Crazy Cat Lady

I love my cats.

That scares the shit out of me. I'm not a totally stable person; I fear becoming a Crazy Cat Lady. But I imagine that by the time one is a fully fledged Crazy Cat Lady, one would not be aware of that fact. That's comforting, really. (And why, pray tell, do people not talk about Crazy Dog Ladies? Or Crazy Cat Guys? Definitely some specie-ism and sexism at play here.)

Still, there's something about craziness and cats. Maybe it's that oh-so-old connection between cats and witchcraft. Or maybe it's the weird eyes. Or the whole pouncing thing. I dunno. But I do fear for my sanity when I find myself engaging my cats in conversation and occasionally--just occasionally, mind you--listening to their replies.

Not that I believe a word they say. I'm not crazy, you know.

Doctor Who Goes to the Oscars

It's Oscar night. All America is watching the Oscars. I am watching Doctor Who Revisited on BBC-America. Dear God, thank you for the BBC.

I'm supposed to be at an Oscars-viewing party but I am home nursing two sick cats and an incipient case of massive depression.  I'm the depressed one; the kitties just have a rather disgusting pooping problem.

I'd rather have a pooping problem. Tho' actually, to be perfectly honest, pooping problems are somewhat intrinsic to depression. You get depressed; your tummy gets its own version; you have pooping problems. But I am totally not blogging about that.

Depression. I am blogging about depression. (You thought it was the Oscars, didn't you? Bwah hah hah!) Here's the thing: I fight constantly against depression. Tonight, tho', depression gets a victory. Just a minor one, mind you [she types confidently]. I am staging a tactical retreat. My reserves are exhausted; I await reinforcements; I flee back to the ramparts.

In other words, I empty the house (sick kitties don't count) and I watch Doctor Who. Tomorrow I resume the fight. I will claim happiness. I will be fun and funny; I will have the energy for my fellow human beings. Tonight. . . tonight,  I need Time Lords and aliens.

Is it bad to prefer the company of Daleks and Cybermen to actual friends and family members? Perhaps a wee bit insane? OK, yes, I do realize the correct answer is "yes." Choosing fantasy aliens is probably not high on the list of acceptable responses to depression. But you know, this is the great thing about facing down 50: The boundaries of "acceptable" prove to be more and more elastic.

At this rate, by the time I hit 60 I'll no longer leave the house and I'll talk only to my cats. Still, cats are Doctor Who fans (I mean, it's obvious). So, all will be well. Maybe in a bizarre, slightly twisted, not exactly normal way, but I no longer aspire toward normalcy. Just being well. And if wellness involves time travel and incredibly sexy aliens and huge doses of fantasy (as well as incontinent kitties), so what?

Geez louise. Go see Silver Linings Playbook (it's up for the Oscar for Best Picture). Then explain to me how to define "normal."

Earth Tones

I'm a primary-colors sort of person, drawn to kitchens done in black and white with splashes of red or bright blue. We, however, have a Craftsman-style old house, complete with original wall stencils, and so decided to stick with earth tones to reinforce the "in harmony with nature" feel of the building. Somewhat to my surprise, then, I'm comfortably ensconced in muted olives and forest greens, rich browns, dusky oranges. It's all good, except for one eensy-teensy detail:

Cat poo comes in earth tones.

Cat poo, therefore, blends in perfectly--is, in fact, indistinguishable, even invisible, when resting on our rugs and even wood floors.

This has become A Problem.

Our once shy but affectionate and completely litter-box oriented kitty has taken to pooping all over the house. Because we can't figure out what's wrong, I now call her Menopausal Kitty--I figure I blame everything weird about my physical, mental, and emotional states on menopause, so why not the kitty, too?

Meanwhile, I'm adapting. Evolving, really. I now step with such lightness, such tentativity (there is no such word, but there should be), that my foot can hit poo and rebound so quickly that not a speck of poo adheres to my sock. Perhaps over eons I could pass this adaptation on to my offspring, and womankind and pooing kittykind could live in ecological harmony.

But I don't have eons and the males in the household remain their primitive stomping selves. Oblivious to the squish and stink, they track kitty poo around the entire house and are utterly amazed when I point out the fecal footprints.  Do men never look down? Is there something in testosterone that prevents the neck from bending? Given this male intransigence and my own growing impatience with scraping cat poop out of the rugs, Menopausal Kitty's future as an indoor cat looks limited.

Which makes me a bit nervous. Now granted, I have yet to poop in odd places but I do find myself and my body doing the strangest things. How long, then, before I'm mewing pitifully on the back porch, wondering why no one will open the door and let me inside?

And suddenly I get the point of male obliviousness--this wonderful evolutionary adaptation, this remarkable means of ensuring ecological harmony between the male species and menopausal womankind.

