Iris is dead. I cannot talk about it.
Here’s the last picture I ever took of her, on December 20. Oh, Iris.
Horrible
Category: My pets
Catch up on June’s…animals (ya got all weekend?)
Before I begin delighting you all with pet speak, lemme tell you what just happened.
These past two days, I’ve been tryina keep up with reading blog comments, but it’s not easy. I tried looking at them here, not in email, and one thing that’s irking me is the comments are in order from oldest to newest. So every time, I saw the same comments and had to scroll endlessly.
From my phone, I tried to mess around with my comment display on WordPress, and you’ll never guess what I found.
Apparently, there is someplace on my blog (not blog) that tells you, a faithful reader, that if you click here you can send a personal message to June, and that June will know this and read it.
Except I never knew this place existed till an hour ago. If you sent me a message there and you were all, What a bitch, you were right, but not about the part where I didn’t answer you. (And in fact, even if I had read these as they came to me, there’s no Reply button.)
I sat here for a whole hour reading messages y’all have sent me since day one of me being here on WordPress. And with no Reply button, I had to sit here going, “No! I didn’t block you on Facebook” and “I’m not an admin on Facebook of June!” and so on. Oh my god, it was like a nightmare! There were sweet comments and mean ones.
My favorite was the person who said, “Are you ever coming back? Because frankly, I’m getting tired of checking here all the time.” Well, if I wasn’t tempted to return before… Apparently, it’s right up there with brick-laying, checking over here.
What most of your messages were about, though, were why I’ve blocked you or refused to let you comment or go on my Facebook page. Every single person who wrote was someone I (a) didn’t actually know and had no hard feelings toward (2) did not block in any way from any portal of my life.
One lesson I offer is to not take things so personally. Because I left Facebook months ago of my own accord, and I stopped writing here months ago of my own accord, and it was not about you, 50+ people who assumed it was.
“JUNE. Why did you block me on Facebook?!”
“JOOON. I can’t see new posts. Did you block me from your blog?”
“JOOOOOB!!! Why won’t you let me into Pie on the Face? Why did you kick me off Pie on the Face? Why can’t I find Pie on the Face?”
So, in summary:
- I can’t block anyone from seeing this blog, or new posts on this blog.
- I am not on Facebook at all. I did not block you personally; I blocked myself from the whole organization.
- I am not on Pie on the Face, I was not an administrator of Pie on the Face for a very long time before I left, and it’s not called Pie on the Face. It’s called (Face)Book of June.
Good gravy.
Oh, and
4. Don’t contact me via that Contact Me thing, wherever that is, because I don’t know if I’ll ever find it in the bowels of WordPress again! That was nightmarish, seeing all those messages I blithely didn’t respond to!
I suppose I should figure out how to remove that, along with the Amazon link that no longer works. Oh, June. Blogging was supposed to be fun.
Okay, onto my pets.
When we left each other, handing each other our yearbooks and swearing we’d be friends forever, 2 Good 2 Be 4Gotten, I had Edsel, Lily and Iris. Steely Dan was missing.
And he still has that loose tooth.
Steely Dan is still missing.
I can’t even stand it. I left a note for the woman who bought my house, saying if an all-gray cat wanders onto her roof, he’s mine. I’ve checked the shelter 900 times because of course, I’m at the shelter 900 times a week. Or I was. For I was still fostering up until the very, very last minute of my move (they were kind of dicks about that, which I’ll tell you about further down).
In June, and who isn’t. Hrrrrrr. That was supposed to be a June’s hot love life joke, but IN JUNE, the shelter had me foster three ferals, and they broke my heart the most of all my fosters.
Because they started out terrified
and ended up being the sweetest three kittens you ever saw. They were so nice!
And how it works when you foster is this: You take them home for a week or two and medicate them if they need it and also fatten them up, like veal, then you go back to the shelter and they get booster shots. If they weigh two pounds, they’re officially adoptable. And for these three little shy muffins, they made it to two pounds way too fast for me. I was just getting them to trust me and then they were back on that adoption floor. I was haunted by the idea that they’d go back to terrified, but fortunately, you can refresh the shelter’s “adoptable cats” page like an obsessed person, and as soon as they’re adopted they leave the page, and they all found homes REALLY FAST THANK GOD.
So that ended well, but it was a rolly coaster, as one of my relatives would say.
Then at work, one of my favorite coworkers died very suddenly, in her sleep. It was awful. I’d been kibitzing with her on Friday and she died Sunday.
So my response? I got a kitten and named it Leonard, which is her last name.
And you remember the part where Edsel adores kittens? And how NINETEEN KITTENS that I can think of have passed my door this year alone? And he’s lived for them all?
He hated Leonard. I mean, he wasn’t mean or anything, but the first thing he did when I brought Leonard home was hide behind the toilet. He spent the next 10 days behind the toilet. I kept “giving it a few days” and there was Edsel, Eau de Toilette, getting tanked. He was flush with fear.
He was Kohl toward that kitten.
Eventually, The Copy Editor Who Sits Behind Me came over, took one look at Leonard and took him home.
And guess what. Leonard CONSTANTLY bites her dog. Like, he’s just a terror to her dog. She’s tried everything and is hoping he gets better with age. Not biter with age.
Eds knew.
As soon as Leonard was gone, I heard a screech in the night.
SQUEEEE!
MEEEEE!
SKEEEE!!!
“Did you hear that?” I asked my neighbor, fmr., who has a very cute cat named Oscar that Iris basically tried to kill.
“Was that a kitten?” asked my neighbor, fmr.
‘Twas. And for the next 87 nights, we sat outside of bushes and kneeled under his deck and carried on trying to get this bitty kitten to come to us, as it was clearly under duress, because did I mention
MEEEEEEEEEP!
It was so sad. I eventually put an ad on NextDrama, asking if anyone had a humane trap, and met a very nice retired math teacher who did. You can imagine the lively math talks he and I had.
Night after night I’d put canned kitten food in there like an asshole, and night after night I’d watch that slip of a kitten go in, eat the food, and walk right back out because he was too light to trip the trap.
The happy ending to that story, much like my massages, is that kitten never did get trapped but got totally friendly and up close and personal, and my neighbor, fmr.’s brother took that kitten and he’s a big friendly gray cat now. I mean, he always was a gray cat. You know what I mean.
The summer ticked by and right when I was in my OH MY GOD MY HOUSE SOLD IN A MILLISECOND drama, the shelter called. They had three two-week-old kittens, and could I take them, and bottle feed them, and teach them to poop and pee, and
I
SAID
YES.
It was about this time that I convinced self that I am chaos junkie.
They were so boopy and teensy at first! I put them in a laundry basket and they slept next to my bed. At first I’d get up in the night and try to bottle-feed them, but then I read if you feed them a bunch during the day, you can sleep through the night and I said Oh thank god.
Their mother had been hit by a car, so I had to be their mom, and that involves stimulating their pee parts till stuff comes out, and it’s not necessarily as tidy as you’d like that process to be.
After weeks of mixing up formula and bottle-feeding them 20x a day and making them poop and keeping a warming disc constantly warm and JUST TRYING NOT TO KILL THE KITTENS, they stopped being personality-less lumps and started being fun.
Edsel’s such an asshole.
For six weeks, these three were at my house, just getting more adorable by the minute. Meanwhile, I’m tryina pack shit, and having three teensy kittens in the way was not great. I kept them in their concrete floor room when I packed, but eventually, I had to pack that room.
And that’s where the shelter sort of disappointed me.
Because often, in fact, every other time, if I took my fosters in for their booster shots and they weighed, you know, 1.8 pounds, they’d take them from me and make them adoptable. I was maybe a week from moving, I’d spent SIX WEEKS feeding and pooping and socializing and caring for these kittens DURING A MOVE, and when I
STEPPED
ON
THE
YELLOW
ONE
I called the shelter. And when I took them in, they said, “They aren’t exactly two pounds yet. Can you take them back with you?”
I had a friend at work who was definitely taking at least one. And I really couldn’t take them back. A mover was coming to get furniture out of that kitten room the next day. The boxes were sky-high in my house. It wasn’t safe there anymore, really, and I had too much to do.
So instead of saying, Oh, thanks for the
SIX WEEKS
of paying for food and litter and bedding and formula that cost $900 a can and for not sleeping, instead of saying thank you for all that? They took the kittens and huffed away.
Honestly, I felt horrible.
I felt terrible for the kittens, and I felt like I let the shelter down, even though that was by far the toughest foster I ever did.
They were ready for adoption in like two days. And my coworker took the yellow one and the black-and-white one, and someone snatched up that tortoiseshell, thank god.
Which brings us to today.
I can’t foster here at this house, because there’s not a good room with stupid concrete floors that I can shut off, and after that last experience I’m a little…reluctant to help the shelter.
So last weekend I found myself missing kittens, and I went to the shelter just to visit. I’ve done that quite a bit, actually. Just go say hi to cats, pet them, get some strange and come home.
But on Sunday, there was one I really liked. He’s buff. Not that he works out. He’s buff COLORED. And he was so chill. He has a little white tip on his tail.
I left him at the shelter, figuring he’d get adopted that day.
When I looked at the June’s OCD shelter website on Wednesday, he was still there.
So I drove there Wednesday.
Turns out they were having a sale. Kittens are normally $75, but they were $13 that day. According to my maths, that’s 900% off.
And that is why I am the proud owner of an 11-week old kitten named Milhous. Get it? Do you? Milhous? Cause I live in a…mill house?
Iris and Lily’s souls died months ago. They’re like, nother kidden. hooo care.
So now you’re up to date on my animal sitch.
We’ll talk soon. Be sure to write in and ask why I blocked you from Pie on the Book.
Furrily,
Juan
Oh, you know. Just cats, The Simpsons, and blender-licking.
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!
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
Don’t fence me in
When we last left each other, flush from our reunion, I told you that Steely Dan was injured and I’d taken him to the vet. It turns out, it wasn’t a cat fight. It was a rock lobster.
No.
It was a fence or maybe a tree. They think he got caught in a fence. Like he’s a steer or something. Anyway, in his endless quest to be mysterious, it turns out Steely Dan is really easy to pill. Affable Iris, the second-most cheerful cat on earth (after Winston, fmr.), is an
ASSHOLE
about taking a pill. Evil Steely Dan, who’d just as soon cut you as cuddle with you, is all, Oh. Okay. You can shove that thing in my gullet. Fine. Is there any port?
But here’s the thing. He really. Really. Really. Wants to go out. And the vet has him on antibiotics for a week and wants him to stay in.
He wants out. Though. Is the thing.
And I have to remain ETERNALLY VIGILANT, because he can figure out doors as long as they’re not deadbolted (at least he hasn’t figured out deadbolts…yet. Now he has all this time on his paws to Google it), and so far this has happened twice…
So that’s been relaxing.
Other than my endless parade of animals and their animal drama, today marks 10 years that I moved into this house, and to celebrate, I’m getting a crown.
Taaaa-daaaa!
