Formal Introduction

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the newest addition to the Story of Why family.

He is six weeks old--he was born on April Fool's Day--and in the two days with which we have been acquainted, he has been a perfect hellion. He yowls all night from his carrier (where he has to sleep, at least til he's a little bigger and has a little more sense) and often yowls with no reason at all. I think he likes the sound of his own voice.

He is also soft, cuddly, and--as you can see--adorable. And he has quite a purr, as well.

Whitey, though he's not thrilled about the new addition, is at least tolerating him fairly well. The prevailing attitude seems to be "You're too small to hurt me, but I still don't think I like the idea of you." I've been introducing them for short periods of time; the first one, if I'd had a video camera, would have easily netted me $10,000 from "America's Funniest Videos". Whitey walked into the room; Anonymous bopped right up to him and tried to sniff him. Whitey backed away; Anonymous advanced. The faster Whitey retreated, the faster the little guy came at him, til finally they were running laps around the bedroom, with Whitey casting disbelieving looks behind him and the little one tearing along after Whitey's tail. It was a beautiful moment....Whitey, the Thug Cat, being driven utterly to distraction by a tiny ball of fur.

Now if I could only think of a good name for him--rough-and-tumble, boyish, yet feline.





P.S. Firefly--was I lying?

Simultaneously Adorable and Disturbing

This morning, as I drove the Ghettomobile to work (Now people, you know I'm the least-likely individual in the world to refer to something as "ghetto" without cause...This car? Is GHET-TO. LJ and one of his friends went halfsies on it for $500 apiece, figuring they could share it and use it as an emergency spare car. It's got all the wiring for television and huge monster stereo and all kinds of gadgets...but the regular old radio? Doesn't work. It's got cruise control and power this-and-that...but the cover on the passenger airbag? Is about half pried-off. Same with the drivers' door--someone must have forgot their keys long ago, because the doorframe has dings all along the top edge, and the rubber gasket around the door is compromised. Plus it's rusty on the outside and grimy on the inside and drives like a buffalo, even though it's a small car. Anyway, LJ is going out of town this weekend (thank heavens!) and he's taking the truck (booo) so I got to drive the Ghettomobile to work for the first time today. And I have no qualms, after that, referring to this car as "ghetto".)

Anyway, as I was driving down Cicero Avenue--a major thoroughfare, for you non-Chicagoans; three lanes in each direction, 40-mph speed limit, lots of retail on all sides--I came to the Target parking lot. And there, walking along the sidewalk near the newly-landscaped shrubs, I saw two very big Canada geese. Now, geese are becoming common enough in the city and suburbs as to constitute a very big problem--mainly because they insist upon dropping their gigantic goose-doots in every open field--and plus they have a well-deserved reputation as being some nasty little buggers. (I am still emotionally scarred by a childhood contre-temps with a petting-zoo goose. Don't they check those animals out for temperament before they throw them in the petting zoo? A VICIOUS little bastard, he was.)

So geese, as such, even walking down Cicero Avenue, are at best a minor novelty. But what really messed me up was this: behind them, there followed a string of six small, fluffy yellow goslings. I mean, it was like something straight out of a storybook--leading the way, the proud momma goose (or daddy; I don't know whether geese are patriarchical, but in the mood I've been in lately it wouldn't surprise me) followed by the fluffy babies and then the other parent, bringing up the rear. It was absolutely adorable...

...except that it was on Cicero Avenue, and since I drive that street every day, I know how people drive there. And the people who drive on Cicero with me? Are even bigger jerks than that long-ago petting-zoo goose. I would imagine that at least a couple of them, faced with a storybook parade of geese and goslings trying to cross a busy thoroughfare, would think "Hey! Fifty points for each baby!" and aim their SUV's accordingly. And I really didn't want to think about that--it's bad enough facing the carnage in my neighborhood, a crossing of paths between people who don't keep their cats indoors and people who drive like maniacs. I would hate to see that fate befall those little balls of yellow fuzz. (And yes, I know---those fluff-balls will grow up into hissing, doot-dropping, human-pecking bastards someday. But I am wired incorrectly when it comes to baby animals. You can confront me with all the logic in the world, and I will acknowledge your logic and condemn my own hypocrisy--but any appeal to reason will be drowned out by that vestigial "awwwwwww...." that bubbles up when faced with small adorable animals. I know it's girly and stupid and in many cases contrary to logic, but I can't help it. They're CUTE, dammit.)

When I got to work I called the Bedford Park police department, who told me there was really nothing they could do except send out a unit to stop traffic if the geese decided they wanted to cross the road. I was hoping for a solution more along the lines of "pick them up and take them somewhere safe", but apparently that's not the correct protocol--too many geese, for one thing, and not enough places to take them.

