Book of June

I was reflecting yesterday, after a confluence of events that don’t matter, about a time my ship came in and I didn’t get on it.

Picture it: Burbank, California. 2006-ish. Marvin and I were living in a 1926 Spanish-style bungalow, a bungalow I’d waste a lot of time trying to find a photo of, but let’s say I maybe did that and only found several stupid pictures of my own hair through the years.

The house is completely not germane to the story but when I think of that time that is what I think of.

So instead, here is a house I just Zillowed from the street we lived on, a house remarkably similar to our rental, so you can literally sort of picture it.

Picture it: Burbank, California. 2006-ish. Marvin, my spouse, fmr., and I lived in a 1926 Spanish bungalow that we rented for $1600 a month. I pay $800 a month for my entire mortgage now, but that’s neither here nor there.

We also had one of those purple Apple computers, remember those? Remember when they had all the colors, like blue and green and turquoise? And by “they” I mean the people at Apple. I don’t mean the world is devoid of color now. But it kind of is. Those computers were fun. Why everything gotta be gray now?

This is completely not germane to the story but when I think of that time that’s what I think of.

In 2006-ish, I’d been a freelance proofreader for years, a thing I loved at the time because one thing you don’t really want to do in LA is have a job you have to drive to. So I didn’t. I’d get up every weekday and meet my friend for a long walk, and I’d set the timer on the coffeemaker for 8:00, so right when I came home coffee was brewing.

I didn’t make that much money but when you consider taxes and clothes and lunches out and driving it wasn’t so bad, the money I made. I think I brought in like $25,000 a year and a real job would have garnered me about $40. OK, so it was kind of bad.

But Marvin had a good job and was making bank at this computer place. He had also gone back to school to become a teacher.

In the evenings, Marvin and I would sometimes also take walks. Sometimes we’d just stroll down to R and get something. R was this convenience store on the corner that had a sign with all the letters faded except the R.

R was a magnificent convenience store. It was very old, and had creaky floors and a colorful display of do rags near the cash register. I’d always pick out which do rag I’d want. Usually magenta. Best of all, R had just the smuttiest, most disgusting dirty magazines you ever saw. A signature move of mine was, when we were invited anywhere, I’d go down to R for my hostess gift. I’d pick up one of the horrific magazines along with some of the incense R sold, an incense with the refresh-your-house scent Pussy.

The first time I saw it in the window of the convenience store, I did that kind of hysterical laughing where you have to bend over, and then after you try to go back to your dignity—you know, way back there where my dignity is, you’ve seen it—but you keep getting hysterical again.

Pussy!!!

Anyway, a nice gift bag with a dirty magazine and some Pussy incense was my go-to hostess gift circa 2006, and I really feel like my flowers in a Mason jar circa last-year-when-I-went-anywhere just doesn’t have a same panache.

The other thing is, I was down to the R alla time, as you can imagine, buying last-minute cat food or sanitary napkins or what have you. And Mr. R was always pleasant to me, UNLESS I was buying one of his dirty magazines. Then he barely acknowledged me.

This rankled.

I mean, YOU’RE the one who chose to provide Finally Legal in your establishment, Mr. R. Now you’re judging ME for purchasing your wares? Incidentally, you’re running low on Pussy.

None of this is germane to the story but you know the drill.

So Marvin and I were on one of our evening constitutionals when he mentioned that he was coming along in his teaching degree, and had I noticed that when he GOT said degree he’d be making a lot less, and had I considered maybe returning to a “real” job to make more money to make up the difference.

So I did.

I got this job on the other side of Los Angeles, and I know in other cities, normal cities, that means, oh, dangit, 20-minute commute, but let’s just say no. No, that’s not how that went. I drove an hour each way, going approximately 1 mile per hour, to my job across town.

However, I loved that job. I got a job as a copy editor at an in-house ad agency for a company that made a bunch of stuff you’ve heard of. A flower delivery service you’ve heard of—you’ve seen their ads during the Super Bowl.