Dental work scares me. I don’t like it. I’m getting the gas, so I will be fairly oblivious, and that’s for my sake AND the poor dentist’s. I’ve got a new dentist after the whole hygienist-who-never-stopped-prattering fiasco at the last place (if you just got here–heh–I got up all my courage to ask for the other hygienist, and I saw her once, and then the next time I came they gave me the chatterbox again, so I got up my courage and asked AGAIN, and they scheduled me with ol’ Chat Room AGAIN. The End), and he seems pretty highfalutin’ with his equipment and so on, so maybe my crown won’t be so bad.
Other than that, since we haven’t talked in a coon’s age, let’s go see what my photos can tell us about what the HELL I’ve been doing lately…
Do I even wanna know what I was thinking when I took this?
I went to Home Depot, then Lowe’s, then Home Depot again last weekend, because no one else ever thinks to go there on weekends, so it was like a big relaxing cavern, really. I picked up these succulents because I fall for any novelty.
Really I was buying paint and switchplates, but that never stops me from a pink succulent impulse buy.
I also tried to go have tea with my coworker Nefertete, and TEA with NeferTETE was almost too much for me on the cute level, but guess what.
They were CLOSED.
We tried to go to a coffee shop and I want you to gird your loins. CLOSED. Had the world ended? It was Monday at 5:45 p.m.
So we ended up at a bar in a restaurant, and the bartender kept insinuating himself into our conversations, probably because Nefertete is young and hot. And then I choked on my wine, as I am always choking on liquids, and careful readers will recall that I’ve already been knocked out and had a tube down my throat to see why and there’s no reason BUT IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. So.
Oooo, and I went to the farmers market this weekend and got my annual plants. These are called frrrrr-deeee-glloooo-de-harbels, and they need pretty much zero care. They feel kind of hard, like a succulent, and apparently it rains just enough here that they thrive in front of my house like this.
I get them every year, and they last April through October.
Then at some point in November I look up and they’re all dying and brown the same way I am, and I throw them out unceremoniously. The way the world has with me.
The point is, while I was marketing like a farmer, the woman who sold me my flowers was young-ish. I can’t tell the difference between 22 and 35 anymore, but she hovered in that general age range. We’d been kibitzing a bit while she rang me up, and she rolled her eyes when she said, “You wanna get hit on by men over 50, this is the place.”
I hadn’t expressed an interest in being hit on, by the way. She said that in response to ANOTHER saleswoman having been hit on.
And right then, it hit me.
Fuck you, men over 50. I mean, really. Fuck you.
Men who are 55 are always going to try for the woman who’s 22. Or they’ll claim they like women their own age but have a leering eye that tells another story.
I know I said a few months back that I’d given up, but right then, at the farmers market which really does not get an apostrophe so don’t get your knickers wadded, right then, I King Kamehameha gave up.
It’s not that I’m not interested in men my age. It’s that I don’t like them. They’re kind of horrible people. And maybe that seems, oh, a tad general, but I’ve been out here tryina meet them since 2015 and have not met very kind men.
They were kind when we were all 32. They were! But I think the kind ones got swooped up in committed relationships. For the most part, what’s out here are men who aren’t good. They’re the evil leftovers. And I guess the same could be said about me, but while I’m flawed, I’m not addicted to porn or leering at 23-year-olds like I actually have a chance.
So that closes that chapter.
I’ll talk to you later, post crown.
Royally,
June
LumberJune
Years ago, I was on the phone with my oldest friend, Pal From MA. She was on her porch, and who knows what ridik topic we were on, but it compelled her to yell, “HELLO, CLITORIS!” at one point.
And when she did that? A woman walking across the street waved.
This obsessed me. I was so tickled, so to speak. It really pushed my buttons.
I mean, was that her NAME? Did her parents hate her? Did she just think that’s what the cool people were doing now, like it was the new Whatup, Homie?
Was she thinking my Pal From MA was offering up some sort of girl-power hello, like the woman bits in me salute the woman bits in you?
Nubaste.
The reason I’m telling you this is because I woke up at 1:48 a.m. today and thought of this and could not stop giggling.
I giggled so hard, and for so long, that Iris, who is usually delightful to sleep with, flumped to the end of the bed, where everything was normal and no one was all “If this bed is a-rockin’ it’s because June is chortling uncontrollably about something that happened in 2009.”
Iris is my favorite cat to sleep with. Needy Lily, on the other hand, is all HELLO CLITORIS, so clingy is she and so hard does she want to sleep inside my soul. Fortunately she wasn’t there last night, because she’s the kind of person who ruins your giggling with, “What? What’s so funny?”
Why do people do that? It’s never as funny when you describe it. It’s the same as, “What’re you reading?” Oh, let me put down my book I’m enjoying and give you a verbal summation. Here’s a summation: You’re an asshole.
Anyway, hi. I know I’ve not been here in a few days.
I didn’t blog at you Friday or Monday because I got yet ANOTHER notice from WordPress that I owed them money and I was irked. I just renewed my ($100!!) yearly subscription with them a few weeks ago, but apparently I also upgraded my account last year at this time, because I needed to transfer over 11 years of blog photos and so on, so I owed on that.
I was giving careful consideration to just stopping this blogging deal altogether, so annoyed was I with this SECOND bill, but then I mentioned that on Facebook, and a bunch of you sent tips, even though I no longer have a tip jar on this blog.
That was so nice, and I was all, oh, I’ll blog Tuesday, and then today Steely Dan got injured.
dun dun DUNNNN
He came home last night, which right there was odd enough. He usually eschews me all evening for god knows what. He’s probably out saying, MEOW, CLITORIS, except he’s fixed. But so am I and I carouse, so.
Anyway, he came in last night during Edsel’s final pee of the night, and he was clearly upset. He was whipping his cat tail, his cat eyes were big and he clearly wanted me to stop fekking cat Yoko-ing him.
Then this morning he was Limp Bizkit. He wouldn’t put any weight on his back leg. I rushed him dramatically to the vet, who tells me SD’s been in a cat fight, and I’d just like to mention that Oscar the fluffy Orange Julius of a kitty next door is also an outdoor cat, and I feel like orange you glad you have a new cat to beat up was occurring last night, and I somehow missed it. How did I miss a catfight? Maybe it was one of those new Silent Bob(cat) fights.
He’s at the vet now, and they called me a while ago using his full Christian name. “Steely Dan Silverman is ready for you to get him at 1:00.” So I’m ready to leave in a second to go retrieve Jack Dempsy, over there, with his antibiotics that I feel like he’ll be quite mellow about taking. Like, Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet mellow.
By the way, there’s a gray parrot at my vet, a gray parrot who meows. As worried as I was this morning, I could not help but be charmed by that parrot. “Meow!” he’d say, lifting his bird foot.
“Mew!” he did a whole ’nother cat voice while he poked at his budgie. This voice was almost kitten-y.
Then he whistled the Andy Griffith theme song to the room at large, and at this point I’m ready to be Mrs. June Gray Gardens Parrot, so enamored am I of this creature.
Meanwhile, my cat died like that little girl in Airplane, where everyone’s singing and not noticing her IV had fallen out.
Oh, he was FINE. He was in his carrier. IT WAS A MEOWING BIRD. Who can resist?
So, that’s all for now. I have much to tell you, including that I was in a tornado, and afterward Marvin couldn’t find me because apparently my phone was out for a bit so I did not recieve his call or follow-up oh my god are you dead text, and then I didn’t blog, so all of a sudden Marvin pictured me under a house with stripy socks.
The house began to pitch, and I’m a bitch.
Anyway, it was nice of Marvin to care if I lived or died. The tornado didn’t touch down at my house, but it sure as hell touched down elsewhere in my city. Tornadoes blow.
Tune in for more of this kind of hilarity and a full Steely Dan Silverman update tomorrow.
P.S. I forgot to ask you: Yesterday on (Face)Book of June, we got into a discussion about what our school mascot had been. Faithful Reader Paula’s kids used to be The Warriors, but that became politically incorrect, and since it was a Christian school, they changed it to The Warriors of the Lord, and I AM SORRY THAT IS EVEN BETTER THAN HELLO CLITORIS.
Warriors of the Lord. Oh, that KILLS me.
I was the Lumberjacks (of the Lord). Those of us who identified as female at my school were called—are you ready? Lumberjills.
Of the Lord.
Goodbye, Clitoris.
Next to the astronaut
Eds won’t stop acting the fool this morning. “Come sit and chew Blu and be a nice dog,” I just commanded him.
Really, I should put off covering that chair for longer. It’s not disgusting enough. I guess if I recover that chair, putting it by the back door again is out, right? I need, like, a mud chair back here. Or, hey, a dog bed. Look at me. The ideas just keep coming. I’m like Ben Franklin.
Anyway, I’m tryina think of things that’re new that I can actually tell you about.
On Tuesday, Ned went to Taco Bell. As you do. When you’re Ned.
One of the old movies was on at my old theater, and seeing as how we’re old, Ned and I decided to go. “I have to get my hair cut first,” said Ned.
My first date with Ned was January 19, 2012. You’ll recall that was a Thursday.
The reason we went out on a Thursday was because when he asked me out for the first time on a Monday and we were tryina make a plan, he was getting his hair cut on Tuesday, so Tuesday was out. I was having dinner with The Other June on Wednesday. So Thursday it was. I do not know why I remember all this.
My point is, Ned always gets his hair cut on Tuesdays. Every sixth Tuesday. I get my hair done whenever I have money and/or my gray roots are so absurd that I look like Shirley Maclaine when Deborah Winger is dying in Terms of Endearment. I know I always use that line, but it’s so accurate.
So, Ned gets his hair done, a phrase he adores, right near my house on every sixth Tuesday. He’s done around 6:00, and the old-people movie starts at 7:00, so we didn’t have loads of time, and I said, “You wanna go to Taco Bell?” and when he said yes, I fell over dead and I’m writing this while lying in the silk. Next to the astronaut.
He got a taco and a glass of water, which did not annoy me in the slightest.
The movie we saw was Raiders of the Lost Ark, and what amuuuuused me was I got home after, and pretty much every coworker I have posted something from Raiders of the Lost Ark on the social media, there.
One guy took a picture of the organist playing beforehand. “Raiders of the Lost Ark on the big screen? Shut up and take my money,” he wrote.
I did not post to any social media about my movie. I’m just taking 450 words to tell you here.
Yesterday I came home for lunch and noticed Edsel’s tooth was loose. That fangy one hanging out. He’s like a 6-year-old human with a loose tooth. Except he’s an 8-year-old dog, and are dogs supposed to have loose teeth? I think not.
So I took him to the vet, which he enjoys 100% of. Even though he shakes once he sees the building, it ends almost immediately once we’re inside. People talk to him and give him treats, he can glare at other dogs who have the nerve to inhabit the planet. Then he gets a restorative treat after. The whole setup works for the Edz.
That crumpled thing back there is a dress I keep meaning to take to dry cleaning. Ask me how that’s going.
Anyway, $78 later, it turns out he has a very loose tooth, and that it’ll fall out on his own very soon. He needed a rabies shot, anyway, so he got that yesterday, and we refilled his Sentinel. As he is a stoic sentinel.
