Category Archives: our furry overlords

No Anchovies, Please

Posted by Tata on

Pete’s decided to make bagels from scratch, I kid you not. There’s dough resting in the fridge for some sort of crazy boiling and baking ritual tomorrow that he assures me will result in actual bagels. Until he announced that he would do this, I would have thought making your own bagels from scratch would have been just about as possible as my flying to the moon. So we’ll see what happens.

This afternoon, the extended family got together to spring a surprise birthday party for my sister Corinne at Corinne’s mother’s house two towns over. Pete and I drove over after we closed the family stores at 6 and found the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party-themed soire in full madness. The kids ran in every direction. The adults streamed from room to room for reasons unknown to me. At one point, half my family and a bunch of strangers piled into the basement. Pete and I sat on a couch in the dining room, perplexed, but from our perspective, it was a nice gesture, them leaving us alone with the colorful and enchanting dessert buffet. I should send them a card or something.

After an hour or so, we had to leave. The supermoon was rising, helicopters circled overhead and News12 New Jersey was mum about the cause. The fourth pass by the helicopter signaled an end to my socializing. I stepped between Pete and one of my nieces and pushed him out the front door, yelping something like, “The thing about leaving is that the going requires you actually go.”

Topaz is curled up on my left, one paw over her nose. Sweetpea snores and twitches on my right hip. Pete’s sitting in a chair, head back, eyes closed. I’m almost ready for sleep. Drusy alone hunts in the kitchen, eyes bright. She knows something. We may find out what in the morning.

And We’ve Often Rewound the Clock

Posted by Tata on

A few nights ago, I couldn’t find Topaz anywhere. She didn’t answer when I called from the bottom of the attic steps, she didn’t bound from under a table or behind the couch. I opened all the closed doors and waited for an indignant kitty to give me what-fer, but nothing happened. Finally, I stood in the living room, looking around, calling her name. Suddenly, she was right where I was looking: perched on a pillow, staring at me. Topaz went from Full Kitty Invisible to Regular Kitty Visible right before my eyes and I have no explanation for it. The next morning, Topaz slipped past me unnoticed as I walked in from feeding the outside cats. Later, when Pete opened the kitchen door, Topaz buzzed past him, skidded to a stop and said, “Uh…thanks” on her way to wherever it is Topaz goes.

Just about every day, Chris Christie plumbs new depths of pointless bullying. This one affects me directly.

Pension and health benefit reform will be high on the agenda in Trenton this spring. Christie wants all public employees, state and local, to begin paying 30 percent of their health insurance premiums starting next fiscal year. Currently, public employees are required to pay at least 1.5 percent of their salary toward health benefits.

Christie has warned that if Democratic lawmakers refuse to go along with his proposal, or a similar plan, he would not be able to deliver an additional $190 million in property tax relief to seniors and middle-to-low income residents.

State Sen. Stephen Sweeney, (D-Gloucester), wants to phase in the increases over seven years and apply the rates on a sliding scale based on a employee’s salary.

Under Christie’s plan, a teacher who makes a $66,000 salary would pay about $5,200 a year for health insurance. Under Sweeney’s plan, the same teacher would pay about $3,610.

In general, public employees with 25 years of service can retire and receive medical benefits at no cost, but that would change under both Sweeney’s and Christie’s plan.

Current retirees, including those who retire before any proposal is enacted, would be protected from the changes. However, Christie has suggested he is willing to make some adjustments retroactive, even if it prompts a legal challenge.

Four things about this article:

  • 1. My older co-workers are retiring in droves;
  • 2. The juxtaposition of 30% of premium cost and 1.5% of salary without describing the relationship of those numbers is bullshit;
  • 3. Sweeney’s going to hear from a whole lot of old public service workers about how playing for the other team is not going to help a Democrat get re-elected.
  • 4. I have 24.5 years in the pension system and unless there’s a day every spring where money rains from the sky I will never make $66,000/year. Probably.

    • Waving around a number like $66,000 makes it sound like every first year teacher’s aide might make that, which is ridiculous and inflammatory. In a just world, teachers, fire fighters, mail carriers, EMTs, nurses, sanitation workers, home health care workers and childcare providers would be paid what their services are worth to society, instead of the least society can get away with. Jacking retirees for their lunch money ought to bring us shame, but no. A whole lot of people just like me may be wondering if we’re going to die at our desks, if we still have jobs.

    Lately, I can’t turn on the radio without Cheap Trick warbling Surrender. But we can’t.

    Kick My Heels Up And

    Posted by Tata on

    The Fair Fifi, all of five.

    I.
    Pete turned the corner and found me locked in a life and death struggle with insulated pants. He stood there for a few seconds, chewing over the idea that his lovely wife could be outwitted by textiles, then asked, “So…what’re ya doin’?” I quit struggling. There was nothing to do but pants myself and start over.

    II.
    People are so interesting!

    III.
    Yesterday, Miss Sasha posted on Facebook that she was dashing off to a taco meeting. Suddenly the problem with all meetings I’d ever attended was clear to me.