A fruit drink you’ve heard of.

A water in a square bottle you’ve heard of.

Other products you’ve heard of.

The in-house ad agency was one floor of a high rise the owner purchased, as you do, a high rise that had an in-house curator who changed out the gardens and art every season just to make it interesting for us. Several times a year we got free flowers after photo shoots, and all the fruit juice you could ever want.

And the people! I loved the people. Everyone was creative and funny. I shared an office with the other copy editor, and he was brilliant. I can pay him the highest compliment I could ever pay a person:

He never annoyed me.

We’d work together in silence for hours, then one of us would say something hilarious about the work we were working on, then we’d laugh and work in silence for hours again.

One of the things they had us do that has nothing to do with copy editing, and this is something I’ve run across a lot in my years of copy editing: No one really knows what a copy editor does. Anyway one thing they had us do was check new floral arrangement name ideas and see if there was a copyright on that name already from a competitor, such as a competitor I won’t mention but it rhymes with STD.

Anyway I remember working in silence one afternoon while we looked up potential bouquet names, and my coworker just saying,

“Smells Like Grandma.”

And then we giggled at this potential bouquet name. Not Pussy-incense giggled, but giggled all the same.

Oh my god anyway.

So one day my flip phone with sparkly Hello Kitty sushi dangling from the antenna rang, and it was this company, this finance company. I’d interviewed with them in the heady days of Marvin first saying, “Get a real job.” I thought for certain I had the position but I did not. I found out from a friend they’d hired from within.

But I wasn’t wrong that they’d liked me. Another job had come up and they’d remembered me and did I want to come interview for it.

“Oh, no thank you,” I said to them. “I really like where I am now.”

For some reason, this set a fire in their loins. Me turning down this fancy finance company was, like, so unheard of or something, that they called me back again. They told me about all their perks. They told me about their two bonus programs a year. They reminded me they were just 15 minutes from me, instead of an hour.

That did sweeten the pot.

So I interviewed with them. Twice! They had me in a large room with many people, MANY people, interviewing me for several hours with no break or food. The second time I went there, I discretely brought a bag of nuts the company I was working for sold, nuts I ate in the bathroom when I got the nerve to ask if I could have a break.

I seriously think the grueling nature of the interview process was part of the deal. Like, if you could handle multiple people grilling you in a conference room for five hours with no break, you were in.

I also recall going back to my office on the other side of town after the interviews, and how colorful our space was, how colorful our people were. How we laughed and didn’t wear gray suits. The candy dish on the work table in the center of the room. The funny poems we left on the coffee pot.

They offered me the job, the finance place did, and it was $3,000 more than I make now, 14 years later. With the bonus system, it’s about $25,000 more than I make now.

It didn’t take me long to say no. And I’ve not regretted it. But now I sit here in my fairly bad neighborhood with my fairly badly colored hair and my fairly small 401(k) and I wonder how life would have been different if I’d taken it.

Do you think I’d have turned all corporate and said things like touch base and so on? I probably woulda been too scared to have a blog. I wouldn’t even know any of you. Maybe I’d have one of those terrible modern houses in a development. A house with more than one bathroom, though. A real place to put the 47 litterboxes! Oh, wouldn’t that be nice!

Anyway, it’s really the only time I ever had an opportunity like that, and I didn’t take it, and I’ve worked in advertising ever since and advertising people are really my people.

Did you ever do something like that? Did you ever turn down something other people would have seen as your big opportunity and you don’t really regret it? Did you end up regretting it? Do you ever ponder it? Would you like some Pussy incense?

These and other Qs burn in my brain.

R,
June

I got my Christmas cup out early.

