Caterwauling

I have this freelancer who always seems to have some sort of life emergency.

The guy who referred him had warned me this kid has a spontaneous work ethic.

I guess he lives cheap overseas and doesn’t really need the cash. Or maybe it’s not worth his while … until it is.

He reminds me of me since Mom passed. I hauled ass through the week she passed (as best I could). And of course the 30 years before it, I really busted ass.

Then … I became soulfully exhausted.

Thank you Shan for that saying.

When I’m on, I’m on fire. Magic flies from fingertips.

When I’m off, forget it. My mind is going a million directions. But standing up to light a candle is beyond my physical capability.

We had an IT guy at the Veggie Patch, Troy. I always said he moved in reverse.

Unlike him, I have enough superstar moments to provide balance.

I hope, anyway.

I got to thinking about that summer’s over nonsense.

I put in for all my PTO rollover in October. And a few hours of my 2025 PTO.

I’ll still work during it. There is no such thing as a full week off. Just a heads-up that there’s a boundary or two somewhere in there.

Which is why I show grace about that guy’s spontaneous work ethic.

I welcome his submissions when I get them, and we pay his invoices quickly.

In fact, it Saturday night and I just spent an hour auditing an expense report for someone else.

Unlike DTOM, I believe in getting folks their money ASAP. And this was a nice quiet hour where Teams wasn’t lighting up like the Coldplay couple’s divorce lawyers’ phones this week.

(I don’t fault them at all. Things happen. As long as the wife doesn’t hemorrhage nonsense all over social media for six years and create 47 accounts to spy on the other woman, as is precedent, it won’t be a total embarrassment.)

Anyway, I don’t mind the working on weekends. Or blogging, since I know folks miss me when I’m too soulfully exhausted to get up and charge my laptop.

I follow Cappy Bears about a cat with paresis whose momma loves him very much.

Cappy’s mom just found him crying in front of the closet where his deceased kitty sibling Lele’s stuff is stored.

The post was about not only how pets grieve, but that grief comes in waves for them, too.

Magic has started this insane nighttime ritual.

And it was only after I saw that post that I wondered whether it might be grief-related.

It never fails: Magic chases Bella to bed (who chases ME to bed) … jumps on her once she’s settled and scares the shit out of her … and when I yell at him, he goes to Mom’s doorway and yowls for a good 30 minutes.

Bell of course doesn’t enjoy the safety of him being preoccupied. She goes to investigate.

Then I hear her cry too, though more softly.

Very different from the all-day-long cries when Magic attacks or at least hovers over her before the attack.

Cappy could only be soothed when he was allowed to sniff Lele’s old cage and crawl onto Lele’s blanket.

And then it occurred to me.

Mom died in her room.

Cocoa died outside of her room.

Both at night.

So it makes absolute sense that the surviving cats gather between the two spots … at night … to look for their Grammy and their Sissy.

Maybe they are even conversing with them.

I don’t join in.

I just say, “Night-night Cocoa. Night-night Momma,” when I hear it.

That was my ritual. Night-night Cocoa. Then Momma. Then Belly. Then Magic.

In favorites order.

I still do it occasionally. More now that the cats go sing the song of their people to our beloveds beyond the veil.

The “Cameras Always On” rule was reiterated. Not that I have EVER deviated from it.

I am dutiful so that my staff, who work through meetings or, I dunno, breastfeed and pick up kids from daycare, can do that in peace.

DTOM’s camera is always on. But finally after three years of seeing this person’s “O” face on the elliptical, it’s finally been hinted at.

They got special dispensation to have the camera off. Though I doubt the televised stomps stop. Their entire raison d’être is to seek attention.

Out of the same memo came an interesting declaration that summer’s over. That was July 15. The follow up sentence was that it’s time to grind so hope you got summer out of your systems.

Um. Yeah, about that.

My staff and I are still taking PTO rollover. That benefit was only launched last year, and it was BECAUSE we’re too busy to take time off.

Look, I’m not saying I work a full 40 hours every week. And when I do it’s more like 60. And at least half of them are before 8 a.m. because I have 20 hours of calls a week. Seriously, sometimes I do my 20 calls and 20 urgent projects and put my hand in the fuck it bucket. Still doesn’t give me enough time for a day off.

In fact, I just put in for a day off — Halloween — using PTO rollover. Meaning, I haven’t touched the five weeks available to me for 2025 … by Halloween.

There was another comment I heard privately too. I was trying to be nice and make conversation and get someone to bond with me. And basically I just got an “I don’t believe in a work-life balance.”

I shut up. Like Goddess you are not going to say anything that is going to make this moment any better.

You know, I have recently been going through emails and texts with Momma. Because I miss her.

You know what the overarching theme is?

Momma asking me to come home not early … not on time … but not SO late.

