Cat’s Meow

Oh Innernetz!  Where do I begin?  The hardest part about blogging is what to say after a lengthy absence.  I’m going to forgo the Compulsory Retroactive Asskissing Pity Party and the tale of woe about antidepressants, side effects, life, death, and all that other bullshit that had my muses screaming like whiney little bitches:  “Ohhh, I’m too sad to write!  Oooohhhh!  I’m too tired to write! Ooohhh, zombies!” But now they’re back kissing my ass because their unemployment benefits have run out.  But there’s no room for them at my laxtop because there’s a new bitch taking up room on my keyboard — Morbidly Obese Cat.  MOC is 20 pounds of drama with a high-pitched meow like an emphysematic helium sucking Fran Drescher and a penchant for catching mice.  That he brings to me.  One.  Piece.  At.  A.  Time. 

This is why I got Morbidly Obese Cat.  I had mice.  Oh, sure, I had insomnia and mental illness and poverty and cramps.  But you know what, Innernetz?  I can live with all of that.  You know what I can’t live with?  Mice.

Fuck you, Walt Disney.  Fuck you for so many awful, hideous things.  But fuck you most of all, Disney, for thinking a mouse was cute or funny or charming or had even an ounce of anything approaching a personality worthy of stardom.  And, come to think of it, this entire paragraph is worth repeating, except replace the word “mouse” with “Nicolas Cage.”

I have seen at least one mouse in every apartment I have ever had in New York City.  Now, maybe some of you buy those humane mousetraps and drive your mice out to the woods so that snakes and owls can eat your city vermin instead of you having to kill them yourself.  Good for you.  I don’t do that.  I murder them.  And I am not nice about it.  I had an electric rat zapper that fried mice so that they made a wet little sizzling sound — kssshhht! — when I dropped their smoking, still-twitching carcasses into the toilet.  Don’t fuck with Dingo, Mickey.  I am to mice what M. Night Shyamalan is to movies.

But my rat zapper broke.  And Not A Dingo has never been one for catching mice.  She’s a lovah, not a fighta.  She’s six pounds of Hello Kitty on Xanax.  I needed a monster, a Hannibal Lecter of cats.  I wanted the mice in my apartment to wake up in unfamiliar surroundings bound to a sinister contraption watching my cat on a tiny TV saying, “I want to play a game.” I wanted internet sites most frequently visited by mice to have pictures of my cat with the caption, “I can haz death.” So, I went to the local animal shelter where I rescued Morbidly Obese Cat.  MOC, a healthy black-and-white Domestic Short Hair, weighs more than three Not A Dingos.  MOC means business.  When you look into MOC, MOC also looks into you. 

MOC doesn’t just catch the mice.  He toys with them before ripping them into little mouse bits.  He leaves the rodent chunks where he knows I spend most of my time.  I might come home from work to find a mouse tail on my chair, or a head on my desk, or an unrecognizable lump of mouse on my pillow.  It’s kind of nice not knowing what to expect, like having drinks with Mel Gibson.

Last Wednesday night, as I sat in bed nursing insomnia and a vodka cranberry, Mr. Dingo, Dingo Girl, and Not A Dingo snored peacefully beside me as MOC wheezed fitfully at the foot of the bed.  Fuckers.  Suddenly, MOC jumped up and ran down the hallway faster than Halle Barrie changes partners.  From the living room I heard thudthumpbam!  Several seconds of silence.  And then BAM.  I was so startled I spilled my drink.  Oh helz no!

Buzzed and exhausted, I shambled down the dark hallway.  “MOC, what the —” was cut short by an eeeeeiiiiwwwww! as my foot stepped on something soft, fuzzy, wet, and cold.  So very, very cold.  And nasty.  I was afraid to look.  But I didn’t have to.  I could feel it.  A thin cord-like tail pressed into my heel and a soft, moist, boneless body flattened and expanded between my curling toes. Vodka and cranberry infused vomit caught at the back of my throat as I hopped around on the unsullied foot banging into walls.  Gah gah gah!  I gurgled.  Gah gah gah!  I wiggled, whipped, and whirled until I was krumping down the hallway like a white guy at the Gangsta Ball.  And then my knee buckled sending me crashing into the bathroom door.  I hate our bathroom door.  It sticks.  Except when a hundred and none of your business pounds of Dingo slams into it.