Really, last year, I had one of those moments where you’ve put all the Christmas things away in their bins, and searched every light fixture and plug for any teensy Xmasy decoration that your mother—who likes Christmas and sends things like Christmas nightlights—sent you, and you finally feel assured that you’ve got it all, and then you find a Bah Humbug mug and

GODDAMMI—

this ridiculous black cat just hit some key and deleted half of what I was writing and I had to go into drafts and restore what I had and now I have the livid of a thousand suns. You know how livid they all are.

He doesn’t just get between me and the keyboard. No. He also won’t ALIGHT, so he keeps walking back and forth across me/the keyboard, swishing the World’s Most Fluffy Tail,

• 

purring and smelling of kitten food.

Anyway the point is I just kept that cup in the normal cupboard all year. It was not banished to the Christmas bins, and now when the other Christmas cups get here it will brag about its wonderful year in the normal cupboard. Hanging out next to the Carolina Theater mug.

If I have to give up coffee I guess I’ll become one of those people who is really into tea. I can’t wait to see who is hovering over the keyboard to deliver the earth-shattering news that some tea has caffeine in it.

I like peppermint tea. Maybe I’ll get some extra-fancy peppermint tea. I also like green tea, and they must make decaf green tea, right? Oh, lord, what has become of me? A caffeine-addicted reader who has cats on her is who I am. I guess I can be most of those things with tea.

In other ridiculous news, I have a dog. Last week, I ordered stuff on Chewy, which—in case you’re a tidy person with no pets—is a site where you can order pet supplies. I have a problem with ordering SIZES on Chewy, as they offer no banana or anything with which to compare, and have more than once received a bag of dog food taller than my own self.

This happened yesterday, and not only did I receive ONE bag of dog food taller than my personal self, I received deux. Dos. Tea for two. And now we’re full circle boom lift baby lion I need to get over that line.

Dude. First of all, I assure you I did not order two bags of dog food, so I think I got free food. So, yay? But, dude. There is so much dog food up in hurrrr.

Thank god that dog doesn’t have a heart condition, because I have senior dog food for the next five years. I mean, that’s an exaggeration, which is not like me, but I’m going to go out on a limb, here, not literally, and say I have dog food through April.

I have one unopened bag taller than my own height, which is 9’4″, in my clothes closet. Then I opened the other bag and poured what I could in the now-miniscule-seeming dog tin,

• 

then I also put some in a baggie.

after putting the rest in every single container I have in the house. These containters were then very scientifically crammed haphazardly into the pantry. And by “pantry” I mean “closet where everything unseemly goes.”

There’s kibble in to-go containers, old yogurt thingies, Rubbermaids, cookie tins.

Even no-nonsense Mr. Brawny is appalled. Mr. Brawny is tear-ing up. Get it? Do you? What do you want from me? I’m like whisper-caffeinated at best.

Anyway I’m good on dog food. Remember this day: November 10, 2020. A day that will live in infoodmy. Then check with me in April to see if I’m still on those two bags of dog food. You’ll ask me and I’ll be all, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

You wrote an entire post about it, June.

I did?

I’d better go and do work things for a change. In case you’re worried, I’ve fed the dog.

Chow,
June

P.S. I totally forgot the bottom of this mug had this:

Dear Mom: You really captured the spirit with this particular gift.

When we were last together, we didn’t know what Nevada was going to do.

…Oh, wait.

We didn’t know what Nevada was going to do, and also I had been told by my headache doctor, the one who made me nearly break my barf streak 10 years ago, that I had to give up my headache medicine because it was causing more headaches.

Look, how is that my fault? Make better medicine, then. Don’t make medicine that makes headaches come back. We all have to function. We have to keep going. We don’t have the luxury of lying in bed endless days with a sick headache, says the woman who just spent 5 days lying around sick. If you make a pill that makes it go away, we’re gonna take said pill.

The thing is, for the last, oh, I can’t even tell you how long, I’ve gotten a migraine nearly every day. If I go two whole days without the twinge of one, it’s notable. And here’s the sad thing: I always say to myself, Maybe I’m done having them. I do it every time there’s a lull. Maybe it’s over. Maybe it’s Maybelline.