    IV.
    Three boxes arrived the other day from a friend in Trenton who knew me when I was Me. My friend had lost a friend who crocheted lap blankets for people in wheelchairs and this yarn was just sitting in my friend’s house for a year and a half. I put away two of the boxes to protect the contents from yarn predators who might be people who are cats, but the third box contained very large granny squares for the cat blanket project. I was speechless. Later, when I could speak, I told my friend I wouldn’t let her or her friend down.

    The Water Where You Came From

    Posted by Tata on

    1. People ask me a lot of the same crazy questions over and over at the family store, but my favorite is, “Do you think this will look good in my living room?”

    2. She rang the doorbell an hour ago in tonight’s snow storm. Apparently, the Sierra Club works rain or shine. I let her in so she could thaw for a minute and I would have made her a cup of tea if we hadn’t just lost water. Snow in pots and bowls was melting on radiators and knitted squares Darla had left for me were piled everywhere. I’d reached a miserable crossroads in trying to join them for cat blankets when the girl said, “I’m interning at this shelter for orphaned wild animals in Blairstown, where the woman uses pockets like those for the baby possums.” She wrote down the name of the shelter and its phone number. I stared at the squares, then I looked back at her. “Are you allergic to chocolate?” She said no. I brought her a plastic container from the kitchen. “It’s homemade cocoa granola,” I said. “I’m not joining the Sierra Club, but you’ve really helped me. Please take it.”

    There’s No Reason Why I Heard That

    Posted by Tata on

    This is a fucking execution.

    See it. Know it. The little kick after the poor guy drops dead is a nice touch. It’s done in our names.

    In related news, the motherfucker who gave us the Department of Homeland Security and paramilitary cops finally answers for his perfidious perfidy.

    Senator Joseph I. Lieberman will announce on Wednesday that he will not seek a fifth term, according to a person he told of his decision. Mr. Lieberman, whose term is up in 2012, chose to retire rather than risk being defeated, said the person, who spoke to the senator on Tuesday.

    “I don’t think he wanted to go out feet first,” the person said.

    And speaking of feet first, the King of Doctor-Killers just keeps coming back.

    Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, will announce Thursday that he will challenge President Barack Obama in the 2012 Democratic primaries.

    Terry is perhaps best known to Floridians for his role as the spokesman for Terri Schiavo’s parents and for his challenge of state Sen. Jim King in the Republican primary in 2006.

    “My constituency is the millions of pro-life[sic – and I mean that./Ed.] advocates who want to make child-killing illegal from conception until birth,” said Terry on Tuesday. “My base is those who know that we must show Americans the victims of abortion, in order to restore the full protection of law to unborn babies.”

    Terry, who has backed graphic ads of abortion procedures before, hopes to run ads during the 2012 NFL playoff games, including the Super Bowl.

    “America has never truly debated child-killing, because America has never truly seen child-killing,” insisted Terry. “We will use FEC and FCC laws for federal candidates to bring America face-to-face with this massacre of the innocents.”

    I am exhausted by the effort of everyday living and this authoritarian, misogynistic, blindly zealous douche bounces back year after year like a particularly dickish superball. Meanwhile, my sister, surrounded by family members who have had abortions, squawks, “Roe v. Wade will never be overturned” and votes Republican. Frankly, I’ve had enough of the stupid and determined.

    Dear Furry Overlords,

    I do not belong on this planet, and your fur is boss.

    Hugs,
    Tata

    Pretend That I Am Weightless

    Posted by Tata on

    We’re expecting snow again tonight. This morning, the physical therapist was stabbing me with an ice pick and panicking. I couldn’t actually see her, so I assume she was stabbing me with an ice pick, but she might have been massaging a particularly tender spot on the outside of my right hip. She said something astounding.

    Angela: Snow days make me all stressed.

    I’m pretty sure she said that. I might have been squawking like a jaybird at the time.

    Sweetpea, unnecessarily anxious.

    At first, I wasn’t sure what she was getting at, since she and I just met. She seems kind of normal. She wears nice sweaters. She’s got nostrils. I hesitated for a second and when I looked over my shoulder Angela’s face was kind of puddled up in concentric circles around her nose. Then I yapped happily quite a bit.

    Angela stared off into the distance. “What do you do on a snow day?”

    I believe I may have yodeled. I have no idea since I would never in a million years yodel, but someone was definitely yodeling. I also said on snow days I bake something, exercise, read, play with my cats, clip coupons, shovel for a few minutes and make piping hot beverages, shop online, dress up in costumes and play games, and as I blurted, Angela burbled along with me. Bake…read…shovel…play games.

    Not at all the Hilton Sisters and their friends.

    She didn’t sound convinced. I blurted some more about checking on elderly neighbors, getting a little upper body workout with a push broom, calling people you miss, writing overdue letters, catching up on a movie, putting on music and dancing, wearing bunny ears, repainting the bathroom, changing the batteries in your flashlights, staying off the road and having such a wonderful time you raise the pulse of joy in the universe. I’m certain I mentioned little sombreros for the pets, too.

    Enjoying a snow day seemed like an entirely new idea to Angela. I filed that thought away for the future, when I will work on her overworked psyche while she’s working on my increasingly cranky hip. We have six weeks, starting today.