Book of June

Alone again, naturally

I can’t talk about the most current proof of this, because it has to do with work and the very last thing I want to do is bitch on my blog about work. Hey, corporate ladder.

But it’s become obvious that I am unlikeable.

When I was a kid, I really, really didn’t fit in. The first school I went to was mostly people who were a different color from me, and I seemed strange as a result. I don’t really blame the kids there for not welcoming me. My parents were very into me going to an integrated school, and I’m glad I had that experience, but I was also very alone and often teased. I was scared. Like, all the time, I was scared.

So in third grade, I got transferred very suddenly to the religious school in our neighborhood, even though we weren’t religious. I remember I left that first school in such a hurry that I forgot my Snoopy glue, and I’ve always regretted that.

Anyway, I didn’t fit in again.

The kids at the new school were sort of no-nonsense German farming people, and my parents were fekking athiest hippies.

It’s easy to look back on it and say, Well, that’s why, then. You just weren’t around like-minded people.

But then the summer before I was supposed to start junior high–we called it junior high then. It was 2,300 years ago–I was in a very bad accident. I think I’ve told you about it once or twice, but if you missed it, suffice it to say I might have died. But I didn’t. If I had, I’d have lead with that.

The point is, you don’t want to be the person who starts seventh grade two months late, and sort of sickly and pale on top of that. You really don’t.

So, again, it’s easy to say, Well, that was why, then. That was why you didn’t fit in in junior high.

It got to the point where I’d have these sort of…attacks, I guess they were, of nerves. Like, being “on” all day was too much, trying to fit in was too much. I knew it wasn’t working anyway, my form of “on,” and the thought of going to school was horrible. But I was made to go, so I went.

In high school, I did have friends. I had my friend Donna, who I met the first day of the first hour of school, in homeroom. She was my people. We were exactly alike, even down to our June hair, and we were inseparable. We started hanging around the boys’ swim team, and we were like their two mascots or something. It was great.

There was also a group of girls I dearly wanted to be friends with. I thought they were rich, mostly because I was so not rich. In reality, they were just sort of normally monied. But they had, like, houses! Houses with two bathrooms!

I dearly tried to glom onto their group, but they just weren’t that into me, and in retrospect, of course, I have no idea what I found so riveting about them.

A few years back I tried to friend one of those women on Facebook. She didn’t accept the request.

Then I got to college, and was part of a big old group in my dorm. Those attacks I was having in junior high? At this point they were full-blown, debilitating panic attacks. Instead of gaining the freshman 15, I lost 15. I was so nervous all the time, and the very last place I felt comfortable was the cafeteria, with all those people. So I hardly went. I hardly ate.

And I told no one about my panic attacks. I was ashamed of them; I thought it meant I was crazy. So I was “on” as much as I could be, cutting up, being outlandish, and then having to retreat to my room as much as possible to sort of refuel and panic quietly.

My diary from that time is just me, day after day, measuring how anxious I got and how well or badly I managed to hide it that day. I remember one time having to just jump up and leave a restaurant in the middle of a date, I was so anxious.

If you’ve never had a panic attack, let me try to describe it. Let’s say all of a sudden you have a medical event and you think you’re going to die. That’s what it feels like. Then you spend the rest of your time worrying you’re going to have that feeling again, and sometimes you do.

Panic attacks: fuck ’em.

The next year, that anxiety turned to depression, and that is when I lost all my college friends. One by one they either started ignoring me or being outright cruel. I remember one person saying, “I don’t want you or your cat anywhere near me.”

I had a cat. He was copper-colored. He was a Persian. He was the nicest cat you could imagine, and no one in their right mind wouldn’t want to be around that peach muffin.

So I know it wasn’t the cat.

Finally, I couldn’t figure out what was going on anymore, so I asked Donna, the friend from high school. She had transferred to my college, and I still considered her my best friend in the world.

“You want the truth?” she sighed. “The truth is, nobody really likes you anymore.”

I do have to say, because it’s important to me: You know my college roommate Sandy that I talk about? She never, ever gave in to the “Everyone hates June” thing. She never wavered from being my friend.

Anyway, I dropped out. Moved back home. Found new friends in my hometown, but after a year, that group didn’t like me anymore.

I’d gotten this horrific boyfriend, who once during a fight sprained my ankle. He was kind of the cool boy in town, but after the ankle incident, we broke up. Obvs.

But my “friends” kept going to parties at his house, because he had the cool parties. I remember one night knowing he was having a black-and-white party, and the person who was allegedly my best friend then showed up to get me, to just go out drinking, wearing black and white “just in case we want to go.”

The thing is, when you’re living here inside your bones, you don’t have perspective. Because as I texted a coworker last night, from my perspective, I just get up, write something funny, go to work, DO my work, say something funny in the break room and go home. I don’t know what I do that offends. I really don’t. I ask, How was your weekend? I say, Nice shirt. I feel like I’m being a normal, likeable person.

I can’t figure out what I keep doing that’s so off-putting. I really can’t. Look, I know I get cranky. Is that it? Is it the cranky thing? Maybe it’s the cranky thing.

So here I am, 52 years old, and I’m being ostracized again. At this point, I figure it’s gotta be me, and I either have to figure out what I’m doing, or just live with the fact that this is how it’s always going to be. I no longer even try to have a female best friend. I just don’t trust it.

I’ve been reading up on ostracism, and how if affects your psyche. It’s as bad as being harassed or bullied, because we have this need to be part of something. We want to belong. That’s why I’ve liked this blog, because we all seem to belong with each other.

The thing is, I can’t change anyone else. I can only change myself.

But I don’t know what I have to change.

And that’s today’s conundrum.

June

Funeral glitter

Summer’s here, but I don’t think the time is ever right for dancin’ in the streets. Seems obnoxious. And possibly risky.

Dancing in the streets. Fekking hippies. Get out of the road. Get a job. Unless one gets a job in a parade, and then one’s job would literally be dancin’ in the streets.

…I realize that summer is not technically here yet, which was always something Ned had to point out.

Me: [sample kvetch] It’s spring. Why is it so cold?

Ned: [sample mansplain] ACTUALLY, spring is in 12 days.

Ned: It’s not autumn until the 21st.

Ned: No, it isn’t. It’s still technically not the vernal equinox.

And that is why Ned is in a shallow grave.

Also, he always had to correct me saying, “rug” when I apparently meant “carpet,” or maybe it’s vice versa. Whatever. Apparently one covers the whole floor and the other is for an area. You’d think as a copy editor I’d care about this, but the depth of my caring about this is as deep as Ned’s shallow grave.

But ALSO, Ned insists on calling the living room “the den.” I think this came from having grown up richer than me, and having one of those fancy living rooms no one ever goes in–and what is the point of those?–and then the room everyone gathers in to watch TV–which probably no one does anymore but that was the plaid-walled idea in 1967–is called “the den.”

You’d think as a copy editor I’d care about the structure of that alarming sentence, but the depth of my caring is about this is as deep as Ned’s shallow grave.

Anyway, it always bugged me when he lived in an apartment and referred to his living room as “the den,” particularly because he had a two-bedroom apt., and there was the bedroom he slept in, and then another bedroom that just had a couch and a desk and his computer, and THAT, to me, would be a den.

But he never called that room a den.

I harangued him about this for a long time, till one day I was around his brother, who referred to his mother’s living room as the den.

And right then I knew.

It was a family thing.

Marvin used to always leave the foil top on things. You know how when you open peanut butter or new aspirin or what have you, and it has the annoying foil lid on top of it for no reason other than the Tylenol scare of 1812? Marvin would peel it back, but not remove it entirely. Then for the rest of time, you had to wrestle that foil lid, like a teensy obstacle course. I think he thought it kept the aspirin fresher or something.

Once I was at his mother’s, and got something out of the cupboard, and sure enough.

The half-on foil lid.

It was a family thing.

Years after he left, I got some spice out of the cupboard, and you can imagine how much spices get used in this House of Lean Cuisine. But I got down Chaucer’s Choice Ye Olde Spice Blennde, purchased with bones because money hadn’t been invented yet, and there?

Was a half-on foil lid, left over from Marvin days.

I ripped it off. It was so satisfying.

But I was talking about summer being here.

June, I’ve been meaning to ask, are you still taking Ritalin?

No. It gave me migraines. What doesn’t? Hey, is that something glittery?

That reminds me. I have a stone I got from someone’s funeral. The person collected stones and rocks, and at his funeral they had a basket of them, and you could take one as a memento of this person. I have it at my desk at work–it’s sort of pink with gray lacing through it.

At my funeral, I want everyone to get a little bag of glitter, and you can all toss glitter at my casket as I pass by. Or keep it forever.

“What’s that?”

“Funeral glitter.”

Anyway, summer. Edsel and I heard our first cicada the other night, and what’s really cool is I think we heard its first-ever song or buzz or whatever it is, as it gave this sort of introductory throat-clearing and did this weird instruments-tuning-up hum, then

ZZZZ!!ZZZ!!ZZZZ!!zzzzzzzzzzz…. of the cicada.

We also have been seeing lightning bugs this week, and the magnolias are bloomed, plus also the mimosa trees, a tree I would dearly like in my own yard. I have never understood the joyless people who don’t like a flowering tree because it leaves a “mess.” Good gravy. Rip off the foil lid and enjoy yourself. Flowers are never a mess.

flat,800x800,070,f.u1.jpg In case you don’t get mimosa trees in your region, here is what they look like. And apparently it is very important to James Brotherton, sisterton, that we know he took this shot, as he has BRANDED it into the corner.

Anyway, they also smell really good, mimosas do, and if I had scratch and my chair would get recovered, then I’d have Alf plant a mimosa in place of the poor tree that’s on its last limbs out in the front of my yard. I’d make him plant one that big.

Don’t you wish you could do that? Plant giant trees? And also get your hair cut long?

Waiting for things to happen is the worst.

Just ask my Chaucer spice.

Summer. Felt.
June

The one where June’s chair, screen and hair look awful

Why does every cat here have to be gray? I see one running across the yard and my heart leaps, and then it’s just Lily or Iris.

Is everyone waiting for me to recover that chair/footstool already? I know. I’ve got the fabric, but it’ll be about $750 to actually have it recovered and I don’t have that kinda scratch.

But when I DO get that kind of scratch, I plan to lug this chair into the living room, and move the big scratched comfortable leather one into here. This does me no good till the scratch.

This all reminded me to put up an Amazon link, above. Go to the image. Click. Get to Amazon. Shop. I get scratch.

June, stop saying that.

My luggage came! Only 6 nights without it! Probably any progress I made on my skin with my Retin-A has gone back to the beginning. Now I’m even OLDER than when I started using it.

Speaking of which, it’s pretty much been three months since I spent…scratch on Ultherapy and guess what. I look the same.

I’d been scraping the damn concrete floor, so I was shinier than I was in March. Also, what the hell with that screen. How many times have I replaced that screen since you’ve known me? Why do I have a dog? Look how it’s all brown where he puts his horrific paws up to let himself in.

I give up.

You know what I did? I didn’t give up. I just got annoyed and went outside and scrubbed that door, but it’s forever stained by dog paws. The screen looks nice, though. I guess I’ll have Alf replace the screen in there AGAIN.

It’s sort of meta that you can look in my door and see this blog post, isn’t it?

I guess the only other thing that’s new is we had some restructuring at work, and now my boss, fmr., is my boss, current. We need to think of a new name for her. Boss, fmr./crrnt. is too taxing to write. It’s like how I got sick of writing “…friend” so I thought of “Ned.”

Speaking of Ned, I’m dragging him to see Mean Girls tonight at the old theater. I’ve never seen it, and you’ll be stunned to hear neither has he, but I’ve always kind of wanted to see it.

I remember when this was a real movie at the theater, there was a billboard for it on my way to my LA therapist’s office. In Los Angeles, you had to have a therapist or you couldn’t get your driver’s license.

Why does the Department of Motor Vehicles keep insisting it’s “driver license”? No one says that but them. And yet they keep trying it. “Any second now, ‘driver’ license will be sweeping the nation.”

