we use our TV studio.

It just got me to thinking about all the people who worked hard and were replaced when they couldn’t do it anymore.

It’s the circle of life, as it were.

Liz and Sue ran so this new person could walk. And yes, I wrote the analogy correctly.

I post a lot of personal photos and random memes.

I don’t even remember half the shit I share.

And I really don’t remember the shit I don’t share publicly.

But this … this was a kick in the tit.

My phone has started showing me random memories from the last however many years I’ve had an iPhone.

It doesn’t show, obviously, photos from before the whole digital era. And it doesn’t seem to favor the people I don’t talk about, let alone post about. Thanks, AI overlords!

Not the person I am referring to:

But then this meme came up and it brought a thousand years ago to the front of my mind.

I really have searched for someone in every face.

And I don’t think it’s that other people weren’t him. It’s just that I must have been allocated my one connection early in life.

I know I’ve written of this before. That life sent me in a different direction because I wouldn’t have been happy with that one.

But, you know.

You can’t see a meme 30 years later and be taken back to a moment in time in 0.3 seconds for it to have not shaped you in some way.

And the fact that I caught them viewing the meme was the craziest part of all.

“I think maybe it’s time I said goodnight
But I’m happy that I came
Just to see your eyes still have their flame
Their beauty and their pain
It feels like yesterday.”

There was a song I heard recently that was this story. Tom Odell, “Old Lovers.”

I should have written it myself.

Maybe I will write it myself rather than sitting in awe of everyone else doing it for me.

Or maybe, as ever, the thoughts will leave my head for a while. Until they come flooding back in about a year and a half or whatever schedule they seem to be on.