When my butt bone and hand cracked on the floor, I saw stars.  And, for the first time, I felt a twinge of sadness, like when you’re driving down the highway and come upon a furry, reddened patch of roadkill that you recognize as a once-vibrant and beautiful woodland critter.  No creature deserves the ignominy in death of finding itself flattened between my second and third toes.  I felt — Sweet baby jebus!  What the fuck is this?!  My fingers landed on something soft, moist, and lifeless.  Gah gah gah!  I began to crawl to the light switch and each agonizing inch revealed a new horror.  It was the ghost of flushed mice past coming to get their revenge.  Every step was littered with — I flipped on the light — tampons?

The bathroom cabinet was open and my brand new box of tampons was ravaged, its contents chewed, severed, and scattered across the floor.  It was a tampon massacre! It had obviously been a group effort.  I grabbed all the saliva-drenched shreds of cotton and bits of string and put them in their final resting place: the trash. Words were said.  Sad words.  Tampons are expensive.  MOC came to see what all the fuss was about.  He threw me a “Whatever, bitch” side-eye as he sauntered into the bedroom. 

As I lumbered back to bed hoping for just a few hours rest before the day started, I stepped on another spit-soaked tampon.  Damn it, MOC! I reached down to take it off my foot.  Except, instead of a played-out Playtex, this was a ravaged rodent.  Or at least part of one.  The back half. Plainly, it had been a male.  Gah gah gah! I am good at krumping.

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I Got Nuthin’

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La Loco Laundry

Classes are finally over and I’ve been grading finals and trying to catch up on all the things I’ve put on the back burner — hell, more like an unplugged crock pot — for the past month.  Like laundry.  When I find myself spritzing my jeans with Febreze, it’s time to suds the duds.  But, Innernetz, I really, really hate going to the laundromat. I’d rather take a kindergarten class on a field trip to the DMV after giving them jellybeans and espresso for breakfast. 

Things were getting desperate, however.  Besides the Febreze, I was also down to wearing Mr. Dingo’s boxer briefs while using band-aids to hold them up.  So off I went to the laundromat thinking that it couldn’t be as bad as I was expecting.  Hahahahaha!  Oh come on, Innernetz!  You know me by now.  Of course it could!

There were two empty machines in the back of the laundromat. I dumped my clothes onto a table and began sorting when a shadow emerged from the corner.  It was Yoda’s evil twin.  Short, swarthy, and with his face wrinkled like a two-pack-a-day Shar-pei , his sudden presence at my elbow startled me.

“Drop something you did?” he croaked as he timidly handed me my bra.  At least I think that’s what he said.  His garbled words oozed past broken yellowed teeth that tap-danced like drunken tombstones in his puckered mouth.

“Thank you,” I said, noticing a wet thumbprint on my C-cup.  He glided backward into the shadows as eerily as he had appeared.  I held my bra away from my body in case the disgusting propagated.

I had just started a load and settled into a chair to mock my students’ papers when I felt a bony finger tap me on the shoulder. I looked up expecting to see Pervy Yoda but no, it was Bod-a-lish-us.  Bod-a-lish-us was wearing an ultrasheer body stocking and fuck me stilettos.  Let me say that slowly: Body.  Stocking.  She woke up that morning, cracked open a plastic egg she’d been saving since 1989 when she was thirty pounds lighter, and, with the aid of a crowbar and shoehorn, strong-armed the sheer burnt orange “suntan” abomination over her calves, thighs, and hips until she reached her armpits.  Then, the body stocking depriving her brain of any oxygen, she looked in the mirror and declared herself flabulous.  She looked like a radioactive hotdog.  And she brought her own buns.  Bubbly, puffy, crusty buns.

Bod-a-lish-us waved a container of laundry detergent in front of my face and asked, “Me use?”

“Sorry,” I said shaking my headwhile prying my container of detergent from her purple three-inch acrylic nails. 

Tears brimmed at the edges of her heavily kohled eyes.  “Me use?” she repeated pointing to a laundry cart with a small load of hoochie-mama accoutrements.  Damn, I thought, if I don’t let her use my detergent, what is she going to wear to work tonight?  Besides, the body stocking was obviously her laundry-day outfit.  Letting her wash the rest of her whoredrobe would be like a public service. 