Speaking of sweeping the nation, I feel I must officially announce

I’VE

SEEN

THE

KIDS

DOING

THE

BEE

GEES

IMPRESSION.

yfsf-kids-2-2018-2018-050518 — There’s a video of some music competition where kids sang Too Much Heaven. It’s cute. Or it was, the first 18 times it got sent to me. Then suddenly I wanted to commit Bee Geescide.

Thank you. There is no further need to put it on my wall, or text it to me, or email it. I’ve seen it.

It’s this year’s cat/dog diary.

Hey, I do the same thing. I see a dachshund thing, and I think of sending it to Miss Doxie, and then I think, probably 86 people are having this same thought right now.

Why does “dachshund” have to be the hardest word in the world to spell? What word can’t you spell? I never do well with words where you leave the “e” off, like “truly.” I mean, I know that one, but words of that ilk.

I leave you with the following evidence that I finally in this life found a four-leaf clover. I’ve always wanted to.

That I found it while my cat is missing and so were all my haircare products cause they were with my luggage and I looked like dung is beside the point. Maybe things are looking up!

God, my hair really does look bad. Which looks worse: my hair or my screen door?

I’d better get to work. The other part of our restructuring is that I helped some people out who needed work done, and now between you and me I’ve got too much work. But if I just forgo peeing, I can get it done today. Is it forego or forgo? See what I mean?

Lov,
Jun

Cat out of the bag

I knew this would happen.

When Steely Dan was a tiny kitten who should’ve still been with his mother, he wobbled up to two college boys who could not leave a tiny kitten on a sidewalk in the rain. So they brought him home, marveled at how brave and playful he was, and realized that with school and job–and I’m going to go out on a limb and say beer–they really didn’t have time or funds to give to a kitten.

So they gave him to me. They gave me his a-boy-bought-this blue bowl and too-big litter box and yellow polka-dot scratching pad that he actually used constantly.

As soon as I held him, I said, “Oh, this is a good one.”

For I don’t know if you know this about me, but I have cats. I’ve always had cats. I know from cats. And I could tell, in my bones, that he was my type.

I like a no-nonsense cat, I guess to offset my own nonsense. I like a solid, stoic, unflappable, brave cat. I guess to offset my flappyness.

Mr. Horkheimer was that way, and so was Winston. So was Roger. Solid cats.

I believe in letting cats out, a thing that would have caused nary a raised eyebrow in, say, 1975, and that now causes people to gasp in horror. Since 9/11, we’ve become an incredibly overprotective society, if you ask me. Kids don’t play. They get shuttled to school in cars rather than walking. And animals are put in sweaters and kept indoors. Everything we love has become a dollhouse creature that we keep shuttered away for safety.

My way of thinking doesn’t jibe with this. Nevertheless, my goal was to leave SD in till he was year old, till he knew where he lived and so on. After that, I wanted him to feel the grass under his paws, to lift his head and sniff at birds, and to get his fur warm in the sun.

Oh, how I didn’t know him yet. Because within months, that cat started escaping the house. I’d look outside and there he’d be. And then I’d look again and he’d be IN the house.

Were there two gray cattens in the neighborhood? Was I seeing things? Was I finally just hallucinating cats?

Turns out, he can not only open doors, that cat found an open something-or-other in the roof that led to the attic, then (I saw him do this. Stood in the hall horrified) he’d …bounce on the closed attic steps till they gave way enough that he could squeeze out of the ceiling and leap into my hallway. Boom. Home.

He figured this all out when he was maybe five months old.

And right then I knew: Steely Dan was no ordinary cat.

He didn’t feel the grass under his paws; he soared above it. He didn’t lift his nose to the birds; he joined them.

Steely Dan was the kind of cat who rarely came home. When it’s warm, some mornings he’ll stare at me through the back window, come in and gobble breakfast, then jump through the hole in the screen and go back out all day.

He’s like kids back in the ’70s. He was free.

I’ve had this cat for two years, and since then he’s gotten famous in the neighborhood. He’s very friendly, and sometimes tries to come right in. On NextDoor, there were at first a lot of hysterical, WHO IS THIS HOMELESS (MUSCLED, SHINY) KITTY? notices, but people started saying, “Oh, that’s just Steely Dan.”

But I knew that with this spirit of adventure, there might be trouble.

I knew that with a cat who lived hard, there could come a morning I’d look for his face at the back window, and if it wasn’t there, expect him to leap from the roof once I opened the door, and he wouldn’t be up there.

Friday was that day.

After my harrowing travel experience Thursday, I came home and opened the back door to let all the cats out. Lily and Iris are content with my yard. They just want to cross their paws in the shade somewhere, maybe murder a bee or something.

Not Steely Dan. And while I had been gone Wednesday and Thursday, Ned had come over to feed the cats, and said he literally caught Steely Dan in midair as he tried to leap out the door. To say SD was nonplussed about being indoors in an understatement.

So I knew when I got home Thursday afternoon that he’d be champing at the bit to leave.

Because I know letting him roam is dangerous, usually when he leaves, I say something to him. I tell him what a magnificent kitty he is, or that I can’t wait till he comes back. Just something so that if he didn’t return, I wouldn’t feel as bad.

On Thursday, I said nothing. I don’t even really remember letting him out. I was so tired, and angry about my missing luggage, which is still not here, by the way. But if I have a choice between my favorite clothes and my $150 Retin-A that’s in that bag, and seeing my cat again, my Retin-A can suck it.

And yes, I’ve done all the things you’re supposed to do when your cat is missing. I notified NextDoor, I’ve driven to the shelter (where I saw two of my orange fosters languishing there, a thing that haunts me), I’ve called the emergency vet, and I’ve gone to ask my neighbors if I can call into their sheds and crawl spaces. “Oh, that cat? I see that cat all the time,” they all tell me. “Walked right into my house once.”

I know there’s a chance he’ll still come back, just like my wayward bag. I know someone will leave an asshole comment about this, too. Something smug and shrill and probably containing the term “furbabies.”

But what I mostly know is I adore that cat. And I wanted him to have a happy life, even if it wasn’t the safest, most coddled life.

So if I never get a chance to tell him, I’ll tell you. Steely Dan is a magnificent cat, and I can’t wait to see him again. I’ll keep his polka-dot scratching pad waiting, just in case.

June flies to Chicago, gets manicure, flies home.

I don’t like to travel.

I realize everyone else does, and that my not liking to travel is part of the list of things I hate that everyone else treasures: Christmas, brunch, live music, romantic evenings, granite countertops.

If you want me to have sex with you–and I realize I’m 52 and no one wants to have sex with me. But if we traveled–which I hate–through time–which I also hate–and you wanted to have sex with young, actually appealing me, you’d be a lot more likely to find me randy at some inopportune time, like lunch hour or after a funeral. But give me flowers and a dinner out and I will have all the sex drive of a slab of baloney.

Anyway.

I had a harrowing travel experience. I’d tell you about it verbally, via my podcast, but I also hate those.

SD before I left, somehow sensing he was going to be sufferin’ indoor cat for 5 days.

11 a.m.
Yesterday morning I packed a bag, grabbed my purse, and headed to my local airport. “I’m so lucky that travel here is so easy,” I remember thinking, back yesterday when my soul still had light in it.

It’s true, though. It’s a 10-minute drive to the Greensboro airport, and parking is pretty decent. It buries flying in and out of LAX, which sucked worse than Christmas brunch.

1:20 p.m.
My plane took off to Chicago. An easy hour-and-a-half flight. I had a three-hour layover, then I’d get on a plane for my hometown, in Michigan, and land at 8:00. “My nails look awful,” I thought, as I flew. The night before the trip, I did some last-minute grueling work that took me till 10 p.m., and I hadn’t had time to groom properly. “I wonder if I can get my nails done in Chicago.”

4 p.m.
Turns out, you can! You CAN have your nails done in Chicago, and if you get the basic manicure, it’s cheap. Hell, I’ll be basic. Paint my basic nails and take my basic money.

Truth be told, money was an object, because I get paid the last day of the month and this was the 30th. My money was not in some vault in stacks, like I was Duck McScrotum or whoever that rich duck was.

How did he make his money, one wonders.

But all I hadda do was fly into Saginaw ( I was going for my cousin’s graduation), and by the next morning, I’d have cash. Yay, paydays! Yay, Payday Candy Bars! Did I also have time to get one of those?

Turns out, I did. Because when I finished my manicure, and popped into the MAC store as well, I looked at the board, and?

Flight was canceled.

5:30 p.m.
Canceled? Why? I went to the ride-at-Disneyland-long line at United Customer Service. Apparently, thunderstorms were dotting the area. Bad thunderstorms. There were no flights going to Saginaw till the next day. Maybe. “These small planes are always the first to get canceled,” the beleaguered guy at the counter told me.

BOOM! said the sky.

6:30 p.m.
“Just stay overnight in the airport,” my mother said, when I called her. I looked around. Everyone was stranded due to the weather. There was nowhere to sit, much less lie down. And what if I did find a place to sleep? How would I know my purse would be there when I woke up?

I looked in my bank account. Forty dollars. Stupid manicure. All I’d eaten that day was a bowl of soup before I left. I’d purposely not gone grocery shopping because I knew I’d be gone, and that was the last can of anything in my cupboard.

The plane had offered pretzels. My feelings on pretzels rank up there with live music and cilantro.

8 p.m.
“We’ve got you scheduled to fly into Raleigh tonight, leaving at 9 p.m.,” said another beleaguered United worker. With no hope of getting to Michigan or even to Greensboro, the Raleigh flight was a big enough plane that the guy said he was “sure” it would take off.

I just wanted to leave that airport. I’d walked all of whatever they call it, section? Area? Hall? Vein? Whatever. I’d walked all of B and all of C and all of F, just for something to do. And also hoping for a place to sit.

Also waiting for his flight. Was not extinct when he GOT to airport.

At this point I was so hungry that I knew a migraine was imminent.

“You’re certain,” I said, to the man who said I could at least go near home. I’d have no car and no money in Raleigh, but at least I wouldn’t be in a goddamn airport with 9493582 other stranded passengers all night.

“Yes ma’am,” he told me.

I got the least-expensive thing at McDonald’s (Disclaimer: At an airport, that’s a Happy Meal that costs $207) and stood next to a nice Southern man on the phone with, you guessed it, United.

“I have to be at work tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock no matter what time you people get me home tonight,” he was saying. He sounded authoritative. “And I need my tools. You did this to me a couple months ago, you never did get my tools to me for a week, and you ended up costing me $2,000 in lost work.”

“This poor man,” I thought, munching a fry.

“You’re certain,” he said, sounding like me. “Okay.” He hung up the phone.

“Airline people are the lying-est motherfuckers,” he told me. “Don’t let anyone tell you any different.”

Sure enough, my 9 p.m. flight? Didn’t happen.

I’d arranged with Ned to get me in Raleigh, and I called to tell him that flight wasn’t occurring either.

“Airline people are the lying-est motherfuckers,” he said.

10 p.m.
My Uncle Bill flies all the damn time. I’m certain I’ve told you before how he’ll fly to China, get home for a night and leave in the morning for Germany. I don’t know what the hell he does. Maybe he makes Minute Rice, and has to make sure the timing is precise.

What do you want from me right now. Am exhausted.

Anyway, he scored me a room near the airport, with his miles or points or pointy miles or miles of points or Miles Davis and the Pointer Sisters or what have you. The point is, I finally relented and went to it.

11 p.m.
Turns out, the hotel had a bar! Everyone in there was also stranded. I was the only loser who had zero carry-on, but not the only loser who was gonna sleep in her contacts. (Those are reading glasses, before you get all UP MY ASS.)

I called beleaguered United again, was on hold for

FORTY MINUTES

and two vodka cranberries,

and one flight they thought I’d be able to get on was a Greensboro flight the next morning.

“GIVE IT TO ME,” I said. I just wanted to go home. Then I fell into a dead sleep at midnight.

3:30 a.m.
[BOOM] Why was someone closing a door in my house? I live alone.

