June at 15: Could it be a faded blog from days gone byyyy?

On December 15, 2006, Marvin set up a little blog for me on Blogspot, so’s I could talk about how we were going to go a year without spending money. (I realize I’m writing this on December 14, but I needed to do this in the evening after work and I didn’t want to wait till that late tomorrow and oh who cares.)

Is that even still a thing, Blogspot? Is that even still a thing, money? Is that even still a thing, Marvin?

…I just looked. Blogspot is still a thing. Here. My old blog, with Queen Elizabeth’s face on it. Which is what Prince Philip often said about his lap.

I see, in that first blog post ever, lo these 15 years ago (14 years and 364 days ago and oh, who cares), I identify Marvin Gardens as my husband, and then he is the first to comment and he does so WITH A DIFFERENT SCREEN NAME and now I am annoyed all over again. We say your name is Marvin Gardens. Sign in as Marvin effing Gardens.

GOD, Marvin.

Anyway. What a change-y 15 years it’s been. Back then, I lived in Burbank, commuted one hour each way to my job near Santa Monica, and oh, right, I was married. Also, we didn’t all hate each other. Remember that? When we might not have even KNOWN if our friends were liberal or conservative? Or vaccinated?

Now I’m divorced, with 257 cats, living in North Carolina. I wouldn’t have predicted any of this, except of course for the 257 cats part.

I guess in 15 years a lot always happens, unless you’re Miss Havisham or something. Unless you’re Delta Variant Dawn what’s that flower you got on.

Have you missed me? Have you missed my current and not at all obsessive references to Delta Dawn? Have you missed me taking you to that mansion in the skyyyy? Interestingly, I was 41 when I began blogging. Not to mention all the folks round Brownsville said I’m crazy.

Let’s talk about these past 15 years while I carry that suitcase in my hand. Because these were the years I “met” all y’all all. I met Paula H&B, and Jan, and Sadie, and Doxie. I met people here who then went away, never to be heard from again. I met people I got attached to, who then up and died like Mr. Bojangle’s dog. I met people I got mad at. Or who got mad at me.

You know what I like? Is sometimes on social media, I’ll notice some of you are friends with each other. And I’ll think, “I didn’t know they knew each other.” Then it delta dawns on me you know each other, in most cases, because you read my stupid blog. It’s so nice! I’m like Thanksgiving, when you gather together to hear the June’s blog post.

Starting a blog is the best thing I ever did, even though Marvin did it. Marvin came up with all kinds of good ideas for me, if you want the truth. He’s the one who said I should stop being a receptionist and look into being a proofreader. Which led to me being a copy editor. Which led to me being a copywriter, and look at me now, all in charge of the world. Or not. Still! It led to an actual career. Sometimes I wonder what new thing Marvin would’ve told me to do. Maybe I’d be a star on ChapSnatch now, or whatever it’s called. DickDock. What’s it called?

Anyway, I gathered you all here today to hear the June’s blog post and to say thank you for 15 years. For those of you who stuck around, from the move to North Carolina, to my divorce, to the Ned years, till now: thank you. For those of you who made friends with each other, or who sent me coffee when I was going through the indignities of life, even for the people who talked about what a rotten person I was on Reddit: thank you.

I am not shutting this blog down for good or anything. If something major or annoying happens, I’ll traipse over here for a hello and an OH MY GOD GUESS WHAT. Maybe half a dozen of you will be left and it’ll be like my early days in 2006, when three or four people would leave a comment.

(Look at how many jerky comments people left on that first blog post a mere 14 years and 364 days ago! So unsupportive! Geez! It’s a wonder I successfully kept at a year of not spending BUT I DID.)

Also, since I last wrote you in July, I found some bandanas at the CVS half a mile from my front door, bandanas I captured on film and huffily texted to The Poet, who is in therapy to try to forget that day at Target that I last blogged about. She has PTSD—post-traumatic scarf disorder.

Also I have acquired another cat, and I’d love to show you a photo, because you haven’t seen enough cat shots from me in 14 years and 364 days, but I opted for cheap WordPress and I don’t think I can bloop a photo in anymore.

He is a pleasant sort. The cat is. His name is Ziggy. It would appear that he is somewhat Siamese. Lilly the person and I headed way out to the country and got him. We also snatched up his brother, and oh, what the heck, also too his sister, thereby cleaning out the inventory of the guy trying to find homes for his kittens. So I have Ziggy and Chris and Lilly have Pearl and Monty, who both look a lot like Ziggy because genetics.

Since I can’t show you Ziggy or his littermates, picture white kittens who might be Siamese. It’s like you’re blind Mary Ingalls and I am Laura, painting pictures with my words.

Oh! Also! My floor! Oh, lord help us everyone, my floor! Since we last spoke, I got the

WISE

idea to RIP UP my ’90s beige flooring to expose the wood floor below. I really don’t think I can show you images, which is a shame, because it turns out, under the beige ’90s was the green-and-orange ’70s and oh lord, that floor was cool. But the rip-the-floor guy unceremoniously ripped that up too, and right now my kitchen has this depressing brown guck all over the hardwood, a brown guck the floor refinishers will have to remove. There are two segments to this flooring journey: Rip-the-floor guy first, which has been done, and then refinish-the-floor guys second, which takes awhile to schedule. They get here January 10, and I am Jackie Kennedy at Delta Dawn’s funeral, so stoic am I about living this way WHICH IS DREADFUL.

{Pulls veil on pillbox hat dignifiedly.}

So that’s all.

Happy anniversary to all of you who have spent 15 years with me. Is what I just meant to say, really. But then I got off on this tangent.

Is this even a thing, a blog anniversary?

Bye bye, buy!
Bye bye, pie!
There went another chapter in the Book of June! Prettiest woman you ever laid eyes on!

I pulled my harpoon out of my nonexistent red bandana

I’m having a quiet week this week and do you wish I’d say “week” more? My boss is out, for one thing, and for another we’re wrapping up a huge project we’ve been working on for months. Not literally. I don’t have the Scotch tape out.

As a result, I have found myself oddly devoid of anything to do so just now I wrote a project manager. “Need any help?” I asked her.

“Well, we need fresh eyes on the ATR report,” she said.

You know what I have? Expired eyes. Nevertheless, I said, “Does the ‘R’ in ATR report stand for ‘report’?”

“Yes, it does,” she said, abhorring me, as everyone does.

So, whilst I’m waiting for the AT report report, I’ll tell you the story of the damn bandanas.

On 4th of July weekend, I went to Winston-Salem, as I am wont to do, to attend the Rebel-something festival. I can never remember what we’re rebelling against. I mean, originally, we were rebelling against slaves not being slaves anymore, and go, South. Good job. But now this festival is basically a rockabilly festival and I don’t know why they don’t just call it that since that’s a lot less horrific than calling it a Rebel-whatever festival.

So, what they have, see, at the Rebel-whatever, is old cars lining the streets, and people dressed in rockabilly clothes, and also music and burlesque and one year they had a psychic booth that I went to and I wish I could find that particular psychic again because she was amazing. Don’t you hate the word amazeballs?

Every time I go to the Rebel-whatever, I long to do my hair in rockabilly, and wonder why I am so dull, and vow to learn to tie my hair up that way.

