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Punch up the Jam

Y'all. As another part in the series of endlessly being That Person, I have to tell you about a podcast. It's called Punch Up the Jam and the concept is that the host and some guest (usually a comedian) talk about a song they either love or hate, pick it apart line by line, and at the end they present us with the "punch up," a cover of the song that either mocks it or attempts to fix it, unless the song is deemed "unpunchable," aka so great that no improvement can be made. Comedian Chris Fleming is a frequent guest, so I have started with those episodes because I love him.

"Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman
This is deemed unpunchable and perfect and it is decided that the world does not deserve Tracy Chapman. 9/10

"The Anthem" by Good Charlotte
The main host was SUPER into pop punk as a teen, so this is mostly about how The Anthem succeeds in being both a brilliantly written pop song AND a song that is secretly about proper peeing technique for men. It's a long story. 8/10

"Running Up That Hill" by Kate Bush.
START HERE, maybe. This contains references to Maria Bamford, puppet shows, but mostly it's just awesome because they spend an hour talking about how awesome Kate Bush is. 10/10

"Mr Jones" by Counting Crows
Or maybe start here if you want to laugh your ass off. One host loathes this song, another host likes it OK, mainly for nostalgia reasons. There's one spot where I was laughing so hard I almost peed my pants and I was glad to be listening to this at home and not in public because I was LOSING IT. The punch up of the song is legit AMAZING, but I won't give details about either of these things cause I don't want to ruin them for you. 10/10

Bragging and Bribing

I must (again) brag on my cats.

After two years with a litter box in the laundry room and a huge litter box in my master bath, I finally broke down and ordered a Litter Robot, on the insane optimism of getting the boys down to one box that would be kept in the laundry room. I was just so tired of having litter tracked all over my bathroom floor, and tired of being able to smell the box (however slightly) while I was working from home. "Let's give it a shot," I said. "If it works out, it's worth the price of the Litter Robot," I said.

The Litter Robot arrived Monday. I set it up, but left one of the old school boxes out. The was curiosity, but the Litter Robot went unused until 1AM Tuesday morning, when it was used by someone but I didn't know who.

Tuesday:
Scooped the old school box and left it out, unwilling to take chances while I was out at the office all day. I realize the cat using the box is Pix who, despite his small size, lack of claws and chill demeanor, is not afraid of any damn thing. (Seriously, friendly as Pavi is, Pix is the one who is up in your face first, sitting RIGHT THERE on the couch next to a running vacuum. Pix gives zero fucks. Also, Pix being voted Most Likely To Be "Creative" About Where He Pees worked for him in this scenario.)

Wednesday:
Did not scoop the old school box but left it out.

Thursday:
Awoke to find that someone (probably Pavi) has expressed displeasure about the dirtiness of the old school box by peeing right in front of it (on the linoleum, easy to clean up). Me too, buddy! I scoop the old school box and then put it in the garage, leaving us only with the Litter Robot. I train a Cloud Cam on the Robot with the plan to watch when someone uses it and then immediately give them two treats for doing so.

I spend the day giving Pix treats, while Pavi stubbornly sleeps all day.

Thursday evening: I lead Pavi into the Robot by holding treats in front of him until he goes inside. See, buddy? It's not a washing machine! It won't eat you! It's full of litter! It's totally cool to pee here! Please pee here! 30 minutes later, Pavi voluntarily uses the Robot, earning himself two treats.

So far, it's going great with the Litter Robot. Everyone seems to have gotten over feeling weird about it, it doesn't smell AT ALL, and (importantly) I no longer have a litter box in my master bath, and nobody's walking around their own poo all day. Two thumbs and 8 paws up!

"Your lips are turning blue..."

So, here's why I'm a dumbass. Onions are surprisingly slippery. Last night, I was zipping through my mise en place, cutting squash, a red pepper, and mushrooms into big chunks for sauteeing. When I got to the onion, I was so focused on how big I wanted my onion chunks that I forgot about the 3 other times my knife had slid off the onion and cut me (I usually just nick a fingernail or something, no big). Apparently, the universe thought I needed a better reminder because POOF, I sliced through 2/3 of the tip of my thumb.

Well, shit. Like, I NEED that thumb, y'all. That's the one you use for running in video games. Also hair washing, holding a razor to shave my right pit, and a host of other things I haven't discovered yet.

I put down the knife and walked into the nerd lair, where Chris was in the middle of a video game mission. "I just sliced through my finger," I said. "Oh? He said, still playing." "Dude...look." He looked over to see a paper towel getting redder by the second. I was freaking out a little because I was hungry and bleeding + hungry = passing out to my low blood pressure-having ass.

