Kim

I met Kim in the spring of 1998. But first I thought she was Monica Lewinsky. Seriously. She was the image of her and this was at the height of MonicaGate. I am not exaggerating the likeness; she was once chased through an airport in Germany by the paparazzi who too thought it was Monica. My co-worker, M., had gone to high school with her (Kim, not Monica Lewinsky) and she introduced us.

She lived in Denver and travelled a lot for business and at the time I was still living in Boulder, but our friendship developed fast and fierce, especially over the telephone. She would often call me from her hotel room, bored and lonely. (It goes without saying I was as equally bored and lonely but at least she had the excuse of being in a hotel room hundreds of miles away from her friends. I didn’t.) Those phone conversations sometimes lasted hours and they nourished my soul like nothing else could.

But we did get together in person occasionally – she had a house party once to which I brought along my friend ?, who ended up giving a blow job to this superhot guy up against a tree a block or so away from Kim’s house. After, every time we drove past that tree, we shared a lascivious smile and, Universe forbid anyone else was in the car with one or both of us, for they got a blow-by-blow (see what I did there?) account of why that tree was named “?’s Blow Job Tree”. We spent New Year’s Eve 1999 together on a rooftop in Five Points (aka Denver’s “ghetto”). When I moved to Denver in the summer of 2000, our friendship got stronger - we went to the circus, where I discovered she was afraid of clowns; the following weekend, we went to The Butterfly Pavilion, where I discovered she was not afraid of tarantulas (I stood several feet away whilst she happily petted one). I got to go to a concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre because of her (a 1980s trifecta of The Psychedelic Furs, The Go-Go’s and The B-52’s). I took her to see Billy Elliot less than 24 hours after I had seen it for the first time because I knew she would love it as much as I did (she did). Over the telephone we both watched the opening ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics and made bitchy comments about the athletes and their attire and had so much fun that we vowed to always watch the ceremony together (spoiler alert: we never did again). On 9/11, she was the first person I called; she was sat on her hotel balcony in New Jersey watching the towers burn. We saw Rent at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts; we both loved Supermarket Sweep so much we considered dressing up as a pair of contestants for Halloween (her plans changed so we didn’t); she put together my IKEA TV unit for me (the day before she’d attended Lilith Fair – she called it her Lesbian-in-Training Weekend). We spent a Christmas Day eating Chinese food and singing and dancing along to the soundtrack from A Chorus Line that my parents had gifted her when I told them how much she enjoyed mine. We were pretty much inseparable.

Then she met a boy.

She’d met other boys during our friendship of course (there was one with us on that NYE rooftop) but this one was different. It wasn’t that she started doing things with him that she had previously done with me – that was only to be expected and I would have done the exact same thing had hell frozen over and I’d been the one to get a boyfriend. (He was the cause of our Supermarket Sweep Halloween plans changing.) No, it was when, as the relationship developed, she started doing stuff with his sister.  That was when it began to hurt. Then she started doing stuff with his sister-in-law. That really hurt. Then they got engaged.

My friend D., whom Kim had met on several occasions, got to see the ring first because she happened to live in the same apartment complex as Kim’s future mother-in-law. Now, I am not that petty – it wasn’t the fact that D. got to see the ring first, it was the fact that Kim had known where D. lived for months and told her on several occasions that she would stop in sometime. But she never did. Then she got a rock and she did. I think I knew then that our friendship was doomed.

That was confirmed a few months later when, deep in planning the wedding, she blew off my birthday celebrations. Because of myriad issues I have surrounding my birthday (the timing of it being the primary one) I am ultra-sensitive to being dissed on my birthday. But when over a week later, I had still not heard from her, I decided to be the bigger person and give her a call. When I had had enough of hearing her woe-is-me tale of being so overwhelmed by the wedding planning that she had taken to her bed for a week (one of the issues she was grappling with was whether or not to have a koi pond at the reception venue (oy)) I told her I needed to go and I hung up. That was about 20 years ago and the last time I talked to her.

Last month I found out she died three years ago.

