Book of June

Yesterday, I got a phone call from Ned and when I said, “Hello?” he didn’t say anything. This led me to immediately believe he was choking on something, which if you think about it makes no sense. Why would you call someone, particularly someone who lives 10 minutes away, if you were choking?

Finally he spoke. He’d been choked UP, see.

For months, maybe even a year now, Ned has been feeding this stray cat. Actually, he’s been feeding three stray cats, but this one has been his clear favorite. He calls her The Shy Cat, and he’d mentioned to me how she seems to be getting thinner and thinner. Two or three times he’s managed to lure her to his vestibule, which is not a euphemism, but then she leaves when she sees Syd and Nancy.

Anyway, she was so thin yesterday that he MADE her come inside and her breathing seemed labored. Ned was all emo about it and that is why he called me, as apparently I am now some sort of cat expert.

See, hoarder and expert are not really the same.

“I think she’s just very old and dying,” weeped Ned.

Anyway, he called his vet at my suggestion, but they were “at lunch” for an absurd amount of time, so he and that poor Shy Cat lived in the kitchen while his regularly scheduled cats craned their necks, appalled. Finally he got in touch, and got an employee who had not met Ned, who has been going there FOREVER, since NedKitty. He spent approximately 90 million hundred dollars on NedKitty in her final months. He hooked her to an IV twice a day. At any rate, that person said, “All we can do is look for a chip. We can’t treat the cat today.”

But when he got there and they saw who it was and his level of emotion, they did treat The Shy Cat.

Turns out she’s not old at ALL. They said 1, but given how long he’s been feeding her, that can’t be accurate. Nevertheless, they got fluids in her and treated her fleas and tested her for the bad cat diseases and she passed all her tests. They said she had a fever, maybe from another cat scratching her, like Ted Nugent.

Ned took her home with an appointment for next week to have her shots. Then he went to Target and got yet another litter box (“I have THREE litter boxes now,” said Ned, to the woman with four cats) and more food and a bed and some toys.

Basically he ended up dropping $340 he hadn’t planned to yesterday.

Meanwhile, I asked people on Facebook of June what he should name this cat, and faithful reader D said, “How about Chelsea? That’s the hotel where Sid Vicious killed Nancy.”

Here’s Chelsea.

“When I went in to check on her, she raised her head but kept her eyes closed,” said Ned. Can you imagine? She’s not had safe sleep in who knows how long.

He reported this morning that she used her litter box!

Anyway, most of you already know this story from my breathless updates yesterday on Faceflaps of June, but for the four of you not on there, like Sadie, there is that story.

Also, when someone else is in the middle of a drama, please gird your loins re the fact that I cannot supply you with photos the minute you want them. First of all, I can’t control whether photos are being taken by others, and second, I’m not going to stop my people to say, “You know how I have a blog? Well, I’m telling your story and they want photo evidence.”

But speaking of photos, remember how I said it was my anniversary of dating Ned and we said we’d always get together on the night of our anniversary of dating?

We didn’t get together the other night. I had to copy edit that magazine, and it ended up going into the evening hours and I had to prioritize work over hanging out with an ex-boyfriend who through the powers of a plague ended up being the one person in my bubble.

However, we had plans to have our anniversary night one night late. I thought the whole new cat thing might put the kibosh on those plans but I don’t know if I have mentioned to you that Ned is a

PIT

BULL

about plans and nothing but death can keep him from them. It is a trait that has always grated on me unless it’s something I really want to do and I know he won’t back out even if he has to carry his one leg that fell off in his Bernie Sanders overcoat pocket.

So he got Chelsea all settled and then he came over. Our plan was to get one of those little splits of Prosecco and drink it in front of the place where we had our first date. Cause you know I won’t go in. You people who just … go in to restaurants and bars and stuff, how do you do it? Aren’t you horrified? In the past year, I’ve gone into the grocery store I think twice. Maybe just once. But I think twice. And I did not linger, let me tell you.

Anyway, what I would have preferred was when Ned went to Target for cat supplies, if he’d gotten the split there and had come to my house prepared. I know they have them. But I also know Ned, and I just KNEW he wouldn’t have done that.

And? He hadn’t. I was pre-annoyed, and rightfully so.

So then we had to go to the grocery store, where I stayed in the car like he wasn’t just gonna bring all the germs back with him. “Hey, get potato chips too” I said as he headed into germs, and we can’t even TALK about my hips anymore. It’s too broad of a subject. I have to get a handle on these hips. And they aren’t sexy Kardashian hips, either. They’re just — ugh.

Here are me and my roots last night, waiting for the champagne and Ruffles. Nothing but the best for me!

You know, I’m tempted to grow the damn white out again. I am so tired of the roots popping up after six hours. I should have stuck with it last year.

Then we drove to the site of our controversial first date. It wasn’t controversial at all; that’s just a line from Say Anything.

Romantic.

“Nine years,” I said to Ned. “Did you think, nine years and one day ago, that we’d still be in touch for this long?”

“I didn’t!” said Ned. “No one ever likes me for nine years.”

“Well, to be fair, I haven’t liked you for nine years, either.”

