My robe sleeves are wet (dishwasher and changing pet bowls) and now I have that pleasurable feeling of receiving teensy kisses from Satan every time I move m'arm.
I feel like I haven't talked to you in forever, so let's begin.
Friday
We knew we were getting a winter storm, which for here is like learning Godzilla is coming or something. Everyone rushes around and speaks Japanese but we dub them in English. I came back from lunch and my desk phone was lit. Not that it was drunk, all worried about the storm, but there was that increasingly elusive "you have a voice mail" light, which in five-plus years there has probably been lit four times, usually to tell me I have flowers.
Pfft. I'LL NEVER GET FLOWERS AGAIN.
"June, this is David at the fire department," the message began, and my heart leapt out of my chest on danced on the desk like that animated paper clip you used to get on Microsoft Word.
My heart/paper clip was dancing to the tune of "My pets are toast, my pets are toast, my pets are toast."
I mean, when something like that happens, you lose all logic. How, in six minutes of driving back to work, did my house burn, my pets char, the fire dept. get my work number and leave a message?
Turns out it was the fireman from where I had given them Violet.
If you just got here--and hey, welcome to blogs, person who never left 2006. Anyway, four years ago, someone left a puppy in my car and I ended up giving her to a local-ish volunteer fire department. The guy who became her dad, took her home with him and stuff, was who was calling.
Violet got suddenly and frighteningly ill. He'd taken her to the vet, and it didn't look good. The vet could do a test to see if Violet could even be saved (at the time they thought it was a twisted spleen), but the test was going to be hundreds of dollars.
It was terrible to hear that fireman cry. When he decided to get the test for her, I got online and asked for donations, and you all listened, and I thank you all so much. That was amazing.
Tests, emergency surgery, a transport to another facility all were for naught. They eventually told the fireman there was nothing he could do, and Violet was put to sleep that same night. She'd had an autoimmune deficiency, and I don't know more than that because I didn't want to pepper these obviously grieving people with a hundred questions. The point is, we've covered their vet bill and we helped to try to save her, even if it didn't work. There will be a memorial service for her at the station, and of course I will go.
So that was a terrible day.
We got out of work early that day, as soon as the first flake was in the sky, and no I did not go skydiving, Shekky Greene. I headed to the store, a thing no one else had thought of, holy cats. "It's not worth it," a man said to me, after I found a parking spot IN TIBET and walked in.
He was right. The line went all the way back to the produce section. I turned around and walked right out that store. On the way back to Tibet, I saw Ian, the coworker I spent Christmas with. "It's not worth it," I told him, the secret code for Grocery Storm Watch '17.
"We're gonna be snowed in. I don't have wine. FUCK THAT," Ian said, marching into the store with grim determination like he was about to storm Normandy. He's probably still there, in line.
The snow was just starting to cover the ground as I got home.
Saturday
When I woke up, I was more excited than I was at Christmas. I WHIPPED open a blind, then squealed.
Sa-NOWWWWW!!
And here's the part that made me sort of sad. How many years now have I been showing you the dogs frolicking in the snow? Here's poor Edsel, doing the lone frolicking.
He tried to get me to play with him, but I was pretty useless in the frolic department. I realize it's his fault, but I still feel bad for him, not having a playmate. Also, THAT SHED OH MY GOD. When you pull the doors now? They just fall in. Sheds are 8 million dollars, have you priced them? Really, I don't even need a damn shed. I could just have that thing taken away like Bernadette Peters' snails.
I guess if I didn't have a shed, where would I put the rake and the lawn mower and all that stuff? The living room?
Anyway, we went on a really long walk, Edsel and me, not Bernadette Peters and me, which I might have lead with. We watched kids sledding, and Edsel got his snout all snowy. Then we retired to my abode, which was fun till it wasn't and I got all FUCK THIS SNOW like Pa Ingalls in The Long Winter.
While it was still delightful.
The miracle of birth
wat da fuk dis eben bee?
I cleaned the house and talked to my old pal Alicia from LA, got the neighborhood gossip. If you remember Alicia, you'll be stunned to hear she got into a fight with one of the neighbors, who insisted he went to Harvard Law School and knew he was in the right.
"You may have pass by dere," she said in her accent, "but you never walk in. You see the outside of Harbard, you go home."
Oh my god I love talking to Alicia.
Sunday
"Want me to come over? We can do tarot cards and yoga," texted one of the Alexes, because the concept of "I'm holding a phone" is lost on millennials. "Aren't you scared to drive?" I texted--I text--back.
"Fuck that. I'm from Jersey," she said, showing up with dog food, as Eds was dangerously low.
So I read Alex's tarot cards for the upcoming year, and then we did something called yin yoga, where you hold the poses for three minutes, and mostly today my ankles hurt. I have no idea why.
Edsel was obsessed with our being on the floor. Every time I looked at him, he was doing dog yoga. The first hilarious person to make a downward-facing dog joke gets nama with my stayed.
Edsel achieved zen or whatever.
After Alex left, I decided I could do stuff I never get around to doing, like for instance I have this picture frame I've never filled. So I looked though photos to find just the right pictures that were also vertical.
This one did not make the cut, but I love it. It's my cousin Katie the lesbian and me at our OTHER cousin Katy's wedding in the '90s. The shoes are COMIN' off. Let's dance. They only name my cousins some form of the name Katie. I have 14 cousins. K8T, the last one, is pretty annoyed by this trend. As is my cousin Qué-Tea.
Eventually I settled on dad at the Smithsonian and mom, gramma and me at prom. I did not take my mom and grandma to prom, although if I had, they probably would not have said, "That's another dollar" when I ordered a refill on my Coke at dinner. My date was such a gentleman.
So that sums up the weekend, and today they're having us come in late, not that it will make any difference, because it's really cold so the roads will just stay icy. Yay.
It's still pretty out, though.
And my pets are not charred. So yay. Bright side.
Icily,
Juan
