She's Writing a Novel

My cat--our cat--one of the cats in our blended family of cats--has picked up an annoying habit recently. She sits beside the front door of our apartment, looks up the wall at the ceiling, and meows pitifully. And loudly. It's a heartbreaking sound, really, when it's not completely fucking annoying. We have not been able to discover the reason for her plaintive cries -- it happens at random even when she has food, clean litter, and social opportunities available to her. She doesn't seem to be in pain. It's just...this thing she does by the front door.

I only heard her make that kind of complaint one time before we moved in with the Russian lover. I was in the bedroom of my ramshackle rental, and I heard a desperate yowl from the living room. I bolted the 10 feet it took to cross the apartment, where I found my heretofore voiceless feline companion gazing up at the wall above my sofa, meowing in hysterical distress.

Worried and confused, I followed her gaze. And promptly joined her in letting out a terrified howl of my own.

It was. Four...six?...inches long. Bright red. And so. Many. Legs.

I snatched up my cat, ran to the bedroom, and slammed the door. I flung us across the bed and started to sob. Because West Philly? Even I had joked that it was more or less a jungle, but actual creepy crawly tropical wildlife? Now the metaphor had gone too far.

I was not consoled by my own typical female solution (shut the door and hide!) to a typical female problem (over sized insects of indeterminate origin!). I knew that...thing...was still out there somewhere, even if I never saw it again. But I didn't have the guts to kill it and none of my shoes were menacing enough anyway.

This back story is all to say that presently I find myself often suppressing a thought generated by this memory:

Dear god, what awful thing is living in that wall?

At least now we live somewhere with a combat-hardened male and his enormous shoes.

So far it looks like 2012 is the Year of the Divorce. Not a whole lot of knot-tying going on, but amicable separations? You can't refresh your browser as fast as these are being announced right now. The year's most popular resolution: Getting the hell out of this relationship.

The past weekend brought us the demise of yet another obnoxiously perfect union, Heidi and Seal. The annual renewal of vows! The blow-out Halloween party tradition! Those perfect bodies, those A-list careers! Why, if these kids can't make it work then obviously the rest of us don't have a chance.

It used to be that the more money and social status you had, the less freedom you were allowed in your romantic choices. Romance was for stable boys and scullery maids! Anyone of wealth and social standing understood that their role in life was to preserve the status quo at a minimum, but preferably to elevate the social rank and material assets of the whole family. Marriage was no more romantic then than a corporate merger is today. Marriage, in fact, was the original corporate merger. The many left-leaning ladies upset about the existence of corporate personhood might pause a moment to be glad at least that they've been relieved of that particular responsibility.

But today it's precisely the rich and famous that marry with impunity, without thought to the implications of their union or the consequences of a subsequent separation. Beyond a prenup, anyway. The rest of the population has to give serious consideration to the outcome of throwing fates together. When wealth marries it boards a yacht together; when mediocrity weds it is climbing with each other into a life raft.

But these celebrity marriages fail for the same reason reality dating shows never lead to lasting relationships; they're built on nothing but a set piece. When the show is done, when the lights dim, when the audience is gone -- they just pack it all up and call it over, only a little surprised that there was nothing left when the performances concluded.

A lot of people say that love, a marriage, is work-- and it's work that sometimes people grow tired of. I don't think that's true. I think love is what grows between two people who work together at life.

Normally, January is a quiet month at my job. December and June are veritable hells, March and September roiling purgatories. August and May are tepid bitches. February is a cocktease. There isn't much to say about April, October, or November -- they're wallflowers. But January and July... they used to come as an oasis of calm after their respective hell months. Months where you could go the office and breathe, scheme, plan, maybe even catch up, maybe, maybe,even start to get ahead.

But that's not the case anymore. I'm not entirely sure what happened. During a recession everybody works twice as hard to stay in the same place, certainly. A recession is an economic desert people are forced to march through, and every time someone falls into the dust and doesn't get up, someone still standing is handed their cross to continue carrying.

This January, however, I feel as though I'm bearing the brunt of a thousand optimistic New Year's resolutions; like so many people got up on January 1 determined to work harder, do better, achieve more -- and to reach their goals, of course, they needed that much more out of me. And the demands of their resolutions increasingly make it difficult to maintain my own resolve to keep my head above water. A little for you, a little for you, and a lot for you -- and suddenly there is nothing left for myself.

I like being busy at work, and I relish a day's end where I know I haven't stopped to breathe but I also know I've accomplished a million things. Part of me has always loved the whirling dervish that is corporate life with all its schizophrenic multi-tasking, while part of me knows this Sisyphean life will always, by definition, bring limited satisfaction and stunted achievement.

