The New Girl

Her Name Was Chloe.

When I was in grad school, I decided that I wanted to get a cat for company.  My friend, The Kid, told me a few weeks later that someone had moved out of the apartment below her and had left a little gray cat outside in the alley.

 

'Let's go get her,' I said.  We went to the alley and waited around for about 2 minutes before she zoomed by, coming back around to visit with us.  She was tiny and stinky.  She had a collar with the name of her vet and her name: Freebie.

We took her inside and gave her a little dish of the food that they had been leaving for her. 'What are you going to name her?' they asked me.

There was no question of a moniker re-do. Freebie. WTF?  I never spoke it out loud, as to avoid embarrassing her.

With my BFF's Daughter, Quinlan

She was young and [crazy] energetic and would whip around my little apartment like a bat out of hell.  She had her tag numbers tattooed inside her ears.  She was incredibly social, more like a dog, really.  She would play fetch with little balls of paper for hours.  She was the kind of cat that even Cat Avoiding Dog People liked.  She was complete. mischief.

She considered herself an outdoor cat, despite the fact that she was strictly indoor.  The Man made her this contraption, which he called 'The Outdoor Get-Away For An Indoor Cat':

                            
We didn't habitually keep the children in there but you know, sometimes? It was so tempting...

She got out once about 5 years ago and was gone for 22 days, during which time, I could barely think of her, for fear of breaking down.  On the 23rd morning, at around 5am, I heard The Man shout, 'Hey! TNG! The cat's home!' before she tore through the house and raced to me, in the back bedroom.

What The Man did in his free time.

She lived with me for 14 years, in 6 different places.  She survived the arrival of The Man (whom she loved), The Dog (whom she grew to tolerate) and The Littlest New Girl (whom she deftly avoided). Having to put her to sleep is difficult.  I'm going to miss her, for sure.  My first companion.  My buddy.  More surprising, is the ache I feel for my Meow-Meow loving baby.  I don't know how to explain her absence to TLNG, who, without fail, calls her upon entering the house, 'MEEEEEE-OOOOOOWWWW-EEEOOOOOWWWW.'

It's going to hurt my heart for a while, I think.

Sidebar Saturday: Fitness Fixation

*Hem Hem*

Hey there!  Remember me on the weekends??  I had this idea, back in the Paleolithic Era that I would do a feature of something on my sidebar on Saturdays.  I think that I did it, uh, twice. 

But I'm back in it for two reasons.

Reason 1:  The Sizable Size Of My Ass.
Yes, yes.  You read that right.  As my daughter gets older, I have been slowly [packing on the l.b.ses] feeling more Myself, like, there's more to me than wiping up drool and snot.  And apparently, Myself likes to eat lots of goodies and likes to stay up late and read and not have any energy to work out and also, it would appear that Myself likes to drink a lot of tea and with the tea, Myself, it seems, likes snacks.  And now?  There really IS more to me.  And also? More OF me. 

And so?  I decided to bite the bullet and get back to Paying Attention (read: Publicly Putting All My Crazy Bullshit On The Internets.) 

'How does this relate to Sidebar Saturday?' you ask?  Good Question.

Reason 2: I Found A Wicked Funny Fitness Blog.
I know, I KNOW!  I thought it was an oxymoron too.  But it's not.  Kelly is funny, funny, funny.  And who couldn't use a little funny when they're considering the [albatross] topic of fitness??  I'm sure she has a niche and fitness blogs may not be your thing but I have to say?  She's not just funny in a fitnessy way, she's just, you know, plain funny.  And there's this sparkly nugget: She curses.  A lot.  And if you know me, you know I kind of love that. Nothing like a coupla' good fuck-words to give a post a little zip.

Her sense of humor is the highlight but there's also some great inspirational stuff there.  If you're into that sort of thing.

But trust me on the funny.  And the cursing.

LOVE.

Fun Fact Friday!!

* Every Monday through Thursday I think of like, THIRTY Fun Facts for you all and then when I sit down to write these wretched posts?  NADA.

