Book of June

I forgot to mention to you that the day Steely Dan was clearly hurt, with the growling when he walked and his big eyes and so on? I called the vet right away, like at 7:30 in the morning, and they said, “Can you have him here by 8:00?” So I took the world’s fastest shower and put on the world’s fastest stupid ensemble and then I scream scream screamed to the vet and went to work and looked like this:

Wow. I don’t know anyone whose hair reflects her every mood the way mine does. This one says, “Harried.” Hair-ried.

But while we’re on the subject of my stupid life, usually when I write you, I’m in my robe, and I will give you a moment to stop being so turned on.

But today, after I showered

[I’ll give you another moment. You must be on fire at this point.]

I thought, You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna get dressed right away, because that robe is always kind of warm and my bosoms are always in the way

[At this point there’s nothing you can do. You are going to spend the whole day in a heightened state of arousal.]

so why not get dressed now?

So I did, and then I made my avocado toast and bit into it and squirted grape tomato all over my outfit.

And right then I knew, that’s why I fucking wear my robe when I write you. I have to wait till the very last minute to dress, to alleviate the many things that can go wrong with my clothing. The cat hair, the tomato seeds, the toothpaste.

Goddammit.

It’s a good thing I pilled Steely Dan before I showered and dressed, as that was another thing that could have landed on my clothes. I know I told you he takes pills nicely, and compared to my other cats, he still does, but perhaps he’s feeling better or just wasn’t in the mood, because he

SPAT

his pill across the kitchen floor.

I didn’t even know cats could spit. He was like a gray angry llama up in here. Just ptooi across the floor with that pill. But I gathered it up and gave it to him and he was all, FINE and took it without incident.

The fact that he is currently an indoor cat makes me feel better about finding this last night…

My friend Lucy, from TinyTown, gave me this right when I moved into this house, and it’s been in my backyard ever since, and it’s been used ever since. Now, I know Iris isn’t strong enough to, you know, RIP a birdhouse open, and probably SD isn’t, either, but since he was inside (and so was Iris, actually), I know I don’t have to blame my own self for this horrific scene.

I didn’t see feathers or eggs or anything, so maybe whatever animal did this was out of luck. There WAS a nest in there, but that coulda been from last year.

So that was dramatic, and also dramatic yesterday was when an electrician came over. I had a smoke detector hanging from my ceiling by its wires, like I decorated using tips from Crack House Monthly. Like I decorated using pins from Needle-trist. And anyway, Alf my ridiculous handyman said it was going to require an actual electrician to fix it, so I got one to just replace all my smoke detectors, because every single one of them is wired into my ceiling and was either (a) missing because I ripped it down or (2) had a door that was stuck open because they were all old and stupid.

So yesterday at lunchtime, the electrician came over and replaced all 6 smoke alarms, and when the new ones went in they would beep a few times to let us all know they may be new but they’re still annoying. And as he did that I was tryina stay out of his way and I saw this.

Poor Eds was in the bathroom, being a letter C. A few minutes later, I walked past again and the electrician was standing over Eds, rubbing his dog chest. I dearly wanted to say, “May I photograph this moment for my blog?” but YOU try that and see how insane that makes you feel.

But speaking of Edsel, he did get rewarded for his terror last night when Aunt Alex came over. Oh, he was mad when her truck pulled up. He was all making a letter O with his mouth and raising his hackles and carrying on, and Steely Dan, who wants nothing to do with any of us at this point and feels like Pa Ingalls did when he was snowed in for months with his stupid family, glared and hoped the person in the truck was an ax murderer and we’d all be removed from this mortal coil.

But it wasn’t an ax murderer. It be Aunt Alex. Note SD in the corner, with his Paw Wash of Disappointment.

“Steely Dan’s inside!” she exclaimed ‘ere he stomped out of sight.

“Apparently you’re not reading my blog,” I said, and it’s always a weird thing when you write about your life every day and then you have friends in real life and you don’t wanna be RUDE and be all, “Do you read my blog?” but you also don’t want to launch into a story they just fekking READ about and then they have to feign interest and it’s really become a thing, basically.

