Book of June

Would you like to know one of my favorite things?

Sometimes, at night, I am wide awake. WIDE AWAKE. It’ll be 11:00 and like Bono I’m over there, WIDE AWAKE! WIDE AWAAAAKE! I’m not sleeping.

But I force myself to go to bed anyway, as my alarm goes off at 6:35 a.m.

5:35 if I have the trainer.

Either way, it falls under the category of damn early and if it’s 11:00 and I’m Bono being wide awake, we have trouble. So I force myself to go to bed if it’s that late.

Then I lie there like Iris’s brother.

Eight years ago, right at Christmastime, my coworker TinaDoris and I drove to the shelter to “just see” if there were any kittens available as I was newly separated and my cat Roger had just died and it was Christmas and she felt sorry for me.

Does anyone ever “just see” a kitten?

Well, my kitten didn’t just see me, because who did I pick from the crowded shelter but ol’ half-an-eye Iris, over here, the greatest cat ever invented. I homed right in on her as soon as I walked in.

(I just got up to take a photo of her, like we don’t all know what Iris looks like, and I walked all around this roomy house and kept seeing her doppelganger Lily and thinking, “THERE she—nope. THERE she—nope.” Anyway, you know what Iris looks like.) (How do cats just disappear like that?)

Here. Here’s the last photo I took of her from the other day with old devil-ears Milhous, and don’t remind me I have to iron the festive tablecloth, a tablecloth that belonged to my cat-hating grandmother who is rolling in her grave RN. I’ve had a cold. I hate to mention it. I haven’t felt iron-y.

Anyway. While I was filling out the paperwork to adopt ol’ half-a-good-eye Iris, someone else was adopting her OH MY GOD SO HEALTHY! brother, a black-and-white version of Iris except with THE WIDEST EYES EVER. It’s like he got ALL the eyes. He was the wide-eye-ist cat you ever saw, and trust me he saw you because HELLO EYES.

That was a total climb-the-Christmas-tree cat, I could tell.

I know that somewhere in the annals of history I have a photo of Iris way up in my white fake Xmas tree and I tried to find it but instead found this photo of me 12 years ago buying my last natural tree in TinyTown. That was the year I discovered I am allergic to North Carolina trees. It’s beginning to look a lot like chest rash.

Oh my god, anyway.

So some nights I’m not tired at 11:00 and then I lie there like Iris’s brother, with the wide eyes.

Then I finally sort of fall into a fitful sleep, and keep POPPING awake all night and have to FORCE myself to fall into another fitful sleep with

POP!

go my eyeballs.

And then? About 5 a.m.? I fall into the most beautiful, deep, restful sleep imaginable. So deep it is; so resty. Oh, how I sleep. And

BLAHHHHHHHHHHH! goes my alarm one hour and 35 minutes later.

Then it’s like getting quicksand off my chest to get up.

And that is what I face today, and it puts me in a sparkling mood, is what it does.

And that brings me to today’s mood: sparkling. And wide-eyed, like Iris’s brother.

I can’t remember what his name was. It might have been Candy Cane. See above re close to Christmas. Iris’s shelter name was Sugarplum, and she will roll her half eye at you if you call her that.

Milhous’s shelter name was Potato Cake. No, I don’t know who names the pets there but they should give that job to me.

Edsel’s name was Montana. Very Brokeback Mountain.

Lily’s was Lily. I stuck with it because I already had Iris and I liked the congruity.

I just got up to get more much-needed strong black woman coffee and there was Iris, nee Sugarplum, just sitting in the middle of the hall rug like she wasn’t 100% disappeared 10 minutes ago. Where do cats go?

Anyway, in case you are worried sick and your family keeps calling for updates, I went to work with my cold yesterday and felt terrible, so I lasted till about 2:30. Then I went home and lay listlessly on the couch till 11:00, when I felt WIDE AWAKE, and today I feel…less bad. I am allegedly doing festive holiday things tonight and have a festive holiday party to attend tomorrow night and —

As I wrote you that, I just remembered that last weekend I lay prone with my cold and ordered a fun gift for my party hostess tomorrow and you know how Amazon is. Usually you just THINK of a thing and it’s at your door. But I’ve been so consumed with cold (did you know I had a cold?) that I’d sort of forgotten I’d placed the order till I mentioned the party to you just now, so I went to Amazon all steaming. WHERE IS MY ORDER?

According to the internet gurus at Amazon? “Delivered.”

Delivered? What the…

I clicked further.

“Delivered today at 7:18 a.m.”

Really? I was up at 7:18 a.m., having gotten the quicksand off my chest and seething at the injustice of trying to sleep postmenopause. Why didn’t Edsel and I hear it? He might have been out back on his constitutional. I toddled to the front porch, and you know what?

My item was delivered.

God, Amazon is amazing. I know I’m supposed to hate them like I’m supposed to hate Louis CK but I don’t hate either and I’m sorry. I don’t.

All right. I’d better get in the shower and go the whole day pretending I slept well. Please think encouraging thoughts about me being able to attend my festive holiday events this weekend. I already missed White Christmas at my old theater because I was unwell. Did I mention I’ve been unwell?

Festively,
JunePlum

Ugh, I’ve been wretched. Wretched.

• 

I’ve worked from home each day this week, sometimes taking my work to my couch and lying there and copy editing it wretchedly. But I soldiered on, because you know how stoic I am.

Today I am going to attempt to attend work like a normal person, and my hope is I am not as contagious as I was. I’m in the dregs part, where I have the lingering cough.

Oh, but look at this!

Kleenex in a stand-uppy box! Isn’t that the most brilliant invention?

…Oh. I just read the back of the box, and allegedly, these are “towels.” TOWELS? I’ve been blowing into a towel?

Well, crap.

Anyway, what else is new with all of y’all? While I haven’t been working while lying prone, or watching Call The Midwife while lying prone, or blowing into a towel, apparently, I’ve done, well, nothing.

• 

Have I missed any gossip or world news? You know how up on world issues I am.

Oh, but does anyone here watch Call the Midwife? I’m on season I think 4. It’s 1961, the pill was just invented, and I really wonder what my nun name would be. Do you get to pick your own or does God come down with a new Hello, My Name Is… tag for you?

What if I got some nun name I didn’t like, like Winifred? Then you’re stuck with it forever like a bad engagement ring. I might as well be a nun at this point, with the chastity and all. Except I’d hate the poverty part even though I’m already pretty poor. Yeah, I might as well be a nun at this point.

I’d better get dressed and go to work. A nun would. She’d go to work with a cold. Going to work is a habit for a nun.

I have a sinus headache. What do you even take for those? I never get any sort of head pain other than migraines. Do you just take regular aspirin? I have some left over from my accident. I’ll Google it. Don’t worry about me. I’ll Google it and drive listlessly to work and have a sinus headache because TROUPER.

I’m sorry I had nothing interesting to tell you today, but I’ve been a distinctly uninteresting person all week. I was more fun in Michigan. There was this one girl in high school that my friend David and I insisted looked better in April. We’d see her at a party looking relatively cute, but we’d look at each other and say, “She looked better in April.”

I miss that friend. He was terrible about keeping in touch so I made a vow to myself, like a nun, that I’d not be the first to call. That was in 2013. So.

Okay, I’m really going. Why does a cold make you feel so awful and fuzzy-headed? Why can’t they cure it? Why don’t you eventually run out of colds to catch? Is there anyone out there who just never gets them? Like, I know people who’ve never had a cavity. How is it some people skate through like with no cavities or colds? They probably also have impressive 401(k)s.

Really going now. May the lord bless you when you sneeze.

Sister June

P.S. You know the really very worst part of all this is that I got my roots dyed last Tuesday, and there’s only a very short window of days before the roots PEEK through again and most of my absolutely-done roots part has been spent here with just Lily and no human to enjoy it. Life throws some mean curveballs. Also, what exactly is a curveball? Aren’t all balls curved?

When I finally dragged my dead self out of bed today, I forgot I’d decorated for Christmas and I was all, Why’s it so fekkin’ cheery in here?

• 

Hi. I’m back from my trip to Michigan. I caught a cold. I’m blaming planes.

Both trips, I had dramatic plane changes at major airports–Detroit and Chicago–where I had, like, 20 minutes to get off the first plane and onto a whole ‘nother concourse before boarding time.

On the way back, we were late leaving Michigan because we’d had to de-ice the goddamn wings, so when we arrived in Chicago I was pre-knife OJ Simpson. I had to run run run from Concourse C to Concourse F, which was appropriate given how many times I said the F word. I ran 86 miles, through that stupid tunnel with the light show, down hallways and past stores I’d have stopped in if I’d had time,

• 

screamed over to my gate, where I was THE LAST PERSON TO BOARD, slammed self into seat and the plane took off. Thank heavens for my catlike reflexes getting me there on time.

So that was relaxing. And then to top things off I got a cold.

I know you have your Christmas version of June’s Big Book of Events, and perhaps you’ve already perused it with your entire family, but if you haven’t, this is the first cold I’ve had in a few years. I was very smug about not getting one last year at all. “Maybe I’ve had all the colds and I’m just done,” I thought. And then the sore throat set in.

Anyway, the part where I was in Michigan was pleasant.

Up yonder is my “uncle” Dale. I air quote him because he’s really married to my mother’s cousin, Big June, but he’s older than me so I think of him as an uncle.