No big. I mean this is a Tuesday for him. He turned off the video game and then patched me up with some fancy band-aids. The bleeding stopped faster than expected, so I talked him out of stitches, but of course once the initial "holy shit" wore off and we were sitting at the kitchen table finishing up, everything started going dark orange and I couldn't hear very well.

"I might need you to hand me my water."
"Why? You feeling faint?"
"I'm going down, man."

So, he half-dragged me to the couch and put my legs up over the back. "Dude, your lips are blue....oh...getting pink....ok, pink."

Anywho, I'm glad he was there, cause otherwise I would have just stopped the bleeding and then laid down on the couch with a jar of peanut butter. Here's hoping that fucker heals soon because it's not exactly easy to clean the house or take loads of stuff to Goodwill with one hand. Meh, I'm pissed at myself for this. I have shit to do! Heaaaaal.

And There We Are.

Chris and I broke up last night. "We are all OK," as grandma and grandpa used to always write in their Christmas cards.

We went to Nashville last week for a wedding, and I think it got us both noodling. By the time he left for a conference in Denver, Chris seemed like he was thinking pretty hard about something, but didn't clue me in on what it was, other than to say that he'd wished he'd stayed in touch with the Vandy folks better. I was also noodling pretty hard, but trying to keep my noodling secret. I didn't know what I wanted to say, what my thesis statement was, and I definitely didn't want to get into it when we were out of town and trapped in a tiny AirBnb together.

Bottom line: I sat at his friends' wedding and thought "we don't have that. We've never had that." Now, I know that people are putting their best feet forward during a wedding and it's not like they were going to have the rabbi read a passage about "that time we had a fight because we couldn't decide on a Netflick to watch" or "omg, don't walk on the carpet in your shoes," but still. By the time we were at the wedding, we had already bickered about when to leave for the airport, "why didn't you double check the time for the wedding?" and "don't stick your whole freaking arm in the box of cereal."

But for real. I don't care if the raisins ARE in the bottom, don't stick your whole arm in the box of cereal.

I left Nashville sure of what I needed to do. I felt loved and cared for and not invisible. I felt like myself, rather than a ghost who lives in the guest room. I had interactions with strangers that were not painful and awkward. I needed to go home. Then I saw his face at the airport and suddenly didn't know again. I spent the next day psyching myself up and not listening to that over-optimistic voice in my head that says "but there's still a chance!"

Girl. Stop. Blow the whistle on this shit before you both hate each other.

So I did, but it should be pointed out that I think he'd wanted to for a couple weeks and just didn't know how. "Do you think maybe we should just call it while we can still be friends?" "I think so, man. But we tried, and that's something." "Yep. Will you still play video games with me on the PlayStation?" "Hell yes."

And so we talked some more and cried a lot and hugged and then had a glass of bourbon to seal the deal. We were sad, but also relieved that we each at least had a direction. My life was no longer a long line of question marks stretching endlessly in front of me.

This morning, I finally gave life to all of my secret, guilt-inducing googling and got pre-approved for a home loan. I emailed my realtor. The scary machinery that is necessary to get my ass back to Nashville creaked into motion just like that. I am freaked out about all of it. It will be expensive and exhausting, but at least I'm a lot less poor than when I did this in 2008. Thanks to the sale of my old house, I can avoid PMI this time.

There are a bunch of things that I'm not really ready to do. I am not ready to make a list of the things we've bought together and ask Chris whether he wants to buy out my half or let me buy out his half. I am not ready to point a vicious editor's eye at everything I own and ditch a bunch of it. With Nashville real estate the way it is, my house hunt will either go incredibly quickly or take a while, either giving me no time to worry or plenty of time to get ready. The time frame is "as soon as possible, but don't rush into anything."

I feel sad that we came up here both expecting to get married and instead we learned that we're too much alike to not murder each other, but I'm not sorry for anything I did. We tried! We said we'd give it a year and we did! We're still going to be friends! And I think we actually mean that!

But it's time to come home, y'all. It's time to come home.

This Weekend

This weekend, Chris and I are going to Nashville fora wedding (apologies in advance to y'all...I am only getting time to see a precious few people because the wedding and a visit from mom are going to take big chunks of time). While I am excited to come visit, I mostly just feel a little weird about it. Why? I'm not exactly sure. The first few days will involve a lot of wedding stuff, and since these are Chris's friends, it's going to be a LOT of them sitting around talking about work. I venture to say that the only thing anyone will say to me is "so how are you liking the Cape?" at which point I will smile awkwardly and think of something positive to say, like how nice the weather is or how holidays in New England look like stereotypical holidays: the leaves are orange at Halloween, there's snow at Christmas, there are lilies at Easter. In Tennessee, you get changing leaves a bit late and lilies a bit early and it could be 70 degrees at Christmas for all anyone knows. So I will spend multiple days trying to focus on the positive about a place for which I don't have much love. I'd leave tomorrow if you gave me a place to go and a magical team of movers who could pack everything with an I Dream of Jeannie blink.