I had reached out to her a few times in the intervening years, some with positive intentions, other times, not so much. Like, at the next Olympics after our break-up, I drunkenly called her during the opening ceremony and left a message reminding her of the fun we had had together and asked her if he was worth it. Then I developed an obsession with wanting to know what she looked like on her wedding day and on more than one occasion sent her emails asking if she would send me a picture. I never heard back. But then, maybe about five or so years ago, I did hear back. Our communication did touch briefly on our break-up and even though most of the exchange was cordial, it was obvious that too much hurt still existed on both our ends and the friendship was irreparably damaged.

Every six months or so I would check out her Facebook page but there was no activity on it. But, for some reason, a drunken Friday night a few weeks ago, I decided to Google her using her married name. That was when the obit popped up.

I reached out to M. for more details. They too had drifted apart, and so M. is not exactly sure of the cause of death but thinks it might have been the result of a head injury sustained in a fall during an alcohol-induced seizure. She’d been to rehab at least three times and after the divorce (no comment) she relocated to a small Colorado mountain town and led a rather isolated existence.

I think whatever the cause of death was I would have been devastated by this news but the fact that alcohol was involved has hit me really hard. We drank together, obvs, because everyone I hang out with drinks, but I never saw any signs of alcoholism. But that might be because anyone who hangs around me automatically does not have a drinking problem when compared to me.

I am not so full of myself to think that had we remained friends her drinking might not have been so destructive, but I cannot help but wonder what would have happened to both of us if we’d continued those late-night hours-long phone conversations.

RIP, Kimbers.

The Gift That Keeps On… Being Given to Me

 

For Christmas 2018 a co-worker gave me the magnet pictured above.  A few months later she betrayed me/stabbed me in the back/threw me under a bus/threatened to report me to HR because I have a DNR order/took someone else out to lunch, etc., etc. I can’t remember exactly what it was (there have been a lot of issues with this particular co-worker), just that it was something. And I do not forgive easily and I never forget. And because I am petty I hold grudges forever. So on my next visit to Goodwill that magnet went with me. Because whenever I looked at it, it reminded me of her and whatever it was she did to upset me.

Cut to summer of 2020. During my once-a-week visit to the office during lockdown another co-worker happened to be there too. She approaches me and in her hands she has an object I could not see that she is cleaning with a disinfectant wipe (remember this was at the height of the pandemic and this person was a germaphobe before COVID, so, yeah, her wiping down something was not unusual). Then she starts to tell me that she has had this for a long time but had not gotten around to giving it to me before we went into lockdown. Now, here is when I have one of my famous clairvoyant moments (click here for an example) because I immediately and thoroughly and utterly knew that what she had in her hands was the very same magnet. And, Whoomp! (There It Is), indeed it was. What are the odds? Well, actually, let’s consider that: these two co-workers are of similar age and socioeconomic backgrounds so it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they shop in similar places (an aside: doesn’t that look like something they’d sell in Michaels or Stein Mart?).

Anyway, I decided to keep this one because, well, I don’t know, when she gave it to me it reminded me of that cheesy saying “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it is yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.” This certainly came back to me! And I do actually like it: its color scheme fits in perfectly with my kitchen and, well, I *am* the world’s best cat mom. But it is one of the very few cat-themed gifts (hereinafter referred to as C-TGs) that I have kept and, holy hell, there have been a lot of them.

So, because it is around my half-birthday (even my half-birthday is near a major holiday - #FML) I am going to have a bitch session about this issue. Because this madness has to stop. Because I am utterly sick of it.

However, before we go on, I should address two issues: not all C-TGs are useless – a calendar is a handy item whatever is emblazoned upon it. But those are few and far in between. Most of these items would not be given to me (or anyone for that matter, that is how rank some of them have been) unless it had a fucking picture of a cat upon it and that is what pisses me off the most: I don’t think many people realize that I don’t actually like cats all that much. Only Sammy. (And there are times when I am not that overly fond of him.)