Up yonder is Aunt Kathy. She’s actually my aunt and I have nothing air-quote-y to say about that. She gave me a pink Eiffel Tower luggage tag for Christmas and you can see I was an adult about waiting to open my Christmas gift.

Up yonder is–Dear June: Please stop saying up yonder.

Anyway, there’s my cousin Katie and Aunt Kathy and mom. I don’t know why I’m telling you this since you know already. My 13th anniversary of writing this blog is coming up in two weeks.

This is my cousin Katie’s husband, Jason. I’ve known him since he was in high school and as far as I know he’s always had round wire-rim glasses frames. I’ve never thought about that till just now.

Here’s my aunt with all her husbands.

And that is all. This photo of my stepfather and mom and my crooked bottom Edsel teeth is the end of the trip. Hey, it was just a 72-hour jaunt. Bookended by dramatic runs through an airport.

Oh! I forgot to mention that on the way there, I got on the plane in Detroit, that was going to take me to my hometown, and I heard, “June?” It was my friend MB, from college! She was on the same dang plane as me! I wanted to sit right next to her and hear every last thing, but she was near the front on the fancy-people part and I was in the back with the dregs. She waited for me when we deplaned and we got to talk briefly and I tried to tell my mother she was my new wife–SURPRISE!!–but mom didn’t fall for it.

Also, on the way back, I met a woman on the flight from Chicago to here. By the way, as I dramatically dashed onto the wing of that plane and climbed in through a window as it was taking off, it took me a while to calm down and look about me. “This plane is fabulous,” I announced to the woman next to me. Turns out, our plane was a month old. Oh, it was nice. It was like plane of the future. Except it was plane of last month. Say “plane” one more time.

The point is, the woman I met on the … plane … has a problem and I told her to come here for advice so look for her in the comments. I’m not sure she’ll remember to look here but she might.

Anyway, now I have to go back to work, and you know I hate to complain. But my ears ache and my throat has daggers in it and half the time my nose is concrete. If I hadn’t just taken, you know, a week off I’d call in sick today. I might just go get my laptop and work from here, so I don’t sicken everyone else. That would be the considerate thing to do, right?

I’ll talk at you tomorrow. IF I LIVE. Did anything interesting happen to anyone while I was gone?

Weakly,
June

Today is going to be sort of an odd day. At 9:00, I get my hair colored. Then at 1:45, I scream off to another salon to get my hair cut. I have to go to special curly-girl places to get my hair cut. What can I tell you? You’ve seen the hair. You know what I’m up against.

Then in between those hair sessions, I have to take Edsel to his dog-sitter. Then at 5:40 I fly out of Greensboro and into Michigan. I arrive at 9:30-ish, unless everything gets canceled and delayed and canceled like last time I tried to fly to Michigan. The good news is, I’ll either be canceled here in Greensboro or canceled in Detroit, which means I won’t be completely stranded, like I was in Chicago that last time.

I’m hoping to find a good book at Greensboro’s hard-hitting aeroport, which is totally how you spell that word. Does anyone know of a good one that might actually be in an aeroport gift shop?

I’d better go shower so I am presentable for the hair salon. Salons. I’m only in Michigan through Friday because going was sort of a last-minute decision and there weren’t many flights except “Leave at 2 a.m.” and “Be there for 72 hours only.” So.

• 

All right. I’ll write you from my mother’s computer if I can get to it or if time allows, because relatives. Since you know everyone, I’ll tell you my Aunt Kathy, Uncle Bill, cousin Katie the lesbian and her husband (which makes no sense unless you know the story) and of course my mother and stepfather will be there. I am assuming there will also be Uncle Leo and cousin Maria but I do not know that for sure. Also my mother’s friend Gwen but do not know that for sure, either.

Last year I was there for some event, and Gwen and my Uncle Leo and I ended up in the kitchen laughing hysterically and everyone was mad they were in the other room and missing out on the clearly fun crowd over yonder in the kitchen. I can remember what we were laughing about but I cannot tell it. Now YOU’RE the rest of the family in the other room.

All right. Here I go, for a day of hair and flight.

Flyaway-ly,
June

P.S. Since this whole post left you nothing really to comment on, let’s discuss our least-favorite Thanksgiving food. Always positive. That’s me.

Well, here we are again. Monday. But for those of us in America anyway (here’s where June acts like she’s an international star with readers worldwide*), this is going to be a weird week, with most of us getting one day off and some of us, like me, working Monday only and then traveling. So it’s sort of Monday and it’s also sort of odd weird one-workday Friday-ish.

*Look, at least one person reads me in England and one in Australia. So shut up.

I worked sort of late Friday, and as I made my way to my car, I saw just my and Wedding Alex’s cars remaining. Two lone workaholics in the night.

I’ve disguised her auto with my fine photo-editing skills, so that you would have no idea that’s Alex’s car and then stalk her and bludgeon her, as you were preparing to do.

Anyway, I sent her this photo via a new form of communication called “The Text” and she received “The Text” and was pleased.

I wonder what the first text I ever got was. I am certain I had texting on my circa-2005 flip phone, which by the way I took to a kiosk in LA and had bedazzled with a pink-gem Eiffel Tower. I also had a Hello Kitty hanging off my flip phone’s antenna. I must have received a text from someone at the time saying, “You’re 40. Stop.”

Oh my god I loved that flip phone. And when the phone rang it played Moonlight Serenade.

I remember watching some movie and this song came on and Marvin said, “Your phone’s ringing,” thinking he was highlarious.

Anyway, I don’t recall my first text.

Also, do you ever think about how you do the last of something but you aren’t aware of it at the time? I was trying to sleep last night and I thought of this parking garage in LA that led straight into a department store I liked, and I thought, one day I walked out of that department store and into that parking garage didn’t realize I’d never do that again.

There was this woman I became friends with at the end of college. She was very classy. She wore a beige pea coat and had beige hair and her parents were rich and she was majoring in art history because hooo care. She took me to her family’s summer home and we hung out on their boat and drank vodka and fresh grapefruit because I didn’t know I was allergic to grapefruit yet, but man did I feel bad the next day.

She was the only person our age I knew who had real pearls.

Anyway when she graduated she came over to my apartment with the oatmeal-colored carpet and gave me her phone number and address and then she was gone and I never saw her again.

I had no idea I’d never see her again. I tried to friend her on Facebook a few years back but she never responded.

It’s weird to think of stuff like that.

Anyway. Speaking of people you’ll never see again except then you do, which is not what we were speaking of but now I’ve segued into this topic so just strap in, partner.

I went to my weekly Friday dinner with my neighbors. Each week it varies wildly. Sometimes 15 of us show up, some weeks four. This week was particularly attended, and I met a nice couple from Massachusetts who bought a house on the next block. They initially looked at my house (“We were the first to look at it!” she said) but they decided on the other house because they were deliberately looking for something to fix up. (“Yours was already fixed up,” she said.)

They were cool, and my neighborhood is becoming more cool, I’m telling you. I wasn’t wrong. Meth deals notwithstanding.

Anyway, what annoys me is I was the second person to look at this house, and it’s really a shame you weren’t around for all that house drama last year. My point is, my realtor (which is technically a proper noun and I sould cap it but I just can’t. Ima be ee cummings of realty today) called the seller’s realtor on speaker right here in this kitchen, and she said, “Someone else looked at it today and they’re interested” and that made me panic and offer full price (you’d still die at the low price) now I think maybe she was full of the shit.

But this is not the story I set out to tell you.

At the restaurant Friday, this fairly young man walked in, and he looked right and me and I at him and I was all, I know him. We made eye contact about 72 times and it was driving me berserk. Why do I know him? He can’t be one of my endless Tinder dates because he’s 30. Or 37. Or 25. They all look the same to me now.

Eventually I got up and asked him. “I work at Mcoul’s,” he said, “I recognized you too.”

Mcoul’s is a pub across the street from where Ned used to live, when he was livin’ downtown, drivin’ all the old men crazy.

• 

We went there, oh, seventy hundred times. They were open on Christmas, so our tradition was to go there Christmas night. They also had brunch, which we attended precisely once when this other couple was auditioning to be our friends. But mostly we went there after our old movies, because it was right in between the movie theater and Ned’s place, and that’s back when I could have wine at 9:00 at night and still function the next day. They were always open during snowstorms. I remember having snow wine there one blustery night.

How did I not recognize that guy? He was our bartender for ages. But anyway, now I’ve placed him. He told me where he worked and right then I knew. Nothing gets past me.

Oh my god we’re not even done with Friday yet.

I also went to two–two!!–two mints in one

movies this weekend. By the way, did we ever learn WHICH two mints were in Certs or did we just watch people knock them together and accept it as fact the way we accepted that the Irish cut soap?

Or the way we accepted that painting chalk was a great way to show us how toothpaste worked?

THE TWO MOVIES I SAW were Ford vs. Ferrari and the Mr. Rogers movie. The reason I saw Ford vs. Ferrari is because Mr. Rogers was sold out, so I settled for that and ended up sort of liking that movie. They even mentioned Fiats and I felt particularly proud.

Then, because I was annoyed I missed Mr. Rogers, as soon as I got up on Sunday, I got online and ordered my ticket for the noon showing and I’m lucky I did because there were a lotta people at that theater even at noon on a Sunday.

I was with actual friends during Ford vs. Ferrari like a normal person who mingles, but on Sunday I was by myself. I sat next to a young-ish woman who was probably 37. Or 25. Anyway, we both wept through that whole movie and when it was over we stood talking in the lobby for a long time about our childhoods, and Mr. Rogers, and what a good person he was, and it was a whole bonding experience till I roofied and raped her.

