two mutton pills and a stein of mead

I had to make a work call on Monday and during the pleasantries portion, the woman on the other end of the line sighed happily and said, "Don't you just feel so much lighter and more joyful now that it's all over and Decided?" And, guys? I did not tell her to cram her entire worthless self into a blender and press "purée". I held back. Didn't do it. And for my enormous sacrifice, I would like to suggest that I am perhaps the strongest human who has ever lived and should be feted. I want a sash. And a scepter. I'll use the sash to strangle Matt Gaetz and I will slowly but steadily force the entire scepter into Mike Lawler's open earhole. Starting with the fancy end.

There's a very cute little boulangerie next to my subway stop and I've been going in there almost every day and getting a raspberry beignet. It's a beignet kind of week. They're delicious, but it's also been really nice having something soft and doughy to sink my canines into; it's either this or a senator's throat.

Okay. Alright. I know. Not only have I not been around since JUNE, my last post implied I was about to be swallowed up by a scary orange mist?? And...that is not cool. It isn't cool to tell everyone you're probably about to die via mist and then just -- never bother to pop back in and let them know that nope! Your melodramatic ass is still alive! Not only is it uncool, it sucks. I have no excuse.

But I do have an explanation, and it's a weird one. See, there's this thing that happens to me every time I move (and I've moved a lot! Which means it's happened to me a lot!) where, hmm. How do I even articulate this? It's like. Being in an unfamiliar place kind of...flips off my personality switch? All the things I do for fun, all my little routines -- I lose them. Sometimes it takes me months to get them back, and while I'm waiting for that to happen it can get pretty bleak. Sleep-eat-shower-unbox, sleep-eat-shower-unbox. And not much else. It's the damnedest thing. It's like I have a baby's sense of object impermanence, except I'M the object; it's usually awhile before I settle down and my dumb infant brain accepts that I'm the same person and I can do the same things, even in a brand new place.

And I can't even say I'm fully there yet! But it's holiday time and I wanted to come spread some cheer anyway. Is everyone feeling merry? Jolly? The holidays always make me erratic, which is ridiculous, because I'm not religious (I like to tell people I'm "culturally Catholic", but I should probably cut that out, because they always want me to elaborate, and, like, no? Don't ask me questions about myself and also, don't look at me?) and I don't have any kids to wrangle. Nevertheless! I felt the deep seated need to post TODAY, because by Christmas morning, I feel I will have completed my ultimate transformation into a pinecone covered in googly eyes.

But, oh! I managed to put up a tree! I love my lil' tree; I went a little hard on the dangly icicles, but she pulls them off so well! She's like a festive prism! I'll see if I can take a photo that isn't too blurry and doesn't show too much of my awful, banged up wall (long story).

And that's the other thing. That this apartment can even fit a tree at all is still just so wild to me. I didn't have to suspend it from the ceiling! Or stick it on the fire escape! Astounding! I'm soooo aware that I still have a ton of apartment impressions to share, and I'm gonna do it as soon as I revert back from my pinecone state. (Which I will! I hope.) Also, gaahhh, I feel like I'm totally out of the loop now and I can't stand it; I'm gonna get caught up on everyone's back entries over the break, but I feel like that's not enough. Should I do some sort of apology dance? Hmm. Well, even if I do, you're just gonna have to imagine it, because those kinds of moves cannot -- and should not -- be filmed.

Feeling very adult-y lately, signing leases and shaking hands and spelling my name correctly on all sorts of dotted lines. The big news: I'm moving tomorrow! The guys with the big van will be here in exactly eleven hours and I am prepared for chaos and confusion; don't forget, last time I did this, I had a moving man pull a switchblade on me. I hate to sound like a prima donna, but...I'd really like it if that didn't happen again.

So, yeah, if I'm boring and quiet for the next little bit, the good thing is I have a decent excuse for once. I'm dehydrated and trapped in a maze of U-haul boxes! That may be my best excuse ever, actually.