And, secondly, I have been guilty of giving C-TGs on occasion: the first birthday my fellow fur mama L. celebrated after Sammy and me rescued each other I did bestow a C-TG upon her. But that was because I was so giddy about being a new cat mom. And when E.D. adopted two cats (hello, George and Graci!) I welcomed her to the fur mama club with a C-TG. But those were one-offs.

And the reason for this post now is because Christmas 2020 was particularly bad.  I can say that easily 75% of my Xmas and birthday presents (and I lump those two together because of the proximity of the dates) were C-TGs. One of them didn’t even make it into my apartment – I went to my mailbox on my way out, opened the parcel in my car and then because I just happened to be driving by it anyway, dropped one of them off at Goodwill! (Goodwill has made a killing off my family and friends’ lazy and thoughtless gift choices.) Interesting aside: the remaining 25% was pretty evenly split between alcohol-themed gifts (A-TGs?) or chocolate – and you will never hear me complain about those two types of prezzies! But not combined – I love liquor and I love chocolate but not together. Yuck.

I know some of you reading this might be hurt and for that I do apologize. I value your friendship beyond measure, it’s just that I want you to stop wasting your money on crappy C-TGs for me. When considered a gift for me (that is if you still want to give me prezzies after reading this!) ask yourself these two questions: what did you get me before Sammy existed? And what will you get me after Sammy dies?

Feast of the Virgin Year IX

 

I think it might be time to accept the fact that I can be described as the “A” in LGBTQIA!

Idol, I guess…

Meh. I think I am getting too old for this show. Or it is getting old. I did not get behind any one performer at all this season. But, as usual, there was a popular one who did nothing for me: Willie Spence. I don’t know why I did not like him because I am neither racist nor homophobic, and I am most certainly not sizeist.

And do you remember last year I wondered how much further some contestants might have advanced if they had gotten the chance to perform under normal circumstances, with access to wardrobe and make-up and a live band, instead of their mum doing their hair before they sang in the garage? Well, I guess the producers thought that too when they brought back some contestants from last year. I don’t have an issue with them doing that, I just think they should have brought them back earlier, say during Hollywood Week, to make it all a little more equitable with this year’s batch.

And Paula Abdul’s stint made it glaringly obvious that there needs to be at least one train wreck of a judge to make it interesting. Those three are so bland and nice and… sober.

And I still hate Bobby Bones.

And I predicted Chayce’s win months ago. Yes, I know some of you might think I am just staying that but for once, I have proof. I sent myself an email and I had planned to place some sort of pic of it here but I can’t get it to look right, it is tiny, so you will just have to take my word for it.

And I miss Brian Dunkleman.

Quarantine in Review – One Year Edition

 One year ago today I started “working” from home. By a weird coincidence, tomorrow I get the first dose of the vaccine. What a year it has been. If I’d have known it would last this long I would not have written the six month review (see here). Then again, I don’t think anyone thought it would last this long. But I guess the end is in sight, what with the vaccines and all. Word on the street is we’ll be back at work on June 1st. But I do not want to go back to all that negativity and backstabbing, so after I am fully vaccinated, I am not going to volunteer that information. If I am asked by my boss I will, but any other co-worker who inquires can go fuck themselves. Sorry, didn’t mean to sound so combative, that’s how much I am dreading returning to the office.

The second six months have been a little different from the first, however. I added a second snack cake choice to the breakfast menu:

And I lost about half the weight I gained the first six months.

But I am still not showering as often and in fact broke another length of time without a shower record (seven days!). And I not slept a full night in my bed this entire year (I‘ve just stayed on the couch) and I have not eaten yogurt (I do not particularly enjoy either the taste or texture of yogurt but it makes for a cheap and convenient breakfast that I can eat at my desk. And seeing as I wasn’t at my desk, no yogurt for me this year!) and I have not gotten my hair cut (well, actually, there was one unfortunate incident involving my bangs and a couple glasses of wine, causing me to be guilty of a TUI – Trimming Under the Influence!).