So if you were driving along Cicero Avenue in Bedford Park this morning, and you got caught in a goose-related traffic jam, I apologize; I just didn't want anything to happen to them while they were still little and cute. And if you were the Bedford Park officer detailed with waiting around all morning to see if the geese were going to want to cross Cicero Avenue...well, I'm sorry for putting you in that position--but it was probably a better way to spend a Friday morning in May than sitting at a desk doing paperwork, now wasn't it?

How Bigotry Survives

I've often wondered how, exactly, bigotry continues in this world. You would think we were more enlightened by now, as a civilization, and yet it goes on.

Yesterday I figured out why: because people don't pay attention.

Direct quote from a phone conversation:

"So what do you think about those Hispanics who are trying to change the National Anthem?"

"I don't think they're trying to change it...I think they're just making a version in Spanish..."

"Well, whatever," said the other party. And off she went into the usual anti-immigrant objections, some of which I even share (well, ONE of them: like her, I have a problem with people who accept service jobs dealing with a largely English-speaking public, yet don't learn enough English to communicate effectively with the people they're supposed to be serving. And I mainly share that objection because I'm tired of getting my food orders screwed up.)

While I listened to her my-grandparents-came-to-this-country speech, and her litany of reasons why she objects to the same opportunities being given to a new generation of immigrants, I had to ask myself: How do you take an argument seriously when the person has already demonstrated a glib dismissal of a fairly-major fact? "Well, whatever..." There's a big difference between re-recording the National Anthem in a different language, and changing the anthem entirely. That's a pretty big leap--how do I know the rest of the argument isn't similarly shoddy?

And then I thought about it; a whole lifetime of half-truths and sorta-facts and not-quite-exactly-how-it-happeneds, coupled with the usual misunderstandings and fear of the unfamiliar, and throw in a handful of media manipulation while you're at it...yeah, I could see how someone might manage to stay a bigot, if that's how they were raised. It's hard work to change one's assumptions, and not everyone knows how. I'm as much an example of this as anyone else--just not on this issue, I guess. We all have our blind spots.

Still, it's disheartening to hear it.

Miracles, Volume 736

Ladies and gentlemen, lurkers and commenters and conscientious readers, a miracle has taken place in the life of your humble blogstress:

THE CATS ARE GONE!!!!

Yes, it's true: for the first time in eighteen months, one week, and four days, I am responsible only for my own cat and its associated byproducts. Words simply cannot render my joy at this fact.

This miracle had been building for about three weeks now; one evening, after opening in the front door after a long day at work and walking into the most oppressive cloud of cat-funk I have ever experienced, and after discovering the source of the funk piled on the floor two inches to the left of the litterbox's rim--a favorite trick of Sosa's--I called Tim and left a VERY irate and unpleasant message on his voice-mail, in which the words "animal shelter" and "this weekend" were mentioned.

He called me back the next day; claimed that his work schedule would keep him from getting the cats til that Sunday, but he'd found someplace he could take them and blah, blah, blah. (Every conversation with Tim to which I refer during this post should be assumed to contain large blocks of extraneous monologue on his part, during which he conveys vast qualities of utterly useless information which totally fails to be germane to the situation at hand. In my effort to divest myself of Tim's cats, I have heard about his work schedule, his friends' work schedules, his friends' study schedules, the state of various individuals' cars, apartments, and/or relationships; and infinite amounts of similarly fascinating minutiae which he somehow felt I needed to know. So when I mention talking to Tim, you should mentally pad the conversation with about fifteen to thirty minutes of needless details.)

Sunday came, and at about 6 PM he called me to tell me that the place he thought he could take the cats would not accept them without their immunization records, which Tim thought were somewhere among his belongings stowed in my garage, but which he could not swear were there. And since the friend who was driving him had to be at work at such-and-such a time, and it would take thus-and-so time to get here and back, and etcetera, blah blah yada...the cats were staying. "Next weekend, though, I promise," he said.

And next weekend came, and went, and no Tim, and Dr. J told me I was being a doormat and needed to follow through on this, which only made me more angry with Tim because, you know, I'm only trying not to be a bitch here, and it's getting totally taken advantage of. He called later that week and gave me twenty minutes about how he didn't want to talk on that phone because he didn't have any minutes left--I didn't even TRY to go down the very-obvious road that presented--and he would be out Sunday, no matter what, world without end, Amen.

Sunday came, and went, and when I tried to call his phone at about 10:00, I got the "subscriber not available" message. So I guess he shouldn't have spent twenty minutes telling me how he didn't want to use up his minutes, eh?

I tried again Monday, and got his voice mail, on which I left a snippy-yet-restrained message. He called back Tuesday and absolutely swore that he would have the cats out of my house by the end of the day on Wednesday--again, this claim was surrounded by twenty minutes of irrelevancies regarding the schedules of his assorted friends and co-workers.

