Time. Flying. And also not. I don't know, I'm fucking JETLAGGED. Cut me some, okay?

Remember that time I said that life is weird? TOTALLY LEGIT, ya'll.

So first of all, I voluntarily hung out at the airport on Monday from like 9:15 a.m. until my flight boarded at 3 p.m. Mostly because that's when Gray could take me and I'm too cheap to pay for long-term parking. But also because airport bars are like the nirvana of the traveling man. 

Early morning booze is totally acceptable. 

So I caught a buzz by 11 and then I took a nap. Loudly and with loudlyness. Except I was wearing headphones and listening to  Mastodon. Because yes, sleeping is better if you're slightly paranoid.

And also I didn't want to know if I A) farted or B) snored. 

Another reason airports rock: anonymity is almost guaranteed, if you ignore the guy who pretends to feel your boobs for explosives.

Yeah, in your pants, Mr. TSA.

Anyway, so on the flight I sat directly behind a guy I'd been eyeing all morning in between sleeping it off. So at first I was like BUMMER but then I realized I was sandwiched behind Jock Man and Super...Something Man, and both were cute. And, I was reasonably sure, of drool-legal age.

HI HENRY! HI BLAKE! Although I'm pretty sure you burned my business cards during a seance to rid your soul of toxic contact.

So we all totally napped for takeoff like every sane person does and then we realized they were serving food.

DID YOU HEAR ME? EDIBLE STUFFS ON AN AIRPLANE. I think Blake said he was having a flashback to the 90s or something. So true.

So then I decided to order a cocktail and Henry agreed, so then I knew for sure he was legal, except we didn't get carded, so apparently airplane rules are different that Safely On The Ground Rules. 

Then we ate the totally free food and Henry and I got to chatting, then I started interrupting Blake while he was totally studying some very intricate drawings of the human anatomy (Jack the Ripper, for sure) so I basically inserted myself into his head, too, then before we landed, we were all laughing (I with glee, them with uncomfortable fear) and then the end. 

It was the best plane ride in memory.

***

On another note, here's a pic of me at my dad's Mac. And, can I say, WHY THE FUCK DON'T THE BROWSER WINDOWS COVER THE WHOLE SCREEN? I cannot stand to see desktop behind it, my mind is literally twitching right now.

And here's me at my dad's same Mac in 2007. 

Holy shit, can you say DIVORCE PLUS WEDDING PLUS PLUS DOGS PLUS TWO LAYOFFS PLUS MORTGAGE PLUS BRAIN INJURY = GRUMPY OLD FACE?

Anyone know how to get 24 back? I'd love to know.

***

About one day to BlogHer and I'm still not ready for the sea of vaginas, but I'm trying. 

Good thing I can't smell.

Only I

So I hazarded my first attempt at a top secret "friend of the family" recipe called Hot Chicken. I really wish I'd learned to make this BEFORE I lost the ability to know if something is seasoned correctly or, instead, tastes like an old shoe. Because seriously, I cannot tell the difference.

Unfortunately, I became privy to this recipe a few months ago which, in Cat's Terms of Memory, may as well have been fourteen thousand years and a few dozen liters of vodka ago. Because all I remembered were most of the ingredients and that the end result is yummy. So I faked it the best I could and reasoned that if nothing else, this would be spicy, and spicy is just about all I have left in this world.

12 jalapenos and 2 habaneras later 1 habanera later, I decided, after I tasted one with the tip of my tongue and it was blissfully painful, ought to have been enough to make this truly "HOT" chicken.

But it wasn't. It was more...mildly intolerable chicken.

To me, it was "meh."

But on Saturday, I prepped everything and shoved it into the crock pot and then headed out on foot (thanks to a flat bike tire) to find a quiet spot to get some writing done. We're a few blocks away from the Minnesota River, which happens to be one of my favorite places for walking, crying and brooding, so I figured it might work for writing, too. That I've never tested the theory goes to show you just how long I've been out of commission.