So, January. Not the lull I was looking forward to; not the respite I needed. For now I guess I'll shore up on immune boosters during the day, down plenty of wine at night, and hope that when July comes around she is still her lazy old self.

Our Christmas present to ourselves, if you want to call it that, was a flat screen TV. But it was just that a really good sale happened around Christmas and we decided at the price advertised, we were more than happy to spend the money. On getting a flat screen, finally.

Up until now, we were hanging on to the Russian lover's ancient 21 inch box of a television. It worked just fine and there never seemed to be a good time to buy a TV. To be the people that went out and blew hundreds of dollars on a television? Ugh. How pedestrian. We'd rather spend hundreds of dollars on champagne and pretend we aren't rushing home to catch a new episode of Real Housewives.

In this country there seems to be an inverse relationship between a person's wealth and the size of their television. Not always, mind you -- sometimes a guy in a red Ferrari is just a guy in a red Ferrari and not a guy obfuscating his lack of endowment. Plenty of the materially endowed have grandiose televisions. But is there anyone on government assistance not watching their cousin's appearance on Maury via a 60 inch plasma? I didn't think so.

Anyway, I'm used to having yesterday's technology. That's what happens when you live with a true techie. The shoemaker's children go barefoot, and the internet guru's girlfriends are bereft of gadgetry. But everything we do have? It works. And you wouldn't believe our internet connectivity. Download speed? Right now I'm watching the YouTube video you haven't even made yet.

The thing is, techies know that technology is more fickle than fashion, and you're better off dusting off a pair of parachute pants than buying the latest "it" device. The device will A. not work or B. break or C. you will leave it in the back of the cab and be out a paycheck. And, if the device is awesome, then next week there will be ten kinds of that device, all for 1/2 the price and double the awesomeness.

When it comes to fashion, some people jump on a decade's excesses and others wait to see what will emerge and become a staple, at least, if not a classic. Technology is no less expensive and no less dynamic, so it doesn't hurt to hang back a little and watch. You, there, with the HD DVD player? You know I'm right.

New Year's calls for resolution and reflection, and I've done a bit of both on my own and together with the Russian lover. Discussing the year that had past, we decided it was, all told, a good year. Not without its low points, but much improved on many of the years before it. There was more momentum and fewer oh-shit moments.

I'm wary of resolutions, because the resolution of today is often the disappointment in myself tomorrow. Failure comes naturally to a pessimist, because you're more likely to berate yourself for the things you didn't do instead of congratulating yourself for the things you did. I don't think there is anything wrong with asking yourself why the glass is still half-empty at the end of the year, or in resolving to continue to fill it, but it should coincide with a celebration that the glass has been filled by half.

Last year I often felt like I was just being carried along by the tide and hanging in for the ride. There was a certain lack of intention bordering on apathy as I trudged through the days. I was content but aimless. Toward the end of the year I tried to find focus, first framing it in terms of a familiar discipline -- exercise. And I've promptly found myself in a position where that is precisely the one thing I cannot do at all, as I am rehabilitated vertebrae by vertebrae in a maddeningly slow and gentle recovery.

That I'm being forced to STOP just when I'd gathered up my whole being for GO has made me reconsider my notions of GO. And STOP, for that matter. For years I did not stop to address what I knew was something wrong in my body, however vague that awareness was, and in turn my body grew weaker. I was becoming so weak and sore physically that living itself was starting to make me tired; I thought it was just life that was exhausting me, when it was my exhausted body that was leaving me little with which to live.

Now that I'm receiving treatment, I am optimistic that in a few months I'll find myself with even more energy, and a body that can keep up with my intent. Already I have moments where I feel a strange buoyancy, and I realize it's the absence of that subconscious river of aches and pains which has been so constant over the past few years. I'm almost giddy when I consider that this is how I could feel all the time some day.

In the meantime, I've thought of the tweaks and changes I'd like to introduce in 2012. Some are pretty ambitious and I'm still mulling them over. Some are more superficial. For example:

-Drink more coffee. I ran on huge amounts of caffeine for years, but I've tapered off in my old age. I'm drinking the recommended daily minimum, but nowhere near approaching the suggested maximum. Here is where I can manufacture some additional energy while my body works through its issues.

-Buy more clothes. And shoes. Most women need to resolve the opposite, I'm sure. I've never liked shopping and tend to avoid it, which means my wardrobe disintegrates faster than I can replace it (much less improve it). I'm going to push myself to buy one thing a week -- even if it's only leggings or a thong -- to keep fueling my closet.

Bum around the house in sexier articles of clothing. I'm increasingly convinced that sweatpants have become the burka of the West; except unlike Muslim women, American women only cover it up at home.

2011 was good to me, and in 2012 I hope to be good to myself.

