Prairie Landing
Casimir celebrates Christmas
When we lived in Providence we had this cat-sitter, Ashlee, who charged $17 a day and was the most disorganized person I've ever met. In the year we dealt with her she lost two Palm Pilots and one paper organizer, which she bought after giving up on the Palm Pilots. Sometimes I'd call her up and she'd say, "Oh, I'm glad you called. I couldn't remember what weekend you were going away and I lost your number." So in retrospect it's not surprising that over Memorial Day she just never showed up. We came home and poor G was frantic and starving. (What is surprising is that we hired her one more time. Less surprising: He bit her.)
We hired a new cat-sitter in Chicago and, with horrific visions of another Ashlee incident extended over 9 days, I called our new sitter "to make sure everything was OK." As a result, for the last 3 days I've gotten daily voicemails listing everything our cat ate, played and shat. Yesterday's message recounted an hour and a half of play in the bathtub, living room and office, rounding off with some lap time until finally G dragged his butt under the coffee table and conked out.
She doesn't get his name right, though. Instead she calls him "Casimir," as in Gen. Casimir Pulaski, a popular figure in Chicago. We're obviously getting our $15 worth, but still, who the hell would name a cat Casimir?
Xmas joy
We're out East for the week from Xmas to New Year's, which is most relaxing and warm. In Wrigleyville it has been in the single digits, so upper 20s sounds pretty good.
The headaches, described a couple of entries below, have become akin to a serious hobby. Avoiding caffeine and wine, "minimizing" alcohol, managing the drugs and their side effects, and then actually having the headaches -- these all add up to the equivalent of a part-time job. If you've ever been on a really structured diet you probably know what I mean.
Part of the time sink is that the Stupamax gave me a two-week headache. The only thing that helped was walking around in the bitter cold -- which, luckily, we had in abundance. So every day I trudged around Lakeview in the coat I have that's so thick that my arms stick out like a little kid's. Last Sunday it was 8 degrees and the wind chill was around -20. There was NOBODY out there on the sidewalks. Cars, yes, but none of the usual street people, punks or Gap-clad locals. (Yesterday I found out there was also a rapist out, which surprised me. Shouldn't they be inside in that weather?)
The other thing is that when I gave up caffeine, I discovered what a big timesaver it's been all these years. After a week of highly un-Christmasy crankiness toward my coworkers and Colliculus, I started going to bed earlier and earlier, until last week I got 8 hours of sleep every night. I bet I was 10 years old the last time that happened.
Apart from that and missing the coffee buzz, though, I kind of like not being hooked on caffeine. When I wake up in the morning on a weekday I only resent it for maybe 15 minutes, not an hour and a half like before. And going to bed is a lot easier than it used to be. That's certainly worth something.
Happy birthdays, T & M! Hope you celebrated in style as always. And tomorrow, Noise Footprint. Though I always think of your birthday as less special when it fails to fall on a Friday.
Spanksgiving!
I'm pretty late on this but should report on
Spanksgiving, as my good friend NFPJ likes to call it and I do too. It's possibly my favorite holiday. (Though that has a familiar ring to it; did I say that about July 4th, too?) It's always excellent because:
1. A whole bunch of my favorite people are there, including the entire Delaware crew plus my cousin Vino and 'rents, perhaps my fave blood relatives, and D-Murder always throws a party.
2. I never have to do any of the work because my mom always tells me, "Y'all are too busy." What this really means is that Colliculus and I are widely regarded as inferior cooks compared to my mother, sister, aunt, and Beyotch-Chef, but that works for me.
3. I never have to drive.
4. Even when I lived within driving distance, Colliculus shouldered that ugly, ugly burden.
Advantage #3 diminished somewhat this year as Colliculus, my sis Darling Angel and I spent 3 hellish hours sitting on the floor at Midway Airport waiting for our plane to show up from God knows where. It became imperceptible an hour and a half after we got on the plane, when de-icing was complete and the plane was still sitting on the runway. We were sitting behind literally 10 full rows of toddler families. (This, we got for being the very first ones in Group A on a holiday weekend.) One after another, the kids had to pee, the parents tried to take them, the flight attendant pleaded with them not to so we wouldn't lose our spot in line, and everyone else glowered. Finally a guy jumped up, shouted, "My son has to go!" and trotted his son to the bathroom. By then no one blamed him. Meanwhile, Darling Angel noticed, the original kid was quietly peeing into a Dasani bottle across the aisle. A low point in air travel.
Eventually we took off and flew, circled Philly for an hour or so and finally woke my dad up at the terminal around 2:30 a.m. So basically #3 is now more of a disadvantage in my book (and my dad's), although Colliculus disagrees.
So much for why Spanksgiving rocks. The actual dinner (my family's) was at Beyotch-Chef's family's house. Notable was the blessing said by her grandmother. It covered not only heaven and earth, but also hell, all continents of the earth, Democrats and (mostly) Republicans, missionaries, everyone at the table, everyone not at the table, and some other topics so varied and sundry that her own son was rolling his eyes and sighing. I was just glad to be drunk. Also to have long hair that I could hide behind.
Did I mention that no one has EVER said a blessing at a meal with my family there?
Pills, pills, and more pills!
I saw a new doctor for my headaches yesterday. Like the last neuro guy, he told me to stop drinking. Unlike the last guy, he didn't call me headstrong and immature, or refuse to refill my happy pill prescriptions, when I refused, and we didn't have the awkward endgame: "I guess there's no point in my coming back here." "I guess not." Instead he just said to avoid wine completely and minimize the rest. So I think me and this new doctor are going to be just fine.
He told me to stop taking antidepressants and move on up to the anticonvulsants. Now I have two bottles of something called Topamax, which epileptics call "Stupamax." It has a little picture of a brain stem on it.
