We’ve finally rolled into Friday and I have to apologize for today’s post in advance. I had some decent content planned for a change, but I encountered a force majeure event that will have to postpone it. 

What is the aforementioned casus fortuitus of which I speak? Well let me tell you. Last night I was snuggled in my big chair in fuzzy pajamas ostensibly participating in a conference call with Japan, but   I was in actuality on my personal computer listening with only half of my attention. I got up to fetch a glass of water and Sarge saw his opportunity. He has an affinity for sitting on my computer (it’s warm? He thinks it will get my attention? Unsure) and he is a large fluffbutt cat. He went up, my laptop went down, and the little USB adapter port snapped off. (Yes, my laptop IS that old.) I rushed back in, scolding, Sarge looked aggrieved and meowed once in protest before sauntering off. Then I realized that my conference line with Japan was unmuted. SIGH 

I am laboriously typing this post into my iPhone with my thumbs and its lucky that I care enough about my work product to backspace and correct my typos. Otherwise, none of you would have known what the hell a force manure event was.  

The walls in our offices are notoriously thin and the acoustics are strange. If you are unlucky enough to sit near someone with above-average projection qualities, you are doomed.
Before the holidays, a new manager moved two doors down from me and I hear him as clearly as if he is sitting in my office. This is alternately distressing and amusing as he is, as described diplomatically by our COO, “a little rough around the edges”. This means his method of introducing himself is by bellowing “WHO ARE YOU” to unsuspecting visitors. This afternoon, I heard “TELL HER TO GO AWAY I DON’T WANT TO TALK TO HER”. And he’s fond of demanding, “WHY DON’T YOU RING THAT BELL FOR ME.”
I don’t know what this means and I must not be the only one as it frequently lapses his audience into perplexed silence.
I was chatting with my colleague who sits in the office between myself and this new guy (because this is what happens when you work in an office – you IM your immediate neighbor when you want to have snarky private conversations about the people sitting around you – i.e. “can’t that person just BLOW THEIR NOSE” or “why won’t he please JUST SHUT UP”).
Colleague: i think in general he adds a lot to the office row
Me: i wish he would bring in more snacks
Me: but overall i agree
Colleague: i will bring it up to him
Colleague: but it may end up being jerky from a deer that he killed with his own bare hands
Colleague: that’s the risk we take
Me: maybe i’ll ask him if he wants to buy some girl scout cookies from l.
Me: but he might make her cry if he yells WHO ARE YOU when she delivers them
Colleague: in general you can’t trust non-packaged snacks that people bring in
Me: absolutely not.
Me: and don’t go over to X department.
Me: last year some guy brought in a whole fish
Colleague: What?!
Me: it was a lake trout that he caught and smoked
Me: he just brought it down and smacked it down on the snack table and left it there all day
Me: no knife, no crackers, no plates, nothing
Me: it still had an eyesocket.
Me: and one day the manager brought in bagels
Me: and perfectly fine clean plastic knives
Me: and some guy whipped his leatherman out of his pocket and used it to slice one in half
Me: it was all rusty and dirty
Me: and he PUT THE OTHER HALF BACK
Colleague: you’ve been here for too long.
Me: wait til i tell you about the ‘don’t shake hands with these people’ database on the secret drive.

  
At the lowest point, Em and Sarge could not stand being in the same room with one another, and if they were, there was violence. They circled around each other like strangers- Sarge cool and slightly interested, Emmett wild eyed and growling in his throat. If Sarge made a sudden move, Emmett exploded like a spring, his growl turning to a wildcat scream that rose every goosebump on my skin. There was also a lot of urine marking and I have a great tolerance for a lot of things, but not that.

An appointment with a pet behavior specialist helped me get a handle on things. I was clear from the first that rehoming one of them was the absolute last option. I couldn’t bear to let go of Emmett, and Miss L loves Sarge. So for several months, they lived in separate bedrooms that I regularly doused with bleach solution. It was the only thing that kept them from revisiting a spot they marked before. (Flowery smelling or citrus cleaners had the opposite effect, exacerbating the problem.)

The cat lady behavior specialist spent several hours being charmed by Sarge, while Emmett hunched in his carrier looking miserable. We came away with a prescription for cat Prozac and a renewed sense of hope that our family could be put back together. Since then, I’ve been grinding up the pills and sprinkling them in their wet food. I arrived at this method after realizing that they could detect a whole or partial pill in a pill pocket or a treat, or even if left whole in their wet food. Sick of finding that they had delicately eaten around the pill, leaving it soggy and ruined, I now ferociously pulverize it.

Within two weeks, the cats were able to spend ever-longer periods of time together & the marking was confined to the litter box. It’s an inestimable relief to have them together again. I have to completely redecorate the spare bedroom, as Sarge is the Odd Couple Oscar to Emmett’s Felix, but our home life is vastly better and the brothers are brothers once more.