A thousand, “I made something good for supper. Can you put down the work and come eat while it’s hot?”

Most of these messages were when I worked an hour or a half-hour away.

But there were quite a few texts that came from the other room when I was working from home.

She always said she hoped I figured out that I needed work-life balance while she was still healthy enough to enjoy some time with me.

I didn’t.

This note telling Tracey to give up her family time hit hard.

We are legally forbidden from talking about all the bad shit she did. But yeah while I was busting ass, she was stealing.

And my Mike … and a bunch of others … lost their jobs because of that.

I still think about that. If he weren’t so embarrassed at being broke and unable to find another job, would we have been married with a kid by now.

I would probably have never had my own Coldplay moment.

Or maybe I would. Who knows.

Anyway. Hope T choked on her AquaNet.

Look, I’m too old to have my morale (too) affected by people who hold worldviews I don’t agree with anymore.

No balance WAS my worldview. I absolutely didn’t need it. I liked the work and the money.

And Momma was only 16 years older than me. We should have had way more time to live well.

And I am actually deeply ashamed that my balance — which BY THE WAY I worked over 30 years to obtain — is work and vegetating and worrying about work and vegetating and finally jamming on the work.

But guess what? It’s days like July 15 that make a lot of people say hey, you do you. I’ll do me somewhere else.

I just wish DTOM was one of them.

Not me over here minding my own business.

Just being equal parts exalted and exhausted from another amazing NYC trip.

When I hear from a professional lurker about one of my professional lurkers.

Apparently Chin-dy is feeling superior because she rented a … *checks texts* … MOTORIZED scooter rather than rent a pedicab, as I did.

Well first of all, thank you for paying such close attention. I feel so loved!

And second of all, not that I owe anyone anything, least of all that wretch, but it was a hop-on, hop-off ride to a list of sites I wanted to see in Central Park and the Upper East Side.

So, I created a job, tipped heavily, stimulated the economy at Laduree, and hoisted my ass in/out of a carriage.

But hey, a scooter is similar enough, I guess.

One of my people had a birthday the other day.

She asked if I wanted to grab drinks.

I said I’ll pick the place.

I picked Epcot.

She used to work there and her husband gave up his annual pass but she didn’t. It was a good thing.

And I managed to score a very hard to get reservation at Geo-82 that opened a couple weeks ago.

When we got there, she checked in with her husband.

I told her the hardest thing about losing Momma is also the weirdest thing.

I used to text her the whole way to a place, “take her with me” through it and then let her know when I was coming home.

Now? I don’t even think about that anymore.

I finally lost that “pull” to want to tell someone I made it to my destination safely.

I mean, there’s social media when I want to leave crumbs.

But how do I leave crumbs when I don’t have someone clued in to my whereabouts?

So my last cat sitter quit and I just did a trial run with a new one. I loved the first but I think I like this one even better.

I type that to say I wasn’t nervous about my next trip till Habanero Hitler bombed Iran.

Like, the last time we were in a scuffle with an “I” nation, where did they attack? Eggzactly.

I almost wonder if I shouldn’t go full paranoia and tell the cat sitter what to do in case of THAT emergency.

Maybe I better give my cousin my Rover login since the only other key in existence to my house is w a girl whose last name I don’t know.

Who knew WandaVision would produce one of the most profound lines of all time.

I used to lurk on my paternal grandmother’s social media page. She must have lost her husband a while back. Still posts about heaven and missing him.

We never knew how deeply Grampy missed his Rosie Girl till after he died. Like any memory he had of WWII, we didn’t hear much till we read his writings posthumously.

I got to thinking about how I loved my Momma — and how she loved me — more than any spousal pairing. And how, did it really only take me just under a year to be OK?

Now that we’re past the year mark, I definitely see that there’s no more OK.

Yes you cry less and smile more at their memory. But when the hurt DOES resurface, it’s crippling.

There’s a part in “Ptolemea” when the devil or whoever is asking Ethel Cain why she thinks she can hide from/outrun him when her death has already happened.

That’s how it feels when the grief shows up unannounced. It happens less often but damn it’s almost worse than it was when the loss was fresh.

That’s how you can tell when a writer isn’t just putting shit on a page. Love persevering isn’t some junior writer shit. It’s someone who KNOWS why you can’t outrun it.

I’ve noticed a few more things about me.

One, when I’m “in it,” I go play on Expedia, Capital One travel, Chase travel and Amex travel till it’s time to shower for work.

Two, I have no sense of delayed gratification. I mean, maybe I never did. I was always impatient AF. But I literally just book every trip I see (refundable, mostly) and then when something better comes along, I agonize over the choices.

So no, I don’t need to make plans with others.

Making plans with myself is complicated enough.

I guess I waited so long, I just want to do it all while I’m healthy.

Like, plenty of time for sadness when I’m my paternal grandmother’s age. I want to give myself good things to look back on, too.