Oh! And I forgot, in between movies I worked again on our dog-related thing we’re doing at work. This dog is 10 and she’s been at the shelter for six months and she was a lamb. She was completely willing to put any clothing on, whereas Edsel would have fainted clean away.

When Eds meets his maker, I really think I will adopt an older dog like this. I can’t STAND the thought of them endlessly at the shelter while everyone snaps up puppies.

I’d better go. I have my big 8 hours to put in this week. I’d better get my nose on that grindstone.

Thin Lizzily,
June

I know I haven’t written in a few days, and it’s because I’m very busy feeling nervous. I’ve got a health thing I won’t know the answer to until MID-DECEMBER, so meanwhile I have to carry on, which BTW is my very worst trait, carrying on is, but I thought I might as well try.

So let’s catch up on the non-health-obsessing news of the day, shall we?

Oh, ding dang it. My phone’s in the other room. Let me take Laila Ali off me and go get it.

Ah. Here we are.

• 

On Tuesday I got to hang with another d-o-g, for that work project. I had to go get her, take her to a local pet shop, have her picture made with outfits on

• 

as you do. Then I had to take her back to the shelter, which is always the awfulest part. But the good news is the next day I went on the shelter’s Facebook page to get the back story on this particular dog, and that same day that she tried on outfits? She got adopted! There was a very flattering photograph of her looking quite pleased with her new person. Oh my god, I was so happy for her.

Then that night one of my old movies was on at my old theater, so my old self went there, of old. I thought I’d seen It Happened One Night before, but it turns out I’d only viewed that one scene, where Claudette Colbert lifts her dress and shows her leg to get a car to stop.

Also, I’d seen stills from it when I got a Clark Gable book out at the library when I was 10. I saw a picture of them on either side of that blanket.

• 

It turns out, it was a pretty good movie. Claudette Colbert had stupid hair, but she was pretty and managed to keep full makeup on despite several days of being on the road with no bag.

• 

What was the story with Big Boy and Dolly? Were they dating? Because aren’t they, like, children? Also, what was the name of Big Boy’s dog? Now I hafta go look THAT up, geez.

…Okay, my very scientific research has given me no answer to that, and maybe Big Boy’s been through the desert with a dog with no name.

Everybody here HAD Big Boy restaurants, right? Where I lived, it was Elias Big Boy, but then when I moved to California it was, like, Fleicks or Fletches or Frutchees Big Boy or something. Marvin and I frequented the one in Burbank, which still had car service, a thing Marvin never let me have and which I always wanted. He always made me go in. Basically my marriage was 14 years of never getting to do what I wanted.

It was at that Big Boy that we figured out I was 444 months old, which means I was there in July 2002 that time.

• 

Once, after a fine meal at the Bob’s Burbank Big Boy bonanza, Marvin drove me past what he knew was Bob Hope’s house (hey, maybe HE owned that Big Boy) (say Big Boy one more time) and on the way there was a yard sale. We stopped, and it was the best yard sale in the history of time. The person’s yard it was was this sort of D-list actor, whose name escapes me but mostly he was a Mr. Handsome who did commercials and game shows. I think he was dead. I mean, at the yard sale. Well, not AT the yard sale, although that would have livened up this story considerably.

Anyway, they had stills of him, 8x10s, standing at various places in a grocery store, in a suit, pointing out the meat and what have you from what must have been a hard-hitting ad at one point. Naturally we snatched those right up. Framed them and put them in the kitchen.

Even better was a 1970s marital aid book, showing a very depressed-looking couple having depressing-looking marital relations on a very shiny 1970s bedspread.

I’m sorry to tell you we got that book out at all gatherings at our abode, and even sorrier to tell you Marvin took it in the divorce without asking me. I should drag him back to court. Demand it back.

This was no hairy Joy of Sex couple, who despite their hygiene challenges at least looked like they were having a good time. This couple in our yard sale book was either on drugs or hated each other. My opinion is the woman in the scenario was depressed about that slippery bedspread.

Remember how those bedspreads had, like, 700 threads going on? And one was always pulling up. Those silky bedspreads are how the devil got in Miss Jones.

Anyway, I guess that’s all I have to tell you, except that last night, a faithful reader who I don’t even know if she reads anymore but she’s my Facebook friend, put a thing up saying, “It’s almost that time. Show a picture of you from the beginning of this decade and one from now, at the end.”

My first thought was, Oooo, I gotta go find a picture of me from 1999.

Oh, June.

• 

• 

So there we are.

Okay, I’m off. Talk to you soon, Dolly. And remember! You don’t have to write a name or email address to comment.

XO,
June

Brace yourself: When I sat down here to write you, my computer told me it has more updates.

In other less-predictable news, Edsel got his heart medicine one month ago today. One of the bottles had a month’s supply in it, and today there are exactly two pills left. He got his morning pill just now and he’ll get his evening pill tonight. So he got every pill he was supposed to this month. Say “pill” one more time.

I tell you this because as absent-minded as I am anymore—and OH MY GOD IT’S ANNOYING. As many times as I walk into the kitchen and the dishwasher door is open and half unloaded,

as often as I walk into a room with half-put-away clothes,

as often as I get to work with no pants,

the many nights I’ve awoken in the hospital because I forgot to breathe again,

as often as I find myself floating in space because I’ve misplaced the laws of gravity,

AS MUCH AS THIS HAPPENS

I was flawless about giving my dog his pill that, you know, keeps him alive. So does this mean my forgetfulness is voluntary? And I keep it together when I really need to?

I guess “forgetfulness” isn’t even the word. It’s distractibility. I start a thing and then the siren song of another thing lures me away.

Maybe I was flawless about the pills because it’s easy to remember to plunk a pill into his bowl at feeding time, seeing as he would never in a million years let me forget feeding time. If I had to do something that took longer, like sew him a pinafore every day, I wonder if I’d manage to do that flawlessly.

Step one: Look up what a pinafore actually is. Is it that little frilly thing at the front of a dress, like what Alice in Wonderland had on?

True confession: I just Googled it, got results, then forgot to actually read what it was before I came back here.

Speaking of Alice, she says distractedly, I keep seeing on social media pages that there’s this channel called Disney Plus or Disney Also Too or something like that, and every adult I know is losing his or her mind over it and is all, OH MY GOD THEY’RE SHOWING COLD BRAID GIRLS EXCUSE ME WHILE I WATCH.

What’s that one cartoon everyone got the vapors over a few years ago? Chilly? Brisk? Icy? Is that even a Disney movie or is it Pixar? Are Disney and Pixar the same thing?

Hooooo care.

I feel like the only person in America who doesn’t much care about Disney. Is it because I never had kids? It’s it because I have ice in my veins? Now, I’ll watch an old Dumbo or Bambi or Cinderella. All those there-is-no-mother cartoons we watched to become chapfallen Gen X. But I wouldn’t, like, cancel my series over any of them. I wouldn’t cancel culture over them.

I know grown women who have shirts with Disney characters on them.

What is this thing? What am I missing? Other than Minnie ears.

It is with these deep thoughts that I leave you, with a note under your pillow and a warm smile while you sleep.

While I’ve been writing this meaningful tome, she says, not leaving you, Edsel has been outside, as he is wont to do occasionally. Every so often he hangs in the yard for a bit, sniffing the perimeter, peeing on his pee tree, getting O lips at the pit bull who gets walked past our house 48 times a day. (I seriously don’t know why that dog needs that many walks. But he’s a sweet huge-headed thing who wags politely when you see him. Edsel is going to protest at that dog’s funeral.)

Anyway, I got up just now to see if he was over it and ready to come in, and indeed he was. He was at the back steps, but was still looking out over his domain, in case a squirrel tried to scurry past. He had his earpiece on and his sunglasses, wearing his suit and no-nonsense expression.

He looked so dignified that I minced in here and got the camera, and I like how our telephones are now “the camera,” but once I got back there he sensed my terrible nearness and did this.

So there is no dignified Eds photo for you, just this plaintive one where even his feets seem to have turned white now, and goddammit. Stop turning white. Stop needing heart meds. Just stop. Go back to this:

• 

Distractedly,
June

Before I start writing you, I have to strap Laila Ali to my head.

I linked to her hair dryer just now, in case you just got here and you’re picturing Muhammad Ali’s daughter literally strapped to my head, and I see her dryer has been discontinued. What happens when this one breaks? Don’t you hate that?

My ex-mother-in-law liked her some Chanel Gold lipstick, although I should note for the record that one time I went into her vanity area and counted her lipsticks. Seventy-eight. Then I categorized them by color. Mostly sort of a gold burgundy.

But anyway, she liked Chanel Gold. Then of course they discontinued it. For her birthday I would find her unused Chanel Gold on eBay.

My point is, why they gotta discontinue stuff?

Anyway, hi. How was everyone’s weekend? For those of you with full-time jobs, how much are you looking forward to getting to work today and having to discuss how your weekend was 48 times?

I went to see the movie Last Christmas, which wasn’t as stupid as you’d think. And I went the whole movie not knowing the star was that chick from Gail of Thrones or whatever. My point is, why they gotta discontinue things. No, wait, that was my last point. My point is, it wasn’t bad.

