Slinging It

Since Cales asked for photos of my sling, I can only oblige...

Leo has two household rules, 1. He has a "no closed door policy" in the house. Regardless of his interest in said room, the door cannot be closed. If it is, he will yowl endlessly and rip up the rug until he has gained enterance.

He's a brat.

2. If there's a box, bag, or package, he has to be inside of it. This is the bag from our new comforter, with Leopold zipped up inside.

8:23 am,  I'm sitting on the couch in PJ's eating a powerbar and drinking coffee. Charlie is plugging in the vacuum.

"You're not vacuuming now are you?"
"Just by the foot of the bed because Fluffington has decided to make that his shedding lair."

Whenever the vacuum goes on, the cats come scattering out like animals from a forest fire. They run, swagger bellies low to the ground, to the farthest point in the house from the vacuum. Sometimes, I'll vacuum in the bathroom without realizing that Bitty's crouching behind the open door. All of a sudden, like a runaway train she bolts, her legs moving faster than Scooby Doos', eyes big as saucers.

Last night, during dinner prep, I was considering the things you learn in partnership. Where I prefer my pasta Al Dente, Charles prefers it nice and cooked. But partnership is a compormise-- so I take out my pasta when it's done, and leave his in for four more minutes. Easy peasy, and we both eat happily.

Summer Plans + Urgent Care

On the first of May, Charlie, myself, and the Fat Cats will pack up our little bags and head east to Charlie's parent's summer house on Lake Mascoma in Enfield, New Hampshire, where we will camp out for May and June. Our plan is to move to the Northwest, but with our own wedding and my sister's wedding (on April 17th!) we figure taking our time and not rushing a big move like that is the wise thing to do. Besides, spending a few months, alone, at the lake house will prove agreeable, I'm sure.

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On Friday, we sat in Urgent Care for the morning trying to figure out what's "wrong" with me. This is one of my favorite games. Sometimes, it seems easier to figure out what's "right". For the past few weeks I've been suffering from fatigue, loss of appetite, headaches, lightheadedness and dizziness, mood swings-- the whole gamut. Two easy scapegoats for doctors are always stress, and my epilepsy (even if I don't think either are involved.. and no, I'm not pregnant). So after the doctor ran a few simple tests and found nothing, he patted my back, told me it was his job to assure me that "nothing was wrong, it was probably stress", and sent me on my way. Sure, doc, I'm glad to hear nothing is wrong. But I still feel tired, I'm not hungry, I'm headachey, dizzy, lightheaded, and I've got these terrible mood swings.

An equally troublesome but equivalently dubious issue that's been plaguing me is a pinched nerve in my dominant forearm. I think it started during my morning workout routine a few weeks ago, and I never stopped using the arm (because, who can afford to stop using an arm?!) so it continued to get worse and worse, until-- fast forward to three days ago, it was achey straight to the bone, and every time I extended it fully, I felt a shot of pain throughout the length of my arm. The doctor pinched and prodded around, feeling up my armpit and making me flex my (amazingly impressive) muscles, before he told me that, again, "nothing could be done" and it would "heal on its own". Of course I was annoyed, because I wasted my entire morning sitting around in the doctors office, but he's most likely right about the arm. What can you do about a pinched nerve, except have patience? So Charlie, cute thing that he is, bought me a sling, and I've been slinging my arm for the past two days. That has helped cut down on use, and kept the pain to a minimum.

We spent the entire weekend together so I can't complain, even if my moods were swinging like a sweet chariot, my arm was tied tight to my chest, and I popped Ibuprofen like Tic Tacs.

My darling, dear, and creative friend Melina often writes words that I feel like could have come spilling directly out of my brain, into her fingertips, and onto the computer screen. In her post, Perpetrator, she discusses the phenomenon when, as a writer (and, I'm sheepish to call myself such a thing, but Charlie assures me that I am.. so let's roll with it today), "life throws up on you and your first thought is 'This will make really good material!'"

I'm very familiar with the feeling. But I'm sad to say this is not such a story. Hopefully someone else enjoys reading it, because I won't. Or at least shares in my ire.

Upon returning to the states and landing in the disgusting hellhole that is the Miami airport, I was excited to turn my phone on (for the first time in almost two weeks)... only to discover 27 billion phone messages from a debt collector. Thinking this was strange, I ignored said debt collector through the weekend, and when the phone calls didn't stop, finally called back yesterday, and said, "Um, hi, yeah, you guys keep calling me?"