It's not the neighborhood I wanted, but it's a cute little block; there's a tapas place, a tea shop, a nice-seeming Italian fruit market. And a Dunkin' Donuts, because -- inescapable. A 24-hour Dunkin', to be specific, which I like, because if I ever lose it and go on a self-destructive jelly donut jag, let's face it. It's definitely gonna be a three a.m. thing and not a nine a.m. thing.

Okay, don't laugh. I'm moving six blocks. Three back and three to the left. Very Zapruder of me, and it does feel a little silly and...anticlimactic? Packing up my whole life only to move it half the length of a football field. Except -- I like the apartment! Details to follow, but I genuinely do, and I also know this:

I must -- must! -- be out of here by the time the mice start loudly procreating in the walls, which THEY DO and which, by my calculation, should be starting somewhere around...oh, god. May 1st? Can't be here for that, can't do it, not this year. I'm happy for them, I really am, and I hope they're having a great time in there, but -- nuh-uh. Nope.

I'm cutting it close. Too close.

Alright, I have to go untangle some masking tape from my hair, because I've got things sooooo under control. See you on the other side!

-- There's a bus stop ad for Magic Mike's Last Dance just down the street and my mother's newest thing is that whenever she passes it, she -- knowing nothing about the plot -- likes to yell out hypothetical reasons WHY it might be his "last dance": "He's facing a firing squad in the morning!" "An asteroid is about to hit Earth the exact shape and size of a male strip club!" "He was just elected mayor of that Footloose town!" And my favorite: "Salma Hayek's character is an evil taxidermist who wants him stuffed and mounted on her wall!"

So far there hasn't been a single idea I wouldn't pay to see in theaters.


-- I toured an apartment yesterday with a kitchen so narrow the refrigerator door didn't open all the way. Or even halfway. About six or seven inches, that's all I got. Same with the stove on the other side; it opened to about the length of my forearm before butting into the wall on the other side. Willy Wonka could not have designed this kitchen. And, okay, apartment hunting on a budget in a city that does not respect budgets? You're gonna see some stuff. I thought I already had! But holy hell!!

I guess it could work if I...what? Jerry-rig a very long set of pincer-type things out of some fondue forks and a rubber band? And hope to God every grocery I buy is pince-able?

Never, ever, ever use the fridge or freezer or stove? Invent a cutting edge room temperature diet for myself? (...tap water and goldfish crackers?)

Or, third option: just don't live there. Seems like the best idea. And yeah, I do realize how troubling it is that this wasn't my very first thought. I am aware.

I won't even tell you how much they wanted for the place. I will not burden you with that knowledge. It's just plain embarrassing. I'm embarrassed for all of us: them, for asking. Me, for considering it. Realty as a profession! The city of my birth for allowing this to happen! Just a medium-thick layer of shame spread over the entire freaking proceedings.

Oh, God. The worst part? It was the super who toured me around, a perfectly nice man who I know -- I know! -- is utterly powerless here. So I'm struggling with the freezer door, seeing how far inside I can fit my arm, possibly grunting a little as I try to pull it out again, and I turn to look at him and his face is RIGHT THERE. Big smile, too many teeth, the terrified eyes of a prey animal and he's like, "I know, right? Isn't it great??" And I was about to ask him if he was fucking serious, but then I realized I knew that look. I have retail experience. This man has been instructed to UPSELL. And I just -- I just felt so bad for him.

He knew the apartment sucked. He knew I knew it sucked. But it became my temporary mission in life to make sure I didn't, under any circumstances, LET ON that I knew it sucked.

So. I let him tell me a twenty five minute anecdote about his father in Ecuador. And then I let him show me the laundry room and the area where the recyclables go, fully knowing I wasn't gonna be putting in an offer. You'd think two, five, ten, twenty years of *wild, crazy-armed gesticulations* would've knocked the people pleasing out of me, but. You'd be wrong.

So that's how the Saga of the Skinny Kitchen ends -- with two idiots smiling creepily at each other and making painful chit chat about Ecuadorian football. I know. I was surprised, too.

