Caterwauling

Because Fate saw that I was looking a little hungry, it decided to serve up a shit souffle. My best friend, who was supposed to be in D.C. today, was unable to get on the plane because she and her two small kids are sick.

She had left a VM for me a couple of days ago to tell me the bad news, but I couldn’t retrive the message. I felt like it was bad news. I knew she was the one who’d called, but as her visit was the one thing in life that was sort of keeping me going, I felt the rock in my stomach and knew not to ruin that particular day.

I’m going to give you one of about 4,000 reasons why this woman is the BEST best friend a girl can have. Her new plan is to come out here in May to help me move. (Seriously, only the world’s BEST best friend would travel 3,000 miles for that kind of odyssey! Of course, if she moves back here, I’ll return the favor.)

Perhaps the only reason I’m not on suicide watch at her inability to visit THIS time is that we’ve talked a half-dozen times since then, of course — not to mention that she’d trained her precious 2-year-old to call me to wish me a “Happy V.D., Aunt Dawn!” (ingenious!)

Alex is potty-training right now, and when she’s done with her toilet time, she announces, “The end!”

Well yesterday, she said those words as my friend was attending to her 6-month-old son. So she asked her daughter to stay still for just a second (which she didn’t) as she raced across the room to put her training pants on her. Then Alex said, “Uh oh! More!” So my friend scooped her up to drag her back to the potty, at which time she stepped in the pile of poo that the kid had deftly left on the floor.

Reason #752 that I don’t want to have kids. 😉 I just couldn’t possibly handle the glamour of it all.

Of course, I told her to train Alex when to say “the end” and when it’s more appropriate to say “to be continued. …”

This, to me, is a great lesson in punctuation. It exemplifies when you should use ellipsis points instead of an exclamation point. Or, like I said in Reason #752, when a period (get it?) is better than anything else at all. … 😉

What better way to ring in a new year than to watch the Caps beat the dayglo-orange off the Flyers in an intense shootout? Oh, yeah, hanging out with Ted, Nic and Victor as well as Ted’s family as we watched our boys whoop some ass on those “wuhter”-drinking figure skaters.

I may not root for the Flyers, but I still loves me my Philly boys!

I’M LATE, I’M LATE FOR A VERY IMPORTANT GAME

Oh Jeebus H, I’m such a freaking dork. I parked at a Metro station that I absolutely abhor because I didn’t think I had enough time to go to my favorite one, and that brought about the curse.

Nic had thoughtfully purchased the tickets and e-mailed us the PDFs. I know me — I lose shit. So I printed two tix and left them in my car. I even remembered to take one as I got out of my car (which was in the eleventy millionth spot away from said station).

So I went about catching my train, and I started racing up the escalator. Whereupon ….

My ticket was gone!

I looked up and down the escalator — no dice. Who could lose an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of paper?

That would be me.

So I got off the escalator and ran down the stairs. I stopped to see if the paper had landed on the escalator, but I didn’t see it. I knew I’d had the paper when I put my pass into the machine, so I went back there. No dice.

A very nice employee heard my story and let me out to go walk back to my car to see if it was on the way. Nope. But alas, I DID grab my spare copy (I love me for knowing what an IDIOT I can be) and went back to the Metro stop, whereupon the guard waved me through so I wouldn’t have to pay again.

Here’s the deal — I was more nervous that someone had come up behind me and STOLEN the ticket, because the stranger would be sittin’ with my friends and I would have been screwed.

So I trudged up the escalator yet another time. By this time, at least 20 minutes has passed. Wouldn’t you know it, as I stepped off, the paper lay right at the top, face-down and with a footprint on it?

I picked it up and laughed and laughed. Everyone on the platform looked at me strangely as I read it, crumpled it and tossed it. Oh, the hilarity I cause when I’m not even trying — I was quite glad that I would be the one sitting in my seat at the game and that I could stop worrying.

When I came home, the same guard was there and she recognized me immediately. She asked if I’d ever found my paper, and I explained that it was a ticket and that it had apparently ridden up the escalator without me. Go figure. She laughed heartily (at me) and said good, because that woulda been a cruddy way to kick off a new year. I agreed and wished her well and took off.