The vet said as dogs age, those bottom teeth get loose. I know Lu lost one down there too. They asked if he liked to chew, and that is when I got to tell them all about Blu.
Turns out, m’vet’s Corgie also enjoys toys from the company that makes Blu. This would be a good time to add one of my Amazon links I never remember to add.
Anyway, that company makes other toys, too, and if you click that photo, above, you can of course go on Amazon and shop for whatever you want. As long as you click over there by using the image or my seaglass image that’s on every page of this not blog, I will become rich.
Also, this is how I’ve been writing you. With this weasel strewn across me. I just write around her. If you knew how often I just write around a cat.
Last night, I went BACK to the old theater and saw Gillian Welch, which was good, except she said one weird thing.
“I had an interesting experience in your city today,” she began, strumming her guitar. Everyone cheered, all WOOOO! Greensboro!
“I saw what’s left of Proximity and Revolution,” she began.
Okay. What was she talking about? I’ve lived here for 10 years. Proximity is the nice hotel I like to drink at. It’s lovely. The only Revolution I know is that cool mill where I get my hair done NOT every sixth Tuesday. It’s thriving. New apartments have gone in there, and new restaurants and stores. It’s humming with activity. What was she…?
Did she just DISS our city?
The whole audience was stonily silent. I have no idea what she was talking about, but it seemed …not kind. Pretty much everyone I know who lives here likes living here. People always talk about how there’s “enough to do” and that it’s affordable and nearly everything is 10 minutes away. Downtown is booming.
Anyway, it made me mad, although I’m still not clear on where she meant, anyway.
I’d better get to the work, and do the work, like I’m RuPaul or whatever.
Current references-ly,
June
Soaring highs, devastating lows
Yesterday was a day of intense highs and lows.
Okay, yesterday I had a high and a low. But everything with me is intense.
I’ve already done my stupid taxes with TurboTax, and I owe every year because freelance. What I parTICularly love is paying taxes and having to pay TurboTax on top of that. And then every five screens they’re all, “Here’s a way you can pay us MORE money!” Yeah, thanks. Cause we’re all not stressed to the gills already, fucksticks. Lemme get out additional bones to toss your way.
The point is, despite buying a new computer this year and painting this room (both deductible), I STILL owed like $1,700.
Last night I got home from work to STILL NO ATM PIN (see yesterday’s riveting account of that), but I did get a letter that said, “Tax information inside.”
“Now what,” I wearied.
Turns out, I got a corrected Form 1098, and I know you’re all nodding your accountant-ish heads. Ohhhh, yes. A 1098.
It’s a form that says how much you paid in mortgage taxes. And as usual, one mortgage company bought another, a thing that’s happened to me at least 4 times since I bought my house 10 years ago. Dear money-hungry people who buy other companies and inconvenience the rest of us: Eat dung.
So I don’t even think I took off my coat last night. I got right on TurboTax and clicked the “amend my form,” added the new info, and now I get a refund.
Someone at some point sat down and wrote that little song. Like, they thought it up and wrote it. And every kid’s sick day from then on would have that song in it.
So that was exciting, to go from owing to getting, and I made myself some celebratory popcorn for dinner as a result and
CRACK.
Broke a tooth.
I’ve never played those two back to back before, and just now noticed the losing theme is the winning theme, just slowed down. With a little “you’re a loser” downward slide to it.
So now today I probably have to have emergency dental work, and why, God. I’m a good per–okay, …yeah, okay. …I see why, God. You can stop now.
The other thing is, I called SunTurst, and I am leaving it “Turst” cause that kills me, and said, “YOU’RE KILLING ME OVER HERE” and the nice man I was speaking to in Jamaica (I asked where he was. Then I pictured, like, Taye Diggs talking to me) said, “May I ask, why did you need a replacement card, mon?”
“I was delivering blankets to the children’s hospital and there was a whiskey sour outbreak and I lost it,” I explained.
Turns out, when you just lose your card and it doesn’t get stolen? Your PIN stays the same.
THIS WHOLE TIME.
I COULDA BEEN USING MY CARD THIS WHOLE TIME.
Bonus-round high, though: Ned bought my Retin-A at the pharmacy the other night because I had no PIN.
It’s a roller coaster, over here.
That’s all I have to say on that topic, and I like how I act like I just covered one topic so far, like I just told you all you could ever need to now about sunflowers, and now I’ll go on to lint.
June starts a new topic. June has one subhead. Just like her topics.
Did anyone ever do something really rotten to you, and you were so taken aback that you did nothing at the time, and you’ve been telling that person off IN YOUR MIND ever since?
Many years ago, I invited several people to my home for a dinner, and one of the guests called me ahead of time. “Frankly, I didn’t want to come to this. But if I do come, I need you to do this and this and this.” She detailed things like, “Hide the cats.”
I was so shocked. Never in my life had I invited someone over and had them be so…not gracious. And all these years later, what I WISH I had said was, “I will spare you the agony of having to come to my home, now or ever.”
Instead, I hid the cats.
Have you ever had that? If so, what do you wish you’d have said? Because even now, I’m appalled that I let someone treat me that way.
I’ll talk at you later. I gotta shower and get attractive for the dentist. This is totally gonna ruin all my hot St. Patrick’s Day binge-drinking green-beer plans I had brewing. [Disclaimer: Have precisely zero plans for St. Patrick’s Day.]
Oh! Wait! I forgot!
We finished our assessment, and Eds is a Protodog.
Oh, well. Thank heavens, June.
Okay, once again they’re saying, “Y’dog’s a dunce, Joob,” but you know, since he’s likely a Carolina Dog? And they are the last of the wild dogs? It makes sense he’s kind of…a pioneer. He’s the Pa Ingalls of dogs.
Here’s his little chart, listing his SAT scores. Community college, here we come. Good lord, the dog is me. Except he’s nice.
So there you go. I wish I could have also given Talu this test. I’d love to compare and contrast. Lottie probably wrote the test and did the HTML stuff for the website.
Okay, talk at you. I know you didn’t really want to come here and I need to hide the cats, so.
Luff,
Jude
Ned and June Put Edsel to the Test
“I have an all-day meeting and I’m getting out of work early,” said Ned, and “early” for Ned means “a normal time to leave work” in my world. Remind me to never be the president of anything. Except this nonblog.
“Would you like to have dinner? I’ll be early, so you can eat like the elderly, as you like to do.”
Back when we were dating, Ned would call me at, like, 8:00. I am not exaggerating for dramatic effect. He’d work till 6:00 or 6:30, go to the gym, drive home and then call and say, “I am starving.” That noon salad just wasn’t sticking with him eight hours later.
How did I not bludgeon Ned to death every day for four years?
So, him calling me at 8:00 meant he (a) was going to go to a restaurant at that point or (2) make something. From scratch. “I’m going to start the water to boil beans.”
Really, how DIDN’T I bludgeon him to death?
What this meant, when we were dating, was I had to starve till 9:00 in order to eat with him, or I’d eat like regular people, at around 6:00, and then have to hear the appalled speech when I’d announce AT 8:00 ON A WEDNESDAY that I’d already had dinner.
Later, I researched love avoidance and said, Ohhhhh. Okay. (It’s one of the things they do. They busy themselves. Oh, I’m so consumed. I can’t possibly actually sit and give you my undivided attention.)
My point is, here was Ned, willing to feed me on a Wednesday at 5:30.
I know you’ve all been lighting candles and keeping charts, so you know that I’ve had an ATM card saga. While I was out volunteering to make smocks for the homeless a few Friday nights ago, I accidentally lost my ATM card when a giant vat of whiskey sours landed in my throat. It was such a phenomenon. It was like the Northern Lights, with sour mix.
It wasn’t even GOOD sour mix. The whiskey sours I get at the fancy hotel near me? They make their sour mix right there. The whiskey sours I got on Lost ATM Night was shot from one of those soft-drink guns. I blame the pinball. I was so up in it that I didn’t notice I was having 49 drinks.
Oh my god, anyway. So I finally got an ATM card from my bank, and when I called to activate the card, they said, “For your safety, a separate letter with your PIN will be arriving.”
You have got to be fekking kidding me.
So now I have this limp ATM card, which at least allows me to go back to my Jimmy John’s delivery habit, but little else. It’s quite confining–and this is Shamrock Shake season! I realize I could drive to the bank and get out cash like I used to with my mom in 1972, but if I drive to the bank at lunch, pretty much that’s my lunch hour, and I keep saying, Oh, I can scrounge up something at home.
Hang on. Ima show you my exciting June’s-ATM-is-useless food supply at the moment.
I said yes to dinner. “After, can you help me give Edsel some tests?!” I asked. Because that’s the kind of standup person I am. You’ve offered to buy me dinner, and my reply is, “Only if you do something else for me.”
“Of course,” said Ned, as he likes Edsel.
Truth be told, I don’t really like going to restaurants. It’s never been fun to me. I have on-and-off years of panic attacks, and restaurants are a trigger for my panic attacks, because you’re stuck there. You can’t dash out 10 minutes later without making a scene.
I’m not in a panic attack cycle right now, I’m just in my regular low-grade anxiety mode that I’ve been in since I’m 8. I had a giant swath of panic attacks starting when I was 19 and ending when I was around 21.
Then on New Year’s Eve 1999, I had another one on a ferry and was tortured with them for a few years, and I’ve been fine since. Knock all of the wood, please.
The point is, because when I’m having panic attacks, restaurants are among my least-favorite things, I kind of hate them all the time. I dislike a lot of things many other people seem to love: Christmas, travel, live music, babies, football, hugging.
But you saw my cupboards. I went to the restaurant last night. Got spaghetti bolognese. Because I’m watching my figure (turn into Queen Victoria’s).
When we got home, we commenced to giving Edsel another of the Dognition personality tests with which I am so obsessed. This time, we tested his memory.
The first two or three tests I gave him the other night insisted I have a partner, with the caveat “if you don’t have a partner, go to our blog.” Well, I’m already HERE and I already watched the introductory video and NO. I’m not going over to your damn blog. Which is what you all say every day, and yet here you are.
So, despite the world saying I needed a partner, sister did it for herself, and it was fine. But since I HAD a faux partner in Ned (you’ve said a mouthful there, sister), I decided to see if it was easier.
It wasn’t.
The way Dognition works is they tell you what aspect they’re going to test that time, using a brief intro video from the guy who most likely invented this whole idea. “Do you want me to wear my hair like that?” interrupted Ned, while the shaggy millennial spoke.
“Shhh,” I said, then inwardly giggled at the idea of Ned with longish bearded millennial Williamsburg unicycle shaggy hair.
After the intro, they guide you to a page all about this particular test. You can either read the steps, or watch another video where they show you the steps. I kind of do both at once.
“Are those guys gay?” asked Ned, as we watched two millennial men play memory games with their trendy large dog who I promise you they refer to as a “rescue,” a dog inexplicably named Kai.
“Kai? Are they saying Kai? Oh, those two are a couple,” surmised Ned, who really isn’t as homophobic as I’m making him sound.