So THIS year, still inspired after the fest days later, I dragged The Poet to Target with me to purchase a bandana. Why? Mostly because she made the mistake of calling me right then. Next thing she knew, I was screaming up to her place, as she lives 3 minutes away, and pulling her unwilling poetic self into my vehicle. Look, I bench 30 now. I can force a teensy poet into my car, no problem.

Did you ever go look for something that IN YOUR MIND you assume is still available in droves, even though you haven’t bought that thing in 14 centuries? Like, you just assume you can go buy an inkwell or cauldron or powder for your wig or what have you because you did in the past, and surely inventory at a store doesn’t change.

I remember craving these Carnation Instant Breakfast Breakfast Bars, and do you wish I’d say “week” more often or “breakfast”? Anyway, I craved them, as they were soft and giving like my bosoms, and when I went to the store I realized there was no such thing as Carnation Instant Breakfast Breakfast Bars for breakfast during the week anymore.

This was also the story with shopping for bandanas.

In my MIND it was still 1985, when everyone was just tying their hair with bandanas, or using them to let other gay men know if you were a top or a bottom and so on. In fact, I was relaying this pertinent info to The Poet as we entered the Target that I Patty Hearsted her into attending.

“You know, in the ’80s, gay men tied their bandanas this way and that, as a code for other men to know what they were into.” I’m the Cliff Claven of man love.

“I didn’t know that,” said The Poet, who spent the ’80s playing cello and thinking about poems. And also working at our workplace, as she has been there forever. She used to have to wear suits, as we were a business-dress place for a very long time. When I started there, it was business. NOT business casual. We dressed up to copy edit report reports.

“Now, where do you think bandanas are?” I asked, as I was still fresh and full of life then. So certain I was moments from being knee-deep in bandanas.

“Probably women’s accessories,” said The Poet, who was dreaming along with me at this point. The Stockholm Syndrome had set in.

…Hunh. Bad shoes. Bad purses. A few necklaces.

“I don’t see any bananas,” I said, assuming they’d be right around the corner.

“Let’s go to men’s,” said the optimistic Poet.

…Hunh. “Look at all the men’s underthings,” I said, and we admired young bucks in boxer briefs. I mean, not in real life. I’d have led with that. On the boxes of chonies were men in boxer briefs, looking into the distance, proud and manly. “Won’t you enjoy my underthings?” they all seemed to say.

“I’d have thought there’d at least be bandanas over here,” I said, expecting that men across America take a bandana with them to work, with their lunch pails and their newspapers. I don’t know why I assume everyone lives in 1942 but there you go.

“Let’s try sports!” This is a thing I have never said before, and it is also a thing no one has ever said to The Poet before. We took our unsportsmanlike behavior over to sporting goods, where one could find kettlebells, which I manfully lifted to show The Poet how I can bench 30. We also saw croquet sets and yoga mats and 6,412 metal water bottles, but do you know what we did not see?

Bandanas.

“They must be in camping,” intoned The Poet, who kept hope alive. Why would you need a bandana for camping? I guess if you had a stick and a knapsack on your back, valderee, valderaa, your knapsack would indeed be a bandana. Perhaps we could try the hobo section next.

You’ll be stunned to hear that amongst the LED lanterns and mosquito repellent there was not a bandana to be found.

We headed to the outdoor section, because you know how often you decorate your lawn in bandanas. Over there was a ceramic banana with a succulent growing out of it. Oh, THAT they had. But a simple red bandana? Or even someone from Simply Red WEARING a bandana? Holding back the years and maybe a spare scarf for me to rock out with my billy out? No.

“Yes. Where are the bandanas?” I finally asked an employee, who was born on 2018.

“Bandanas?”

You’d have thought I’d have asked where the tiddlywinks were. “Yes, can you direct me to the sassafras?”

The employee, who was born after AOL was invented, directed us back to women’s accessories, even though his handheld device did not say any bandanas existed. “Try over in scarves,” he said.

On our way there, we paused, as we were growing weary. “Mr. Target has not walked this store and thoroughly as we have,” I kvetched. As I paused to gather myself, as if I had reached base camp in the Himalayas, I noted a plush toy that was a sort of cute avocado.

What in the millennial.

“I want to avocuddle” the plush toy read.

“Why is this necessary in life?” I asked The Poet, who had begun to look wan.

In sum, because my report report is here, we were at Target for one hour and found (let me do some math in my head) ZERO bandanas. We found one scarf with a sort of bandana pattern, but it was the size of a dollar bill.

Eventually I hooked up The Poet to an IV so she could regain her strength, dropped her at home where she promptly changed her number so I could never contact her again, and drove home, got on Amazon, and 14 seconds later had a set of 18 bandanas on their way to my house.

And by the way, I tried to rockabilly one in my hair and looked precisely like Sammy Hagar, so further reports as YouTube tutorials warrant.

Hanky pankily,
Scarfless June

[whinny]

Last night started the summer movies that you know I like to go to, at my old theater.

• 

  Killjoy was here

I saw, for the first time, Rebecca, a film I assumed I’d seen before because I took a Hitchcock class in college, which was harder than it sounds. Anyway, I had not. But what I discovered was that Young Frankenstein definitely got its inspiration for Frau Bleuger from this movie.

• 

• 

[whinny!]

In fact, I kept leaning over to Ned and whinnying any time the maid spoke, a thing that did not beleaguer Ned in the slightest. When our host, a guy who, I don’t know, manages the theater? Owns it? Whatever his role, any time I see him in public it’s like a celebrity sighting, kind of like how that one time my Aunt Mary saw a QVC host and squealed.

My point is this. Despite having three teensy kittens who have fortunately graduated to being fed every FIVE hours now (freedom!) and despite getting work emails that began at 6:08 a.m. (why are people up?) I am here telling you about Sunday cause I said I would. Oh, and I didn’t finish my thought above, what a shock. The theater’s host or owner or whomever always gives a little speech before the movie, and any time he says there’s no smoking in the theater, I dramatically suck the last of my imaginary cigarette and stomp it out with my heel.

“That never stops being funny,” said Ned, who was about to be whinnied at 407 times in the next two hours.

Anyway, Sunday. Not to be confused with sundae because I am fat.

I had my tattoo party on Sunday. My neighbor, A, told me about it originally, and I have been texting with the tattoo guy, and truth be told, I did not get what I asked for, but I am coming around to sort of liking it. Here is what I asked for:

I wanted an iris, because Iris. The idea was I wanted that stem, a thin stem, to go up the side of my wrist, and then up near the top would be a teensy iris.

Here is what I got.

Yeah, I know. I kept saying, “I want it teensy.” I think tattoo people don’t like to do tiny, delicate tattoos. I remember a place in Seattle saying if you want a tattoo that’s smaller than a dime, forget it. I mean, isn’t that up to us? Charge us a minimum. Anyway, there we have it.

After I got my large tattoo, I asked Ned if he wanted to go get ice cream out in the country. I realize I hang around Ned too much, but ice cream. Didn’t I just refuse to say sundae, above? This is why I am fat. I forget. I forget I’m fat.

Here is what happened. You have to drive up to order ice cream now, rather than walk into the place, and it’s arranged in an inconvenient way, where the menu isn’t seeable until it’s your turn, and then you have to panickedly read it while the person is standing there to take your order. The flavors can differ. Luckily for us all, Ned always gets peach in a regular cone

NOT

A

WAFFLE

CONE!!! This is vv important to Ned. If they had a kale cone he’d get that. Motherfucker’s getting ICE CREAM, but oh, watch the sugar in that cone.

