Category: Animules

Wherein I talk mostly about dogs.

On the Depilation of Felines

I’m the baby of the family and pretty much acted like one for a long time. (Still do, kinda?, maybe?) But when I was 22, my older sister asked if I would babysit her cat while she went on a trip. She didn’t have any kids—Willie was her baby—and I wanted to prove that I was growing up, that I was responsible, so I agreed.

Wa lived in Boston, I in New York. She brought the cat down to me, told me how to feed him and clean the litter box, and left on her trip.

I tried to snuggle him posthaste—that’s something you’re supposed to do when you’re taking care of a thing, right?—but Willie was a real scaredy-cat. He wouldn’t let me get close to him at all. So that first day, I did what I could: carefully measured his food, put out fresh water, like, five times, scooped every turd practically as soon as it hit the litter. After I while, I gave up on trying to lurve on him. I showered, waxed my legs, and got my fancy black pants on, and I went out with my friends for the night, leaving him in the apartment by himself.

I ended up staying out all night, because that’s something I did when I was 22, and when I stumbled back into the apartment the next morning, I couldn’t find Willie anywhere. He wasn’t in my room, he wasn’t in the living room, he was nowhere, and I was like, OHHHH EFFFFFFFFF.

I LOST MY SISTER’S CAT.

THE FIRST DAY.

I was panicked. I checked every closet, everywhere, and I was about to call my sister and tell her I was the worst, most irresponsible person ever, but something made me get down on my hands and knees and looked under the bed. Back in the very corner, I saw two gleaming eyes, and I was awash with relief.

I hadn’t killed or lost the cat, and—the best part—no one was the wiser. No one had to know I was the most irresponsible person ever.

Problem is, he wouldn’t come out. I tried everything. I called him. I made a trail of treats. I ignored him. He would not come out. So finally I got the broom, and I was like, this little bastard’s gonna come out and I’ma snuggle him.

I swept back with the broom, and sure enough—he shot out from under the bed. Immediately I saw that something was wrong, that he was walking funny. Like, step-step-step-shake, step-step-step-shake.

Every time I got close to him, though, he ran away so I couldn’t figure out why he jitterbugging. Eventually I trapped him in my tiny bathroom, and when I did, I saw that he must’ve jumped up onto my dresser, where in my preparations for going out, I had left one of the wax strips I was using for my legs. And now, one of those was strips was stuck to his back leg. His whole back leg.

Now, how do you get a wax strip off a cat’s leg? It occurred to me to pull it off like I pulled them off my own legs, until I realized that I would probably pull his leg at least out of the socket, if not completely off his body. That would be hard to explain to Wa.

Next, I thought about some sort of solvent but figured anything strong enough to get the wax off would probably dissolve his hair. And maybe his skin?

So I ran to the kitchen and got a pair of scissors, then sprinted back into the bathroom. Willie was trying to be everywhere but near me, but there wasn’t a whole lot of room to roam, so I managed to catch him and pin him down, squirming and caterwauling. I picked up a corner of the wax strip very gently and snipped the hair underneath, then I pulled back a tiny bit more and snipped again. And working this way for six years, or maybe it was eight minutes, whatever—Willie’s catatonic at this point—I managed to get the wax strip all the way off. I opened the bathroom door, and he bolted out.

WHEW, no harm, no foul—maybe I still didn’t even have to tell my sister what happened.

Then I looked down at my pants, which were no longer black.

They were orange. I was wearing orange cat fur pants. Willie had completely molted, except of course for the leg that I had trimmed the wax strip off, which looked like it had been groomed with an old lawn mower.

There was no way I could get around telling my sister what happened.

BUT! I must’ve done something right between then and now because I’m in my sister’s will as the guardian of her three kids, should something happen to her and her husband.

And god forbid it did, but now at least I know to keep the wax strips away from the children.

See? I’m responsible.

Wildlife

Couple years ago, I was in my house when a car alarm started going off intermittently. I was pretty steamed about it too because it was 11:00 on a school night. The alarm would ring out for a minute or so and then go quiet, and as sooooooon as I was drifting off to sleep, it would go off again. Finally, I pulled on my bathrobe and went to the back door to see if I could see where it was coming from.

And I could totally see where it was coming from because it was coming from MY CAR. Which was weird because my car didn’t have an alarm.

At least, I didn’t know it had one, but turned out, it had a panic function, which would flash the lights and sound the horn over and over if you hit the button on the fob.

But I hadn’t hit the button on the fob.

I grabbed my keychain and stabbed at the red button with the exclamation mark, but the noise wouldn’t stop. Until it did—phew—and then after a random interval (three seconds to four minutes), it would start again.

