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May 25, 2006
I'm losing you and it's effortless
It wasn't until Herself and I were sitting down to watch House on Tuesday night and I realized I wasn't being plaintively meowed at, that I really noticed (noticed and thought about, that is) how I hadn't seen Bob since morning.
"Have you seen Bob?" I asked Herself. No.
"Have you seen Bob?" I asked Moo. No.
Jack and Spike refused to answer.
We started looking. Under the beds. In the closets. The basement. The bathrooms. Moo's room. Under the pool table. Under the bushes in the front yard. Under the deck in the back yard.
In the kitchen, Bob's dishes were untouched and full of food. That was when I had to admit that Bob was not anywhere I could find him. I leave the door open to the upstairs deck during the day so the herd can enjoy the sunshine--Bob must have seen something interesting and jumped off the deck to investigate. I relayed this theory to Herself, who got wide-eyed and teary. "He's never coming home," Moo said, with a satisfied finality.
I fished the flashlight out of the junk drawer and went out to search the neighborhood. Calling a cat by name is pointless, so I walked the dark streets making a noise like I was sucking on a lemon, hoping Bob--if he was in hearing range--would hear it and come running. When I got home, the flashlight's batteries were dying and Bob was still out on the town. I left his dinner on the front porch and went to bed with Herself, who cried as she fell asleep and then moaned all night in her dreams.
Every night noise convinced me it was Bob and I slept badly, and when I got up he was still not home. I printed some flyers and when Herself got up and dressed, she canvassed the neighborhood and dropped them off in mailboxes. She ran out of flyers, but wouldn't go back out after I printed more because "the birds sound like Bob."
They went to school and I went to work, and when we all got home Bob was still gone. "He's not coming back," Moo pronounced, exasperated with Herself and me and our stubborn refusal to Face Facts, and already planning the arrival of our next pet, more acceptable: a kitten next time, not something already half-grown with irritating quirks. Herself and I walked the neighborhood again Wednesday night, getting down on hands and knees to look under parked cars, chatting up the neighbors, combing the bushes down by the lake. When she went to bed, she said to me "How will I have a good time in Orlando [a month away] when Bob is gone? His head is so little and he's out there all alone."
At four-thirty this morning the meowing woke me up. Nobody meows like Bob, and the sound had me out of bed almost before I was conscious. And there he was on the deck downstairs, crying for his breakfast.
Posted by JudyLa at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2006
loose ends
Doing everything by halves
You've got a real flair with excuses
Meeting someone at the bar
Where loose ends still have uses
It's complicated
This time I think it could be
Triangulated
It could be just what we need
So what you say we give it up and walk away
We're overrated anyway
We're kissing without kissing
We've got it down to a fine art
Love's supposed to keep you young and frisky
But we grew up and wide apart
Not now, not ever, no it's never a good time
How will the good times never roll on
Comparing photos that are then and now, now and then
Just wondering where it all went wrong
Imogen Heap
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2006
the life you save may be
The sun isn't up yet. Spike sits on my desk looking out the window, tail lashing. Maybe he sees the early bird.
"You think I'm a complete mess, don't you?" said B. to me last night while we worked, tears in her eyes. I said No, Of Course Not!, but what I should have said was "If by 'complete mess' you mean 'ought to be medicated,' then the answer is yes." When I got home I looked in my medicine cabinet. Wellbutrin. Paxil CR. Lexapro. Abilify. Effexor. All the things that make life bearable for the modern woman.
I wanted to put them all in a bag and drive them to her house, stand and watch while she took something, anything, out of the bag and swallowed it, just to get her started. She's 25 and has a dog, a 33-year-old husband in the military who treats her like a recalcitrant child but can't figure out how to make dinner for himself or wash a pair of socks and who called her while she was at our annual Christmas party and told her to come home immediately because he had locked himself out of the house, psoriasis, fibromyalgia, migraines, anxiety, and the tendency to self-medicate with too much wine. I want to hold her in my arms and say "shhhhh." I want to smack her and say "Stop doing this to yourself!" I want to put her in the car and take her to the doctor. I want to call her parents and tell on her. I want to move away from here to where I don't know anybody and nobody knows me.
The sun is up; it touches the very tips of the trees and the birds are singing. Spike jumps to the floor and meows at me. Time for breakfast and another day.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
May 21, 2006
if not now, when?
Oh my gosh, yesterday was such a beautiful day. The early morning clouds and drizzle gave way to perfect spring weather--sky the color of a robin's egg, a slight breeze that carried the voices of people fishing on the lake, warm sunshine perfect for dozing under with a book. The kind of weather that makes you hold your breath because it's just too perfect. And for a change, Herself and Moo stayed away from the sniping and bickering that usually accompanies our time together. Herself said to me at the end of the day, "I woke up feeling happy and I stayed happy."
