4 am all night hell gas station
NEW YEAR NEW DEBRIS
The year 2023! So far! It is a mixed bag! Did you know that term refers to a bunch of dead birds in a bag? The past six weeks has not been entirely unlike a bag of various dead birds. Maybe it is time to do some taxidermy.
The last time I decided to type my feelings away (less satisfying than eating or fucking them away but what can you do) I was excited to have my college kid home for a month. And I was right to be excited, because he is cool. He was taking a class over winter break so between three and five hours of his day was spent doing Insane Math (I think that was the literal title of the class? Maybe not). But we still managed to watch a lot of movies and have the holidays.
One of the highlights of Christmas Eve was a discussion of the worst gifts we had ever received. We had a contemporary winner, as just a few days previous my sister-in-law had received a book from her sister-in-law (someone she does not exchange gifts with, nor speak to). The book appeared to be self-published and was called God Wants To Be In Your Marriage.
I like to take this title literally. God is like, “I saw you two from across the…well, the universe (All-Seeing, you get it), and I really like your vibe. Ever consider making room for a Third?” God would probably be cool with the two of you having other partners too, as long as they weren’t other gods. He has been known to be pretty crabby about that.
As for me and gifts, I have a relatively acquisitive nature for stuff I want (earrings, candles, certain scarves, spices, kindle books, comics and zines, tea, organizational doodads), but dread receiving things that I have to find space for or decide what to do with. This year I was happiest to receive an actually good yoga mat instead of my stupid slide-y one, a chainmail bracelet from one of my favorite artists, and one of these sweatshirts, which I am wearing right now.
Welcome to the family, me! Welcome to the management training program! I am ready to be screamed at, ignored unless I’m useful, and have my every idea or expression of earnest emotion met thus:
(Can’t you just hear that photo in your mind?)
Then it was my birthday! And it was also the day I tested positive for COVID! For the first time ever! Perhaps it was the fancy new variant, as I did have the crazy body aches and fatigue, felt moderately sick for a few days, had mild dry cough that is nothing I would not have blithely gone to work with in the Before Times (shame!), lost my sense of smell for a day (so old-school!), and then felt more or less fine while still testing positive for another four days. We are all the same level of vaccinated, and we made a moderate but not strenuous effort to isolate in the house, but still LT got it and Aaron never did.
There was some mental bullshit that went along with this infection too. I have a moderate amount of health anxiety so I spent time worrying that a COVID infection of any severity had turned me into a ticking time bomb, with a sudden blood clot or heart attack inevitably looming in my future. That is not a productive line of thinking and I was eventually able to quell it with meditation and weed. Also the mildness of my COVID case made me overconfident that I would test negative quickly: look at me clearing my viral load like a motherfucking IMMUNITY CHAMPION, and when that did not happen I felt a bizarre sense of failure. I realize this is pretty ableist and does not make sense so you do not have to yell at me about it.
SOME THINGS I LEARNED
1. He donated it all to charity (or so he SAYS) but did you know that when his mom died King Charles apparently received condolence cards from UK citizens that contained MONEY? Actual cash? This blows my mind. Is it the Middle Ages? Can you imagine handing over any money to a royal unless an actual sword was pointed at your throat?
2. Pedialyte makes a Pedialyte SPORT, and since I only know Pedialyte the brand as a parent this kind of confused me. Is it for diarrhea toddlers or NBA stars? Or diarrhea point guards? Or toddlers who hoop? (We all know who it’s really for: hungover college students.)
3. Horses have no muscles below their knees.
Eventually we were all COVID-negative and then it was time for Aaron to go back to school. Listen to this maturity: I was not nearly as bereft as I have been at previous leave-takings. Sure I moped a little, but I also had the feeling that you get after hosting an excellent party: wow that was so fun, I love those people! I am so lucky to have had such friendship and festivity! Now it’s time for real life.
This is not a perfect metaphor, because my son is not a guest and I don’t treat him like one. But school breaks are starting to feel like a disruption of sorts (a really fun, amazing disruption, like a party is), and him being at school is the normal. I guess that’s good? At least until the next time I have a severe maudlin PMS attack and get all like HOW CAN YOUR BABIES JUST LEAVE YOU.
(He’ll be 20 this week! Surely I am not old enough to have a 20-year-old child. I demand to see the accounting books.)
THE BAD THING BESIDES THE COVID
Of course Rocko had been declining for a while, as any 17-year-old cat will do. It got quite a bit worse over winter break: he stopped eating much, stopped being able to do the stairs very well (he could do them, but it took a long time and was painful to watch so I usually ended up carrying him). He stopped cleaning himself very well. (Is this a gift animals give you, to become a little bit gross at the end of their lives? So it’s a tiny bit easier to distance yourself?)
The day we put him to sleep was by no means his very worst day. He had a few bites of food from a spoon,* he got lots of pets, he lay on his heating pad as usual. This makes me feel a little guilty, but then again there were not going to be very many better days. He was in my lap for the injections and it was peaceful.
*Here’s another thing: the work of a terminally ill animal kind of sneaks up on you. I was carrying Rocko to the litterbox several times a day (to help with the aforementioned stairs issue), taking full half-hours to feed him a few bites of mush from a spoon (which frankly annoyed both of us), and ferrying him to lots of vet appointments as we tried to figure out ways to make him more comfortable. I did it gladly, because I loved him! But I will not lie: not doing it is pretty good.
Oh Rocko, the cat no one wanted. (We went to the shelter to adopt Lola and very suddenly she was part of a “bonded pair” and they were boxing up Rocko sight-unseen-by-us. And probably high-fiving each other that they had managed to unload such a weird cat.) He had a kittenhood full of neglect and Mountain Dew and had to have most of his teeth pulled, at great expense to us, and his tongue flopped out of his mouth all the time. He had strange nerve problems and, also at great expense to us, had at various times in his life been on buprenorphine, gabapentin, and Prozac. He only liked his family and he often yelled at guests, instead of just leaving the area like a normal cat would do. (He did enjoy certain strangers, but only if they were of obviously Eastern European extraction. Racist Rocko?) He was aggressively affectionate to me and often stared at me like I was the Most Beautiful Woman in the World. He was relatively unlikeable, but very lovable.
I am ready for better times. This weekend I went to a bar and had a very nice hot buttered mocktail (it came with a cookie!), saw a movie, planned two weekday dinner dates. Let me stay busy and stay uninfected. (With both viruses and fungi—are you watching The Last of Us? Holy shit it is too scary. I am scared.)
—mimi smartypants is a bullet in a shotgun waiting to sound; whenever you want her she’ll be around.