I always want something with nuts in it. But that day, all they had was butter pecan and I get that constantly, so here’s what I did. I asked for two kid-sized scoops, not that they are the size of a child, in a cup. I asked for double chocolate and coffee flavors.

What they gave us was one cone (NOT WAFFLE) for Ned and TWO CUPS for me. “Can you hold mine while I park?” asked Ned, who forgot I am not an Indian goddess with 8 arms.

By the time we’d parked, the ice cream had melted everywhere, and there was no catching up to it, and apparently Sunday was a day that no one understood what I meant when I said I wanted anything.

“I’m never coming back here again,” I said, in my covered-in-detritus-Jackie-Kennedy-in-Dallas ensemble,

• 

It wasn’t just there. No. I had ice cream all the way to the bottom of my pants. It was absurd. If I ever go there again—AND I’M NOT—I will demand they don’t fill it to the top. GEEEEEEZUS.

I have some stuff from the dollar store called Awesome, and it all came out, miraculously.

I have to go. I wish people wouldn’t send work email before 8 or after 5. It gives me the willies, and I know there are mellow people for whom this is not an issue, but for me if ruins every moment because I feel like I should be interrupting my not-at-work life to answer work things.

I’ll talk to you later, about bandannas, and by now this had better be the best bandana story in the history of all bandana stories. Also, I can’t get on Facebook so you’ll just have to come looking for posts or subscribe or something. They want me to get some sort of app to get on the app that is Facebook. Answer: No.

Rebelliously,
June [whinny!]

Indiana Junes

So many things happened this weekend that I don’t even know if I can cram it all into this tiny closet but Ima try.

I see that I literally did not take one photo on Friday, which tells me Friday was some sort of hellish one-thing-after-another day that likely involved work and neonatal kittens and maybe eating things.

On Saturday, I had to get up early for my trainer, and really, is there anything worse than having to set your alarm on the weekend? I mean, maybe you’re one of those go-getter types who loves to arise at 5 on Saturday and take a jog over to TJ Maxx to be the first in line as soon as they open and then you run to the garden store and re-sod 90 acres and then cook an elaborate meal for 40 of your friends, and if you are that type why the HELL would you read this blog?

I have never understood people with drive and ambition. Doesn’t it suck? Like, don’t you feel a terrible urgency that isn’t there?

Anyway, Saturday.

After the trainer (I’m benchin’ 30 now, and I realize I should join the circus, what with this freakishly strong upper-body strength), I planned to drive to Blueberry Thrill, which is this pretty farm out in the country that sells peaches and blueberries and the like. Since I’ve aged, I’ve gotten oddly intolerant of everything, but also of anything sour or bitter. So while I USED to enjoy a blueberry, the random sour one is now so repulsive to me that I just can’t.

So I was headed into the country for peaches but not blueberries when I saw a kid pulled over, attempting to lure a Beagle running into the road and then away, into the road, then away. “Oh, for the love,” I said, and pulled over too.

“Is that your dog?” I asked the kid, and for all I know he was 16 or he was 30. They all look the same.

“No, but I saw him running and pulled over. There’s another one, too. They’ve been swimming in the creek.”

Sure enough, from out of a very green creek came a white-faced pit, waggling and smiling and happy as shit to be loose, high and free.

“There’s a number on the Beagle’s collar,” said the kid, who was able to just, you know, look at the collar and read the number. He didn’t have to pat himself all over, looking for reading glasses. I suppose I was that person once, too.

He read me the number and I called it, and while that was happening, that damn Beagle kept running into the road. “Wanna go for a ride?” I asked, in my Edsel exciting-news voice.

I want you to gird your loins, but she did. She did wanna go for a ride.

No one answered my call, which I wrote off to me being a weird number. They were probably certain I was calling from Internal Revenue Service about Social Security number. Do you get 90 of those calls a day? “This is Internal Revenue calling.” Sure, Jan.

“Well, I’ll keep the Beagle in my car and you can put the pit in your car,” I said, and we tried that, but that pit would not budge. He stared longingly at my car.

“You wanna go for a ride with your sister?” I asked, and I based the sex of the Beagle on her name being Dixie. Maybe she was part Whistler. I realize there’s no breed called a Whistler. Cut me some slack. I’ve been busy. My funny is buried under all my Outlook meetings. Anyway, I hope you didn’t de-gird your loins, because the pit also too was down for a ride in the car.

Eventually I decided to drive the dogs to my house and await the call from the owner. Yes, I understand I have a dog-hating dog and many tasty cats here. But what else could I do?

• 

  Brad Pit muddee

• 

  Jessica Beagle delite to be looos

I just came up with those names, and hang on while I capture self in oil.

I had my lure-a-dog crackers with me, and while I drove I handed those into the back, where Brad Pit ate all of them. He may’ve been unwilling to leave his Beagle sister, but he sure was willing to let her starve to death. Of course I worried either of their brains would snap and they’d commence spontaneously eating my throat, but they were very good dogs. We were halfway home when my phone rang. Sure enough, it was the owner, and I turned around, Bright Eyes, and took them home.

They live on lots of land, where they can roam for ages, but when you’re a Beagle, that’s not good enough. Talu had Beagle in her. I know of what I speak. The Beagle urge to roam is mighty.

Fortunately, I still had 45 minutes after my heroic dropoff of the dogs to get to Blueberry Thrill before they closed. I dropped off the pit to get to the Peach Pit.

Dear June: Just don’t try to be funny. We’ll all be better off.

As I drove there, I realized the best part of life is the thinner slice, and also that I had had two giant mugs of coffee before the trainer, one large glass of water after the trainer, and suddenly I had the urge. The call of nature. I had to shake the dew off the lily. I fixed my friend Sleeping Beauty up with a friend once and he SAID that on the FIRST (and only) date.

Anyway, I was tempted to just drive home, but the Google said I was only 5 minutes away from Blueberry Thrill, so I said, Look. You can hold it. It’ll be OK. Just get’cher peaches and go.

It was the CUTEST place, by the way. And fortunately for me, there was a port-a-john. I never go in those unless I’m completely desperate, but I can tell you that the dew needed to get off that lily, man. So even though I was convinced I was peeing on a copperhead, I did it and was glad to. There was even a little sink outside with running water. I was so happy, and I walked happily along the happy road to the happy store to get my peac–

SON OF A…

I see that typing this has taken up my whole lunchtime, and I only got to Saturday afternoon, which leaves out the many things that happened on Sunday. This means I’ll have to come back, and I just remembered I told you LAST time that I’d tell you about The Poet and me trying to buy bandanas, as we have big plans to rob a train, so now there are myriad reasons for you to return to the serial drama that is my life.

I’ll try to write tomorrow. I have one of my old movies tonight so I’ll be out late, and also I have many bottle-consuming kittens, and also my job, and also my regularly scheduled pets, and also…

Look, I’ll TRY. OK? I’ll TRY.

With only 4 days left till she’s 56 and even more lame,
June

This ain’t no place to be if you planned on bein’ a star

At the start of the long weekend, I made a list.