Trying Not to Think about Politics

I live in Baton Rouge's Garden District, which has just been designated one of the 2012 Great Places in America Neighborhoods! No foolin'. And it truly is a great-place-in-America-neighborhood, shaded by trees straight out of Tolkien, featuring wonderful vernacular architecture (that's a technical term--impressive, eh? means "local") and a truly amazing abundance of flowering shrubs and trees. And it's walkable and has sidewalks and front porches and cute kids and a real sense of itself. It's a good place. It's a Great Place in America.

Except it's in fucking Louisiana. Minor FUCKING detail.

Sorry, sorry. But it's election night and I'm in FUCKING Louisiana, which means my vote means utterly and absolutely nothing. Geez. The Democrats don't even bother with us any more. I had to vote for Crazy No-Party Guy, just to register my complete contempt for my horrifying congressman. (Do you realize how many crazy little parties are out there? and this guy couldn't even find one of them to endorse him. . . )

But I am not blogging about politics. This is not a political blog. This is the blog of a middle-aged, getting- -old lady who is trying desperately not to think about politics tonight.

So I'm thinking instead about my shat-in-the-shower kitty, who has gone psycho, even by middle-aged kitty standards. It's my fault. I bought her a touch-activated squeaking mouse toy, filled with catnip. Actually, I bought it for the young kitty, since Wimsey never, even when she was a kitten, had any interest in toys. But Marple ignored the mouse while Wimsey, well, I do believe the mousey has sparked something deep within Wimsey, has in fact triggered a mid-life crisis, a veritable existential struggle. All night long, she wanders around the house, batting this mouse and wailing loudly, articulating, as only a cat can, those basic, keep-you-awake-all-night-long questions about life and love and meaning and purpose. I'm ready to strangle, skin, and barbecue the damned animal but I do admit that when she yowls, I find myself thinking, "Oh baby, yes, I know, I know."

Meeerowwww.

I get that

A few days ago the kitty-cat shat in the shower.

I was, of course, appalled, but also gob-smacked, dumbstruck, shocked, bewildered. I mean, I've had confused kitties who have decided to dump on the sofa or the bathroom rug. I get that--the surface is soft, pliable, makes a nice convincing skritch-skritching sound somewhat similar to kitty litter. But the shower floor?? The hard, cold, shiny shower floor??

Until I thought further

--which is scary, really; here I sit, in the 52nd year of my life, contemplating cat poo in the shower; still, this is my life--

and it actually makes perfect sense. Kitty is no longer a kitten. She's not old, mind you, but she's not  young. She's a middle-aged kitty. And who knows how long she's been looking at that shower floor;  how many hours she's sat there, immobile, on the shower ledge, asking herself what it would be like to shit in a shower, to feel that cold hard tile against her rear, to try something entirely, utterly new. And then, one day last week, evidently, she realized the time had come, what the hell, why not, now or never, cross it off the bucket list, go girl. And she went.

I get that.

Ick

Marple the Kitty has tapeworms, Cleaning Sarah informed me when I got home today.
"They were all over the chair, you know, the rocking chair that he sits in."
I'm confused. "But, how in the world, I mean, I thought tapeworms showed up in poop."
Cleaning Sarah is embarrassed. She doesn't like discussing bodily functions. Too much cleaning of other folks' toilets, I imagine. "Well, yeah, but you know, they crawl out of, well, you know, down there. . ."

Oh good lord.

Ick.

So in less than one week we've got Kitty Wimsey crapping in our bed, Ol' Dog Rowan vomiting twelve times one morning before I left for work and another five times after, and now feline tapeworms.

I'm thinking maybe a goldfish.

Maybe not. I remember goldfishes. We had a series of them, plus beta fish, when the boys were little. You start with all that enthusiasm, a fresh bowl, a little filter, a couple of plastic plants and a castle, plus the fish. You end up with lots of slime, a horrible odor, and a dead fish. Which was the whole point of it all, from Hugh's perspective. He loved our fish funerals. He never actually actively killed a fish, but he certainly thought they were far more interesting dead than alive. Of course, he had a point.

So maybe hamsters. We had a successful run of hamsters when we lived in England. Cute, containable, fairly cheap. You put the little guy in a ball and watch him run around--a couple of glasses of wine and hey, it's like you're at the Olympics. But you have to remember to put him back in his cage, or you'll find one really traumatized hamster and a plastic ball filled with hamster pee and little hamster feces, stuck behind the sofa late one Saturday afternoon.

So maybe not hamsters. Can't remember basic things these days, let alone hamster balls.

Maybe menopausal women and pets are a bad combo. Like menopausal women and teenaged sons. And menopausal women and husbands. And menopausal women and work colleagues. And menopausal women and neighbors. And menopausal women and telephone survey takers. And menopausal women and pizza delivery guys. And menopausal women and supermarket checkout clerks. . . .

Maybe the isolation ward. I hear the drugs are really good.