Alright, so. Last summer? When my mother was still pretty much bedbound and we were stuck doing the bedpan thing? I was stressed and loopy from lack of sleep and she was stressed and loopy from too much sleep -- and also extremely embarrassed at having to piss in a plastic tray -- so I started doing this...thing. To make her laugh.

Semi-relatedly, does anyone know the Boar's Head Carol? It's a Tudor-era madrigal about boar-eating, but also, somehow, Christmas? Very officious, very majestical, and -- here, I'll just show you:



Now, I know what you're all thinking. "Jess, you absolutely rewrote this song and made it about bedpans, didn't you? Didn't you??" And to that, I say: you guys know me so well. That's exactly what I did. And every time she needed to pee -- every single time -- I did a little ceremonial march into the room, holding the bedpan high over my head with both hands, singing it in the closest thing to a baritone my voice will allow.

It never stopped being funny. An evergreen bit.

My lyrics were vulgar, but not terrible! I came up with a successful rhyme for "piss bucket" -- and not even the one you'd think! Anyway, I hadn't thought about that in months, and then I remembered it just now and almost choked on my own tongue. Still funny.

*

Oh!! Oh, my God! Speaking of seasonal musical atrocities...has anyone here ever heard of Dominick the Donkey? I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess no, because even though this thing was ubiquitous throughout my childhood (they played it on Adult FM radio, for Christ's sake!) I discovered four or five years ago that it is apparently HIGHLY regional. I was shocked! But it's true; if you didn't grow up in New Jersey, the NYC Metro area, or, I guess, the more commuter-y parts of Connecticut? You probably don't know it. Sperrywink doesn't, and her hometown isn't really that far from mine! (But I can almost certainly guarantee that Joey Fatone does.)



Oh, did I forget to mention that it's EAR POISON? You're welcome! I dealt with it as a kid, but now in my old age, I am become George Costanza in the Festivus episode; those opening strains make me stand up and leave. Go wherever my feet wanna carry me. Just away -- away from that little Italian donkey.

This has been my post about niche Christmas jams, I guess. Thank you and good night.

- So I guess one of the people working at my favorite local cheese shop is a secret comedy genius? It's a family run place -- a husband and wife and their twenty-something son, and I've never gotten that vibe from a single one of them. They're all nice and normal-ish. Just friendly enough. But, I mean, those posts don't lie. They're priceless and I'm obsessed, and also kind of identifying with a wheel of Mimolette at the moment. Should I say something next time I'm in there?


- Anyway. Speaking of my last entry's title (which, no, we weren't. But we could've been! Dare I say, we *should've* been!)...does anyone remember an SNL skit from the late nineties with Will Ferrell as a night nurse? He spent the whole thing crooning Bob Dylan's Lay, Lady, Lay to his patient, who I wanna say was...Robert Duvall? And it went on and on and on, from funny, to unfunny and then back to funny again? Ugh, no one does. No one remembers this thing but me! And I can't find it and it's all I can think about! This is the worst pain anyone has ever suffered. I deserve your sympathy. I demand your sympathy.


- I just found out they shut down my favorite Lush! The one by the big Macy's! Now I have to go all the way down to 14th Street to finagle my free samples! ("All the way". It's two extra subway stops. But I'm annoyed!) (Also, I'm allergic to half the items in their holiday collection this year. Stupid food dyes. So, doubly annoyed!)


OK, so. The birthday. It went alright! They're never really as bad as I think they're gonna be. Except for the ones where someone dies. Which has happened. I didn't magically wake up looking like the cryptkeeper that morning -- YAY. Not that that's a thing I'd ever freely admit.

To caring.

About.

At all.