To which I discovered I apparently owed $1,000 to Bank of America. Again, I found this strange, as I haven't used my Bank of America card in a year. Despite Bank of America's claim that they are "everywhere".. they are not in Woodstock, Vermont, nor are they in Madison, WI... or anywhere in a 3 hour vicinity of Madision, WI, making banking with them virtually impossible. I stopped banking with them last April, keeping a small chunk of change in the account in case I ever moved to a location where I chose to bank with Bank of America again.

I feel kind of bad for the poor, southern sap who had the misfortune of telling me that "I had overdrawn" last June, my account had been closed last October, and now, I had accrued $1,000 in fees. After all, he wasn't personally responsible. None the less, I had some choice words for him, as I explained that the first I heard of this alleged overdrawing was that afternoon, from a debt collecter. He informed me that the $585 check I'd written in June was the perpetrator, to which I retorted, "Sir, for the last time, I haven't used this account since March. So how could I have written a $585 check in June?!" He took this as an appropriate "out" and transferred me from one sector to another, when I finally landed in Frauds.

Eventually, I realized what happened. Last April, I wrote my ex-landlord a check for $585, although I had already moved to Wisconsin, on the off chance that I didn't find a subletter for the apartment. I did find a subletter, and my landlord assured me that he had ripped the check up. Two months later, the subletter peaced out and decided not to pay rent. I felt bad for my ex-landlord, but I had purposely taken myself off the lease and had this guy added to avoid just this kind of situation. Now, the funds had been essentially depleted from my Bank of America account and put into a WI Credit Union, and apparently my tricky landlord had held onto the check... and he went ahead and cashed it. The details on why the bank never contacted me are still shaky ("Ma'am, we did contact you" "Sir, no you didn't." "Well ma'am, that's what we do. We contact people about these things." "Well sir, please explain to me why the FIRST TIME I HEARD ABOUT THIS WAS TODAY, FROM A DEBT COLLECTOR!?!" "Ma'am, we did contact you.") but, since I "waited so long" to make a claim on the check, their "hands are tied" and there's nothing they can do. Except, of course, charge me one thousand dollars.

I hate to be too candid about my honeymoon.

First of all, I'm putting a honeymoon on par with New Years Eve. Or, at least mine is. The way there's so much build up and excitement to the new year, so much pressure to have a bigger, better, bolder New Years than the last. And post New Years, you are bound to be peppered by the constant chime of, "What did you do for New Years?"

Maybe, for New Years Eve, I just wanted to stay home, eat popcorn, and watch movies with my honey. Maybe I didn't care about New Years at all. Maybe I didn't celebrate, or went to bed early. And yet, the question is constantly asked, and my frank answer is always met with a certain amount of disapproval.

Our honeymoon was tumultuous, at best. To kick start the whole shebang, we got to the airport nice and early on Monday morning- bright-eyed and bushy tailed, only to find out that our flight had been rescheduled to leave an hour earlier, but we'd never been notified. Apparently "this can happen" "when you buy your ticket early". Excuse us for planning ahead.

Our cabin was ransacked and we were robbed our second night in Grand Cayman-- my wallet, our brand new, never-been-used, nicer-than-we-could-afford wedding present camera, and charlie's $10 aviators. A strange compilation but alas, stolen, never again to be seen. Though we were given interesting insight to the police on Grand Cayman after spending an hour doing a handwritten report with a detective, two cops nervously pacing the grounds in dark sunglasses. As per Caymanian dialect, I'm happy to say that the police report was full of mispellings and the word "tings" in place of "things".

There was a shooting in Hell (a town aptly named for the overabundance of lava and limestone, as in, "this must be what Hell looks like")... apparently there is some gang activity on the overwhelmingly large 20 mile island.

Our rental car was sideswiped on our last day; people drive on the left in Grand Cayman, and someone came flying up the left side and sideswiped me. I noticed, with much annoyance, that their little yellow convertible looked totally untainted as they sped off into the exotic (though suddenly unappealing) sunset. Our little Toyota Yaris was not so lucky.

And to cap it off, we got stuck in Detroit on a runway for 2 hours on the way home because of the heavy fog in Madison.

It wasn't all bad. We had each other, we had a beautiful beach and a great little cabin, and we were able to rest and relax, which is what we really needed post (traumatic stress) wedding planning. It just wasn't what you'd typically expect. So when people ask me, with excitement in their eyes, how my honeymoon was, and want me to spill all the juicy, sexy, exciting details, I'm a little at a loss for how to describe it. And it was sexy and exciting... just not in the typical sense.