The only sad thing is that it’s had an effect on Emmett’s personality. Before the meds, he was Mr Bright Eyes, Mr Fearless, the intrepid one with the big meow. Now, his pupils dilated, he is somewhat dazed and remote, sleepy. His brash kittenish way is gone and there hasn’t even been much cuddling on his very favorite Sherpa blanket with me. 

So this morning, when I woke up to find him asleep on the foot of the bed, I rested for awhile with him, admiring his soft stripes and needle sharp nail tips, his deep purr. 

And that, boss, is the long explanation of why I was late this morning.

My workouts are usually done on my lunch hour. If the weather is fine, I can go outside and run on the wide shoulder of the road or into nearby residential neighborhoods; about a mile down the road is a local college with an outdoor track. In the winter, Widget Central has a small but sufficiently equipped workout room and several times a week I pack my gym bag and either spin or run on the treadmill.
Because I hate Apple (and specifically iTunes) so passionately I now listen to books or podcasts while I run, or nothing at all. This has reduced my speed but I think in general it’s good mental discipline. Today while I slogged out my miles on the treadmill, I listened to an old Fresh Air with Neil Gaiman. He wasn’t the primary interview, but as usual he said enough in his 10 minute discussion to keep me intrigued. For example: “The idea that even the most normal people close their eyes for six, seven, eight hours a night and during that time, for several hours, go absolutely and utterly stark-staring mad is beautiful.” I never thought about it this way, but it made me think about the dream I had last night, in which my mother and I browsed through a pottery shop in an English stone cottage in the countryside. I admired the stained glass and the pottery tiles, all of which seemed to be incredibly delicate, wrought lighthouses, including one black and white one that stood in a snowfall. A blind woman had made them all, and she left her post behind the counter to read my fortune. She held my hand in her soft, wrinkled one, and when I asked her what she saw, she said, “Nothing,” and I didn’t know if that was in reference to my future or if she was being terribly literal about my question.
This made the first mile go quickly and most of the second mile was absorbed in pondering Mr Gaiman’s gobsmacking revelation that Adam of biblical fame had three wives. I knew about Eve, of course, and I was aware of Lilith, but I had no idea that in Jewish mysticism, Adam had a second wife. Apparently God built this second wife before Adam’s eyes, from bone to tissue to hair, and Adam was so grossed out by watching this process that he absolutely couldn’t stay married to her. This wasn’t intended to be a funny story, but it made me laugh all the same, because in a way, this is a very instructive parable about human nature and specifically why it doesn’t pay to let the person you are in love with see too much of your insides.

  
Yesterday we pretty much spent the day in pajamas. I made beef stew and we baked Toll House cookies with a bag of M&M’s thrown in for good measure. (I’ve finally perfected the art of the chocolate chip cookie and it relies on under baking and not using butter.) 

We spent most of our time in front of the wood stove, learning the new Ravensburger games that Santa brought. Miss L prefers Enchanted Forest but I am rapidly becoming obsessed with Labyrinth and so proud of the fact that she regularly beats me at it. 

The Prozac that I’ve been surreptitiously slipping the cats (ground up in their wet food) appears to be gaining a foothold and for the first time in months, Emmett and Sarge lounged in the same room with us. The enjoyed the fire, and the periodic roll of dice, and paid no attention at all to the suburbanite deer that wandered up to the birdfeeders in broad daylight. There was no cat-on-cat violence or mayhem or urination. Hurrah for Better Living Through Chemistry!

Family Game Night might just become a thing for us and I’m wondering if she’s old enough for the Junior Settlers of Cataan? And if we still have that old Carcassone game in the basement? That is technically my ex-husband’s, but the directions are in German (indecipherable) and we couldn’t remember how to play. I’m sure they’re now available on YouTube or the general interwebz.

Anyway, I sat at my desk today and clung to the memory of our pleasant and serene pajama day. The first day back at work and school was tough. I had to repeatedly tell L that everyone feels the same way. Everyone would rather be in pajamas with the people they love (and cats) than in the ‘outside world’. (I refuse to call it the ‘real world’ because I don’t want it to be my ‘real world’. I would rather consider it to be the ‘world I am forced by necessity to venture into’ as opposed to the ‘real world’ – which for me is my home, with my little family, doing things we love together. That’s the ‘real world’. Or it should be.)

For the last two weeks, I went on vacation and traveled, and in between it rained, so when I finally had a sunny Sunday in which to do yardwork, things were a bit out of control. The summer is suddenly half over, the solstice gone, and still it tends to rain and shiver and I have only been out to fuss over my tomato plants once or twice. It’s funny how life can change, the once-thrilling expectation of summer harvest suddenly disappears in dampness and melancholy, things are never what you expect them to be.