“SHHH. Ned, I’m watching how to do this,” I said.
And, see, there was our problem. Because while I, superior I, was busy learning how to test Edsel’s memory, Ned was too busy mocking the video, and when I got started, he had the
NERVE
to tell me I was doing it wrong.
“What–why are you–you can’t LIFT the cup. That’s cheating,” Ned would say, having not paid attention to one of Kai’s gay owners LIFTING THE CUP during the video.
Meanwhile, here was Edsel.
Eds was SO not into our testing last night. Some of it had to do with Ned and me bickering, and some was the part where you’d show him a treat, put said treat under a cup, then wait as long as two and a half minutes before he could retrieve the treat.
Lemme tell you who 100% forgot treats were ever invented in 2.5 minutes. That would be old steel-trap Edsel, up there.
In summary, Edsel’s memory sucks. They tried to be polite about it, but later in the description they talked about how wolves and feral dogs have to hunt prey for hours, and while sometimes the prey isn’t in site, these wild animals remember the prey’s general vicinity and keep hunting.
“Edsel doesn’t have this instinct,” they euphemized, pretending it was because he was so well fed at home that he didn’t need it. They can’t come out and say, Your dog is sort of a dunce.
“There is no need to worry! It is just one more piece of evidence that Edsel has his own cognitive style,” they said.
Yes. His own cognitive style. That’s it.
I gotta go. I have to get in the shower and get my own style going. I’ve started Retin-A and remember that scene in Sex and the City where Samantha shows up to Carrie’s book party with the raw face?
Veil down, I think.
Attractively,
Jeb
It’s Pi day! This blog no longer has “pie” in its title! So now I’m just berserk!
“Beep!”
“Beep!”
12:50 a.m. it was, and some DAMN beep from some DAMN alarm was going off last night. It’d almost be better to die of the carbon monoxide or the intruder than keep getting awakened with these damn beeps. They always have to be “damn” beeps.
I threw the covers off and got up to investigate. This is one of those rare times I wish I lived with a man. “Go see what that is,” I could command, then roll over, because I am charming and why so alone, you think?
Anyway, I got up and figured it out, and then noticed a shadowy figure in my bathroom.
It was Edsel. Pressed against the tub. The beeps had frightened him, and nothing protects you from horrifying beeps better than the side of the tub.
“Oh, Eds,” I said, and ran in there to hug his shivering self. Usually he sleeps with me, but I wasn’t in the MOOD for Edsel last night. I know. I was getting a migraine. Sue me. What did the poor thing do, with two dog beds, a couch, a spare actual human bed and two cat-clawed chairs to lounge on while I slept?
I think when I lock him out, he mostly just sleeps on the hallway rug half an inch from my door.
Speaking of Edsel, the other night it was snowing and sleeting and I still didn’t have an ATM card, so I was pretty much confined to the home like I was wearing an ankle monitor. Instead of perusing hard-core XXX and big-game-hunting videos as per usual, I checked out dog personality tests.
What’s sad is you know that is absolutely true, that I looked at dog personality tests over something more sinister. When did I get so boring? Say, June, try “birth.”
The test measures five parts: empathy, cunning, communication, memory and reasoning. We did the first three, and will commence to finishing maybe tonight. I was very busy going to see Blazing Saddles with Wedding Alex and her spouse and Ned last night.
For example, I had to yawn several times in front of Edsel, then stare at him for 90 seconds to see if he’d yawn, too.
Turns out, Eds had the empathy. Further down on this result, they suggest perhaps I have a dog who gazes at me soulfully from time to time, and that this means he is “hugging” me “with his eyes.”
That dog does nothing BUT gaze at me. He has an iron grip of death on me, with his eyes. He Yokos me with his eyes. If eyes were arms, Eds would be an octo…pussy.
Then we tested his ability to communicate with me.
Basically, he’s a crappy communicator. The thing is, he knows a lot of words. I don’t think he struggles to read my cues, I think he just gets distracted by whatever’s exciting. He’s a lot like his mother.
Then we tested if my dog is trustworthy, or if he texts other dog moms after I’ve gone to bed.
I had to lie treats in front of Eds, tell him to LEAVE IT, then either stare at him or turn my back or cover my eyes, depending on the test, to see if he’d eat the treat in the next 90 seconds. The only time he did was when I was staring right at him (after an agonizing 47 seconds of dog eye contact). According to Dognition, this meant he’s pretty trustworthy. And you know he is? If I leave food lying out, he rarely bothers it. Tallulah would have digested and passed the food before I walked back in. So.
So that was sort of riveting, and Eds got so many treats that he’s now Violet from Willy Wonka, so it was a win all the way around.
Further reports as developments warrant.
I leave you with nothing but my best wishes and the lingering scent of my perfume, but before I go, I wanted to mention I had to renew my damn WordPress subscription today. “But June, IIIIII get WordPress for free!” Perhaps you do. But in order to add riveting video like Edsel yawning and so forth, I have to be a premium member. So I just paid a hundy for the year.
“June, please never say hundy again.”
Anyway, of course you don’t HAVE to, and maybe you need every dollar, but I’ve added a little donation button in case you want to throw 11 dollars my way to say thanks for 11 years of this boring-ass blog, June (or, if you want to throw 22 or 33 dollars my way, you just change the “1” down there to “2” or “3” or “900.”) (I aim high). I made it 11 instead of 10 because PayPal does take a cut, man. A big annoying cut.
Tips.
$10.00
I’m so glad I switched to WordPress. It’s so much nicer over here, and I have, like, concierge service, since a very tolerant person who works there happens to read me, and all I do is just email her and she hates her life but then patiently helps me. We should all write her boss or something, get her promoted.
And speaking of WordPress, remember you do NOT have to add an email or even a name to comment. I know it says to add those things, but rebel, over there, rebellious one. Towanda.
This opens me up to all sorts of snotty anonymous comments, but all I have to do is block your snotty ass. The other day someone was a tad spicy, and I searched his or her IP address, and there were ALL SORTS of reports on this IP, including, “This person should be arrested.”
Guess who’s block-assed? That is totally a phrase.
Okay, Ima go. I have to go to work and copy edit things, and rush home and give my dog a personality test.
Say, June, try “birth.”
Dully,
Juan
For me, it’s not so much March as Hobble
Rabbit, rabbit.
Why do people say that at the beginning of the month? Sarah Jessica Parker always does (she’s my Instagram friend), and because she does it, I think it’s cute, but all my life I have no idea why people say it.
But isn’t this literally a rabbit, rabbit month? Isn’t Easter this month? My calendar doesn’t tell me.
My mother got me this calendar for Christmas. It’s vintage pictures of dogs, which you’d think Edsel would rip up, given his love for other canines.
Guess who chews it instead.
Anyway, I love an Irish terrier. A friend in LA had two. They were adorable. So wiry! She rode horses, this friend did, and she’d take the Irish terriers to the stable with her, and they were thrilled.
I lived near there, and if you wanted to see my friend, you pretty much had to go to the stables. She once said they should just automatically deposit her paycheck to it.
The point is, I remember going there one night and sitting on the side, there, watching her ride under a full moon, with the hills of Burbank in the background. It’s such a cool memory. When did I go from being a peaceful person to a chaotic one?
Do you think Steely Dan ever laughs, or does he more sort of just smirk?
Speaking of how I need to get out more and stop thinking about my pets, I went to see all the live-action shorts last night. Not that bermudas and gyms were dancing about.
I saw the wrestling competition between madras and culottes!
Oh, can the jorts ever dance. Could you believe?
Speaking of how there’s something wrong with me because I hang around pets too much, I went to the movies last night to see the live-action shorts. Now I’m all set for the Oscars. I’ve seen all the bitches up in there, which is how they plan to announce them.
“And now, all the bitches up in are will be announced.”
The shorts were good, although all of them were incredibly depressing. The khakis pleated with me to nominate them, but I don’t know.
June. Stop.
Really, though, when did “good” have to mean “earnestly depressing”? Can’t we just see a nice story in 20 minutes? This year’s crop included a school shooting in America, racism that lead to murder in the ’50s in the South, more murder in Somalia, and a deaf child whose parents suck ass.
These were not Richard Simmons’ cheerful ribbed shorts, man.
But now I can watch smugly, never thinking, “I wonder what this movie was about.”
Also, at work, they asked those of us who are into movies what we thought would win this year, and I don’t want to cockblock their surprise, so I won’t say which one I am, but they had us each reenact one of the movie posters of the best-picture nominees. Let’s just say I had to lie on the studio floor at work. In a dress.
I’d better go. I had some…trouble last night, in the stomach-al arena, and I wouldn’t go to work at all, but I’m in the middle of that huge project that I do at the end of every month that I launch into dramatically on the regular, and no one would be able to just pick it up and finish it, as I have my own method. So. I’ll go. I’ll hobble into work with my broken bone and queasiness, and no one will notice anyway because copy editor? Who cares?
Unless there’s a mistake. That’s how you know you’re good. When no one notices what you do. It’s odd, but it’s true.
I guess this post about seeing the shorts was short.
March on,
June
Enjoy the organ
I could NOT fall asleep, so when the alarm went off this morning, I was exhausted and hit snooze 39493940 times. I went last night to the old theater to see Gold Rush, the Charlie Chaplin silent movie–and I guess ALL of his movies were silent movies and now I’m officially annoying.
Dear June:
We need to review with you the date you became annoying. You seem to think that occurred today, when in fact our records show it began somewhere around July of 1965.
Oh, shut up.
Anyway, maybe it was all that live organ playing (when I gave my ticket to the volunteer, she said, “Have a lovely evening. Hope you enjoy the organ” and then I giggled like the 7th-grade little bitch I am), but man, was I ever awake at, you know, MIDNIGHT and then ONE and so on.
So I wasn’t gonna blog today, because I seriously have no time to be sitting here doing this like the 7th-grade little bitch I am, but I knew it was payday last night, which I guess would make it paynight, and just now I checked my checking (heee) and dear June, please see above re date you became annoying.
$547! When I checked my checking in my checkered pajamas while I lay next to a Czech after a rousing game of checkers, I saw my Amazon payment came, and it reflects what you guys bought through my Amazon link in December, and I received $547 today!
Oh my god, thank you. It all goes to paying my taxes, which, wooo! But still.
So that is why I stopped in today, despite making self late for work and making no sense because DID NOT SLEEP for some reason.
Someone gave me a brilliant tip re my Amazon link, and I will share it with you now. Let’s say you’re on your phone and you want to shop on Amazon, and you wish to do me a solid and get to Amazon via my link. The blue photo of seaglass is RIDICULOUS to find on one’s phone. I mean, it even annoys me.
But if you go to the Menu and then the “About” page at the top of my not blog, the link appears right there, and you don’t have to scroll scroll scroll like the 7th-grade little bitch that you are. So that’s what I use, now, when I want to get to my damn link.
Ima actually shower now, and attend work, as I am wont to do.
I leave you with this. The latest work of Steely Dan, and you know, I thought my robe was safe. He’d seemed disinterested in eating it, but I guess he had a change of heart. Well. “Heart.”