I know that was a weirdly random (randomly weird?) list and all very trivial, thereby proving that not much has changed in the year of lockdown. See, I knew one day I would find the silver lining in my miserable, lonely, boring life – a worldwide lockdown didn’t affect me one bit! Well, that is not entirely true – I now own more rolls of toilet paper than I ever have before:

Year in Review – 2020 Edition

Well, that was an interesting year, wasn’t it?!

Several co-workers caught the virus, as did a family member back in the UK (a child, interestingly enough, considering how few children get it) but so far, thank the Universe, I have not and neither have any close friends. It’s weird, considering how intense this whole thing was, the virus, the pandemic, the lockdowns, the quarantining, it all had very little effect on my life. In fact, the only major difference between my life now and this time last year is that I now own more rolls of toilet paper than I have ever done before!

So, below is the usual round-up of facts and stats of my year. I have including parenthetical details on what effect, if any, the virus, the pandemic, the lockdowns, the quarantining, had on them and because out of all those it was probably the quarantining that affected me this most, I have called it “The Q” for brevity.

Still a born-again virgin! (The Q: not even a pandemic is going to change that!) And now that Anderson Cooper (who I may or may not have met this year – see here) decided to have a kid, he is out of the running to help me break my streak. Single fathers are not for me; sorry, Coop.

Got two pedicures. (The Q: it’s usually around seven.)

Saw one movie in the theater. (The Q: that was the same number as last year, once again proving how unaffected my life was by this situation. And I saw that movie on March 5, just before everything closed.)

I lost 1.2 pounds. Not a lot, obvs, but considering that most people gained weight during the quarantine, I am happy with that.

Spent $129.64 at Target; $414.28 at the dollar store; and $219.83 at the Post Office. (The Q: that dollar store number is way up, mainly because that was where I bought all those rolls of toilet paper I now own.)

Voted in my second Presidential election and this time the right person won (thank the effing Universe – I was considering going back to England if the Cheeto-in-Chief got in again).

What else? Oh, yeah, so after my car crapped out on me in 2019, my digital mouse, wireless router, cell phone, and my landline phone decided to follow suit. (When I asked the kid in Best Buy where their landline phones were, he got a very confused look on his face -I don’t think he even knew what a landline phone looked like!)

But probably the biggest development in my life in 2020 was the introduction of Words With Friends into it. I am completely and utterly obsessed with that game. Prior to this year, my only experience with it was through the media; some celebrity was kicked off a plane for still having his cell phone on because he was playing it; and Sheldon was playing Stephen Hawking in an ep of The Big Bang Theory. But then my dear friend C. sent me a link inviting me to play. The rest, as they say, is history. I am obsessed! I ask everyone I meet if they play and in my holiday cards, I even included this:

(Yes, that is my actual screen name, so if any of you reading this play too, HMU).

Anyway, that was my boring year. I hope you and your loved ones and family members (they are not always one and the same) survived 2020. And remember - wash your hands, wear your mask, stay six feet apart!

Sammy’s 9th Annual Holiday Message

 

Look at him. I’m not just saying this because he is mine, but this cat cannot take a bad photo.

Anyway, I am still “working” from home, and I can’t be arsed to write much, but I wanted to wish you all a happy holiday season. And, remember, if you want to see your family next Christmas, don’t see them this Christmas.

Quarantine in Review – First Six Months Edition

My last full day in the office was exactly six months ago tomorrow, on Tuesday, March 17 (yes, I was wearing orange). I started this post that very night and added to it as time went on. My plan was to publish it the day before our office re-opening. Well, that date has changed several times, the most recent being announced just last week. And for the first time since lockdown, management went from using a definite return date - “We will be re-opening on July 6”, “Plan to be back August 24” – to adopting a nebulous time frame of “possibly some time in the new year.” So, because who the eff knows when I will be back in the office, I decided the six-month mark was as good as any to publish this.

Six months. It has flown by. And even though I would trade every one of those days off for this horrid situation to not exist, I am not going to lie - I have loved “working” from home - the things I have organized and read and watched and done, wow.