Revenge

In the chaos following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, looters specifically targeted Royal Street in the French Quarter. Although just a quick walk from the drunken frat boys, sad strip shows, and tacky bars of Bourbon Street, Royal's high-end antique shops epitomize a world of luxury and elegance and privilege that most of us can only gawp at. After Lake Pontchartrain overtopped the levees, then, and before the National Guard descended to restore a highly racialized version of "law and order," looters descended on Royal Street. They broke the plate-glass windows, smashed all those Regency chairs and Louis Quinze tables and Delft china sets, spray-painted the walls, and then, in shop after shop after shop, defecated in the cash registers.

I had thought that out of all the animal species, only human beings were capable of actions of such symbolic and substantive fury.

I underestimated my cats.

We've had friends from Britain come to stay, and because one of the group has severe cat allergies, we boarded out the kitties. When I picked up our two cats from Petz Plaza yesterday morning, I knew they were miffed, but by the evening, they seemed happy; I assumed all was forgiven. Until the wee hours of this morning, when one of the cats (aided and abetted, I am sure, by the other), jumped on the bed--our bed, the bed containing both of us, the bed in which we were sleeping--and left us a steaming pile of shit.

Message received.

Never mind

So the night before last Keith was in the mood and I was not. Such an odd situation, sigh, we wish. Anyway, we both went to sleep with no canoodling. Then, in the wee hours of the morning, Keith began to kick me. Not "kick me" as in he's sleeping and rolling over rather restlessly and his leg bumps mine. I mean, Keith began to kick me: he grabbed me and started to kick the daylights--except I guess they were nightlights--out of me. I hollered and woke him up; he's all confused and apologetic and out of it; the dog, standing anxiously at the foot of the bed, is wondering what he's supposed to do now; the cats have hightailed it out of there. The next morning, Keith vaguely recalls his dream: he was running from someone and had to kick a door.

OK. Except that evening, as I'm walking the dog, I start thinking about the whole sequence of events. And the proverbial light bulb winks on, as I realize, hey, wait just a sec, I say no to sex and he's kicking open a door!! I'm outraged and horrified, I'm in total feminist mode, I can't believe my husband was trying to kick open my door. I hurry the dog on home, a cruel act as the dog has a hard time hurrying these days, and storm inside and confront him. Him. My husband. This lovely man who has suddenly descended down the evolutionary ladder and now looks to me like some sort of primitive beast. "Do you realize what has happened? Do you realize I said no to sex and then you have a dream where you're kicking in a door?? And you're really kicking me? My door!?"

Keith looks up from the football game. He's a tad surprised. He says, "But honey, in my dream I was kicking the door closed."

Oh. Well then. Never mind.

Cats and Funerals

I'm typing this on the less comfy sofa, because the kitties are happily ensconced on the comfy sofa and I don't want to disturb them. This alarms me. I can see that, if I fail to exercise due diligence, I'll become a Crazy Cat Lady.

Crazy Cat Ladies are not, in general, Good People Persons. I am not, by nature, a Good People Person. I have become one through sheer will power. But I grow old. Will power, like everything else, droops these days. I find myself less and less inclined to make the effort. Crazy Cat Ladyhood beckons.

Today, for example, I directed parking at, and attended the funeral of, one of my fellow church members. I didn't know Jack well but I respected him a great deal, and as the funeral wound on, and I learned more and more about him, I realized how much I regretted not knowing him better. I sat there and reflected on previous funerals I'd attended for church folks, and realized I had felt this way many times before--this sense of, "I had no idea" and "Gosh, I'd have loved to talk with him/her about that" and "Shoot, that is so cool--I wish I had known that before." And then the funeral ended and I zipped past the fellowship hall where the reception was being held so that I wouldn't have to talk to anyone. I drove home to my cats.

Keith is a trained Myers Briggs assessment giver and counselor--you know, the personality profile that puts you on a grid of Intuitive/Judging/Sensing/and something else that I can't recall. He's a Myers Briggs cheerleader; as an historian trained to look for the particular and the unique as opposed to the general and universal, I'm a huge skeptic. But I have learned one very valuable thing from M-B: some folks, like Keith, get energy from being with people whereas others, like me, draw energy from solitude and find other people's company to be energy-draining--and (here's the Important Bit): one way is not better than the other; it just helps a lot to know who you are and what you need.

Which is all well and good, until one day you wake up and realize it's just you and a bunch of cats.

Neighborly

The dog next door is barking. The dog next door is always barking. I have actually contemplated buying a pound of raw ground beef, lacing it with rat poison, and tossing it over the fence. Except I don't throw very well and we'd probably end up with blood dripping down our side of the fence and glops of poisoned meat all over the flower beds. The thing is, I like our neighbors--the human ones. They're good-humored, good-hearted folks, just, you know, with a dog problem. So I grit my teeth and swallow hard, avoid the meat section of the supermarket, and try to focus on being thankful for my own quiet dog. He may be prone these days to bleeding and vomiting, but he's not a barker, bless him.