YOU CAN UNDRESS HER UP, BUT YOU CAN’T TAKE HER ANYWHERE

In any event, Victor learned why it’s best to just never take me in public.

He was very much into the game when I arrived, and he was sort of commenting to himself out loud about it. In any event, I’ve scared many a man in my life, and today was no exception.

Victor: “That’s a high stick.”
Me: (exclamation point forms over head) “A high stick? Heh. I like those!”
Victor: “I think I’m blushing.”

But wait, there’s more.

Announcer: “Please respect your neighbors and refrain from using foul language.”
Me: “Well, fuck me then!”
Victor: (repeats what I said to Ted. Turns back and says) “You’re shit out of luck.”

I’m sure the neighbors weren’t offended — we’re convinced that the row of non-English-speakers behind us were swearing in some sort of Eastern European dialect. 🙂

But my swearing never really ended. Later, as I was making a comment about something, Victor looked at me and said, “You just swore six times!”

Yup, I’m a lady. We’re all just lucky the Caps won, else the expletives woulda REALLY been flying!

D.C. IS DEFINITELY NOT A HOCKEY CITY

I’ve seen sporting events in a handful of cities. Like in Springfield, Ore., all folks have are the University of Oregon Ducks, and people go apeshit at their various games. And Pittsburgh, where I’m from — hoo boy, everyone loves them some of the Black and Gold. I mean, psychotically LOVES their teams.

Not to mention, we had Myron Cope as the color commentator for the Steelers, and then Mike Lange (with the Pens), who could really rile you up. I mean, we’re talking that these arenas and stadiums were on FIRE with fans going ballistic for their teams.

In D.C.? Meh. When the signs came on to make noise, to get louder, to fucking acknowledge that your heart is still beating, you got some half-assed “woo hoos” and that was as good as it gets. Like Nic said, though, D.C. isn’t a hockey town, but she says they do go nuts for their football.

Good lord, if THAT’S what gets this town excited, seriously, yikes. I only root for the ‘Skins when they’re playing New England or Dallas!

In any event, that pretty much ends all I know about sports. So I’d better get off my ass and start cleaning the place up to host the Carnival of the Recipes! Check back in a bit, friends — I’ve got more balls for you than a Wizards game (which, incidentally, are off my radar now that Michael Jordan’s gone). …

So I walked into Reagan National early Tuesday morning, luggage in tow, to the America West counter.

It was one of those rare occasions in which I wanted to deal with a real, live human at the ticket counter. But I suppose I should have defined human.

Anywho, I got into line — I was first, behind two people at the electronic ticket dispenser Because I had a minute, I grabbed my wallet and yanked out my driver’s license in one fluid motion. I say this because some jerkoff walked up to the side of the counter and got serviced RIGHT AWAY while I waited. Me? Not happy.

One of the machines opened up, and this little man who CLEARLY had short-man syndrome snarled at me to go to it already. So I lugged my bags up to it, whereupon it promptly told me that I couldn’t check in because you can only check in eight hours or fewer, prior to your flight. Seeing as though my flight was leaving in, oh, an HOUR, this was Not Good.

So I asked the Sniveling Little Shit to help me. He acted like I had just eaten his breakfast and stormed out to show me what I’d done wrong. Which was nothing because I’m not a goddamned moron, so he had to check me in himself, which took all of 60 seconds.

Meanwhile, a guy came up to the next machine and it gave him a whole different type of error. So when the Sniveling Little Shit snuck out from behind the big, bad counter, I didn’t really see him.

The thing is, I have this one suitcase that literally takes all of my might to lift. It’s for suits and stuff, and there’s so much hardware and so damn many zippers that the thing is heavy without any clothes in it. Shove in a few dozen yards of clothing, and yay carpal tunnel.

Anyway, I totally did not plan this, but when I gathered up all my strength and hoisted that big-ass suitcase into the air, I (accidentally, I promise!) HIT the Sniveling Little Shit and sent him FLYING across the aisle! Hah!

Oh, to see his legs going in opposite directions warmed my frosty little heart that day. I sort of choked out a half-assed, “Sorry!” before scooting away to hand over my bags to security.

