I’ve tended toward being a loner all of my life. Despite periods of time in my youth where I longed to be “popular” and have scads of catty girls clamor for my disdainful attentions, the reality is I like having a scant handful of faithful friends rather than an endless supply of gossipy acquaintances.
People in groups exhaust me. I’m shy to the point of being thought mute when I first meet someone new. I have what can only be termed a phobia about the phone. I also enjoy my own company, and I’m happy to spend a day alone – it never bothered me to say “Table for one, please.”
Still, once I attach to someone, I’m like a dog. I will literally slog through shit to take care of the friends I did make. And it seemed to happen naturally enough. I’d meet someone and we’d click, and it was like I had a sister.
Samantha* was like that too. I met her shortly after I started dating my boyfriend (now my husband), because she was the wife of one of his friends. While Samantha was everything I was not, namely a former head cheerleader, model, and picture-perfect mother of two girls with a comfortable suburban life, something between us clicked – just like that – and we became nearly inseparable. We went out to clubs and danced until our feet fell off. We just hung out at her house and swam and did crafts and kid-stuff with her two girls. She and I took a girls’ weekend together in some hellhole in Mexico and drank too much tequila, braved a topless beach and got horrible sunburns (the former is what I blame on the latter two – thank God the resort was nearly deserted except for that one creepy guy whom we had to dodge later – but that’s a story for another day).
Samantha’s girls adored me, and me them (hi, yes, I was substituting my own relinquished child with my friend’s two daughters). I baby-sat for free when she and her husband wanted a date night. During a rocky period in her marriage, I stayed with the girls every Friday night until she got home. When she had to go out of town, they came to me for the weekend. We did holidays together.
Fast-forward a few years, and some cracks began to show in our perfect friendship. Sam was one of those people who needed relentless cheerleading – she constantly needed to hear how beautiful she was, what a good mom she was, how she always put herself last (snort), how she was the most dedicated Girl Scout leader, class mom, whatever. She would frequently abandon me for this girl or that – only to come back whenever New BFF put her nose out of joint and act as though nothing had happened. During one of those times, when she was palling around with a fellow model, some psychotic half-wit named Marie, and I hadn’t heard from her in a week, she called me for a short-notice weekend babysitting gig; I was scheduled for dental surgery that Friday and told her no. She got snippy. I stood my ground. She called her mother, I spent the weekend zonked out on pain pills, and we didn’t talk for another week, then made a kind of uneasy peace where we both pretended she hadn’t acted like a class-A bitch about the whole thing. Predictably, Marie failed to live up to the standards of cheerleading expected of her, and I was back in the top slot. This happened a couple more times over the years.
By this time, my fiance had tired of the cycle of things with Sam and began asking me what, exactly, I was getting out of the relationship. Privately, I was beginning to wonder the same thing, but I wasn’t ready to let go just yet (I told you I was like a dog – stupid loyal – you had to kick me a thousand times before I’d stop running up to lick your hand).
So, when I got engaged, the second phrase out of my mouth after “Yes!” to my future husband was “Be my Maid of Honor?” to Sam.
But things continued to head downhill and they would never really be the same. She made a large production (hysterical calls resulting in a hurried move) out of leaving her husband “for good” and then began seeing her boss at work immediately. Then back with the ex. Then not. It got dizzying. I was annoyed by her manufactured drama, for as surely as she swore she was an innocent victim, she stirred up the shit often enough.
She claimed she felt us drifting apart and wanted to mend fences, and for a time, it seemed like that might come to pass.
But it didn’t. It couldn’t. Our last straw came during a party where everyone had had a little too much to drink, and she got in my face screaming vicious, nasty things at me over some imaginary transgression, which was really the culmination of the crumbling of our friendship – nothing more than a pretty castle in the air.
I was devastated even though I had seen it coming. I never expected to be so cruelly treated by someone who claimed to be my friend. I cried for days, my husband grimly holding me while I exorcised her, as much as possible, from my wounded little heart.
I never called her again.
Over the years since then, we have seen one another a handful of times. We treat each other with carefully polite smiles, pretending away the ugly past. Her children, the babies I once knew, have grown up into young women themselves. I see them slightly more often than I see Sam. I still love them, and I would never denounce their mother to them. So I ask, I send my best, I smile.
Deep down, I miss and mourn the woman and mother and friend I first knew. Since that awful night, I have cautiously held myself farther aloof than I ever did back then. The friendly dog is still within me, but she was kicked once too often, and I guard my heart now, rather than go running with tail wagging at the first friendly overture.
Certainly, it has kept me from being hurt like that again. I am safe in my small world. Yet lately it has also seemed rather lonely. Oh, I have you, My Internet – and I mean that with the genuine care it deserves, for my online friends are as real and cherished as any I’ve made with actual face time. It’s just really hard to have you guys over for coffee or wine. OK, mostly wine, but you get me.
Don’t feel like you have to gush over me; I’m hardly going to die alone in a shoebox-sized apartment surrounded by my own feces and cats. I have people I talk to every day at work, and they are nice people, we chit-chat and sometimes have lunch…but there is no one I have to talk to or my day feels incomplete, there are no secrets and inside jokes and that sisterly togetherness that my husband just can’t provide. I mean he’s a trooper, but really, trying to go shopping with the man is painful for both of us.
I just miss having a Best, and I think it may be time to climb out of my Internet-powered tower and brave the wilds of face-to-face friendship once again.
So.
Anyone moving to Vegas soon?
*Like all my faces from the past, “Samantha” is not her real name. Nobody needs to recognize their regrettable past history (colored by my personal memory and perspective) on my semi-anonymous blog with their real names attached.