After that, I thanked him for not raping me in the parking lot nine years and one day ago as I always do. And oh! For the one boy who reads this blog, here’s a stupid picture of Ned’s car. I know you’ve been asking for it.

I’d like everyone to take this time to appreciate my professional disguising of the license plate.

Anyway, that about summed up Anniversary Celebration 2021. After that I had to get home and Ned had to tend to his 14th cat, so until next year.

Hip June

Yesterday was a DAY, that began with me having to read a magazine for work. I know, that sounds so relaxing, right? Like I should be in a turban with my feet in some sort of spa bath thing. What are those called? I don’t think the good inventors of the spa bath thing called it a “spa bath thing.”

Truth be told, I prefer long assignments at work. I didn’t mind getting a magazine. Ideally, I’d have had the whole day interruption-free to really concentrate on it but of course that didn’t happen.

First of all, Iris was at the vet, which careful readers already know because I took her to the vet right up in the middle of yesterday’s scintillating post. A post in which we also argued about the 10 Commandments being in the Capitol, and one reader said, “Yes, they are” and another said, “No, they aren’t” and there we have it. Hello, state of America right now.

First, the vet called to say Iris’s thyroid was OK but her white blood count was up. So then he did an ultrasound. Then he called to say she definitely is having a bad bout of irritable bowel, and we need to

PILL

HER

for two weeks.

Dudes, I can’t. I tried last night. I tried today. It’s not that she flails. She doesn’t. She sits there and foams at the mouth, and she will do so till the end of time, and when you finally let her go, she coughs it back up. She is the worst pill-taker I have ever had. It’s her special gift.

I ordered her stomach food in canned form, to try to disguise it in there, but I know it won’t work. She’s never gonna take this pill.

So that was distracting yesterday.

So, even though I finally did read that magazine, I asked when the real deadline was and I can look at it again today, so Ima do it again today.

Let’s pause a moment and discuss “Ima.” Ima is short for “I’m gonna.” Please do not give me the angina by saying, “June, Ima gonna go here.” You don’t know how that pierces my soul.

Anyway, when I was finally done with that I did some more of your tarot readings last night and then finally, FINALLY, I got to the best part of my day. It was late, but I got to it.

As a Christmas present to my own self, I got me a 1979 Cosmopolitan magazine, the January one that contains the Cosmo Bedside Astrologer. It’s a fabulous guide to love and sex, career, finances … like I was having any of those at age 13, which is what I was in January 1979. You know, January 1979 is when I started my first period. You’re welcome. I had the last one the day we elected Donald Trump. You’re welcome again.

Anyway, it was fabulous. Just like that fabulous guide. Oh my god, I want ALL the Cosmos from the 1970s. This is my new life goal. Hang on …

Dude, do you remember these stupid ads ^^^ that were in ALL our beauty magazines back then? I had completely wiped them from my mind. I was forever wanting to send away for this collection of products, because who doesn’t want to spritz on some Anne Klein Blazer before a day of 8th grade, and I never sent away for it because I made zero money.

I also realize this is a terrible photo but Milhous was on me and I didn’t want to bug him.

Even though I could never afford to give the answers plus One Dollar to get the MakeOver (a camel humping that doesn’t bug me at all), I always took this quiz IN MY MIND. What lip color DO I use most? Corals? Cinnamons? I really didn’t know. [Update from 43 years of putting on makeup: Corals and cinnamons make me look like an anemic homeless person.]

Dammit, y’all. I always wanted the luxurious enamel butterfly pendant, as it was FREE. But no. Also, if I took this quiz now, I’d just be in that 50+ group. Like, sure, you old guys at the back. Here’s your free luxurious butterfly pendant, practically dead person. We’ll put the mixed eye shadow shades on your corpse in the open casket.

Speaking of my future, naturally I took a look at my year ahead, if my year ahead were 1979. What I was most interested in were what fashions I should wear. I was always most interested in this, even back then, and I’d like to once again point out to the crowd that I had no scratch and my entire wardrobe was dictated by Grammy, who schlepped me off to the department store semi-annually to buy me navy-blue cordoroys and kelly-green crewnecks. So.

“Zodiac” capitalized does not at all make my nethers twitch. I’ll feel better once I get some hanging ferns in an antique cage. Hang on. Wait, where does one buy an antique cage? Can I just buy Nicolas Cage? Is that close enough?

Anyway, I’m glad we could look at Cosmopolitan together and there’s more where THAT came from if you wish. I leave you with this.

Lucky us!

Tugging on my navy drawstring pants,
June

P.S. Who was Carol Lawrence and why were we listening to her and her Irish sweater?

I have to have Iris at the vet in 25 minutes, meaning I have to leave in 15, so what I might do is write here till I have to go, then come back and finish after. This is barring any work that comes in, but I know how work goes, and it’s unlikely any copy editing will be here this early. Copy editing is at the end of the line. Down the road a piece. At the end of our rainbow. There’s something I must say out loud.

You’re once.

Twice.

Three times a lady.

Who danced with a boy to that song at a school dance? Anyone? All of us? My first slow dance with a boy was to Stairway to Heaven, which as you’ll recall was a very long song, and the whole time I kept thinking, Man, his belt buckle is huge.