From a small-ish town in North Carolina with a loving cat and a hole in m’robe,
June
P.S. I almost forgot! Due to a pertinent work conversation that involved fairly pornographic paper art of cocker spaniels mating (don’t ask), what do you think is the dog breed of each decade? Like, cocker spaniels. So the 1970s.
The ’90s. Labs.
What else?
June talks to you while she gets ready for her hot Friday night.
I had two plans tonight: coworkers were getting drinks at 5:00, and then other friends invited me over at 8:00-ish. Don’t you hate people who add “ish” to a time? What are we, gay men in the ’60s? That outfit is fab, lover.
Anyway, I eschewed my right-after-work plans because I didn’t work today. I took the day off to go to the doctor in Durham about m’nose. I’ve waited TWO MONTHS to get this appointment to see if I can actually get it fixed, and how much would it be, and so on.
And? Migraine. Woke up with it in the middle of the night. ‘Twas a bad one. Had to cancel my damn appointment.
So, I spent the day instead sleeping till 10:30 and then trying to clean the smell of cat bodily fluids out of my bedroom. Fmr. Because cats.
I had taken 839395945 books and surrounded the bed, so they couldn’t crawl under there and poop, and instead all I did was make it so they could still go under there and poop, but I couldn’t get under there to clean it. So. Good work, June. Efficient! You can smell my German roots. They smell like cat shit.
So I took the opportunity to scrub the empty bookshelves, which is a pleasurable way to spend one’s day off, and then I put the books back up but cannot recall how I organized them with all their gee-gaws and doo-dads that I also have up there.
Last time I arranged my books, my neighbor Peg was here to help me, and we drank wine and she ordered me around and it was a typical evening with Peg.
Now she’s in hospice. HAPPY FRIDAY!
Anyway, here’s the first bookshelf, and it really needs Peg’s touch, plus also I should always leave that clothes hamper right there. Hot.
So that’s done, and my afternoon of scrubbing the bedroom floor with vinegar, and then drying it by mincing around the room with a beach towel under me, and opening both windows, and turning on a fan, and Sharking it, all that resulted in guess what.
It still smells cat.
So while the rest of my household, not including Steely Dan because please. It’s Friday, bitch. But while the rest of my household plans them a hot-in-the-city-tonight evening, I’m drying my hair
with my GODDAMN UNFIXED NOSE and then Ima put on some makeup and before my plans Ima head to PetSmart
and them Ima come back with some enzyme fluid and see if that works. If it doesn’t, I’m going with Faithful Reader Tee’s suggestion of uninitiated alcohol or whatever she calls it. Indentured servant alcohol. What the hell does she call it?
Also, I need lamps. I have no money for lamps this pay period, but lamps I need. I need one for next to the bed in the guest room, and now one for next to the bed in my room BECAUSE IT GOT POOPED ON, and a stand-up one in the living room for comedy, and maybe one back here because the one back here has no knob–it fell off–and now it flickers and I can’t do anything about that. Because no knob.
I have the hardest time finding lamps and clocks. Every clock I’ve bought for this house has ceased working eventually, and the Lenox clock they gave me at work? The fancy crystal one for 5 years of service?
Stopped working.
I think it’s my nose. It can stop a clock.
Seriously, was looking forward to this nose appointment for TWO MONTHS.
Is this dry enough? It isn’t, is it. Goddammit.
So, other than my plans tonight, half of which I skipped out on, my only other big exciting thing Ima do is get my chakras read tomorrow. Of course I will report back to you. What are you, new?
The first asshole to point out how many lamps I can buy with a chakra reading gets cloudy chakras.
…Okay, dry enough, man. PetSmart won’t shop itself. That made no sense. As opposed to the sensical smelling of my German roots.
Your number one. And two,
Nosily,
Joon
To Kill a Talking Bird
Dear Women Who Prattle at Movies:
What the hell is wrong with you?
Last night, my old movie theater showed To Kill a Mockingbird, and I got there fairly early in order to get my popcorn (dinner) and get a decent parking spot. Not necessarily in that order, and what I like about myself is my strong writing ability.
My spot in the balcony was secured. I have always sat in the same spot in the balcony there, and when Ned and I broke up, we made a deal that I’d get the balcony and he’d find another spot. Once, after FatGate 2016, I even sat on the main floor during It’s a Wonderful Life, just so I wouldn’t spot him accidentally.
But last night I went to my regular spot, and guess who showed up. I wasn’t even surprised. I knew he’d want to see that movie.
Anyway, that wasn’t the annoying part. The annoying part was these four women directly in front of us. Now, I know that when you women get together, you hen parties, you all like to talk. Excitedly. This is why I don’t generally hang around women. That and the fact that women always expect you to show up with a candle.
Women: Hey, let’s have lunch.
Me (reluctantly): Okay. (The other reason I’m not friends with many women is lunch. Why are they so into it?)
A week later…
Women: Hey! I’m here at lunch with just a little something I found for you. It’s a candle! With a cat on it! LOL!
Why? Why do we have to exchange gifts just because we’re getting together? It never dawns on me to get a gift for anyone unless they’re, you know, having a birthday party or dead.
Okay, it never dawns on me to get gifts for the dead, either.
Married. If they’re having a birthday party or if they’re registered somewhere because they’re getting married. Then it occurs to me to get a gift.
And I know it means they were thinking of me and they love me and wish to hug, and I should be flattered, but are they? Is that true? Or do they think, Oh fuck. Lunch is Tuesday. June’s so looking forward to lunch. I gotta get her ass a candle.
I mean, is it a pain in the ass obligation for these women, or do they truly go shopping and think of other people, which by the way is also something I never do. Ned once told me I’m the only girlfriend he ever had who has bought him zero clothing, and I’m the person he dated the longest time.
Why the hell should I buy him clothing? Am I his mom? Is he 7? Maybe I’m just a terrible person. Also, I’d like to say to the four women in real life that I’m friends with, I don’t mind lunch with you. Well, I do mind lunch. But not you.
But speaking of my terrible towel personality, last night, there was Ned with his beer and his popcorn, and he’s getting all settled in my spot–our spot, fmr.–and this gaggle of women, middle-aged women, is in front of us, and yes I know I’m a middle-aged woman.
What I like about myself are my short, concise sentences, and what a strong writer I am and oh, thanks for the candle.
Anyway, as soon as I sat behind these women, I noticed one of them was chattering. I mean, endlessly. And looking at her tiny cracked iPhone 3 or whatever embarrassing phone she had. She kept checking Facebook at the movie, and chattering to her friends, and I’m telling you she was physically unable to stop talking.
At this point, the organist was still playing (some 40s song that escapes me now, but which I know all the words to, so I was singing along and Ned was quietly howling like a dog, which by the way is exactly the same thing damn Marvin used to do when I sang. I HAVE A LOVELY VOICE) and the announcer person was still announcing (that always goes on too long), so I had some hopes this woman would
SHUT
THE
FUCK
UP
once the movie began.
But no. Oh, no. I wanted to shove her into a ham costume and knock her over in the woods.
Seriously, are people just unaware that you shouldn’t talk in the movies? There was an old couple in their row, who kept trying to sort of unobtrusively stare at her, so she’d get the hint, because it’s the South and other than Dick Whitman, who once turned around and told an old lady to be quiet and I just about died of shock, no one ever directly says anything here. Unless it’s racist. Bah.
Anyway, good movie, but once the lights went up, I saw Ned smirking at me.
“I hate those women,” I groused.
“I knew you did. I knew the whole time,” he said.
Meanwhile, Nancy is still not pooping in her box. He has three–three!!–different styles of boxes and litters now, and he’s taking her to the vet on Thursday.
For me, that’s the dealbreaker. A cat doesn’t use its litter box, it’s over for me. It makes me appreciate the asshole cats I have. And when I say “asshole,” I of course just mean Steely Dan.
Since the kittens got here, I’ve been sleeping in the spare bedroom, and I don’t know why I’m not shutting the door in there the way I did in the real bedroom, but the result is, just everyone’s sleeping with me. I got Edsel, with whom I always sleep, but now Iris and Lily, who are easy to sleep with.
And then it would appear that Steely Dan doesn’t so much sleep with me as he perches atop the headboard and stares down at me, like when Snoopy acts like a vulture.
I say this because at any point that I wake up, he is leering down at me with his shiny eyes of death. That is why I’ve come to the conclusion that that’s all he does. That he never actually curls up against me and purrs or anything. Like a cat that isn’t evil would.
I gotta go, but I keep forgetting to mention goat yoga to you, which I attended on Sunday.
It was at a very muddy farm, as it has rained here for like 412 days.
This did not stop the white people. No, sir. There musta been 50 people there, and also there had been goat yoga the day before, as well. It was sold out, that one was.
But goatses!
So that was fun, and totally worth it, and now I wish for a goat.
I gotta go, which I think I said 20 minutes ago. Ima check in on m’kittens, and get to work.
Wow, they’re getting so bi–HEY.
Asshole.
Your funny Valentine. If “funny” is a relative term,
June
Queen Kong
When I first get up, I feel vaguely like a cafeteria server at the prison, or like Laura Ingalls Wilder when she had to feed the threshers the first day she was married.
“Gee, June, I don’t remember that from the show.”
And that was the day June tore down the street in her chonies and cut out her own tonsils.
Anyway, feeding the threshers. Not that even one of these mofos has helped me thresh even once.
I really have to vacuum that floor. I tried just sweeping it, but I see some leftover Feline Pine. This means Ima have to pull out the vacuum and terrify four kittens. Rewarding!
Anyway, when we left each other on Saturday, I had taken all the kittens and their mom to the shelter, for their shots and so on. When they brought back the cat carrier, I could tell right away that Nancy, the mom, was not in the carrier. “She’s ready to be adopted,” they told me. “Your friend, I think his name was Ned Nickerson? Emailed me to say he wants the mom.”
She knew more than I did. For while I had included Ned in a group email saying the kittens and mom were almost ready, he hadn’t written me to say, “Ima take the mom, for sure.” Or even fo sho. As Ned is forever talking that way. You know how street he is.
So then I came home and wrote to you, and said if anyone wants to fekking leave a tip for June, your old pal June, that would be great, because it turns out four kittens eat a lot and poop a lot, and yay, thank you for your tips thus far!
Tips.
$10.00
Then I couldn’t stand it, and I called Ned. “They took the mom cat from me. Are you really adopting her?”
He really is! When I called him, on Saturday morning, he was in Raleigh, and do I want to know why he was in Raleigh that early? I do not. I figure there was some kind of VaginaFest 2018 that he attended that I’d rather not consider.
The point is, while the shelter DICKED HIM AROUND–kept telling him one thing and then he’d get there and learn another (he’s been to the shelter like three times this week), and no one seems to know what anyone else is doing there–he is, in fact, getting Nancy today.
One of the things they did tell him Saturday was that he had to come get her right away, that they could not keep her on hold, so he screamed down there and they were all, “Well, she needs to be spade first.”
