After my six-month appointment at the Hospital For Special Surgery, Pete and I walked around and around the Guggenheim. The uneven surfaces proved difficult and challenging, but ultimately, we saw wonderful canvases and had a wonderful time. At home, we collapsed on the couch and wished we could sleep for a week.
Left: sugar plum chutney; right: pickled beets.
I am too depressed to talk. Between the sudden death of Tunch, the George Zimmerman acquittal and a strange turn of events in my family, I feel a little broken. Maybe tomorrow will be better.
At 11 pm on a school night and in the space of ten minutes, max:
My phone rings. It’s the upstairs tenant from the other side of the house. Her voice is trembling.
Kathy: Is Pete there?
Tata: He is!
Kathy: I caught a mouse under a wastebasket in my bathtub. How did he get in my bathtub? I don’t know how it got there, but it’s there and I’m terrified –
Tata: We’re on it! [To Pete] Kathy caught a mouse in her bathtub.
Pete: [Reading juicy gossip on Facebook] Goddammit!
Kathy: – if you guys weren’t home I didn’t know what I was going to do. What if you guys were away for the weekend? Was I going to leave it there? I didn’t know –
Pete: Grrrr grrrr grrrr….
Tata: [To Kathy] Oh, I know! Oh, I know! [To Pete] Get up, I’m goddamm Sybil Fawlty!
Kathy: – how I could take showers and what if mice were in my closets and can he come up here and help me?
Tata: He’ll be up in a minute.
Kathy: Okay.
Pete got up and made for the basement. Over his shoulder, he said, “Tell her I’m getting gloves,” which seemed mysterious until I heard a door slam on the other side of the house. Out in the hall, Kathy was sweating and nearly hyperventilating. Makeup formed generous rings around her eyes. I ushered her into our house.
Tata: Pete’s gone to get gloves. Come in, come in, please! Can I get you a glass of water?
Kathy: No, thank you.
Pete marched past us grimly, gloved hands in front of his face like a surgeon on his way to the operating theater. I opened the door for Ben Casey and Kathy cycled through her story again.
Kathy: I caught a mouse under a wastebasket in my bathtub. How did he get in my bathtub? I don’t know how it got there, but it’s there and I was terrified –
Tata: How about a glass of water?
Kathy: – if you guys weren’t home I didn’t know what I was going to do. What if you guys were away for the weekend? Was I going to leave it there? I didn’t know –
Tata: You really don’t want a glass of water?
Kathy: – how I could take showers and what if mice were in my closets? How would a mouse even get into my bathtub? Did it come through the pipes? After I found mouse droppings in my kitchen, I put everything into plastic containers. There’s nothing for the mouse to eat, so how did it get there –
I got up, put ice into a rocks glass, poured cool, filtered water and handed it to Kathy in the living room. She took a sip and noticed three black cats had come to see her. The blind kitten scampered off, breaking Kathy’s concentration.
Kathy: She just walked away! How does she know where to go? She’s in the kitchen!
Tata: She runs, jumps and plays. She’s really smart.
Kathy: How does she know where the furniture is?
Tata: She remembers.
Kathy: Who is this one?
Tata: That’s Topaz. She normally doesn’t engage with new people but –
From the other side of the house, we both hear BAM! BAM BAM! BAM! Neither of us flinches.
Tata: – she likes you a whole lot. Drusy over there is our hunter. We’ll be happy to lend you a cat if you have this problem again. Drusy and Sweetpea would make short work of any mouse problem.
A door slams, then the front door slams.
Kathy: Drusy? She seems so tiny.
Tata: Yeah, but she’s ferocious.
The front door slams again. Pete walks through the front door.
Pete: Well, next time, we’ll lend you a cat. They love this stuff.
Kathy: They catch mice?
Pete: Yep. Sometimes, Drusy runs by with a victim in her mouth.
Tata: It’s hard to hear, what with all the screaming.
Kathy: The mouse?
Tata: No, me.
Pete: I cleaned up the tub and took the mouse out to the garbage.
Kathy: Thank you, thank you!
Cats: Amateur!
Because I am full of sore muscles, arthritic joints and smartness, I drive myself over to the massage therapist’s office once a week and turn myself in. I explain what parts of my glorious person are laughing at me and not with me, then do half an hour of stand up comedy lying down, because if I stopped telling jokes, I might go a little screamy. Therapeutic massage, as practiced by Merciless Mark, can be very painful, but it forces me to come up with new material on an urgent basis.