I was naaaaaave.

Anyway.

I had a Facebook discussion with someone from high school with whom I never slow danced who insists the 10 Commandments can be found, as she put it, “13 times” in the Capitol. This is profoundly untrue, and the fact that we just…repeat things and don’t make sure they’re true disturbs me. So, when I said, “That just isn’t true” and her comeback was, “Yes, it is,” I gave up. She clearly wasn’t interested in being anything but “right,” which she was not, so where can you go from there?

Other than that it’s been a painful weekend. Saturday was OK. It was pretty out, and Ned came to get me and we took a long drive out to the country in his Mustang that he is obsessed with. “There can be only one discussion of your Mustang, or anyone else’s Mustang that we see on the road,” I said, and my commandment—see what I did, there?—was not heeded.

• 

At one point we crossed through a small town, and what would a small town be if it didn’t have a McDonald’s.

“Would you like to get a hot fudge sundae at McDonald’s?” I asked Ned cheerfully. When we met, Ned literally didn’t know how to go through a fast food drive-thru. It was the most annoying thing you’ve ever witnessed. It was like he’d just moved here from Zanzibar.

“Should we split one?” asked Ned, as we waited in line.

See.

This is a famous line of Ned’s. Any time we’re about to get anything delicious, he suggests we split it, and back when we liked each other, I would be shamed into saying OK, but now I just give him The Look and he knows the answer.

I weigh 15 pounds more than when I dated Ned.

I’d better go get Irises to the vet. I’ll be back, and I’ll retitle this Parts 1 and 2, so you know my pith has gone on.

…I’m back but I DO have work, which is why you should never assume you know things. So I must go, but suffice it to say I had a migraine the rest of the weekend, so there was nothing more to tell you except there was agony, and much lying about.

Today marks 9 years since my first date with Ned, and when we broke up we said we’d still meet every year at the place of our first date, so tonight we are meeting in the PARKING LOT of the place of our first date, and having a sparkling drink in the car, although I hope not in the Mustang, as I will have to then hear about the Mustang, and then about other Mustangs, and possibly even about the chase scene from Bullitt, which is not what I signed on for 9 years ago.

Talk to you tomorrow. Oh, and Iris’s thyroid is still OK. We are also checking her kidney function and I don’t know about that yet. She just seems off to me and I can’t figure out what it is. She seems hunchy and she doesn’t hang around the rest of us as much. Maybe we’re just one cat over the line, sweet Jesus.

Anyway, talk to you tomorrow.

I didn’t write earlier today because I was expecting — not a child, because this isn’t the Bible and I’m not Ruth expecting Baby Ruth. Or wait. Was it Sarah who had a baby when she was old? Someone did. Some chick of old. It’s been a long time since I was in parochial school.

Anyway I didn’t write earlier because I was expecting work. And I wanted to get started on it early, so I IGNORED this blog and went straight to work but then the work wasn’t there and it wasn’t there and it wasn’t there and I was like Sarah Ruth expecting that baby and getting on my donkey and heading to Ye Olde CVF for pregnancy tests.

Remember how old printing presses used to use Fs for Ss? That was the joke, there. Like it was the CVS of biblical times.

Headed to CVF for a Last Response Pregnancy Test. Cause they weren’t that good back then, see.

I should just give up.

My point is, I did all sorts of other work today to clear out my schedule for the thing I was expecting and now that I am not getting what I was expecting, the afternoon

YAWNS

before me, so here I am writing my blog.

Yesterday I got up and wore clothes and got in the car and did all sorts of before-times things that I don’t normally do.

My laptop, generously provided to me by the good folks at my job, was wearing out. First of all, the A key was all faded, and I don’t know why the A. Am I The Fonz? Do I type a lot of aaaaaaaaaa? I don’t know. But that’s the key that suffered.

This was no big deal. But what WAS a big deal were the keys themselves, particularly my shift key, wasn’t working, so lots of what I would type would be in lowercase and I thought it wasn’t a big deal but it turns out that’s a sign your laptop is wearing out so I brought mine in to work and IT transferred everything to this here new-ish laptop that I have today.

Edsel didn’t even know what to make of me leaving the house without him. Now that we’ve been together this much, I was 99% certain he understood me when I said I’d be back in an hour or two.

Then I drove to work and got a good spot in the parking lot, and right there’s your silver lining. I walked into the dark room that is my workplace. I opened the door and didn’t see all the people.

My office is an old mill, so it’s got huge open rooms and several floors, and yesterday there was no one on my floor at all. On my way to my desk I heard “squeak!!” and I know it was a mouse. You can’t blame him. I’d be hanging out there, too.

My calendar still read February. I toyed with taking it down but I figure it’ll be more dramatic to do so when I return for real. I sprayed on some of my perfume I have at my desk. Then I headed upstairs to where IT is.

There was just one IT guy there, and he put on his mask as soon as he saw me. We had to work together for a bit so he could get all the info off my old laptop and put it on the newer one. But then there was going to be 45 minutes where everything was Manhattan Transferring. “You can hang out if you want,” he said, but clearly he does not know me.