So when my doctor said, “Next time you get a headache, you simply cannot take medicine,” that next time came sooner than you’d think. It came that day, actually, last Tuesday, but I had to see who was elected president and you all see how that worked out, but I took an Imitrex that night. Screw it.

Then on Wednesday afternoon, the pain came back. Just like the cat in the song. The pain came back, we thought it was a goner. But the pain came back. It just wouldn’t stay away, away.

Anyway, so I told myself, Here we go. I won’t take an Imitrex. And once again, Dear Imitrex: Make better medicine, then. Again, how is this my fault? Why am I the one who has to be tortured for doing what your damn medicine says to do, which is take one as soon as the pain even hints around that it’s on its way?

My ex-mother-in-law used to call Marvin and me and say she was “giving half a thought” to visiting. That meant her ticket was purchased and her bags were packed. When my head tells me it’s giving half a thought to giving me a headache, I’d take a pill. It’s what you’re supposed to do: nip it in the bud. Oh, now that’s bad?

Anyway. So I had a migraine. With no drugs. It wasn’t pleasant. It hurt. I missed work. I was nauseated. But I got through it. It lasted 24 hours, but I got through it.

I had one hazy hour where the pain was kind of receding when

BOOM!

It wasn’t just migraine pain, which by the way is already dreadful. I got a whole nother migraine, along with racing thoughts, panic attacks, inability to sleep, chattering teeth, and?

My favorite!

Nausea. I won’t go into it, but be glad you’re not my roommate. Edsel is traumatized.

That was Thursday? Friday? Oh my god I really don’t know. It’s all sort of a haze of misery. Nothing made me feel better, and that’s likely because I could take nothing. He’d prescribed me a sort of muscle relaxer but I was allowed to take it just once.

At some point over the weekend, the pain part and the racing thoughts subsided, but the nausea stuck with me. Thanks! Thanks for being there through thick and thin.

So now it’s Monday (right?). He has me on this new preventative, that I’ve taken since Thursday despite how rotten I have felt, and I think it’s making me feel out of it, because I need more symptoms. I also have been lowering the coffee consumption, which does not make me bright-eyed.

Anyway here it is Monday (right?) and I have

A

LITTLE

HEADACHE

and I’m ready to punch Ouiser. I’m so goddamn mad I could scream. And I have to copy edit things, which means I’m encouraging a migraine. Copy editing always makes me get a headache, but what doesn’t anymore.

So that’s how things are going over here, and also someone needs to pull Forest aside and tell him this whole lying on me and patting at the keys while I blog is something I am NOT IN THE MOOD for and he’s lucky he’s silky and adorable.

So that’s me and my sitch. This all better fekking work.

Headily,
June

I’m going to ignore everything roiling around me and this country and talk about my head. I wish you could see my cuticles—I’ve bitten them to within an inch of their cuticle lives.

Anyway, m’head.

Ten years ago, I went to a headache specialist here in town. He didn’t laugh at any of my hilarious jokes, but he did tell me several crucial things about my migraines. For one, he told me I had to give up caffeine. He said I had a delicate brain, which I loved, and that caffeine was just too much for it, which if you ask me cannot be true because I been lovin’ caffeine since I’m 15 and look how well I turned out.

He also gave me a list of migraine-safe foods I could eat, which consisted of water, lettuce and chicken.

He also put me on Topamax, and the weight fell off of me, and I weighed less than I had since I hit 30. It was magnificent. Oh, and it helped with migraines! The only thing is, it made me stupid. Like, seriously. I couldn’t think of words, and I kind of need to be able to think for my job.

I stayed on Topamax for about six months before I missed thinking and so I went off of it and gained all the weight back and oh! Another thing Topamax did was make carbonated drinks taste flat. It happened on day one. I took my first Topamax and stampeded to McDonald’s, and said, “Oh, their Coke is broken.”

