I haven't really talked to you since the 4th of July, before that kid out there put a firecracker and his head and killed his own self. Did you read about that? Anyway, since it's been that long, I will go backward, like Benjamin Button is blogging at you.
Right now I just woke up. That sums up the present. NedKitty is standing behind me in this chair, and has her wet Kitty-Love-the-Shower hands on my shoulders so she can eat my hair, as she does. We look like we're posing for an Olan Mills shot. Because you know how often you've had the cat pose behind you with her wet shower cat weird head at Olan Mills.
Speaking of weird, last night, Ned and I had therapy and a movie--the traditional date. That old theater we like is essentially showing four old movies a week, all of July. Last night it was The Man Who Knew Too Much.
I had to scream right from work to therapy, which started at 5:30. The therapist knows the way of her people, so she wondered where we were going to eat after. "Nowhere. We have a movie," said Ned, handing her a check for six thousand dollars.
"I have to eat before the movie, though," I said to Ned, who wondered why I couldn't just wait till after the movie. And right there is what we should have spent that session discussing.
Ned regularly eats dinner at 9 o'clock at night, like he's Spanish. I do not understand how a human can have a salad for lunch, WORK OUT LIKE A DEMON, and not eat till 9:00. I really don't. And he really does not see how that is not acceptable behavior to me.
Do you remember the first year we were dating, back when I pretended to be nice, and he made me go Christmas shopping with him after work, and I didn't know how he was yet with the decision-making, and we didn't get to a restaurant till almost 10:00, and then inexplicably Ned insisted we eat at the bar, so we had to wait, and when we sat down the kitchen was closed?
DO YOU REMEMBER THAT?
I do.
The point is, we had half an hour between therapy and the movie. "Ill just drive through somewhere, and you go feed the pets," I said to Ned, and the therapist said, "Cook Out."
See. That's why she's good at her job. Cook Out sells delicious barbecue, and they also happen to have the worst drive-through speaker in the history of time. Ned was nervous about this whole setup. "How will there be TIME?" he kept asking.
I got to the drive-through at 6:32. "I'll have a barbecue sandwich, cole slaw, and some hush puppies," I told the speaker.
"Ma'am?"
"BARBECUE SANDWICH, COLE SLAW--"
"Ma'am?"
Sometimes I think they do it on purpose because they're mad I'm not Southern. After 52 tries of me screeching into that speaker like a fishwife ("A COKE," "A milkshake? What flavor, ma'am?") I drove up and got precisely not at all what I'd asked for. I got fries, and a barbecue PLATE. Not a sandwich. A plate.
I was home by 6:38. Ned had already gotten home and fed the animals. I took my wrong food to the back yard to eat al fresco with el dogs-o, and I am not kidding you. I AM NOT KIDDING YOU. Ned stood behind me while I ate. Looking at his watch. So that was relaxing.
Tallulah while I ate barbecue. Note the paw of insistence.
Edsel, having rolled in the dirt merrily, till he realized I was eating barbecue. Yes, Ned has sat down at this point. But doesn't he just LOOK impatient? Ned and the impatient torso.
We got to the movies on time, after that relaxing precisely-what-I-wanted meal. After, I had a deadline for Purple Clover (here's my latest one), which I banged out because it was lightning-ning out and thundering and I wanted to see it.
At about 10:00, I finally got to my own front porch. Ned was eating. Ned was eating tomatoes on toast. He'd not eaten for more than nine hours, and then he was content with tomatoes on toast. I was ready to eat AGAIN, after all that Alfred Hitchcocking.
As soon as I got outside, I saw them, the lightning making them visible. Two bats, who I named Bat Lauer and Batty Rubble, were swooping right outside our porch.
"NED! BATS!" I yelled to him, and he got up from his toast points or whatever. Ned and I love a bat. And these were maybe five feet away. "Geez!" said Ned, as they swooped ever closer. "I hope I have the camera ready when one gets in your hair. This is like Muskbat Love."
"I'm not afraid," I said, because I don't believe that stupid bats-get-in-your-hair myth. I like bats. I know they could be rabid, but do you know how many things I live with that could be rabid?
Woosh, they'd swoop in front of the porch. Woosh, they'd swoop back. "Good. I hope they get every one of those mosquitoes," said Ned, who never gets bitten. In the meantime, I am no longer a human, I'm just a collection of welts.
It was all cool till Bat Lauer swooped right onto the porch. You know how I say I'm not afraid of bats? Turns out I kind of am.
"Eeeeek!" I said, like I was a cartoon character, and screeched inside.
Ned sat out there with the bats for the rest of the night, like he was Count Chocula or something.
Tonight we have the original King Kong at the theater. Ned is beside himself over this development, as he loves that movie. Nothing but death could keep him from it. The people I work with think the original King Kong has Naomi Watts in it.
I see that I've rambled on forever about just one day, and this is why I cannot get behind on my blogging. Suffice it to say we went to a festival on the 4th, and I saw this tattoo of a Death Party Hello Kitty and have A NEW GOAL WANT THIS SO BAD OH MY GOD.
And I know you can't wait to smugly get on here and say, "It's Day of the Dead, Joooooon, not Death Party," but once my Uncle Bill was held up by a funeral, and when he got home he was all flustered, and he said, "I had to wait for those cars, for the, oh, what do you call it. A party, a death party," and that is something we have not let drop.
DEATH PARTY HELLO KITTY TATTOO! So fucking cool.
So I will go, with many more stupid stories to tell you left untold. It's kind of like we're at that speaker at Cook Out.
Ma'am?
P.S. I got back on Facebook, after my huffy hiatus. Go friend Karen Sommerfeld. I have no idea who that is, but go friend her.