The star of our movie, and I like how now we’ve all gone to the movies together in a bus, enjoyed her the George Michael very much, and as they played a lot of George Michael it occurred to me I really like him too and why don’t I have more George Michael on my iTunes, the same iTunes that vexed me last week. iTunes and I got back together.

But I also thought about how once on this blog, we talked about what our least-favorite Christmas song was. I enjoy it when you all get cranky, and that particular day was a gold mine, a Chanel Gold mine, of crank.

Anyway, one of you said the song you hated was the one that went

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart.
The very next day, you gave it away.

I think you were bugged that it was such a downtrodden song at Christmas. Like, shut up and be merry. It’s Christmas. Who are you, JonBenét Ramsey? Cheer up.

Anyway, when they played that song during the movie, I thought of you, whichever reader that was. Look, I been doin’ this 13 years and there are comments every day. Don’t get pissed that I can’t remember specifically who that was that one day who knows how many years ago.

My point is, why they gotta discontinue stuff. And also, is there anything I or any commenter has said through the years, lo these 13 years, that has stuck with you like that?

Do tell.

I guess I oughta stick a photo in here for those of you who are bored by words. Hang on. Lemme go look at my pictures…

Here we go. The peeping tomcat. Also, my neighbors got a new kitten, who is all black and whom I love deeply and guess who’s sorry they invited me over to meet said kitten? Will I be there every day? Will I be waiting on their couch when they get home? Will they get up in the morning and I’ll be sleeping with the kitten? Signs point to yes.

I’m off. Don’t forget you don’t have to put in your name or email to leave a comment. Last Christmas, I gave you my name. The very next day, they discontinued Chanel Gold.

Rhymingly,
June

Someone in the comments yesterday asked if we could have question day today and seeing as I have to dash off to the doctor, let’s do so.

(I have a mysterious mole. It has a Russian accent, first of all. I made this appointment months ago, but now with Iris’s vet appointment, going to Edsel’s vet to pick up his $130-a-month heart meds, my trip to the regular doctor and now this, it’s medical week here at House of June.)

So, go ahead. Ask me any question. I’ll likely answer it right there in the comment section when I can, unless of course said Q bugs the shit out of me.

“Does your tree have a face, June?”

heeeeee…

Answer you soon!

XO,
June

Do you know what I hate? {Everyone sighs and heads to get their scroll of Things June Hates, now held in a special case in the Hate Room}

I sat down to write you, and realized I didn’t have my phone. Usually I plug it in here so the photos I took the day before pop up, and I show them to you if there’s anything good.

Like this. How can the world live without this selfie I took yesterday? How did we get by?

Anyway, I found my phone, but there was no cord here to connect said phone to said computer. Those Apple cords rip apart in no time, like Joe and I were ripped apart (name that movie) so now I have just one. I have to remember to bring THE WHOLE CORD from where I charge it in the bedroom–much like how I charge up the many mens in there–over to the den.

I’ve never called this room the “den” before. But it’s a room where I sit and read and use the computer. What makes a den a den?

I should call this room my man cave.

So I was here in my man cave, plugging in the goddamn phone finally, when

BOUNCE!

BOUNCE!

went my iTunes icon at the bottom of my screen, and you know how that bothers me.

“WHAT,” I said, clicking it.

“iTunes needs to be updated!”

Something always needs to be updated every damn day around here. Mostly my condom supply what with the many mens being charged up over beyond my man cave and on into my bedroom.

“FINE.” I said, clicking the go-ahead-and-update-it thing.

“Oh, well, we need your Apple password.”

You knew it was me when you started bouncing at me when I’m tryina blog. Now you need me to prove it’s me?

I entered my password, which is always some form of “fuck you” and the company I’m dealing with. FuckYouDr. FuckYouCable. Etc.

“Oh, no. That’s not it. That’s not your password. You’re making iTunes very upset.” My computer wrung its hands.

Eventually, I just changed my damn password to another iteration of FuckYouApple, and then?

“Oh, dear, no. Before we make this change you didn’t want in the first place but you had to stop the bouncing, you need to put in your iTunes password as well.”

And that is why I yelled and turned poor Edsel into a letter C, and you’d think by now he’d be immune to these outbursts.

Anyway, two things happened yesterday. Well. Forty-six things happened, but only two of note.

I got up early yesterday, which increases my sparkling mood at all times, to drop Iris at the vet. They have a system where you can drop cats off and they check on her when they can and I come get her at the end of the day like I had a trophy engraved or what have you. You know how often you’re dashing out to have your trophy engraved.

• 

Iris has bounced back, and is no longer plagued with her sniffles thanks to some drops they put in her nose every six weeks that I’m certain she enjoys getting. Those drops are her Apple password. “fuk yew, drops.”

Also, the special food that costs $39239 a can is working to fix her stomach problem. She’s not perfect but she’s a lot better.

So, yay.

The other thing is, careful readers will note I’ve felt like I had a UTI, without getting to have any of the pounding sex that generally precedes a UTI. I went to the doctor, who tested my urine by having it go into the woods with just a match and a tarp, and the doctor said my test was negative.

I mean, my test was a tad downtrodden, but negative is a strong word.

I hate it when people say, “Hate is a strong word.” Shut up. You know what’s a strong word? Your mother.

She gave me antibiotics anyway, because there’s no danger of us all becoming immune to them or anything, and guess what. Antibiotics didn’t work.

I called on Monday to announce this, and of course instead of just prescribing me another antibiotic because see above re us all becoming immune and dying of Black Plague as a family in the kitchen under a Live/Seize/Perish plaque, they insisted I come back in.

I balked at this pee-ily. I was NOT coming back in. I was sick and tired of coming in for every last thing. I took my not-UTI and flung it behind me as I flounced off that call.

Then yesterday I was so miserable I called and asked if I could come in.

Why do all your doctors quit, June?

I got the PA, not that they let me make announcements at the doctor, but I would LOVE that. “Hey, are those stirrups on your feet or are you just happy to see me?”

I know that makes no sense but I’m the mother of a blind cat. Give it rest.

Anyway, the PA re-tested me, like John Kennedy Jr. taking the bar, and this time I passed.

I’ve never been so relieved. When I tested negative last time (and maybe they were just testing my attitude) I was all, am I making this up? Do I have bladder cancer? Why do I feel so awful yet I’m testing negative for UTI? UTWhy?

They gave me new antibiotics and I have now taken three of them and feel … less awful. Like Iris, I’m not 100% but I’m very smugly resting on my own leg.

So those were yesterday’s highlights magazine and I realize they were both medical and maybe my whole life now is just medical appointments and going to Cracker Barrel at 4:30 with a walker with tennis balls on the legs, but if that’s my fate, so be it. At least I don’t feel like I have to pee every 49 seconds.

Briefly,
June, who wonders if she’s ever mentioned you don’t have to leave a name or email to comment, but continues to wish you’d sign your name at the bottom of your comment, otherwise she’ll ask for your iTunes password and then your Apple password and then your email password and then she’ll want you to hum the theme song from Password.

Here’s a mistake I made.

Do you like Reddit? I like Reddit. This weekend, I started reading a Reddit thread that asked, “If you signed an NDA and it’s expired, what exciting thing can you reveal now?”

There were the usual “This celebrity is a jerk” and “This corporation is ripping you off,” nothing terribly riveting, there. But then I read one from a person whose dad worked for NASA who said the people in the Challenger didn’t die instantly. They lived until they hit the water. And even worse, there’s a script out there telling you all the things they said.

My mistake is I Googled what they said. And now I wish I hadn’t. I’m not linking to it cause it’s ghoulish, but you too have the power of Google should you want to make yourself upset.

The guy in the Reddit thread said his NASA dad just came home that day and stared into the distance and drank and smoked.

Yeesh.

In cheerfuller news, here is what I did this weekend.

On Friday, I lamented the bags under my eyes. When the Christa McAuliffe did these get here? They’re awful. Also, I have a UTI that won’t go away. I didn’t get to do any of the fun things that NORMALLY lead to a UTI, and yet I know I have one. One course of antibiotics did not do the trick and I know I have to call the doctor but I am already angry, because I know she’ll say I have to come back there.

During my concussion, I went to the doctor at least 6 times Aug–Sept. Then she made me come back in a month after clearing me to return to work. Then, I swear to god, she said, “Don’t forget, you have your physical next week and also you have to come in early and do labs the day before.”

We couldn’t have, oh, combined my concussion visit with the physical? Seriously?

So then at the physical she said, “Don’t forget, you have to come back in a few weeks so we can see how you’re doing on Wellbutrin.”

SERIOUSLY? She put me on it when I kept being too scared to drive. But when I went back for the damn physical I already told her I was doing fine on it.

So, I’ve been to that doctor at a minimum 8 times since late August and I KNOW IN MY HEART OF HEARTS they’ll say, “She wants you to come in” and I am preannoyed.

Somehow this became not about what I did all weekend.

On Saturday I worked again for that extra project we’re doing at work, for the SPCA. I got to spend my whole day playing with puppies, and then come home to sniff of betrayal, where Edsel pretty much lives with his snout on my legs all evening.

Sniffsniffsniffsniffexhale.

Sniffsniffsniffsniffexhale.

Oh, but speaking of work, a guy I work with is forever forgetting to finish his time log at work, where we put in which accounts we worked on and for how long. You have to have all 40 of your hours (or in my case lately, 47 hours) (hello, Saturdays at work) done before Monday morning. Anyway, to remind said coworker to do his time I did a lovely and refreshing dance to Time Has Come Today or whatever that song is called from the ’60s when acid was groovy and we killed the pigs.