So I was excited to get fat and migrainous and drink a soda again.

Anyway, the final blow for me seeing that doctor 10 years ago was he wanted me to have these nerve shots, like I’m not nervous enough. They were to help my neck, which is always stiff. I like to keep a stiff upper neck.

Ten years ago, and have I established when it was yet? It was 10 years ago. I went in there for m’nerve shots, not worried about it at all, when

WOOMP!

I got this WAVE of nausea, and according to the nurse turned green like the Wicked Witch of the Migraine, and as throwing up is my personal phobia, I ran out of there and never went back.

Until now!

My migraines are horrendous as of late. I get them almost every day. Days I DON’T get them I think, “Oooo! No migraine today!”

That’s no way to live.

So I put on my mask, which makes me panic but I do it anyway, and headed into the office, there, and filled out 47 yards of paperwork (Do you get headaches? Do you get bad headaches? Does your head hurt when you get headaches? Are your headaches located in your head? Hey, by the way, how are your headaches?) and then had an EKG to see if — well, they told me what they were looking for but I forget.

Despite evidence to the contrary, I have a heart, so then they took 14 vials of blood to see — well, they told me what they were looking for but I forget. I just know they said if they don’t call it’s good news. Or they forgot. Whichev.

Then the doctor walked in. He’s one of those people I see all the time. Do you have people like that? I’ve seen him at Target. I saw him at a beer place once, splitting a giant pretzel with a pretty woman.

“That would be my wife,” he said, when I delivered this dialogue. Have I mentioned he doesn’t laugh at any of my spectacular jokes? I know I made some yesterday but I forget.

Look, I slept like one hour last night. I’m tense. I’m trying to ignore. Have I showed you my cuticles, or lack thereof?

I did a series of tests, not like with a scantron sheet or a blue book, but to prove I don’t have anything in my brain except sparkles and kittens. After testing everything, the doctor said

wait for it

I have migraines.

Then he said he’d like to do those nerve block shots again.

Oh my god.

“They’ll really help,” he said, and I relayed the story of last time he did them, and how the paper sheet my I was lying face-down on had a Shroud of Greensboro on it from my sweaty nauseated face, and how I was green—GREEN. And we all know it’s not easy being green.

He said he’d go slowly.

So I can very slowly get nauseated.

“Does anyone actually throw up from the shots?” I asked him tensely.

“Just young thin women,” he said pointedly. Then he sort of looked me up and down. “Women with really low blood pressure.”

I may be old and fat, by my blood pressure is always 14 over 4.

So we made an appointment for me to go get the damn shots, and I do have to say once the nausea passed last time my neck felt marvelous, but mother of god I am scared.

Also, he gave me a diet of water, lettuce and chicken, which sounds familiar. And I have new preventative pills to take, not Topamax but something else, but the side effect is weight loss, which is good because I recently won the woman from This Is Us lookalike contest. Have I mentioned I’ve gained the weight?

Also also, he said I have to give up caffeine. Haven’t they advanced in 10 years? Haven’t they found ways to work around the whole caffeine thing? IT’S ALL I’VE GOT. Well. Apparently I’ve got food. See above. But now I have to give that up too.

“And, stop taking the Imitrex,” he said. “Just stop. It’s causing all these rebound migraines.”

I knew that, of course. I am taking way too much medicine. But to stop will mean I will have a horrid, horrid migraine with no drugs. He did prescribe me some other pills, a muscle relaxer, to sort of get me through the awfulness of that, but mother of god, I am not looking forward to that.

I have two weeks of vacation time I haven’t used, and am thinking of using it to Trainspot self off the Imitrex. Doesn’t that sound like a delight? Doesn’t it sound relaxing?

So that’s where I am with that. Oh, and I have to be very regulated about sleep, which I really do try to do, and then I got my one hour in last night so go me.

Caffeine. CAFFEINNNNNNNEEEE!

