Thursday night, I got a text from a couple I adore. I love going over to their house. They know how to throw down. The man part of the couple turnt (I’m hep!!!) 50 and they invited me over Friday for his birthday party. Why I gotta have an incision?
I was so upset. But I’m not allowed to drive, or do much, and they live maybe 15 minutes away. “Don’t worry,” they said. “We’ll get together soon.”
I know we will. But I wanted to right THEN. Have they met my impulse control?
The next day I got a text from my neighbor, R. She and her husband were headed to this really beautiful little town about 30 minutes from here, to go see a documentary. Did I want to go with them?
Dang my uterus.
And that is why, Saturday night, against my stern doctor’s strict important orders, I showered, put on makeup, even put on pants—PANTS! And drove to the next block where another neighbor was having a party.
I hadda get out, man. I was FOMOing at the mouth. I figured since it was so close to my own house, I could pop in there and as soon as I started to feel bad I could go home.
The photo at the top of this scintillating post is my pants at the party. I didn’t want to take pictures of people and then pop it up on this extraordinarily popular blog and expose their faces to the world, so I sneaked into the coat room and took this picture. Naturally, someone walked in just as I was doing it and I looked like a crazy person. “I have a blog,” I said, which didn’t make me sound any more sane. Or current.
The party was great. It was to celebrate my neighbor moving here a year ago. She has all sorts of interesting friends, and she even had a cake decorated like the logo of the mill that is the whole reason this little millhouse neighborhood exists.
I got there ridiculously early, because I asked some of you on Facebook of June what time you should attend a party that starts at 5:00, and most of you said about 5:15.
I was the third to arrive.
I cursed you all mightily, but talked to the few people who were there and you’ll be shocked to hear I let those people know that I had had surgery and that it was my first sojourn out of the house in 11 days.
Before long, other guests arrived, and had I gone with my instinct to get there at 5:45 I’d have arrived with them like how on sitcoms everyone walks in the door in a clump.
I hobbed and I knobbed, and finally I made my way back to the living room and saw that the mantle clock said 8 o’clock. “Look how well I did!” I said to the people I had met at the beginning of the party. “I stayed later than I thought I would!”
“That clock is wrong.”
Dammit.
Anyway, I stayed an hour and 45 minutes. I was tired when I got home but I didn’t feel so bad. Then Sunday I did feel kind of shitty, to tell you the truth. Kinda shaky. Damn this incision and curse it right. It cuts me to the quick.
But none of this is why I gathered you here. Since I have had nothing but time to convalesce during this, my convalescence, I have been noticing how many people have been being nice to me. Oh my God you guys, I have gotten food and presents and cards and flowers and of course my mother and stepfather flew all the dang way here, which by the way I remember almost none of.
Today on Facebook somebody said that when you’re in a predicament like the one I am in, you should make a list of the things you need done. Then when people ask what they can do, you can show them the list and they can pick something from it. I think this is brilliant.
So let’s talk about being helpful at times like this. [points microphone at you]
I guess you get my drift.
It’s Christmassy up in here.
As opposed to me. I have no element of ridiculous.
We didn’t tell them we were coming, didn’t know they’d be there. BRF Alex wasn’t, but her husband was.
I got a t-shirt I been sleeping in ever since, some locally made pumpkin bread, and some sugar sticks. (See the photo above. It’s the box of “Virginia Beauty.” I have a close-up picture of it, but WordPress is acting squirrely.)
They’re doing great, as long as you don’t mind food crumbs everywhere. And they’re ALL getting the hang of the litter box!
The runt is my special friend. She wasn’t eating the real food yet, so I started hand-feeding it to her like she was a bird or something, and now as soon as I walk in, she gets on my lap and screeches, MEEEEEEE.
I make a gruel, because the internet told me to, of canned kitten food, dry kitten food, kitten milk supplement and water. It looks disgusting but they adore it. And step directly in it. So.
I photographed self before the event, but once I was in there, surrounded by sweet pitty puppies and big-headed pits and so on, I felt like an idiot saying, “Can I photograph these dogs?”
My elbow has been killing me, and I thought, if only they had an ice sleeve, which sounded like something I made up. My doctor told me to ice my elbow twice a day, and I have been, but when I do, I have to sit motionless with an iced eye mask on my arm. It’s stupid. So in my head I invented a sleeve you can just wear, that’s iced.