Yes, I know we covered misogyny somwhat when I debuted this feature, but guess what? On Mad Ave., it’s always hip to hate on bitches!
Ladies, you all know that you’re never, ever going to be as smart as a man, as capaable as a man, or as attractive as any man, especially your husband or boyfriend, feels you ought to be. It’s time to face facts – you suck. But we’re here to help you suck less (except when it counts, wink wink, nudge, nudge, saynomore):
Let’s talk about your coffee choices. Stupid girl, you bought the wrong kind! Time to take your lumps:
That’s right, ladies – get the wrong brand of coffee and WOE BE UNTO YOU. You deserve that beating! You failed to provide the freshest cup ever so YOU FAIL AT LIFE. Don’t even get me started on last night’s meatloaf.
Holy living hell. I mean, Jesus, I know the patriarchy is still alive and well nowadays (Hi, AskMen.com! Also known as AssMen.com!) – but really? Beating one’s wife was once not only considered acceptable advertising for coffee, I’m sure the Real Life Mad Men considered it a very amusing joke. She doesn’t deliver the perfect cuppa joe and I’ll smack her around! Ha ha! Now that’s funny right there! “Say, honey, isn’t this just a hoot? Careful, I might spank you if my toast gets burned one morning! Ha ha!” And any humorless dried up old maid who didn’t titter along was just No! Fun! At! All! No wonder she’s here alone.
Once you finally get the coffee right and shoo your devoted mate out the door (rubbing your bruises, ostensibly), goodness knows a girl’s work is never done:
It’s time to prove you’re not a scatterbrain by showing off your whitest whites! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? Don’t you WANT to be “his kind of girl”?
Then it’s time to have a light breakfast and clean up around the rest of the house:
Yes, girls, it’s true – The harder a wife works, the cuter she looks! Because remember, your job is to always appear attractive, desirable, and roughly 18 years old, but not slutty. No, you need to be slutty and wholesome. And a good housecleaner. And relentlessly cheerful. THIS CEREAL CAN DO ALL THAT FOR YOU! It’s your duty! Look at poor Mr. Jones – all tuckered out at closing time! YOU HAVE TO BE HAPPY, DAMN YOU!
Keeping that in mind, PMS is never an excuse not to be at your Stepford Best!
DON’T DRIVE YOUR MAN AWAY WITH YOUR STUPID PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL ILLS! Midol can help! It’s your job to “be the you he likes”! Screw what you need – LOVE MEANS NEVER SAYING I’M BLEEDING, CRAMPING, AND PISSED. Remember, if you aren’t perfect in every way, it’s his right to leave you at any time, missy.
Oh, there are more, so much more, but after this post, I really think I need a Nembutal suppository. Cheers, Internet – and never forget that coffee is JUST THAT IMPORTANT.
Before we begin this week’s installment, I’d like to propose a moment of silence for my hard drive, which passed away in a blaze of glory last Monday evening. Just for Erin’s husband, let me show you what happens when one’s hard drive is peed into:
Now you know. Urine + delicate electronics = molten nuclear-grade diasaster. I had actually turned on the computer to try and reinstall Windows, but once the office filled with acrid smoke and the second story smelled like I was roasting Barbie on a spit, I quickly saw that reinstallation of anything was not to be in my hard drive’s future and yanked the smoldering wreck of it before it could do any further damage. As a brief and irritated aside, hubs showed his computer guy the remains of the mess and IT Dude’s chief reaction seemed to be amazement that I could remove the cover of the PC and successfully extract a plug-n-play component without step-by-step direction and supervision. Then again, seeing as our kid peed in the computer he probably wondered at the wisdom of any of us handling electrical devices.
All of this also means I am without technology at my house, which, in case you’re wondering, sucks donkey butt. So I’m not ignoring you, my friends on Blogger, nor my friends who have e-mailed me urgent requests for rides to heart surgery, I simply cannot get to you right now. It’s not you. It’s me, my son of the wayward toileting habits, and my empty shell of a PC.
Moving on to Time Warp Thursday Wednesday! You know, I wondered if I’d be able to keep this up because I normally have the attention span of an absentminded gerbil, but there is really such a wealth of god-awful ads out there from years gone by that I could probably devote my blog to it exclusively for the next 5 years and not scratch the surface. So you’re getting two episodes this week, to make up for my neglect. Today, let’s delve into the bizarre world of ill-conceived advertising involving children, shall we?
Besides the odd, kewpie-doll helmet of hair and the strange, adult looking eyes of this supposedly cherubic infant, I really, really have to wonder what, exactly, is IN Num-Zit. Look at the demented grin on little junior’s face. I have to suspect that Num-Zit is mostly full of bourbon. Or perhaps gin. Maybe 151. “Recommended by many baby care authorities!” it boasts…by the same doctors who used to smoke while examining patients, after their 3 martini lunches, I’m sure. Let’s look at some more excellent remedies from days gone by.
I…my God. Are you seriously telling me that they used to routinely prescribe barbituates for kids? NO FUCKING WAY. Well, at least this explains that idiotic old adage “Children should be seen and not heard”, huh? Take a look at little Junior up in the ad – he looks like he just came back from a Grateful Dead concert. He’ll be staring at his right thumb for hours, absorbed in the pretty colors – no talking from him, by God. Just ignore the maniacal giggling and the drooling. That’s NORMAL. Talk about a spoonful of sugar making the medicine go down. Only this one’s got a spoonful of magic fairy dust.
And if Junior objects to taking the magic elixir? Why, we have another HANDY OPTION AVAILABLE!