Plus my hunch is that the folks next door with the incredibly annoying dog often have to grit their teeth, swallow hard, and hold themselves back from sending us a nice neighborly plate of brownies flavored with arsenic. In fact, I fear that everyone on the street, or actually two streets since we occupy a corner lot, is having to do a lot of teeth-gritting and insult-swallowing these days, for we have become Bad Neighbors. More precisely, we have become The People Who Do Not Take Care of Their Yard.

I blame Keith. Now, "Blame Keith" is the default mode in most areas of my life but honestly, the yard has always been his thing. When we married, he had a condo with a small back yard, in which he'd fashioned a series of raised flower beds and vegetable plots. I had spent years as an apartment dweller, with nary a potted plant to my name. So he kept doing the gardening and lawn care, and I didn't. And when we moved to this corner house with its large front yard, side yard, and back yard, Out into the Wild he went, encircling the house with serpentine beds, laying out an enormous herb garden, experimenting with lettuce, planting perennials, grappling with ground cover, trimming, digging, culling, mulching, mincing, dicing, slicing, pruning, cultivating, and whacking away,

And then he changed jobs. And now he's far too busy, far too intellectually and emotionally and physically engaged in his work, to have time or energy or interest in the yard. And here in the semi-tropics, where plants grow several inches overnight and veritable armies of insects wage constant warfare, even a momentary lapse of attention allows nature to thrust in and take back its own. On our beautiful street, a boulevard lined with live oaks and a variety of flowering bushes that guarantee splashes of color all year round and a series of carefully cultivated lawns running in front of wooden porches, our yard stands out--and not in a good way. It's like the students who stumble into my 8:40 class at 8:55, their hair greasy and clumped, traces of last night's pizza still on their unwashed faces.

I get these moments, when I look at at the tangle out there and think, "I could do something about this. I should do something about this." And then I think, "why?" The homeowner gene seems to have passed me by. I realize I'm incredibly fortunate to own a house, but I've never found it in the least bit interesting.

So. The dog next door barks. Our weeds grow. I grit my teeth and my neighbors grit theirs. We meet periodically for drinks and remind ourselves how much we all actually like each other. And someday soon, I hope, we'll move. Maybe the new owners will be enthusiastic gardeners. Deaf enthusiastic gardeners, even. And all manner of things shall be well.

Pigs' Ears

My dog is dying. Maybe.

He's had two tumors--bone cancer--in his paw, and a toe amputation. And now he's on painkillers, and the vet says he has to stay on painkillers the rest of his life. Which means, I think we can assume that the vet believes my dog will be in pain the rest of his life.

Massive moral dilemma. Serious self-examinations.

Surely it's best to send Rowan gently into the good night, painfree evermore. Except. . . I take painkillers. When I don't, I hurt. Yet I like my life. I enjoy it. I would fight really really hard to keep it. If any higher life form were to decide that I'd be so much better off dead, I would resent it, to put it mildly. So if Rowan needs drugs to get him through the day, is that so bad? He's done his doggy duty; all he asks is to sprawl on the rug next to us, take the occasional quick walk, and chomp down a regular supply of treats.

And then. . . what if there's a part of me that wants the dog to die---no, no, I am not that bad, but what if there's a part of me that just can't cope with what it means for the dog to keep on living? The part of me that's sick of mopping up the regular piles of vomit. That retches at the sight of his mangled paw. That clenches at the sight of the blood splotches winding their way throughout the house. That crumbles when he looks at me, trusting, in pain, sure I'll fix it.

I dunno. How do you judge when life is no longer living? Especially when it's not your life, but a life entrusted to you?

Rowan still likes pigs' ears. Is that enough? Is that a life worth living? How do we decide? Must we decide? I dunno. Maybe a nice crunchy pig's ear is all one can really expect, all one should really want, from life. I look at my poor mangled dog, and I just don't know. But he's still crunching. Damn. More than I can say for myself on many a day.

Hisses and Yowls

We got a new kitty. I thought Wimsey was lonely and needed a playmate, now that the Peeing Kitty has been banished to the outdoors, and there at the vet's was this tiny, friendly, adorable orange tabby. So I brought Marple home.

Total disaster. Unlike Wimsey, tiny, friendly, adorable Marple comes equipped with rapier-sharp claws which he has yet to learn how to retract. He frenetically, ceaselessly, desperately pounces on Wimsey--playwithme comeoncomeon playwithmeplaywithmeeeee. Wimsey loathes him and our household now pulsates with hisses and yowls.