We spent Christmas day the way it's meant to be spent -- in Chinatown with the Jews and Asians. The Virgin Mary had a baby boy and we had Peking duck.

We stuffed ourselves and people-watched; the rest of the city was an eerie ghost town of newspaper tumbleweeds and too-available street parking. In Chinatown there were comforting signs of life-as-usual.

Without the normal hordes of humans and traffic, center city Philadelphia looks like it's set in the post-zombie apocalypse. Which is to say this place is already such a shit hole that a violent pandemic and total breakdown of civilization could hardly scar the landscape any further but only leave it emptier. And by "violent pandemic and total breakdown of civilization" I'm referring to a zombie apocalypse, not summertime in Philadelphia...but eh, well, you see where I'm going with this. The city is so filthy and run-down and joyless already that the distracting throngs of living moving beings are the only thing keeping people from realizing how bad it is.

I'm not entirely sure what's worse -- slow-motion decay or catastrophic destruction. I guess in terms of the outcome, it's an easy answer. Nations and people seem to bounce back from wars with the same ferocity they fight them. But when the enemy is entropy, cultural erosion, diminishing prosperity...people don't seem to know what or how to fight. Government accelerates the demise in the name of staunching it, contriving enemies with the same cynical transparency of someone drawing editorial cartoons.

There's a theory that the only thing that can bring about world peace is an enemy that the entire world could get behind. In a word, Aliens. A galactic bloodbath is the only way to ensure that we're too otherwise occupied to skirmish over our differences, that we're more invested in being united than in dividing ourselves.

If you want Peace On Earth, then you've got to Take It To The Skies.

Two days until Christmas. FINALLY.

At this particular stage of life, there is no actual anticipation for the Day Of. Not like when I was a kid, and the holiday season was this symphony of pleasant rituals leading to the sublime crescendo, an orgy of presents. My childhood Christmas's far exceeded my first sexual experiences in terms of both arousal and payoff.

Now the eagerness is about getting to those extra days off away from the office, days I can drink wine at 11am and lay in bed watching Harry Potter, or bathing for hours and reading trashy magazines. Freedom. Time. Free time.

The Russian lover and I prefer to lay low during the holidays, not trekking to huge family gatherings if we can avoid it, and our celebration is similarly laid back. We'll put up a live tree and string it with some white lights - simple and beautiful. Ornaments aren't an option in any event because of the cats; they'll be gnawing away on the lower branches as it is.

I'm aware that Christmas trees are considered mildly toxic plant material for cats. But ours have survived at least 4 of them. More to the point, have you seen what passes for cat food these days? I'm spending 200 bucks a month to give them premium grain-free wet food; a couple of pine needles here and there once a year aren't going to ruin them as fast as a steady diet of supermarket cat chow would.

Anyway, that's really the extent of it. On Christmas day we'll make a slightly bigger deal of dinner -- maybe a whole roasted duck -- but that's about it. We don't do presents. In fact, I've more or less stopped doing presents for anyone altogether, and instead I'll invite family and friends out to dinner. It's amazing how much stress goes into selecting and buying and affording gifts, and I'm so glad to have cut it out.

In discussing a future involving little Russian-American hybrids of our own, the Russian lover has been pretty adamant about leaving the presents out of Christmas. And it's not because he's an anti-materialist; it's more so about the Russian tradition of giving gifts, in a limited (Soviet!) quantity, to celebrate the New Year. The New Year comes before Christmas on the Orthodox calendar, and since the Orthodox aren't actually religious anyway, the New Year becomes the Big Holiday of their holiday season. Here in America, it's precisely the other way around.

So it's amusing to imagine a family started by two non-religious people who nevertheless have two different ideas about which day is Christmas. December 25? January 7? Both? I think celebrating the New Year with sufficient gusto is the appropriate compromise.

Today I woke up with the feeling that something was terribly wrong and I should not go to work. Since I had the sick time available, I decided to go with that feeling and call out for the day. The anxiety has abated somewhat, but only because I know I made the right decision. The alarm bells that were screeching in my head this morning are satisfied.

It wasn't a panic attack, exactly, because I've had one of those. The best way to describe that experience is to say it's a kind of existential claustrophobia, where it's not the walls boxing you in but space and time itself closing in to crush you. Your heart races and spasms and aches and you struggle to breathe and you know you are about to die, because that's the only escape you can fathom in that moment. But if you're lucky like I was, you will quietly tell a friend who knows all about these sort of things and she will lead you outside; the distraction of her voice and the rhythm of walking will push the weight back from your soul and you'll be able to breathe again.