So, even though I like spending my Saturdays with dogs and going to the shelter and so on, on Sunday I saw how much laundry I had to do and heard myself yelling, “HOW CAN THERE ALREADY BE THIS MUCH @%#^ LAUNDRY??” and right then I knew. I was kind of burned out.

I threw a load into the washer and, armed with Wellbutrin strength, got in m’car and headed to the country.

• 

• 

There’s a creamery way out that I like to go to, and I am sorry to report to you that I got both butter pecan and double-dark chocolate, and why the cankles.

They have cows there. You can pick your cow to make your ice cream, like with lobster.

I was enjoying the cows except people brought their children to get ice cream and see cows, and what about my needs? I kept waiting for the children portion of the afternoon to thin out but they weren’t budging, so finally I stomped over there my own self and saw cows anyway.

A small child looked up at me. “This one pooped!” she announced.

Well. You know I enjoy poop things.

“Did it?” I asked. “Where?” I was riveted.

It was only after I got to the car that I saw I had chocolate on both sides of my mouth. Sade called. Asked me to be on the cover of her Smooth Operator 45.

1979 called. Wants its references to “45s” back.

I feel like that’s all I have to cover except–oh! Yes!

Since I was free to be you and me, I watched many episodes of That Girl this weekend. If I were Donald, I’d have broken up with Ann in a heartbeat. All that madcap fast talking and wide-eyed shit. But she was cute, so that’s probably why he stayed. But the whole time you know she knows she’s cute, kind of like I know my doctor is gonna say I have to come in, and you want to tell her to cut it out with the smiling with her tongue in her teeth and messing up her hair to drive home how madcap she is.

I kept skipping over the intro, a lovely feature my new Firestick offers, but eventually I sat through one and had a flashback. I called my mother.

“Hullllllo,” said my mother. You know how she answers in that alluring voice. Wait, maybe you don’t remember it. Here it is.

I think you should be more grateful than you are that I made a video for all 10 of you to see before I’ve showered or anything.

Anyway. “Hullllloooo,” said my mother.

“Did I used to call the show That Girl ‘Batgirl’?” I asked.

“Oh, I think you did! I’d forgotten that!” she said, with a normal voice. It’s just the “hello” where she’s Greta Garbo.

Batgirl. What the hell is wrong with me?

Okay, I have to get to work and then I have the trainer and it’s likely by the time I get home I will yell about laundry again.

Busily,
BatJune, who reminds you you don’t have to leave a name or email to comment.

Here is my soaking-wet hair at 7:34 a.m. Let’s blog a bit and see if it gets remotely dry as we speak. My theory is it’ll look just the same after. It’ll start to look dry by about 11:00. This does not bode well for the corporate ladder.

Alternatively I could blow it dry and look like this:

I have received this meme approximately forty-seven million times in the last few years. Since so many of you didn’t know what “TL;DR” was yesterday, do I have to explain a meme? It’s a photo or words (or, like here, both) that suddenly are just everywhere on the internet.

Have you heard of the dismissive, “Okay, Boomer” meme? I rather like this one. No offense. If you Boom, I mean.

You know how you put up something funny somewhere on social media and someone let’s say older doesn’t get it? Here’s an example: Once I used a makeup app on Edsel that made it look like he had eye shadow, false lashes, lipstick. Anyone with an iota of familiarity with computers would see it wasn’t real. The lips weren’t quite straight, and besides, where did Edsel get lips?

“DON’T PUT MAKEUP ON A DOG!” someone wrote under Edsel’s Facebook picture. “IT’S VERY BAD FOR THEM!”

Okay, Boomer.

See how it works?

I guess it’s not very nice but it’s so USEFUL.

What I like is the arrogance of someone yelling at you about something, knowing full well they aren’t quite sure what’s going on here on this here internet. But I’m still going to tell you how to live!

Getting old sucks. You just become more addled and people Okay, Boomer you. I’d like to say one day I’ll get “Okay, Gen X” but no one pays any attention to us. They always talk about the battle between Millennials and the Baby Boomers and I’m all Jan Brady in between. Helllooooo! I’m annoyed with you both!

It’s not been my experience, by the way, that Millennials are lazy. On the contrary, the many (many) young people I work with seem so driven and high-self-esteem-y. I’m all, You’re 27. Why aren’t you rolling in here hung over with a giant coffee and sunglasses?

“I had a green smoothie and did an hour of pilates before work!”

Their generation is not mine.

When I was 27, I was a PR person (yes. With my sunny disposition. I was sunnier then. Life hadn’t beaten me down) for a nonprofit. I made about 47 cents a week and worked late almost every night and many (many) weekends, and yet my boss would harangue me because, “You’re often three to five minutes late.”

I am not kidding. We started at 8:00! Do you have any idea how hard it is to show up at 8:00, well, ever? What a jerk that guy was. Anyway, my point is, I would roll in there at 8:03 hung over and I’d steal one of the Nutter Butters from the honor system candy and eat it with coffee, hung-overedly.

You know what chaps my hide? [June pulls chair closer and gestures with cigarette] It didn’t matter if I got there at 8:05. No one was waiting for me except his anal ass. I didn’t answer phones or greet guests. I remember screaming over to that office trying to get there at 8:00 on the dot, then staying till 8:00 at least once a week for 47 cents a year, and did that part ever matter? Did he ever say, “You often leave at 8:03 or 8:05”? He did not. BECAUSE HE LEFT AT 5:00 ON THE DOT.

I like how that was half my life ago and I’m still mad. Rather, I wasn’t mad for years but after awhile I looked back on it and said, That was ridiculous.

It’s 8:07 a.m. now (I’d be 7 minutes late for that job), and since we started talking I’ve had some toast and let in hysterical Milhous, who loves screaming out to the back yard any time Edsel goes out, but it’s cold here today. When I let Eds back in, I “kitty kittied” and nothing. Then when I was in here I heard MEOW! MEOW! MEOW! MOTHER OF GOD MEOW! He’d sampled the cold life and wanted back in where there are heaters.

Millous doesn’t meow a lot, but when he does he’s an auctioneer.

• 

He talks at you fast and hard.

Also, when he was small, he’d come in by squeezing under the door. Now he’s huge and refuses to come in any other way. So even though the back door is wide open, so to speak, he insists on dragging his body under the door and walks around with door marks in his fur like it’s normal.

Anyway, I’m glad he’s in and I’m sure everyone in town is in a lather about the cold day (the low is 26!!) but you know what I think when it gets cold?

The fleas are dead. DING DONG! Do you have any idea how much I spend on Revolution during flea season? Forty-seven million dollars, that’s how much.

Anyway, she says, sequiter-ly, here is my hair and it’s exactly the same as I predicted, and now Ima have to blow it dry and look like a meme.

Okay, Boomer.
June

Hey, Boomer, you don’t have to sign in or leave an email to comment. But do sign your name IN your comment so we know who the hell you are.

Yesterday felt like one of those days where you never get to stop running around both at lunch and after work. I hate days like that. My whole goal is to get to the sit-around part. That’s my finish line.

Among other annoying things, I was trying to find a lock for my water spout outside. The guy next door, the one who brought me all the paintings, didn’t have water for months, and I told him he could come fill his bucket with water from my spout when he needed to. I also gave him my bucket, and I’d just like to mention for the record that I couldn’t find a cute replacement bucket so I ordered one online and it’s very, very late. In fact, when you check your order status, it reads, “On its way, but very late.”

No good deed.

Also, I know I don’t need a CUTE bucket, but these are the benefits of living alone. No one to give me shit about needing an avocado-colored bucket (except for all 10 of you I just told this to).

My point is I was coming home after dark the other night, with my swinging singles lifestyle, and saw lights on in his place. Yesterday at lunch when I was running about doing 40-hundred things, I saw him.

“Did you get your power back on?” I’d been calling the water company about his WATER but not his power.

“Yep, we got it all back on,” he said. “Then yesterday I up and collapsed.”

Seems he lost consciousness; fell right onto the street. “I wasn’t even drunk,” he told me. Neighbors called the ambulance and hauled him off. Then he showed me all the places they gave him shots and IVs.

“What did they say was wrong?” I asked.

“Don’t know. I was there for three hours and never saw a doctor so I walked home.”

I believe he and I have differing opinions on self-care.

The point is, I swear I heard someone taking my water the other night. Maybe I’m hallucinating it, but I wanted a lock. If anyone had just ASKED to have some water I’d have said okay, but just blatantly taking it rankles.

Turns out Lowe’s will bait-and-switch you, tell you there’s a lock for faucets right in the store, but there is not.

You’ll scream over there after work, acutely aware that your heart-patient dog is home winding his pee watch, and bupkis.

No one took any water last night, though. I was poised dramatically with a flashlight to jump out at them like I was waiting for The Great Pumpkin, and zip. In a way it was disappointing.

Remember my old neighborhood where people had tea parties and teeth?

Anyway.

Thank you all for your stories yesterday. It wasn’t that comment-y of a day but I saw all you ghouls came back a lot to read comments. They were heartbreaking and in every single case I thought, Well, you should forgive yourself on that one. It’s so easy to do that for others.

Oh! And the other thing that happened yesterday is my friend in real life, Faithful Reader Enormous Member Steve, sent me a riveting article about a blogger from back in the day who eventually started sort of faking it and seeming happier than she was to keep her blog going.