* I've (re)started my health kick.  OOF.

* When I was in 2nd grade or so, I had a *best friend* named Sanya.  I went over to her house a few times and I remember it as looking like a castle.  As I got older, I realized that I must have been mistaken because I remember huge, sweeping, staircases with red carpets and literal Suits of Armor fucking standing around the joint.

* When I was in 3rd grade, my school closed and I had to transfer to another school (Catholic!) beginning in the 4th grade.  I'm not sure why my parents [tortured me so] chose that school but it was...er..interesting.  I remember the 3rd grade teacher, with actual, real-live pin-curls in her hair, who would smack your knuckles with a PACK of rulers.  And she wasn't even a Nun.

*After our school closed, my *best friend* Sanya went to the public school and we drifted apart.  When I went to undergrad for art, she was in my class. Reunited just like Peaches and Herb!! We talked about our short stint as BFF's and she said this: 'Yeah.  That was back when we were rich, before my dad lost all our money.  Remember that huge house with the suits of armor at the tops of the staircases?'  HA HA!!

* My father, an immigrant, has officially retained The Immigrant Mentality.  He routinely eats ALL the groceries in the house, until there's NOTHING left.  Condiments.  Maybe.  He showers and does his laundry sparingly.  He [jerry-rigs] [garbage-picks] reuses EVERYTHING.  When we arrived from our major road trip, the refrigerator was BARE, the lights were all OFF, and the thermostat was on 58 DEGREES.  His electric bill is THIRTY DOLLARS A MONTH.

* My dad came to this country when he was 16 years old.  He spoke no English and had only one relative living here (his Aunt.)  He came by plane (his first and only time on an airplane), with a few thin salamis sewn into the lining of his coat.  He lived in with his Aunt and they had one pot and no furniture.  They made their coffee in the can on the stove.  My dad went and got two jobs and started saving, little by little buying items to furnish their apartment. He enrolled in school and because he spoke no English and there was no such thing as ESL yet, they put him in a room with Kindergartners(!).

*  One time, I called my dad and found him very upset.  Here's how the conversation went:

TNG: 'What's wrong?'

Dad: [disgusted tone] 'Oh, my lawn-mower shit the bed, somenaaaabiiiitch.

TNG: 'What's wrong with it?'

Dad: [mumbling and cursing] 'I can't get it to work.  I monkeyed with it and it won't start. goddammit.'

TNG: 'That sucks.'

Dad: 'Yeah.  I got that thing out of the trash and I fixed it up and it was working okay and then it just crapped out. Mah-kee-somena biiiitch.'

TNG: 'Wait. What?  It was free?  You're so pissed off about a free lawn-mower that you garbage picked?'

Dad: 'Whyyyy CERtainly.'

TNG: 'How long did you have it?'

Dad: 'Only about seven years.'

Okay, So, Vote, Because I'm Laughing Too Hard To Be Convincing.

Yeah, yeah.  I know.  The Election is over.  But HERE'S where your vote really counts, friends. 

I put this pic of my BIL's Bonhomme de Neige in the post with the road trip pictures.  No one commented about it there but please, take another look.

Forget the fact that my cute-ass Nephew is stealing the show by eating the carrot nose right off said Bonhomme.  Look instead, if you will, at Les Yeux.

Um.

So, do they look a little not right to you?? 

A little like, er, Dog Turds, maybe?  Frozen, I grant you.  But still.

On The Facebook (my personal account, yo) my BIL asserts and maintains that those dusky, chalky, poopsicles are ROCKS.  Rocks that he found in a PILE behind my dad's shed.  Which, I am CERTAIN, is probably the Dog Turd Cemetery in those parts.

I have a better shot but I'd have to block The BIL out of it because while I have no qualms about showing off his progeny, I'd hate to have any of his friends stumble on this blog and find out that he's 1) related to me (for his sake, not mine, OBV.) and 2) that he's a Turd Wrangler.