I watch them and I remember the summer I was ten, when we took a family vacation to the Ozarks. My two oldest brothers had grown out of such trips but my parents insisted that the third in the line-up, 16-year-old Jeff, come along. It was of course the Dark Ages of family travel, long before mini-vans or house-sized SUVs, with no in-car video players or headphones or iPods. Jeff just had to sit and endure us all, two younger brothers and two younger sisters and of course Mom and Dad, for the entire two-day trip down from Chicago. I don't think he ever spoke. He certainly never smiled. Once in the Ozarks, we settled into two adjoining hotel rooms on the second floor overlooking the outdoor pool--the three boys in one room, 7-year-old Cheryl and me and my parents next door--and several days of morning jaunts and afternoons playing in the pool. Except for Jeff, who hunkered down in the hotel room, where he read Popular Mechanics and engaged in lengthy masturbation sessions. (The automobile obsession I knew about at the time; I only learned about the autoeroticism much much later.) Jeff's sullen refusal to join in the family fun drove us younger kids crazy; we'd periodically pounce on him--playwithusplaywithuspleeeese-- but no matter how hard we tried, all we got was a bunch of  hisses and yowls.

16-year-old Hugh is home from school for the weekend. He arrived at 5:00 pm Friday night, put down his dirty laundry, picked up the car keys, and headed out to hang out with friends. We agreed he could spend the night at a friend's house--with Tropical Storm Lee bucketing down on us, it seemed a sensible plan. Except he didn't come home til 6 pm the next day, and only when we called and insisted he do so.  "We want to see you," we said. "We want to have dinner with you, talk with you, spend some time with you." Much hissing and yowling on his side; increasingly desperate pouncing on ours: Playwithus playwithus comeoncomeon itwillbefun you'llseeyou'llseeee. . .

Blarney Trees

On the grounds of Blarney Castle sit the most amazing trees. Sigh. Yes, yes, Blarney Castle, I know, I know. Total tourist trap, shameful that we take our students there on what are supposed to be serious study trips but hey, the Young Ones demand it; they really truly want to kiss the Blarney Stone and, as a Young One sternly said to me, "Sometimes it's really fun to be a tacky tourist." And if you turn your back on the castle and head out into the grounds, the trees make the otherwise ridiculous Blarney admission price worth every cent. Centuries old with enormous trunks and limbs polished smooth and hard by wind and rain, these trees tower above and yet intertwine with and spread themselves all about the surrounding boulder-strewn hills and cliffs, so that rock and tree and sky blend into one.

I thought of those trees when I came home after five weeks abroad and discovered that my dog had shrunk.

Why is it that old age so diminishes us ambulatory creatures? Experiences and efforts accumulate; pains and pleasures pile up; we dwindle. My poor, pitiful dog.

Not that he sees it this way. Let loose amidst the  Blarney trees, he'd just pee on them and amble off to resume his endless quest for a chicken bone. 

Thanksgiving

After all the whining, moaning, and bitching in my last post, I figure I'd better focus this one on something more positive. You wouldn't know it, but I genuinely am trying to cultivate an outlook of gratitude. No really, honestly. So here's proof: a list of Five Things For Which I Am Thankful:

1. Wimsey the Normal Kitty. She pees and poos in her litter box, and that's a fine and wondrous thing. (I'm scarred by the Peeing Kitty.) And she doesn't suddenly up and bite the nice neighbor lady, as Rowan the Neurotic Dog did just this afternoon, hence raising the specter of a huge lawsuit leading to the loss of our house and all our worldly possessions. Not that the nice neighbor lady is going to sue, she assures us she is not, but a pattern of erratic biting is emerging and sooner or later he's going to bite the wrong person and we'll end up in a trailer park having to hunt squirrel for supper. But I'm not going to talk about that. I'm being grateful and positive. Like Scarlett, "I'll think about that tomorrah." Meanwhile, I will appreciate my self-sufficient, supremely self-assured, angst-free kitty.

2. The fact that the Peeing Kitty has successfully made the transition from cossetted, clawless, indoor pet to vulnerable outdoor pet. I figured that without claws she'd be dead in a matter of days, but instead she's flourished, a poster cat for living life on the wild side. She is even beginning to look the part. Her long silky hair, designed for daily grooming and arrangement on a pillow, is shaping itself into dreadlocks: Reggae Kitty. Rastafarifeline. Marley-Miaow. (OK, I'll stop now.) I am grateful that she has lived this long because now when, as is inevitable, she is run over by a car or mauled by a stray dog, I'll feel less guilty. Life on the edge suits her. Some of us were just made for a short wild ride.

3. The iPhone. It has made Hugh happy. It's downright scary how happy he is with that thing. But he's happy. And happy Hugh means much less conflict in the household. Thank you, Apple people.

4. My Gap Body tee-shirt bras. Now, I hate bras. I hate the feel of a bra. I hate the damn straps that always drift down my upper arms and I despise that tight elastic around my chest. But several years ago I discovered Victoria's Secret simple cotton triangle bras. So light and comfy, with straps that stayed in place. And then VS stopped making my bra! Just like that! Without even thinking about my needs, absolutely no consideration whatsoever. After months of searching and much money squandered on various torture-inflicting boob-holders, then, I rejoice in the Gap Body no-wire tee-shirt bra. Not as effortlessly comfortable as the VS triangle, but close. . . and unlike the VS bra, this one contains enough fabric to hide the sight of an erect nipple. A good thing, actually, as I often do get excited when I teach--intellectually rather than sexually, mind you, but the nipple looks the same. And undergraduates are easily distracted. Gap, I am grateful--as, I am sure, are my students, who are no doubt nauseated by the thought of an aroused 50-year-old history professor.