Look closely, Grasshopper…that’s right, Nembutal, everyone’s favorite babysitter, is now available in SUPPOSITORIES! Yes, if your little angel doesn’t like the taste of the Great! Tasting! Barbituate! ELIXIR! you now have the option of cramming the dose right up their bottoms! “IT TAKES THE MAGIC ELIXIR OR ELSE IT GETS THE SUPPOSITORIES AGAIN.”
Look at the poor little girl in this ad – do you suppose she’s thinking to herself “I should have just taken the damned elixir” or “I hope Mommy got the smallest size this time”? Probably both.
Well now. Next to those last two horrors, this next ad seems practically benign:
Listen up, Mommies! We have conducted LABORATORY TESTS that show that if you don’t give your baby COLA (a health drink – providing essential sugars!) practically from birth, your tot is doomed to grow up being that awkward, pimply uber-dork who never gets to go to the Prom and is stuffed into his locker every Senior Ditch Day EVEN YEARS AFTER HIS OWN GRADUATION. So take it from us! The Soda Pop Council That Is Completely Unbiased! Babies need SODA, not breast milk or even the more sterile, healthful, better alternative of formula – WHY ARE YOU STILL SITTING THERE? DON’T YOU CARE ABOUT BABIES? For the love of God – think of the children.
Boggles the mind, doesn’t? We were and are a nation of simpletons. Then again, after all that Nembutal, perhaps the claim of soda’s “personality boosting” qualities might actually be true.
Once you’ve given your kids downers (It was for medicinal purposes, bitches!) and then sugar-and-caffeinated them back to the land of the semi-living, it’s time for play. How about this?
Ooops! My mistake! Iver Johnson Arms & Cycle Works of Firchburg Mass. USA is CAREFUL to point out that their revolvers “are not toys – they shoot straight and KILL!” This is nicely juxtaposed with the little tot in bed with her dolly, looking for all the world like she’s loading the revolver and piping up sweetly “Papa says they can’t hurt us!”. Everyone together now – Aww.
When I look at this ad I feel like I must have fallen down some bizarre rabbit hole – I mean what the bloody hell? Am I hallucinating? This is an ad with the word “kill” in it…picturing a child playing with a gun in bed. Then I remember – it’s probably just the Nembutal making me see leprechauns again.
See you tomorrow, Internet! Bring your Vibra-Bras!
Some Days, You Either Laugh Or You Scream…And Once You Start Screaming, It’s So Hard To Stop.
What a weekend.
I mentioned that Badger has discovered his penis can be used as a small fire hose recently, and also that he enjoys playing the educational games on PBSkids and Noggin.com. What do these things have in common, you ask? Let me tell you, young grasshopper. Through an unfortunate design choice by Dell (those assholes), there is an opening in the front of our PC whereby a large mesh screen is all that separates the delicate innards from the cruel outside world.
Honestly, until yesterday, I never gave it much thought.
That was before Badger came running to tell me, mere minutes after I’d set him up with the Yo Gabba Gabba! gang, “Mommy! Computer’s broken!” Sure enough, there was a bizarre looking BSoD. I shut down the PC and waited, then tried to reboot. “No boot device detected”, my miserable PC informed me. I tried again, feeling that sick emptiness in the pit of my stomach which always signifies “You are going to be making major repairs to something expensive soon!”
Suddenly, I noticed that there was…liquid…near the mesh opening. Also, that there was a sort of sparking sound (never good), and an ozone-y smell (also never really good).
“Badger,” I asked slowly, trying not to scream the walls down even though I already knew the answer, “Did you pee in the computer?”
“No!” He replied emphatically, while nodding his head and looking wary, as well he might, because I probably resembled Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest right at the point where she freaked out about the wire hangers and doused her daughter in Comet.
“Badger,” I said again, grinding my teeth so hard I felt my fillings begin to protest, “You need to tell me the truth. Did you pee in the computer?”
“I don’t know!” He shouted, falling back on the time-honored tradition of children who’ve done incredibly dumb-ass things of developing amnesia, bursting into tears and fleeing the scene. Well, gentle readers, you already know what happened – my son had indeed taken a leak inside our PC. I turned it off because ALARMING SPARKING NOISES, dumped out the pee, and hoped for the best. The really awesome part was Badger slinking back upstairs later and asking hopefully “I play on the computer, Mom?”, to which I explained, in a less than patient tone, “The computer is broken because YOU USED IT AS A TOILET.”
This morning, after 12 hours of drying out? Nothin’. “No boot device detected!” my computer insisted sullenly, proably adding to itself “Because your 3 year old pissed on my brains, you dumb bitch!” Oh well, at least there’s no more sparking. I mean, I joked about setting my own house on fire, but you all know I didn’t mean it. Besides the thick, choking smoke and losing all our posessions and being homeless and all, how humiliating would it be to see your burned out home up on the news along with the report “Fire investigators suspect pee in the computer started the blaze”? Awkward.
I’m lucky enough to have a good contact at work for PC issues, so I called my friend S. today and gave him the story. In between laughing so hard at me that he was barely coherent, he advised me to try and reinstall Windows, but that I’d probably need a new hard drive. And maybe a Motherboard. Super!
Hey, I told myself, I’ve been angling for a laptop forever, maybe this is my chance. But Badger ain’t gettin’ within 15 feet of it. He has also lost computer privileges for quite some time, assuming I get the old PC up and running.