Tata: This spot here feels wider after the surgery.
MM: Any chance the surgeon gave you a new body part? I hear that happens.
Tata: Why didn’t I ask him, “Hey Doc, can you make that narrower? I wouldn’t mind narrower hips.”
MM: Shake his hand and slip him a little something?
Tata: “My friend Mr. Lincoln would like you to take off – say – two inches?”
MM: “And his friend Mr. Washington would like to thank you.”
Tata: “What if Mr. Hamilton joined this party?” Sixteen bucks! I guess you could make up money.
MM: “Mr. Taft would like you to make the scar reeeeeally small.”
Tata: He’s on the one million dollar, right? No, the $250 bill!
MM: What’s Kennedy on?
Tata: The fifty cent piece. You flip that to your orthopedic surgeon and say, “Here, kid. Don’t spend it all in one place.”
MM: “Susan B. Anthony nominates you for Surgeon of the Year.”
Dang. He’ll be here all week.
“Brass Band” is a multiflora rose cultivar introduced in 1994. The melon-colored flowers are scented. Photographed at R.W. van der Goot Rose Garden, Somerset, NJ. Photo: Bob Hosh
This is a new low:
“If it was your son, in fact, screaming as you testified, that would suggest that it was Mr. Zimmerman’s fault that led to his death,” [Murderous moron George Zimmerman’s attorney Mark] O’Mara observed. “And if it was not your son screaming, if it was, in fact, George Zimmerman then you would have to accept the probability that it was Trayvon Martin that caused his own death, correct?”
“I don’t understand your question,” [Trayvon Martin’s mother Sabrina] Fulton said. “I heard my son screaming.”
“You certainly had to hope that was your son screaming even before you heard it, correct?” O’Mara continued.
“I didn’t hope for anything,” Fulton insisted. “I just simply listened to the tape.”
“I don’t meant to put you through this any more than necessary, but you certainly would hope your son, Trayvon Martin, did nothing that could have led to his own death, correct?” O’Mara tried again.
“What I hope for is that this wouldn’t have ever happened and he would still be here,” Fulton shot back. “That’s my hope.”
“That’s a real dick move, Mr. O’Mara,” said all dick moves ever.
Pete and I took our little grandchildren, my daughter Miss Sasha, my mother and stepdad to the American Museum of Natural History today. This is my grandson Panky.
What? There are more dinosaurs? Lemme at ’em!
If some pathetic douchebag harmed my grandson and the pathetic douchebag’s attorney asked me if the blame rested anywhere but on the pathetic douchebag, I’m 101% sure I’d look that attorney square in the eye and tell him – or her – what sort of monstrous pigfucker he – or she – was. Sabrina Fulton deserves a medal of some kind, but at least the conviction of her son’s murderer.
When I got home from work, Panky was rolling across the couch with his shoes on, Buckwheat demanded I unwrap her toothbrush, the kitten was huddled in the kitchen, the other cats shivered in the attic and Miss Sasha was holding the dog. I don’t have a dog. The TV was on. South Indian food was spread out across the table. So I unwrapped the toothbrush and told the kitten I was doubling her allowance.
Roadside memorial on Route 18. Trees in the distance line the riverbank near where my old apartment stands. The whole place is so blood-soaked we should see ghosts panhandling on Albany Street.
Currants are ungodly expensive, so as projects go, they’re strictly gift food.
Fortunately, I don’t really drink much hard liquor anymore and Pete knows if he touches this, I’ll murder him in his sleep.
At the American Museum of Natural History, Pete and I stumbled into an exhibit about food anthropology and a demonstration about the magic of pectin. I answered questions because Dad died and left me homework. Thanks, Dad!
In other news: Pete’s surgeon declared Pete’s surgery a success. We then tromped around the museum at the edge of Central Park for a few hours because we could without debilitating pain. It was a big moment for us, which we celebrated by taking the train back to New Brunswick and walking over the bridge to where we’d left our car. It doesn’t sound like much of a fiesta, but last year’s trip to the museum sent me to bed for a day, which is so much less fun when it entails agony and drugstore bonbons.
I should have planned that better.
In the waiting room at the Hospital For Special Surgery, we heard the great news: DOMA was struck down and Prop 8 was thrown out. Last night’s groundbreaking filibuster in the Texas State Legislature by Wendy Davis and the crowd was a welcome surprise after the day’s Supreme Court ruling gutting the Voting Rights Act. There’s no time to absorb news as it’s happening this week.
Poor Impulse Control 