I got in and started the car. The cacophony stopped! Blessed silence! That lasted until I turned the engine off. Aaaaaaaargh!

At that point, I was worried my neighbors were going to burn my house down so I drove down to the pawn shop on the corner—my neighborhood is very classy—and called Durham P.D. and told them my car was possessed.

The dispatch was like, “Uh… this doesn’t seem like an emergency,” and I was like, “No… but yeah, can you please send somebody because I don’t know what to do k thx.”

I sat there for 20 minutes with the engine running, and then within 30 seconds of each other, four officers in three patrol cars showed up. I explained what was going on and turned off the engine, and we stood there.

A minute went by.

And I was like, “Oh fuck, it’s not gonna do it. I’m gonna look like a crazy asshole who calls 911 because she’s lonely.”

Me, tugging at collar: “Heh heh, I swear it was…”

It went off, thank god. The cops witnessed my poltergeist.

One of them popped the hood, opened the fuse box, and took out the horn fuse, which stopped the alarm. He said I wouldn’t be able to honk my horn, and I said that was A-OK. I thanked all the officers profusely and returned to my house without fear of an attack by an angry mob of my neighbors.

The next day I took my car to the mechanic, and when he looked inside the fuse box, he found pieces of acorns and cigarette butts. Turns out, the squirrels that lived in my pin oak had been wildin’ out under the hood of my Subaru. Eatin’ acorns, smokin’, and chewin’ fuse wires.

I told you my neighborhood was classy. Watch out if you come over—the squirrels around here are hoodlums.

The birds are goddamn vandals too.
The birds are goddamn vandals too.

Paso Gato

When I lived in New York right after college, I was doing a soul-sucking job, one that paid me a lot of money for a 23-year-old (more than I make now with a Master’s degree, National Board certification, and 12 years in the classroom—thank you, N.C. General Assembly!).

To deal with the spiritual discomfort of selling something I didn’t believe in, I DAHNCED. I bought an unlimited pass for ballroom and Latin dance lessons at DanceSport on Broadway and 60th, and I would go directly from work to the studio. I took salsa and swing and hustle and cha-cha, rumba, foxtrot, everything. I would take a 5:30 class, a 6:30 class, a 7:30 class, and an 8:30 class, and sometimes I would stay for the 9:30 “practice party” of mixed dances too. Every night of the week. Hours and hours.

The way the classes worked was, the leaders (usually men) would stand in an oval around the room, and the followers (usually women) would partner up with them. You’d practice a few steps, and the instructor would say, “Rotate,” at which point the followers would move clockwise one man. Repeat.

Since you were dealing with/being close to/touching a bunch of strangers, there was an etiquette to these classes. Common-sense stuff, but just in case, they had laminated pages posted in the bathroom, that said:

BE A GOOD DANCE PARTNER

1. Bathe.

2. Wear deodorant.

3. Manage your breath.

Those kinds of things.

You met all kinds of characters there:

  • a lot of adorably awkward white businessmen, a lot of them;
  • the Dominican instructor who asked me out for a drink and, while actively trying to get in my pants on this date, told me about his wife and kid at home (I left him at the bar); and
  • then there was this Russian guy. In his 30s maybe, like six-two, brown hair, mustache, horrible body odor—the kind that singed your nostril hairs and made your eyes water—always wore black pleated Dockers and a black rayon t-shirt, and based on the smell, I think it was the same t-shirt. At the beginning, I thought he was chewing gum loudly during every class. It was a few classes in that I realized he had a full set of dentures, which he would pop in and out of place.

So many breaches of etiquette. I was like, What is wrong with this guy?

One day, I noticed too that he had abrasions all over his forearms, like up and down, angry red marks. Next class, same thing. A month or two went by. I couldn’t figure it out, but one day, when the instructor called Rotate, I gestured toward his forearms, looked up at him, and said, “Do you have a cat?”

His eyes widened, and his fists clenched. He turned his forearms up and, with a look of abject fear, he said, “She is creissy!”

And all of a sudden, I pictured this poor man in his apartment, a prisoner to his crazy cat. The B.O. and the same outfit every day—totally forgiven because an animal that inspired that kind of terror surely guarded his bathtub and his laundry pile with an iron claw. She probably popped out his teeth in his sleep!

I learned an important lesson that day: Don’t judge people because you never know who’s being domestically abused by a pet.

The End of Retrobruxist Fridays

It’s been a terrible day. In fact, it’s been a terrible week.