I can’t stand it. Ima do it slowly, not cold turkey. Like, in the morning, I have a small pot that makes four cups (pffft. Why are measurement never accurate? It makes two mugs. Who drinks CUPS like some sort of pansy?) and I usually make two pots of that. Today I am trying to live on just the one pot.

Then next week I will try to drink half that pot.

Then the week after that I plan to take my life in a simple ceremony. BECAUSE CAFFEINE.

Ugh.

Does anyone have any good chicken and lettuce and water recipes?

Headily,
June

Are you nervous about tonight? I am. Everyone’s so angry.

I put this on Facebook already today, but let’s say you’re Sadie and you’re not ON Facebook. Every day I draw one tarot card to kind of tell me about my day ahead. I know it’s very likely not true but I enjoy it so shut up. Anyway, here is today’s card:

Weird. Weird Harold. Weird.

Anyway, let’s talk about something else because I can assure you someone is shrilly talking about today’s events somewhere online or on TV or outside your door or maybe in the next room, if you’re stuck living with someone.

Let’s talk about how weird I’m getting. I can’t imagine living with someone any longer. I really can’t. To have to share your food and have someone making noise in another room and vetoing your paint color? Oh my god that sounds awful. I don’t know when I switched over into this person, but here I am. The one that you love. Go away.

Not to mention if I lived with someone they SURELY woulda put the kibosh on keeping Forest Lawn. Right?

Despite sounding like the Unibomber with my hermitage, Lottie Blanco is coming over today! She lives outside of Greensboro, and in my mind it’s only 15 minutes away, then I actually go to her house and I need to pack a lunch and a sherpa and get a TripTik to get over there, and don’t even talk about the drive home, where you’re tired and the trees start to look like Where the Wild Things Are and you’re wondering if you will EVER see your doorstep and you kiss the ground when you do.

I think she lives like 45 minutes away. Whatever. It feels long.

Anyway she is coming to town and is bringing me chili that her wife made. She isn’t coming all the way here just to bring me chili, although there is nothing wrong with that and it wouldn’t be weird at all. But since she’s out and about, she’s coming over. Masked. Distanced. Still.

It’ll be nice to see The Blanco.

When “all this” started, she said to me, “I can’t believe you’re going through this quarantine alone” and I said, “I can’t believe you’re going through this quarantine with somebody.”

Lottie Blanco is an extrovert. Also emotionally more adjusted than me.

Speaking of emotional, now I’m all worried about Dooce. Dooce used to be a famous blogger and now she’s really just sort of an Instagrammer. She had an MRI yesterday and might have, like, a brain tumor or something and now I’m all nervous waiting to hear. And she famously starts to tell you something and then just never mentions it again, which is enough to drive you berserk. So she better follow up this time.

Anyway, she’s been looking terrible and acting erratic all year, and has had myriad health symptoms so maybe now we’ll know what’s going on and I know I don’t know her but I’m all upset.

I hate medical waiting. It always traumatizes.

I guess that’s all I have to say today, other than Forest is here as per usual and he keeps putting his PAW on the MOUSE and adding extra spaces and things. I’m torn between charmed and annoyed. He has his chin on my hand and his head bobs with each letter I type.

Here are photos I took yesterday evening, as I was wrapping up the workday. Literally. I got ribbon out and everything. Anyway, please to ignore the Pirate’s Booty. You want a pirate’s booty, look behind me. Mother of God I have gotten huge. This is the fattest I have ever been and I hate self long time.

It might have something to do with the part where I stay home, sit around, and eat all day. I’m not sure, though. Could be the dryer shrinking my clothes.

Well, good luck tonight, unless you’re voting for the person I am not. Harrrr. Try to stay relatively sober, although one of my coworkers is taking tomorrow off. “Are you planning to be hung over?” I asked him.

Yes.