All told, I wasn’t the ONLY one flying that day! 😉

Ordinarily, I’m not fond of Wednesdays. They tend to have a few dark clouds over them. Today, though, the one Big Thing that doesn’t always go easily, well, went splendidly. And for that, the horah was danced.

It’s just EVERYTHING ELSE that’s been crap.

I had my office door closed all day. I opted to not put on makeup because I got busy right away and, hell, why put on makeup for only a couple of hours at the end of the day?

I need to somehow write 5,000 words for my NaNoWriMo project. Like, tonight. Good news is that the deadline is midnight. Better news is that it’s midnight in a time zone that’s a few hours behind mine!

This morning, everything started going haywire, from cat antics to jamming my new vacuum cleaner with the cat leash to smoking up the house because of it. Then I ironed all sorts of clothes and not only wore the wrong shirt out of the house, but I also FORGOT my blazer that I’d planned to wear. Hence half the reason for hiding in the office all day.

But wait, there’s more.

So I cut the back of my thigh shaving. I didn’t bother putting on pantyhose until sometime around noonish, at which time I realized I’d bled all over my light-gray office chair. (And neither that stupid Tide stick nor those Shout wipes will do the trick, goddamn it.)

It was one of those days that I REALLY needed to go outside for some fresh air midday — whereupon I see I messed up my light-gray car seat. Hot damn.

At lunch, I got an eggnog latte (mmm) and a sammich. I also bought cat food, as the girls are starving. I also bought a sweet treat for the end of the workday, as that sugar rush is crucial. Well, guess who forgot the sweet treat in the car but who DID bring in a can of fucking cat food? Christ.

That would be the same girl who dropped her half-eaten focaccia sandwich on the floor that hasn’t been vacuumed since, um, APRIL. That would be “fuckaccia” in my world!

*waves goodbye to lunch, hello to bread and meat droppings all over the floor*

And you know how much I hate UPS, but really, I hate companies more that refuse to ship to P.O. Boxes. I have been waiting and WAITING for a product that I need to, oh, supplement my health, shall we say.

And because I hate the semantics of having to have UPS deliver it to my house (where I never AM) and then re-route my packages to the UPS office in my ‘hood where I have to stand in line 100 years and deal with snarky, cranky-ass employees, I had it sent to work.

Days have gone by, and no sign of the package. So I went to track it today, only to find that I never put a company name with the address and UPS wanted to send it back. So I had to call and beg for it to be redelivered for tomorrow. And the thing is? I blame no one but myself. I’m so accustomed to shipping shit TO MY FUCKING P.O. BOX that I didn’t think to type in the company name, just the street. *big sigh*

If it doesn’t come tomorrow, I am so totally blowing my brains out.

I’m sure there have been a thousand other irritants, but I’m getting really depressed, just reading about my day that isn’t even the slightest bit close to ending yet. Whee.

Subtitle: Ze pain! Ze PAIN!!!

This weekend, I helped my ailing mother and grandfather move into a lovely rented house high atop a hill. In sum, I:

That last one is my favorite. 😉 I’m sure there are more, but Mom has threatened to beat me (when she’s able to move her arms again) if I blog the move. Heh.

The house is so cute. I’m not embarrassed to pull up to it like I was with the last one. I am scared, though, that the move was too hard on my family — I was terrified to leave them.

They couldn’t thank me enough, but I told them I was just repaying Mom for that week we spent packing my shit to move from Mount Washington (Pittsburgh) to Virginia. Especially the night my smoked-glass coffee table top shattered into seventy billion pieces on the street at 3 a.m. (damn heat — it burst in my hands as I carried it).

As we were vacuuming (the street, yes) and sweeping the mess, the cops came — thinking we were on crystal meth and out of our minds. Well, the latter half was true, and they let us carry on. Whee.

I hate moving. And my own is coming up entirely too soon. …

Mom just called to tell me that our storage bin had been broken into, probably last night.

She’s devastated.

I am in my writing bubble, so life is all zen-like and shit. Which is probably good, because she was Freaking. The. Hell. Out.

We’ve moved a million times since I was a wee lass. We never owned a place, just rented. We’ve gone from the projects (back in the day, when they weren’t totally tragic) (oh, and like WOW, I’ve never admitted that, so holy shit and forget I said all that) to a duplex to a house to them being in a tiny townhouse and me not having a place to go if everything falls apart.