I never got that big as a blogger. I mean, I got bigger than I ever aimed to be. I sent this to 18 people after my first post, and in my heyday I had 4,500 people come by regularly. I had zero ambitions of anyone reading this, ever, so I was just grateful to get that many. Sometimes my lack of ambition seems like a shame and sometimes I think, “I’ll bet I’m a lot less stressed out than most people.” Unless of course I’m waiting for my cute bucket that never arrives and trying to chastity belt my spout.

My assumption is I never got big because I’m not aspirational. I don’t have a house to die for (but apparently my water is quite desirable) and I’ve never seemed to have it all, so why would you stampede over? But the upside, I guess, is when things are in the poop shoot I get to say, Man, things are in the poop shoot.

What’s a poop shoot? Is that an anus? How many times do you find yourself asking that? Who’s with me?

TL;DR, glad I never had gaze out miserably against my exposed-brick wall and pretend everything was okay. But I get the pull of that. I do.

I leave you with the following important issue. I was fact-checking something at work and with my ADD that can be a problem. Because I found out there are modern cuckoo clocks and now I’m obsessed.

I need one, right? I’m cuckoo for current clocks. As soon as my sparkly bucket gets here, I’m getting a clock that cuckoos currently.

Needlessly,
June

P.S. You don’t have to use a name or email address to comment! Look! I remembered to say it today!

Long ago, when my Uncle Jim was still alive, he shot and killed someone. He was a cop, my uncle was, and when the story first broke in the newspaper, they didn’t identify who the policeman was, and my first reaction was, Those damn racist cops.

Then I heard more of the story: The man who was shot had a history of mental illness and the police had been called to his house many times. The day of the shooting, he was acting erratically. He was, in fact, naked in a parking lot, incoherent. He jumped onto the police officer with something shiny in his hand. And that’s when the cop shot him and the man died.

Then I learned it was my uncle who was the policeman.

And even though nowadays I sometimes get lost in those Facebook videos they show, the ones where the police pull over black people for no discernable reason (the air freshener tree in the car was the most recent one), reasons no white person would get pulled over, and I get SO ANGRY at those videos, I still try to remember my uncle’s situation and keep in mind I often don’t always know the whole story.

Not that “I’m pulling you over because you have a tree on your mirror and, oh, do you have drugs?” situation. I don’t keep anything in mind re that one. That situation was some bullshit. Not once has a policeman asked me if I have drugs. Ironic! I’m littered with them! I’m weighed down with blue-speckled Dexies!

(In high school, the burnouts were forever taking blue-speckled Dexies and I had no idea what those were but always wished I had one. Like, a break-glass-in-case-of-needing-to-look-cool emergency one.)

My point is, there was a whole trial and everything my uncle had to go through, to prove he was defending his own life and doing what he was supposed to do in the line of duty. It was determined that, indeed, he was doing what he was supposed to do in the line of duty, and I found this out on my radio on the drive home from work that day. I called my uncle’s house and my cousin Jimmy answered in his teenage way.

“They all went to dinner,” he said, with the enthusiasm of a 17-year-old cat in the sun.

He told me where they went, which was a nice place sort of far out of town. I am ashamed to tell you I drove ALL THE WAY OUT THERE, in a LATHER, and STORMED into the restaurant where everyone was: my uncle, my Aunt Sue who the courts ended up blaming (you have to have been around here a long time to get that joke), my Aunt Kathy and Uncle Bill, my mother and stepfather, even my Uncle John and Aunt MaryEllen from Detroit were there.

There was champagne on the table. We aren’t an “order a bottle of champagne” family, but we were this day.

My Uncle Jim looked so happy.

“I just wanted to THANK everyone for not inviting ME,” I said tearily, then stomped back to my car.

Where, by the way, I waited for someone to come get me and no one did and then I drove all the damn-ass way home, crying.

Even telling you this story 27 years later I burn with shame. My Uncle Jim wasn’t happy a lot. Most of the time he was sort of downcast, although in his later years (not that they were that late. He died at 55.) he was hilarious. He was the king of inappropriate jokes. But I’m telling you that seeing his face all happy that day was a rare thing to see. And I had to come in and make everything about me.

Many years later I called him from my house in LA and apologized to him. I can’t remember if we actually spoke or if I left a message on his machine, but I know I did apologize. But it doesn’t matter. I still feel like an asshole when I recall this story.

And that is why I’ve gathered you here today. What story sticks in your head where you still hate something you did? Have you done anything about it? Do you think you’ll ever forgive yourself?

Do tell.

Yesterday at lunch, I ordered Panera (grain bowl) and right now I’ve just turned on the oven to warm up that ridiculous loaf of bread they give you. It’s not good unless you warm it. Otherwise it’s a sad hard cold chunk of white bread you can’t chew unless you’re a mastodon.

I guess mastodons would be better at shish kabob than Panera bread.

I also ordered a goddamn salad from Panera, to eat after my trainer last night, the trainer who, mother of god, was tryina kill me. When I first get there, I get on the elliptical for 10 minutes, a thing that used to exhaust me and now I don’t even notice I’m doing it. We’re usually catching up on our lives during those 10 minutes.

“Today we’re going to be doing some couple work,” she said, pursing her lips at me as I made the scissoring gesture. She probably takes a nice Xanax before I arrive.

Hang on. Lemme go see if my bread is good…

It’s still a little like breakfast for prisoners, but whatever. Am famished. Am certain the other side of my scissor would be delighted I’m having bread and also butter this morning.

Anyway, we did things like she’d step up on that box and do a bicep curl while I did a squat. Then I’d do a bicep curl on that box while she squatted.

There was one time where I sat at that one machine where the weight is on your feet and you lift it up till your thighs are screaming that they want a divorce

• 

while she did jumping jacks. Then it was my turn to jumping fucking jack while she lifted and then we did it all over again, trying to beat the number of reps we did the time before. Then I killed myself.

No one has eaten a salad with more gusto than your pal June, over here, afterward. The soundtrack was just me crunching vigorously.

And that about sums up yesterday, other than pesky work, which required me to work all day. The nerve.

Oh! Also, after my delicious and oh-so-satisfying salad (did not at all want a giant roasted chicken and some mashed potatoes) I watched my show. Do you watch The Durrells in Corfu? It’s on Masterpiece Theater, which a circa 1994 boyfriend of mine used to call Masturbator Theater. We aren’t together any longer.

Let me digress for a moment. Once we were headed to a party. “I think you’ll really like my friend’s tattoo he just got,” he told me in the car. “It’s a Monet. I know you like Monet.”

• 

All the way there, I’m thinking, how on earth do you make a tattoo of a Monet? How do you make it all slurry with the lines and so on? It fascinated me. I could not wait to get there and see the Monet tattoo.

“Show June your new tat,” said old Masturbator Theater.

The guy exposed his shoulder.

There? Was a Nagel. Not just a Nagel. It was a Nagel of a woman bent over grabbing her shins.

Nagel. Monet. I’ll bet they were friends.

Anyway. Not long ago I discovered The Durrells in Corfu, a fairly true account of an actual family who moved from England to Greece in the ’30s. Everyone in the family is delightfully quirky. It’s like Eight is Enough with likeable characters and not that irksome Joanie with her side ponytail.

MY POINT IS, my Firestick told me another episode was ready and I gleefully turned it on and

what

what the…

IT WAS THE SERIES FINALE. I had no idea it was going to end! Oh my god that was devastating, and I realize I have to get a life and grab life by the shins and so on but that pretty much finished me for the day.

Every time I like a show it ends. I really liked this one show back in the early 2000s about this family who lived in Philadelphia in the 1960s. They were Catholic and the girl danced on American Bandstand. I loved it.

Canceled.

I adored this show called I Love Dick. One season. Canceled.

I like to think it’s my refined tastes. I’m too lofty for the common man, what with my scissor jokes and couch from the secondhand store. Not to mention my raspberry beret.

I have to go. My throat is still fixing to hurt and that adds insult to Corfu injury, frankly.

Sincerely,
June Gardens

I like to wake up and drink a full 8-ounce bottle of water right away, so I’m ahead of myself in the water department. But today, as I was chugging my water standing before the fridge, I could feel my throat was a little sore.

Then I was just leaning over getting something out of the closet, and my ears had that full feeling.

Ding DANG it. Cold. Cold is coming. I’m like Game of Thorns or whatever.

So prepare yourself for a lot of pictures in my socked feet next to bowls of soup and so on. You’ve got THAT to look forward to. I wonder if I can stream The Price is Right?

I think I likely caught this upcoming cold, coming to a theater near you, because I thrust myself into crowds all weekend. This is why it’s better to isolate.

I’m friends with a couple you’ve seen on here before; I’ve spent a few Christmas Eves with them and know I photographed those events thoroughly. Hang on and let me see if I can find a picture. They’re both absurdly good-looking.

Okay, this is a terrible picture of him and apparently I’ve snuffed out his wife in this scenario.

Anyway, I worked with the dude up there and cannot recall if I’ve given him a blog name or not so let’s call him Ian. Ian worked with me as part of our now-defunct Spanish team.

For awhile at work we had an account that, for everything we created in English, it also had to be produced in Spanish. So we hired all these fluent-in-Spanish artists, editors, copy editors, etc. and we had a big old Spanish team. It was so much fun.