At the 12 Oaks barbecue moments before a Civil War,
June

I worked until 8:30 or 9:00 Friday night, and then I told myself, “You are going to shut down this laptop and not even look at work things all weekend.” And I didn’t. But now I have it back on again and I am willing myself to not look at work until work time, and it’s KILLING ME.

Anyway. I guess the highlight of my weekend is I went to the cemetery with my ex-boyfriend, Ned.

• 

Ned called me recently and mentioned there was a cemetery tour of this old, you know, cemetery near our old house. Back when we were house-hunting, the very first place we looked at was magnificent. Hoity-toity neighborhood. Two stories with a long porch in the front and just a lovely backyard. Hardwood floors, french doors that smoked Gauloises, a den with bookshelves built in, and?

Ned had to think about it.

Those of you who remember the heady days of Ned are all, Yeah. Of course he did. Anyway, we lost that place. But very close by was this old cemetery, and while Ned was THINKING ABOUT IT we talked about how we could take a walk in that cemetery every day.

The house we DID get was pretty close to that cemetery too, so we still ended up taking walks in there when we weren’t screeching at each other. (Our living together did not go well.) Anyway they have formal tours there, where they tell you about important tombstones and tell you about the botany of the place, which is quite advanced. Some guy—and I shoulda paid more attention but you know how I am, but he was some rich important guy—would go in there and plant whatever he wanted. So there are all these rare trees and plants in there.

There are also tombstones falling over from the tree roots of Mr. Plant What May putting things in and not thinking it through. So.

Anyway it was a perfect day to tour a cemetery–not too hot, not too cold.

Ned paid our $10 fee and we stood, masked, around 4 or 5 people waiting for the tour to begin. At the last minute a woman ran up, and naturally she was the sister of someone Ned used to date. Ned is the Hugh Hefner of North Carolina.

Anyway she was nice, and we all had a good time learning about what things mean what on a tombstone, and how some of the really rich people have simple stones, and the difference between a crypt and a mausoleum. (Door. If it has a door, it’s a mausoleum.)

• 

We did find one part of the cemetery we’d never noticed. You know Vick’s Vapo-Rub? It’s my favorite smell, and it was invented right here in Greensboro during the flu pandemic of 1918. The Vick’s family, who you can imagine are rolling in it, have this sectioned-off part behind a brick wall, and it’s kept up beautifully and it’s lovely.

The whole tour kind of reminded me of when I was learning to drive. My Uncle Leo, of all people—and I say that because he is something of a distracted driver—was teaching me to drive when I was 15 going on 16, so we went to a cemetery to learn. The problem is, my Uncle Leo is obsessed with history, so I’d drive maybe a foot and a half, before he’d be all, “Oh! Stop! This is the Hoodebleedee tombstone! They arrived in Saginaw in 1412, and …” and then he’d be off. He did that all morning and incidentally I did not get my license till I was 17.

And no. I did not see any cats during my cemetery tour. I kind of looked. Because I’m low on cats.

I have to go. It’s now time for me to open the work email. I did it! I didn’t look early! Am a rock. Am a tombstone. Am a death parade, as my Uncle Bill would say when he can’t think of “funeral procession.”

XO,
Jube

Remember yesterday, when I said my Google machine mentioned a hurricane statement, like a hurricane got behind a podium with papers and a glass of water?

Dang. I guess I didn’t really think it through. I was all, What’s with all the wind and rain?

I put this video (veeeeedeo) on Instagram yesterday with the caption, Everyone knows it’s windy and then I married self in a simple ceremony and I really need to get over that line.

My power went out about 9:30 yesterday morning. And oh, it tried not to go off. I’ve heard from neighbors we are on the same grid as the hospital, so we hardly ever lose power. Who knows if that’s true, although the hospital is refreshingly close by. But the thing happened where there was a click and it got dark, then it clicked back on, then off, and it was a real struggle between good and evil, there. But finally, my whole house went, RRRrrrrrrr. And died.