Speaking of nonrefundable, I bought a $100 ticket for July 4. The venue called to say if you can’t come, please release your ticket. But NO REFUNDS.

Would you believe they are selling tickets for $200 on their website? So they pocket $300 after they sell my seat twice … a normally FREE venue.

They want you seated at 6 and fireworks are at 9 and a girl I met on the Disney Skyliner said oh don’t expect to get home till 4 a.m. — wear a diaper. So I was kind of thinking of taking the loss anyway.

But not for their profit. Hell no.

The struggle between needing friends and not really wanting them continues.

There’s another witch in my coven who’s single, fun, smart and likes to do shit.

She’s been after me forever to hang out.

Never to do anything I was also interested in. And then the whole “everyone I love died” thing happened and I became a living ghost.

We ran into each other at a psychic thing down in Pompano. And she bugged me about my ghostliness.

I said I will say yes to the next thing.

She’s like Paddleboarding! And I said OK I lied.

Anyway I see the messages coming across Messenger. Lots of them.

And I at least had admitted earlier that I lied. I don’t open them.

I like her very much actually. I think we could be good friends.

I just … like my house more.

Honestly I don’t even feel all that bad about it.

Like, last weekend, I met a guy when I was out doing my single girl thing.

And he literally talked through the entire thing I went to.

I didn’t even post from/about it.

At some point he said wow you seem stressed out. I said I came here to hear THAT person speak, not you.

I wasn’t a total ass. After the thing was over, I hung out and it was mostly fine.

But then I wanted to meet the speaker.

I asked him to take a photo of me and the speaker. He THREW my phone at someone else and jumped BETWEEN us.

I was PISSED.

I ran to the other side of the speaker and got my damn photo.

It was a shitty photo anyway so it will never see the light of day.

But like damn.

Then he pulls this can you give me a ride home shit. I said no, but thanks for offering to ride with me.

I left him very confused with that one.

He may still be standing dazed in Delray for all I know or care.

Now, I’m not saying this chick would be like this. But I pay attention to my reflexes. Some people get a response in five seconds. Maybe five days or five years. Whenever I’m ready. And something in me isn’t ready.

And yes, I get why people give up on me. But I guess when you’ve had three people stalking your every move online for anywhere from seven to 30 years, it’s easy to assume everyone will be waiting if or when you’re ever ready.

Hint to the seven to 30 set: Don’t hold ya breath. Die mad. Be buried mad.

Two years ago last week, I visited my old apartment.

It comes up in my Memories now and man, it’s bittersweet.

Got a similar jolt the other day when I saw the address of a guy I’ve gone on some dates with.

His apartment number is 712.

And a lightning bolt shot through me for some reason when I saw that.

Last night after mostly finishing this recurring project from hell, I treated myself to playing dead on the couch.

And it hit me why 712 meant something to me.

It was the house number where I spent a great deal of my formative years.

I met JO when we were 10, but we really spent high school together.

Anyway guess who fell down the Google rabbit hole last night.

The house looks the same on Zillow. Though I might have screamed when I realized the pool was gone.

Fut the wuck?

Had a lot of fun times and wore a lot of cute swimsuits there.

Sat on that window seat a million times. Because I didn’t trust his waterbed. Lordt how cool that was then!

Mom always found cute clothes and swimwear for me in Lerner’s and the Newport News catalog. Heck I am still finding clothes she bought from back then with the tags on. Always saving it for something special that never came. Fashion Bug and Dot’s too. This paragraph is a fast-fashion time capsule.

Anyway, it looks like JO’s parents sold the house in 2016. Bought a new one across the street from him in 2017 in the state where he had moved to.

I love that for them. We may not be friends anymore, but they were my bonus family for a lot of years. I will always, always wish them the best.

The Google stuff wore out my already tired brain. But I did want to see how JO’s been voting these days. Since he was one of those who registered Republican when we were 18. And our idiot friend Frumper did the same.

Thankfully, JO is now a faithful, active Democrat. Good boy.

It was really the whole 712 of it all that sent me into Wonderland here.

But the whole “Orange president gets mad that no one attends his $45 million birthday party so he bombs Iran in an Adderall-fueled rage” really got me to thinking about JO.

Change the “N” to a “Q” and now it’s 1991 all over again.

JO turned 18 that December. I was worried sick that he’d be drafted. Shit, that conscription would come for me in 1992.

How he registered Republican after that, I’ll never know. That’s what cemented me going the opposite way. And never looking back.

Anyway. I wonder if anyone who doesn’t have anger issues goes down the Google hole about me.

My age and address are wrong on most sites.

And there’s no record of my Momma anywhere.

My grandparents appear to be my parents on every family tree type of site.

And apparently my email address is still the one I got in 1995 at college.

