I am an idiot

I was thinking in the shower today. (Naked! Naked!)

I am an idiot. Here's why:

1) I have a hard time drinking water and breathing at the same time. Seriously. I turn blue.

2) I can make out with a guy and like, have his tongue in my mouth, but I'll break up with him if he expects me to eat off the same fork. That is SO gross.

3) I am afraid of the sound of toilets flushing in the dark. But ONLY when it is dark out.

4) I cry EVERY SINGLE TIME I watch the episode of LOST when Charlie dies.

5) I watch LOST.

6) Oh my God.

7) I am totally fine with how fat I have gotten, yet I won't wash my hair more than twice a week because I don't want it to get "damaged". UH... could I be more damaged... like... everywhere else?

8) Speaking of idiotocity, I put SEVEN different things on my face each day to prevent aging. I am going to be FORTY in ten days. Ten days, people. The bell has rung.

9) I am forty and I still have daddy issues.

10) I am forty and I still count fat grams and calories (note how little good it does me).


Anyone else feel stupid today?

(I love you).

Nina

Are we getting anywhere?

Is this any better? I think it looks pretty awful, but I am used to the dark and storminess. Is the red doing anything for anyone?? The white background?

Also: I believe that novels, like all essays, should have thesis statements. My current working thesis:

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.


The quotation comes from the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. If Jesus really said this, and I hope he did say it... uh, Jesus you are absolutely correct. If you don't give what you have, all that havingness will come back and bite you square in the ass. Destruction is certain.

Another note: thinking about writing the book has been fun because WOW have I done great work in the area of being angry and blaming others for everything. Since I take comedy any way I can get it, I have been getting lots and lots of laughs making notes for this book. Let me know if you want special tips in the area of blaming others or feeling viciously and sadistically persecuted. I have special skills in these areas.

I love you just because you are you, but also because you are beautiful, and I can't help myself (and because you show up here and read about my badness).

Love,

Nina

Ignore the weirdness

I am trying to re-jigger the template. I haven't decided what should go where yet, but here we are for now. (Maybe a day, tops).

Request for Advice

I started this blog a few years ago, and when I started, the blog had no purpose at all. AT. ALL.

Then it developed a purpose. It got me through the death of my father and all manner of other related crapulence. I have maintained the blog - though it had no clear purpose - and since those events (see: crapulence), I have tried to write.

I think we all agree that the better posts are in the archives.

The advice I request has not to do with whether I should keep blogging. I shall. Really. (Please don't look at me like that).

What I want to know is this: as I embark on the book project unrelated to this blog (but not without overlap)... can I, should I, shall I... write about the book?

And what is the book...?

It is a novel. It is not the Whole Story of Why I Sharpen My Knives.

It is just a story.

(In which perhaps one character will maintain a shocking collections of very sharp knives).

Can I blog about it... ?

Learning

Things I have learned this year:

1) People really can change. I have changed several times this year.

2) It is possible, with the proper motivation, to eat an entire bag of Veggie Booty.

3) And then drink a beer

4) Good grammar is wholly unnecessary if the sentiment is sincere.

Place Holder

In order to maintain my "back" status, I am posting this uselessness.

Is it useless?

It depends.

Have you heard of Joseph Arthur?

....

Good heavens.

....

Get you some.

Yes, Jane

Yes, Jane. I am back.

Although to be fair I am working on acquiring my own URL and to be fair I am fairly sure I am going to transfer few (if any) old posts from here. But Nina, so far as Nina goes, is back.

So very back.

(But not the old Nina. The past is over. I didn't know. I really didn't know. Meaning: When I started this blog with a careless post about making out with platonic friends... I didn't KNOW that this blog would be the public record of the most fucked up {to date! to date!} time of my life).

I just didn't know. But now I do. Now I can blog with a little more self awareness. Although... seriously.... I am making no promises in the area of promising. Which might be construed as unpromising.


But I am going to write.

And also: no one answered my question. How are you?


ps. I know. I should check your blogs if I want to know how you are. I will. I will. I want to, and I will, and soon you will see me there, but right now I am just sticking my toe into the water. But yeah, see you soon. Meantimes, how are you?