Sighing, I said, “Okay, but please use just a li—”

“Gracias!” she said.  Her tears dried up like a sunbathing raisin contemplating its deferred dreams.  And then waving her talons, she summoned three kids who entered the laundromat rolling one of those SUV-sized granny carts.  And there went my laundry detergent. The Bod-a-lish-us brood opened and slammed washing machine doors and swung from them like low-hanging crotchfruit.

I had just taken my seat and opened my gradebook when I was again disturbed by a poke at my shoulder.  It was Pervy Yoda handing me another of my bras. 

“Drop something you did?” he said, giving me the side eye.

This was just too creepy. 

“Get away from me, you fucking freak!” I screamed.  Inside my head.  I searched for the manager.  I found her watching a telenovella in a little room at the far end of the laundromat as she reverently stroked the coin-changer strapped to her belt.

“There’s a guy back there stealing underwear,” I said. 

She sighed and, without taking her eyes off the screen, yelled something unintelligible over the din of the TV.  I smugly waited for Pervy Yoda to levitate to the front of the store.  He would’ve gotten to us sooner but for the disruption in the force as three Bod-a-lish-us muffpuppets cried out in glee and raced through the laundromat on laundry carts slamming into washing machines.

When he finally reached us, Pervy Yoda and the manager shouted back and forth at each other in tongues until the commercial break was over.  The manager threw her hands up in the air, tossed a few words over her shoulder punctuated by an occasional “Ayiii!” and then went back to her show.  Pervy Yoda slunk back to his hole.

“That’s it?” I asked.  “Aren’t you going to kick him out?”

“No miss.  No worry.”

“But he is stealing underwear!”

“He stop, miss,” she said. “He here with one of his children and their mother,” she explained, pointing toward the Bod-a-lish-us brood.

Fuck this, I thought.  I stormed back to my washing machines, took out the wet clothes, and left.  I’d buy a bucket and scrubbing board before ever going back there.  Once home, I stomped to the bathroom.  And then I opened my laundry bag to hang up my wet… dental floss thong, fishnet thigh highs, and cupless bra.

These weren’t clothes.  These were pieces of fabric held together by fairy dust and surface tension.  In addition to my own clothing, I had stolen Bod-a-lish-us’s undies.

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I Didn’t Have To Go To Starbucks For This One

The semester is almost over, thank dog.  I am worn out.  Two of my classes have been engaging and fun.  One class, my mouth breathers, have required every bit of patience — well, let’s just say that their ignorance is like a BP oil spill: the stupid won’t stop pouring out and, I swear, it’s not my fault!  I’ve had writing workshops, peer reviews, and intensive one-on-one writing sessions yet I still receive papers with insightful pronouncements like:

“Being a Christian has the promises of eternal salvation.  One day, when you kick the bucket, you will go to the city called Heaven.  Except, maybe not.  You might go to Heaven.  Unless there isn’t really a Heaven.  Then you will just be dead.  So sad.  So very, very sad. But this book isn’t about Christianity its about anarchy and there all going to hell anyway.”

And…

“Paul Whitman wrote Leafs of Grasses.  He was gay.  He had a beard because he had acne.  He is famous because he is the only gay poet in America.  If Paul Whitman were alive today he would be a gay poet with a beard.”

But the Troglodyte Of The Year Award goes to Beaker.  On the first day of class, my explanation of the syllabus was interrupted by a high-pitched “Meep!” from the back of the room.  All heads whipped to the hairy bespectacled Lorax sitting in the corner. 

“Excuse me?”

“Meep!” he replied, the lower half of his wooly Snuffleupagus-like visage partially hidden by the syllabus wedged between his saber-toothed incisors.  Meep!  Meep!  Meep!  I was a bit non-plussed by the truckload of trouble that seemed to be backing its way into my classroom. 

“I have autism!” he shouted through a mouthful of paper.

Beaker’s proclamation hovered over the room like a loud, liquidy shart in a crowded elevator.  No problem, I thought.  I’ve had autistic students in several of my classes.  What followed, however, was weeks of meeping when asked a question, spasmodic jerks at any mention of technology, and a host of other ticks and triggers that made teaching each and every class like being “It” while playing Simon Says in a minefield.