To top the weekend off, hubs decided yesterday was a great day to give Badger a haircut. This normally should involve sedation via dart gun, but instead I held Badger while hubs attempted to clipper him like a sheep-shearer. Problem here was , the attachment? Broke. So hubs? Mowed a 3 inch strip of bald into my boy’s beautiful wheat-blond head. Then Badger? Screamed so hard I thought he was having an embolism. So we had to release him, half shorn on one side and with a Chernobyl strip on the other. He looked kind of like Gary Oldman in The Fifth Element at that point.
Then hubs said, over Badger’s shrieks of rage, “Let’s go out to lunch!” And that’s when I shot him, Your Honor.
In case you’re wondering, later I made hubs hold Badger while I sheared him with the next shorter attachment and now the strip of bald is only quite ugly instead of holy hell what did they do to that poor kid? Thank GOD he’s too little to notice or care. Because if he were just a year or so older, SCARRED FOR LIFE.
I hope you had a better weekend, Internet. Now make mommy a martini and bring her a Xanax.
I don’t know about you guys, but I love me some misogynistic, wack-a-doodle vintage advertising for a laugh. Mimi over at Mommybrained does this with some regularity – and a high degree of genius (check out the Hertz ad. You’ll want to Hertz them bad.). She inspired me to hit up Google and see what I could some up with for crazy, creepy and hilarious ads on my own for my new semi-regular feature here: Time Warp Thursdays!
Today’s Episode: “Feminine Products” Gone Horribly Wrong
In our first swell ad, the makers of Kotex have tied a seemingly unrelated series of nifty events in the average repressed future housewife’s life to…maxi-pads. Planning a blind date for your BFF? Don’t forget that she likes Photography…and sedatives. And remember, for “problem time” – trust Kotex! Ha ha! Your period is JUST LIKE GOING ON A BLIND DATE. Uncomfortable, awkward, messy and sometimes painful. At least they got that part right.
Incidentally, what’s up with the girl in the Barber chair? Is she getting a chip implanted under her hair to further stifle her individuality? “Trust me, honey, I’m a barber. You don’t want to think for yourself! Now be good and your daddy will buy you a new girdle when we’re all done.”
Moving on to more evolved times, let’s explore the world of Pursettes:
I…I don’t even know where to begin on this one, except LUBRICATED TIP. On a TAMPON. No! It gets better. Look below where it says “Pursettes are ‘medically-correct’ ; the lubricated tip makes insertion easier than ever.” OMFG – it seriously reads like cheesy porn. I started snickering like Beavis & Butt-Head when I read this monstrosity. “You said lubricated tip. Heh heh. Heh. Lubricated. Heh heh heh.”
Also, what exactly did they mean by “medically-correct” ? Were previous incarnations of tampons medically incorrect? Did they contain radium? Were they made of fiberglass? Did they make your uterus shrivel and rot? I need to know! I could be using the incorrect ones!
I had almost composed myself when I scanned down and noticed the box for the “revolutionary” Pursettes…look at the logo. Look. Tell me that’s NOT a tiny penis! Go on. I know you see it too.
Well, once you’ve started down the road to burning in hell with your lubricated tip tampons, you might as well go all the way, dirty girl, so here’s our next astonishingly bizarre product:
It’s a vibrating bra! Because today’s fashions call for no bra – and sometimes no tops! Ha ha! It’s awesome to be liberated, girls! Except for you droopy-boobed broads, you all still suck and no one will ever love you. Lucky for you, the Vibra-Bra (United States Government Patent Applied For, potential copycat bitches) will help bring new elasticity to your flaccid ligaments. You MAY NEVER HAVE TO WEAR A BRA AGAIN!
I am dying here. Are you kidding me? This would probably be the ONLY bra I’d ever truly enjoy wearing! After all, “the vibrating action eases tension, relaxes, and soothes” – I’ll bet it does. Look at the chick in picture 2 – she looks like she bought four or five of these suckers and is Vibra-Bra-ing her way to her own personal version of the promised land. “Mmmm. Vibra-Bra, I love you!”
I can just picture her husband hollering up the stairs, “Gertie? I can’t seem to get the CBS Evening News to come in. Something’s making the signal all fuzzy. Hon? Are you up there?”
Well. I can’t speak for the rest of you, but after those last two trips down memory lane, I could use one of these:
Lung Cancer – now in designer prints! Also, with menthol! Die faster! But look better doing it!
Seriously. It’s a fucking miracle any of our mothers made it out alive, isn’t it? Which makes me wonder – what are people going to say about OUR ads 50 years from now? I’m thinking the penis enhancement pills will be worth an even bigger laugh then. I’m sure by then replacement penises will be a dime a dozen.
My son, my precious child, who by turns can be darling or devilish…your childhood slips away like melting snow. I failed at your baby book long ago, I have nearly four years’ worth of scrapping to do before your scrapbook is presentable…but I want to hold a few things, sift through them in the years to come like pretty pieces of ocean glass.
I want to remember how you belly-laughed when you found the falling letters game from Word World. I have to admit the letters bonking that silly little duck in the head were pretty hilarious.
I want to forever see you in my mind’s eye, leaping fearlessly off the side of the pool to your daddy, coming up triumphantly to announce “I’m a fish!” And you are – because we can barely keep up with you as you launch yourself underwater, paddling and trusting that we’ll be there to bring you up if you flounder. I suspect you’ll be swimming independently by summer’s end (though we’re still signing you up for swim lessons).
I want to feel the lanky weight of you in my lap as we read “Click, Clack, Moo” and “Goodnight Gorilla” over and over. And over. I want you to slow me down by saying “Mommy, wait!” as you use your own fingers to point to each word as I read it, memorizing, learning, soaking in the stories you love. I want to remember that the rather inane sound effects and observations I made up to go along with the minimalist verbiage in “Goodnight Gorilla” charmed you so much that they became innate to the story for you, and now you repeat them to me.