“I’ll just come back,” I said, and headed to the mailroom to get my package. I’d accidentally ordered something to come to work.

As I made my way to the mailroom, I thought, “This is why you got so fucking fat.” Because seriously, my workplace is giant, and we have three floors you have to traverse via stairs, and usually during the workday I’d do that all the time. It’s easier to just run upstairs to ask someone something rather than send a dumb email.

But now for the past year, all I’ve done is sit in this 999-square-foot house where I only get up to let the dog out or what have you. I guess this explains my appearance, which can only be described as squishy.

Speaking of which, since I was out, I decided to stop off and see the fine people of Sonic. It’s near work and I never get there anymore as that would require getting up off this chair. As you know, from your Big Book of June Events, I enjoy the Sonic chili cheese dog. And here’s my problem. I mean, beyond my cholesterol.

My problem is they never add the onion or mustard. Which, why? So yesterday I said, “Yes. I’d like the chili cheese dog with onion and mustard, please.”

As I was paying, I got a message from IT that my laptop was ready. So I screamed back there as soon as I could.

“Now, can you log in and…” began the IT guy.

“Do we have to do this together?” I asked. First of all, COVID, and second, I had a chili cheese dog.

“Oh! I don’t want to stand in the way of you and your chili cheese dog!” he said. “No; you can do this at home!”

So I screamed to my car, screamed home, brought in my purse/keys/laptop/draaaank/bag of fries/chili cheese dog/box from mailroom OH MY GOD but I was finally inside without dropping anything.

I was so dying to get to the chili cheese dog, and I ripped open the packaging like it was a bodice and I was Mandingo, and?

No chili. They gave me a hot dog with mustard and onion.

WHY DID THEY THINK THAT’S WHAT I WANTED? OH MY GOD.

So that was severely disappointing.

At the end of the day, and I’m not one of those dreadful people who is using that term to mean, “ultimately.” I mean literally my workday was done. And at the end of it, Ned called.

Ned bought a 2008 Mustang at the end of last year, and I refused to ride in it until two weeks had passed because he’d test driven and done paperwork with some car dealer and I didn’t want to hold him in my armchair so I could feel his disease. But finally the two weeks were up and Ned wondered if I wanted to ride in his car with him. So I said yes to the man. (Name that movie.)

You shoulda heard old Ned roaring up to my house. Good gravy. I got in his car and saw my neighbor, so I waved.

“I wonder if the neighbors think some new dude is squiring me about town, what with this new car and all.”

“They think I’m a whole new man. I’m going to introduce myself as someone cooler. Colorado Nickerson. ‘No, I’m not Ned Nickerson. I’m Colorado. Colorado Nickerson.'”

Colorado and I drove around this loop that takes you all around the city, and you know I’m indifferent to cars, so I didn’t ask that many questions about it. What I did ask was, “Can we go to CVS? (Not CVF.) I have GERD from my non-chili, non-cheese chili cheese dog.”

So we roared into CVS so I could get Prilosec, and I’m sure everyone was impressed with how cool we were. Look at the indigestion on that cool duo!

Finally, we got back to my house, and Colorado Nickerson dropped me off. He was in a hurry because some stupid basketball game was on and I’m so glad to not have any testosterone. I mean, I guess I have some, right? But like one teensy speck of it that comes out when people type apart when they mean a part.

When I got inside I was finally able to take off my pants, pants I’d been wearing all day, and frankly I can’t believe I went so many decades just … wearing pants. They’re so cumbersome and awful. I guess this is why Edsel gets that dreamy look when I scritch him under his collar. Like, you don’t even know you’re uncomfortable till you find something more comfortable and say, Wow, that was awful and I didn’t know it.

So that sums up yesterday and for me it was pretty people-y. Now I gotta sit here and wait for symptoms.

Relaxedly,
New Hampshire Gardens

I feel sort of itchy in my nose and also kind of sneezy, as in I sneezed once, so inevitably this is it. I’m Rona Barrett. The fact that I have not spoken face to face with another human since December 25 is beside the point.

I have to go to work today, actually, so I hope I don’t spread this faux ‘rona. For a month now, my keyboard isn’t exactly working, and I have to press the Shift key about a hundred and nine times to get it to make capital letters. Everything I type looks like I’m e.e. cummings. Or his very inclusive sister cc cummings.

Finally, I alerted IT, which always scares me because by the time I’m (argh. That “I’m” took me 50 tries) done at IT I feel like a bumbling old lady. They always ask some questions that you couldn’t possibly know the answer to like, “Are you wired?”

“Well, I’m a little wound up, but.”

So I have to take it in to the actual office from noon to 2:00, so I guess this means today I have to put on pants and stuff.

Elizabeth Gilbert said if you work at home you should make your bed and get dressed every day. So I’ve done that, although I’ll stretch that, “It’s still morning” robe look till 11:00 sometimes. But when I get dressed it has been leggings and a t-shirt or, in winter, a sweatshirt. I even bought two pairs of shorts this summer. I haven’t worn shorts since we all enjoyed the Reuben Kincaid hair shift commercial on Nick at Night.

