Enclosed please find a video of Tallulah, the most stubborn cute dog in the world. Minutes before, she'd been moaning at me to go out, and when I lugged my day-at-work, half-hour-of-Tracy-Chapman, 10,000-steps-on-top-of-that self off the couch, she didn't want to GO out. And yet here she is, asking to go out again minutes later. Cancer schmancer. She's still a dick.
A good friend would not notice how I'd thrown my sweater on the chair or left my mirror on the side table like I'm my grandma, whose side table always contained a red mirror I'd given her, tweezers, nail clippers, her cigarette case, Kleenex, a coffee cup and the TV Guide. I used to do the crossword puzzle in her TV Guide, with no regard for whether she wanted to do it or not, and I'd always get all the answers and think, God, I really am smart. Look at me, knowing the answer is Donna Mills.
I guess it was good I had high self-esteem. It may have been misguided. Which is my epitaph. Her high self-regard was a tad misguided.
So what's new with all of you? I'm working on a project with one of the Alexes at work, and yesterday I asked her about how she records interviews with QuickTime, and I immediately became my mother, who once said, "I don't know how to paste and cut." "How to you do QuickTime to record interviews?" I asked her, and she came over to my desk because clearly I'm too old to take my cane and bone-colored Velcro sneakers over to hers.
"Don't you have an iPhone?" she asked me. "There's a voice recorder on your iPhone."
There is?
She showed me where the recorder was. "Oh, look! I have a voicemail recorded for no reason," I told her. "Wow, what is it?" she asked. We played it.
"Hi, sweetheart, this thing is running late like I knew it would, but I wanted to call and tell you how much I love you, and I miss you," the recorded voice of Ned said to me from sometime in 2014.
Goddammit.
mom do be having Edzul. forever by jooody bloom, mom.
Why does life do that to you? When I was packing to move to California to live with Marvin, I came across a piece of cardboard that had written on it, "I really do love you" from my '80s boyfriend Giovanni Leftwich. I'd moved that piece of cardboard, which quite possibly was from a package of nylons, from Michigan to Seattle, and thanks, world. Sometimes Giovanni would sneak down to my '80s room and put notes under my pillow and I'll bet that's what that was from. I'll bet I had that weird rounded-cornered piece of cardboard in my trash and he used that to write me a note.
I kept it. It's still here, in a Giovanni box somewhere. I have a Marvin box and a Giovanni box. So to speak. I only have one written note from Ned and a few cards. The rest is email and text. And apparently one voicemail recorded on my damn phone's recorder. Isn't that sad? We don't have physical evidence of our relationships anymore. No real photos, no real letters.
I was talking with someone who had kids, maybe it was one of my interminable dates that haven't worked out. He said he barely has any real photos of his kid, they're all electronic. Good for the earth, but what about our memories? What if some terrorist comes and erases the cloud or something?
Of course, people went millions of years with no photos and managed to remember their relationships. They had letters, though. I mean, Cleopatra didn't. "I saved all the rocks Anthony chiseled for me."
Maybe it was a bad idea to go off my antidepressant. Maybe I get too deep.
Dwelling on the Deep, with occasional forays into Donna Mills, by June and Edsel. Point/counterpoint, by June and Edsel. All of Eds's counterpoints would be, "Eds luff mom so bad." If Edsel could leave me a voicemail, he'd leave one like the one Ned left. Only maybe a little more enthusiastically. Like, call-the-authorities enthusiastic.
Do you know who doesn't need an antidepressant? Edsel.
I got my glasses yesterday. I have the best spectacles, ever, black ones with teensy diamonds at the edges, which is also something my grandmother had, and recently Iris knocked them to the ground as she does all glasses and I stepped on them and got them all wonky. I'd like to take this moment to wonder why I have all these goddamn pets.
Anyway, I haven't worn them in months because they're wonky, and finally the other day I went to my regular glasses guy to get him to unwonky them, except the worst woman in the world was in there.
The guy who owns the store where I get my glasses is a one-man operation. He's a helpful guy and always friendly. When I walked in there, a woman was seated at one of the tables, trying on frames, acting like she was buying a condo. There were two men waiting to be addressed, and then there I was. So now in this small store were three people waiting, and did this woman care?
She did not.
I am sorry to be insulting, but she had a New York accent, and I've become one of those people who live here who assume New Yorkers are going to be awful because they almost always are.
"Now, how do I look in these?" she asked him, peering at herself in the mirror. The red mirror next to her Lazy Boy and her TV Guide.
The glasses guy gave her a detailed answer, because that's how he is.
"Now, I know we already discussed these, but didn't you say we could take the bridge from this one and put it on these?"
Yes, he had told her that already.
"I only get new glasses every 20 years, so price is no object," she said New Yorkly. "Now, what did we say about these?"
Oh for the love of GOD, lady.
"Well, ma'am, as we've said, those are the ones most similar to what you've already got," my glasses guy told her. I knew she was gonna be the type to buy exactly the same glasses she already had, even after 20 years.
And here's the thing. Go on wit cher bad self, take your time buying your goddamn glasses. Be the person who takes forever to decide. BUT BE A LITTLE CONSIDERATE. She couldn't have said to him, "Go ahead and help these THREE OTHER PEOPLE while I mull some more"? She couldn't have said that?
God.
Finally my glasses guy told her he had to get up and help these other people, and when I called to see if my glasses were ready I said, "You.are.welcome that I am not an asshole like that lady." I been going to that guy for 8 years, and he knows I'm a gem.
Great Jehoshaphat.
I'd better go to work, and do work things, and in case you're bothered, I did take that sweater off the chair, eventually, and throw it in the laundry basket. You are welcome.
Tidily,
Jooon