Careful readers will note I got everything accomplished on that list, but to tell you the truth, I could probably do one more load of laundry. I tried to tell myself it was a negligible amount of stuff left over, but I was kidding no one.

Nevertheless, I have the satisfaction of crossing everything off, but let me tell you what: Everything on my list saw travesty in some iteration.

On Saturday morning, when I was still fresh and feeling positive about the world [Disclaimer: I was over the world by the time I was 8], I called the oil place. I don’t mean I called deep inside the earth; I mean I called a place that changes your oil. I bought my car in December 2019, had SURGERY in February of 2020, then remained in my house for a year and three months after that. This has resulted in me finally putting 3,000 miles on my car, like, last week.

The first place I called is a homey car repair less than a mile away. They have excellent junk food in their lobby and everyone is really friendly. It seems to be run by a bunch of old people who I assume are related. Also, they have several framed and unframed photos of their dogs about the room.

Anyway, the phone just rang and rang there so I gave up. Then I called a chain. Not, like, a literal chain, as they do not have hands with which to answer a phone. I called some sort of oils are us oil-changing place.

“Yes; do I need to make an appointment to get my oil changed?”

“Ma’am, today you’d just hafta to drop your car off. Err’body gettin’ they earl changed today, for the holiday.”

I immediately loved him. I love people who just go ahead and talk like this on a work call.

“OK,” I said, charmed by Mr. Earl Change. “I’ll come Monday.”

“That’d be a whole lot better for all of us,” he said, and hung up.

So, next on my list was to clean my car. See above re 3,000 miles after a year and 7 months. I don’t know if I’ve ever vacuumed the inside of it, and here’s why. Back in my old neighborhood was this car wash where you drove up, told them which package you wanted (I always opted for the middle one. Not the cheap no-frills wash, and not the wash where they practically paint a mural on your car and add eyelashes to the headlights, a thing I have always sort of wanted and am also sort of appalled by), then you sat in the lobby perusing bad greeting cards and those scented trees while they did all the work. If you wanted to, you could stand at the window and watch your car go through the washy thing, then watch the men wiping and hosing and squirting your car with vanilla at the end. I always went for vanilla, and if they forgot that final touch I’d always ask for it. One of the other scent choices was baby powder, and I can’t for the life of me understand why you’d want your car to smell like a child’s ass.

That nice quaint car wash has changed to this miserable futuristic multi-station contraption where you have to do all the work. You have to vacuum your own car, and wipe out its insides and then hose it yourself. What sort of outrageous request is THAT? Why am I paying YOU for me to do all the WORK? This idea incensed me. The first time I saw that place, I lit the top of my head on fire and smoked nag champa-ly.

So I looked for another full-service car wash by, you know, Googling it, and the only one I can find in my town in the titty car wash. Women will wash your car for you, sans shirts, in another part of town. This seemed sort of, I don’t know, oppressive, so I drove to a self-serve car wash a mile from me. “I’ll just vacuum the inside,” I told myself. That was all I wanted. Edsel, see, rides with me any time I’m going somewhere that I don’t go inside, like if I’m mailing a letter or going to the delicious drive-thru at Captain D’s. I bring him because he always THINKS he wants to go with me, but then gets his hangdog letter C look when I turn the car on. And then he nervously sheds. So at this point the inside of my car is a cashmere sweater.

This car wash was pretty much in a bad neighborhood, and I considered that I might be bludgeoned to death for my 2018 Fiat 500X, but I would’ve led with that had it happened. Mostly it was just people also hosing out their cars. I pulled into a station next to a middle-aged man, who was happily vacuuming his SUV.

I got out of my car and read the instructions on the vacuum thingie, and got my dollar out to—-

No dollars. The damn thing didn’t take dollars. Nor did it take debit cards. What kind of rinky-dink…oh! There was a change station in the middle, and also a vending machine that sold those car trees. Those car trees, by the way, make me immediately sick as soon as I smell any of them. I have never seen the appeal. Although once I went Christmas tree shopping with my friend Beige, back in LA. I’d been to a Christmas party the night before, so I had on hangover sweats, a random t-shirt, and my beaded party bag because I was too lazy to change purses. Anyway, we crammed a 6-foot tree into my Volkswagen Bug, which meant we could no longer see each other, as there was evergreen sticking all the way from the back of the car to in between us.

“These trees in your car really do make it smell like pine!” I said, then patted own self with affection.

Anyway, the car wash. I put my four quarters in that I’d gone to all the trouble to retrieve, the vacuum turned on with a roar, and?

No suction. None. It just made a lot of noise and rested atop the Edsel fur.

What the…?

“Is your vacuum working?” I asked the middle-aged man next to me.

“Oh, yeah, mine’s working real good!” he said. “I’m fixin’ to leave, you want to come to this one.”

So I got MORE QUARTERS, and I have half a mind to sue that place for my lost dollar. Anyway, his did work better but you know what? It didn’t work that well. There was still a ton of Edsel fur in the car.

Then I was determined.

I drove to ANOTHER car wash, in an even WORSE neighborhood, and I don’t know why I didn’t just go somewhere nice, but these were so close by and I was exhausted from all that quarter-retrieving. Once again, this place didn’t have full service, even though Google said they did. I’d long given up the pipe dream of a place where men ran about hosing and wiping your car. I just wanted a drive-thru where you sat inside and that hula dancer came out at the end and wiped your car automatically. That’s all I needed at that point. Just the hula dancer.

But no. More vacuum machines and more banks with hoses.

It was then that I decided to try not just the bad vacuum bank, but the drive-in-there-and-wash-it-yourself part. My car needed washing, and clearly I was never going to find a place to wash it for me. “Lots of people a lot stupider than you know how to drive into these things and wash their car,” I told myself. I tell myself this a lot, and nearly always end up being a lot stupider than everyone I assume is a lot stupider than me.

There was a tall, detailed sign describing each part of your car washing experience. I think you could CHOOSE which parts you wanted, but I couldn’t figure out how to choose. I put in my $1.50 (this place at least took debit cards) and

WRRRRRRRR!!!!!

all sorts of things came alive. Do you remember that scene in Naked Gun where Leslie Nielsen is trying to spy in an office at night, and the lights, sprinkler system and player piano all come on at once? That was me in that stupid car wash bank.

WRRRRRR!!!

I wish someone had filmed me turning in circles in that thing. What do I grab first? I went to one hose but that wasn’t it. I went to the giant brush but it wasn’t doing anything.

WRRRRnnnnnn…

OUT OF TIME. Oh my GOD I hadn’t DONE anything yet. I slid my card in a second time and grabbed the first hose. Oh! It had water trickling out of it!

I sprayed my car and then realized I had to turn this dial next to the debit card slot to get to the next level in my car wash game. There was pre-rinse, rinse, lather, rinse, repeat, wash, tumble dry, dry out, oily/dry/combination, it was a litany of things allegedly coming out of that hose. I was about three levels in before I noted the hose had a HANDLE, and if you pushed it, a lot more product came out.

Then my hose stopped working, and it was several suspenseful seconds before I noted the big brush was foaming at the mouth.

“Oh my god!” screeched, and scrubbed my car with the brush. I looked liked a nervous member of the Toothbrush Family.