So that will be weird. Pants, I mean. And going to the office, I mean.

IT has been going to work this whole time. I think they’ve done it in shifts, like one goes in one day or something. I plan to run in there, drop off my laptop, and scream out. Then I’ll go down to my floor and get my picture frame.

For Christmas, my mother sent me the original recipe card of one of Grammy’s cookie recipes, a cookie I eat every Christmas and really why so filled out. Why the leggings.

I got the brilliant idea to frame said recipe and get it out as a Christmas decoration each year. I found a black-and-red-plaid picture frame on sale, then got the “YOUR ORDER HAS ARRIVED” notice (that all-caps just took 109 tries) and then I saw the shipping address was work.

Also my boss got me something ridiculous in her travels and left it on my desk so I have three—three!!!—reasons to go in. Threeee! Ah ah ah.

I’d better go. I promised marketing I’d copy edit some stuff for them and I don’t want to screw that up by not having my computer for two hours today. Also I have to shower and try to squeeze self into pants. I know I’ve gained at least 10 pounds and that depressed me so much I didn’t weigh myself again, but then I wanted to know how much Forest weighs, so I bit the bullet, not literally, and turned on the scale but mercifully the battery had died, and it takes this weird nub of a battery I don’t own.

I made him get on that kitchen scale I use for the foster kittens and he was most perturbed so the best I can tell you is more than 9. He weighs more than 9. I think maybe he weighs 10 pounds. He’s 10 months. Further reports as developments warrant.

And for all I know I weigh 415 and I’m tryina get into my regular chubby June pants. I’m not getting on the kitten scale to find out. This whole plague has ticked me off.

OK, talk at you.

June

Somewhere or other I mentioned this woman awhile back and people have asked about her since. I know I’ve told this story before but obviously everyone hasn’t heard it, so here it is.

Marvin is my ex-husband and the person who suggested I start blogging in 2006. I am certain he is chagrined that I’m still doing it. In any event, I’d known Marvin in college, we dated three terrible months (I was an anxious attacher and he was a love avoidant at the time. Seeing as I didn’t know about this dynamic I just felt constantly nervous about if he’d call and he rarely did and that sums up those three months. I remember calling him on my birthday just so I wouldn’t spend my birthday worrying if he’d call).

Ten years later, Marvin lived in Los Angeles and I lived in Seattle. We’d stayed in touch, sporadically, and I always liked him. I invited him for a visit on the spur of the moment because you know how I’m not impulsive or anything. He immediately said yes and visited a few weeks later and the rest is history but then again so is the holocaust.

The visit went well and we got married. I mean, not that weekend but I’m trying to move the story along.

Fortunately, by that point Marvin was more of a secure attacher and as an anxious attacher dating a secure attacher I said, “Wow, this feels so different. I don’t have to feel terrible and wonder if he’ll show up or disappear or what have you.” So then I became a secure attacher and all was well.

In my studying about attachment theory they say the cure for anxious attachment is to find you a secure attacher and I can say it really does work. Then we got divorced and I stampeded for another love avoidant and follow me for more healthy choices.

I trusted Marvin. I never looked through his desk or computer history (we didn’t have phones to look through but I wouldn’t have looked through that either) or any of the old tricks I’d normally pull as an anxious person in a relationship.

Ten years into the marriage and four years into blogging, this woman started leaving comments on my blog. As was the custom back then, she also had a blog. She was hilarious and really smart. I think she had a PhD, if memory serves. This was back when maybe four people would leave a comment all day, and I’d end up emailing back and forth with those commentors. So we really got to know each other.

I have since figured out I choose two kinds of friends: the charismatic unreliable and the old faithful. I am always, always drawn to smart, funny, charismatic women (and men) who inevitably let me down. For example, one friend in LA, who wrote screenplays for a living and left you ON THE FLOOR with his hilarity, said no to my wedding invitation because, “I thought about your wedding and said to myself, ‘Am I really gonna have fun?'” So he didn’t go.

I always want those people as friends and they always fail me. I end up staying friends with people who are quieter and more sensible than me. My friend Sandy. Dottie. The Other Copy Editor. You see the trend.

The point is, this woman was 100% a charismatic unreliable, and oh, I was enamored with her. She lived in New York, which seemed so glamorous to me. We got on the phone and MapQuested each other’s addresses, or maybe it was Google Maps by then, who knows. The point is, we could see each other’s dwellings and it seemed super cool and futuristic and she couldn’t believe I didn’t have a sidewalk.

She was unlucky in love, and I gave her advice, the sage advice of a married woman.

I can’t remember how she and Marvin started playing Scrabble online and maybe it wasn’t even Scrabble but it was some game. I must have set it up, and there you go. Then he’d be telling me her latest woe and we were both friends with this funny, smart person in New York.

As I said, I trusted Marvin, maybe too much. We once met this young, pretty woman we liked at the dog park and they both wanted to see some band play and I said, “Why don’t you go together?” and they did and in retrospect I think I was kind of setting him up to fail a bit.