5. My Dyson vacuum cleaner. It's difficult to admit, as I would very much like to be the sort of woman whose mood never depends on household appliances. . . but I am not that woman, not yet, so until I get there, thank you, Mr. Dyson. This vacuum cleaner rocks.

Winning

I won!

I know Good Parenting is not about winning. Good Parents do not think in such terms. Good Parents aim to mold character, to encourage personhood, to cultivate citizenship, to give 'em wings and let 'em fly, yaddah yaddah yaddah. But I don't aspire to Good Parenhood anymore. I'm just looking to survive. And in this struggle for survival, I do relish a rare victory.

Hugh is now 16. When it comes to attitude, however, Hugh has been 16 since he first started talking at age 2. Arguing, actually, in beautifully articulate, perfectly pronounced, complete sentences. A toddler trial lawyer, he soon was racking up victory after victory against the opposition. Us. Me and Keith, the pitiful parents.

Hugh thrives on conflict. Chaos energizes him; a knock-down, drag-out fight gives him purpose and power. Keith, the most conflict-averse person I have ever known, never stood a chance. I am more of a fighter--but I am also the mother of another child and a teacher and a writer and a homeowner and a churchgoer and a citizen and. . . so Hugh soon realized that if he stuck to something long enough, eventually I would get distracted and he could plunge ahead and claim the prize. Which he did, and does, over and over and over again. It's a good thing parenthood is not supposed to be about winning, because we never win.

But I did, last night.

And you want to know the really horrible thing? I shouldn't have. Hugh was in the right. And I still feel good about winning.

It was around 10:00 and I was heading to bed. Hugh came into the hallway. "Gross! Totally disgusting! Sarah's diabetic cat pooped in my laundry basket!" Keith and I had gone for an over- night getaway to New Orleans and Cleaning Sarah had stayed overnight to care for the pets and make sure Hugh didn't decide to stage a Guys Gone Wild event in our absence. Cleaning Sarah has a diabetic cat that needs constant injections; hence the diabetic cat spent the night as well. And some time during the night, evidently, the diabetic cat took a shit in Hugh's dirty laundry.

Without thinking, I responded, "Eww, that is disgusting. So get a plastic bag and clean it up, will you, before Wimsey decides she has a new litter box."

Hugh spun on his heels, threw his arms in the air, and bellowed, "I'M not cleaning it up. YOU clean it up!" And you know, he was right. The diabetic cat was there because Cleaning Sarah was there, and Cleaning Sarah was there so that Keith and I could have great food and great sex in New Orleans. All to our benefit, none to Hugh's.

But he was bellowing. And I was tired. So I shifted into Parent Power gear. "Hugh. I. Said. Clean. Up. The. Poop." "I WILL NOOOOOTTTTT." On and on it went. Sooooo stupid and pointless. Such bad parenting.

And then I remembered. He's a just-turned-16-year-old American male. Duh.

"Hugh, until you clean up poop, all your driving privileges are revoked. I'm going to bed."

All was quiet. He cleaned up the poop.

Cue the theme song from "Rocky."

Mistakes

After my surgery last week, the nurse sent me home with this strap-on plastic bootie, a bottle of pain pills, and a routine list of instructions that included the order to "walk to comfort." So, I figured, boot thing + pain meds + weird instructions = walk until it really hurts and then take drugs. I was never very good at math. Plus today I went for my post-surgery check-up and discovered that the nurse had forgotten to give me a pair of crutches and strict instructions to bear no weight on my foot. Oops. No wonder the damn thing has hurt so much.

Fine, then. I'm actually pretty good on the crutches, at least in short spurts, tho' I think perhaps watching my wine intake might be a good idea. And then there's the dog, who's terrified of folks with large stick-like objects in their hands, particularly large swinging stick-like objects that go Tha-ump!. It's so sad to see him so conflicted: "Danger! Danger! Enemy with Stick!" "No, no! That one gives Food. And Car Rides!" "But she has Stick!" Poor darlin'. Maybe I should rub the crutches with chicken broth or pork skin. He's used to me walking him every night, and now as night after night goes by, and Keith or Owen pull down the leash, I can see him looking at me and wondering where it all went wrong between us.

Meanwhile, Hugh has decided that he doesn't like the new Invalid Mom at all. At least the old Headachey Mom could drive him places and did her own laundry and vacuuming. This new version just has no point, no point whatsoever.