The most suspenseful part was that I kept running out of TIME, so I’d have to go swipe my card again, and I estimate that whole thing cost $5,000. I sort of have a goal of getting all the steps in for the first $1.50, just to stick it to the man, but I also have a goal of never doing this to myself even again.

I know this story is similar to the last one I told you, in which everything went wrong, and I’d like to also mention that like the last story, I ended up hosing self and becoming soaked. Also, in looking at that photo of the Toothbrush Family, I had completely forgotten Suzy Sponge and wonder how she’s doing. Did she update that hair?

I won’t bore you with my “How the hell do you hold this dryer?” part of the car wash story. Suffice it to say that every step was a challenge, and if someone doesn’t invent a local car wash where they do the work for you, I will end up having one of those cars where people write WASH ME in it.

Eventually, soaked and irritated and still full of fur, I pulled out of my stupid car wash bank and turned around to head home.

And that’s when I saw that the middle bank was, in fact, a full-service automatic car wash.

And then, on the way home, I remembered I have a cordless vacuum at home that’s made specifically for animal hair.

So.

Stay tuned for the next travesty: June and The Poet try to find a bandana.

TickTok

I have a story to tell you that’s really more than a story. It’s more of a saga, like The Thorn Birds, just without the monsignor sex. And I realize I have some nerve just showing up here after being missing for so long, but I assure you I am busy, which is why this saga was particularly painful. Even more painful than that initial intrusion by Ralph de Bricassart.

I’m breaking it into sections, because saga.

Early June
Edsel had a dark spot in his ear. As we know, his ear has a lot of real estate

• 

  rezzent

and it turns out, a tick had moved in. It must have felt so luxurious to said tick, like moving to a ranch in Montana after living in Manhattan. Edsel’s original name was Montana, and I guess we now understand why.

Anyway, I grabbed my tweezers and deleted said tick from our lives before I could think about it. Then I flapped my hands around heebie-jeeebily for a bit and carried on with my life. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I am helping with a book we are writing at work. I am enjoying it, but it turns out books are a lot of work. So after several very manly minutes of flapping about disgustedly, I returned to thinking about work.

Mid-June
Edsel presented with a spot on his snout, and I enjoy my medical use of “presented” because I think about health a lot and now I have become a doctor. Of medicine, not of Dre.

Or of Pepper.

We had slept in the same room together all night, Eds and I had, so I was extra heebed and jeebed when, the next morning, he leapt on my bed with what I thought was a scab on his snout but it was

ANOTHER

TICK.

I should’ve put this on TikTock.

This time, after I removed said tick from the premises, I not only bleached those tweezers like I was Howard Hughes, I also placed them in the cat cupboard, along with the eye ointments and flea medicine. Those tweezers have been relegated to pet use. And speaking of flea medicine, I pay $9,087 a month for Revolution for all the pets, a flea

AND

TICK

treatment that is supposed to work. And that is when I called my vet and said, “I spent $49.067 billion on Revolution every month, yet I am seeing ticks on my dog. Can you tell me what gives?”

As you can imagine, my local vet has named a wing of the office after me, so they were happy to tell me what gives, which is that A(, and I like how I fucked that up and I’m leaving it, but A(, Revolution does kill ticks but not for 36 hours

!!!!

and )B(: it’s the worst tick season on record. Ever. We’ve ticked again, like we did last summer, but only way worse.

Isn’t it enough we’re having a plague? We also have to get ticked off?

My vet prescribed me three vials and one chew of this NEW flea and tick treatment that you only have to apply every three months, which is good, because any time I apply that topical stuff onto the shoulderblades of the cats, they act the same way my mother does if you tell her Nixon was our greatest president, a thing a high school boyfriend did once just to see my mother spontaneously combust.

Honestly, they get so OFFENDED by that topical stuff. I don’t even think they can FEEL it, yet all three of them lift their skirts and screech. Anyway, I went to the vet and spent $417 on their treatment, which I could not put on them until July 1, as that is when their Revolution was officially plum wore out.

Late June
So, the pets would be safer come July, but what about all the ticks in my yard? My milkshake brings all the ticks to my yard. What about me? What about my needs? I don’t want any malaria or whatever ticks give you. Is it trichinosis? Is that what ticks give you? Maybe I am just a doctor of Pepper. I’m at least a sergeant of Pepper.

I did not want to have some company come out and spray for bugs because every night, I drag my exhausted, overworked ass outside and watch fireflies. It’s all I got. I blankly watch fireflies and then I go to bed. And also I did not want to kill the bees because all the bees are being killed and soon we will all die of beelessness, I forget why, but stuff like that makes me decidedly nervous.

So I did what anyone would do, and that’s head to the internet, where everything is believable. After I opened a pizza parlor that specialized in pepperoni made from the hind end of Chrissy Tiegen, I asked, “How can I get rid of the ticks in my yard without spraying? Say it, don’t spray it.”

And people came back with extremely helpful suggestions, such as, Get a gila lizard.

Oh, OK.

But one person said there’s this spray you can get that’s organic and has good vibes and is a Sagittarius, and it doesn’t kill bees or fireflies or anything. It just kills, like, chiggers and ticks and tacks and the like. I looked it up and after reading good things about it, I ordered it.

Later June
I know you are going to ask what KIND of spray, because no one can do anything online anymore without having to say where you bought everything one can see in the image. “Where did you get that sky?” “What brand of telephone pole is that?” But I’m not gonna TELL you what kind cause I’m about to complain about the bug spray and I don’t wish to be sued for all my millions, as I am a doctor. Doc Marten.

The organic hippy magic bus bug spray arrived, and for this I was glad. I would be tickless! Staying drier is nicer with a little Tickless.

Imagine the great things my mind could’ve done, imagine what a good doctor I’d be, had I used my mind for something other than remembering commercials and songs from the ’70s.

That night, after work, and did I mention I work a lot? I opened the box of the hippy Mama Cass’s ham sandwich bug spray. “Just attach it to your hose and spray!” it told me.

Just…what, now? This was not disclosed in their ad.

I mean, does everybody here have a hose? Do the makers of YinYang Bug Spray for your Vibes just assume we all have hoses? Because I SORT of do, but not really. I have two hoses that came with the house—

There’s some hose in this house, there’s some hose in this house.

Dear Tee: Please don’t watch this video. I want you to stay pristine, as I imagine you. Also, your husband is going to come into the room—after he overhears these lyrics—with a large butterfly net and drag you off to the home.

On the other hand, Tee, I sort of want you to secretly memorize these lyrics and just start singing them whilst you do dishes.

Anyway, there’s some hose in this house, but one of them is covered in duct tape and the other one doesn’t have an end. Like, there’s no metal at the end. It’s just the rubber hose, with which I wish to put up your nose. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Why did we think Welcome Back, Kotter was funny?

Nevertheless, I persisted, and attempted to attach the hoses to my Free to be You and Me bug spray, and you’ll be stunned to hear it didn’t work.

Goddammit, I said, coming in covered in ticks, tacks and toes. So I ordered a hose online.

The late, late show with June in June
The hose arrived, and after a harrowing day at work, I unpacked it and went outside. It fit! It attached! It…barely went to my back yard. I was meant to spray the Age of Aquarius bug spray all around the perimeter of my yard, but this was not possible as the new hose was 14 inches long.

Goddammit, I said, coming back in with a tic.