I didn't believe it was going to happen, but it did! After several phone calls (each of which came at a crucial moment of the various reality shows I watch on Wednesday night, and each of which was padded in the usual way with extraneous information) he and his friend showed up at about 9:45, packed up the cats and begged a couple days' worth of cat food from me (he wanted litter too, but I was out), hugged me and thanked me profusely, and waddled out the front door, struggling under the weight of a combined 50-60 pounds of portly feline-ness. I closed the door, locked it, turned on the alarm, and picked up White Cat for a dance of joy.

So between the departure of the cats--FINALLY!--and the wonderfully-satisfying trifecta of reality-show eliminations that happened last night (Nnenna, from America's Next Top Model; Kellie "Ralph Wiggum" Pickler, from American Idol; and Stephen from Top Chef), I am a very happy girl. And Whitey is a VERY happy kitty-cat!

Yes. I Am Twelve Years Old.

From Robert Feder's column today...


(Man, the things you have to get approval for, these days...)

Guilty

From the Tribune website:
Cynic that I am, I thought they were going to let him off scot-free. I'm fairly impressed that they didn't. I'm not so optimistic that I think it will change anything in the culture of "government as usual" here in Illinois--as corrupt as some third-world countries--but it's nice to see someone (or in this case, twelve someones) standing up against it.

Of course, it will be months or years before it's over--they're already talking about appeals, and I'm sure the two dismissed jurors are going to be a good starting point--and Ryan's an old man; he may never see a moment of jail time. But the fact remains: the legacy he was hoping to create for himself, of George-the-Humanitarian, George-the-Nobel-Prize-Nominee, is dead. In its place he's leaving George-the-Criminal, George-the-Convict. And frankly, even putting all my cynicism aside, that's as it should be.

All Quiet

I'm still here, still sober, still hanging on. I'm going to start looking for another job, and at the same time I'm finally working towards getting the business started. Most of my time, though, has been eaten up by work, or by recovering from work, and so I've not had much energy. I hate my job, and it's precisely because it's so inoffensive and bland and unexciting. It's like living on three meals a day of unsalted crackers and water. You -can- live that way, but there's not much joy in it.

I've also been thinking about how I need to start preparing for the rest of my life. It occurs to me that I'm quite likely going to die alone, and that's not a pearl-clutching "poor-me" statement; it's a statement of a very likely fact. LJ, even if he does stay around, will not outlive me; he's already leaning heavily towards some serious health problems. I'm not going to have kids to take care of me, and I've got no siblings, and thus no nieces and nephews. I'm not close to my extended family, and my mother will be 77 on her next birthday, and my closest friends live far away. There is not going to be anyone to take care of me when I'm old, and I need to start preparing for that eventuality. I need to think about money, and where it's going to come from; about appointing someone to make decisions for me in case I can't, or to look out for me when I'm no longer able to look out for myself. And these are all good, motivational-type thoughts, in a way-- but in another way they're not, since they all invoke the specter of being, at the end of my life, all alone. It's not a happy thought, but there's not much about it I can change.

You know what I think about most, when I think about the end of my life? I think about all the things that mean something to me. I think about the afghans I've crocheted, the quilts I've made, the books that used to be JP's; I think of all the pottery I painted with Firefly, and all the little artsy things I've done since. I've been spending a lot of time in thrift stores lately--there's a great one just down the street from Dr. J's office--and I see a lot of things that I know once meant a lot to someone. Cookbooks, for example; today I bought a cookbook from 1948, autographed by the author, with a bookmark in it that was a slip of paper which turned out to be a ticket from a 1961 train trip to Pennsylvania. I see a lot of paintings in the thrift stores, paintings that look like they were done by amateurs; the proprietor tells me that she gets a lot of photo albums with the photos still in them. She and I have talked for a long time about how amazing it is, some of the things that people part with sometimes.

And when I think about it, I think: those must have been people like me--people who, when they died, had no one to leave these things to who would see them for what they were, and how much they'd mattered. I've been guilty myself, I know; some of JP's belongings ended up in the hands of people who couldn't possibly know their importance. But I made it a point not to be stingy with the memories I had of him; I know I wasn't the only one who lost something when he died. And then there were the things that didn't survive the various habits, things I had no business selling. I think about those things sometimes too.

Mostly I think: there's going to be no one else who has my memories, when I'm gone. Huge swaths of time that mean everything to me, and nothing to anyone else, are going to die with me. And maybe that's true of everyone, but somehow I think of everyone else as having someone--a sibling, a child, a partner--to pass some of these memories on to. I'm not going to have any of those things; and then again, so much of it is trivia, little things that wouldn't mean anything if I -did- have someone to pass them on to.

It's almost enough to make me question: what's the worth of doing anything? But then I think: I'm here; I may as well do something, after all, and it may as well be something I enjoy. So I collect my old cookbooks, and hunt through the thrift stores for other people's afghans, which I then take home and rescue from oblivion. Some day they'll go back out into the pool of forgotten objects, along with a few things of my own. Maybe that's just the way of the world.