I opened my eyes, saw I was in a hotel room, and right then I knew: I was in a hotel room.

I knew who was closing the door at 3:30. One of the nice women at the bar was tryina get to Atlantic City to be with her friend, and her only choice was to stay up, leave at 3:30, and then her friend was 100% gonna expect her to be “on” all day in Atlantic City.

See. That’s why I hate to travel. I hate to be on. The whole thing just makes me nervous and cranky and migrainous.

Also? I never fell asleep again. I should have just gone to Atlantic City, as well.

5 a.m.

I finally got out of bed, only to discover my only coffee choice was decaf. Yes, I did call down to the front desk, thanks for asking. No, thanks, really.

Silver lining: Picking out my clothes for the day was a breeze.

I didn’t shower, because I had no hair products and no razor. I brushed my teeth with the toothbrush they give you for free, which was not unlike a prison-issue toothbrush.

Washed face with grapefruit soap, even though I’m allergic.

6:45 a.m.
Got on the crammed shuttle to the airport. No one on shuttle was cheerful.

8 a.m.
Got through security and to my gate. No one working at the airport was cheerful. In fact, they were downright brusque. There were Disneyland lines at every Starbucks, and when did fucking Starbucks become the only coffee in town? We can’t have a nice Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf? What the hell? It’s not StarBUCKS, it’s StarMONOPOLY MONEY.

What do you want from me? Am exhausted.

Anyway, I decided to have coffee on the plane.

9 a.m.
Get on plane. The stewardess informs us the coffee machine isn’t working.

You know how sometimes they show people having fits on planes? It no longer seems so outlandish.

12:30 p.m.
It’s official: At this point I could have driven all the way to Saginaw, and back to Greensboro again. I’m not sure why, but whole body hurts. Perhaps the walking for 8 hours at the airport, the standing in lines, the weird bed, the tension. The teensy lack-of-legroom flights. Or maybe I’m dying. At this point it’d be a relief. Take me, Lord, I’m ready. Oh, look, he’s delayed.

1:30 p.m.
Airline has lost my luggage. I am supposed to get it back tomorrow, but see above re lying-est motherfuckers. The luggage claim lady was nice. “Oh, honey, I am so sorry about all this. You call them and get your money back.”

Allegedly, I already have. It’s my mother’s money, but supposedly she will get a “partial” refund for the three canceled flights.

Meanwhile, I have no hair products at all, no razor, no deodorant, no toothbrush and see above re no one wants to have sex with me. Why, though.

I DO have my migraine meds, which is good because you’ll be stunned to hear I got one.

6 p.m.
Now I am home and writing you, and I really can’t wait till my next adventure. I love the open road.

Let’s meet for live music at brunch and talk about it soon.

StitchFix time!

My boss, fmr., did my annual review yesterday, which I guess kind of makes her my boss, current. Or sort of my boss. Or something.

Anyway, they still like me at work and that is a relief.

But speaking of my boss, fmr.-ish, she received her box o’StitchFix yesterday, and I was muy busy, and yes I just said “muy busy.” I don’t like me, either.

Is there anyone who really likes him or herself? They put all this pressure on us to like ourselves, and then when you don’t, you feel bad about it so you like yourself even less. Let’s stop tryina like ourselves. I feel like that was some ’70s bullshit that never shoulda taken off, like women’s rights.

[I just said that so my mother would have to be revived with paddles.]

Anyway, I took time out of my muy busy afternoon to photograph her ensembles for you, as I know that you like voting on which StitchFix items she should keep and which she should return. This would be an optimal time to mention what a pain in my

ASS

making polls is, so I hope you appreciate all I do for you. There are plenty of middle-aged women in Africa who don’t get any blogger making polls for them, and they have to go without. Without polls.

When you get your box of StitchFix, your stylist sends you a little note, and this time they wrote to say they saw my blog! I AM FAMOUS! I like myself! Because of externals! The way god and good clothes intended.

Anyway, here is the first item:

Oh my god, Kate Spade Keds, which how is that even a thing? I LOVE them, but they’re pricey.

“Can’t you just buy regular Keds and and paint polka-dots on ’em?” I wanted to know. My boss, fmr.-ish, pointed out that the dots are sewn on.

…Oh.

Next we have a cute stripy dress, which according to StitchFix is actually named the same name as m’boss, fmr.-ish. Let’s say the dress is named Claudia. IT’S A SIGN!

Fruit-striped boss-ish. Now with $78 dots!

Next are some adorable jeans, and I guess I’m not really being a neutral reporter here, am I? I’m the FOX News blog. Or the MSNBC blog. If I want to be fair to all.

She paired the jeans with another top they sent, and what I like about boss, fmr. is that in real life she’s a pretty quiet person, and you get a camera in front of her and she’s Mary Pickford.

Two things I like about myself, because society demands I like myself, are my current references to Mary Pickford and also my ability to decide if my poll titles will be title case or sentence case.

Tune in for another episode of Things No One But a Copy Editor Cares About.

And finally, there’s a little blue top that frankly would look magnificent on me, but that’s irrelevant.

One thing I’ve never mentioned before is that if you order all the items, you get 25% off the order. Once I watched boss, fmr., do the math to see if she kept one thing she wasn’t crazy about, if it’d be worth it.

My brain doesn’t work that way.

Anyway, that sums it up. Vote before I blog again tomorrow and completely forget I asked your opinion on this matter.

“Don’t ask anyone if I should keep these gym clothes I’ve had 20 years.”– Another Boss, fmr. Do you feel like maybe they just pass me around till they can’t stand bossing me anymore?

Fixin’ to stitch,
Joon

On the third day, she “Rose” again

On Friday at work, they let us leave at 3:00, a delightful habit they’ve gotten into before any holiday weekends. I suppose it’s for normal people with families who want to get on the road to the beach, or whatever normal people do.

What do the normal folk do? …I think craft. Seems like they craft a lot. They also seem to traipse to restaurants in big groups, if Facebook is any indication.

Having never been normal for even 14 seconds, I eschewed the creative team’s early happy hour and went home to do my freelance work. Technically, it’s due today, but I’d been moving along on it and thought, “Well, I’ll just see how far I get Friday.”

And I finished it.

I finished it!

“Well, NOW what do I do?” I thought. It was too late to go to the happy hour. So I streamed Goodbye Christopher Robin, which I thought would maybe be a delightful film re Pooh and so forth, but really was incredibly dark and I kind of liked it better for it.

Saturday dawned and I continued to have nothing to do, and I assumed I had no money to do it with. Payday is tomorrow night, and they picked a fine time to have a holiday weekend.

I took Lily to the vet for her rabies shot, and now the only thing she’s rabid about is food. Speaking of which…

“Do you want to go to Lexington and get barbecue?” Ned asked me on Saturday afternoon, and yes. Hell, yes, I did. We will not pick this moment to talk about what an effing heifer I am, because Lexington is a town famous for its barbecue, and for good reason. And here it was being presented to me by my rich ex.

So we got in the car.

IMG_9099 2.jpg — “Why are you taking a picture of this?” asked Ned, who is clearly new.

I’m starving to death reviewing these images anew. Mother of god, that was delish.

Say, June, can you store my equipment in those saddlebags?

Anyway, on the way back, I was telling Ned I was considering painting my spare bedroom. Bitchy Resting Face Alex and I had painted it back in 2015, when I moved back after my unfortunate year abroad with Ned, and we’d painted it white and it never really looked fully covered. It was half nude.

“I just don’t think I have enough for paint,” I kvetched, checking my account.

Turns out, I had a few hundred dollars! Because Amazon!

So basically this next part is all you guys’s fault.

I’d toyed with some colors prior, but when I got to the paint store (and does anyone remember the hot man of color who sold me my Labor Day paint last year? I went there about 40 times that weekend, sort of because I’ma bad planner and sort of because he is so hot. “Could you have more obviously had a crush on that man?” asked Ned after we left the paint store, but WHO CAN BLAME ME.)…

…what the hell was I talking about? Oh, paint. Right.

So somehow I convinced self that

PINK

would be the right color. I wonder what inspired me.

IMG_9109 2.jpg — A color, and a description of me.

I did not elicit Ned’s help in this scenario, as I have found when we do projects together I mostly want to snap his neck. There’s a whole lot of “Why aren’t you doing it my way” and “Why are you doing this” and “You know what I’D do…” and snap. Neck. Look at the bent neck on Ned.

Pretty much the rest of the weekend was me moving furniture and taping trim and pulling out nails and spreading drop cloths and OH MY GOD CAN WE PAINT YET?

Someone we all know, someone in the asshole family, was deeeeeeLIGHTed that shit was being moved around and things were differented up. I thought cats were supposed to be made nervous by change. Not this one. He was pretty much in there every second I was painting, and likely has brain damage from the fumes, but that’s just the kind of mother I am.

eyeriss bozzered. to not move things pleese.

Finally, after three days, I’d scraped and moved and sanded and trimmed and painted, finally, and then I stepped back to admire my work and was all,

I hate it.

But now I’m stuck with it.

My rule is I have to wait a year before I can paint again.

This might be a nice time to gently remind that I hate advice.

Anyway, then I had to move everything BACK in there, to the room, and I texted my mother to get her advice on where I should put things.

“I don’t like this arrangement,” my mother announced, and who made HER…oh. I guess me, cause I asked. Also, I see I let one damn doorknob stay brassy, and gets what’s next on my agenda.

“I don’t like it either,” I agreed. “It looks like a ship is tilting and everything went to one side.”

“This looks like Abraham Lincoln slept here and he had to share the bed with another boarder,” said my mother, who has an active imagination.

“Why does Steely Dan have to get in every picture?” she asked. “He’s like you.”

In the end, this was the arrangement I went with, and I ordered an area rug…

screen-shot-2018-05-29-at-8-18-58-am-e1527596388576.png

…that’ll really tie the room together, harrr.

I also at some point decided I should shop for, oh, lamps and comforters that maybe would butch the room up a bit. Maybe charcoal accents, or black or caramel.

Then everywhere I looked, I was all, Oooooo, look at the pale pink ostrich-feather ottoman! Look at the sparkly chandelier! Oh my god, magenta fluffy carpet!

So. Butching it up did not go well. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this about me, but I’m not good at being butch.

So that’s the news on my cervix guest room. Guest womb. Maybe I’ll invite P!nk over to stay.

Tune in tomorrow, when I will have done something else absurd.

Rosily,
Rosalie

June’s word is pink gold

I have the best possible news.

My smoothies came.

I forgot to look in the bathroom mirror this morning and rub my (new) lips like the girl in the commercial, but I did grab a smoothie out of the freezer the way she did. I ordered a bunch of flavors, but here are the ingredients in the one I grabbed:

Organic zucchini squash. Why can’t they just say “zucchini”?
Organic pumpkin seeds. Organic? Was that necessary?
Organic dates. That’s everyone my mom dated in the ’70s.
Avocado. Oh, apparently THAT doesn’t need to be organic.
ORGANIC coconut milk.
ORGANIC cacao powder. Why’re we going around saying “cacao” all of a sudden? It’s like we’re saying it wrong. It’s like we’re from another planet, trying to pass. yes would like hot cacao then take me to leader.
ORRRRGANIC coconut.
Or–guess what–ganic coconut oil. Sounds fattening. …Twenty-one grams of fat. Jesus.
ORRRRRRRRRGANIC pea protein. And yes, I still have no idea what pea protein is. Remember when I made Hulk eat hummus and he had 47 giggles over “chick pea”?
Everyone’s favorite, organic cocoa nibs. Would you like some cocoa? Oh, just a nib. How was your organic date with that dude? Well, he had a cocoa nib. …Oh.
And, finally, Himalayan pink sea salt. How obnoxious. Bitch, I’m from Saginaw. We get our salt from the girl in the raincoat.

I wish I could make it now, but I’m distinctly not hungry, as I ate a lot last night. I had dinner with Ned.

…Oh.

I remember when Ned and I broke up, which doesn’t narrow it down.

The big time. The time I moved out.