So I ordered ANOTHER hose, to attach to the new hose.

July
Meet the new hose. Same as the old hose.

Today, July onest, I GOT THE NEW HOSE, and after

READING AN ENTIRE BOOK TODAY, NO, SERIOUSLY,

I unpackaged the second hose, the new Darren Stevens, and headed outside. They attached to each other! They fit inside the jug of Peace Sign bug spray! I turned the hose on with my smile, headed into the back yard, and?

It wouldn’t turn on. The damn jug didn’t spray. Turns out there’s this plastic dial at the side, that only the world’s strongest men, the kind who have to join the circus, so bemuscled are they, can turn.

GODDAMMIT, I said, all ticky tacky. I went inside and watched a YouTube video of how to use the spray. The cheerful woman in the video who probably owned a good hose straightaway just TURNED that dial like it was nothing. Determined, I headed back outside. I pulled and I tugged and I tugged and I turned and finally that DAMN thing gave a little, so I turned the water back on the hose, and?

SPKLIRRRRTTTTT.

One of the hoses? Broken. BROKEN! It sprayed all over me, all over my yard, all over yonder, and, soaked, I unscrewed it from the other new hose.

GODDAMMIT, I said, ticking like a time bomb.

I decided to just spray as much of the yard as I could using the one hose I had, but when I turned on the water, it turns out, that hose, like, expands, and it stretched all the way to the back of my yard. So I needlessly bought a second one, needlessly waited to spray while the ticks mated and flew friends in and had themselves cloned.

So finally, finally, the hose was hooked up, I was at the back of the yard, I had the turny thing on the bottle turned, and?

Nothing came out of the jug. WATER was coming out, but the level in the jug never moved.

GODDAMMIT, I said, ticked pink.

Maybe I had the nozzle the wrong way. My engineer’s mind told me to turn it the other way and maybe product would come out. So I did, and then I turned the water back on (each time I did this, I had to slog back to the faucet and then back to the end of my yard, and each time my yard seemed to get longer and longer and hotter and hotter) and then?

SPKLIRRRRRRTTTTTT!!!

The spray sprayed ME. I mean, it was like a fire hose, spraying me. I think I blew back a few feet.

I had on my The Hermit t-shirt, which looks like the tarot card of The Hermit, except it’s a cat instead of a hermit, and I can tell you that I won the wet t-shirt contest going on at the home of June, over here. My Hermit shirtmit wasn’t just soaked, my entire ENSEMBLE was soaked.

Eventually, I just unscrewed the top of the hippie jug and dumped the stuff around my yard, hoping it kills something. It already killed my will to live.

Still July
Then I had to slog back through my yard, soaked, and drag the dang fire hose with me to put back on the hangy thing, and I did this with my clothes clinging to me like Melanie clung to Ashley when he returned from the war and I realize I need to get a new example. Then I had to take the broken hose, and drag IT through my yard and onto a chair, so I can return it or maybe hang self with it, I am not decided yet.

Attached please find an unretouched image of me after the whole ordeal was done.

• 

  What humidity? What stress hair?

In sum, no ticks were harmed in the making of this blog post.

And that is the end of my Thorn in my side Birds saga.

The one where everyone bends over forward to help

It’s Sunday night, and I’m writing you now instead of tomorrow morning because not ONLY do I have my trainer before work in the a.m., but afterward I have to screech over to the lab, not that I am rushing to a dog, although I would.

Three months ago, I had some labs done, not that I arranged for someone to have sex with a bunch of labs. They really need to get two entirely separate words for the dog breed and for the place you have your blood drawn. Why are they the same word?

Anyway, three months ago, I found out my cholesterol was 6,893 and so I started nights with white statins and also working out with my trainer, which is why I never have time to blog in the morning and now we’re back in the full circle of life.

Nants ingonyama bagithi baba
Sithi uhm ingonyama
Nants ingonyama bagithi baba
Sithi uhhmm ingonyama
Ingonyama
Siyo Nqoba
Ingonyama!

Sorry. Didn’t mean to swear or become The Exorcist. …Is that up there an actual language or did the people who wrote that song just make up words, words that have no meaning, like “narcissist” or “delayed gratification”?

…I just looked it up and it’s Zulu. If anyone up in here speaks Zulu, tell us what those lyrics mean.

ANYWAY, tomorrow after the trainer I have to zip over to the Dalmatian and have my blood drawn to see if the statin islands did me any good, and they might have done me more good if I remembered to take them, you know, every night.

So that’s exciting. And that’s what brings me here on a Sunday, despite that song telling me to never ever on a Sunday, a Sunday.

What is wrong with me tonight? Can you feel the love tonight?

I gathered you all here on this Sunday to tell you about my sex-filled weekend [disclaimer: there was no sex] but first I want to show you all the animals. Well, Edsel is in his dog bed and I can’t see him but you can at least see what all the cats’re up to. Let’s catsup with the cats!

• 

  girls on film

• 

  Guess who just got back today: them wild-eyes boys that’d been away

Those really weren’t riveting photos of the cats, per se, but my captions were impeccable.

When Zelda and Lily sleep together, they’re like one gray/white lump.

Also, the fact that there is some video game called Zelda annoys me, and I’d have never gone with that name had I known. Now everyone thinks I’m over here playing Pong and shit. Do you prefer Gilda? But once again, I’m thinking of the movie character and not, say, some random Gilda from a Marvel movie or whatever lowbrow thing there is I don’t know about.

Wait. Why does no one like me? I don’t get it. It’s not at all because I’m Major Burns with my pretentiousness or anything, is it?

Oh my god, the weekend. Or as the kids spell it, weeknd.

On Friday, I feel like I worked late and then looked at fireflies till late. I can’t recall anything else that happened.

But on SATURDAY, my friend Marianne came to see me, and at this point I feel like the same people have been reading me since aught six and don’t need me to tell the whole “Who’s Marianne and how do you know her” story. Old friend who lives in Charlotte. The end.

Anyway, she and I were gonna meet in Winston-Salem, because meeting in Winston tastes good like a cigarette should, but she offered to come all the way here, as she knew I had a fairly harrowing week. As soon as she got here (she brought me a peach-colored iris plant in honor of Iris, and I planted it out front. Further reports as blooms warrant), my lounge chair also got here, and I said, “Oh! My chair! Let’s just put it together and we can go!”

She’d wanted to go to the hippie crystal store in my neighborhood. So we figured clip clap cloom, the chair would piece together and boom, we were off. I really thought that.

An hour later, we were still in my back yard, on the hot patio in the hot sun having a hot girl summer with ZERO INSTRUCTIONS for the chair. And it had bolts and nuts and washers and dryers and oh my god we did not know what we were doing. So then we texted A, my neighbor, who has come over to rescue me from other disasters, such as the time I removed my doorknob and deadbolt and was unable to fit the new one in and it was getting dark and the old one no longer fit cause I’d sanded the hole, so to speak, and anyway sadly for A, she answered my text and then came right over.

An hour after that first enjoyable hour, we were all on my hot patio in the hot son having a hot dog! good time STILL PUTTING THAT FEKKING CHAIR TOGETHER.

And I say “we” but really I stood there like a princess, like a princess she was lying there, moonlight dancing off her hair, because did I know the first thing about putting that chair together with no instructions? Am I able to look at a chair and use my spatial relations skills to piece nuts and bolts and washers and dryers together to make a chair?