So I did what anyone would do: I googled ‘Amy Scott mugshots’ and reveled for a moment in the notion that, as bad as shit is right now, at least I’m not one of those Amy Scotts.

amy-scott
Girl, I’d call yours a *smug*shot. <high-five>
Amy-Scott-mugshot-26907800.400x800
Dying to know what her shirt says… If it weren’t for WHAT, then WHAT?!
AS mugshot 1
OH LORD JESUS.

I started Retrobruxist Friday a year ago, and now I’m done. This was fun, but I don’t think I have more than one good post per week in the archives, so.

This last round is all good ones though:

Three years ago, I wrote a letter to my grandma, one heck of a woman.

Two years ago, I learned in a very difficult way exactly what fight-or-flight meant.

One year ago, I got mostly naked on the internet.

What you might have missed on Fat CrossFitter: I wrote what I thought was a funny story about how I became a stark-raving-mad, premenstrual mess who made histrionic mountain insults out of perfectly reasonable, helpful, and well-intentioned molehill comments, but it got interpreted by people I care about in a whole nother way, so I took down the post.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t write about people anymore—not my students because I’ll get fired, or people I know because I might hurt their feelings, or online dating prospects because I’m never putting myself through that bullshit again. So I think we all know what that means.

I should probably get another foster dog.

Comparatively (and by that I mean, at least we’re not in prison) happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.

You Guys, It’s My 4-Year Blogiversary (with Retrobruxist Friday 8/2/13)

I’ll be accepting your gifts of linen, silk, fruit, flowers, and/or electrical appliances. Thank you. You’re too kind.

Three years ago, as one commenter said, I was paying off some bad karma.

I learned two years ago that what I was doing had a name: the Valsalva Maneuver.

A year ago, I was having one of those ducks-but-water moments. I finally bought one of those reusable ones. Today, when I arrived back at the classroom with my mug in hand:

Student: You sure do like coffee.
Me: I sure do like being caffeinated.

What you may have missed on Fat CrossFitter: I get pretty excited about dinner too.

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.

 

 

(insert pic of me with pockets inside out, moths flying out of them)

Hey, remember when Violet’s ACL blew out,
and I took her to N.C. State Veterinary School,
and they sliced and sutured her,
and I changed jobs so that I could afford to pay for the surgery,
and I had to keep her doped up so she wouldn’t injure herself during recovery,
but she totally did anyway,
so she had to have a second surgery,
and how she still limped, and they wanted to do another surgery,
but I didn’t have any more monies,
so she’s just kinda limped around for a couple years?

And remember how the vets told me about the great likelihood that she’d tear the knee on the other side at some point?

Guess what happened when she was chasing a bird on Friday night.

These things don't work so good.
“Hm. These things don’t work so good.”

She’s going to be fine.

She won’t put any weight on the right, so she’s hobbling around on her gimpy left leg, the one that’s atrophied from a couple years’ lack of use. But she’s back on her food, and she pooped finally after 40 hours of holding it post-injury.

She’s trying to do everything she could do before, and that makes me scared and sad, but I’m not as spastically emotional as I was last time. Because she’s going to be fine.

Off to the orthopedist we go on Thursday. This ortho—NOT the vet school; they can suck it—has a great reputation.

So she’s going to be fine.

You know, I took on extra responsibility at work and got a freelance second job so that I could have money to maybe buy a vial or two of baby juice. Now I get to use that money to buy an anterior cruciate ligament repair job for my dog.

I think the Universe is telling me not to procreate.

#pityparty

Retrobruxist Friday, 7/26/13, Also I Could Use a Little Guidance

It’s funny how once you’re aware of a thing it clicks. Like with my finances—as soon as I over-drafted, I was all, “Oh yeah, regular bikini waxes during an extended (I mean extended) dry spell? Probably not the wisest investment.” Click.

(Seriously though: extended.)

Same with my avoiding intimacy.

I thought about the time recently when I tried to buy a movie ticket at the machine (so I wouldn’t have to talk to the ticket person, natch) and it wouldn’t give me the discount I thought I was supposed to get. I went through the line, asked the clerk about the discount, and when she told me they no longer honored it, what did I do? Did I buy a ticket from her? No no, I walked out of the line and back over to the machine. Saved myself a good 15 seconds of one-on-one human interaction. Click.

I thought about that night in March when I ran lights for a Monti/Sacrificial Poets show. (It was very technical—I raised and lowered a dimmer switch.) The sound person, with whom I sat in a booth for a couple hours, told the director later that she’d wanted to talk to me—she was a fan of mine(?!)—but I didn’t seem to want to talk. I must’ve come across as a super-snob. Click.