And to think, at the start of all this, I volunteered to stay in the office. WTF was I thinking? It was like this: for about two weeks before we went into lockdown, we were planning to start experimenting with a skeleton staff and revised schedules. Now, because my commute is super short and because my work computer is way faster and bigger than my home one and because I have access to a printer at work and because I hate most of my co-workers and most of them hate me and so being in the office when they are not there is like being on vacation, I told my boss that, unless it was mandatory to not be there, I would stay (plus the brownie points I’d earn from this gesture did not escape my mind). But then all of a sudden – and I cannot emphasis enough how fast this all happened – we were all working from home. Literally, on the Monday morning we had a socially distanced meeting of 50 people (back then you still could) discussing how we were going to handle it all and then by midday the following day, whoomp there it is, we were done, we all had to leave and not come back until we were told to.

But I have gone back in a few times. Mainly when I was going to be in the area anyway, and mostly to do personal stuff, like print out pay slips and address labels. But because I wanted more brownie points, you can bet your bippy that I made sure my co-workers knew I was planning to be in the office. I’d make the announcement in our video meetings or send an email, and I always asked if any of them needed anything done to let me know and I would be happy to help. (Once or twice one of them actually took me up on the offer and I had to extend my time there. Bastards.)

But the majority of my time has been spent “working” from home. And of course, I cannot help but compare this time with my bout of unemployment. The main difference is that, well, I am getting paid, but, for the most part, there were many similarities: I have rarely showered (and in fact broke my unemployment record of four days without a shower by one day); I have rarely left the apartment and then only when I am out of boxed wine (so, yeah, about once a week); the days have sometimes blended into one another (that happened during the unemployment time too); and I’ve gained weight – eight pounds to be exact (my quarantine breakfast of choice of Little Debbie Swiss Rolls and Mountain Dew didn’t help that situation). But because I did not have the added worry of no income coming in, and because the vast majority of my co-workers are in the same position as myself, I have not felt guilty about reading or watching movies and television and doing a myriad projects around the house.

Some of those projects I have been wanting to tackle for years and I got so far on some of them that I know when I do eventually move, I have saved myself a ton of packing time. I got so organized that one time I put an item I no longer had any use for into the Goodwill bag, then took it out a few weeks later because I found a need for it with another project, and then got so organized with that second project that the item went back into the Goodwill pile!

But it has not all been The Price is Right viewing and drinking later than normal hijinks, however: I have at times felt guilty for doing personal stuff but I just remind myself that I am probably not the only one who’s worked on non-work stuff and well, if they wanted me to work eight-hour days they’d make me go back to the office. But on the few times I have been concerned that that might happen, I have reminded my boss that I fall into one of the high-risk categories (high BMI).

And exactly one month into the lockdown, when I went to do my weekly check-ins with friends and some co-workers, I noticed on the call logs and the text lists and the email records that, once again, I was the first person reaching out. So that caused a bit of a breakdown, although I do not know why it surprised me – it didn’t take a pandemic to make me realize that not that many people give a shit about me, or care enough to be the first one to text or email or call. But what surprised me the most is that even those I could rely on to return a call or be the first to send an email have been slow to do so or have not done at all – a sure sign of the severity of this situation and the effect it has had on us all.

And on that very selfish, needy and whiny note, I present to you two sets of selfish, needy and whiny scenarios concerning certain areas of my life that have been affected by this situation. But remember what I wrote earlier – I would trade every one of my days off – and the things on the “good” lists below - for this horrid situation to not exist.

Money

Bad: The money I have spent by doing things I wouldn’t normally do. My electric bill has gone up because I am at home and running the AC a lot more (we had a particularly hot spell at the end of August where 112-degree days were the norm). And the water/money I have saved by not showering as much has been negated by my running the dishwasher more often because I am eating at home more, thereby creating more dirty dishes. I also got caught up in the cooking things I don’t normally cook trap that seemed to befall others. Not bread (way too much effort) but there was an attempt at a cake and a particularly intricate curry. But because that was costing too much I turned to the extremely cheap hobby of ice-shaping:

Good: The $1,200 government check, of course (although that went straight into the trip to England and/or a down payment on a condo fund) and the money I have saved by not doing various things anymore. Like getting pedicures: this time last year I had spent $100 more on pedicures. Sammy does not give a shit what my feet look like and he is the only one seeing them right now so what’s the point of getting them all gussied up? I’ve also spent less on laundry because I have not done as much because I have been wearing fewer clothes – there have been days when I haven’t changed out of my sleepwear and there are days when I am in my daywear only because I fell asleep wearing it the night before! And the car insurance discount I got back in April was huge. (I am sure the majority of you could add “saved money on gas” to this list but for me that is a non-issue because my commute is so short, I fill up only about once a month anyway.)