In the years to come, please let me recall that your favorite expression of disgust, frustration or dismay (once I broke you of “Shit!” – oops) was “Oh Thunderbugs!”, which obviously came from some Noggin show but which is so much more endearing coming from you in your sweet voice.
You greet me in the mornings and at night with open arms and a joyful “Give me a biiiig hug!” You wrap your arms and legs around me and squeeze so tight, hugging with your whole body. You kiss my boo-boos and say “Aw, it’s OK, Mommy.” Let me keep that.
Please, I need to remember that you called brownies “chocolate brown” and you’re learning to bargain for ice cream with chocolate by eating 5 more bites of pasta, counting as you eat them.
I hear your little voice singing the alphabet song and twinkle twinkle as you soothe yourself to sleep. In the years to come, there will be best friends who take my place as your Most Favorite Ever (sorry Daddy, you’re a close second, but I’m The Mommy), there will be sports and school and fights over clothing styles and loud music and yelling and forbidden parties and groundings and girls to make you feel like I am alternately the The Queen Of The Ogres and The Queen Of The Embarrassing Idiots.
Through it all, I will likely still sneak into your room at night and brush the hair back from my man-child’s eyes, wonder where the years went, and sneak quietly back out before the surly morning arrives again with a fresh round of eye-rolling.
And I’ll keep your battered copy of “Goodnight Gorilla” forever.
First, to everyone who sent me kind thoughts about my geriatric cat – thank you so much. I love you all. She’s out of her ridiculously expensive cat hospital and doing better, for someone with about 30% kidney function. Did I mention I have to give her IV fluids every day? For the rest of her life? I do. She’s worth it. She doesn’t like me much for it, but that’s the breaks when you’re a thousand cat years old.
Now. Check out these two slideshows featuring Seattle area fire fighters who are vying for a spot on a fire fighter calendar – mostly guys, but there are hot fire girls too. Pun absolutely intended.
I think I need a cold shower. Or an extinguisher. Definitely some mouth-to-mouth.
Yes, I realize it’s sexist and objectifying and that fire fighters are real people doing a very dangerous job and that I should not be so shallow.
But…damn.
Number 59 in the photo shoot slideshow is my favorite. Who would you consider burning your own house down for, Internet?
This has been a bad year for animals around Casa Coco. First the fish. Now the cats. I am the Angel of Animal Death.
My remaining two cats are the Methuselahs of the feline world, at 16 and 17, respectively. I’m sure there are older cats somewhere, probably in museums…wrapped in wee mummy bandages…residing in tiny sarcophagi next to the flaking remains of their ancient worshippers staff members owners. But mine are still alive and they’re pretty damn old. Like a hundred and ten, in modified animal years. Old.
You know what that means?
No, it doesn’t mean Al Roker wants to interview them and give them birthday hats and kiss their furry cheeks live on whatever Morning Show he’s haunting these days. It means they get old lady ailments. Like thyroid disease and heart disease and chronic kidney disease. All at once. Just like one of the old girls presented me with today. She’s historically been my Diva girl, the pretty one with the silky coat and the flowing, fluffy tail that she preens and keeps meticulously groomed. She’s also not the sharpest tool in the shed, following us around sometimes for hours, wanting for nothing (I always check) yet meowing loudly in an apparent conversation about whatever is going on in that furry little skull. Patting and scratching and toys don’t stop her. She’ll have her say, damn you. Even at 3 AM.
Lately, she hasn’t said much. I didn’t think much of it because I’m busy trying to keep Badger from peeing in the planters and his toys and his cereal bowls rather than the toilet (Yes, he’s discovered he can aim that penis at anything he likes. Boys.) Yesterday, I came home to a greasy-coated cat with runny eyes like she’d been drinking cheap gin for years with no end in sight. Craptastic. I called the vet and described what I thought was an eye infection. Bring her in, they said. You know how that goes. After two hundred dollars worth of tests, our options are 1. hospitalization, to the tune of some $600 MORE, plus meds and what have you 2. Euthanization, to the tune of a couple hundred dollars more. or 3. Do nothing and watch my poor cat slowly die, to the tune of irreparably shredding my soul into tiny bits and so let’s just forget option 3 would even be a possibility in anyone’s world.
Of course, someone is probably going to jump in here and tell me that it’s a cat, and the logical choice is euthanizing her because it’s a fucking cat. A cat. Not a kid. Not a person. Which is logical, you know, so I’m not going to jump on anyone who says that (unless it’s a troll who just wants to nastily tell me I’m a dumbass for caring about my cat, in which case, my response will be something that starts with “F” and ends with “you”). Eight hundred dollars buys a lot of macaroni and lip gloss. She’s an old cat, she’s had a long life.
The problem is, she isn’t terminal. Yet. She isn’t in agonizing pain. Oh, she feels like crap so she let herself go a bit – but hell, I do that every Saturday. I’d feel a little put out if hubs decided to off me for not washing my hair and dolling up once a week. Or twice a week. Whatever. Anyway. The kidneys are chronic, and there’s no cure, but there’s a good chance the treatment will help and give her anywhere from several months to several years. I may have to give her fluids via injection for a while, or maybe not. She’ll probably need thyroid meds, for as long as she lives. And special food that - surprise! – you can only get at the vet. Still, these things are all within the realm of my skill set. It hits our budget, but we can manage. I see a lot of PB & J in my lunch and a lot more scrimping other places. Not exactly a crisis.
