The Forty-Eighth

A: "If I'm so helpless, then you should help me."
Me: "I AM helping you. It's tough love, baby!"
A: "I don't want your opposite help!"

The Forty-Seventh

Alex is calling her his "furry ticket" out of moving to Europe. Since we can't adopt her and then let her languish in quarantine.

"Are YOU my furry ticket? Yes, you ARE my furry ticket..."

The Forty-Sixth

I am rather scatterbrained. I really try not to be, so most days I assume I've grown out of it, but then there is a perfect storm.

The other night I left my parents' house around 11:30pm, intending to drive home. My dad was watching me from the porch to make sure I got to my (A's) car safe.

Halfway down the driveway, I realized that A had dropped me off, so I was walking towards some stranger's black car.

So then I had to ask my poor father, who was on his way to bed and needs his sleep, if he wouldn't mind suddenly hopping-to and driving me home at 11:30pm. He was very nice about it, and I only live, like, five minutes away.

He dropped me off, and I walked up to our apartment door on the third floor, and I fished around in my ski jacket pockets for my keys. And realized I didn't have them. A had been asleep for at least an hour and a half, and I had to ring that horrid doorbell until I dragged his poor, rumpled carcass out of bed. And then he was so alarmed about where my keys could be that he wouldn't go back to bed.

And 30 seconds into the key location conversation, the doorbell rang again. Thinking I'd forgotten to flash the lights at my dad to let him know I was in safe, I opened the door in a fluster without asking who it was, and it was my mother.

She had noticed my keys on the table by the door just after my father and I left, and, at 11:30pm at night when she was tired and on her way to bed, she had torn out the door, hoping to catch us before I woke up Alex.

So that is the story of how I managed to keep/wake up everybody who loves me the most. For absolutely no reason.

The next day my mother entirely blamed it on the fact that my father never has his cell phone with him.

The Forty-Fifth

Am

gave

Mom

purple

hiking

undies

for

the

holidays.

Today was an astonishingly productive day.

I

applied for jobs,

studied Spanish,

cleaned up the majority of the holiday accumulations,

went through all my receipts and paid my bills,

and went to the gym.

It's been a long, long, long, long time since I had a day like that, and I didn't even set out to! I merely started looking at jobs, thinking I could probably talk my lazy butt into completing a quickie application, and then I found several and did it right. And then the lady from Casa Hispana called and said they were going to evaluate me when I visited, and I really want them to put me in the advanced class, and I had the Spanish book right there. And then Em called to make a gym date for later in the afternoon. And then I thought, in the meantime, I really ought to pay my bills today, because they're due in two days, and who knows what effect New Year's will have on online payments going through. And to pay the bills, I had to find all my receipts, which I scatter to the four winds over the course of month.

And as my mother always said, "If you can't find something, clean everything up."

(That, by the way, is excellent advice.)

The Forty-Fourth: Gleeful!

link

I came home an hour ago after watching the first several hours of Glee with my mother, Em, Y, and Y's mother.

Glee's such good, clean, musical fun; I was sure my family would love it. I had brought it over last week, and I campaigned for it heavily tonight when we were deciding what to watch. Em, because she is such a great audience, was laughing all the time, and everybody except Y (who just had brain surgery, so he is excused) was paying attention. As each episode concluded, there was continuous, unanimous voting to immediately start the next one.

They also voted that my dad should drive me home (instead of Em) so they could keep watching it.

I'm so pleased I was right!

Also, my best friend L sings all the time, sang in our college choir, and is a general (campy) TV junkie. She's basically had her head buried in the sand since starting medical school, though.

me: Have you seen Glee? You would love it forever.

L: psh of course I have. And I love it forever

The Forty-Third

Today, I am sick and grumpy.

The illness is a minor cold than my mother and I caught from my dad, but I am a giant baby when I'm sick.

The grumpiness is due to the fact that I just had a slew of actually possible jobs appear on the horizon, and the last of them fell through today. I've been very ch

aracteristically optimistic about all this since July, but this big wave just knocked me off my feet.

Big wave + cold = pneumatic outlook.

I'm going to weakly cross my miserable fingers that perhaps my unemployment benefits appeal hearing went better.

However, I am watching Julie and Julia at the moment, and it reminded me of something that cheered me up immensely. Julia is chopping onions and weeping, and the last time I was weeping over onions, the cat was sitting on the kitchen window sill, supervising. When the fumes were at their height, the kitty started blinking like a crazy person. Cats usually squint their eyes when they're comfortable and happy (or when you squint yours at them -- try it!), but that's always a slow, languid blink of contentment.

This was, like, MANICALLYCONTENTSOSORELAXEDANDHAPPYR

IGHT NOWRIGHTNOWNOWNOWNOW!!!!!!!!!!!

She sat there for a long time, too, while I laughed/cried, before she finally ran out of the kitchen.

I do love her so. And isn't it interesting that onion fumes bother kitties too?

Kitty supervises A's sandwich.

The Forty-Second

I am inspired by this post today, because I had a similar experience with A this afternoon. It is a bit embarrassing to put this into words, but this blog more or less strictly exists to jog my own memory anyway.

A and I have very, very little in common. We have different habits, different personalities, different interests, different backgrounds, different goals for the future, etc. Were we not soulmates4evah!!!!, we would definitely not be friends. (Obviously, the most important things work, else we would not.)

My sense of humor is all quips and wordplay. A can be very witty and appreciates non sequitors, but nothing has ever floored him like the first time he heard me fart.

(Let us imagine that, shall we? You are a nice girl with a nice, new boyfriend of several months. You're both in the living room doing separate things, when something escapes you rather loudly, and you're a bit pink. You assume your embarrassed "excuse me" and perhaps a grin from him will be it. Instead, your heretofore very adult and somewhat staid boyfriend EXPLODES with laughter, hysterically flailing around in his computer chair for several minutes until he can no longer breathe.)

And some things make him laugh that I just don't even get, let alone find funny.

But, he is the only person in the world who is silly exactly the way that I am.

This is our big connection.

We often, often have conversations that consist entirely of sounds. It's a constantly evolving language, too. He used to echo me if I was whining to much, by saying, "muhnuhmanuhmanuhma" back at me in a sympathetic sing-song with an exaggerated pout on his face. I've adopted the "muhnuhma"s, but I say them in a very affectionate way while invading as much of his personal space as possible so that he can no longer do whatever activity he's doing.

Hm.

I can't remember anymore the exact play of today's events, but he's developed a response to my "muhnuhma"s that's "rar rar rar" with his face screwed up in a crotchety old man kind of way. And we were being ridiculous this morning, and there was a cute exchange where I did two random things that he realized were connected in a funny way and laughed and then responded with a "rar rar rar" to continue the connection, which is when I saw the joke, and we both laughed.

And then we hugged each other laughing because we are very happy together.