Jesus. But that gave Ned, who you may know is something of an unspontaneous person, a chance to go to the pet supply store, even though he already just had a cat for 18 years, and get new litter boxes and a new cat carrier and a little litter-trapping rug and I don’t even know what else, I just know he spent like $200. For a $25 cat from the shelter.
He said Nancy was already in the cats-for-adoption room when he got there the third and final time till he goes back today, just dead asleep, and he said she was probably exhausted from seven weeks of mom-ing. Her surgery is today, which ought to perk her up. Heh. He gets her at 5:00.
Meanwhile, I get to keep her children for two weeks. I don’t see the point, really. If they’re away from their mom, and they’re with me, why can’t they just be in another, permanent home?
Lexi took this one of herself, while I had the camera at the ready this weekend. It’s hard to photograph a kitten, as they are constantly on the go.
At work, one of our clients was, let’s say, a telecommunications company, and every three seconds they had something happening “on the go.” Get your bill on the go. Now you can watch The Big Game on the go. We do this service for you, because we know you’re always on the go.
Guess what I worked hard to recast? In copy editing, instead of just saying, “Re-fucking-write this,” we say, “recast.” Because we’re pretentious. And on the go.
Anyway, whenever evil Steely Dan is outside,
I let the kittens out. He seems appalled by them, and while he was great with Jodie Foster, I don’t want to take a chance with his evil self.
But the point is, Edsel is an excellent kitten-sitter.
Could I look more hagged out in that photo? Hey, I have a lot to take care of right now.
But seriously. When I open the door to the kitten room, he gets this excited whine under his breath, and they all tumble out of there
Somebody peed on the bedspread in there, so I just took it off. That room is a mess. I was in there scrubbing the floor with vinegar this weekend, and as I already announced, I see I have to vacuum over by the boxes and food and so on. Good lort.
Anyway, he’s excellent with them. My mother said they’re like Fay Ray and he’s King Kong.
Queen Kong. Who’re we kidding?
So that was my weekend, although I did go out with the four coworkers who still like me.
We met up in a part of town I really like. Everything’s old. I guess it goes without saying that if I really like something, it means it’s old.
The good news is, there was a puppy at the bar, ye olde bar, so thank heavens I left my house of pets to go out and admire pets.
But seriously. IRISH WOLFHOUND!!
I also ended up going to a Super Bowl shindig, and what commercials did you like? I thought the Bud Knight was funny. And I don’t want to see movie trailers during my Super Bowl commercials. Fuck off.
Anyway, when Ned gets Nancy I’ll officially alert you–and yes, he’s keeping the name Nancy. “Well, she already has a name,” he said, like she’s a dog or something. He’s very nervous. He’s only ever had the one cat, and he worries about adjusting to a new cat’s quirks. But Nancy is a delight. Unless she was being polite and once she feels more comfortable, she will be World’s Worst Cat. But you’ll be stunned to hear that I feel like I know from cats, and she’s a good one.
Why would you know from cats, June? Why won’t you go ahead and recover that chair, June? That you already bought fabric for, June?
Catly,
June
June the snowflake
It snowed.
If you’ve read me for awhile, you’ll know that (a), that means work was called off, although we are expected to “work from home,” and I remember a really bad storm two years ago where I proofread a giant deck–giant–and just as I was finishing it, Iris stepped on my laptop and erased all the changes I had made.
And that is why Iris is mounted on my wall today.
(Also, a deck is a presentation. It is important to never call anything by its name.)
This, by the way, is how Ms. Iris has spent her snow day, aka all days. Her big-game-hunting seems to have dwindled, although to her credit, now when I see something dead on my doorstep–mice, a bird, a hobo–I just assume Steely Dan killed it. I also assume he, and not video, killed the radio star.
I don’t give poor Iris any credit anymore. However, see above. How can she kill things if she’s nodded out on the horse or whatever is going on with her and all cats who can’t seem to stay awake more than 20 minutes at a stretch.
Anyway, they warned us snow was coming, and when did weather get to be such an exact science? Remember in the old days and all the jokes about the weatherman being wrong? Now it’s all, “Snow will begin in your zip code at 4:49 a.m.”
But anyway, yes, they warned us it was coming, so I left work on time-ish and dashed on over to daycare to get my child.
Careful readers will note the ears in the window, and how did he KNOW it was me? It was 5:30 on a Tuesday; every motherfucker on god’s green was coming to get his or her dog, but old Ears up there…maybe that’s why. Maybe the ears tipped him off. He could hear my thoughts or whatever from Spain.
Anyway, my giant nose and I got him home and at some point I turned into a Rembrandt with that collar. I guess it’s a scarf. Still.
I made an enormous pot of pumpkin chili on Monday, because you know what a chef I am, and yes, I just linked to a recipe. Who even am I?
Anyway, I knew I was okay with food in case I had a long winter like Laura Ingalls Wilder. And also like Laura, in her hit book Little Movie at the Shopping Center, I had the dilemma: Should I go to the movies with The Poet as we’d planned, and risk opening the theater doors afterward to see that we lived in a snowglobe?
I sound like a movie trailer. In a world…
But because she is from Iowa and I am from Michigan, we decided to not be a couple of pussies, and we applied the same logic to the size of our popcorn. You’ll be stunned to hear we had some left over.
“Well, I didn’t know you’d eat five pieces and be done,” said The Poet, who apparently really is one of those “where does she put it all” kinds of people, because she gave that bucket the college try and she weighs about 72. Lithe, is what she is. And also currently full of popcorn.
Anyway we saw Lady Bird, and I will not bore you with the fact that we liked it, as everyone likes it, and I wish I could be rebellious and say, “Not enough titties” or whatever, but I cannot. As it was a sweet movie.
Then I got up today, as per usual, and kind of forgot it was supposed to have snown–yes, snown–and went about my normal business, such as navigating the Cat Calcutta that is my hallway first thing.
But I opened the blinds, and I was all, Oh, yay! I forgot that it was supposed to have snowded. Then I checked m’phone and Oh, yay! Work is canceled. Then I checked it further, and Oh, boo. We are expected to work anyway.
So I’m constantly checking my phone to see if work is streaming in, which really cockblocks my original plans of Bailey’s and hot chocolate all day.
So, as I was saying 47 paragraphs ago, if you’ve read me awhile, you’ll know snow means I don’t have to go to work and also winter frolic pictures will occur.
Meanwhile, back inside my ranch, and that joke never gets old, Steely Dan was torn between wanting to venture outside and being highly offended that something outside kept making his paws cold.
I was in the kitchen, doing dishes because hey, dishwasher that works, and Steely Dan kept opening the damn back door, going out, trying to walk on everything that wasn’t snowy, then coming back in getting bored and doing it all over again. I’d have snapped his neck had it not been sort of cute.
He also begged to go out the front, as if maybe it hadn’t snowed in the front yard.
I wonder how many people are waiting for (b). See first paragraph. Then remember whose not-blog you are reading.
There you go.
Your Ice Princess,
June Cassadine
I forgot a damn title
In case anyone was worried sick, my presentation went fine. I had to present to the rest of the creatives–that’s what they call us: “creatives.” I had to show the rest of the CREATIVES why copy editing is necessary and why it takes so damn long.
We copy editors get a lot of, “Can you look at this real quick?” which is just exactly the opposite of what we do, so no. We can’t.
For the presentation, I wrote The World’s Worst Paragraph, with every error, every fact you have to research, every is-this-written-in-the-client’s-voice issue, and all the first person/third person woes you can imagine, to show how just one paragraph might take us two hours to complete.
“Can you look at this real fast? Just do a quick read.” Madre de Dios.
Anyway, it went well, and people laughed, which was my goal. I even used Oprah’s “A new day is ON THE HORIZON” line, so yay. Everyone needs more Oprah impreshes.
I also forced all the other copy editors, or CEs, and we’re called amongst the CREATIVES, to wear black and red, the official colors of copy editing. Behold The Poet, who even threw in her bunny socks.
The Poet is going to the opera, as opposed to the Oprah, this Friday. They stream New York operas to the movie theater, and you can buy a ticket for nine hundred dollars and watch at the movies. I’d expressed interest in it, but in a stunning display of How We Both Are, I can’t join The Fancy Cello-Playing Poet this weekend, because that day I have drag queen bingo.
So.
In other news, I have this one cat named Steely Dan.
Have you heard about him? For he is ridiculous.
So far this year, it’s been damn cold. Un-The-South-y cold. And the only good part of that is that my wandering Jew stays home.
Steely Dan is not, in fact, a Jew. I always thought Francis might be. Edsel sure is. Steely Dan is all Presbyterian. Maybe working-class Catholic. With zero guilt.
Anyway, he’s been home a lot due to the cold, playing with that giant computer box that he enjoys so much that I’m loath to put it away, and fetching his mice till they all disappear and I have to go buy new ones. It’s lovely having him here, like a wayward husband who has a broken collarbone and has to stay in or something.
The point is, he chews. He chews clothes. He’s a clothes chewer. I’ve never had a cat who did this, but I’ve had other cats who left their mother too soon (See: Jewish Francis) and developed other odd allegedly soothing habits. Fran liked to chew plastic, and also paw euphorically at it while swinging his head from side to side like Stevie Wonder. He’d even eat plastic.
You’ve no idea how many times that cat swished into a room with dry cleaner bags half out his ass. Well. Like, twice. After that we got rid of all dry cleaner bags as soon as they got to the house. Remember when we all had to dry clean everything?
Have I ever told you the “Hello, Garden?” story? It involves doing an impression of an Asian accent, after all that yesterday.
…Actually, there used to be a punchline to this story, but now so many years have passed that I can’t remember it. Still, I used to live in Seattle near this place called Ace Cleaner, which was technically Ace Cleaners but they’d always call themselves Ace Cleaner when they called. And called they did, as I was never getting my clothes once they were ready. Because cost.
As a busy important receptionist at the time, a welcome addition to my wealthy existence was having to dry clean business clothes, which I had to wear every day. I can wear jeans to work now, and it’s funny to think of the long purple blazers over long black skirts because hello ’90s, and also the black hose hose hose out my ass like Fran’s dry cleaner bags. So many pair of hose. We MAY have had casual Friday, but I don’t think so.
Anyway, I was forever taking stuff to Ace Cleaner and then getting the fairly annoyed call. “Hello, Garden. This Ace Cleaner. Your clothes are ready” answering machine message. Because hello ’90s.
They always called me by my last name, but slightly mispronounced. And then I’d go there and just pick up one item, as it was all I could afford. I’m certain I wasn’t annoying at all.
I think they paid me $21,000 a year at that job, and insisted I wear fancy clothes that needed to be dry cleaned. What a rip. They DID pay for my bus card every month, though, so that’s good.
Oh my god, anyway.
So of course we don’t KNOW what tragedy befell Steely Dan’s motherless self, but we DO know that those two adorable gay college students saw a teensy, barely able to walk yet, barely legal all nude Steely Dan was toddling up the sidewalk in the rain two summers ago. So he left mom at a young age for sure, and thank heavens those boys took him in and cared for him, not knowing he’d grow up to be a panther with commitment issues.