Anyway, over MLK weekend, the New York woman sent us cookies with a funny card, and I wrote her to thank her and she didn’t write back. We talked all the time so that was odd.

I wrote her again and? Nothing.

After a week I really started to worry. What had I done? Was she OK?

And I can’t remember all the ins and outs now, so to speak, but I know in my worrying I found her secret blog she had or something. I don’t think I found this in her regular blog. Anyway, it was a whole post written over MLK weekend about how “the affair had been memorable” but she’d decided to end it without another word.

I mean.

It couldn’t have been an affair affair, as we were hundreds of miles apart.

“Did you have a cyber affair with Charismatic Unreliable?” I asked Marvin.

“What? No!”

It was the first time I’d ever had any sort of anxiety like that the whole time I was married. I didn’t believe anything had happened at all, but then I feared something did, and now 12 years later I don’t know what to think.

I mean, Marvin left one year later, almost exactly. So maybe he needed someone to talk to, and she was lonely, so maybe they got close and she got excited about it and Marvin didn’t see it the way she saw it.

Anyway, it’s water under the bridge and I never talked to that woman again but that’s the story of how Marvin was almost stolen by Scrabble. How many points for the word harlot?

Love,
Charismatic unreliable June

When we left each other last week, I was preparing to be buried in the Snowstorm of the South. Let’s just say I sure am glad I stocked up on — yeah, I didn’t need to stock up on anything.

• 

Really, that dog WAS happy about the snow, but he’s always happy unless he decides to Letter C, which he just ups and does sometimes. I feel like he must remember some time in the past when he was an asshole or something.

{lottie}

Also, I know most of you have seen the below on the social medias, but here it is for the 4 people who refuse to join modern society. Get down off your one-wheeled bicycle and look at Forest’s reaction to snow.

Unicycle. I guess it’s called a unicycle, not a one-wheeled bicycle, as that literally makes no sense.

It bugs me that two years into living here I apparently already have to paint these back steps. Just because 20 feet go up and down it 70 times a day.

Also also, that turquoise thing is the table umbrella. I just laid it against the house for winter, rather than store it in the shed, because if I left it in the shed I’d be scared snakes would just pop out of it when I opened it in spring. I realize the best part of life is the thinner slice and

Dear June: Please stop quoting that line from the fine people at Air Supply.

I realize I need to get over going into the shed but I cannot. My snake shed is practically useless now, as it is a snake shed.

To sum, the snow never really even covered the grass, so I am holding out for a hero, and also for another more substantial snowstorm later this year. LAST year, all we got was one snowstorm the day after my surgery so I don’t really remember it. So it’s been two years since we’ve had a really good snow that I could enjoy.

The other thing I did this weekend was try to take ballet. A few weeks ago, my Instagram ads—ads that know my very soul—had an ad for online classes from the International Ballet Academy in New York. Ooooo, I wanted those. Naturally, they HOSED YOU OFF by not telling you ANYTHING until you entered all sorts of information, but finally I learned classes were

$197 a month

and I said yeah, no. That’s less than I was paying for my trainer by the way, but still. So on Friday afternoon I got a call from a woman from the International House of Balletcakes, wondering why I didn’t seal the deal.

“Oh, the cost was too prohibitive,” I said to her. You should hear me on the phone with these kinds of people. Once I get past my breakthrough “Yes,” at the beginning, I talk like I have a PhD in phone conversations.

“We’re offering a special of $50 a month and you can cancel anytime,” she said.

When Marvin and I used to go out to eat, he’d ask for the special and if it contained anything with a lemon or honey or chicken, Marvin would say, “Sold!” to the waitperson. This sort of grandpa talk always humiliated me to my core, despite the fact that later in the dinner I would inevitably balance the spoon on my nose. My nose has now gotten so huge that I can’t even do that any longer. Plus the last time I was at a restaurant was the day Kobe Bryant died. It was on the TV at the restaurant.

The point is, I so wanted to say, “SOLD!” to the fine woman at the International Ballet Academy. Or maybe, “Take my money.”

The first live class was Saturday at 12:45 p.m. You can watch it after that any time, but I really wanted to take it live. I have ballet shoes from when a coworker was going through a divorce so he took ballet and I said I’d go to classes with him to be supportive and then bought shoes and never went. Follow me for this kind of support.

Before class my mother called. I recognized her ring. I don’t have ring tones for people. I just knew, when the phone rang, who it would be.

“You’re not taking beginning lessons, are you? You’re not a beginner!”

…!

“Yes. I suppose I should’ve mentioned my years at Ann Herzberg dance studio in Bridgeport, Michigan from 1972 to 1975. Geez. I hope I don’t blow the instructor out of the water.”

In the end, I couldn’t get on Zoom. I mean, I could, but first I tested to see if I could and once it looked like I was for sure getting on, I hung up, cause it was like 20 minutes early and I didn’t want to seem overeager. Then I tried to call back right before the class like

ELEVENTY HUNDRED TIMES

and I think Zoom thought I was some sort of scammer, or Antifa. I never could dial back in. So I took a ballet class on YouTube for free just because I had on the shoes and I felt like this:

Nevertheless, I am persisting because $50 a month, man. That’s 1/8 of a Botox.