I was armed with a notebook full of helpful man thoughts from a crew of (apparently) drunken comrades, and I was curious to give these ideas a shot. I'm still working on that, but as it turns out, I am TERRIBLE at being a man.

A bug flew directly into my eyeball, and though I saw it coming and reacted by slamming shut my eyelid, it was too late. It was unfortunate for me that I stuck my jalapeno and habenera fingers in after the bug to fish it out. Let's just say I was blind for several minutes and considered turning around and heading home.

Once at the river, I started along the path (because who would ever do such a thing as walk in the grass?) and I stumbled upon a scruffy middle-aged man who, from a distance, appeared to be sporting a shirt pocket of cigarettes and a fist full of some hideous, silver-canned beer. Turns out it was only a travel mug of what I presume was coffee, but this guy was a character, I could tell just by glancing.

He had with him a dog who was off leash and well behaved, and he paid no attention to me as I approached. The dog was busy tramping through the water and weeds, looking for anything that moved.

As I am wont to do, I asked the man what kind of dog he had, and he answered that it was "hard to say," or something the like. Again, with my memory. I noted that the dog looked like he had tiger markings, and the man commented that was his brindle. Happily ready to prove that I am a Dog Person, I noted that Gray once had a boxer named Tyson who shared the same tiger-looking brindle as this dog, and the man exclaimed, "Yes, exactly!"

We started walking together, dog talking, of course, and he asked if I was just out hiking.

Ha, exercise. Not likely.

I told him I was trying to find a quiet spot to write, that our neighbors were installing a fence and there was a jack hammer involved, that there are kids all over the park by the river, so that I was following the trail looking for a better spot.

"Come with me."

Normally, I don't go around following strange men who say "come with me," but this guy wasn't setting off any alarms and plus, he had a dog.

I am powerless against the charms of the canine species.

Turns out to be a lucky thing I followed the guy because he led me to a marina and then out onto a secluded peninsula so near the river, and so level with its surface, that I felt I was sliding right along with it. He pulled up a chair for me and one for him, we smoked a bit, and then he left me to my writing, but not before we became friends.

I told him I considered this an open invitation to return and he didn't disapprove, so now I have a new place that is perfectly peaceful and serene where I can retreat in just a few short minutes whenever I need to write, which (apparently) should be all the damn time.

Next time, remind me to take the bug spray. I'm half-mosquito today.

The trouble with...

...getting out of bed in the morning is that it means I am likely to accidentally do things.

And have any of you ever noticed how I tend to...how do I say this...OBFUCKINGSESS about those things that I do?

Yeah, I'm doing it again.

Now that I've started writing, it's like I can't turn it off, and I've found myself with 7 new drafts in my blogger dashboard and countless tiny, indecipherable, middle-of-the-night notebook scribbles, all of which is good I guess, but it's also frustrating because none of them are "publishable" in even the loosest "hit publish button on blog that nobody even reads" sense, and all of them are completely fucking different topics and ideas, but I have this suspicion that they're all related in some way, and so I'm starting to see a pattern and a way that they can go together to make an entire readable thing, but the problem now is that I have to actually make that happen, and holy shit, ya'll.

Writing is hard.

All of this is compounded by a few things, like that I called in a refill for my crazy meds last week but didn't realize it needed a refill authorization from my doctor, so I ended up having to miss a couple days of medication, then the pharmacy forgot to call and tell me the Rx was ready, and then I forgot that I needed to call the pharmacy to see if the Rx was ready, but finally I remembered to check on the website and saw that it WAS ready, so then I forgot to go pick it up. For two days.

Needless to say after my recent behavior, I can report that I am absolutely confident that I should be medicated. AT ALL TIMES. And by any means necessary. Which reminds me, I need to order this medication in the anal tablet form so that in the event I accidentally staple my mouth to someones couch, I can still get my absolutely vital daily dose. Ya'll, I lost track of the number of times I sobbed over things like the color of Lily's sad eyes and that the dishwasher was full of dishes, but those were clean and I had nothing to replace them with, so the poor dishwasher was going to be lonely.