Then there’s the fact that, while I abhor the idea of treating pets as really hairy people, and dressing them in idiotic clothes, and taking them to the fucking grocery store in small handbags, once upon a time, when my life sucked so bad that I literally had to look for a reason not to step into traffic every day, these cats were that reason, more often than not. It sounds odd now, but yeah, some days the idea that no one would take care of my cats was all that kept me breathing. When I didn’t have a friend in the world, there they were. Always. Then there’s Badger, who’s finally figured out how to keep the cats from running for the nearest crawl space when he approaches, and Diva is his favorite. He’s extremely concerned that she’s sick, and even though that concern manifests itself in him trying to carry her around while he accidentally compresses her internal organs, he knows something’s wrong. Even my hubs, who routinely threatens to make Cat Stew when he steps on a juicy hairball, looked worried.
She’s just a cat, sure. A nutty mixed breed with no pedigree and an ongoing external monologue with no one in particular, who vomits up atrocious hairballs and sheds on my clean laundry and craps on the bathroom floor if I try to switch cat litter.
But she’s our old, senile, stupid vomiting cat, and she’s part of the family, and that means that tonight? We’re going back to the animal hospital and checking her in. Six hundred dollars later, we’ll see if it paid off or it was just a really expensive final spa stay. I’m trying to be realistic here.
Now if only I could stop crying.
Goddamn cats.
I’m sorry, I just don’t have the energy to finish one of the 87 drafts I have started, so instead, I’ve decided to trot out a few of my past favorites. If you haven’t read them already, I hope you’ll enjoy them. If you’ve seen them before, consider it like a re-read of your favorite Harry Potter book. Or something. This post was originally published January 30, 2008 and the memories always make me smile.
BRINGING IN THE HORSES
I was a horse-crazy kid from birth.
When other children were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, their answers were things like “teacher”, “doctor”, “fireman” or even “President”. I wanted to be a horse. Not just have a horse, be a horse. I spent hours galloping around my back yard, perfecting my technique for the metamorphosis that would surely occur if I just worked at it.
It took my parents some years to convince me that becoming a sleek, glossy, four-legged equine simply wasn’t in the realm of possibility for little human kids. Even if you prayed really hard and could whinny almost perfectly and knew just how to kill a rattlesnake threatening your foal. I argued my position, but in the end, I had to admit defeat.
So I settled for second-best, which was to obsess about horses. I drew pictures of them constantly. I had an imaginary friend who was a horse. His name was Sundance. I practiced “riding” him every day on the playground at school, supremely indifferent to the jeers of the more sophisticated nine year olds. I ran for the horse pasture at the edge of our local park, coaxing the occupants to come take my wilted offerings of grass and dandelions. I read every printed word about horses that I could get my hands on, from The Black Stallion to My Friend Flicka to Misty of Chincoteague to horse care handbooks to magazines and 4-H flyers. I posted more centerfolds from horse-related magazines on my walls than a teenage boy with a stack of Playboys and a lock on his bedroom door.
My passion was complete. It was all-consuming. It was also, alas, mostly unrequited. Our family didn’t have the sprawling ranch with the rolling pastures of my dreams. My mother was slightly scared of horses and my dad viewed them as smelly nuisances best replaced by cars. Still, they indulged me as much as they could, with books and Breyer figurines and trips to the local rodeos. They did their best, but I still spent a lot of time feeling frustrated at not having regular access to horses.
When I was 11, however, my dad’s company threw the company picnic at a place outside of town called Plum Creek Stables. I remember lying in bed at dawn, the light just beginning to pink up the spring sky. There were knots in my stomach and I’d been up for hours already. You see, the most coveted activity planned for the day was a trail ride. Not a little kid’s ride, where weary, dusty ponies shuffled around in an unsatisfying, never ending circle. A real trail ride, and I was old enough to go by myself with the group!
I must have driven my parents crazy that morning, as I nagged them through breakfast, their second cups of coffee, chores, loading the car, and every other thing they insisted we complete which did not involve any horses. Finally, we arrived at the stables. I paid no mind to the groups of my dad’s co-workers and friends. I impatiently brushed off my mother’s request for help setting up our things. I didn’t want to eat hot dogs or even have a soda. I ran right for the paddock area where the horses were saddled and waiting. Looking back, it’s likely that none of them were particularly outstanding examples of horseflesh. They were resigned trail nags, selected solely for their ability to (mostly) ignore and endure squealing, overly excitable adolescents and half-drunk weekend cowboys.
But I didn’t care. To me, every one of them was an enchanting creature, the carrier of noble bloodlines from ancient, mysterious lands. I was surrounded by beauty and grace. I was in heaven.
When we got to ride, I was somewhat disappointed that I wasn’t chosen to ride my favorite, a large bay gelding named Cheyenne. He had been earmarked as being for “experienced” riders, and despite my surely relevant experience reading twenty seven books on riding, I was passed over. Still, my bruised feelings were soothed when I was paired up with a little gray Appaloosa named Blue, who was small but just feisty enough to satisfy me. I tried hard to impress our Trail Guide by sitting up straight, keeping my heels down and out, and moving with the horse, as the books had instructed. With all that effort, I’m sure I looked exactly like what I was: a clumsy little girl with messy, flyaway hair and a dirty face, who had never been on a horse in her life, yanking awkwardly on the reins and hunching in the saddle, wearing a smile that would light up a city.
Somehow during the 30 minute ride, Blue became “my” horse. When we came back, I suspiciously eyed his next rider. I paced the picnic grounds while the second group was out and dashed to see Blue as soon as he was back. I’m sure I was an annoying little pest, but the staff took pity on me and let me brush Blue as he rested, one leg cocked up at a time, lazily swishing away the flies with his straggly tail. I fed him hay cubes and carrots. He snorted and sneezed green goo all over me. I told him all my girlish horse dreams and fantasized that my parents owned Plum Creek. He seemed to nod and understand.