On one occasion, I asked the class a question about the day’s reading.  Beaker’s hand shot up.  Thinking it was one of his ticks, I called on someone else.  Beaker’s other hand shot up. 

“Beaker, do you want to respond?”

He nodded emphatically, eyes wide behind his dirty glasses.

“Okay, go ahead.”

Beaker slooooowly lowered his hands and covered his mouth as he spoke, fingers interlaced in a hairy-fingered web that trapped his words.

“Beaker, I can’t hear you.  Do you mind moving your hands?”

Beaker paused for a moment and then slooooowly raised his hands like a roman shade until his eyes were blocked from view.  His mouth continued to move.  No sounds emerged.  I sighed and called on someone else.

Beaker’s outbursts increased in frequency and intensity, often disrupting class.  I needed some advice: taser or baton?  So I went to the student disability office.  The student disability office Beaker was supposed to have registered with at the beginning of the semester.  The student disability office he said he registered with, between meeps, at the beginning of the semester.  The student disability office he didn’t register with at the beginning of the semester because he DOESN’T FUCKING HAVE AUTISM!

In fact, the student disability office informed me that Beaker had tried his autism routine in several other classes.  When confronted, Beaker fessed up, settled down, and didn’t utter another meep for the rest of the semester.  That’s right, Innernetz, Beaker doesn’t have autism.  At all.  Not even a little bit.  Not even the high-functioning-I’m-gonna-make-a-bazillion-dollars-on-a-world-dominating-computer-operating-system kind.  What he did have was the wrath of Dingo coming his way.

The next day, at the beginning of class, I announced that I had sent the entire class an email.  He meeped and flailed back and forth like a hairy piñata in a Santa Ana wind.  I ignored it and went on to mention that students could collaborate about their in-class presentations online.  Beaker twitched and jerked.  I suggested Tweets and Beaker grabbed a book from his desk and waved it in front of his face while making “tweet” sounds.  When I suggested that the groups befriend one another on Facebook, he screamed while smacking the book against his face.  I suggested instant messaging, bulletin boards, and online collaboration apps, but it wasn’t until I mentioned Skype that Beaker fell to the floor, exhausted and panting.  I then requested that he come see me during my office hours.

“Ms. Dingo? You wanted to see me?” He stepped into my office, hair poking through buttonholes and sleeves as if he’d bought his clothes at a minoxidil fire sale.

“Sit down, Beaker.” Beaker sat. 

“You don’t have autism.  You’re a faker,” I said getting to the point.  Barely restraining my glee about the water works and blubbering apologies that I just knew were about to spring from his lying lips, I reached for the tissues I keep by my desk for such occasions. 

“Um, is this about my papers?”

My hand paused mid-air.  I may or may not have made a fist.  He doesn’t have autism.  He did have stupid.

“No, Not Rain Man, this is not about your papers.  This is about the fact that you’ve been faking a developmental disorder and disrupting class.  What the hell, dude?!” I sat back mentally rubbing my hands together waiting for the groveling.  I’d worn my best shoes.  I find the tears of desperate penitents exceptional for buffing patent leather.

“Oh, yeah, that.  Does this affect my grade?” he asked.

“Meep!” I said.

He smiled a little.  “No, seriously, I can’t fail this class,” he said.  “This won’t affect my...?”

“Meep meep,” I said and froze, but for my left arm, which glacially moved a sheet of paper from the desk to the front of my face.  “Meep,” I repeated, until I was sure he had left.

Damn, I’ll be glad when this semester is over.

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Like A Rock

*cough* <waving away dust and cobwebs> *cough* Day-um, y’all, it’s all dusty up in here!  It’s not that I’ve forgotten about you, Innernetz.  I’ve missed y’all tremendously, but if I didn’t focus on the freelance writing, copyediting, and tutoring jobs I rustled up for some extra cash, I’d instead miss things like electricity and food.  The past month was an exhausting pattern of workworkworkworksleepwork.  I’m not complaining — well, yes I am because that’s what I do — but this last month has been full of the suckage and no bloggage.