Welcome to Latvia!

I was in the airport last week for six hours. And while I was there, I had a moment of pure ______________. It occurred to me that I had my passport and enough funds on my person to get out of the country. Options: Casablanca, Lima, Sydney, Riga, Hong Kong, Ulan Bator.

Seriously. I could have been gone. Just gone. Deferring problems so great and terrible that the very wizard himself would have fled the curtain and run screaming from the set. I could have been drinking fermented horse milk (and stuff like that). In Ulan Bator. (Latvia, I hear, is also an excellent option. Someday I will go).

I did not board a flight for some foreign land. I exited the airport and took my passport and my small accumulation of cash (some of which isn't even mine) and went... home.

Instead I am going to try to make my life work. Fix up the broken pieces and toss out that which cannot be fixed. All from right here: New York City.

Latvia will have to wait, but when I do make it there, I sincerely hope that I am wearing a set of raggedy overalls.

And how are you?

Love,

Nina

PS Photo from some recent decade when overalls were fashionable (at least among us Target dwellers). I still wear those sometimes...)

Track Abandoned

"I am a railroad track abandoned."

You could know, of course, by googling.

On the other hand you try to relate to Buckley's insights. What do you have to add?

Liar

There is a commandment somewhere on the tablets the anthropologists can't manage to find. It says (reportedly): don't lie.

Oh.

Eek.

I lie all the time. I do it to protect other people from truths I fear people cannot - or should not have to - handle.

Sometimes I lie because the truth would break the hearts of people I love.

But I also lie to make money. (I have two jobs and neither employers knows the other exists).

Other times I lie about where I am going (Kate doesn't need to know that I am going out at 9pm for a cheap bottle of hootch because I can't sleep and oh dear God please tell me that in heaven, everyone sleeps, all the time. Please? Thank you).

My lying concerns me. It is true that I can go to confession and bore some sweet old priest with a list of all the times I told my brother I was really feeling fine, and thank you for asking, when the truth was I was sharpening my knives and looking for a way to commit the deed - and still look pretty in the casket.

But we - the priest and I - would be there in that hot and uncomfortable cell for a long time if I gave all this information. And sometimes I think to myself: how terrible for the priest who has to listen to people's sins.

"Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been three months since my last confession. Twice I drank a bottle of Night Train and ran naked through Cooper's Square. Nine times I interfered with myself while thinking of Anna Nicole. I hate animals and children because they are loud and smelly. I rarely bathe and I have not flossed in a year. Oh! And I got fired from my job for drunkenness and something they call sexual harassment. Bastards! Is that their sin, or mine? Okay! That about covers it. What's the penance?"

Where was I?

Oh. My lying. There has been something (lately) that I lie about all the time, to everyone. Even to Lindsey.



Sometimes when work is slow and I have the inclination, I go to Woodlawn - all the way up there in the Bronx. There, I sit in the cemetery (it's a big one). Because my parents don't have graves, looking at those of other people gives me peace. I do not know the people buried at Woodlawn, but I wonder who those people - all those people - are. And I hope they don't mind that I come and sit with them, even though my visits are for my own benefit - that at best, their resting places are a proxy for the graves of my deceased parents.

It is not a sadness thing. I don't go up there and cry or cling to a stranger's headstone. But I do spend hours and hours there. I sit and think about there people buried there, and I wonder who they are, and I ask myself if I could talk to them, what one thing they wished they had done differently before it was all over.

My mother, who went out with real style, said on her deathbed, "I wish I had worried less and laughed more."

My father probably said something but I'll never know what it was. I wasn't there. But I can damn sure tell you what he would have done differently, and if you have been reading my internet diary this long, you know, too.

But that was not my point.

Lying. I lie far more than my conscience allows.

How much lying do you do? Do you have regrets? And if lying is ever legal, when? why? how?

Air

Love is in air, or at least the air between my ears.

His name was (is?) Torrey. I could just go for it and embarrass myself, but the post would confuse us all.

But I will divulge that there was a man named Torrey and though I have not spoken with him in years, I loved him like I have never loved anyone else, ever.. He brought me back to myself and made me feel again. In that sense, he saved my life.