All too soon, it seemed, the day came to an end. My parents, tired and probably half-crocked at that point, shooed us into the car as the sun started to fade. I watched the horses as long as I could see the stables, chattering incessantly to my dad about horses, the stables, how fun it was, did he see me ride Blue, how did I look, did he think we could come back soon, did he think his work might have another party there soon? All without taking a breath, too. He never got a word in edgewise.
I didn’t know it, but sometime during that day, my parents had spoken to the owners. They had probably noticed me clinging to their horse and talking to him for hours and hours and hours. The next morning, as I moped around the house, they said they had a surprise for me. Of course, my first thought was that my parents had purchased a horse for me at the stables! Maybe it was Blue! Hey, you gotta dream big, right?
That wasn’t the surprise, but I was delirious with joy anyway when I found out I would be starting riding lessons the following Saturday. Oh! Bliss! I screamed. I called my best friend. I kissed my parents over and over. My mom and I spent the afternoon shopping for a suitable pair of boots and new jeans, and I was dreaming of the weekends to come.
The lessons were everything I wanted and more. I was in a “semi-private” deal, which could mean as many as 4 students, but that rarely happened. Mostly, there would be two of us. A few lucky days, I was the only student. Not only that, but we were expected to learn to do everything for our horses. So my 30 minute lesson actually took about 2 hours, because we had to collect our assigned mount from the stable, get the tack and inspect it, saddle up the horses, then we rode. At the end, we were responsible for removing all the tack, cleaning it as needed, putting it away, watering our horses, grooming them, and putting them up. I did it all, and oh, I loved it. Every minute. I dawdled and lingered and came early and offered to help my instructor, Carol, with any menial chore she would let me do for her. She was so capable and confident on horses. I was duly impressed and I tried to act just like her.
On the final day of the weeks of lessons, I was devastated. I didn’t pester my parents for more, because I knew it had been an expensive extravagance for our family for me to even have 10 lessons. My parents didn’t know I had heard them talking, but I did, and I felt guilty. We weren’t poor, but we weren’t rich, and my mom was a SAHM then. I put up my horse that last day and tried hard to be thankful and happy, but inside, I was desperate and sad. If only I could think of a way I could still come back that wouldn’t cost my parents any money. Suddenly, it dawned on me: if I worked here, for free, no one would have to pay for me to show up!
So I cornered my mother and poor Carol. I cajoled. I begged. I wheedled. I promised I wouldn’t get in the way. I said I’d spend all day just mucking out stalls. No one would have to pay me or watch out for me. Now, I was not a particularly outspoken or brave child. So for me to corral two adults and basically brow-beat them into allowing my inexperienced 11 year old self to work weekends at a stable for no pay is a testament to how deep my obsession ran. My earnest little face and voice probably helped a little, but in the end, I think they just wanted me to shut up, figuring I would tire of shuffling horse poop easily enough, and then both of them would be off the hook.
Little did they know. My mother would drop me off, early in the still-chilly mornings, clutching my sack lunch and bounding down the gravel driveway toward the office, which was just inside the big white ranch house. Carol would give me a list of chores to do and off I would go, toting a pitchfork and shovel as big as I was in a wheelbarrow, determined to do a great job. Into the cool darkness of the barns I would trundle, calling out to the big draft horses who waited to pull the hayrides each day, and admiring the glamorous, edgy purebreds who were boarded there. After a few weeks, they got to know me, and would hang their heads over the doors as I came in, angling for a scratch or a treat, if Carol told me I could let them have one.
I filled my wheelbarrow with manure and dirty straw over and over, hauling it out to the manure pile after each load. I scrubbed saddles and bridles. I filled the water troughs. I passed out oats and hay, checking off who had been fed carefully on Carol’s list. I swept the tack room and raked the paddock. It was hard work, but I didn’t mind at all. After the last of spring turned into summer, and I didn’t give up no matter what she threw at me even on the hottest days, I think I surprised her, and earned some coveted respect from my rather curmudgeonly mentor.
If the day’s schedule was light, Carol began letting me do more with the horses. I got to help her bathe the “big boys” as she called the draft horses, and rub them with some strong-smelling liniment to ease their sore shoulders and legs. I got to groom the trail horses and get them ready for the day’s rides. Sometimes, if the groups were small and Carol was in a good mood, I was put on an available horse (maybe even Blue!) and allowed to go out on trail rides with her.
My crowning glory came one morning as Karen and Randi, a couple of the college girls who worked summers, were heading into the thickly wooded pasture to bring in the trail horses and the boarders who’d been sent out to graze for the night. I was gazing wistfully after them as I put my lunch away and started to head out to the shed for my wheelbarrow & tools, when Randi called out to me to hurry up, Jenny was sick and they needed some help bringing in the horses, did I want to come? My heart pounding, I looked at Carol carefully. She barely glanced up from the stack of bills she was reading, but she did say two, magic little words:
“Go on.”
So I ran as fast as I could to catch up with my unexpected allies. I knew what to do already, because I’d spent hours watching the older girls do this exciting task. We were to lead and drive the willing horses into the paddock, and then, and then…we were to grab onto a horse we knew, mount them bareback, and literally round up and drive the wilder ones in while we rode!
