When that stupid alarm goes off, here's what I usually do: My phone is often charging next to me, so I can get brain cancer or whatever later in life. I like to ensure my future. So I grab the phone and see if any pressing messages came my way overnight. Answer: No.
Steely Dan just hopped up here and does HIS morning routine, which is sniff my coffee and make a HUGE production, a Gone With the Wind–size production, out of scraping his judge-y paw all around my offensive coffee, trying to bury it. And today, for the first time, he sniffed the coffee and got some up his kitten nose, so now he's huffed off, sneezing.
I guess he's more of a tea man. Tea for the kittenman.
You wanna know what's wrong with me? The '70s are what's wrong with me. Growing up with everything being trippy all the time.
Anyway, my routine. I check for pressing messages, as if someone from work is going to email me at 4 a.m., and believe it or not I do get meeting requests in the middle of the night, god knows why. I guess the scheduler can't sleep. But any time someone schedules a meeting, my phone goes BloooooooP! and that used to wake me up and stress me out. Now it doesn't. I sleep right through it. Like people used to sleep through the Blitz. But not the Ballroom Blitz, cause heyyyyyy, it's a Ballroom Blitz.
You wanna know what's wrong with me? The '70s are what's wrong with me.
The other thing I do after ensuring there isn't some kind of 911 proofreader emergency is that I look at Facebook. You know, ultimately, it was Facebook that lead to my final fight with Ned. When he and I broke up in 2015, his family didn't just Facebook unfriend me--which is a logical response and I expected that--but they blocked me, as well. Which I took to mean Oh my god, we've always ABHORRED you.
Then Ned and I got back together and I was supposed to spend Christmas with them all, and the night of our horrible fight, it started with me saying, "I'm nervous about this" and he took it as "I hate your family," which I really did not. His family was cool, actually. They were one of his big draws. But it was one of those times where he heard it the wrong way, and with his temper, it all ended very badly.
That was probably the fourth Facebook fight we'd had. What I'm saying is, Facebook is high school with memes. What I'm also saying is, Ned and I were rarely able to work out our differences, because tempers escalated too quickly. When someone's screaming at me, my cool-headed response is to scream the fuck back. Ned and I were high school with wrinkles.
THE POINT IS, today on Facebook they showed me my memories from the year before, and there was last year's blog post. I read it because apparently I watched The Exorcist last year on this day, and scared the crap outta myself, and was droning on about it.
I talked about how Tallulah was taunting me after by rolling her eyes back and moaning, and how she was the grownup and the pack leader and the parent, and what struck me is how a year ago she was just here. She was just, like, the majorest person in this house, and I just took it for granted, and now she's just gone. It never occurred to me last year that Tallulah just wouldn't fucking be here a year later. I'm sure it never occurred to Carrie Fisher that she wouldn't be here, either.
But speaking of pets whom I take for granted, yesterday Lily had a modeling gig.
"Hey, June, can we use your cat?" the art team wanted to know.
"Sure!" I said, not even checking if it was for some kind of Satan worship or anything. There are plenty more cats. Whatever.
We decided on Lily cause (a), she has eyeballs, and (2) she's actually really quite calm and (4) Steely Dan isn't. Plus a solid-color cat dark cat isn't that easy to photograph.
Oh my god. I can't even SEE that lavender kitten. I rearranged, by the way. It's part of my New Era. Do you like it?
Anyway, I took yesterday off, because I had one more vacation day left, and they called me at about 1:00, so I put Lily in a carrier and it became Take Your Fluffy Daughter to Work Day.
Lily in the carrier. I pressed the phone up to a hole at a red light.
When we got there, the approximately .02 people working this week came over to greet her, and I lifted her out of her carrier and took her down the hall to the little room where all the photography and video magic happens.
"Look at the kitty!" everyone said, and I felt like Debra Winger when she visits Patsy in New York, and gets out pictures of her kids.
You know what's wrong with me? Is that I figure everyone remembers who Debra Winger's friend is in Terms of Endearment. "Tell them it's okay to talk about The Cancer."
So, when I first put Lily down, she walked low the way cats do in a new sitch, but Neil the art guy had his kids there, and they are somewhere between 9 and 17. Look at me, getting better with ages. They both loved Lily, of course, and commenced to petting her, and one thing you can say about Lily is that she is a whore.
Oh, she rolled, she simpered, she stuck her ample ass in the air, and in no time, she was so cozy and foot-curly and relaxed that the whole photo sesh (you love it when I say that) took 20 minutes.
I'm also proud of us for using a plus-sized model to let cat women of all sizes know that beauty can be found in basketball-silhouette shapes.
Now today Lily won't get out of bed and wants champagne brought in. So.
Oh, lord, look at the time. I'd better get ready to go to work and wish there was anything to do. This is a dumb week. They should just have Christmas and New Year's on the same day; get it over with.
I'll catch you and your '70s vibe later.
Jewn