I am not.

So finally, FINALLY, those two bitches finished my chair and I was able to lounge on it the way god intended. But then we had like six minutes till the hippie crystal store closed, and so we all screamed over to it.

Naturally, A. took a big shine to Marianne, as everyone does, and I announced that I wish just once, someone would be all, “Your friend Marianne kind of sucks.” But no. My whole family is always all, “Oh! How is Marianne!” or “You’re gonna see Marianne!? Aww.”

At the store, Marianne got her eye of Newt Gingrich or whatever it was she needed so she could go home and hail Satan or whatever, and then we all went to the brewery, wherein I bought everyone a drink to thank them for doing manual labor for me.

A. told me how she’s going to a tattoo party in a few weeks and is deciding what tattoo to get, and she said I could come too and now I am obsessing over what I can get. Maybe I’ll get sleeved out, or have my whole face done like that Post Toasty or whatever his name is.

When I was at the crystal store with Marianne looking into the soul of the person next to me, I signed up for a tarot reading, which careful readers will note I could just do myself, as I know how to do the tarot. But this reader was the same person who, in 2011, predicted I’d meet Ned at the beginning of 2012, and careful readers will note I got Lily and Ned on the same day: January 5, 2012. Then two days later I broke my vomit streak and Lily was probably all, “wyyy Lillee have to live in pyuke howse?”

Anyway, I’d love to go get my pages of notes from today’s (yesterday’s, for the rest of you, since I’m writing on Sunday) reading, but since I have starting penning this tome the following has happened:

Milhous was ALSO up on me but when I grabbed my phone to show you my three cat night, he left in a huff. How dare I move freely. Anyway, don’t be sad, cause two out of three ain’t bad and it’s also enough cat on me that I feel guilty about getting up to get my notes.

But I remember some predictions. She said I have money coming my way, and I always appreciate cash money. She also thinks I will be doing more with my own tarot readings in the future. Also too, she thinks I will start a romantic relationship in October and that it will lead to a commitment, or perhaps I will need to be committed, either way.

I was thinking I was done with relationships, so we’ll see. Remind me, when I’m swept up in hot heaty hot romance at Halloween that the tarot reader predicted this.

She said other things but cats prohibiting me from note-looking.

I had better go. I like to get my workout clothes all laid out so that I can jump into them like a Porky Pig cartoon, remember that one? Where he gets up in the morning and leaps into his clothes? Well. His shirt. He leaped into his shirt. He never did pull on any pants. How did he not get fired?

My 97 cats and the one dog will talk at you tomorrow. Well. Day after tomorrow, for me. Tomorrow for you. Dear June: Get over the part where you’re writing this on Sunday.

Ingonyama!
June

It’s a new day! STFU.

Here’s part of my problem: When I open this laptop in the morning to type at you, I can see my work email, and it always, always has a ton of new emails on it. I open those, even though it’s, for example, 7:33 a.m. and I don’t have to “be” at work for at least another 57 minutes (we don’t have real start times, but the general feeling is you’ll be available around 8:30–9:00), there always seems to be something that HOOKS me in. Some question I want to answer RIGHT AWAY or something, and next thing you know, old Jed’s a millionaire but not June, who does not make enough to become a workaholic, which is where I’m headed.

My point is, each morning there is a message from something called Cortana or Corlandia or some such, which is I think part of having Microsoft Office. It’s helpful, actually, because it shows you how much “quiet time” you have each week (as in how much time you had to actually work at work and not answer emails or go to meetings) and it also send you a list of shit you said you’d do in emails. As in, “I’ll find out and get back to you.” I don’t know how Cornholio knows what I write, the nosy little minx, but you can check off, Yes, I did this or No, remind me again and that’s lovely.

But today, Cornwallis’s subject line read, “IT’S A NEW DAY!!!!” like it was on an upward swing with its bipolar disorder, and it rankled. Yes, I am aware that it’s a new day. I got up when I didn’t want to, drank a bunch of coffee, gave myself GERD, drove to trainer, and now have a full day of meetings and things I’m already nervous about. I’m aware that IT’S A NEW DAY!!!!, Miss Excitement.

There’s little I hate more than a positive attitude.

Speaking of which, do you know who Nick Cordero is, or was? He was an actor, he was 41, and he died horrifically of COVID. His wife, who was also an actor but also an exercise instructor and also hot, got sort of Internet famous as he was in the hospital. That’s when I started following her. She’d update us on his condition. He was in the hospital from late March, when they thought he had pneumonia, to early July, when he died.

His wife, Amanda Kloots, has one of those sunny attitudes I generally abhor. But despite this, I was on her side and was hoping things would work out, and then he died. They had a one-year-old at the time. Isn’t that awful?

Anyway, Amanda Kloots and her sister, Anna, who sort of irks me, wrote a book together about the experience. I follow both of them now (I sort of irk-watch the sister) (she lives in Paris and can’t shut up about it, and I think I’ve told you this before, but she’ll literally have pictures taken of her walking around Paris with balloons) (I can hear all five of you going, Ohhhhh. OK, sure).

THE POINT IS, they wrote a book and it came out yesterday and I’d preordered it, so there it was at my house yesterday, and I had an insane day that involved NOT being able to read a BOOK till about 9:30. So while Zelda leapt repeatedly at my EAR, which she made BLEED last night and got her first nail clip (she was surprisingly serene about that) I read that book. Before I opened it, I thought, “I’d start right in the middle of the drama and go backwards” and that’s just what they did.

Then I looked up and it was goddamn 11:00 and I was annoyed.

I find myself waiting all day to get to do something I want to do, and then that part gets here and moves too fast and then I have to go do something I don’t wanna do, like go to bed cause I have the trainer so early. Do you know what I hate, other than everything? Is people who think saying “butt crack of dawn” is funny.

So today I have work, of course, and meetings, of course, and then after work I have another movie at my old theater, so I won’t be reading my book again till 9:30 and it will happen all over again.

Do you know what I hate, other than everything? Is people who say, “Lather, rinse, repeat” when they mean they’re going to do something the same way again the next day.

First of all, my shampoo doesn’t lather, because Curly Girl method. The term “Curly Girl” irks me too, and it has become clear to me I need to go back on my antidepressant, but last time I did, I broke the longest streak I’ve ever had of not having a migraine. So now I’m afraid to take another one and instead everything is irking me, like balloons in Paris.

It’s just so affected.

OK, I’d better go. Oh, I guess if I have an adorable kitten, you’re gonna want a photo of her, aren’t you? She’s in the kitten room, eating breakfast. Hang on and I will go photograph her assy self. Did I mention she feels better from her upper respiratory thing and she is not, 100% not, a mellow kitten? They sold me a bill of goods.

^^^ This is not a kitten. I wanted to show you how I had to make the bed today, so as not to disturb Milhous.

Here is a kitten. This is a fairly awkward family photo, but she wanted to run and play and break my EAR again. What was the name of that boxer guy who bit the other guy’s ear?

Garp bit Bonkie.

OK, I gotta go. I gotta go do things until 9:30 tonight, when I can read my book.

• 

  Current situation. She WILL jump at my face. I guarantee you. “Oh, she’s so MELLOW.”