No, today this was a Vague Unease with Aggressive Tendencies. I know these, and I try to listen even when I don't know what they're trying to say. Sometimes they don't say anything at all except that Something Is Wrong, or something is about to be wrong. I suppose I could call it intuition, but I've never had any evidence that my intuition was correct. If I feel the Vague Unease nudging me to cross this street, or not to walk down that one, or to stay home as it did today, I listen and don't try to rationalize. Sometimes the Vague Unease will grip me with such force I have to go for a walk until I feel the release and know that its OK Now.

But I never know the source or the cause of the Vague Unease, nor do I know why it departs when it does. If I've avoided some misfortune, I never know what. If someone I deeply care about has avoided some misfortune, I also don't know it. A bit of a falling tree in the forest type of a mystery; was there really ever any calamity to be avoided at all? Will I ever know, since it appears to have been avoided?

It reminds me of stories about foolish superstitious types; like a man who throws salt over his shoulder every time before he gets on a plane and claims it protects him from crashing. And when someone points out the obvious lack of correlation, he retorts that he has never crashed yet.

And on some level he knows there cannot be anything to it, but the salt still gets thrown over his shoulder. And I may be avoiding nothing at all by listening to the voice telling me to avoid. But here I am.

About not renaming this site. Because the last month or so has been a parade of various maladies, and I thought it would be better to keep the running track of bitching and moaning in my head instead of committing it to written form.

I threw out my back about a month ago, and it has remained thrown. After several weeks I sought out a chiropractor because, well, I wanted putting on shoes to stop being an ordeal. You know you've done a terrible harm to yourself when you drop something on the floor and your first thought it, Oh dear. How will I ever get to that? It may as well have rocketed into space.

And it turns out a little incident I had on a boat several years ago was the crowning affliction on three decades of living, and my body had gone all kinds of off kilter, and the chiro was surprised I was still walking around like a normal person instead of laying down to die. Not that I hadn't thought of that.

So I'm going to the chiro 3 days a week, and that's only because he's not in the office more days that that. I think I'm beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel, but its a very long tunnel and I've been in it a long time. Years of aches and pains that I thought were a normal part of life...well, apparently the other twenty-somethings out there who weren't subjected to multiple traumas didn't feel like that at all. My normal was the normal of an octogenarian, and it was absurd that I accepted it as long as I did. But I didn't know. I thought I was just being a wuss.

It was only when I reached the point where I couldn't do any of the things I wanted to do, and I could only do very few of the things I needed to do, that I decided to get help. The chiro recommended to me is a cheerful older man who wears a different bow tie every day and assures me that he'll get rid of me as a patient as soon as he can; which is to say, I'm going to be just fine eventually. In the meantime there are good days and bad days, but the bad days now are better than the good days from before. Healing is always a process of two steps forward, one step back. There are no miracles, only journeys.

So, at some point just before or after I got sick, I threw my back out. I have a vague idea of how I managed to do it; I started taking these new fitness classes a couple weeks ago, and as I do with most things, I approached them with far more enthusiasm than good judgement.

And when it comes to athletic prowess...well, I don't have any. So this was a particularly dangerous combination. Heretofore I had merely suffered some sore quads, angry calves, throbbing abs, etc. Only enough pain to assure me my efforts were working and I would soon have Gwen Stefani's physique.

Alas, I may have overdone it in that last class with the leg lifts and the stretchy bands.

The Russian lover will laugh (maybe cry or scream) at the notion of me admitting that I "may have overdone" something. This confession is not unusual from me, and it usually precedes some additional declaration of fail. Such as: I'm coughing up green bio-hazard now, or: I'm unable to put on my own pants.

And he's right to be frustrated, because on this point I don't seem to learn from my mistakes. I repeat them with the tenacity of someone who wants to excel at poor decision-making. I appreciate that I'm too intelligent to try picking up heavy things just as my lower back hints it might be on the mend. And then the part of my brain that did not get an A in calculus says, "But the heavy thing, it must be picked up!"

And so here we are with little discernible progress and substantially more chagrin.

No matter how much I promise myself that I WILL be sensible, I WILL, I have an undeniable inclination to flout good sense. Not wanting to be overly self-indulgent, I push myself past all point of making any point. And then, suffering the unnecessarily inflated consequences, I become self-indulgent. And loathing that self-indulgence, I too soon push myself...and, you see the cycle.

I thought the Russian lover was insane --INSANE-- to suggest I take more than one day off of work for the flu last week. But I know, my body knows, that he was right. So why would I never have allowed for that without his insistence? I'm not sure to whom I am trying to prove what; maybe that if I can't get an A in calculus, at least I can get an A in self-flagellation!

Anyway, what's done is done and now my responsibility lies with trying not to do it again. Not not throwing my back out, per se, but not making the masochist's march down the path that inevitably leads to thrown-out backs.

ANYWAY. If I keep this up I'll have to rename the site "She's Keeping a Log of Her Various Maladies." I will try to avoid that.