“Well, I have plenty of power in my laptop,” I smugged, not realizing I had no internet, and therefore could not download, or upload, or send any work via email. And I don’t know if you’ve gleaned that since the pandemic, my workplace is hardly mellow yellow. They aren’t haha! OK! Well, free day off! Haha!

No.

So I had to somehow think of a way to keep working, without driving over there with the germs and trees falling on my head.

Because, yes, trees were falling. That there is a fallen tree from Forest’s cemetery. I’m glad he wasn’t in it. He was, however, just dying to go out. I was all, Are you fekking kidding me? LOOK at it out there, Forest!

Meeep!

He didn’t care. He totally honey badgered the situation. However, I am taller so I prevailed.

Will you hang on a minute? I need to stand up and adjust my robe so it actually covers me. It’s cold this morning. I guess the hurricane blew in the fall.

…OK.

My phone still had internet, who knows why, but I recently switched plans and it turns out my new plan has no hotspot. A few weeks ago I could have internetted my laptop with my phone. Internetted is a fine word. Also, I remember those few heady months I dated Dick Whitman, he said when choosing dating profiles, any woman who listed Las Vegas as a hotspot was automatically out. Back then, on Match, they had a listing for “favorite hotspots,” which is dumb. I think I said “from my phone” and now we’re full circle lift the baby lion boom.

Eventually I ended up taking a photo of the Word doc I’d fixed and texting it to a coworker, along with a long boring description of what I fixed. The next thing I worked on was blissfully long, so I didn’t have to worry, How Ima get these changes over for many hours. By the time I was done, the power came back on.

So that was yesterday. Oh, I wish you coulda seen the sky. Forest wished the same thing, with his meep! He was totally Helen Hunt in that tornado movie. He was pulling on a little tank top and heading into it all.

My pal Lottie Blanco told me that Helen Hunt movie is a favorite of lesbians because of Helen Hunt’s constant tank top wearage. I had no idea. I can never get past Helen Hunt’s fivehead.

Anyway, the sky. The clouds were in a hurry. They weren’t meandering by as clouds do. They were late for something. I was worried sick about my baby trees but they came through it fine. I have this lineup of little lights on metal poles all along my walkway, and at the end they were all leaning to the left like they were doing a cheer. Lean to the left, lean to the right, stand up, sit down, fight fight fight.

I know there is one person from 6th grade who was on cheerleading with me who sometimes reads this blog and I wonder if she will read it today and be all, Oh my god, lean to the left. And then she’ll picture herself doing it in her black-and-white cheerleading uniform. Our exciting colors were black and white. We had precisely zero black people in our—wait. No. Two. We had precisely two black people in our school: Daphne and Regina. I was friends with Daphne and Regina and I can’t believe I forgot about them. We all traded spend-the-nights at each other’s houses, and at Daphne’s house we found a letter her mom had written some man and we read it out loud. I’m certain her mom would have been delighted to know this. I remember it said she wanted to sit down and work things out. She underlined work things out.

Women are forever thinking you can sit down and work things out, but in my experience with any man, I have never worked anything out with them. In my experience, you talk and you talk and they remain purposely obstuse, or they change the subject, and you end up frustrated and eventually bitter and they say, What do you mean you don’t want to have sex anymore?

That’s my experience.

I hope Daphne’s mom had better luck. I hope she worked things out, underline.

I’d better go. I got groceries yesterday and want to try my new power waffles. I have great hopes for them, much like how I believed Wonder Bread would make me strong because the ads said it would. I would literally eat a piece of Wonder Bread and then say, “Gramma, try to lift me,” and my nice grandmother, not the one I turned into, would make a great show of not being able to pick me up because I had gotten so strong from that white bread and in truth I weighed 17 pounds.

Anyway, if something wonderful happens thanks to my power waffles I will alert you without hesitation.

Meep,
June

P.S. I forgot to say that the headache place canceled because hurricane. They blew me off. BAHAHAHAHA. Anyway now I go Tuesday. Unless there’s another natural disaster.