Anyway, when we broke up, I told him, “You know what I’ll never be? I’ll never be part of your harem of exes you keep as friends.”

Ned is friends with several people he dated. I mean, when I met him, he was 46 and never married, so you can imagine the posse of wimmin in his past. I’ve met a couple of his exes, and they were way cool. Lovely people. I would be friends with them in real life. But I wasn’t going to join them in being his pal.

Then guess what I did. I joined them. And yes, my lip IS starting to bruise.

Also, I enjoy this shot…

…as I look like some kind of villain.

Shut up.

Anyway, Ned-who-I-said-I’d-never-be-friends-with called me at 5:30 last night.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“I’m at work,” I said. “Where are YOU?”

“I’m leaving work.”

Leaving work! Ned! At 5:30! You have no idea how not like him that is.

“Do you want to have dinner?” he asked. I’ve been trying to get rid of my excess of strawberries, so for lunch I’d made a smoothie of strawberries, spinach, frozen blueberries and a little almond butter.

WAS

STARVING.

“Yes,” I said, and what I like about myself is I’m a woman of my word.

He actually ordered something unhealthy!

So I had a french dip, which I can pretty much assure you no French woman would ever order. I also choked on my cranberry juice, and I choke on liquids constantly and I’m over it. I already did the thing where they went down my throat with a tube and there was nothing there SO WHY DO I KEEP CHOKING?

Anyway, I lived, and after dinner and a choke we strolled through the garden near the restaurant.

Wow, June. What a fascinating shot of green stuff.

There’s a dog park part of the park (good sentence) and DO YOU SEE THE PUPPY? He’s getting his neck bitted up.

Actually, I had trouble watching the puppy play with all those big dogs. Edsel has traumatized me. Thanks, Edsel.

“Ooo, take my picture behind the ‘K,’ I commanded Ned.

“K,” he said, because he’s a dissappointed texter.

All I needed was the one photo, but you know how Ned is.

There are two kinds of people in the world: People who take one photo and people who think it’s funny to take 129239492 photos.

“You’re wasting film,” I tried.

Anyway, that’s why I’m not quite ready for a smoothie.

Now the weekend yawns before me, a holiday weekend at that, and other than preparing my white pants, I have no plans. I’m a bit tempted to do some sort of house project, like paint the bathroom. Or my bedroom. Ooooo. I could paint the spare bedroom like a pale rose color. I’ve been wanting to do that anyway.

If I paint one more thing pale blue or green Ima retch. Is pale rose too obnoxious?

I know I talked about moving, but now I’m not so sure. I like my little house, and it turns out any house out in the country costs MORE. Turns out they charge you for land. Why? It’s just grass you gotta mow.

Why can’t I meet some hot farmer? Some farmer with the delts?

I stole that line from Sex and the City.

Anyway, then I could just move myself and my 40 animals over to his pad. And maybe he’d have goaties. Or piglets. That he’d slaughter for bacon. Oh, a farm! How wonderful.

I had a dream last night that at my front door was a mom cat, a dad cat, and their kittens, which were newborn. They’d come to my house knowing it was a safe haven.

Note: I WOULD LOVE IF THAT REALLY HAPPENED.

Speaking of which, the woman who took Cora has her safely ensconced at home now. Look at her poor shavey tiddies. She had her operation, so no more kids for Cora. Seven is enough to fill our lives with love.

Is everyone waiting for me to mention spending our days like bright and shiny new dimes? What about the plate of homemade wishes on the kitchen windowsill?

I didn’t ask if she’s keeping that name, Cora’s mom, I mean. I think it’s a fitting name, but you’ll be stunned to hear it’s not my decision.

I’ll try to pop in here at some point over the weekend, to see if you’re watching the telethon.

…wait.

Don’t forget to be memorial.

LOFF,
Joob

Weathered Vain

“Leaves no oily residue,” my eye-makeup remover reads. I just read that this morning while I was washing off the oily residue from my eye-makeup remover.

Just tell the truth. Jesus. “Removes your makeup pretty cheaply because it’s the drug store brand.” You know what I really like is that Clinique eye-makeup remover, but it’s too rich for my blood. Even though I got new lips yesterday like I could afford it.

Wait. What?

On Tuesday, I had a consultation at the same place that I get m’Botox and m’Juvederm. In case you’re local, I go to Barber Center and I see Robin.

You know I hate my lips, right? And I already have a Gor-Tex implant in the top one, from 1998, and lemme show you my lips, former.

Okay. Here’s me and my blemish and my lips, fmr. I took this Monday. I’ve no idea why. I’m certain there was a reason at the time. …Oh, I remember. Self-obsession.

So I went to the consultation on Tuesday, and this Robin over there, man does she look good. Not fake cat-lady good, either. The point is, she said, “Thin lips are really hard to bring out. We can add bloo-dee-blah and see if that works, and on top of that, add bleee-dee-bleep-bloo if we wanna keep going.”

That all sounded good to me, but she’s so in demand that she wasn’t available to do it till August 29. “That’s fine,” I thought, and don’t you hate people who say, “I thought to myself”? Who the hell else do you think to?

Anyway, my theory was that’d give me time to save my pennies.

Then yesterday at work, the phone rang.

“Robin has had a cancellation. Do you want to come in today?”

I wonder if we’ve met. Hi, I’m June. I’m impulsive. How do you do? LET’S STREAK.

I mean, I could have said, “Oh, I’ll wait till August till I’ve saved my pennies.”

“I’m taking an early lunch!” I announced, and hightailed it right to the office of beauty and naturalness. The building of aging gracefully.

While I was waiting in the lobby, my old workplace called and up and offered me a job. I am not kidding you. It’s the place I worked at circa 2008–2009. I demurred. Then I went in and had my lips done did. Talk about your dramatic day.

She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t li-docaine.

This is what she used on me, and look at this bitch. If I had her regular lips, I’d be praising Jesus and all the saints.

“We’ll try Volbella,” Robin-who-looks-great said, (“Volbella.” Good lord.) “and if we want to keep going with other stuff, we can.”

First, I iced my lips, and I don’t mean I murdered them. Then she put this numbing cream on me, and maybe this process was the other way around. It was all a whirl. I woke up yesterday not knowing NEW LIPS were at hand.

Here’s me yesterday with the numbing gel, waiting for my million shots to the lips. SHOT TO THE LIPS, AND YOU’RE TO BLAME. Darlin’ you give aging a bad name.

I mean, I think you have to hand it to me that with all this last-minute-ness, I thought, Oh, shit, I’ll probably blog about this. I should take a fow-toe. So I did. And flattering lights in there? When the lights, shine down, on the biddy.

How much of that lidocaine you been takin’, honey?

Then she gave me the shots.

Mother of pearl.

Look. I get through Botox like it’s nothing. And I had Ultherapy and wanted to die (I think I’m beginning to see the results of that, by the way). This pain was somewhere in between.

Mostly, the fact that my lips were so numb freaked me out. It felt like they were 11 feet wide, and I worried, “Am I able to breathe? I can’t really feel my breathe parts.”

And then also, and I want you to brace your own self, but having needles poked right in your lips really hurts. But each shot included lidocaine (Take your silver spoon, dig your grave), so it got more numb as time went on.

Who here is hoping hard I keep referencing cocaine songs?

We used up the Volbella, and after some discussion, in which my lips did not actually move, we decided I’ll stay with just this for now, give it two weeks to settle in, and see if I want to add this other stuff on top of it.

So here they are now.

“It looks very natural,” my Aunt Kathy said, when of course I immediately texted her the results of my day of needles.

“Yeah, that’s the problem,” I wrote her back. “Natural is never my goal.”

So here’s before, with the flattering numbing cream, and after. I think I will probably go get more shit put in. Because last night Ned stopped by, which by the way, I pulled into my drive just as he did, because I had been out on a very important mission.

Faithful Reader and now Mother of One of My Foster Kittens LaUral sent me info on this: rosé vodka. You know in the cartoons where someone takes off in a hurry and there’s a little puff of smoke behind them?

“Hi. I’m a girl,” my new lips said to the indifferent woman at the liquor store. “I hear there’s a rosé vodka.”

She sighed and took me over there. To the vagina section of the liquor store. The only good thing that happened was this song came on:

and it turns out, we both love it, if you’ll forgive the pun. So we had us a little dance party in the vagina aisle.

Anyway, so Ned popped over, and I was all, “Oooo! I won’t say a thing, and we’ll see if he notices my new giant lips.”

He didn’t.

Oh, I was pursing them, and smiling with them even though they hurt. I was turning my head in every direction. That male, straight motherfucker.

Photo on 5-23-18 at 7.23 PM — wat rong wif U

Anyway, I can tell, but I will probably add to the lip sitch in a few weeks.

Oh, and yes to the rosé vodka! I tried it straight and it kind of tasted like rosé wine, but then I added it to my PowerAde Zero Fruit Punch flavor, and it was a dream. I hardly ever drink now, because I’m tryina be thin and also wine never fails to make my head hurt, so I think the last time I drank was that party back in early May. The good news is I have one drink and I’m all painting my body gold and singing Wild Irish Rosé.

Don’t give me any lip,
June

Oh, you know. Just cats, The Simpsons, and blender-licking.

You’d think Lily would bite his face off. But needy. Both of ’em.

Some nights, Edsel is just too much. With the flumping dramatically off the bed whenever I move a corpuscle. Then floomping back on a minute later. With the pressing his head on my neck as hard as he can, for pets. At 4 a.m.

So some nights I kick him out. Last night was one of those nights.

But I let Lily stay, which I rarely do, and last night I was reminded why.

Good lord. This cat has some sort of disorder. Some sort of friendliness disorder. You don’t get a cat so it’ll be friendly. You get a cat so it can lie sleekly across the room and glare at you.

“Yes, I’d like to return this cat? Yes, I do have my receipt, hang on. …Well, she’s too friendly. Something’s broken. She needs her bitch meter turned up.”

She constantly–CONSTANTLY!!–pushes her head into your hand. You have no idea how hard a cat can push her head into you till you’ve dealt with this one.

Actual, unretouched photo of Lily right this minute, making an elusive trip to the food bowl.

Meanwhile, in the back of my ranch, Edsel was left to his own devices. When I got up this morning, I saw he’d taken my robe to the couch and slept with it. So now I have to walk through this life knowing Edsel sobbed into my robe all night.

I just noticed that Lily has moved on to Iris’s dish.

And while nothing is more interesting than hearing about someone’s pets, let’s move on to talk about someone’s work. Wooo! Lemme get more coffee, June.

Busy, is what it was. I literally got 11 hours’ worth of work done in 8 yesterday, and also my blog post was published, the one I was kvetching about doing yesterday. So that was active. After work, I got my hair done because I was shooting moonbeams out my head and not in the good way. What roots?

I should just give up and go gray. If I didn’t dye my hair and didn’t get Botox, I’d save approximately 12 million dollars a month. But I’d look like hell and hate myself. But, see, I already look like hell and hate myself, just underneath “blonde” hair. I should just officially give up and embrace my inner old lady. Which is getting more and more to be my outer old lady.

One day I will look back at photos from this time and think, “I was so young!” That’s depressing.

You know, from age 12 on, I was under the misguided impression that beauty was just around the corner. That I’d just have to get through this one awkward stage and there it would be: my peak of looks. Except that never happened and I spent my whole life looking eh. Eh, she’s all right.

And now I’m on the downward spiral of age and it isn’t going to get better. Although do you watch the Real Housewives? How can you read this blog and not watch the Real Housewives, is what I wanna know. Anyway, Kyle looks particularly good this season, and not fake, either. So if I become a millionaire, maybe then I’ll start an upward spiral.

Speaking of which, I won a dollar playing instant lottery this week. Do you recall, in your Big Book of June Events, that on January 1 I won $100? And I was all, “It’s gonna be MY YEAR!”?

Turns out, it was really everyone’s year and not just mine.

Still, I hadn’t bought a lottery ticket since and the other day I had a dollar so I went to town on the machine at the grocery store and boom. Dollar. Clearly I am on some kind of streak. When I return to the grocery store–

and here is the part where my mother is shocked that two days have gone by since I last went. “Make a list, honey.” But really, what else have I got to do?