At the time, we still had to wear business casual, and all the regular boring white people would come in in their black pants and white shirts or what have you. One day I walked past the Spanish team while they were in a cluster talking and I noticed shirts that were

SKY BLUE!

MAGNENTA!

TANGERINNNNNNNE!!!

And everyone smelled magnificent. It was so much more exciting over there at the Spanish team, and some of that team are still friends of mine, including Ian.

The other interesting thing about him is that he and his wife lived in the apartment right next to Ned. We’d be heading into Ned’s place in our white shirts and black pants and there very tangerine-ly would be Ian and his wife, sitting outside the door in comfy chairs, drinking red wine. For some reason, all you wanted to do was stay there and kibitz with them.

Eventually they moved to the prettiest house you ever saw and it’s the kind of place you never want to leave. It’s so cozy and festive all at the same time. They’re the type of people who you just feel happy around.

On Friday nights, I head to the restaurant in my hood to eat with my neighbors, and as of late I keep seeing Ian and his wife, and I like how she has no other identity than “his wife,” when really she too is this sparkling, cosmopolitan, hilarious person and why do I have to be so Midwest and gray-pantsed?

Anyway, I have been seeing them on my walk to the restaurant, as on Fridays they’ve been going to the brewery across the street. So they’ll be sitting outside on the Adirondak chairs and they shout over to me and I cross the street and say hello.

That is why I must have been on their mind when they invited me to a Puerto Rican festival at that same brewery on Saturday. Who am I to turn down a Puerto Rican festival?

Oh my god everyone there was so much fun. They put the fest in festival. And as the evening was winding down, everyone was taking group photos and Ian’s wife insisted I be in them. I know the next day everyone was all, Who’s Old Whitey, here, with the hair?

The next day was the Jewish festival, and I’d like you to know I left my phone at home for both these events and hello Ritalin I’m not taking, but I asked one of my friends to take a photo at the Jewish fest so I’d have at least ONE DAMN PHOTO of my weekend. “Just take a picture of me at some point and text it to me,” I commanded.

When I checked my phone, here’s what I got.

You’re welcome.

It was kind of cold, and it dawned on me that one month ago I went to that Greek fest with Marty and Kayeeeee and do you remember how ding-dang HOT we were?

• 

• 

It was in the 90s and we were sweltering, and here I am a month later in m’Patagonia.

Oh! The only other thing of note is that on Saturday I went to my favorite vintage shop and THEY HAD FREE KITTENS OUT FRONT. “Free kittens” is my favorite phrase.

They looked like they had Maine Coon in them and I considered just trading in one of my regular cats so I could get a kitten but I did not and see what a good person I am? Oh my god they were LOVELY. Someone found them and their LOVELY mom in the country. They had the long hair and the Maine Coon stripes and I actually did have my phone that time but how insane would I have looked taking photos of them?

Oh, they haunt me. They were beautiful kittens, did I mention?

But that is not my point. I bought a used couch. Is my point. Let’s call it a vintage couch. I

HATE

my current couch, which is a loveseat that I got new at Traveling Rooms or whatever it’s called. It’s too short, and I know it’s a loveseat but I’ve had loveseats before that you could at least lie across without having to put your feet on the armrest.

And it’s shallow. I’m not far from the shallow now. I feel like I’m practically falling off when I sit on it. I don’t know why I bought it. I want you to brace yourself but I believe I acted impulsively when I bought it.

So I saw this one and the fabric is not my ideal but my thought is eventually I’ll have it recovered. I sat in it and felt for shallowness. I splayed across it like an insane person. I spent a lotta time with this couch, is what I did.

I showed this in Facebook of June this weekend and someone very nervously pointed out the left cushion should be the middle cushion and she was all that lady who saw the passage to hell in Amityville horror. “FIX IT!!”

The lady in Amityville Horror screamed, “COVER IT!!!” but I always figure you’re right there in my head with me and you know what I mean.

It gets here next Saturday. The couch, not the passage to hell. So now I have a week to resent my current couch, which I guess I’ll give to Goodwill unless anyone here wants a short shallow couch that Edsel sat on and licked.

I have to go. I have to go to work and then after work I have my trainer and then after that I have a cold that I’m sure I won’t mention in any meaningful way for the next week to 10 days.

Malingeringly,
June

I don’t know about you, but in my religion, yesterday was a holiday. We call it Hall-o-weeeeen.

I’m like the old menus at Taco Bell where they showed you phonetically how to pronounce burrito (burr-eee-toe).

Some of my coworkers dressed up, as we have a costume contest that I 100% missed because I got distracted. Someone sent me a message wanting to have a meeting, and I said, “Wait, won’t people be at the contest?” with my rapier-sharp org skills and the messenger with wings on his heels that they send from person to person at work and we really need a more modern system said, “The contest happened at 2:00, June.”

Really?

So I missed that, as I was hiding in a room in an empty part of the building in order to, oh, work and not hear, “OH MY GOD YOUR CAT EARS ARE SO CUTE” ninety-hundred times.

I’m not sure when I became a curmudgeon.

Anyway. Later in the day people’s kids came and I gave them all candy and while I know I am a bit of a

curmudgeon

about children, I always enjoy them in real life when they come for Halloween. Plus also at this point I have seen some of these families for 9 Halloweens, so you get attached.

So that part was fun. That part of what we call in my religion Hollll-oh-weeeen was fun.

Then I went home.

I’m working on this huge overwhelming project that is due by the end of today and it’s huge and overwhelming, did I mention? So I took it home to look at for awhile last night, thinking trick-or-treaters (in my religion, part of the celebrations of this holiday is you go door to door dressed in disguise and get candy) would taper off by 8:00.

“TRICK OR TREAT!” some girl child was at my door dressed in something spooky and all black with red-lit eyes, and at this point kids are generally wearing things I don’t understand. “It’s from the movie Hooo de Hizzle,” parents will explain. “Haven’t you seen it?” they ask, assuming everyone stampedes off to kid movies if they don’t have to. Then there’s the inevitable,

“They make it so adults like it too.”

Right.

Anyway, she tricked and she treated and took just one polite piece of candy and that always kills me when kids do that. Take a handful! We live once.

I was just settling down to a funny text from my friend Lilly, who sent this:

Oh my god, this KILLS me. If you knew her kids, these costumes are so them.

The other good news is, they’re keeping the pig. The people whose pig it was never came for him, which, really? So even though they don’t really NEED a pig, they HAVE a pig, and if they’d have taken me up on saying yes I want that pig I’d be writing you a whole special pig post RN. But they have an actual, you know barn and barn food and land and so on, so they get to keep the pig. Damn.

The point is, I was doing that when

EEEEEeeeeeee! My phone screeched at me.

TORNADO WARNING, it read. SEEK COVER IMMEDIATELY, it said.

Was it…serious?

I knew we were gonna have rain, and I was pursing my lips over kids not coming despite the rain, but a tornado? Really? In October? …Really?

Right then the wind picked up.

WOOOOooooooo! said the wind, and my hanging porch plants began dancing, which is never a good sign.

So I did what any normal person would do. I gathered ye rosebuds and also my 40 pets, and we went to the sort of hallway in the middle of the house. It’s just the spot where the rooms meet up, it’s not really a hallway, but there are no windows there.

All the cats dispersed immediately and ran under things, which I figured was better than being out and about.

Eds, however, stayed glued to my person.

WoooooOOOOOoooo, said the wind. And right then I realized I was scared. Naturally I called my mother, because I’m an adult 54-year-old.

“I wish you had a basement,” said my mother. Everyone in Michigan has a basement and nowhere else that I’ve lived has them.

Seattle? Too rainy.

LA? You get crushed by an earthquake.

Here? I don’t rightly know why, but basements aren’t so plentiful. And everyone in Michigan just assumes you have a basement, by the way. It’s just a given there. When I moved away, I thought, where do teenagers go to make out if there are no basements?

“June’s having a tornado, so I’m going to stay on the phone with her,” announced my mother, who forever has 200 people in her house, and if I had visitors coming in and out the whole time like she does I’d have thrown myself head first into the wind.

“Did she get in the basement?” one of her Michigan friends asked.

So we stayed on the phone so she could hear her only child die in a tornado, but in fact it didn’t happen, and no house landed on me and my striped socks, and then finally they called off the dogs.

“Are you okay?” texted my neighbor on the next block, as if a twister had touched down over here but not there.

So that put the kibosh on Halloween, and to tell you the truth I was kind of scared. I know we’re supposed to be scared on Halloween but that wasn’t the good kind of scared. Yeesch.

I will leave you with a more pleasant story, and that is this:

Ned texted this photo from his abode, of Snowflake (now Sidney), Nancy, and the photo of NedKitty I gave him, all arranged on the shelf. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned I love Snowflake so bad, I do. She’s going to be magnificent-looking. I mean, she already is. But she’s going to be an impressive cat, and poor squat Nancy has to deal with that all her life.

All right, I’m gonna blow out of here. BAH.

Putting on my Helen Hunt tank top,
June

P.S. Did you know you don’t have to leave a name or email address to comment? I’m not blowing smoke!

What was your favorite Halloween costume?

Favorite candy to get? Least-favorite?

If you could dress up in any costume, what would it be?

I feel like I have many small things to catch you up on, so I will divide today’s hard-hitting post into categories.

Some Pig
My phone, home computer, and computer at work are all hooked up now in an Apple way, through no fault of my own except probably I clicked something that told the Apple people, “Yeah, go ahead.”