It's an unfortunate coincidence, then, that right before my surgery Owen convinced me to buy the new(ish) Morrissey album, which comprises nothing but Morrissey misanthropy. When facing sullen son who simply cannot believe you were so selfish as to have surgery and so ensure that you cannot drive him to the mall when you knew you knew you totally knew he needed to be driven to the mall and so you planned it this way because it is always about you and you rejoice in making his life hell and never never thinking about him, well, it's probably not the best idea to have these lyrics running through your head:

You hiss and groan and you constantly moan
But you don't ever go away
That's because
All you need is me

You don't like me, but you love me
Either way you're wrong
You're gonna miss me when I'm gone
You're gonna miss me when I'm gone

No, really, it would be much better if you had the lyrics to "O Holy Night" or "I'm a Little Teapot" running through your head. Or even the Stones' "Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown."
But Morrissey + horrid child + post-op = parental disaster.

Hair Ball

This morning I sat and watched my kitty cough up a hair ball. If you're not a cat owner, you may not be familiar with this extraordinary sight. The cat freezes, makes a series of other-planetary sounds, extends her neck so that she looks like some sort of creature out of Dr. Seuss, coughs, gags, coughs, gags, and then convulses. Rewind. Repeat until hair ball (one of life's more disgusting byproducts) appears.

As I watched, this overwhelming sense of deja vu enveloped me. I dismissed it: of course I've been here before; I've had cats for years. But then I realized it wasn't deja vu, actually, but more that sense of being reminded, of parallels pushing you toward a memory not of what was in front of you but of something else, something sort of similar but really very different. And slowly, fitfully--rather like coughing up a hair ball, actually--I recognized the memory evoked by my gagging kitty: therapy.

My kitty contorting herself to produce this mass of indigestible, glutinous gunk perfectly embodied the process of undergoing therapy (when the therapy is working, that is). You sit there and at first you freeze but eventually these noises emerge and then you find yourself coughing and gagging and over many many sessions and much more emotional coughing and mental gagging, you find yourself stretching and straining and it's not right and you weren't meant to feel this way and you want it to stop but it doesn't, you don't, and then, and then, and then, eventually, maybe, there's the hair ball. But it's not over, because now you and the therapist have to dissect the hair ball, and seeing what's in the thing is almost as bad as coughing it up in the first place.

Curled up like a fossilized ammonite, my kitty sleeps on the wooly blanket atop the sofa. She clearly has no memory of and no interest in her hair balls. She wretches them up and moves on, unaware.

I gotta say, measure me against my kitty on the scale of emotional wellbeing and the kitty wins, hands (paws) down. Self-awareness is just not all it's cracked up to be.

The Middle Age

Many of our friends find themselves in the "Middle Age," as the self-help books label it, caught in the middle between high-demand teenage kids and high-maintenance aging parents. While we have the high-demand teenage kids, Keith and I are lucky: our dads died when we were young.

Wait. That didn't come out right.

Umm, I just mean, we don't have aging dads. And our moms. Gosh, our moms. Incredible women, they live active, productive, energetic lives. My mom roller skates. Keith's mom smokes meat and cans veggies that she grows in a garden the size of New Hampshire. The moms are fine.

But we haven't quite escaped the squeeze between demanding kids and aging loved ones. It's just that our aging loved one is a dog. Rowan is aging--and not at all gracefully. He's a dog. A big furry lumbering slobbering dog. He doesn't do graceful. But he does do age. Every night. In our bedroom. Where he sleeps. Loudly. He snorts. He snores. He coughs. He sighs. He mutters. And then he wakes up and wanders. We have wood floors. Bracken has nails. He goes clickclickclickclick back and forth back and forth back and forth. It's like having the River Dance troupe in your bedroom in the middle of the night. And then all those clicking dancers suddenly throw themselves on the floor with a loud THUMP and begin to lick their genitals with great slurpy gusto.

I keep fantasizing about a pair of youthful West Highland terriers. I will call them Campion and Comfrey. They will not sleep in our bedroom. They will wear little terrier mittens so they will not click. And they will be de-tongued. . . or de-genitalled. . . anyway, they will not slurp.

Clearly I am not a Good Person. A Good Person does not fantasize about replacing her loyal and affectionate dog with a younger model. I wonder if this means that when we come to the point where we are caring for our aged, ailing moms, I'll daydream about substitutes,you know, like perhaps one of those wealthy old moms with a great summer house by the beach and a small collection of paintings by early Abstract Expressionists and a voracious appetite for world affairs.

Oh dear.

It's really ok

The summer after my first year in graduate school I worked as a nanny for my brother and his wife. Nancy was a stay-at-home mom, heavily pregnant with Baby #5, and heavily weighed down with doctors' appointments and medical tests for Toddler 4, a charming, curly-haired, chubby little charmer born with a host of "issues," as we say when we can't figure out what's going on. (Like when the specialist told me I had what the experts call "sore arm syndrome." Seriously. That's what they call it. It means, as the specialist went on to explain, "we see there's a real problem and we haven't a clue how to help you." I liked this guy.)