I was nervous, mounting bareback from the ground was hard even for better riders, especially on an unrestrained animal. But I would not miss this big chance, I vowed. After the tame group came in, I found my friendly horse and got up on the first try, then guided him with my legs back up to the pasture to collect the rest. It was gloriously like my fantasy rides. As we thundered down the hill, whooping and hollering behind a cluster of recalcitrant stragglers, Carol was waiting at the gate. When I passed, rosy-faced and triumphant, clinging tight to the back of one of the very horses I’d admired but not been allowed to ride before, she gave me a small nod and smile. It was one of the happiest days of my life.
People tell me horses stink. I suppose to those who do not love them, they do. I only rarely notice the smell, myself. Though the years went by and I got lost in puberty, boys, parties, and bad choices, the little girl who loved horses above all else never really went away. One day, yes, I will have that small ranch with the rolling hills and pastures. I will muck out stalls and haul horse poop and hay, and rub liniment into tired muscles while I watch my breath fog in the cold autumn mornings. I will have a horse of my own, one that nobody rides but me, and I will thunder down the hill behind the stragglers we chase in. And because my son is already displaying the same affinity for animals that I have, he will have lessons as soon as someone will take him (currently age 6 is the youngest). So one day, on that ranch, he will be beside me, riding with the easy skill of a horse-crazy kid who has been around horses his whole life.
That will be success enough for me.
I’ll be the first to admit I have never been a Michael Jackson fan. I thought the “Thriller” video was cool at first just because of the premise – a zombie music video! – but after the 255,795,234th time I saw the stupid thing on MTV and/or heard the stupid song on the radio, I pretty much hated it due to relentless overexposure. The rest of his music I just found overblown, self-indulgent, and laughable by turns (Remember Michael singing “Bad” and mock-fighting with garishly-clad “gangsters” in some kind of West Side Story-esque dance off? Please. The entire idea of him as a badass was just stupid.).
Nevertheless, I recognize that despite my personal tastes running more toward Echo and the Bunnymen and The Sisters of Mercy than the King of Pop, Michael Jackson had a sizeable influence on music whether I like it or not. I can respect that he was talented even if I loathed his music. I can also empathize withthe reality that he was thrown into stardom as a child by a controlling and abusive father, he grew up in a fishbowl and never got to experience the normal kid things most of us average nobodies take for granted – summer vacations barefoot with our friends, backyard barbecues with the neighbors, camping, school dances, enjoying, or at least enduring, that first kiss, first date, first time we made a giant ass out of ourselves without being filmed by 378 paparazzi. I can imagine that the unrelenting scrutiny in every area of his adult life, the constant torment by the tabloids, the estrangement from his family and the real world, the faltering of his once-massive career would drive him further into the arms of whatever demons lived inside him. I can see how it must have all combined into the perfect storm that drove him into what he became in his later years – a continuously disintegrating parody of himself; a confused, increasingly eccentric, sad and lonely recluse who made bad choices in many areas of his life.
He was also a father, and regardless of how I feel about the circumstances in which that occurred, or his abilities as a parent, the reality is, his children are devastated right now. I feel desperately sad for them, these three children who will also never be allowed to have a normal life and who have now lost the only parent they were ever allowed to have.
Having said all of that, when I see the never-ending coverage of the planned memorial in L.A., which is expected to surpass the ‘84 Olympics for attendance by some estimates, I feel bewildered. When I see coverage of fans literally sobbing in the streets because they did or did not get a ticket to the memorial, or because they are personally devastated by his death, I feel impatient. When I pull up CNN and 95% of the Top Stories concern the Michael Jackson memorial, which true to form is set to become just another overblown circus, I feel angry.
This is our priority as a nation? This is all we’ve got?
Michael Jackson was not a saint. He was not a hero. He was a gifted performer with extraordinary success in decades gone by, and a bizarrely behaving celebrity with a troubled past more recently. Yet his death has seemed to make many people, and particularly the media, feel like he somehow deserves this continuing accolade, this ongoing worship as though his presence was some sort of gift that we will now be forever and tragically lacking.
I don’t begrudge his fans the opportunity to pay homage to an idol – nor am I hard hearted enough to suggest that Jackson shouldn’t be remembered at all. What I am suggesting is that while we are being force-fed MJ coverage around the clock like geese who are destined to offer up their livers to the gods of foie gras, there are other people, people making real sacrifices for us all, who are literally giving their lives and being overlooked.
Seven U.S. soldiers died in Afghanistan yesterday. That’s seven more families who will be getting the news that their loved ones will not be coming home safe and sound. Seven soldiers fighting in a war far away from home, who actually took a vow to serve our country and lived up to it, and who are now coming back in boxes, got less than 30 seconds of coverage on the national news last night, bumped in favor of the hoopla of the Jackson memorial.
That is disgraceful.
Where are the packed memorials for these fallen soldiers?
As a large part of the media obsesses over whether Jackson’s son will sing at the service, I find myself disillusioned. It seems like we as a society are increasingly focused on the sensational, the tawdry pieces of cheap glitter that make up the flotsam of the flea circus we’re being told is important, nay, essential information. Don’t worry about that silly war, ha ha! Look here, look at the shiny beads! I realize it gets depressing to be constantly barraged with what’s wrong in the world, but to be constantly deflected into investing so much time and energy into minutitiae that, in the grand scheme of things, really aren’t going to affect the lives of us or our children, seems utterly foolish.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – we need to stop watching Nero fiddle while our version of Rome burns around us. Unless we wake up and figure out how to fix the problems that DO affect us, really affect us, we may very well wake up one morning and find out that we know exactly where we and all of our friends were when Michael Jackson died, but we have no idea how we’re going to feed our kids this week because of widespread famine and food rioting.
And then it really won’t matter if we have that Michael Jackson Memorial Service Video with 25 million hits in our youTube account, will it?