• 

My point is, if I work on something at work and save it to my desktop, it’s also on my desktop at home. This is convenient.

However, one thing that’s screwy is whenever someone texts me, it BLOOPS across my work computer screen. Recently my cousin Katie sent me a “hilarious” joke text that involved a rather endowed gentleman, and his whole naked self BLOOPED across my work computer.

“Thanks.” I texted her back. “You just got me fired.”

Anyway, that’s a shame, but what isn’t a shame is yesterday afternoon when a picture of a teensy black pig flashed on m’screen.

• 

“So this just showed up at our doorstep,” texted Lilly. My friend Lilly. Not my cat Lily. I’d have led with that.

Turns out they had a runaway pig on their hands, and this is why I’d rather live in the country, if only they could make the country snakeless like they did with grapes. Not that grapes had snakes. But remember how annoying all those seeds were? Not that snakes had seeds.

“The only thing that ever shows up on my doorstep is a meth addict,” I kvetched.

She kept me updated all night (“Don’t be a boar,” I wrote. “Keep me posted via the ham radio.”) and they could not catch the pig, although they now know who OWNS said pig, which is a shame because of course her next question was did I want a pig and my answer was a thousand times yes and this is what happens when there is no one to reel me in.

Some Dog
The heart pills Edsel is on have been a miracle. I swear it. He’s like a puppy right now, and I know this is a temporary thing but it might be temporary for years, so I am glad. Think how much fun he’d have with a pig.

• 

But really. He can play, he leaps around joyously, he’s the Edsel from last year and not this plodding lazy character I’d assumed was here because of old age. Remember in It’s a Wonderful Life when they carry mom down the stairs before the big dance, and she lands on her husband’s lap and says, “My blood pressure!” That’s been Edsel for the last year. Always clasping at his heart and feeling woozy.

Some Phantom

Last night I went to my old movie theater despite the fact that they tore up the parking lot nearby, put in paradise, and now parking is a pain in my fucking patoot. I like how saying “fucking” is okay but I have to use an ass euphy. Euphy. How much do you hate me? How much of a patoot am I?

Anyway, they had an organist, and I should show him that text from my cousin Katie, he wants to see an organ, but anyway the organist always stands and talks to you sort of endlessly about the movie and what music he’ll be using and then last night he told us his grandmother had been an organist for silent movies and we all got misty. Play misty for me, organist.

But the other thing is he mentioned that musical about the Phantom of the Opera and I never once put two and two together that they were the same thing. You know how I am about musicals.

Is that the one where they sing MIDNIGHT! NOT A SOUND ON THE PAVEMENT!? Because that overwrought song can go fuck itself. It can go euphy itself.

Anyway the movie was pretty good if you like silent movies where everyone is as dramatic as possible.

You’re here so I’m gonna assume a little drama never bothered you.

That phantom was every dude who’s ever swiped right on me. “Okay, look, I know I have nostrils the size of potholes and I live five stories under the opera. But you should give me a chance.”

Also, our heroine had June hair.

• 

And she was just slightly an asshole. She had a fiance but blew him off totally when some voice in the walls told her he’d make her a star. What a gold digger. What a basement digger.

Then when it turns out he’s not a 10, she gets back together with the first guy, who had an unfortunate ’70s pornstache. And he’s all, Okay. Like she’s the only June hair in town.

• 

Anyway, I’m glad I went to see it even if I did have to park 45 miles away in a rape garage.

I guess that wraps up my day. I have ANOTHER APPOINTMENT today and then tomorrow I am blissfully free of meeting with anyone other than my regularly scheduled employer and this dog with a new heart.

Don’t forget, you don’t have to add a name or email address to comment. But maybe sign your name at the bottom of your comment so I know who you are.

Some blogger,
June

My cereal assures me it contains “onyx sorghum” and thank god for it. I’ve been clamoring for some onyx sorghum.

Don’t you hate it when people call it “breakfast cereal”? What the hell else would it be? Oh, we sat down to some dinner cereal for Thanksgiving. Had us some Sugar Pops and gravy.

Anyway.

In my eternally full datebook, I’m on like day 95 of Having Somewhere to Be Either Before Work, at Lunch or After Work. When this happens, it makes me hate everything, including the phrase “breakfast cereal.”

Yesterday I had a dentist appointment, and careful keepers of their Books of June’s Events will pause with their pen over the page. “Why, she just had a dentist appointment in the summer! What gives?” [puts down pen and gazes out window soulfully]

Way back at the beginning of this year, I used an Ulta gift card to purchase this toothbrush with a blue light in it that allegedly whitened your teeth. I used that blue-light toothbrush faithfully until my summer dental appointment, when my dental hygienist was all, MOTHER OF GOD, WHAT’S HAPPENED TO YOUR TEETH?

I went from having “1, 1, 2. 2, 1, 2” results when they stick that little poker of intimacy up in your gums to measure you—just a little pinch between your cheek and gum—to “4, 3, 4. 5, 4, 3” results. It was terrible. I got a Sonicare brush right there at the dentist for $145839 million, threw away the blue-light-special toothbrush, and commenced to good oral hygiene again.

(When you had to go to Kmart with your mom, did she say, “Well, if you see anyone in here, it means they’re at Kmart too”?)

But the dentist still made me come in in three months just to make sure I was being good. And that is why I spent my lunch hour getting poked, and not like in the good old days when I had a boyfriend.

My new hygienist is blissfully quiet, a respite after the disordered last one I had at the old place who was stuck on Chat mode. But this time she was a little TOO quiet. She was sticking that pokey thing up in me, she was The Poker’s Wild, over there, but saying nothing. She was Ellen Jamesian.

The suspense was killing me.

“I’m memorizing the numbers so I can type them in,” she finally said, and right then I realized that usually there are two people there, one to say out loud, “3, 2, 1…” and the other to type it in. But this time she was a lone poker. Was was one pokey man.

I don’t want to be Alfred Hitchcock, over here, dragging out the suspense, so I’ll let you know my numbers are much improved. Now I just gotta go back in FOUR months to make sure I’m still being good.

At the end, she was rustling about in the drawers, and I knew I was getting the free toothbrush.

I love the swag bag at the dentist.

As you further know from your Big Book of June Events, I base how the next few months of my life are going to go on what color toothbrush they give me at my cleanings.

LAST time I was there, when my gums were 867-5309, they gave me a LAVENDER toothbrush, and I was all MY LIFE IS GOING TO SOAR and then

BOOM

rear-ended, month-long concussion, lingering fear when stopped at red lights.

So yesterday I got new lip balm (vanilla mint), floss, toothpaste and?

A navy blue toothbrush.

But I figure if I thought lavender was going to be so great, maybe navy blue won’t be so bad. Maybe my color system is unreliable. I know. It’s hard to believe.

I’ve got nothing much else to tell you beyond the note you should make that I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT AT NOON TODAY and tomorrow I GO BACK TO MY DOCTOR AT 10.

Goddammit.

But one more bit of housekeeping before I go. Remember two weekends ago when that teenager was here, my lawn guy’s daughter? As she selected books to take home, she photos inside one. They’ve been on my desk ever since and I will show them to you and then put them in the cubby where I’ve shoved photos in such a chaotic way, and do you know what I might could have done in that

MONTH

I took to have a concussion? Is organized the photos.

Despite the fact that this photo claims to be from January 4, 1996, I know that is not true. This is Michigan, late summer/early fall, in I think 2004. My mother and I had lunch at The Turkey Roost, my favorite restaurant of all time, then we headed to Judy’s Pies, there, and got a blueberry pie, THEN we headed “up north,” as they redundantly say in Michigan, to my mother’s then cottage. They always call them “cottage” in Michigan and not cabin or lakehouse or any other word other regions use to describe a vacation home.

I like the formal purse/casual shoes combo. And also that Judy had I had on practically the same shirt.

BABY TALLULAH. Enough said.

…There. Now I’ve shoved those photos into the hellhole that is my current photo storage system. Oh my god.

Also, one more thing before I go. May I offer just the teensiest complaint? A soupcon of censure?

This blog. It’s, like, an hour of my day each morning. I write it here, and then I go to work. As the day progresses, I get, whatever, 40? 50? emails that are each of your comments. I like getting your comments. I like getting them here.

What I don’t want? And god love ya. But if you actually know me, or we’re social media friends, what I don’t want is to have to discuss whatever I wrote, you know, somewhere else.

I don’t want to have a talk about it on an instant message. I don’t want a text discussing it. I’ve put in the effort right here. I’ve said what I want to say that day. I’m done now. Now I just want to hear what you all have to say, without the pressure of responding. If time permits and I’m inspired to reply to one of your comments, my reply is IN THE COMMENTS. That’s where I want all blog things to be. Is in my comments. Not seven other places in my life.

Does that seem unreasonable? It’s just something that seems to be happening more and more and I wanted to address. Nothing makes me sigh beleagueredly more than a text or IM that starts, “I read your blog today, and…”

Because NOW I’m expected to fashion a reply. A full reply. About something I already spent an hour writing about at the expense of many other things I could be doing. Now I’m expected to further discuss it with you behind the scenes.

Am I being cranky or does that seem irksome to other people? If this were happening to you would you also feel sort of a pressure or obligation when this happens?

Anyway, that’s what’s on my mind today, and now I must go brush teeth.

Remember, you don’t have to put in a name or email address to comment! Remember, here is the place to comment about my blog! heeeee.

XO,
June