So, whether it’s because his mom left too soon or he’s just a dick, Steely Dan eats clothes, a realization it took me awhile to have. I was all Ace Cleaner with my “just one” item of clothing suddenly having holes a’plenty, and I’d be all, that damn dryer.
That damn moth.
That damn hole punch I got stuck in and forgot.
Eventually I figured it out. I may have actually seen him ecstatically chewing chonies or whatever, but in general he tends to do his clothes chaw when I’m not around. It’s a private moment for The Dan.
So at this point, I’ve Anne Franked my clothes to the Nth degree. I hide the laundry baskets in the spare-room closet with the real door. Yes, he can open doors, but he hasn’t figured out that particular door contains a clothing smorgasbord yet.
I also keep my bedroom door shut AND a spare medicine cabinet–something we all have–shoved against the doors to the closet in there, as they are swingy, hello-I’m-in-a-Western double doors with no knob, for some reason.
Every once in awhile I’ll nap with the bedroom door open and I’ve heard from time to time a soft shove, and there SD will be, just starting to move the damn medicine cabinet to get to his closet.
Because the thing is, see, he loves my bedroom. It’s his home. It’s where he spent his childhood.
When he was a kitten, I kept him back in that room a lot. His canned kitten food was presented to him there, and while he ate, I had to shut the door so Edsel wouldn’t burst over and eat all the kitten food.
Then, unlike other kittens who’ve resided in my room, he was content to leap onto the rocking chair and just hang out alone rather than find a way to get back to all of us in the rest of the house. We matter little to SD, in the grand scheme. And now his goal in life is to reside in his old room, maybe casually meander to the food fest that is behind my swinging Western door closet.
So I’ve been careful to not let him have more clothes to eat, and I’ve even given him a whole SD Chewing Shirt that he’d already ruined. One month my Stitch Fix came, and I left it all in the box, and he got in there and helped himself to a whole shirt that I had to then buy already ruined.
So after I fed him poison razor blades and ran him over repeatedly with the car and he sprang back to life like the Friday the 13th guy, I gave him the damn shirt to chew at his leisure.
News flash: All the time, every moment, is Steely Dan’s leisure.
THE POINT IS, somehow this week, I left out ONE SOCK, one of my new soft Christmas socks with the rubbery stuff on the bottom so I don’t slide, and I discovered SD’s assigned shirt that he’d LEFT ALONE, next to my NEW SOCK chewed to bits.
And that is why I drink.
Love,
Sockless June
P.S. My new computer has new effects on its webcam, a feature I’ve been wanting to show you and forget to show you. You know how I am. See above.
In the stars
You know what MY problem is (everyone gets out their Giant Scroll of What’s Wrong With June), is that moderation is stupid. I mean, it would appear that I think moderation is stupid. Signs POINT to me thinking moderation is stupid. Except when it comes to exercise.
The woman who sits next to me–and I’m sure at some point I gave her a blog name but who can keep track of 11 years of blog names. Anyway, the woman who sits next to me, Alex, received a giant box of Dean & Deluca treats for Christmas. I think a client or a vendor or someone gave it to her.
Then she left for the world’s longest Christmas break.
“Did, um, Alex say anything about these treats?” I wondered, one hungry afternoon in late December. As if all my afternoons aren’t hungry. And by “hungry,” I don’t mean Biafra hungry. I mean Bored White Girl hungry.
“Oh, she did. She sent an email about them. Didn’t she include you?”
Humph. See above re No One Likes Me At Work.
“She said the treats were for all of us, and to have at them.”
Well.
Naturally, I opened the good stuff first, right? The obvious dark-chocolate-covered hazelnuts, the shelled pistachios, the tin of 27-year-old muscled bald men of color.
By the time she returned, her hazelnuts were mysteriously lacking. “Oh, no, that’s fine. I told everyone to eat them,” she assured me. “Didn’t I include you on the email?”
Humph.
So here it is, early January, and I’m starting to break into the weird stuff.
And that is how my addiction to Sanded Starfish began.
Okay, first of all, pretentious Dean ampersand Deluca, if that is your real name, they’re sugared gummy candies shaped like stars.
But oh, man, do they have flavor. Orange is distinctly tangerine-y. I’ve no idea what the others are supposed to be, but I can tell you the famous flavors Blue and Green are to die for.
[Five sanded starfish are five Weight Watchers points. Careful maths will reveal that they are approximately one point per sanded star.]
“Haaa aaaayone ried a arfish?” I asked the room at large, around a mouthful of sanded starfish, which is now my Official Work Language®.
Turns out, no one wants to try them, or if they have, they are not nearly as charmed as I. Which works in my favor.
Meanwhile, back at my ranch, four men were working on m’house yesterday. My ’50s ranch house, which is always in need of something.
Was not at all annoyed to pull up to my own house and have the driveway so full I couldn’t get in.
Alf was over to put the clothes rod back up in my closet. But for months he’s been telling me I need to fix the fan in my bathroom. Since Day One at this house 10 years ago, the combination fan/light switch/outlet has not worked in that bathroom, and at this point I’m just used to the idea of charging my toothbrush in the kitchen.
I’ve had two other men over to try to fix it but it never gets really fixed.
So I got a sherpa and some trail mix, parked, and hiked over to base camp, aka my house with all the men parked at it–and I hope that’s what Ned thinks it’s like here day and night. All the men parked all over the place, just lounging in my home, waiting to service me however I see fit.
Anyway, first of all, when I walked in, good watchdogging, Edsel.
For the love of all…I SWEPT THAT FLOOR YESTERDAY. Okay, maybe day before yesterday. Still. I give up. Plus, is that Kleenex on my robe? I am happy to report that I washed a Kleenex this past load of laundry, and just this morning was trying to PICK IT OFF all the clean clothes.
Anyway. The electrician used to be a fireman, and he brought two young firemen with him, who are learning how to electrician or whatever, and why is it that I have firemen over more often than even the firehouse?
They were all very nice, and they all had dogs–big manly dogs such as Labs, so Edsel was a refreshing change for them, I like to think.
The good news is, the electrician found the problem! It had to do with the fuses or whatever, outside. Something was loose or missing or something. Simple fix, a big $98 total, and boom, they were done. “It’ll work now. I can pretty much guarantee it,” said the electrician, scratching ecstatic Edsel’s manly head.
One of the young firemen was also admiring Steely Dan, who was clearly showing off for company: fetching his mouse, leaping cleanly in and out of the computer box.
As you know, when you set down your Giant Scroll of What’s Wrong with June and pick up your Big Book of June Events, I just got a new computer. My plan was to trade in my old one for a big $155, and they sent a box for me to do just that. When I was gathering it all up to eventually put it in that box that Steely Dan has been obsessed with (chewing the corners, leaping into it from every possible angle and so on), I realized I don’t have the original mouse any longer. That was something they’d asked about when they gave me a value. “Sure, I have a working mouse!” I’d written, not thinking about how it was a pink right-and-left-clicking mouse from Office Depot.
Also, one of the keys of the keyboard was loose. The Q. From all those letters to Queer Eye For the Straight Guy, I suppose.
The point is, I knew I wouldn’t get all $155. When the young firefighter was admiring the cat, I told him what the box was for. “You don’t need a 2011 Mac, do you?” I asked him.
Turns out, he did! And he was so excited! I warned him that thing was slow, but he seemed unconcerned. So that was my good deed for yesterday.
The point is, with all these men crawling about, I was sort of self-conscious about what I ate for lunch. I’d done Pure Barre earlier in the day, so what I WANTED for lunch was that big slab of meat that tips over Fred Flintstone’s car. What I had was Amy’s Organic Vegetable Soup.
While I was pretending to be dainty, I got an email from our receptionist at work.
You know, work doesn’t pay for my phone, and why I decided to include work email on my own phone is beyond me. Anyway, she wondered why the newsletter wasn’t out yet, and of course (Big Book of June Events page 409) I gave up editing the company newsletter way back.
“Holsteder and Frapdorp run the newsletter now,” I informed her, and right when I wrote the two editors’ last names like that, it occurred to me that their names are sort of …comical together.
“Did you get the email from the receptionist wondering where the newsletter was? I forwarded it,” I asked Frapdorp when he walked past my desk yesterday.
He had.
“You know, the two of you, with your names together. They’re such unusual names. You’re like a…I don’t know. Like a pretentious candy company or something.”
Frapdorp paused.
“A pretentious candy company. Is that even a thing? Is that even a genre? A pretentious candy company…” he was getting ALL READY to make fun of me. I could see him winding up.
And that, my faithful readers, is when I was able to grab my nearly empty tin of SANDED FUCKING STARFISH and shove it at him victoriously. I was trying to fill in the gaps that stupid vegetable soup had left in me.
What I lack in willpower I make up for in ready tins of sanded starfish.
Sweetly,
June
Astro surf and turfing
I woke up at 2:53 a.m. today, with a migraine. I attribute this to having gotten up at 5:30 yesterday, to go to damn Purrrrre Barrrrre, and one wonders why I think I need to work out when I already look Like This.
Anyway, my sleep pattern was messed up, which is a migraine trigger, and whatever, I had one, hooo care.
I got out of bed and hunched over to the kitchen, and I feel the need to hunch when I’m not feeling well because my Aunt Kathy always does that when she’s not feeling well, which by the way is around 270 days a year. She’s a professional not-feeling-well-er.
The point is, I took my medication and hunched back to bed, where Edsel and Jodie Foster awaited me, and while I was trying to get back to sleep,
boop!
That damn kitten kept booping my face. boop! Oh my god, annoying.
No matter how many times I…gently placed her orange bitch-ass down the bed, and yes, I did want to hurl her with all my might, she kept coming back and
boop!
Here is why I’m insane. I kissed her little walnut head before immigrating with my pillow over to the spare bedroom. That damn kitten drove me out of my own bed, into the vast desert of the spare bedroom, and I still had to kiss her.
In the spare bedroom, Steely Dan was lounging across the pillows. Having spent most of my week with Two-Ounce Tillie, up there, all of a sudden his already-enormous self seems even enormous-er, and he also seems this solid paragon of dignity.
I kissed his coconut head and settled in to sleep. When,
BOOP.
That asshole booped me in the face, with all 182 pounds of him.
HE’S NEVER BOOPED ME IN THE FACE EVER BEFORE.
“STEELY DAN,” I said, irritated with the world. He touched his wet cold nose to mine before curling up against me and falling asleep, where as soon as he was unconscious I injected him with lethal gasses.
And I’m sorry all my stories are about cats lately. It’s all I’m surrounded by. I’ve all of a sudden become the old lady with cats.
The other exciting news is I got my roots dyed yesterday, at lunch, which by the way is super relaxing and you’re not over there nervously checking the clock or anything.
We also had a happy hour team thing after work for a particular account I work on, but I already WENT to one for a DIFFERENT account last week, and just now I typed “last” wrong, and my computer autocorrected it to “astroturfing,” like that’s a thing I say just all the time. I think I can honestly say that is the FIRST time I ever said “astroturfing,” so good going, computer. Good smart-ting.