Which it damn near did.

But in any event, we had gorgeous, gorgeous things to put into this series of abodes. My grandmother? Impeccable taste. Simply wonderful. We didn’t have money, but we made sure to get the best that our meager money could buy when we were in need of something. Not to mention, the artsy stuff she created. God. Porcelain statues that she’d made for fun. Things that are all we really have left for her, save for my personality being a damn-near exact replica of hers.

In any event, the shit we could manage to fit into the storage space, well, there it was. Emphasis on WAS.

Sounds like it was an inside job, as to get out of the storage unit, you’d have to climb a fence. But with a $3,000, huge black-lacquer REFRIGERATOR on your back? Please.

I’m trying not to think about the family heirlooms that were destroyed and/or taken. She said nothing’s salvageable — whoever did it had a rocking-and-rolling good time destroying what little our family has to its name.

Fuckers.

But what I said to my mom is to be grateful that we’d finally gotten my grandfather’s guitar out of there. Thank god that it was the storage unit and not their apartment that was violated. Thank god they weren’t IN or NEAR it when it happened.

Everything else? We’ve been living without it for five years. Sad, sure. Tragic, no.

I’m trying not to think about what was lost or about the thugs who did it. Karma will anally rape them someday, no doubt. And we will be stronger and have even nicer things to replace the things my grandmother had tried to leave behind for us. Maybe someday, we won’t be dumb enough to leave them in storage but, rather, I’ll get a nice place that we can call home permanently.

Because long-term is a word we’ve never really known — in a good sense, anyway. But it’s high time that changed.

Like I told Mom, now she can quit paying all that damn money and be so stressed out by all the shit — she can pick up and move at a moment’s notice, which is what she’s always wanted to be able to do.

I’m not sure when I got so rational, but maybe my blood-pressure medication is finally working. 😉

Ah, the ever-quoteworthy “Grey’s Anatomy” rides again. …

There comes a time in one’s life when she realizes that she has spent so much time trying to save the world or, at least, the worlds of those around her. But, while she wasn’t looking, she forgot to take care of herself. And the wear-and-tear eventually starts to show.

For me, that day was yesterday.

And that time in one’s life? My 30s — the time when all of my friends have told me that your body changes so much that your mind needs to follow suit.

For me, years of overachieving and now oceans of guilt over not being as far ahead of the game as I planned to be or, hell, as I used to be have officially taken their toll.

I’m mad at myself for falling behind — and I’m weary at all the life events that I’ve missed out on as well. But I’m aware of all the steps that I skipped in the process, and maybe this is my time to go back and learn what I didn’t know then. And to make things right.

That said, it’s pretty bad when you’re in with your new physician for 10 minutes and you’re being shoved out the door with a purse full of meds and a list of workups they want to do because their diagnosis is that you’ve officially driven yourself nuts. Ha.

I’ll be fine soon enough. In the meantime, this is a grand opportunity to make a new beginning — time to delete all the 3,000 e-mails I had the best intentions of answering but never seem to get around to doing. Time to excavate/clean/pack the house, go on vacation, do that writing that always makes me happy, find my dream apartment, dust off the elliptical — and do it. Motion begets momentum.

Outstanding issues make me nervous and render me ineffective. I think that’s why I’ve become brilliant — nay, addicted — to multitasking. Because being super-busy is a wonderful distraction from noticing all that remains unresolved.

When you’re clinging to a life preserver, you wonder why you’ve held everyone in your life at arm’s length for so long — why you’ve been so afraid of really, truly being touched in every way possible. How you can offer up every single part of yourself to anyone to asks, just as long as they don’t stay the night. How you’re taken aback when someone wants to corrode those walls — how you’re even more stunned when you find yourself being anything but opposed to the idea.

I’ve spent my life being a book-smart overachiever. But whether it was my intention or not, I always wanted to fix the people and things around me — all the while letting myself collapse with nary a hint of wanting to preserve me.

For the first time in my life, I’m going to need help. I’m going to ask for it and even take it. And if all you can do is just love me, that could very well be what I’ve needed all along to help me to heal.

Mom went to the doctor the other day — she hasn’t been to one in a hundred years, so she’s rusty, to say the least.