Anyway, next time I go to the store I will buy another lottery ticket with my last one, and this is how they get you hooked. Next thing you know, I’m Marge Simpson at the casino.Remember when she got hooked on the gambling? What do you mean, you didn’t catch that episode in 29 years of that being a show? Is The Simpsons still on?

To be fair, I’ve never once watched an episode of Gunsmoke, which is the second-longest-running show after The Simpsons. But to be fairer, I was a zygote when that show started, and also, who wants to watch a Western?

There is nothing that will make me change a channel quicker than a Western. My grandmother was forever watching Westerns like they were good. Oh, look. A cactus. And a bar. And someone shooting someone. Say, is that an Indian?

HOW IS THAT INTERESTING?

Plus also, anything having to do with the courts or justice or law or murder mysteries. I just don’t care. I read some Agatha Christie when I was a kid because my Aunt Kathy loved then, and what I liked about them was her Britishness. I wanted to hear how she made a spot of tea. I didn’t care who lay prone in the drawing room.

So what I’m saying is, I have also never watched those Law and Onions or whatever they’re called. And those Murder, SUV or whatever. Of course, now I have no TV, so I watch nothing except binges of the Real Housewives, which is good because it’s reality, everyone. I only watch what’s real.

But truth be told, and pull up a chair cause I’m ’bout to tell you a shameful secret. Truth be told, those housewives shows are getting old. It’s the same thing over and over. Someone gets offended and then 8 episodes are devoted to the one woman saying. “We need to talk about how offended I was” and then they offend each other anew, or a new person gets mad, and really in the grand scheme, hoooo care. I just like to see when they pop into the plastic surgeon for a spot of collagen or when they show us how much they spent when they go shopping together. Whoever thought to always show us the cash register at the end is a brilliant person.

Also, Philip Roth died. Did you hear? I’ll bet he was a real fan of the Real Housewives.

All right, I gotta go. I realize this was a pressing post, but oh! My smoothies come today!

collection-smoothies

I don’t know how I got to be part of this demographic, but on Instagram I keep getting the same ad, where this hot young girl in her 20s lives in this million-dollar clearly NY apartment and she gets up every day and inexplicably rubs her lips in her bathroom mirror. “Every morning, I do what I gotta do,” she begins, and apparently that involves rubbing her lips. And she looks good doing it. I’d look like I had a nervous tic.

“Then I have one of my smoothies. It feels like I’m doing something naughty.”

See. That’s how hot 20-year-olds think. I’ll show you something naughty, you vanilla whippersnapper.

Anyway, then she gets this delicious-looking smoothie out her freezer, and she makes it in a fancy blender, and then

LICKS

HER

FANCY

BLENDER

and manages to look adorable doing it. Then she kisses her teensy shitty little dog and leaves.

June. Losing readers with shitty small dogs, since 2018. Just get a cat if you need such a purse-sized dog. See above about what a pleasure cats are.

The point is, I watched this ad until I became convinced that if I just got these smoothies, my life would be transfigured and I would be cute and hot and living in New York with a nervous dog the size of a button. Hashtag goals.

I hope that model isn’t real and that that’s not her real dog, cause then I would feel bad. I guess that shitty small dog is someone’s dog, right?

MY POINT is that I signed up to get these smoothies, and allegedly here is a referral link that means you get three free cups and I do, too. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess you have to buy some, too. You’ll be stunned to hear I didn’t take time to read all about it.

I’ll report back to you on if they’re good. You can choose what kind of benefits you want and they adjust the ingredients accordingly. I chose beautifying, because I want to be 20 and a millionaire.

Delusionally,
Joon

Why Sussex

Why does everyone bug you when you’re busy?

Have you ever noticed that? If you’re bored stiff, your social world is a desert. But if you’ve got shit to do, people are crawling out from every damn crack in the wall. Waving their antennae.

I had a busy week at work last week, but when I got back from lunch on Friday, there wasn’t anything to do. So I emailed a few people. “Do you have any work for me?”

At work, we publish blog posts, but they’re not fun blog posts like mine are. Aren’t you having the time of your life right now, for example? Aren’t I a carnival ride? Anyway, the person who’s in charge of all that said, “Well, I was tryina write a blog post for next week and it isn’t gelling. Do you want to try?”

Do I want to try? Hmph! I am the blog-post master! I’ve written 5,000 posts in 11 years! Gimme dat.

Except the thing is, they aren’t fun blog posts, did I mention that? Did I mention that every time I’ve written “post” today I’ve typed it “pist” and I’m getting pist?

So I had to think of a deep, work-related topic. Then I hadda do research to back it up. The next thing you know, old Jed’s a millionaire, and also I’m knee-deep in this blog post.

When I got to work Monday, I was still working on it. “Hey, you gonna have that today?” the Person in Charge of Blogs (PiCoB) wanted to know.

Am I gonna HAVE that TODAY? Good lord! Maybe I could have asked more questions before I undertook this endeavor, and I know that shocks you. I know you’re aware of how carefully I think things out before I plunge into them. Oh, sure, I’ll be the astronaut who flies to Pluto. What I gotta do? Is it just wear this dome hat? Cause okay.

Because of course Monday I actually got work to do. For clients. So I had to “prioritize” that, and you know what annoys me? Prioritizing when I’m into something else.

So not only was I tryina “prioritize,” like that’s a real thing, but also there was the part where there are people in the world.

“Hey, how was your weekend?” 394,330,930400,003 coworkers wanted to know.

HOOOO CARE how my weekend was? And do people not recognize body language? If someone is bent half an inch from their screen, not looking at you when you walk by HORRIFIC OPEN FLOOR PLAN WHERE PEOPLE WALK BY EVERY SECOND, why do you think that someone looks amenable to coming up and chatting?

And it was particularly bad yesterday, because royal wedding. Although I do have to say, the straight married guy who got into the wedding thanks to my enthusiasm was cute to see. Did I tell you about him? Through the months, me being into it made HIM into it. He read way more about the intricacies of the wedding than I did, as he has always been a thorough person, and would probably not volunteer to write a work blog post in one working day. He wanted to know why they’re the duke and duchess of Sussex, and how the hell should I know?

“I thought you know all about this wedding,” he said, and then I felt guilty that I don’t know the ins and outs of why Sussex.

But aside from The Straight Guy Who Now Likes Royal Weddings, I pretty much wanted to kill everyone else.

And my phone. Y’all.

I’m sorry. But do you have a full-time job, and also friends who do NOT work a full-time job? Because holy cats yesterday. Ten-foot-long texts. Follow-up texts wondering why I wasn’t texting.

800-minute-long voice mails. About nothing.

Four-hundred emails. Ned–NED!!!–emailed 26 times. That is not an exaggeration. Twenty-six times. And he called me at lunch. Except I wasn’t at lunch. Because working.

People tagging me on things. People messaging me things. I mean, it was endless. And I feel like if you don’t respond IMMEDIATELY, people get insulted. So I’d just like to say to everyone in my life:

HAVE

JOB.

I am there Monday through Friday. All day. That’s what I’m doing when you email me the song lyrics from Magnet and Steel and wonder why I don’t reply with the next line.

You’re a woman who’s lost to your song. OoooOOOooo…

That really is an excellent song. I hate to be your grandma, but why does Stevie Nicks always have her hair in her face?

“What art and charts are you including with your blog post?” PiCoB wanted to know.

WHAT?

CHARTS?!

You know what I ought to do? Is ask more questions before I plunge into things. Things like, When is this due? How much effort will it require? Will you be needing charts and images? If you’re 46, why have you never married?

Things like that.

Anyway, I got the damn blog post done, and I got my work for clients done, AND…AND!! I got some last-minute freelance work done that came yesterday and that they wanted back yesterday, for my old workplace in LA. I did that after work, because I felt so fresh.

Then I went home and no one called, texted or emailed me all night.

Now I told you so you oughta know. Oooooo,
Joan

The foreign-bean section

I just now got up and fed the regularly scheduled animals, and man, that was easy.

PLOOP. Throw Edsel’s food in a dish. I’ve moved his bowls and food tin back to the kitchen.

Thrill to the sight of the bowls in their rightful place.

I’d had them in this room, my computer room, at the back of the house,

so his crunching wouldn’t scare the mom cat inches away in the room off the kitchen.

Say “room” one more time, June.

Anyway.

Krrrrplap. Iris and Lily’s food, served in the window of the kitchen.

FLAARP. Steely Dan’s canned food, atop the refridge.

Aaaaand, scene. I mean, that all took less than a minute. Everything was in one…room. I changed their water, too. Seriously. Under a minute.

Dang.

But here is where I will not say my favorite thing when someone is telling a story, and the thing I will not say is, “Let me back up.”

Friday
After work, there was a happy hour, but I opted for a June hour instead. Like all my hours aren’t June hours.

I headed to the grocers, the greengrocers, Hulk Teeter’s, because I’d decided to have baked beans on toast during my wedding Saturday morning. When I lived in London the summer of 1990, every morning in the dorm one of the choices was baked beans on toast, and I always had it after my run through the park, and it was delicious.

I had a friend from London, when I lived in LA, and she was pretty much the Forrest Gump of our time. I mean, you name a cultural event in my generation, she was there, somehow. She’s had this charmed life. Anyway, SHE told me the reason it’s delicious is the type of baked bean they have in England.

I went over to the foreign bean section at my grocer’s Friday evening, and do you know every motherfucker in this town bought all the good beans, leaving just this dented can of botulism that I did not buy?

I also went to Target and got new watching-the-royals pajamas, as the royal family is famous for getting pajamas at Target. Meghan’s wedding dress was totally from Target.

Saturday
I’d gone to bed early Friday, in order to be fresh for my wedding. I’d set the alarm, but oh my god I BOUNDED out of bed before it, got m’Diana QVC engagement ring on

and screamed over to the telly. I’m British now, as I have married Prince Harry, so I can say “telly.” I can also say “Savalas.”

Y’all.

Oh, I squealed, I cried, I clapped, I cried more, I screeched, I carried on. THAT WEDDING!!!!

I loved her tiara, and her lace on her veil. I thought her dress was perfect, and why people want it to be a skin-tight David’s bridal mermaid gown is beyond me. I loved everything, even Camilla’s hat.

I wanted to pinch the queen’s cheeks, which I’m certain would have gone over big.

And Meghan’s mom! She is magnificent. She was lit from within.

And okay. That preacher was a little much. But he meant well, and it makes me want to be Episcopalian.

I was a wreck by the end of that thing. I’d cried, I’d clapped, I’d changed religions.

I texted with my friends Lilly and Sandy throughout, and both L and S were annoyed that Meghan had hair out of place. “I realize it’s her thing, but still,” texted Sandy, who has always joined me in judgyness.

“It’s bothering me, too,” said Lilly, who likes Camilla, by the way, because “one day I’ll be an old horsey woman just like her, you know.”

I hate to say it, but I have softened re Camilla as well. They had unfortunate circumstances, but they were in love, Camilla and Charles were. Is it Camila or Camilla? I don’t have time to look it up.

Anyway, I pointed out to Lilly and Sandy that there we were, judging Meghan’s one hair out of place, when we were all three sitting around looking like hell in our pajamas.

Anyway, the whole thing was quite taxing on me, but totally worth it.

I had to stop off for a restorative cream soda after, she says keto-ly, at my favorite sandwich shop, which happened to be next to my Botox place, where I had a 10 a.m. appointment. Normally on a Saturday that hour would kill me, but hell, I’d had a whole day and every emotion and a religious conversion by then.

Fortunately for all of us, my Botoxer is my age. She had been almost late for work, so involved was she in our wedding.

“Yes, they were in love, but he’d made marriage vows,” said my Botoxer, as she came at me with with a needle. She herself is a victim of infidelity, but has meet a lovely new man, who she’s marrying in July.

My Botoxer and I throw down when we’re together.

“You really don’t ever want to get married again?” she asked me, as she jabbed the botox I rejected in my beans into my forehead.