Of course, that is not the whole story.

But oh, Torrey, Oh lord. I loved Torrey. Writer, poet, lover, vagabond, boy of no fixed address. My darling.

The relationship is over. But the love, the innocent good intentioned kind, is forever. I have never stopped missing him.

What about the rest of you? Who rearranged the workings of your heart, forever? Who do you miss?

Come on, tell. I did, after all.

Love,

Nina

Questions

I have been thinking. (I know. I know. Drink more, think less: happy life). (But I have been thinking anyway).


I have questions for God.

No, the are not questions such as "why have you been so not awesome to me?" and they are not questions like "is there a paradise for Cathead -- even though Cathead was a dirty, dirty sinner (even in his most charming moments)?

My questions are:

1) God, what if the fall angel, Lucifer, the evil one, requested a meeting with you and repented of all his pridefulness and bad behaviors and begged forgiveness? Would you grant it? And if you did, how might that decision impact the whole everything? (I am serious about this question. I really want to know if the fallen angel has ever said to him or herself: gosh... I probably made a serious error, here. Can I fix it?).

2) Catholic theology teaches that if you skip Mass to go bowling with your friends and you get hit by a car on the way home, you are damned just as surely and completely as mass murderers and and child rapists. Are you serious?

3) God, I believe in you. I think you exist and I think you are powerful and probably good looking, too. But love you? I am sorry, but I don't really love you. Don't get me wrong. I want to love you. I am told that I should. But love is something people feel for their friends, their family, their Catheads - maybe even their favorite board game. The fact is, God, I cannot picture you, unless you count the endless images of Jesus stretched out on a cross and looking for all the world like he was of Swiss descent, even though the overwhelming likelihood is that he was short and dark and certainly had brown eyes. Oh wait. Where was I? Love is personal. It is big hearted and faithful and hopeful. However, in your case, my images of you are ephemeral and my understanding of your influence in my life is at best... confusing. Frankly, I am terrified of you. Love? Where do I even start? I mean thanks that I am I fat, white, American person. Thanks that I am not deformed or prohibitively stupid. But I think you know I would rather have had other challenges. More on that later.

I ask these questions well aware that if I die in the next ten minutes I will be pulled to pieces by demons and roasted alive (dead) for the consumption of demon-types who love the taste of fat white girls. But I still have to ask.

Comments: if you have one (or two questions) that you would ask God (assuming you believe in God and assuming you would get an answer), what would it be?)

M15

This post reveals facts I am uncomfortable sharing. OH! My blog is (nominally) anonymous.

Though Cathead died on Saturday morning, I did not dispose of his body until today. Why? Because the humane society closed early, a development I welcomed.

Por Que?

Because I was not ready to let go.

Internet, I did not like my cat very much. I loved him a lot, but like him? No. Herewith, some highlights of Cathead's life:

1) When he was a kitten, he bit my dad so badly that only a trip to the emergency room prevented my dad from losing his right arm. (No lie).

2) The night before my best friend's wedding, Cathead bit said friend so badly that she had to go to the emergency room. And when she got there, the ER doctors put her on anti-biotics so serious that her birth control was rendered ineffective. That's right, people. Condoms on her HONEYMOON.

3) Once, when I was asleep, Cathead chewed off a large hank of my hair. Then he decorated my apartment with it.

But we did have our good times, too. The night my dad died he slept in my arms and patted my crumpled face with his tiny paw. The day we moved into Bob and Kate's asylum for middle aged refugees, he did a charming rendition of "The Sun will Come Out Tomorrow" on the pool table. He scattered about 50 puzzle pieces onto the floor, but the sentiment was genuine. And as Julie notes, back in his happier days, nothing pleased him more than to steal my rosary beads and entangle himself in their sparkly goodness. In the floor of my shower. Where (I assume) he prayed all day that I might turn my heart and mind back to God - or at least get some compassion skills. (It did not work).

I am trying to get to the comedy of today. The segue is just not happening, so sloppy segue. Here it is.

This morning, I had to take Cathead to the Humane Society for cremation. I put him in his cat carrier (please, oh please don't ask me how I kept him cold all night. Use your imagination. Or check Twitter). I was composed during the loading process and I was numb during the walk to the M15 bus station. It was the activity on the bus that did me in.