She’s also blonde.

She was telling me about the difficulties she was having, trying to crawl up on the examining table — she was totally confused. I still don’t understand why, but OK, she’s Mom. I know not to question these things. 😉

And maybe I do have a bit of her psychic ability, because when she told me she was given a gown to wear, I said, “Mom, please say you put the opening in the BACK.”

*silence*

*hysterical laughter*

“Why didn’t you TELL me that BEFORE the appointment?!?!”

Apparently the doctor walked in and wondered what exactly she was SMOKING before she came in to the appointment. 🙂 Her friend had also advised her not to wear scandalous underwear, which she did anyway, and the Good Doctor got a nice view of that, too. Which he appreciated.

One other story: Mom never goes to the doctor (it’s a lack-of-coverage thing, as sainthood — i.e., caring for elderly parents — doesn’t earn you any care of your own). The only time she ever crosses a physician’s path is when she’s dating one. Which the Good Doctor was NOT trying to discern when he asked:

“Are you seeing any other doctors professionally?” (i.e., for other problems.)

To which, she said:

“Nope, but I’m seeing one rather unprofessionally!”

Scared the hell outta him.

She makes me so proud. 😉

Filed under: Sometimes I can’t figure out how we’re related. Other times, how could there ever be any doubt?

Katie Holmes is pregnant?!?! Aren’t we taking this fag hag thing to the extreme a bit?

This entry probably belongs on Maddie’s page, but we could use some light reading over here, and Kadi’s antics can provide just that kind of amusement for you at my expense. 😉

Some days, I feel like Jon’s character with his Garfield and Odie. Else I am Tom and Jerry’s owner. Either way, for as much as my pets hate each other, they love to collaborate to foil me, time and again.

Shining example:

I let the girls hang out on our second-floor balcony all the time. Mostly it’s because Maddie has a shit fetish and likes to drag her butt all around the house, sending me morse-code-type messages to buy new food or scoop the box or something like that. As I am often in olfactory hell, I like to have the windows/doors open to air out the place. (Note that I have eight — EIGHT — plug-in air fresheners and four cans of Febreze Air Effects.) Thus, the kids play outside.

They love it.

Kadi, however, is not a pure housecat like Maddie. At least one of Kadi’s parents was feral, which means that I cannot fully break her of her wild ways and turn her into a domestic priss like her big sister, who couldn’t give a shit (ha! pun!) about anything other than flopping on her back and snoozing the day away.

That said, Kadi loves bugs. Bugs, bugs, bugs. She catches ’em, kills ’em and brings ’em to Mommy. Which would be me. Ewww.

I don’t have a problem with dead bugs — that’s the way I like them. And that’s why the good lord invented the dustbuster — for when my proud child likes to bring in her treasures.

In any event, Maddie is one furry motherfucker and she pukes all the goddamned time because she is always full-o-hairballs. So I am very strict about what she eats because I was not born to scrub carpets (although, in my house, you’d never know that!).

That said, I saw Maddie sitting inside the sliding-glass door last night, chewing on something. As I had fed them dinner long ago and it was NOT anything she could hold between her paws, I got suspicious. I went up to her, and she freaked out and thumped her plus-sized puss ass behind one of my chairs.

The kid’s almost 10 years old and is 20 pounds — seriously, I don’t have to make much of an effort to catch her. Usually, anyway.

So I went to get a better look at what was in her mouth (a big old BUG) and I decided to lunge for it and extract it from her. But in a RARE burst of energy, she hightailed it under the dining room table, en route to the bedroom.

What would normally have been a clear shot at catching her was FOILED by her sister Kadi, who is lightning-fast and also who managed to jump onto the glass (*sigh*) dining-room table. This is where Kadi expertly and deftly knocked a bottle of Febreze onto the floor … AT MY FEET … at exactly the moment I was about to grab her big sister.

Yes, I fell ass over teacups because my baby cat somehow threw an obstacle at my feet to prevent me from catching my fat cat.

Oh, the humanity.

I wasn’t injured — I am klutzy and fall all the time, so I have gotten pretty graceful about catching myself throughout the years. I thought it was pretty funny, actually — until Kadi came up to check on me and decided to flatulate in my face.

The End. (In more ways than one!)