“I really don’t. I did for a long time, when I was desperately in love, but now I enjoy my alone time. I mean, look at me this morning! I didn’t have to take any shit from anyone about my wedding.”

After my Botox, I had a 1 p.m. appointment to take my kittens and their mom to the shelter for shots. While they came to me in a shelter-appointed carrier (see above), I had to return them in two, because they’d gotten too big for eight cats in one carrier.

I’d been weighing them all along, and I knew all the orange boys were close to two pounds (that’s how much they have to weigh to be spayed or neutered) but all the girls were a pound and a half. Runty was a little less than a pound and a half. So what I figured was they’d return my carrier with three tortoiseshell kittens in it.

They came back with an empty carrier.

I lifted the thing to be sure.

“All of them?”

“Yes, ma’am. They all made weight.”

Dammit. I need to get something better than that old kitchen scale.

So, this week LaUral will get her little tortoiseshell and another faithful reader will get the mom. The good news is, when I first got to the shelter, I had two carriers with me, and there were two chairs available in the whole room.

One woman was sitting down filling out an adoption form, and her

JERK

of a daughter, who was young, like, maybe 15, maybe 20, they all look the same to me now, looked up, squealed over my

TWO CARRIERS

of kittens, and kept sitting her stupid young arse down in that chair. I wanted to bludgeon her with a cat carrier. So will I stood there holding eight cats so that

JERK

could sit next to her mom for no good reason, other people approached to look in my carriers. One young couple got quite enamored of my kittens, and as I was leaving they were filling out a form, too.

“Oh, are you really going to take one?” I asked, running down for them each personality trait of each kitten even though they hadn’t asked.

“We’re thinking of taking as many as three of them, ma’am,” they said.

Oh my god! Three!

“Take two orange boys, then, for sure.” I told him. “They all play together and would love to stay with each other.”

And then I returned to my empty house, with barely any pets in it.

I gotta go. I didn’t do much Sunday except grocery shop and drive out to the country for strawberries, which is my new favorite thing to do.

Where, by the way, I saw this. Apparently there are water buffalo now in North Carolina. Or just hot cows. She’s the Pamela Anderson of cows.

I’d like you to take a moment to drink in my current references.

After I bought healthy strawberries, I also drove further out in the country and got some restorative ice cream, she continues keto-ly. There’s a dairy here where they make the ice cream on site, and I am pleased to tell you they have a very friendly guinea hen there named George who I am mos def in love with. (See above re current.)

Okay, now I’ve talked forever and I really have to go.

Royally,
June, dutchess of keto

Days I can’t complain about

I just sat down to blog at you, and sometimes when I have no pressing news, I look at my recent photos to jar my memory of what’s been going on. Not in a Marvin Gaye way.

We have two new guys at work who hail from Vegas. I mean, they don’t bring icy pellets with them wherever they go. You know what I mean. Anyway, we act like they’ve never lived on the planet before, so…introduce-y are we to The Way of North Carolina’s People.

“Have you guys ever tried honeysuckle?” we asked them the other day, on our 3 o’clock walk.

We showed them how you pull the stamen out and eat the little drip of honey at the bottom.

“I guess that’s why they call it honeysuckle,” said one of the newborn Las Vegas guys, who probably hasn’t seen any of the world or anything in Las Vegas. We also gave them a riveting discourse on humidity.

Here’s the best part: It had never occurred to a single one of us that “honeysuckle” was the same as “you suckle the honey.”

Well, golll-eee.

When I got home from work that night, I did the thing where you remain in your car for a moment. I forget why. Something good on the radio (but not NPR, as NPR makes me want to kill own self), something I wanted to answer on my phone. I don’t know. The point is, why do I always forget that this is going to happen?

He can’t wait EIGHT SECONDS for me to emerge from the car.

Then when I did finally go inside, I had all this. LOOKIT THE BABY.

There are also two OTHER new guys at work, and they sit in an office right across from me. That area was originally an “ideation” space, my favorite word, and it was also the space I made doctor’s appointments in, because hello open floor plan. It also served as a milk-pump room for women at work because hello open floor plan.

However, the two guys who moved in there are pretty great, and in fact I KNOW them from another ad agency I worked at.

The agency we came from didn’t just have coffee. It had three different coffee bars, with fresh beans, and from what I hear, there’s a full-time barista there now.

My work doesn’t provide coffee, just a Keurig pot and you bring your own pods, and they were surprised at that.

“I have my own Hello Kitty coffeemaker at my desk,” I said, “but I never bring real coffee.”

One of the guys whipped out a baggie.

“Let’s do this bitch.”

The best part was watching this 8-foot-tall bearded viking carrying my Hello Kitty coffeemaker from the kitchen to my desk.

So we had real coffee at 4 p.m. yesterday, and I slept anyway last night because addict. I just drink coffee now to keep from feeling sick.

When I got home last night, I had a package. About a week ago, my pal in real life, Marty Martin, put an article on Facebook about jewelry called Fordite, or Detroit Agate. For years, people painted cars by hand, at Michigan factories, and the cement underneath it had swirls of the various car paints baked into them. Someone got the idea to make that concrete into jewelry.

When I was growing up, everyone worked at the factory making cars. Everyone. Not my parents, although they both worked at the factories for like a week apiece at some point in their youth.

But my grandparents did. And everyone’s dad did that I went to school with.

When I saw that Detroit agate was a thing, I had to have some. Got this on Etsy–just look it up there and there are plenty of choices. It was hard to photograph up close but all the colors have a little bit of sparkle to them. There are reds, blues, silvers, creams. Ooooo, I loves it. It’s the jewelry of my people.

Also last night, a woman came over to look at Runty and decided she might take the mom cat, Cora, instead. Cora is rather charming, and I’m not worried about people adopting the kittens, because they will.

I take them all in to the shelter tomorrow after my wedding, for their shots and a checkup. I think they will probably take the mom and all the orange boys, who all weigh nearly two pounds now, and give me back the girls for continued fattening–or at least Runty, who weighs only one kitty pound. And if I were gonna keep anyone

WHICH I AM NOT

I would keep Runty, and to give her back to me is a little squealy and I must not love Runty.

I went in to say goodnight to the kittens last night, and three of them were up in the closet. They love that closet in there. They better not ruin my ’60s romance magazines I hid in there when I was thinking of showing my house.

I better go. Tonight is a happy hour for a woman at work who’s leaving, but I really want to be sure to be in good shape for my wedding, so I don’t know if I’ll go. I tend to go to those things saying I’ll just stay for one and being the last person to Uber home at 2 a.m.

Actually, I’ve never done that, but does anyone recall the Whiskey Sour Extravaganza of 2018? ‘Twasn’t pretty.

Or how about the Ned Had to Get Me That One Night Extravaganza of 2016?

So.

I’ll talk to you all soon. My wedding day involves not just my royal wedding, but that trip to the vet, and also m’Botox and then a party and a baseball game. I know. I’m only going to the baseball game because they are giving away free Prince Harry bobbleheads. You know your ass’d go to that sporting event, too.

The point is, you might not hear from me that day, but fret not. We will discuss the wedding, my wedding, ad nauseum.

Royally
Juub

Shelter pics of my kittens. Aka Riveting June.

Despite another busy day at work, I called the animal shelter Wednesday.

“Yes,” I said, because it’s my signature move to begin all my business-y calls with “yes.”

“Yes, I’m fostering seven kittens and their mom, because am self-loathing nincompoop, and I have two people possibly interested in adopting one kitten each. How should they do that?”

I wonder if my mother would pronounce that word “nincom-go-to-the-bathroom.” Do you remember when she said Ned should “Go to the bathroom or get off the pot” re marrying me? Harsh words from a stern taskmaster.

“What are the names of your kittens?” asked the poor recipient of my “Yes…” call.

Their names? They had names?

The last two batches of kittens I received came with paperwork, but these did not. So I had to go home and make up names for them, which is how I came up with Cora Godsey and the seven Walton children, although let’s face it, I always call that one big one Donald Trump and that runt “Runty.”

But all along they had regularly scheduled names?

Using my name and date of birth and social security number and ATM PIN and password to my 401(k), we figured out which kittens I have, and the nice “Yes” recipient gave me the shelter ID number of the mom cat, for future identification. Then she told me how my potential adoptees could get their potential cats, potentially.

The point of my telling you this rather tedious tale is that when we hung up the phone it occurred to me, she’d grown up just like me. My “Yes” recipient was just like me.

AND THE CAT’S IN THE CRADLE AND THE SILVER SPPON.

You’re welcome.

IT OCCURRED TO ME that I could go on the shelter’s website, where on their homepage, in blue, they’ve written “See adoptable animals” and then in BLACK they’ve written “Click Here,” which is just about the most cockamamie link design I have ever seen.

Or, is my mother would call it, genital-amamie.

Despite this, I realized that with the mom’s ID, I could find all the first-day-at-the-shelter mug shots of the mom and all her teensy babies, ALONG WITH THEIR REAL NAMES, and I am dying and also I feel I must show this to all of you.

The level of thrilled I was with this discovery was not nearly commensurate with reality, but that about sums me up. That and, “I hate everyone except people made of glitter.”

Without further ado, I present you my foster kittens way back four weeks ago when they arrived at the shelter, naked and afraid, and an accompanying photo from this current moment in their lives.

Mom Cat/aka Nikita/aka Cora

Mug shot. Wanted for being tawny and prolific with the chillins. No man could resist her tawny stare. It was arresting.

yuu shud be arrest for dis chippy floor.

Nikita is my coworker Ryan’s girlfriend’s name, so this kills me extra particularly.

Rembrant/aka Donald Trump

dis dark kittee a immigrint. must abollesh.

I AM DYING. Oh my god, I love that I discovered their mug shots from kitty jail. And they’re all getting so big big big! They got to the shelter April 20, and I got them April 21. So they looked like these jail pics when I picked them up. I can’t even remember them being so bitty!

Claude Monet/aka JimBob (two names you often mention in same breath)

…no. not gooeng to paint you like french gurl. zzzzzzz…

Andy Warhol/aka Ben

Edgar Degas/aka Jason

Did not lyke to be pick up fore week ago. do not lyke now. to put down degas jason. spready toes on degas jason. get hint. do degas jason need to paint pictur?

Caitlyn/aka Elizabeth/aka Runty/ aka Runtis Americanus

do not have room to tat-two all dese names on kittee

Blythe/aka Erin

wate. do kitttee be Gwinnith Paltrowe mom? son of BITZ.

Azra/aka MaryEllen/aka FR LaUral’s soon-to-be kitten

wyy kittee gotta share screen tyme wif Ben Warhol? Dis bullchit.

So there they are, my foster kittens’ mugshots. I hope I was not alone in being delighted I discovered these. I know Hulk, at least, will be happy to see more cat pics.

Also wondering what the fuck an Azra is,
June

Andy Voltaire

Google Photos likes to show me what I’ve been up to in other years. Three years ago today, mom came to visit me in my Year Abroad house. Tallulah was happy to see her gramma.

Oh, Talu.

Someone mentioned in the comments the other day that they wondered if my more curls/less Voltaire hair was a result of doing Curly Girl, and yes.

D'après_Nicolas_de_Largillière,_portrait_de_Voltaire_(Institut_et_Musée_Voltaire)_-001 — I’m Mike Voltaire. I got June hair. [Disclaimer: I have no idea what Voltaire’s first name is.]

Chuck Voltaire liked him some layers.

I have been reticent to do a How To Do Curly Girl tutorial because I didn’t want to steal from the person who actually WROTE the book The Curly Girl Method

(here’s a link to it on Amazon) who is trying to sell a book and so on.

But everyone and their curlies has put online how to do this method, so if you want me to, I will, too. It varies by person, which products work and which methods, but for me almost all of the stuff they tell me to do in the book works.

I just won’t plop. I refuse to plop. If you want me to do a tutorial you will learn what plopping is and why plopping can suck it.