And has anyone noticed that "breaking up" with a friend is really fucking awful? I've had to do that a couple of times in the recent past, and it's honestly more painful (for crazy lil ole me) to lose a friend than it was when I got divorced from my first husband.

Both times this has happened, it was due to both a parting of interests which make continued friendship more harmful than awesome, and also to my BIG. FUCKING. MOUTH. that I cannot seem to ever stop from running around naked while metaphorically flipping people the bird in between swallows of Svedka.

Between my lack of medication, the overwhelming inadequacy and pressure I feel when I'm trying to produce actual words with actual meaning, and the social turmoil of the week behind me, I can honestly say that I plan to get so motherfucking drunk tonight that I will not wake up until Monday, and when I do, I probably won't be able to locate either my pants or my face.

PS - I will need a ride home on Monday. Any takers?

Nickfit & McClooneybin

Today, I sound like a carton-per-day, loose-neck-skinned grandmother from the backwoods. I'm probably wearing matching socks and t-shirt under my night shirt. Mr. Hicks - If you need some strong baritone in your chamber choir this year, lemme know. I can fly down for the spring concert if need be. I think what pushed me over the edge was the cigarette I smoked. Who says carcinogens are bad for people? It's like I'm supporting fine arts just by being alive. I'm a hero. ::hacking and gasping::

::throat clearing::

Last night I got to hang out with my writing losers Nick and John. It looks like we're the Final Three in what started out as a writers' group of six spazzes, and it has come to my attention that although this was our first meeting since September (stupid brain pain!), it was not the first time that everyone came with some writing to share EXCEPT FOR ME.

I've gotta get back to school and into a creative writing class before my brain cells die and fall out of my nose. I'm registering for summer and fall classes next week.

Nick, whom I think of as one crazy good motherfucker, read a performance piece about some wrestling match back in some time before I even pretended to like wrestling for the sake of getting into Gray's pants, and it was funny as hell, thanks to his typical crazy fucking delivery. But if I liked it, you might have thought that Gray was going to jizz all over the dining room because holy shit this nerd is talking about THE UNDERTAKER in my very own home and now I can die happy. Well played, Nick my man, and if Gray tries to cop a feel next time, it's all on you. Home-wrecking bastard.

Then there's John, who just published a collection of fiction on Amazon, and ya'll'd be fucking nuts not to go buy them for 99 cents a pop. You don't need any kind of E-reader to download them, just half a brain and a computer. John used to work with prosthetic limbs, so he could tell you a thing or two about the brilliance of your plans to play chicken with a train and your bad habit of eating too many Oreos (I'M LOOKING AT MY HUSBAND).

I'm a big fan of John's work. We took a writing class together last year and I remember him as one of a handful of people with real talent, at least as far as my vodka-sodden, concussed brain is concerned. He's a bit on the dark side, which is another reason his work is relatable for me. Three of these stories are short fiction and one is flash fiction, which meant it was almost physically painful to me when the story ended and I realized THAT WAS IT. No more. Nada.

When preparing to tell you losers about John's published stories, I asked him to dish some embarrassing (and thereby fascinating) things about himself. Apparently one of those things should have been that he's a perfect specimen and has never fucked up in a public manner, because this is how he responded:

Three embarrassing things about me:

1. It's been ten minutes of blinking cursor.
2. Hmmmm... apparently I have blocked out anything truly embarrassing.
3. Fuck, Cat, I don't know. Make up something about a nursing home, a pellet gun, and a plastic vat of Mississippi river water.

You can see why I love him so.

Services Rendered

So I've started my new career as a newspaper columnist / slash / professional dog walker, and I have to say that it's awesome so far. Of course, I've only written one column for the University's paper and I've only walked one dog. One time. But still, I couldn't help but day dream last night as Libby and I strolled through the darkening SE Minneapolis streets...I could walk dogs all day long and maybe write a little in between "clients". That would be the life.