XO,

Clawed June

Zelda Hissgerald

I never slept last night. I do not know what the deal was. Although I do have to tell you that the fine folks at Coca-Cola have made a Coke with COFFEE in it, and I did imbibe in one of those. But are those powerful enought to make me not sleep all night? What the hell, man? Is there Ritalin in them?

I had my trainer at 7:00 a.m. today, so at about 5:30 this morning I just gave up and got out of bed. Then I went to the trainer, and while I was there, I got a call from the vet that I could bring my new kitten in as long as I got there before 9:00.

Oh, did you not know I have a new kitten? I do. I’ll tell you in a second.

I RUSHED out of the trainer’s, SCREECHED home, LEAPT into the shower, and with wet hair I drove that little kitten, Zelda, to her first vet appointment. I can tell she’s got a little upper respiratory thing happening, which is common in kittens, as her eyes are a little scrinchy.

Oh, did you not know I have a new kitten? Hold your horses. Geez.

As I drove back from the vet, having been two places already before 9:00, like the Army, I felt a terrible pull of exhaustion. I am ahead at work, so I ended up calling in sick. Then of course I got a work call like two minutes later. Still. I’m going to, what? Sleep? Should I sleep? I’m afraid I’ll be awake again all night tonight if I do that.

This happened to me one other time, in 2006, in LA. Three nights I could not sleep, THREE NIGHTS. And finally I called in sick to my job, and when I came back the next day there was an email from the owner of the company looking for me. I had never spoken to her before or since, and that was douche-chill horrifying. “Do you know when you’ll be back in?” Good gravy.

Oh, right, the kitten.

OK, so, first of all, when Iris died, I assumed I’d just have three cats. I mean, three cats is plenty, although between you and me, sometimes they’ll all be up on the dryer, eating, and it looks like a paltry amount of cats. But really, what did it for me is Lily. I did not think Lily and Iris were that close, but it appears they were. She jumped on the bed and stayed with Iris while Iris was being put to sleep, even putting her paw on Iris’s back while she was getting the shot. And then, she has been going out EVERY DAY since April, when Iris died, and she SITS at Iris’s GRAVE.

• 

  kitty of the corn

What’s the most heartbreaking about this is that you have to see these weeds. I am afraid to weed, as once I was doing so and a snake slithered out and I ALMOST FAINTED FOR REAL, so I let the lawn guy do it, but it’s been too rainy for him to mow. Which I spelled as “roo rainy” just now like I’m Astro.

Anyway, Lily likes the boy cats and they like her, but they run off to the way back and she is not interested in those shenanigans.

So this weekend, I was busy buying new/old dining room chairs and selling Peg’s online, which was a mistake.

“Four dining room chairs,” I wrote online. “All have arms. Light blue cushion. $50.” Then I told the story of how they belonged to my neighbor who was an interior designer, and how they are “good” chairs, but that they were too bulky for my table, and I really thought I had given too much info, really.

Then the responses came.

“How many chairs are there?”

“What color are the cushions?”

“Now, do they all have arms, or …?”

My favorite was, “Is the hutch still available?”

The…? The what, now?

“I’m selling chairs, not a hutch {you damp ham}.”

“Oh, I really only need the hutch. It’s not for sale?”

OH MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? There is NO HUTCH, Starsky.

So, one of the 87 people who claimed they were coming to get my chairs said she’d be here yesterday at noon, so for the THIRD TIME I was dragging those huge heavy chairs out of the shed and onto the patio, only to be stood up again. Anyway, whilst doing all that I saw Lily once again lying on Iris’s grave.

And I took action.

I seriously don’t want four cats. But I could not help myself. I looked on Next Door, where there were kittens galore available, selected one that was my type, drove to a church parking lot where the deal was made and brought home Zelda.

• 

  hemlo. am zelda.

I understand that she is absurdly cute. Lily took to her right away, which I suppose we all want to see as magical and so forth, but truthfully any time she gets to see any of my fosters she likes them too. Lily pretty much likes anything other than when Edsel accidentally steps on her.

I mostly kept Zelda in the kitten room so she could decompress, but she mewed to come out so I let her wander, so so far everyone has at least looked at her and there has been no incident. She seems quite taken with Lily, however, and for this I am glad. Currently she is at the vet, which I already told you but did I mention I’m lucky if I slept 45 minutes all night?

I feel so foggy. I’m Foghorn Awakehorn. It’s terrible. It’s so terrible I am making jokes like Foghorn Awakehorn, which makes no sense.

At any rate, I hope they tell me Zelda is OK, although they’ll have to give her something for her scrinchy eyes. They’re checking for peanuts or what have you in her stool. They’re checking for fleas and ticks and horseflies. They’re checking and saving. I really need to nap, I think.

Anyway, that’s the story. Oh, and I give up on selling those chairs. If anyone local wants them, come get them. If you stand me up I will find you and check your stool.

Sincerely,
June, of the four cats again Junes

Completely Modo

I have no doubt that you lovingly crafted and maintained a List of All June’s Ailments, so I know you’ll recall the plantar fasciitis of 2012. I remember the year because that’s the year I started dating Ned, and I was consumed with looking cute so he’d like me back. And no one looks cuter than Limpadoo Limpado, with her limp. “Won’t you have the relations with me? Here’s my hot Quasimodo impresh.”

So then I had to spend $100 on these MaryJanes that looked like I was teaching pottery at the Learning Annex.

No. Wait. You know what? The hard-soled MaryJane purchase was from the great broken toe debacle of 2017 or ’18.

The point is, I have plantar fasciitis again. And it’s hard to spell, which literally adds insult to injury. I think I got it because I was trying to walk a lot more to shed the 9,000 pounds I gained in my solitary don’t-get-the-plague year. I can’t even remember what I did about it those 9 years ago, when Lily was young and I wore heels to make Ned desire me. I think I got a shot in my heel.

SHOT IN THE HEEL, AND YOU’RE TO BLAME.

Ding DANG it I’m annoyed. This is why I should just sit around. Maybe find one of those men who are into chubby women.

In other news, no one will stop bugging me. Every sentence I write you, another notification pops up on my text or email. No wonder my heel hurts—OH MY GOD THERE GOES ANOTHER NOTIFICATION. I liked life better before we all got computers. Back when computers were this giant lit-up thing in a room somewhere like NASA.

Anyway, the stress is going to my heel. I suppose I could look at, like, cures for plantar fasciitis, or why is plantar fasciitis so ridiculous to spell, but I am pressed for time.

I have to go. I have a meeting I have to attend, and whenever I “go” to a meeting secretly looking bad, I fear they’ll say, “Let’s all turn our cameras on today!” and everyone will see me in my NC State t-shirt and tormentor on Princess Bride hair.

I went to see The Princess Bride at my old movie theater last night. I went with Ned, and I no longer care if he thinks I’m cute or not, so that’s a relief. Anyway, during the torture scene, I asked, “Does my hair look like that?”

“No,” said Ned, who wouldn’t tell me if it did.

Then during the scene with Carol Kane, I asked, “Does my hair look like that?”

“You want some M&Ms or something?” asked Ned, who I think wanted to change the subject because it so does. Now that it’s light, I so have Carol Kane in Princess Bride hair.

OK, I really have to go. Heel advice, please. And don’t tell me to use a prong collar.