I gotta go. I have to get to work and my commute is a nightmare. Harrrrr. All those years in Los Angeles I wished for a better commute and NOW LOOK AT ME.

I leave you with this image of God watching Democrats and Republicans.

Years ago, one of you said that someone you knew thought mammogram was pronounced “mammy-o-gram,” and I’ve really never been able to call it anything else and thanks for ruining my life.

Yesterday was my scheduled mammy-o-gram, and if I could actually arrange for Scarlett O’Hara’s mammy to just come feel me up and give me the OK and then harangue me about Ashley, I’d do it.

Of course I had my annual mammy-o-gram freakout and terror and obsessive Googling that comes before, and then the morning I was to get it, aka yesterday, I got an email from my regular doctor, who has not yet quit or died. She emailed all her patients to let us know she is still going with the pronouns she and her (which, why?), and also to let us know that coronavirus cases have doubled in our area in the last 10 days and to please limit our movement.

Oh, I’ve limited my movement. You should see me over here. What was that big blob thing in Star Wars?

“Terrifying Mammy-o-grams. May I help you?”

“Yes,” I said. Of course I said “yes,” the mating call of all my phone calls to professional places. “I need to postpone my mammy-o-gram.”

So now it’s in April, and the receptionist said she didn’t blame me, and we bonded over “this whole thing” and then no sooner did I do that then I got a call saying my migraine doctor appointment is next week.

GOD

DAMMIT.

And he’s holding me hostage; I can’t get more of these anti-seizure pills unless I go. There is no earthly reason a migraine doctor can’t have telehealth calls. All you DO is tell him what’s going on. They don’t weigh you or measure you or look at your tongue or any of that nonsense. That nonsense like your vitals.

So I ran from the Raiders of the Lost Ark boulder that is ‘rona this week, only to have to face it again next week.

Also, as soon as work was done I got another call last night from that goddamn Mario from that goddamn Apple Care. What they do, see, is a recording calls you first, see, asking if you’ll take the call, and if you can’t, press 2. I had worked right up till 6 and the call came at like 6 and .0001 seconds, so I pressed fucking 2 as hard as possible. I have grown officially tired of my issue and no longer even wish to fix it.

How long have I been working on this? At least a month. I’ll bet I’ve put 30 hours into fixing this thing. Hooo care at this point. Can’t they just send me a new computer?

In other news, we are under a “winter storm warning” here and I want you to brace your loins or whatever but we are expecting

AN INCH POINT TWO.

of snow.

I hope we’ll all make it and your thoughts and prayers are welcome at this snowy juncture.

The thing is, they promised us it’d start happening overnight and that I’d wake up to an amazing frosty oasis of one inch of snow, and I told Forest about it and figured he’d like it, since once it’s anywhere below 40 that cat is clinging to the door, MEEPING to be outside to place his bits on cold rocks and cold ice and cold drinks and cold compresses, his fur blowing about like he’s waiting for Poldark.

But we got up this morning and dashed to the door to frolic, and?

• 

Dull. Dull day. Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day. Fritter and waste the Blu in an offhand way.

I realize Blu is disgusting. A dog plays with it. Whattaya want from Blu? Occasionally I will clean Blu but it gets dirty again like two seconds later, as a dog plays with it. So.

Anyway, NOW they’re claiming it will begin to snow this afternoon, and they are still calling it a winter storm warning, and we are all hunkering down to be pelleted by an

INCH POINT TWO.

of snow.

I have tied a rope from the house to the shed so I can feed the snakes tonight and make it back in without losing my way due to snowblindness.

I had better go. First of all, my choice of pants was stupid and I feel way too breezy and I need to put on something warmer like maybe bearskin chaps. Secondly, it was slow slow slow at the beginning of the week, and now work is crashing my way and I fear I will not get it all done and that someone will give me the pursed-lips look from behind their laptop if I say, “This is going to be late.”

[disclaimer: I am never late. Instead I give myself migraines and bite my cuticles and don’t sleep. But I do not turn in work late, even if I get zero work on MTW, and then 47 hours of work on Th.]

Not that fondly,
June

I woke up before the alarm went off and I thought, “Wow! I slept all night without waking up, even after all the crap that happened yesterday! I don’t usually do that after a good day!”

I rolled over to shut off the alarm so I wouldn’t have to hear it, and it was 11:20 p.m.

I’d been asleep 20 minutes.

So.

Anyway, that was jarring. Yesterday, I mean. It was jarring and upsetting, and here’s the thing.

I really have no patience for anyone who’s going to try to tell me, “Oh, that was just a protest like all the Black Lives Matter protests.” or “That wasn’t us who stormed the Capitol. That was ANTIFA!”

I even saw someone who had the nerve to say, “Those people were DEMOCRATS with MAGA hats on!”

If you’ve read me for awhile, and who here hasn’t, really, you know for nearly 15 years now I’ve said, OK, let’s not be hysterical about “the other side.” After presidential elections, I always have us write comments where you have to say something good about the political side opposite yours, and snide remarks get deleted. I deleted an 86-year-old liberal—repeatedly—because she couldn’t play by the rules.