I believe I mentioned we're broke. I believe you'll remember that we started doing the TOTAL! MONEY! MAKEOVER! thing with Dave Ramsey and that it worked pretty fucking well (I paid off a small fortune in about nine months), but then we got engaged and every last cent *plus some cents we didn't have* went into paying for the wedding and associated festivities.  Then there was BlogHer. Did I mention shit is expensive in Manhattan? Plus there was luggage to check ($20/bag) and airport bars to support ($9.99/bloody fucking mary) and now we're just flat out broke as a couple of Summer's foot bones.

Here we are, post-expensive occasions and stuff, and I'm frantically trying to pull money out of my ass so we can get back on track with our budgeting and debt-paying and, oh you know, EATING.

Enter The Metropolitan. It just so happens that the editor of the paper is a member of my writing group and the production manager was the flutist in our wedding, and they were interested in adding a student lifestyle column, and what was that? I can make $30 an issue, you say? I'M IN.

Then I realized they were also in need of a business manager to do some paperwork for a total of two hours per week and I basically knocked over anyone standing in my way and demanded that I be given that position as well because A) I FUCKING LOVE PAPERWORK and B) bigger stipend, so here I find myself as the new business manager and contributing staff writer for The Metropolitan, student newspaper for Metropolitan State University. My first paid writing gig.

It just so happened that on the same day I heard about the newspaper gig (I totally just typed "jewspaper"...must be thinking of Jessica Bern today...), I also placed an ad on Craigslist for my dog-walking services, thinking if I could find one or two clients who needed me to walk their pups a few times per week, it would be a great way to make a little extra money AND get some exercise, especially while the weather is still warm and sunny.

Yesterday, I met my first client: Libby, the Australian shepherd mix. Her person works overnights and has a long commute, so Libby needs to be let out and walked between 7:00 and 10:00pm several times per week. She is super adorable and teeny tiny, but has some socialization issues and isn't very friendly with new people so her person tells strangers to stay away because she bites (which she doesn't), so I actually am getting paid to scare children and play with dogs.
 
Since I think I would love walking dogs full-time, I wondered what it would take to quit my job and walk dogs full-time like Jennifer Lopez in Monster In-Law, except my apartment will always be organized and mothers-in-law love me, except when I divorce their sons. Don't worry Sharon, your son is too awesome. So far.

I calculated would need to walk fifteen dogs every day to make the equivalent of my current hourly wages, not to mention I'd have to pay for private health and dental insurance. But then again, I wouldn't have to pay taxes, which is awesome in and of itself, and even if I get audited it would be like Will Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhaal in Stranger than Fiction and my auditor would end up falling in love with my bra-less boobies and my incredible home baked goods. I would have to pick up a whole lot of dog shit, but I'd also be able to drink all day long because I could just ride my bike around from house to house.

Plus, I could steal enough dog treats for Bampa that we'd never have to buy them again.

It's like I'm scamming The Universe.

A Stab

All these pieces of garbage. Microscopic waste. Stuck in the industrial carpet, ground into it until they're inseparable, forgotten until now. These things: fingernails, crumbs, hairs, flakes of skin, an assortment of ash, clumps of dirt, tiny pieces of string, even a length of tooth floss (which he identified by tasting). All of these things fell from a person as they stood in this space, and in so little time. It was amazing how many pieces of ourselves we lose in such a short span of time. How long? The building is one hundred and thirty-four stories tall, so maybe four minutes? Thirty seconds? Not long enough to remember in hindsight, but plenty of time to shed and drop. To leave bits and pieces of our DNA and our diet and our habits.

Bits and pieces overlooked by vacuums and carpet cleaners and janitors. By security guards and lawyers. Graphic designers and medical device sales people. Hell, even he overlooked them, day after day, elevator ride after elevator ride, until now.

Now, with his cheek pressed to the floor, the pattern of the carpet already marking his torso through his shirt, now he saw the droppings of human life, and he was afraid.