And I will do that, think of nice things to say, while pretending I'm not missing Nashville (and, more importantly, the people in it) A LOT. It's been a year and I still feel like I was plunked down into someone else's life where I don't belong. I miss my people, my gym, my community college almost as much as I did on day one, only now there's no sense of adventure and optimism. "It's early! You'll get used to it! Go Explore!" Has become "shouldn't we feel better about this after a year?" and "I don't know if I'll ever get used to it" and "there's nothing out there. I looked."

I'm also even more nervous about having to make polite conversation with people because it's gotten even harder than it already was for me to talk to random people. I've never been good at it, but now I REALLY have nothing to say (because I don't have anything going on and don't know many people) and I think I'm talking too quietly because people keep making that "straining to hear you" face when I talk. I am legit not very interesting. What is my life but going to work and taking walks.

So I can just focus on movies we saw, or places we ate in Toronto or shows we're into. Neutral topics. Hey, have you been watching Glow? Because it is hilarious!

But I am definitely bothered by the underpinnings of that. Wanting to talk about food and TV shows not because those are probably way more interesting for the listener anyway, but because I don't feel like anything I'm doing is interesting at all. I mean, it's my life and I'm bored by it. This week's big news was that I finally found a place to get a pedicure that didn't have anybody on Yelp being horrified by the cleanliness of the place. It's been two days and I don't have flesh-eating bacteria, so FIVE STARS.

Fucking Mayberry-assed bullshit. Fuck this place.

I feel alone, I have nothing going on, I literally feel like I am wasting my life, but the weather's nice and there's lots of good seafood. Note to self: leave off the beginning of that sentence at parties.

Oh, hello, I am insane.

I have just written "PAVI, <date>" on a bunch of cans of cat food in preparation for his 9-day stay at a boarding facility. My thoughts on this:

I feel super guilty, but I don't really have another choice, as our usual cat feeder will also be out of town and I don't know anybody else here
I wish I knew other people here
AHHHHHHHHHHH I am super nervous about leaving him with people
But the boarding people seem really nice, have great reviews, etc.
Also, cats are almost wild animals. They can handle this.
Does he need a Feline Leukemia booster? Why didn't the vet just do an FVRCP instead of an FRCP like Murphy Road would have?
Fuck it, schedule the Leukemia booster
AHHHHHHHHHHH
Sorry, buddy.
I hope they don't forget that I'm paying for the playtime upgrade so he can get attention and lovins.
I hope they don't forget his special prescription food
AHHHHHHHHHHH
Please don't mess up my cat. He is a kick-ass cat. Please don't mess up my cat.
I hope he doesn't hold this against me and hate me forever or pee on my stuff when he gets home. I've heard that cats do that sometimes.
But he has been boarded for 7 days before and he just came home like it was no big, so he's probably fine.
Fuck this place, why can't we move somewhere where the vet knows how to act and I can get a friend to stop by and feed him.
AHHHHHHHHHHH

I hate when the most comforting thing I can say to myself is "well, have you done your due diligence to the best of your ability? Have you made the best decision you know how to make? Then you have to just chill and trust your decision." Why can't I just control all of the things all of the time? AHHHHHHHHHH

O Canada

After spending 3 days in Toronto, Chris and I have (of course) decided that we would like to move to Toronto. We're not going to, of course, because ENT jobs in Canada are crazy-difficult to find and harder to get and double or triple that if you're not already licensed in Canada. But you know....good to have goals?

I'm saving most of the details for the book I'm attempting to write, so I'll spare you and just say this: we had a really good time, we ate all of the things. The public transit and streets were spotless and the people were as nice as all of the stereotypes suggest. Toronto is basically a magical fairy land where things are safe, people are nice, and train stops get announced in English AND French. 3 days in a big city and not one single negative interaction, unless you count the cab driver who couldn't seem to figure out how to work the air conditioning in his own cab as we got sweaty in the back seat because the lady folk didn't want their hair blown around. (Also, I got the stink eye from some of our travel companions for that because Lyft isn't a thing in Toronto and I refused to use Uber. Meh.)

When you come back from Canada, you do the "scan your passport, talk to an immigration person" bits in Canada instead of in Boston, which is awesome because the lines for that in Boston get insane. Chris's immigration dude was rude to him, and my immigration dude was slouched down in his chair asking me fast, non-articulated questions and getting irritated with me because I couldn't understand him.