Sabine, my neighbor-behind, came through the hedgerow to chat. She passed along sad news about the other neighbor’s cat Oreo, who was once upon a time the scourge of the neighborhood; taken by a coyote. With an eyeroll that exuded disapproval of Those Who Will Never Learn, she indicated a new cat lounging indolently on Anne’s patio, licking a fat glossy butterscotch paw. Emmett, from his safe but confined vantage point in my window, regarded it with thinly concealed bitterness.
“I’ve been remiss,” she said suddenly, and pointed to her yard, barely visible through the overgrown arbor vitae along our border. The grass was ankle deep, unmowed perhaps for weeks. She twinkled briefly. “Maybe I’m rebelling,” she mused, “although I am not sure against whom.” The deer, she explained, liked to lie in the grass back there.

After she had gone back through the hedge to her own quiet house and her own feline familiars, and Emmett sulked off into the house to yowl, I stood for awhile swishing my legs with a handful of pulled-up weeds. I realized that it is an odd grouping of women, four women living alone in bordering yards. A dark kind of feminine magic. Maybe just by where I live I am destined to belong to a strange lonely tribe. I feel as though the realtor should have warned me before I signed on the dotted line; but perhaps it is a better trade. A still house of dark magic is better than many things. Sadness about this is old and weary now and comes from a long way away and I don’t have the energy for it anymore.
I thought of my recent attempts to explain a concept; the feeling that some entire lives, and large chunks of other lives, are made up of things beautiful and shiny on the outside and empty on the inside. Like Christmas in a catalog, a painful attempt to buy a life, to triage a mortal wound. I don’t care what it looks like on the outside, I told him, I just want there to be something on the inside, something that matters.
His eyes are glacial green and lovely. They regarded me for a moment of instant, pitying understanding, and then skated away, already bored, already somewhere else.

• Tonight the deer was basically standing in our side yard watching us pull into the driveway, with its mouth full of the neighbor’s landscaping. I swear, I feel like I have a third pet.
• Watching Miss L’s Daisy Scout troop crowd into a booth together (away from the troop moms) to nosh on froyo and banter about their days. Miss L wouldn’t take her bicycle helmet off. 🙂
• Signing up for my first race in a year!
• Being able to run without shin pain. (I mean, everywhere else hurts, since I’ve lost so much endurance, but no shin pain.)
• Eating dinner late: tabbouli salad with salty salty pita chips and hummus and a splash of red wine in a jam jar.
• The Mad Men finale…Om.
• I’ve made time for meditation almost 50% of the days since I started again.
• Sarge, who watches Gaston the fish with his tongue out.

When flipping through radio stations, if I hear a Hall & Oates song, I will always stop and listen to it.

I am older than I think I am. 

My mom and Miss L and I spent a week in Chicago for Miss L’s spring break. We took the Amtrak through small towns, fields and woods, and gradually the landscape morphed into industrial parks, cement and asphalt, and the outskirts of the sprawling city.

The train was a good way to travel, but I was glad that we were in business class. The seats were comfortable, there was greater privacy, and ample space for luggage. The Ann Arbor Amtrak station is tiny and easily navigated, but Union Station in Chicago was an entirely different proposition. Luckily, both Miss L and my mom are good travelers, and there were no issues.

We stayed at the Chicago Hilton, which is a grand old hotel across from Grant Park, and within walking distance of the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum. Miss L was impressed with the grandeur of the lobby, and mildly interested to hear of its history, but it was the pool that really captured her heart.

We spent days at the aquarium and the museum, both of which were unbelievable, capturing Miss L’s wonder and imagination.

Even my mom & I got to experience some things that were new to us. We used Uber to ride from the hotel to the American Girl Doll store (aka Miss L’s ‘happy place’) and it was a riot. My mom was mistrustful of the Uber concept, to say the least. When we were picked up by a somewhat crazed gentleman with an accent, purple sunglasses, and fingerless driving gloves, I could feel her giving me side eye as he discussed the ins and outs of Chicago snow and parking spaces and tire slashing. When we were safely offloaded at American Girl she was exhilarated by our daring and although she suspected he might have been part of a sleeper cell, she was comfortable using Uber back to the hotel.

The weather in Chicago was very Chicago-like – windy, chilly, damp, and blustery. But when we returned to Michigan, spring, it seemed, had begun.

  My nails look like little Easter eggs. Thanks Sis 🙂 

(Ignore my ragged cuticles!)

Miss L learned how to ride a two wheeler with no training wheels this weekend! In about five minutes flat – she didn’t fall once. Proud mommy moment watching her take off and fly.

I have turned over a new leaf. My mornings have been far too crazy for my liking- too many snoozes, too much rushing around to get us out the door. It starts the day off on a bad footing. So I am tweaking the AM routine. I put the alarm clock on the other side of the room, set it for a half-hour earlier, and reset the timer on the coffee maker so that by the time I stagger out to shut the alarm off, the tempting aroma of caffeine is wafting up the stairs.

I also turned the alarm volume up. 

It’s a bit shrill…

This morning it sent Emmett and Sarge flying out of their cozy morning slumber with wild eyes and bottle-brush tails. 

They haven’t forgiven me yet and stared at me reproachfully while I enjoyed my slightly more leisurely toilette.