Of course, there are so many people with my name, maybe everyone thinks I’m the animal killer or the girl who went missing when we were teenagers. Or at least the software executive in Orlando.

I just hope any random Memory Lane strollers see my better photos and not the Kim Lardassian ones. I never mind being fat till I Google myself. Like, can the AI algos promote the less-fat ones, please?

It’s my cousin’s birthday.

And the three-year un-anniversary of Roe v Wade.

And this shit.

I got Mom’s urns back OTD last year. And Bella loved the flowers Liz sent us.

That’s enough for today. Where my least favorite person is demanding a meeting today because she promised someone else.

I pulled a her and said i am busy today but free as a bird first thing tomorrow. So she is pinging me every 10 minutes to whine that I am not available to provide my ideas on how I am going to take on this project and execute on it so she can cross it off her to do list.

Like maybe approve my employees’ expenses already? I make you wait half a day but you make them wait two months? How did resolving YOUR problems with it become MY problem?

GTFO, DTOM.

Now that’s some shit.

Anyone know where that fountain pic was from? I want to say Alexandria or Philly. Maybe my avid reader who was born in every town I’ve set foot in will know.

Not to be confused with Sia, my other Anastasia, who has been gone — gulp — is it 10 years this summer?!

No wonder her death hit me so hard. As she and my great-grandmother shared a name.

And those two ladies were just pure magic.

I don’t write much about Anna Banana. I called her Old Gram. As, in my childhood wisdom, I had a “Gram” and it was only natural that her mom should be “Old Gram.”

I got to thinking about Old Gram, the original OG, today.

Fell into a social media rabbit hole about the Catholic Church and I mentioned how she was excommunicated for leaving an abusive husband.

Immediately, some dude told me I’m an idiot and wrong because the church doesn’t excommunicate you for that.

I said, “By all means, please continue to mansplain my family to me.”

On the other side of the spectrum, a nice woman said oh that poor woman. How awful that had to have been for her.

I said you’re not kidding. She had three small children and made 10 cents an hour cleaning some doctor’s house in Squirrel Hill.

Mom had told me the doctor was cheap, too. And it was a damn mansion right near where Fred Rogers is buried.

In any event, it made me happy that someone would be so kind as to say warm, loving words about Old Gram.

I also told her, “What a badass she had to be, huh?”

I was thinking about the gall of that guy who basically called me a liar. I’m bored with idiots who have keyboards that are as dusty as their crotches.

And I decided to think about Old Gram instead.

I remember cooking with her. Simple things, as I was young. I just about killed her because I made her a hot dog and then a grilled cheese in the hot dog pan. Learned to wash every damn thing between uses with that episode.

I remember playing with Cabbage Patch dolls with her. And her listening to me sing at my Commodore 64K computer. And sitting on the porch with her at the projects.

I got to thinking, too, about how accepting my family was of Mom having me at 16.

My grandparents were 30 when they had her. But Old Gram would have had Gram at 19. I’m not sure of Uncle Joe’s or Vince’s ages, but my guess is Gram was the oldest. She always had that Lucy Van Pelt energy.

I can’t find Uncle Joe’s obituary to confirm he was younger. But I think I found Joe Sr.’s. If so, he passed in 1961. Interestingly, Joe Sr. and his granddaughter Dana died at age 55. So, Mom wasn’t the youngest when she passed.

Sorry, I get so off track when I’m trying not to do work.

I remember Old Gram whipping up Mom’s and my ice cream so it would be more like custard than whatever hard Breyer’s came out of the cardboard carton.

I remember her arthritic hands. Once pretty, from the rare photo of her from the 1940s that I saw. But one hand was permanently in a fist but as if her nails were too long to close into a proper fist.

“Her poor little hands,” I remember Mom saying. How she cleaned that stupid doctor’s house till she collapsed, six days a week, and for what?

Mom always told me not to let men steal my pretty. That must have been where the idea came from.

I wish I had more memories of Old Gram. I do remember those final years of her having a hospital bed in the dining room. And her passing in Jefferson Hospital. And how I was at peak asshole when it happened, just like I was when Mom was going.

Mom always said her people passed when she finally told the universe she’d had enough of all the pain and stress. She was careful to never say it about herself.

Oh! I remember Old Gram waving at me from her hospital bed with one finger from her little crooked hands. When it was time for visiting hours to be over.

She was so cute. So freaking cute. What a twinkle in her green eyes. Green eyes that Mom and I inherited.

Oh wow, I hadn’t thought of all this since I was 12. When she passed.

That little finger wave.

Goodness, I am so grateful for this surprise memory.

Man, it’s 40 years gone by and it makes me cry even now. How those little hands must have hurt but she was tired from the blood transfusions and could only wave and not talk.

Love you so much, Anna Banana. I hope you got to meet sweet Sia at some point. I’ll always love your shared name because of all the love you both shared with me.