But I’m baaaccck, and I know you are just orgasmic with relief.  I’ll give you a minute or two to compose yourself and change your panties.  Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

I had a break this weekend when The Cougar came to visit.  She took one look at my pasty pallor and prescribed large doses of Vitamin Daylight.  It took a while for her to crowbar me away from my desk, my ass having molded perfectly around my chair cushion, but once that was accomplished we headed to the park with Dingo Girl for a tasty but hasty dingolicious picnic. One of the paths that meandered up a steep hill took us along a massive vertical rock face jutting drunkenly out of the ground like Mel Gibson at The Passion of The Long Island Iced Tea. As I walked to the edge of the path so that Dingo Girl could do her bidness, I suddenly heard The Cougar say, “I’m going to climb that rock! I bet I can see most of the park from the top!” The next second she was scaling the smooth precipice like Spiderman with a sand wedgie.

“Come down!” I called.  “What are you doing?! Are you crazy?!”

The Cougar continued to climb.  “Take a picture!” she yelled.

My heart thumping so hard it sounded like Kirstie Alley in Wal-Mart flip-flops, I fumbled in my messenger bag for my camera.  Dingo Girl was pacing around my feet, whimpering.  By the time I found the camera, The Cougar was another five feet up.  She paused to wave at me.

“Don’t do that! Get down here!  You’re going to break your neck!” The Cougar responded by giving me The Cougar equivalent of the finger — she stuck her tongue out at me.  And kept climbing. 

I started to put the camera back in my bag when I felt a tug on Dingo Girl’s retractable leash.  She had started up the rock after The Cougar.  Dingo Girl, however, not having grasped the fine art of climbing 80-degree rock cliffs, shifted into reverse, going up the rock face ass first. I dropped the leash, crossed the path, and walked to the rock to get her down.  She crab-walked just out of my reach but not before planting a saucy lick on my nose — Dingo Girl’s version of the finger.

Dingo Girl halted her upward progression about twenty feet up where the rock veered even more sharply up the side of the hill and sat down.  She somehow remained stuck to the side of the rock, jutting from the cliff like Pinocchio’s nose at a Tea Party rally.  I started to scale the cliff to save her.

“Mom!” I yelled.  “Call Dingo Girl to you.  She has to keep going.”

Hearing the panic in my voice, Dingo Girl began to get nervous.  She began to whimper.  And then howl.  It was a long, high-pitched wail.  It sounded something like I’msofuuuuuucked! I’madognotamountaingoat! She started to slide.  Pebbles, dirt, and bits of moss kicked up by her struggles hit my face like a rice-substitute at a very environmentally friendly wedding.  Here comes the bride.  Too bad she died.

My feet couldn’t find purchase against the slick moss.  Motherfucker!  Motherfucker!  slip, slide, whack! My knee crashed against the rock.  Motherfucker!  Still, I made slow progress toward Dingo Girl.

“Grab her!” I yelled to The Cougar.  She reached for Dingo Girl’s collar and…missed!  Dingo Girl slammed into me.  For the first time in years, I thanked the Universe for my big thighs.  More surface area to hang onto the promontory of death.  I managed to catch Dingo Girl, her head trapped between my knees and her butt in my face.  I breathed a sigh of relief but now I had a freaked out dog trapped between me and the rock.  And I was on a rock!  No, I was on the side of a rock!

The Cougar carefully scooted toward us and got close enough to wrap her arm around Dingo Girl’s back end.  We slowly moved up the remaining five feet or so in fits and starts like Frogger, The Epilectic Edition.  When we finally reached level ground at the top of the boulder, The Cougar and I flopped onto our backs, breathing heavily, and picking dog hair out of our mouths.  Dingo Girl went to pee on a bush.

“Well,” I said to The Cougar, “we made it! Thank you for that exhilarating experience!”

Then I grumbled something only marginally obscene.  You couldn’t even see the entire park from the top.  Too many trees!  I called Dingo Girl over and then turned toward her.  She was still rustling in the nearby bushes so I went to get her.  I didn’t want her near the steep edges.  I pictured her jumping over the edge and The Cougar jumping right after her because that looked like fun, too.

When I reached Dingo Girl, I realized that she had found a staircase carved into the rock.  The stairs led down and around the rock to a point about thirty feet in front of the spot where The Cougar had decided to climb.

And that, dear Innernetz, is how I lost my voice.

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