Clothes

Bad: on the two or three occasions I have ventured into stores that sell clothes I of course could not try any of them on and because I am such an awkward size, I can’t take the chance that they will fit.

Good: some items on the “summer” side of my closet had only one more season of wear left in them. Now, because I have not used them, they’re good for next year.

Entertainment

Bad: There were no Fourth of July fireworks on the Strip. I love fireworks.

Good: Because my cable company was giving out freebies during the start of the lockdown, I caught up live on the last seasons of two pay-cable shows (The Affair and Homeland) that I usually watch on DVD several months after they’ve aired. An aside about the last episode of Homeland: it was the most perfect last episode of any show I have ever watched. It tied up most of the loose ends and ended with some intrigue that, should they decide to bring it back, they’re set, but not so much intrigue that it was frustrating for the viewer. I believe this ep should be mandatory viewing for any writer tasked with creating the final ep of any show from now on (pity it wasn’t around when the last episode of Lost was being written (yes, ten years later and I am still bitter about that!)).

Alcohol

Bad: I can start drinking earlier. Before, by the time I got home, changed, and fed Sammy, it was around 5:30 pm before I had my first cocktail. Now because I am already home, that time has changed to around 5:05 pm.

Good: I can start drinking earlier. 

Feast of the Virgin Year VIII

I forgot about this! Not only the date itself (June 9) but the official celebration too (the second Saturday in June, which this year was June 13). Quarantine brain. Only remembered because the Prettiest Boy Alive posted something on Facebook. Which he rarely does these days because he is newly engaged and all lovey-dovey with his new chick. Gag. (And total jealousy, too.)

The Quarantining of American Idol

So, was that a blah season because of the dearth of talent or was it a blah season because of the quarantine issues? Actually, maybe the talent was there, it was just not given an opportunity to shine because of the limitations imposed by the quarantine.

No, I think they were all, for the most part, crap.

I don’t think Prisons Tats Sam (I refuse to call her by that pretentious stage name of hers) would have won under normal circumstances, and not because of what the quarantine took from her performances, but what the in-studio setting would have added to others. I am sure one or more of the pretty white guys with guitars would have gotten further if those mass-voting tweens saw them all gussied up. Or maybe one of the other girls might have reaped the benefits of professional makeup artists and lighting and a live band and an audience that did not just consist of who happened to be hanging out in the garage that night.

So, after the show went into lock down, I fast-forwarded through most of the performances and the critiques so I cannot fairly judge whether Sam deserved to win. But my mind was already made up that she did not because of how her sob story probably garnered her sympathy votes. I HATE sympathy votes.  But at least she did not milk it as much as Louis “My friend killed himself and the producers are going to make me bring it up as much as possible for the sympathy votes but I am OK with that because at least that means I’ll get votes because I am not going to get them based on my mediocre voice and looks” Knight, or, as I like to call him, the One Direction Reject.

And what was that about those in certain time zones not being able to vote because the show started after voting closed? That just proves what I said last year that this is a popularity contest and not a talent competition. Because the contestants kept the same phone number anyone in any time zone could vote for their favorites. But what about those who vote on that night’s performance? Nope, they were screwed. I wonder why they chose to do it that way this year? Last year they were live in every time zone.

And I know this is simply because of the circumstances, but I missed the montages that usually pepper the final show of the season. Well, I guess they could have created some but seeing someone’s dad sweeping out the garage or their mother string bistro lights on trees in their back yard would have made for a very dull montage indeed!