Not that every day is a perfect hair day for me, but this above was second-day hair, meaning I didn’t co-wash it and start all over again with products. But it was also a rainy day, and trust me, my hair could look a lot worse than this. It’s like my cleaning lady Alicia’s best comment to me: There are a lot of people who look a lot worse than you.

Also, hey, June, why don’t you try to turn your camera OFF sometimes rather than take 29 accidental selfies a day.

Day THREE hair, which, really, I was pushing it at that point. Also, rain. Can you tell it rained? Why is my head a weather vane?

Anyway, please let me know in the comments or through telepathy if you’d like that. A tutorial. I mean.

Selfie I DID mean to take. My little eyeless kitty girl. I love her so.

Anyway, I’m tryina think of what’s new, over here. I’ve been busy at work, but the good kind of busy, where there’s a lot to do but you aren’t OH MY GOD WHO CAN DO ALL THIS. There’s a new-ish but not Jewish copy editor who sits behind me now, and maybe if you asked her she’d say I sit behind her.

The point is, we’ve become a little bit of a team. We work on a whole bunch of accounts–which differs from how I used to work. I used to be dedicated to just one client. Now I’m spreading my talents all over town, like my college roommate.

So, they pretty much assign everything to both of us, and we dive on it like jackals. Or, alternatively, we both shy away from it like my kittens are doing with the dry, less-expensive kitten food. Oh my god they won’t eat that damn Kitten Chow. I leave it there overnight and when I get up, most of it’s gone, but they don’t mean it. It’s just to tide those motherfuckers over till the eleventy cans arrive.

Does anyone else follow Love and Hisses? Did you ever notice her kitten room is pristine? Believe it or not, that floor is swept and I Shark it often, but that floor looks a mess.

When the kittens DO go back to the shelter, I AM GETTING THAT FLOOR REDONE. I’ve got a little freelance work to do this month, and that’s where my big dollahs are going. Toward a real floor. How long have you known me to hate that floor? Six centuries?

Does anyone remember in 2014, when our president didn’t tweet and I was preparing to rent my home out for my Year Abroad? I scraped and prepared and painted that floor with alleged paint that was JUST for concrete, then I sealed it and died of exhaustion?

Does anyone remember that?

6a00e54f9367fb883401a511d895df970c-200pi — July, 2014. DON’T DO IT, JUNE! DON’T MOVE! Stay and enjoy your floor!

Yeah. That lasted. The floor lasted as long as my relationship.

I want old-looking linoleum, which I may have mentioned, but even if I haven’t I can’t imagine you’d be shocked at this info. June likes old stuff? June likes it vintage? She always struck me as sleek and minimal.

Alf my ridiculous handyman says I’m not allowed to measure or purchase tiles without his participation, and I am down with that plan. Because maths. “Alf, the room is 38484 by 31. I need one tile.”

I guess that pretty much sums it up, although technically I’ve told you nothing.

I had a guest over last night, to try to socialize the shy kittens, but they’re really effing shy. Do you recall a month or so ago when I was offered a job by the company I freelance for? I’ve gotten friendly with the person who offered me the job, and she stopped by last night to drop off m’freelance (under/over on how long June stares at her freelance work and doesn’t start till she’s panicked?) and meet the kittens.

She’s allergic to kittens, incidentally. And even though Ben and MaryEllen and Donald Trump barely let her touch them before dashing off hysterically to hide under the chair (I have no patience for shy anything), she still broke out in welts.

“I knew I would. But I don’t care! KITTENS!” she said. For she is my people. There really is something incredibly rewarding about touching their little walnut heads. Even when their walnut heads are shy and you have to drag them out from under a bus to pet them.

Other than that, I finally got a pedicure…

June comes to the realization that she painted her toes the same damn color blue she chooses for everything. June’s next BF will be from The Blue Man Group. She will never see him perform.

…and tonight I was gonna go to the cat cafe, because I don’t see enough cats, and then maybe the hookah bar with Wedding Alex, where I planned to ask her, “Whooooo are youuuuu?” but now she has to work, so I will come home and look at my freelance and put it off till I’m panicked.

And that’s the way it is, Wednesday, May something, 2018.

Love,
June Voltaire

The June Channel

Photo on 5-14-18 at 8.14 AM — Sans makeup. Blugh. Oh, but I DO have on sunscreen! Australian Gold tinted 50 SPF.

You know those annoying posts where I put on my makeup and talk to you, because I’m tryina do everything at once?

Yeah.

Photo on 5-14-18 at 8.18 AM #3.jpg — Laura Mercier Secret Concealer for Undereye in 1.5. How can it be a secret if I’m telling you about it?

So, if you read yesterday’s post about my humiliation, you know I have TV now.

Photo on 5-14-18 at 8.22 AM #2 — L’Oreal Brow Stylist in Light Brown. I don’t actually like this stuff, but it’s what I’ve got. Does anyone like their eyebrow tint?

Turns out, TV SUCKS, man. I haven’t watched TV in, what, two years? Is that how long it’s been?

First of all, almost all the channels are just commercials disguised as channels. QVC, old-lady makeup network, a cheerful channel called Dealing With Cancer. What happened to, you know, shows?

Photo on 5-14-18 at 8.28 AM — Chanel Perfection Lumiére Velvet in Beige

Then when you DO get a channel, like, I stopped on E!–E exclamation point–there are all these terrible POP-UPS at the bottom of the screen that distort the real show and distract you annoyingly.

Do TV people realize we can all just stream things now? That they should be getting BETTER, not worse? Why do we PAY for this bullshit?

Photo on 5-14-18 at 8.33 AM #2 — NYX Natural Shadow Palette. Don’t really like this, either, but it’s what I’ve got. I like the COLORS, but it doesn’t seem to actually go ON. It’s like, did I just DO anything, applying this?

One good thing I found was a network that showed me old Warner Bros. cartoons. I saw one where a poor homeless hound dog needed shelter, so he found a house in the woods that ended up belonging to a skunk, and the whole thing was the two of them duking it out and being friends in the end.

I guess maybe in retrospect, the skunk was squatting in the house same as the hound dog, because there was a vanity with perfume, and why would the skunk have a vanity?

Also the next one was a dog who got abandoned in a field, and I WAS ALL NO YOU ARE NOT SHOWING ME THIS, who wanders over to Porky Pig’s farm and tries to get P. Pig to adopt him. The dog is all, “I’m 50% Pointer–there it is, there it is. I’m 50% setter (he sits down). 50% boxer (he starts boxing).” Oh my god, it was magnificent.

Also, Porky Pig is not humane. He was mean to that poor dog. I guess to be a pig who owns a farm you gotta be pretty cutthroat.

Photo on 5-14-18 at 8.44 AM — NYX Retractable Eye Liner in Gray–they really make these labels on cosmetics for the young. And L’Oreal–although nowhere on this tube does it SAY that–Voluminous Butterfly Sculpt in Blackest Black, because eff natural.

Finally, last night I watched Mildred Pierce on Turner Classic Movies. What happened to the old guy? There was always an old guy named I think Robert who introduced you to the film and told you the inside guff. Now they’ve got some preppy whippersnapper.

Photo on 5-14-18 at 8.49 AM — Clinique Chubby Stick in Roomiest Rose. I don’t really like it, but it’s what I’ve got. Are you sensing a theme, English major? Also, I like how sometimes Eds is at the door, and sometimes he’s dashed outside again.

So I’ll probably get ridda TV once the royal wedding is done, because this is bullshit.

Television industry, you have one week to get me hooked again.

Luff,
June

P.S. Obligatory kitten picture:

Special Sunday Humiliation Edition

Ned–and right there’s my problem: Ned.

Ned has been out of town a lot lately, with work and family things. “I thought of asking if Nancy could stay with you, but I realize you’re at cat capacity,” he said, and why he thinks 11 cats counts as “capacity” is beyond me.

Vagabond Ned was going to grace his own town with his presence for a one-night-only special appearance Friday, and he wondered if I’d like to have dinner.

“Can we go to the Thai place?” I asked, because ket-no. Keto schmeto. If I see one more piece of food that doesn’t have carbs in it, I’m gonna drive myself to the nearest wheat field and just commence chewing.

Ned agreed, which means he must have been desperate because he hates the Thai place, as apparently they don’t serve good beer. This is a thing I’d never notice, but I’m not old Hoppy Ned. Old barley boyfriend, fmr.

So off we went, and I am delighted to tell you that Ned got pinot noir and I ordered the Kung Pao chicken, which isn’t even Taiwanese (heeeee) but Chinese, and HOOOO CARE because the point is it comes with rice.

Rice!

Oh, rice.

Delightful rice.

I was Condoleezza Rice, is who I was. I was Carbra Streisand. I had it all over me, like I was a toddler. I was mashing it on my hands, it was in my hair. I felt magnificent. Reuniting with rice. That’s nice.

1975 — Any time anything is “America’s No. 1,” you know you’re in trouble. You know it’s right up there with white sneakers and new country music.

While I was carb loading, I managed to bring up the royal wedding, with which I am obsessed. “It’s only a week away!” I said, wondering if the Thai place also had a bread basket and maybe an oatmeal cart or tortilla tray.

Ned has always insisted that Kate Middleton is the most beautiful woman in the world, but that is where his interest in the royals begins and ends.

“What I want to see is the Kate Middleton sex tape. When’s THAT thing gonna come out?” he asked, over his plate of Thai vegetables and a side salad of vegetables. “Could I get one grain of whole-wheat brown rice?” he’d requested.

“I imagine, Ned, that there are all kinds of Kate Middleton lookalike pornographic films available,” I said from under my I Heart Rice sash I’d fashioned from the pages of my now-useless keto book. “I mean, surely you’ve looked for them.”

Ned put down his forkful of kale.

“I’m disappointed in myself that I’ve never thought to look for that,” he said.

I got out my phone. In general, I don’t look at pornography, because I figure that’s a job for the men of America, but in keeping with my general fascination with the absurd, I do occasionally look up ridiculous themes like Star Wars and My Little Pony porn. Am I the only person here who knows you can find anything–ANYTHING–made dirty by some poor soul? And again, I am looking at you, Broken Men of America.

For example, sometimes I look up the search terms people use to find this blog. Behold the last one:

Screen Shot 2018-05-13 at 9.57.57 AM.png

I feel like the fact that that’s even a thing is the work of men. I do.

Anyway, naturally, I got out my phone right there at the restaurant and Googled “Kate Middleton porn.” And lo and behold, the world and Photoshop and MEN had already addressed the world’s deep need to see Kate Middleton in the altogether.

“Here’s one!” I said brightly, showing Kate’s lovely face surrounded by man bits that had quite recently…lightened their loads, as it were.

“Oh my god–PUT THAT AWAY!” commanded Ned, who can be quite the fussy hen sometimes.

Do you think I put it away? Do you? When I was already on a rice high and thrilled to appall Ned?

There was Kate Middleton, pantsless, leaning on a desk. “In a million years, she’d never wear shoes like that,” I announced, thinking of her vast collection of tasteful nude pumps.

Also captured on film was Kate’s apparent visit to the United Nations, so diverse were the men she was…offering felicitations. Also, for as well-dressed as she normally is, you’d think she’d remember to at least wear, you know, something when greeting these fine gentleman, but she often limited herself to a few lacy bits of lingerie.

I held up for Ned images of Kate Middleton greeting dignitaries at her back door.

Kate Middleton the…orator.

And who knew Kate was such a fan of the ladies in waiting?

“Put that phone away this instant,” commanded Ned, his salad growing cold.

After dinner, we both had to go to Rite Aid for various reasons, and it become one of those Rite Aid visits where you begin browsing, and Ned found himself enamored of a hand-shaped retractable flyswatter, which he kept rapping me with from various distances.

There was also a retractable duster, which the more I think about it, the more likely I am to return and purchase. It’s actually a brilliant invention.

“Attention Rite Aid shoppers,” said the ceiling. “The store will close in three minutes.”

“Oh my god! We’ve shut down Rite Aid!” I said, thrilled. I can’t recall the last time I got a last call announcement. Ned and I high-fived our flyswatters.

“You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here at Rite Aid,” Ned said.