Because nope, I don't. Not one bit. And anyway, my mother is aging, like, fantastically. Her skin looks amazing. And then you find out she spent the entire 1970s laying out in the sun with nothing but a big hat and God's own mercy to protect her, and you're like, WHAT. But what's weird is that I forget. I do. I honestly forget sometimes that I'm not her direct clone. We're so close and my father's people are such a strange, faraway concept to me, it's easy to forget that half my DNA is just. Unquantifiable. I have a few, fuzzy memories of my dad's mother. Mostly I remember platinum hair. Scary red talons. A lot of fur. This woman was committed to her aesthetic and apparently that aesthetic was: Cuban Cruella.

I guess I wish I'd paid better attention to her face.

Next week it'll be twenty five years since my dad died, and if there's a standard way to commemorate something like that, I don't know what it is. I don't even know if I'd be up for it. I'm still so angry at him; it hasn't gone away or died down at all. If anything, I'm angrier now than I was fifteen, twenty years ago, and it makes it impossible to mourn him properly. One more thing to discuss with that therapist I refuse to pay for.

And...there she is. My headache, right on schedule. I knew she'd find me. I was gonna go into the apartment stuff, I really was, but...maybe y'all won't mind if I raincheck this? Prepare yourselves, though, because next time, you're gonna hear a tale of woe and real estate! Featuring: the NYPD! Veterans of foreign wars! And at least one ghost! A SPOOKY STORY FOR THE SPOOKIEST SEASON. OOOOooooOOOoooh!!

-- OH, MY GOD. IT'S FEBRUARY AND I AM THE GROUNDHOG. I mean, okay, yes, I did already know what month it was, thanks, things aren't that dire -- yet -- but I feel like only today did I truly get hit with the weight of it. It's February. I poked my little head out of my winter apathy cocoon, truly grasped how much time has passed since New Year's Day, and -- you know what? Forget it. Bad metaphor. Bad, bad metaphor. Sounded better in my head.


-- Alright, this one's for my popslash friendos. (It isn't much, but I'm running low on anecdotes these days, so you get what you get.)

Some of you may know that I care about organized sports not one single, solitary iota. When people talk about them, basically all I hear is that tin can teacher voice from Charlie Brown. Wah, wah, wah. I absorb nothing, I comprehend nothing, and I'm so very okay with that.

So my friend J was teasing me about this the other day, saying I probably couldn't name one of the two 2022 Superbowl teams if I had a gun held to my head, and I was like, yeah, no, of course I couldn't. This is not news. But still, I closed my eyes, grimaced, made a real, honest attempt, and what came out of me was:

"The Cincinnati...uh...Lambs?"

Which was wrong, of course. So wrong. But -- not a bad fic idea, am I right? Lance and Mister Himself prancing around on a football field -- or is it diamond? A football diamond?? No plot, 'cos I am absolutely not willing to do the research, but
these'd be their uniforms, so who honestly cares?

Literary genius. A true winner of a fic. I am accepting accolades as of...NOW.


-- Everyone, gather 'round and look at the cookie place that just opened in my neighborhood. This is either gonna be a really good thing, or a really bad thing. I haven't decided yet.


-- I'm not getting over Hugo. If anything, the opposite. This isn't my first grief rodeo, but it sure feels that way. Every, every morning, I'm surprised when he doesn't jump up on the bed and sneeze on me. I'm never less surprised than I was the day before. Like, we've gone back to the basics here. We're talking rudimentary childhood development -- stage four. I feel like I'm Big Bird and I'm stuck in that episode of Sesame Street where Mr. Hooper dies, except the lesson's not clicking. And the lesson is sucky and hateful to begin with, so who even needs it?

Back around October-ish, I guess, Hugo and I had a minor tussle that left me with a small scratch near my left wrist. It healed, but the scar's been lingering -- fine by me, because I'm a sentimental whackadoo. Well, the other day I noticed it's starting to fade a little, and. Meltdown. A big, wet one, the kind you'd never catch Big Bird having. I shamed Gordon. Maria would've been appalled.