So, friends.  What say you? 

So.

I spent the ENTIRE DAY yesterday CLEANING and FOLDING and ORGANIZING and PUTTING AWAY and I'm EXHAUSTED and SORE from it and today?  You can't. even. tell. (I know that you're so over the period after every word but it's so how I'm talking right now.)

Anyway.

The first day back in my house after a trip away from home is always...strenuous for me.  I come home with New Eyes.  Like, the scales have fallen away and I can actually SEE all the dog-fur-tumbleweeds and the scuffs on the walls and the shit that is accumulated in piles all over the fucking place and my jewelry all strewn about and the gunk under my burners on my stove and it makes me feel, I don't know how to explain it.  It's not a great feeling.  It's like things pile up and I'm not paying attention and then all of a sudden?  Holy Shitholey.  

I have Neat-Nicks for friends, friends and I sometimes can't help but feel somehow inadequate after visiting them in their clean, well-decorated digs.  It's not a feeling that I am used to and it doesn't fit well on me (it chafes at the collar) and so I try to get rid of it as quickly as I can.  Organizing and settling back in helps some.  But it doesn't get my bedroom outfitted with curtains and it doesn't get the spare bedroom painted or the hole in TLNG's bedroom patched or the faucet in the kitchen fixed.

*Sigh*

The road trip, itself, went really well and compared to the one that I had in my head before we left, it was a piece of cake.  None of the hyperventilation was necessary and The Littlest New Girl was a champ. 

I will say this, though: when they design car seats, they in NO WAY have nursing mothers of road-tripping toddlers in mind.  In NO WAY.  Yes, yes.  I whipped a out a boob while my desperately-in-need-of-a-nap-for-crizzakes-toddler was strapped into her car seat, in a GIANT SUV, as we hauled ass down the PA Turnpike (one more reason never to say 'never,' folks).  Despite the fleeting happiness I had at giving the other Monster-SUV drivers a little side-show at which to chuckle, I was well aware of these two facts: 1) That my ribs were not meant to be concave and 2) That I will never, ever be invited to perform in Cirque du Soleil. 

And in other news (with the most awk transition evah), I am now on the second book of the Twilight series and it's full steam ahead, babies.  I'm just going for the Four-in-a-Row.  I was going to try to break it up, you know, to give the -ly a break already, but no.  I bought the second book while I was visiting my father (for mental health purposes, I relaxed my no-buying policy).  I'm almost finished and have to go and put the other two on hold at the library because really?  WHO NEEDS TO OWN THESE BOOKS??  If you own them, I'm sorry that I yelled that.  But let me just speak for myself and say that _I_ don't need to own them.  In fact, when I'm finished with them, how about a giveaway, where I GET YOU HOOKED ON THIS STUPID-ASS SHIT I'M READING??  Doesn't that sound like fun?  Maybe it'll be a contest where you tell me your most favorite adverb. 

Cunningly. 

Snidely. 

Stupidly.

And lastly, I'll leave you with this: I think that I love the men who run the body shop that my insurance company sent me to after I was in a car accident with some Smacked Ass last week.  I call him a Smacked Ass because although it was a minor collision, for which he was completely responsible, he got out of his car irate and yelling at me.  I don't know what's up with that but it's happened to me twice.  Guy hits me and gets out screaming.  At me.  Who he just hit on account of his own stupid ass.

Anyway, the body shop.  There isn't a Half-Naked Woman-With-A-Car picture anywhere.  The guy has a screen-saver that features his daughter.  He asked me what happened and I told him and he shook his head and said, 'I do this for a living and I hear it every day.  I don't understand these guys.  I've heard 90 year old women getting yelled at.  I say just 'Man up, Buddy.''  I know, right?  Woman-friendly shop.  Who knew such a place existed?

And get this: When he came back from checking the damage (to the rear passenger door, right next to the car seat) he winced while asking me if the baby was in the car when the accident happened.  She wasn't, thank goodness, but I wanted to hug his neck anyway.