I thought about the conversation I had with a friend a few months back at Nanataco. I made an off-hand comment about being addicted to Facebook, and she said, “Yeah, sometimes when we’re together and you’re on your phone, it makes me sad.” I apologized profusely, called myself a gaping asshole, and changed my behavior. But now it’s clear, of course, that my iPhone was a salve to soothe my intimacy-averse psyche, jangling from all that Being With. Click.

The thing about recognizing I was being a spendthrift is that there was a pretty easy fix. (In case the link breaks, google “snl don’t buy stuff”.)

But the intimacy stuff? I imagine the conversation with the guy in the commercial for that.

Him: “Just be with people.”
Me: “How do I do that? I’m scared of them.”
Him: “You be with them anyway.”
Me: “Can I do this from the comfort of my own home, without any other people around?”
Him: “No, you actually have to be with people.”
Me: “What if I just hang out with my dogs instead? Will I get the same results?”
Him: “No, they are dogs.”

Ugh. I need an action plan. Like, with SMART goals and stuff. Who’s on it?

*****

Three years ago, Redford saved me from almost-certain bovine death.

Two years back, I told the story of how I was an accessory to a crímen. Mas o menos.

I made a threat a year ago. I’m still down for it, Universe! (For real, so very, very extended. Hhhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnngggg.)

What you may have missed on Fat CrossFitter: I always have good intentions.

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.

Retrobruxist Friday 7/19/13

Experiencing a word shortage here at AB Headquarters.

These things happen.

Probably has to do with my cycle. And stress. The kids started back to school on Monday, and I’m doing my damnedest to teach them. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess insiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide.

The teaching and letting and showing take energy. Energy that I then don’t have for writing, or doing my second job, or socializing, or reading sperm donor profiles.

<sigh>

PITY PARTY STILL RAGING.

Three years ago, our heroine found herself on a quest.

Two years ago, I went on four dates in six days. Four dates. In six days. I think I just gave myself the runs thinking about it.

A year ago, I explained, not so gently, why CrossFit is not a cult.

What you might have missed on Fat CrossFitter this week: I’m trying to un-brainwash myself.

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.

Oops, I Missed Retrobruxist Friday, Also the Information Age Is Creepy

For future reference, you can have Retrobruxist ANYDAY, you know. Scroll down a little. See that heading on the right that says Archives? Click the drop-down menu, make a selection, and—bippity boppity boo—a month’s worth of old classic posts. That’s what I do every week! Now you know the magic behind Retrobruxist Fridays!

[Disclaimer: I wasn’t that good at blogging when I started, so maybe skip the first year. Or two, or three. Basically, don’t bother.]

This last Friday, I was busy driving from New England to Queens to see a play that my friends wrote, directed, and produced (I’m biased, but it was objectively EXCELLENT), and I had to get the dogs to their uncle-in-law’s place in Brooklyn for babysitting, and traffic, and what-have-you. It was all very complicated. Forgive me.

In case you were lazy and didn’t DIY:

Three years ago, I was wondering why my friends C and K weren’t married.

Two years ago, I was given an assignment to come up with ten things I liked about my body. I came up with five.

I didn’t write anything a year ago because I was on vacation.

What you may have missed on Fat CrossFitter: I cobbled together a WOD with the resources available to me, namely a picnic bench, a rock, and a Walker-Bay. By the way, I started Fat CrossFitter six weeks ago, and it already has more Facebook Likers than Avid Bruxist, which I began in August 2009. Granted, some are the same people, but still. Maybe I’ve been barking up the wrong tree this whole time—people don’t want to hear about dogs or dates or lawn mowers, they want EXERCISE.

Which reminds me, my birthday’s coming up (in 3 months), and I want this shirt.

We Are the Best

Anywhoodle, I got home from vacation last night. My fridge held an onion, some tahini, and a container of moldy lunchmeat, so I went Krogering this morning, and the cash register spit out these coupons with my receipt—you know, the ones for products similar to what you’ve purchased in the past?

20130630-142135.jpg

Pampers.

Pampers and wipes.

You know where I’ve never bought a product for a baby? Ever? Like ever-ever?

Kroger.

The whimsical-faerie-who-believes-in-a-speaking-Universe part of me wanted to believe it was a sign—a sign. About the time being right. About my capability to parent a child. I must procreate! The coupons decree it!

Alas, all I can think is that when I registered for an account with California Cryobank a couple weeks ago, they immediately sold me out to the grocery man.

Happy Conspiracy-Theory Sunday, y’all!