I went to bed early and dreamed about getting new tattoos and sending text messages. Lately my dreams are more like outlines for stories than actual scenarios; maybe this is a side effect of leaving Lexapro behind for Effexor. Gone are the cravings for carbs and wine, the upset stomach, the clenched jaw ... and in their place? ... I don't know what, yet. Less of a dream life and more of an actual one?
I feel stubborn, lately. I'm tired of playing by the rules, since they're rules I didn't make up.
No. No, I won't.
No, I don't wanna.
I scared The Husband last week, I think, when I told him I can well imagine committing mayhem against Spooky Girlfriend's person. I think he's afraid that there is no line, for me, between "imagine" and action. You know what, a lot of the time I wish there wasn't. I imagine the satisfaction of my anger made physical. Finally.
But.
But instead of driving to their apartment and setting the place on fire, I think I will
go to Lowe's and buy some hostas and ivy and mint and grasses,
some mulch,
some river stones for the steps that wind down to the dock.
I think I will get on my knees in the dirt and plant some living things in the soil and let The Husband and SG have what they have and I will thank whatever power there is out there or in here for letting me have this day and these children. I think I will spend some time in the sun again today, and under the trees. I can always be angry again tomorrow.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
May 13, 2006
baby you're crawling way past your speed
Herself and I are watching Lost. She sighs and says to me "I wish Sawyer lived on our street. Then maybe he'd be working in his yard and his shirt would come off."
The weather pattern for the past couple of days has been for the day to begin sunny, like it is now, blue, blue sky overhead and the light shining on the firs in the back yard; and then gradually the clouds cover the blue and by late afternoon or early evening it rains. Last night it rained and thundered, and this morning the squirrels leap from tree to tree and water patters down from the leaves as they jump.
The Husband returned from a business trip to Colorado yesterday afternoon. He text-messaged me "I'm lonely," which is something I don't remember him ever saying before, and he drove down to our house and ended up spending the night here, to my surprise; consequently I didn't sleep very well. I'm not used any more to having somebody else in my bed--unless it's Herself, who regularly dreams about zombies and bad guys and worries about noises in the night--and the rhythmic breathing of another person, instead of soothing my brain, just agitated me.
I am a creature of habit. My Friday nights are spent with the kids, more or less; maybe we go someplace for dinner, maybe we get take-out, maybe we go to Borders or Best Buy, but we are usually home by 9:00 and then I find it extremely luxurious to stretch out fully clothed on my bed with the TV and the lights on and let the work week ebb away as I drift to sleep to the background noise of Law and Order: SVU.
I am out of practice with regard to the marital requirements of making conversation with another adult and having to consider that a television show about sex crimes is definitely not what The Husband considers quality programming. Consequently, I had no idea what to do with myself last night. I was embarrassed for him to see how rabidly I pursue the mundane but too used to my Friday night ritual to be able to do anything else but long for bed, once ten o'clock came around.
I can count on the fingers of two hands the number of nights The Husband has spent at our home in the past year and a half; it's not like he suddenly finds himself here, unplanned, and thinks "Gosh, I'm tired; I'll stay over." I kept wondering Why Are You Here? but couldn't bring myself to ask, mostly because I knew the answer I got wouldn't be The Answer.
So here I am this morning and he is sleeping upstairs and my perception is a little bit skewed and my weekend seems not-mine, and I've forgotten what it was that I meant to do today, so I sit here and type and look out the window at the morning, which continues on as if everything was perfectly normal.
Posted by JudyLa at 07:00 AM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2006
all I know is.
All I know is that loving you is what I did with my life. And I'm terrified by what happened to us.
...But I'm just not interested in watching this second adolescence. I had my adolescence. I can't go through yours again. ...
And I'm not going to be getting any thinner or younger, my ass is gonna hit the ground, if it hasn't already--and I want to be with somebody who can still see me in here. I'm still in here. And I don't want to be resented or despised for changing ... I'd rather be alone. I don't want someone to have contempt for who I've become.
I feel like I've done my best to honour the past, and what you were and what you are now--but you want something more than that, something new. I can't be new.
Zadie Smith, from On Beauty
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
May 03, 2006
life = art = life
... And with the miracle that is male compartmentalization he had barely thought of her either. ... He had recalled, with the mawkish tenderness of the disloyal, how very lucky and blessed he was to have his family. In fact, taken as a concept, as a premise, 'Victoria Kipps' had done a world of good for Howard's marriage and for Howard's general mental state. The concept of Victoria Kipps had put the blessings of his own life in perspective. But Victoria Kipps was not a concept. She was real.
Zadie Smith, from On Beauty
Posted by JudyLa at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)