After all that excitement, I barely got up in time to greet the cable guy, who came over Saturday to give me TV. “I haven’t had TV in years,” I told him, “but I’m getting it to watch the royal wedding next Saturday.”

Being a straight man with a blue-collar job, you can imagine the intensity of his interest in the royal wedding. This didn’t stop me from telling him all about my fascination with the royals, and how early I got up at age 15 to watch Diana’s wedding, and how I stayed up for her funeral, as well.

“You’re also getting faster internet as part of the package,” the indifferent cable guy told me. “In fact, why don’t you see if your internet is back up. It should be available now.”

And that is when I got my phone and clicked on Safari, the cable guy looking over my shoulder…

…where a photo of Kate Middleton, her wedding dress hiked up, enjoying adult moments with William and an enormous man of color, flashed on my phone.

Yeah.

Coming down with a case of LaCroix

Tell me if this is universal or it’s just me.

You’re extra full of things to do for a few days, and you think okay. I can deal with this. I’m all right. In fact, for me, it’s more fun when work is busy rather than: do this assignment. Wait a bit. Now do THIS assignment. Wait a bit. I like a steady pace that’s just on the edge of being scary but not actually scary.

So.

But, to be specific, I’ve had a very busy time at work, PLUS seven kittens, four adult cats and a touched-in-the-head dog as well. And a strict diet that requires preparing food. Which in case you just got here is not my bailiwick. ‘Tisn’t in m’wheelhouse. Not my forte.

So, I kept thinking yesterday that if I just did this next thing, I could relax for the first time in several days. That’s what was dangling in front of me like a donkey with a carrot. My couch and the TV and a little LaCroix were danglin’.

I created a to-do list by speaking into my phone as I drove home, as my mind was abuzz with the shit I had to do. Once the list was done, I could relax.

Get your food and put it away.
Take care of the animals.
Go to the grocery store.
Then? LaCROIX THROWDOWN.

I’d ordered a buncha keto food delivered, and it was to arrive Wednesday in a box with ice like I’m Elvis ordering banana sandwiches. UPS kept telling me it was on its way, and I wanted to get it into the refridge, which is one of those things someone says wrong and then you start saying it wrong and in this case that someone was Ned.

Go to the grocery store, the list told me, as you are 100% out of dog and adult cat food (it’s cat food that talks dirty) (the each little nibble is man-bit shaped) (when my three cats eat it, instant three-way) (they wash it down with MILF) (okay, I’m done).

I was also 100% out of paper towels, and I wonder why. Is it because ONE of those kittens does not always get to the box? I see most of them going like good cats. But one. One is a rebel. He’s number two. He tries harder. To go on the floor.

So I’d dashed home from work hoping Elvis keto would be on my porch but no.

Since the food wasn’t there, I went inside, let Edsel out, scooped litter boxes–quelle surprise–threw out the bag of cat wastey bits including old Rebel with Orange Paws’s wayward bits, fed everyone, swept the kitten-room floor, tried to get the Donald Trump kitten to be nice, and then boom. UPS finally arrived.

(There’s one big cute orange kitten who used to be called JimBob, but he’s huge and orange-headed and I’ve taken to calling him Donald Trump. He HATES being petted. He shirks down. “No one is going to adopt you if you’re an asshole,” I keep telling him. He doesn’t care. My suspicion is that he’s the pooper but I swear I’ve seen his giant orange head in the box.)

When the keto delivery came, I got the scissors and opened it, then opened the many many many bags inside, put them all away, recycled the original box out at the bin, and finally got to leave for the store.

I got huge bags of cat food and even bigger bags of dog food, giant heavy litter and a case of LaCroix. I’m comin’ down with a case of LaCroix.

And, see, I PLAN to order pet supplies through Chewy again, but I wanted to keep track of how often I run out of everything so I’d know when to renew my order, and now I know. I went from April 18 to May 9, so apparently I need to order cat and dog food and fucking litter (it was in the adult cat food section) every three damn weeks and WHY SO BROKE JUNE OH MY GOD.

Sweatily, I lugged all the enormous shit into my house of enormous shits. The only time I regret being single is grocery-unloading time.

I had to rip open the food bags and dump the food into tins, change the real-cats’ litter boxes using fresh litter, and MY POINT IS…

When you’re this busy, and you keep thinking, one more thing. I just gotta do one more thing. When you do that, and you think you’re done, and it’s ALMOST TEN O’CLOCK, and you realize

GOD

DAMMIT

you also have to take out the trash,

is that when you lose it?

Or is that just me?

I mean, normally you go about your evening, and you see oh. The trash needs to go out. And it’s like, well, shit.

But not me. Not me last night when I’d not stopped moving for 16 hours and I JUST WANTED COUCH AND LACROIX and there was ONE MORE THING TO DO and SON OF A BITCH.

Is that everyone? Or it that me?

P.S. While I was telling you this story, the lawn guys came and thank god because Shoeless Joe Jackson kept wandering out of my tall grass to tell me to build a baseball diamond. But the noises my lawn guys make scare the

CRAP

out of Cora, the mom cat. So when they came, she began howling, and I went in there to pet her and talk to her.

And do you know that Donald Trump kitty crawled up on her back to make her feel better? I’ve never seen any of them do that to her at any other time, crawl on top of her.

So see? Everyone has a sweet side. Even poop-on-the-floor-orange-headed-don’t-pet-me Donald Trump kitten.

I gotta go. I’ve got stuff to do.

If a picture meows a thousand words

Work is kicking my azz lately (I started at 7:00 a.m. yesterday), and you’ll be stunned to hear cleaning up after seven kittens is a lot.

I haven’t had time to write, but I offer you kitten pictures to tide you over till I can speak normally again…

And finally:

Toasted since 1964

I just timed how long it takes for me to take care of all the current animals: 15 minutes. I didn’t get any time to just sit with and pet all the kittens, so without, you know, being kind to kittens, just basic feeding and scooping and changing water, it’s 15 minutes.

I guess that’s not so bad, except the whole getting-ready-for-work thing is always something of a rush, especially if you’re someone who also says, Hey, I guess I’ll sit down and write about my life to a couple-thousand people before I dash off to work.

Anyway, here’s what I did this dang weekend. What about you?

Friday.

My coworker had a partay, and do you wish I’d stop saying “partay” already? Anyway, she did, and careful readers will note I go to this party (partayy) every year at this time, as it is this coworker’s birthday but she never says that.

I’d planned to stay maybe an hour or two, then get back to my 97 kittens, but careful readers will see that day turned into night, night divides the day. Try to run, try to hide, break on through to the other side.

And yes. That is a coworker with a light balanced on her head. It seemed to be the thing to do.

I left that to the younger crowd.

I got home to my kittens and their kitten crumbs pretty late, and the mom was waiting for me with a rolling pin.

“it okaaa. mom do it all herself. she fine. …SYYYY.”

Saturday.
When my high school swain, Cardinal, was here a few weeks ago, he told me about this really cool cemetery in Milton, NC, and you know what sounds good are pastries from Milton the toaster. Hey, June, how’s keto going?

Still on it. But I’d slap your grandpappy’s half uncle for a Pop-Tart.

So I drove there. To Milton. Hoping to meet Mr. Toaster. Tell me I’m not the only person who remembers Milton the Toaster.

He always seemed to have a touch of the rosacea.

I remember this one just bitch of a reader, who couldn’t wait to say mean things to me whenever she could, and what is that? What makes your life so empty that you take time to find a blog, then hate what the person wrote, and stick around so you can be angry?

Anyway, I had some makeupless picture up and she commented, “Is that rosacea?”

I’m tryina think of the other bitch-ass things she wrote over the years till I blocked her. But that’s the only one I can recall now.

I also recall in my first year of being separated, dating someone for, like, a week, and it didn’t work out, but that same weekend of deciding that torrid one-week affair wasn’t going to work, going on another date and kissing that second date goodnight, and coming back here to tell you all that it went well, and someone said they’d never read again because “all the drama” was “dangerous.”

Good lord with people. Good lord with my short sentences like the one above.

But back to my cemetery.

Before I got to get in the car and head to the dead, I had to take Cora Godsey and her seven Walton children to the shelter, for their checkups and shots. Steely Dan didn’t join us. But I like this photo of him. When he’s indoors, he’s just longing to go out.

So he can do this. He caught some sort of rodent Saturday morning, and what berserk eyes of murder? Good lord. More delightful updates on that in a moment. Stay tuned!

Anyway, I took the 2,000 kittens to the shelter, and they’re all doing well. I go back in two weeks with them for another checkup, and I would not be surprised if by then they will be adoptable. That’s also the day of the royal wedding, and also the baseball thing here (Official Name®) is giving away Prince Harry bobbleheads to the first 1,000 visitors and of COURSE I’m going, so two Saturdays from now will be big with me.

After I got 101 Kittmations back home and situated, I got on the road to see the dead people.

June, knowing how to throw down. June, toasted like Milton the toaster, since 1964.

The drive there was all country roads, which I love.

And the town of Milton was cute!

I guess I should’ve, you know, stepped back, but these are trees growing out of an old building.

I even met goaties!

I promised I’d send them this after I took it and still haven’t.

Anyway, finally I found the cemetery.

If you ever want to be horrible to me, like if that “Is that rosacea” woman is in charge of me after I depart the earth, put me in a treeless cemetery with fake flowers on the graves. THAT would be horrible, to me.

Sunday.
On Sunday, I acknowledged the 900 animals here.

Faithful Readers Happy and LaUral both came by to see kittens, and you know, I CALL them faithful readers, but I have no idea if they actually read my blog/not blog or just saw kittens on Instagram or whatever. Hoooo care.

[Potentially] FR Happy, whose philosophy is, Why photograph a kitten when you have your thumb?

[Maybe] FR LaUrual, who is not going to be IGNORED by Eds.

Anyway, LaUral was somewhat in the market for another cat, because you can never have enough cats, just ask me. And she landed on MaryEllen.

Not literally.

MaryEllen is brave, and seems to be good with dogs, which is good because LaUral has a giant white 4,500-pound dog, so.

Family portrait. It’s Olan Mills at my house. That’s a fake bookshelf behind them.

Once I take the kittens back to the shelter, I’ll tell them I have a person who wants to adopt one, and they’ll set it up. Just six to go, plus a mom!

kittee feeel confident she find home. look at all dis.

The rest of the afternoon was quiet, and as evening approached, I headed to the grocery store to buy more damn keto food. Steely Dan was hunkering over by the trash cans, which isn’t like him. I petted his velvety head and left.

I ran into my doctor at the store, of all things, and he was glad I was going keto. “It really burns fat if you stick with it,” he said, as he reached for skim milk and I reached for heavy whipping cream.

When I got home, SD was still by the trash cans. Was he injured or something? I had to take the trash cans out of there, anyway, so I went over to talk to him and he seemed fine.

Then I rolled the first totally full recycle bin. I rolled it

OVER

BABY

CHIPMUNK.

That’s why that jerk was stationed at the trash cans! For at least 45 minutes! That’s why! And I FINISHED IT OFF FOR HIM with my trash can!

Oh my god, I was devastated.

You shoulda seen that evil cat, poking at the poor thing. he really ded?

That cat practically high pawed me. Gave me the high four.

We’re like Bonnie and Clyde now.

Goddammit. I will never get over that. I feel horrible. Also, this is three dead rodents in a weekend, and they may all have been chipmunks, and is there some kind of chipmunk colony in my yard? If so, they picked the wrong yard.

I gotta go, but I guess I’ve filled you in on all the happs over here. Also, Dear June: Don’t say “happs.”

Happs,
June

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WHAT?

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Mom Cat/aka Nikita/aka Cora

Rembrant/aka Donald Trump

Claude Monet/aka JimBob (two names you often mention in same breath)

Andy Warhol/aka Ben

Edgar Degas/aka Jason

Caitlyn/aka Elizabeth/aka Runty/ aka Runtis Americanus

Blythe/aka Erin

Azra/aka MaryEllen/aka FR LaUral’s soon-to-be kitten

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