Anyway, back to my shortlived nanny career: in the course of that summer, my sister-in-law Nancy said something really important: "I love all my children all of the time, but I don't always like all of them all of the time. Sometimes, you know, you just don't like a kid for awhile."

She said it casually, as we were scraping a concoction of melted Legos mixed with Skittles off the just-refinished wooden floor. But this casual comment has helped me immensely.

In the short term, it helped me see that no, I was not crazy, my mom really didn't like me, but that was ok, she loved me, which is all one can really expect, and hey, I didn't like her too much at that point either. And that was ok too.

[OK, Transparency Moment: it took me many exhausting hour-long sessions and many shredded Kleenexes in neutral-toned offices with neutral-faced therapists to be able to type "that was ok". ]

In the long term, damn, absolutely, you love your kid but holy cow, sometimes, you just don't like him (or her--but I never had a her, sadly) very much. Or at all.

Take the last two days, for example. I love Hugh absolutely and unconditionally. But over the last two days, I haven't liked him at all. Because he's been a colossal shit.

(I know, I know, he's 15 3/4; he's supposed to be a colossal shit. And I'm supposed to be colossally [is that a word? doesn't look like a word, does it?] annoyed. We're both playing our parts. But it's just that he's sooooo good at his part.)

Hugh was furious with me because I came home tired from work and wouldn't immediately jump in the car and drive him to the library (a 20-minute drive, btw). For the last few months, he's met once a week or so with some friends at the library to "study biology." And I've driven him there and Keith has picked him up. But Keith was out of town and I was tired and I wanted a glass of wine (ok, yes, several glasses of wine) and I didn't want to drive for 80 minutes back and forth, back and forth. So I said no. Am I a Bad Mom?

Personally, I think it's a structural/societal problem rather than a parental issue. Why do I have to drive this child to the library? Why can't he walk there or take a bus? Must I really shoulder the blame and the consequences for the many many many wrong-headed, wrong-hearted decisions made about taxation and urban planning and mass transit?

Hugh could care less about the societal/structural issues. He sees things simply and clearly. Simply and clearly, I'm a Bad Mom. And so his response to my "no, not this week, honey," was to punish me. Over the next two days, I became acquainted with my shortcomings as a housecleaner, a cook. a pet owner, a laundress, a driver, a gardener, a wife, a teacher, and a friend; I learned why my clothes, my hair, my jewelry, my toenail polish, and my taste in tv shows were not only inadequate but an insult to humankind; I was forced to see that the way I walk, blow my nose, sleep, remember family vacations, pronounce various words, and chop onions all threatened the future of civilization.

So, I'm grateful to Nancy. Because of her, I know it's ok not to like a kid for awhile. I'll always love him. And sometimes I like him. Some time soon, I'm sure, I'll like him. And that's ok. It's all one can expect. And really, it's ok. Really. OK.

Postscripts

Just so you know, I'm quite enjoying being an Ornamental Pillow Person . Every morning I make a new and different pillow pyramid. It's very exciting.

Maybe I need to get out more.

Or maybe I really do need to start using marijuana. No, haven't yet, despite my every intention and my discovery that you can find this stuff in some pretty surprising places. The thing is, it's illegal. And I always always always get caught when I try to do something that everyone else does all the time. I must just exude guilt. So I want to be sure that when I am caught, I can mount a really convincing defence, buttressed by all kinds of evidence showing 1) my long history of chronic headaches, and 2) my equally lengthy list of attempts to find a legal remedy. Which means acupuncture. I keep talking about trying acupuncture but, apart from the expense--fairly hefty, tho' honestly, what does weed cost these days? --

--"these days, she writes, as if back in "other days" she knew the cost of marijuana--

there is the little matter of needles. Nevertheless, needles be damned, acupuncture it will be. And then I'll be able to say, "But your honor, it's the American medical system that should be on trial, not me."

I also, despite every good intention, haven't yet killed my cat. The peeing one. Instead, I have banished her to the outdoors. Well, duh, you say. No, dear reader, not duh. Peeing kitty has no claws and so little chance of defending herself against predators and competitors. Plus she's one of those long-haired kitties, meant to decorate the living room, not live in the wild. Entire ecosystems of fleas and tics could flourish in her fur; shoot, birds could nest in there and we'd never know it. But--I've put her out, and after a few days of adjustment (punctuated by much mewing), she seems to be having a good time. Actually, she seems to have gone feral already. I know that sooner or later she'll be run over by a car or mauled by a stray dog, and I'll feel terrible, but at least she'll have had these days of unrestrained beastiness while I soak the sofas in cheap vodka. (Kitty shrink tells us it neutralizes the cat pee smell--not sure yet--I do worry about, well, flammability. Combustibility. Someone lighting a match and our alcohol-laden furniture igniting. Could make our parties a bit more interesting, I guess.)