-- My mom has become obsessed with The Gilded Age on HBO, but, for whatever reason, she can't seem to grasp that the show takes place thirty entire years before the sinking of the Titanic. Every time a new character pops up, it's all, "Oooh, does he die on the Titanic?" "Does she?" "Do they?" "Oh, that guy totally does, I can just tell." At this point, I almost feel like she's getting impatient for it. It's all very Milhouse of her.

Another 'three things' post! They may not be exciting, but they get the job done!

-- I bought myself a little poinsettia plant and stuck it up on the mantel. Poinsettia petals are (famously) toxic to cats, so this is literally the first time I've ever had one in my home. A guy was selling them on the street, and I shrugged and thought, "yeah, might as well". It's possible he caught me in a self-pitying moment. More than possible.

The plant is very pretty. I'm doing my best to enjoy it.

-- I saw Darren Criss at the Beacon with sperrywink Monday night! The man puts on a good show. Great, even. And he's so charming and compact; I may or may not have spent the past three days fantasizing about carrying him around in a sequined baby bjorn. What? Don't make this weird.

We had a special VIP package, meaning mostly that we got to attend a little pre-show thing where he came out and interacted with us for a bit. And -- I feel that I must share this with you -- on Monday morning, my mother told me about a dozen times, "whatever you do, don't let him kiss you on the mouth." Like, ???? Presumably because of Omicron, but she never specified that; she just kept on saying things like, "Don't let him kiss you. You don't know where he's been!" "Don't let him kiss you. Even if he's really persistent about it."

Finally, I was just like, alright, Ma, I will do my best to fend him off. (What she thought this VIP package entailed, I cannot tell you.)

Then when I got back that night, I barely had one foot in the door when she barked, "he didn't try to kiss you, did he?" I'm still cackling. This woman wildly overestimates my appeal.

-- I was looking for some last minute gift inspo and clicked on one of those internet lists: "50 Stocking Stuffer Ideas for Moms", something like that. I kid you not, one of the recommended items was a vibrator. Just, normal list, normal list, socks, bath bombs, then -- bam. Vibrator. Right in the middle. That I forgot to save the link in order to share it with you all will forever be my biggest regret.

Who on God's green earth is buying their mother sex toys for Christmas? That question wasn't rhetorical. I want names.

I knew it. I don't know how I knew it. I just did.

He stopped eating Sunday night and he was gone by Thursday. It was quiet and uncomplicated. Fast. I was shocked at how fast. Plus -- seventeen! I am, in fact, aware that a seventeen year old cat is a very, very old cat. I know I have no right to complain. We had a lot of really awesome years together.

But.

It wasn't enough. It didn't feel like a lot of years at all. It felt like a blip.

So I'm sitting here, and it's nighttime, and...I don't know what to do with myself. Aside from a handful of wacky anomalies, I think it's been something like 25 years since I slept under a catless roof. Maybe longer. I don't know how people do this. Nothing about it feels right.

His most recent thing is, instead of sitting next to me on the bed and doing our butt-on-butt routine, he wedges himself behind me, between me and the pillow -- usually while I'm trying to read. He'll lay there on his side, brace his little feet against my back, and spend the whole night kicking me in the spine, the jerk. And he's not here to do it tonight, and he'll never do it again and I feel like I can't breathe.

I'm sorry. This is emotionally sloppy of me. I haven't even pressed 'post' yet and I'm already embarrassed.

Wow. What a year.

I thought, I really did, that I'd be one of those people who sails through their second Covid shot and kinda just bypasses all the side effects. You know, 'cos I tend to be lucky like that.

Well, after sixty hours of whatever-the-hell-that-was, my opinion has now changed to: what? Huh?

It's...Saturday? Apparently? I mean, I guess. If you say so, calendar.

I think I may have ordered takeout at some point? I have the fleetingest memory of cramming something fried into my face. Maybe some sort of chicken? But then there'd be empty boxes lying around, since I haven't been so great at taking out the trash lately, and there aren't. Unless I ate those, too?

You have no idea how badly I want to say that's not possible. But, man. I just can't.