Cathead died with his eyes open. Therefore, people could see his eyes, and because lots of people who ride the public bus are not very bright, many of them wanted to stick their hands into my cat carrier and pet my deceased cat.

I kid you not.

Please note, internet: cats who do not blink are DEAD. Cute they may be, but they are DEAD.

I managed to keep the hands of my fellow metro riders out of the box of death by explaining (lying). I told them Cathead was sedated, you know, since he had just been to the vet. It worked. (Have I mentioned that some people, while children of God and possessing excellent hearts, are stupid?)

I arrived at the Humane Society, I stood in line for a few minutes. That was ok.

Until the woman behind me spotted the dead cat in my carrier and started sobbing. For my loss.

"Oh, I know you are grieving," she said. (Have I mentioned crying is contagious)?

"Yeah," I sobbed.

"How old was he?" she said.

"Seventeen," I sniffled.

"OH! Mine is seventeen. It could be any time!" she sobbed.

So we cried and we made asses of ourselves at the Humane Society. I cried for Cathead and she cried because she knew very soon she would be just like me, standing in line in an animal shelter carrying a box of DEAD.

Here is my last living picture of Cathead. I like it because it captures both his repose and his restlessness. He is chillin' because he is in his favorite chair. But his ears are up because he is about to smack the shit out of an unsuspecting spider.



I think about justice all the time. It is the only thing that offers hope that we live in a world with meaning. If my hope is not in vain, Cathead is at peace, praying the rosary, and beating the ever loving shit out of whatever displeases him. That's what he loved to do, and though he was... challenging... he was my kind of challenge. He was my first, my last, my only. My Cathead.

Waiting, part two

My cat is on my bed exactly where I placed him last night. The food and water is untouched. And my cat is dead.

I feel surprisingly emotionless about it... so far. I keep telling myself that I have cleaned up my last sand dollar of cat puke. I keep telling myself that he will never scream at me again and again and again for no reason. I keep telling myself that he was old and that he was tired. (He was). Also it had to happen someday. And he was (obviously) suffering (last night, anyway). But I still feel like shit.

Should I have taken him to the vet last night when I realized he wasn't breathing right? Should I have gotten on the cat boards and hoped that cat fanatics on the west coast had an answer? Should I have been done something other than shove food and water at him? What could have saved him?

Well, whatever the case may be, he is not saved. I have stressed tested him and he is most assuredly not living.

As I write this, he is just where I left him on my bed last night, and yes, I know that is a violation of something or other. I'll have to take him to be cremated today (isn't that what I am supposed to do)? But right this minute, I am just waiting until I feel up to putting him in a duffle bag and taking him to the vet. Let's hope I get that going before the flies arrive.



Bon Voyage, Cathead. I loved you. I liked you. I wanted to feed you to other, foul-tempered animals.

But mostly I loved you. (You were darn cute).

Love,

Nina

Waiting

Today I walked into my bathroom to find my cat curled up behind the sink. He was not moving and he appeared short of breath. I watched him for a few minutes and then I came back half an hour later. Same thing. Labored breathing. Glassy-eyed. And not liking me at all. (He has always hated me, so... whatever).

I decided to pick him up and move him to a more comfortable section of my apartment.

Uh oh.

He hissed when I picked him up and placed him on my bed. When I placed a clean bowl of water under his chin, his face sank into the water until her snarfed it up his nose. Then he drank a little and glared at me as if I were the Worst Person in the World.

So I put some food near the water. On my bed. Next to the water on my bed. And he is still motionless, breathing. And hating me, I am sure.

I sincerely do not expect him to live until morning. He is 17, which is probably about right for a pure bred cat, but I don't know. I do know that if he does go, I will have an ocean of guilt to wallow in. He is a pain in the ass, but he is my pain in the ass.

Anyone else had a cat behave... like this and magically be ok in the end?

It's going to be a long, long night.

Love,

Nina

PS: By the way, he has faked dying before... just never this convincingly. Last time it was swaying and drooling for about three hours - and then eating two pounds of cat food. (I don't see that happening this time).