"Where are you going?"
"Boston."
"Why?"
"I live there."
"Why were you in Canada?"
"Vacation."
"Did you have a good time?"
"Yes!"
(long pause)
"Did you have a good time?"
(I look at him, wondering why he's asking again.)
"Why did you come to Canada?"
(OH.....I misunderstood his mumbling.)
"We'd never been here."

I walk away from that guy's desk and look around for Chris, to find him standing in a set of double doors, holding them open. I wave at him as I pass the last guy:

"You got somebody waiting for you?"
"Yep, there he is"
"Are you lost?"
(This seems odd, but I just smile and say no, like maybe this guy is just having fun with me in a grandpa-like way.)
"Nope!"
"See? She's not lost!" the guy yells over to Chris.

Apparently, Chris wanted to stand at the guy's desk and wait for me, but the guy rudely told him that he couldn't. When Chris explained that I wouldn't be able to find him if he went through the doors, the guy said that there was only one way to go and I wouldn't get lost (there was no way to see through the doors). When Chris asked the guy if he would let me know where Chris had gone, the guy was like "nope."

So you know...welcome back to America, don't forget to fuck yourself.

And how's the book going, you ask?
It's kind of not, really. I continue to have trouble finding time when I am awake and energetic enough (and not beholden to an employer or a house full of tasks) to write. I thought it might work to try and do rough drafts in voice memos as I walked around the neighborhood, but that led to some of the shittiest, least funny stuff I've ever thought of. I mean, a rough draft is one thing. Ten minutes of a turd that can't be polished is another thing entirely. So I need to switch gears and try something else. Maybe getting up an hour early a couple days a week? Maybe devoting a couple hours of weekend mornings? I don't know. There's no deadline, so I have plenty of time to figure out some other things, I guess.

Missing the Vet

I just took Pavi to the vet for his first for-real checkup in almost two years. The Mass vet had never seen Pavi, but they do know that he has two catheters in the last year: one in December, one in January. As you may (or may not) recall, when Pavi got his first catheter in December, the emergency vet was like "yeah, it's stress....you may also want to consider switching his food." They made it seem like no big rush, so I was like "I'll finish the mega-expensive food I have and then switch," in my head. No one at the emergency offered to hook me up with special food or urged me to track some down. Voila, Pavi needs a second cath less than a month later, and the emergency vet is STILL telling me it's about his "stress," even though I had bought a fountain, bought Feliway, make an extra effort to keep the house quiet, etc. So they were still just hammering on me about something that I was already doing everything I knew to fix. Not knowing what to do, and feeling like the emergency vet was calling me a shitty cat mom, I called my old vet in Nashville. Not only does he offer to look at Pavi's test results for free, he also asks how Sterling is doing, possibly knowing about Sterling by memory.

"It's the food. Just switch the food."

I switch the food, Pavi loses 3 pounds and has no more issues peeing.

So I take him to the regular vet today. They don't seem particularly interested in those two catheters, listen to his heart, brush him to check for fleas, and look at his teeth. They don't make any comments or tell me anything. No "well, heart sounds normal" or "got a little gingivitis there" or anything. I had to ask specifically about his teeth, since those are my main concern because he's Siamese and doesn't seem to have any other problems, now that he's on prescription food. They don't want a urine sample or blood work or anything. Not that I'm chomping at the bit to pay for extra tests, but you'd think they'd at least be curious after all that urethra drama and never getting a full set of tests? Or maybe the emergency vet did tons of blood work 4 months ago, so it's totally unnecessary. But maybe they could say that?Is it really my job to ask specifically about everything that could possibly come up?

I don't know. Maybe I've just gotten so used to the people at Murphy Road wanting to test for everything all the time that I get needlessly suspicious anytime I have a vet visit that is less than $200?

A Note on Last Weekend's Wedding

Last weekend, my cousin got married up in the mountains of North Carolina. I did not go because that thing was a trek that would have involved a plane trip and a total of four hours of driving on top of that, as well as a hotel, and my travel budget is a little tapped at the moment. My cousin is cool, but we're pretty much on a "Facebook friends and see you at Christmas" basis, so I doubt I was missed much. My sister was on a trip to Turks and Caicos (as you do) so she didn't go either. BUT mom went, which means that she got to field the questions about whether my sister or I will ever settle down, have kids, etc. As mom is a sassypants and perfectly capable of answering these questions, I figured she would be fine. Here is a paraphrasing that is fairly close to how she quoted herself to me:

"Both of the girls have been pretty clear that I'm not getting grandkids, which is fine by me. As for getting married, they'll do it when they feel like it, IF they feel like it. I hope neither of them has any plans to 'settle down.' Ever."

My mom is available for family reunions, bar mitzvahs, anniversaries, and baby showers, if ever feel like hiring her to tell the extended family what's up.