Anyway, I didn’t go. I was exhausted.
Also, I’ve been invited to two things, one on Christmas Eve and one on Christmas Day, and both hosts say, “Don’t bring anything,” and is that true? What do real people do?
Both are married couples, two kids each, except the Xmas Eve couple has two teenage daughters and the other couple has two little kids. Your thoughts, Hobson?
Also, I’m getting together with Jo and Kit on the 27th, and all of a sudden Jo’s all, Oh I got you two the cutest thing and I was all, “WE’RE GETTING EACH OTHER THINGS?”
“Oh, just regift something,” said Jo, as if I have a whole closet of Gifts That Didn’t Work For Me.
Your thoughts, Hobson? Do you wish I’d quit saying that? It’s from Arthur.
The entire time I’ve been writing you, I’ve been scarfing these chocolate-orange-ball Christmas cookies my mother made me, thereby eliminating all of the work I did at Pureé Bar yesterday. Orange you glad I ate chocolate cookies?
I’d better go. I have to shower, and my whole body hurts, and also migraine hangover, plus also my face was booped repeatedly and Dear People Who Don’t Have Cats Who Are Moments From Annoying Me:
It’s when a cat hits your face with a velvety paw, not to inflict pain. It’s really more a claws-in sitch. They just want to play, so they boop boop boop your face over and over again, and you all of a sudden get how someone could abuse an animal.
Sincerely,
Jone
P.S. Oh, HELL. This is Chunky Cherry, and seriously, Clinique, what’s with all the fat names lately? I have ZERO MAKEUP on again, and I’m SORRY. It’s the MORNING.
Going Ham
Remember the guy at work who gave me the eagle calendar last year? I’m tryina find a picture of him but OH MY GOD with this slow computer, which is my other news.
Here he is. He’s had several funny lines on this here not-blog through the years, and anyway my point is, he brings the same lunch every day.
EVERY
DAY.
Peanut butter on whole wheat, a baggie of tortilla chips, an apple, and a depressing glass of water. “I don’t know why you say my glass of water is depressing,” he said when I was inevitably remarking on it.
It’s depressing because it’s a glass, see-through John Deere mug, which should be used for coffee, that he’s using for water. Drinking water out of a mug says, “I have no available dishes.” Drinking water out of a mug says you’re clinically depressed, or 20 and in your first apartment.
Which he is not. My coworker is far from clinically depressed. Or in his first apartment, as he is elderly like me. He just likes a routine.
Anyway, the other day I had a work question for him, but there was that sad mug o’water. “I hate to bother you during your exotic lunch…” I began. And really how much did I hate to bother him, since I was forging ahead with my query.
“Actually, today I have a ham sandwich,” he announced.
What the Mama Cass?
“Every so often I’ll bring in a ham sandwich instead. My kids call it ‘Going Ham.’ ”
Going Ham.
And that is why I like my workplace.
Also, he wandered over to my desk yesterday to say that he “sort of” reads my blog, but lurks on it just enough that he didn’t feel justified commenting yesterday. “Besides, me commenting defeats the very notion of lurking.”
Speaking of yesterday, let’s discuss a few things regarding our discussion at hand. [Arranges her papers like Walter Cronkite]
At the bottom of every post are little icons. Those are so you can share my brilliance with your friends. Ima go out on a limb and assume you have friends.
Someone said my blog was “hard to share” so I wanted to point those out.
Also, I’ve yet to go to my survey from yesterday about how to arrange the comments (scroll down; it’s under this post) but last I looked you seemed to be voting for the comments to be in thread form, which means you can reply to someone, and that reply will be tucked up under that person’s comment.
The other option was to just splat them out there chronologically, which some like because then if they return that day, they don’t have to scroll up and down to see all the new comments.
But PLEASE NOTE, when you leave a comment, there is a box you can check so that if you want, you can get all the comments delivered to you via email. So you can read them all that way if you want eleventy emails.
And finally, at the bottom right of each post you can click “Follow,” and you can get emails that tell you I’ve blogged, so you don’t have to come looking for me, ever.
That is all. And that’s the news today, Wednesday, December 20, 2017.
Except there’s other news. But that was the news re my stupid blog.
The other news is that I had to buy a new goddamn computer. Like, I started this post right at 8:00, and if you look up and see that photo of my coworker? Getting to Safari, getting to this website, starting a post, then going to Google to find his photo?
Took until 8:13. I timed it.
It’s not even fun to write anymore, because this machine just GROANS along, and spools, and doesn’t move, and sometimes I wrote a particularly pithy line, if you ask me, and I look up and it didn’t type. It just didn’t type! Because the machine hasn’t caught up with me yet. Which is the title of my new book.
Heh.
Anyway, this computer is more than six years old, and I hope you all remember my excitement when I got it, and how delighted I was to use the webcam. Let me take 49 minutes out of my morning to fire up the webcam and find the very first picture I took on here…
Oh, June.
This photo is dated 9/24/11 at 4:48 p.m. There are two videos that precede this photo because I didn’t know I was making a video rather than a picture, but god help me if I try to upload a video. I’ll miss my whole day of work, waiting.
Anyway, the convenient part about Apple is I was able to call them and get pretty much the same computer, just the 2017 version, delivered right to my workplace next week. It’ll be faster, but the same size. Which is what she said.
Did I WANT to spend my hard-earned cash on a new computer? I did not. But I literally could not really use this one any longer, and careful readers will note that week back in the early fall when AppleCare and I spent forever trying to get this old lady speeded up.
It didn’t much work.
Also, I traded this one in. So.
Today at noon I take everyone’s favorite foster sister back to the shelter to get her booster shot and to have her cold checked out. You can see it has not slowed her asshole level down even a bit.
Also, someone is quite pleased to have a kitten friend.
I leave you with today’s lip color: Broadest Berry. Lu resent.
Today we have a Christmas party for the creative team, and then after I am screaming over to my friend The Other Copy Editor’s B&B because last week she was too busy to talk to me and allegedly this week there will be time for us to make out.
Then allegedly I am getting up for 6 a.m. Pure Barre tomorrow, and “allegedly” is a big word with me today.
After Pure Barre, I am totally Going Ham.
Luff,
Juan
P.S. Two things that are already irking me: Your comment yesterday did not “disappear.” The comments only go to 100, then you have to click “See older” or whatever it says, at the top of the comments.
At the top of my not-blog I’ve changed the photo. Earlier, the tag line below referenced my Aunt Kathy, whom you’ve all seen a millioon times (go look at Thanksgiving, for example). She was having trouble finding this page so it was just a joke.
However, that woman in the photo is clearly not her. I changed the tag line today so as not to keep getting OH MY GOD IS THAT AUNT KATHY? WHO SUDDENLY IS AN OLD LADY IN A 1957 PHOTO BUT STILL A VIABLE NOT-ANCIENT PERSON TODAY? WE JUST SAW HER THANKSGIVING BUT IS THAT SOMEHOW HER IN THAT 60-YEAR-OLD PHOTO? So. Yeah.
June does her makeup and talks to you. Yes, again.
It will be 11 years Friday that I’ve done this dang…website. Other than June’s Live Sex Tape, I’ve pretty much done it all on this thing.
[Considers June’s Live Sex Tape.] [Step one: Get sex life.]
When we left each other yesterday, dabbing at our eyes the annoying way the Real Housewives do: dab, dab dab–check Kleenex, we said every day we’d try a new lip color from my exciting Clinique set of 20 lip colors that I needfully bought. Because if there’s anything anyone needs, it’s 20 Chubby Sticks.
Step one: Get one chubby stick.
Hey, mom. [Sees mom in her head. Sees mom’s pursed lips. You know what would unpurse them? A Chubby Stick, by Clinique!]
Since we all know this exciting post is going to end in me showing you today’s color: Fuller Fig (as opposed to yesterday’s color: Richer Raisin), I thought we’d put on our makeup altogether together.
Oh, June. With the play on words.
So I started up there with my grocery-store-purchased Revlon Brow Fantasy, and if you’re really having fantasies about eyebrows, consult your nearest medical professional.
I am using Light Brown, or as the fancy people call it, Brun Clair. Why is my eyebrow pencil also French? Do a lot of your French folk schlep to the grocery store for their cosmetic needs?
In real life, when I have the dollars, I prefer the Anastasia brow products called DIPBROW™. Look at me, even adding the TM.
Laura Gellar Baked Balance-n-Brighten, because you know how much I love anything with “n” instead of “and” in the title. My Aunt Mary, whose initials are QVC, sent me my first compact of this in 2015 and I’ve been using it ever since. It’s easy and it works.
Also, since I moved my computer in my quest to photograph anything OTHER THAN THE RAYS OF THE SCREAMING SUN, please note my poor succulent back there. It seems to be drooping. As you can see, it’s not like it’s NOT GETTING ANY SUN, so does anyone have succulent advice? I know to not water it often; that’s why I HAVE a succulent. Have you met my attentive nature?
Laura Mercier Secret Concealer for Undereye. It’s not a secret anymore.
I wonder if Laura Gellar and Laura Mercier duke it out in my cosmetics bag?
I really meant to go to the store last night and get root touchup. GodDAMMIT. Anyway, Bobbi Brown eye shadow in Gray. Because it’s my prerogative.
Do I make that joke every time? What do you want from me? I’m an old woman. Also, note my gray eye shadow and my gray roots do not match. Apparently there really are 50 shades of gray.
I like how my blog about me is showing pictures of me with a reflection of me in the background. Also, carry on, my wayward sun. Jesus, with that sun. So to speak. Talk about your father, sun and holy shit it’s bright back here.
Anyway, Revlon ColorStay eye pencil in Black/Brown, or as they also like to call it, Noir/Brun. Okay, Revlon. Get over your not-French self.
Followed by DiorShow Blackout mascara, and the color is apparently 099. That’s warm and personal.
Ninety-nine. I’ve been waiiiting so long. Oh, 99, where did we go wrong. Oh, 99.
We need to hear more from Toto. Whatever happened to them? We cast aside our musical heroes so fast. Toss ’em aside and call them 099.
Incidentally, while I’m writing to you and doing my makeup, what I know for sure is that eating six Jeno’s Pizza Rolls for breakfast is not good for you.
That is why I’m having six Totino’s Pizza Rolls.
TAAA-DAAAAA!! FULLER FIG, which I just typed as “Fuller GIF.” Again, it’s not bad. I don’t wanna marry it, be June Fig. But it’s okay.
What’s not okay: gray fucking roots.
So there it is: A simple makeup routine that, if you also blog about it and photograph it and eat pizza rolls during it, takes a mere hour and a half.
I leave you with this portrait of ennui that I took last night. Apparently there was a staff meeting no one told me about. Perhaps they’re planning a takeover.
Fine with me. I hate being in charge around here. Let THEM figure out how to afford flea meds for four.
Talk to you tomorrow, when we shall delve into the exciting world of Clinique’s Whole Lotta Honey.
WAYYYYYYY down inside. WOman. Youuuuu neeeed.
LOOOOOOOOOOVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV….
XO,
June Fig