But if you still think what Donald Trump led people to do yesterday was “just a protest” or if you’ve now backed off and said, “Oh, that wasn’t us,” go away.

I mean it. Go away. I don’t want you on here. I don’t want you commenting. I don’t want to know you in real life.

You are a terrible person and I’ve had it. Go rethink your life choices.

I get that you’re angry. I get that you feel unheard. But you’ve taken a bad path.

If you’re a Republican who understands that Donald Trump is a dangerous person but you’re still conservative and proud of it, I’m absolutely fine with you being here. I welcome you here. I’m not only fine with people having opinions that differ from mine, I think it’s important that we all have different beliefs. If I don’t listen to other reasonable thoughts, how the hell am I going to learn anything?

But I’m not fine with people who are willfully ignorant and violent. What happened yesterday was un-American, and truthfully all that “I’m an American” stuff never meant that much to me except on September 11, 2001. But it’s become a hell of a lot more clear to me now just how important it is that we respect the electoral process and hey, here’s a thought. How about we act like grownups?

So, in the end, I didn’t sleep well last night. But I did decide that much. If you were OK with yesterday, my tolerance ends here. And while my tolerance for dumb, easily Google-able questions and advice has always been limited, my tolerance for other opinions and beliefs has always been a point of pride for me. I’ve always detested the vilification of people who differ from me. It’s always seemed absurd and shortsighted.

But this? This I won’t tolerate.

[shuffles papers, leaves dais]

I’m writing to you from the kitchen today; it looks so pretty that I just decided to be in here. I know I have to iron the ding-dang tablecloth. I keep thinking it and then thinking about other things that are more fun than dragging out the ironing board.

Also, I am sick of these cats. Who decided to get all these cats? [looks behind her accusingly]

First, Iris had to get special food for her stomach that costs $479 a bag. And everyone wanted to eat it. I fed her in a separate room, here in the kitchen on the little shelf in here. But every time I looked over there, someone was munching her kibble, which sounded dirtier than it is.

Finally, they were all so obsessed with her food that I just called the beleaguered vet.

“Would it be OK if that was just everyone’s food?” I asked him.

“Oh, sure! It’s just for easy digestion! But you need to keep Forest on his canned kitten food till he’s 1.”

So now that I’m spending 9 million dollars a day on special digestion cat food, what do you think everyone wants now? Is it the canned effing kitten food? All I’m ever doing is PULLING everyone BACK, like they’re fans at a Beatles concert, over that canned kitten food. Meanwhile,

Here’s Forest over at Iris’s food.

So that’s relaxing.

March. Forest will be a year old in March. Then we’re all eating that special stomach food, even me.

While I was typing this, I heard all sorts of barking and realized Edsel was still outside for his morning constitutional and the woman next door had let HER dog, Cinnamon, out. This led Edsel to lose his mind and bark at the fence, really low. I don’t mean his voice was really low like Barry White. I mean his SNOUT was really low and he was carrying on like a crazy person and meanwhile Cinnamon remained unimpressed on her side of the fence.

You should’ve seen it. It was like two sides of an emotional coin over there. Which just made a ton of sense. But maybe they were like those drama masks, only the masks were insane and stoic. It’s kind of like when the Tasmanian Devil is having a fit and Bugs Bunny just stands there.

Cinnamon is a large unflappable light-brown pit bull who likes me because I give her treats. She could not care LESS about Edsel, who considers Cinnamon the great enemy.

In general, I’d like to speak to the manager of these pets. Honestly, where IS the person in charge here?

Also, I’m running into the same problem every morning. I write this stupid blog from about 7:30 to 8:30. I mean, it doesn’t always take the whole hour, but that is the general time frame. And lately, every day I’m getting all sorts of texts and messages at that time.

I’ve gotten to the point where I’m just not answering them till 8:30. I tried the whole: “Talk to you at 8:30!” ploy and it seems to make no difference, so now I’m just pretending those messages aren’t there. Honestly if you give people an inch.

I JUST WANT MY TIME TO WRITE. And I know you’re gonna be all, “You can turn those off, JOOOON” but it’s a pain to turn it on and off all the time and my big fear is I’ll forget to turn it back on. As opposed to my charm, which I can’t seem to turn off.

And I know people just want to write while it’s on their mind but then I get that urgency feeling. It NAGS at me, that little message there. I’m tryina write you and yet my mind is telling me, Someone needs something. Someone NEEDS something!!!

Computers just made a lot of things worse. When my grandmother, the one I turned into, wrote her angry letters on her typewriter, it was just her and her typewriter. She had this special typewriter font that looked like cursive. If you got a typed letter in the mail on her special cursive font you were always filled with a kind of dread only a Grammy letter could produce.

Anyway, my point is, nowhere on the typewriter did she have any red 1s letting her know SOMEONE WANTS SOMETHING. DIRECT YOUR ATTENTION HERE.

I gotta go. It’s two minutes till it’s 8:30 and I’ve ignored 10 messages since 7:30 and I’m filled with angst.

Distractedly and barking at an indifferent Cinnamon,
June