Other than relatives such as my parents, the people who know me in real life don’t read me. It’s probably enough to know All This in real life without having to read All This.

“No, I–I read. I know he got hurt, but then what happened?”

See. She saw it in Facebook, is what she did. It really is a thing, this blogging and having friends. It’s an awkward thing. Maybe I should just go ahead and tell all my stories, and they can interrupt me with, “Yeah, I read this already, bitch,” but who’s gonna do that? Emily Post has never addressed this situation.

Aunt Alex was over to have dinner with me, as I have not seen her in awhile because we don’t work together anymore and she no longer lives a mile away. She and her spouse, who is also good-looking, moved to the country so they can impress the animals with their golden blondeness. They’re like Adam and Summer’s Eve.

And why do all my younger friends get to move to the country and eat a lotta peaches while I’m stuck in the bustling metropolis that is Greensboro? Why I gotta be all urban? I’m dying to live in the (snake-free) country.

They should make snake-free country the way they got the seeds outta grapes. I mean, someone figured that out, and that couldn’t have been easy. Work on it, smart folk.

Oh my god, anyway. The point is, we went to dinner at this little diner that’s been around since 1977 and since they last decorated in 1977. I want it to NEVER CHANGE. I adore it there.

I had quiche, because 1977, and she had a prosciutto and swiss sandwich, and we had a lovely time and talked and laughed and then she took me home and as I walked into my living room, I saw her pull back into my drive.

I went outside.

She got out of her truck. She stared at me, aghast.

“We didn’t pay.”

OH MY GOD WE DIDN’T PAY! We just clean forgot! We just STROLLED out of there without going up to the counter!

Alex went back, and she texted me after. “They weren’t even fazed,” she said.

We totally coulda gotten away with it.

I gotta go, but I wanted to tell you about a lovely experience I had last night. I mean, beyond dining and dashing.

Here’s one of my Amazon links to a CD. Back in the year 2000, which feels like five years ago but was EIGHTEEN, I trained for and ran a marathon. I also had a very fruity therapist, whom I loved, who changed her name from a nice Jewish lady therapist’s name (think something like Myra Goldblum) to something Indian-ish, because she was super duper into meditation and so on, and during some sort of seminar she was given a new name. So she went from Myra Goldblum to Sanguine.

I loved her. She lived in my neighborhood, so I’d walk over to her house once a week and get therapied. She got me to get a Ganesh keychain, and so on. The point is, she loaned me the above CD, there, called Sound Body, Sound Mind, by Dr. Andrew Weil. It’s five minutes of him talking, then an hour or so of really pretty music.

What happens is allegedly while you listen to it, your body heals itself from whatever’s wrong.

I was to take her CD and tape it, and dear Dr. Andrew Weil, don’t arrest me.

So Marvin made me that tape, and he inscribed it, Sound Body, Sound Mind CD from Gurpmaloni Changetrimeshu.

I used that tape like a motherfucker while I was doing my marathon training, because something always hurt on me, and I would giggle

LIKE AN IDIOT

every time I saw Gurpmaloni Changetrimeshu. And that’s really the name he wrote; I can still remember it.

THE POINT IS, eventually I bought the CD so I wouldn’t have to get up and flip the damn tape, and I LOVED it and I think Marvin accidentally stole it in the divorce, because the very last thing he wants is a bunch of fruity meditation music given to me by Gurpmaloni.

I told her that story, by the way, and she giggled. Oh, I adored her.

Anyway, m’tooth was hurting again last night, and I said, Goddammit. I really wish, what would really work, is if I still had that Dr. Andrew Weil CD, and I don’t. But you know what I did? Technology. I got it on iTunes, and I plugged my phone in next to my bed, and when that music started up, I almost started to cry.

I’d listened to that thing so often from, like, 2000 to maybe 2005, and then it got lost, and it was so nice to hear it again. And I fell asleep listening to it, slept like a LOG, and then today my mouth doesn’t hurt.

So I’ll link to it again if you want it. Or you could just iTunes it like I did. It was 12 dollars.

Namaste,
Junemaloni