Yesterday I saw my high school boyfriend Cardinal Hunter. He lives outside of Seattle, and yes, we both lived there at the same time for awhile. He was here because most of his family lives in North Carolina, which is weird, right? I can’t shake that damn Cardinal Hunter. It’s like tryina get a taffy wrapper off my hands.
He fell particularly in love with Erin, that tortoiseshell one, as she is a big starer. Eye contact is kind of her jam.
And that, my friends, is how a February 1982 phone call resulted in weird June Gardens nostalgically eating marshmallow in a cup in 2018. Just for a moment I was back in school. And felt that old familiar weirdness.
Wow. I don’t know anyone whose hair reflects her every mood the way mine does. This one says, “Harried.” Hair-ried.
My friend Lucy, from TinyTown, gave me this right when I moved into this house, and it’s been in my backyard ever since, and it’s been used ever since. Now, I know Iris isn’t strong enough to, you know, RIP a birdhouse open, and probably SD isn’t, either, but since he was inside (and so was Iris, actually), I know I don’t have to blame my own self for this horrific scene.
So yesterday at lunchtime, the electrician came over and replaced all 6 smoke alarms, and when the new ones went in they would beep a few times to let us all know they may be new but they’re still annoying. And as he did that I was tryina stay out of his way and I saw this.
Poor Eds was in the bathroom, being a letter C. A few minutes later, I walked past again and the electrician was standing over Eds, rubbing his dog chest. I dearly wanted to say, “May I photograph this moment for my blog?” but YOU try that and see how insane that makes you feel.
But it wasn’t an ax murderer. It be Aunt Alex. Note SD in the corner, with his Paw Wash of Disappointment.
Here’s one of my Amazon links to a CD. Back in the year 2000, which feels like five years ago but was EIGHTEEN, I trained for and ran a marathon. I also had a very fruity therapist, whom I loved, who changed her name from a nice Jewish lady therapist’s name (think something like Myra Goldblum) to something Indian-ish, because she was super duper into meditation and so on, and during some sort of seminar she was given a new name. So she went from Myra Goldblum to Sanguine.
A stunning 88% of you voted that my boss, fmr., keep that bird shirt. I hope she perches on that decision and spends some bills on this shirt.
We were double-breasted on the coat, too. It was pretty much half and half (49% yes, 45% no) on whether it should stay or should it go, now. If it goes it will be double (breasted) and if it stays it will be double (breasted, still).
At least we were all in agreement that we hated a wrinkle in time, over here. A weird 1.36% voted she should keep this. I’d like to hear from this elusive 1.36%. Do you also hate chocolate and Tom Hanks?
And, finally, we didn’t link to this cuff much. 58% said to unhand the cuff.
Then it was Sunday night, and your mom was spraying Hair So New on your wet hair while you watched Wonderful World of Disney
knowing you had school the next day and the weekend was over, and NO JUNE POST.
The reason I was going to write you Sunday is that my iPhotos had presented me with this weird grid the other day, a grid titled “People.” And indeed, it showed me people. Why these people, I don’t know.
As you know, from your Enormous Banana of June Events, my ridik coworker Camilo–whom I’m certain I’ve blog-named in the past but who can remember what I called him. I must be low on potassium.
“Is it the thing where you peel it from the bottom,” an unenthused coworker, who had a deadline, asked. Clearly she had not been on the banana boat earlier, when he’d already assured us it was WAY BEYOND the old opening-it-from-the-bottom trick.
“You know how sometimes you have a banana, and you want to share it with others?” he asked.
“Watch this,” he said, about to serve us a banana shakeup. Camilo stuck his thumb in the top of the banana, and pressed down.
Turns out, if you press the top of a peeled banana, it automatically divides into three sections. “It’s like it’s MADE to be shared,” he said. He wasn’t monkeying around. He handed banana sections to the whole bunch of us.
Anyway, I’m glad I had the brilliant idea to get together with Marianne, and that we had a good time even though we were done by, like, 7:00 rather than just going out at 7:00. It’s good to have people you can grow old with. Even though I’m getting hotter by the minute.