What a fucked up weekend this is turning out to be.
Last night began strangely enough. Esteban is still involved with moving Joel and Cheri into their new home as well as moving our other friends into Joel & Cheri’s old home. Now apparently another friend, Phil, decided to purchase Joel & Cheri’s three-year-old refrigerator, since his own conveniently blew up on him. (A picture of Phil and Joel) Thus, Esteban became involved in that they needed our truck to move the thing. And would you be a dear and stop and get us an appliance dolly on your way over? Thanks buddy!
Whatever.
So we went and got their appliance dolly and brought it to their new house. Oh my god. Their new house is gorgeous. One of the nicest homes I’ve ever seen, which is saying a lot considering that there was plastic and dust everywhere and the entire upstairs has not been finished yet. In fact, as Cheri was showing me around, she was turning on every light because they just got hooked up this week. Life will be fun for them, living in this house while it is being finished, I’m certain. But it’s a damn nice house though.
Esteban and I just left them the truck, taking off for dinner in the Monte. I think they were a little disappointed that we were not going to also help them load the side by side refrigerator into the truck and bring it to Phil’s house, but honestly, Saturday and most of Sunday (and don’t forget twelve hours last Saturday) are completely devoted to helping move everyone’s shit to various locations. We needed to spend some time together and we were cranky from hunger, too.
So we went and got some dinner at a Grandma Gertie’s Cafe. It’s our normal breakfast place, but we went there for dinner because everything else was packed. Dinner at Grandma Gertie’s sucks, by the way. Really a lot of suck. Anything more than eggs and pancakes is apparently too much of a burden for Gert. Esteban was smart and got the same thing he normally orders for breakfast. I was stupid and got ‘Tips’, which in an alternate universe might have entailed tender sirloin tips with mushrooms, but in Gertie’s world, entails tough pieces of shoe leather drowning in onions. And creamed peas. Yikes. Why would anyone want to ruin perfectly good peas by creaming them? That is nursing home food’ it doesn’t belong in general society.
So we went back to Joel and Cheri’s old house, where they were supposed to be. No truck. Two and a half hours later and they are nowhere to be found. We drive to Phil’s house and there is the truck. Esteban pops out of the Monte and says, ‘Just go home, they must have left the truck here. I’ll be right behind you.’
I went home. And checked my email. And put on some comfy clothing. And waited. And played some Internet games. And waited. Finally the phone rings’ ‘They needed some help with the frig’ I’m leaving right now.’ By this time, it was 9 o’clock. We had been planning to go to a movie, but that was down the toilet. Esteban got home and we decided that instead we’d watch The X-Men DVD we recently purchased and sack out on the sofa.
I put the DVD in the player and then sat down to watch. Tilly was walking around on the sofa, hopping up next to me, hopping down, doing her normal schizy routine when she hopped down and started to walk across the room.
‘Look at how she’s walking.’ Esteban says.
I must interject this with a little history. Esteban is always watching the cats. He’s a little overprotective of them. If he hasn’t seen one in awhile, all household activity must stop until the missing feline has been brought into protective custody, because he’s worried that one might have gotten outside somehow or is trapped in a closet about to suffocate or has possibly hopped a bus and is on her way to Memphis in hopes of pursuing a country/western singing career.
Also, for whatever reason, if Tilly gets scared or what have you, she’ll pick up her back foot like she’s injured and shake it. When we got her, she was seven months old and her previous owners had only had her front paws declawed, for whatever reason. After she put three holes in our waterbed in three days and gave Chelsea a big scratch, we took her to the vet to have her hind feet declawed. I think she was a little too old for it and remembers how much that sucked. Thus, whenever she experiences trauma or gets frightened, she revisits that initial traumatic event, which physically manifests itself by picking up her back feet like they hurt.
Look at me’ psychoanalyzing the cat.
Anywhoo, she was kind of flicking her back foot. That was strange. No one had spooked her or anything. Then we watched as she tried to put some weight on it and she made a weird ‘Meow’ noise, then laid down to take her weight off of it. Esteban knelt down and tried to look at her paws, but she actually slapped his hand and hissed at him.
Then she got up and tried to walk away, but it was as if her legs couldn’t support her back end and she ended up kind of bottoming out half way across the room. I started to get upset ‘What’s wrong with her?’ And almost started to cry because it was so upsetting to see our big strong annoying barn cat unable to walk across the room.
We called the Emergency Vet, which is the only option at 10:30 at night. They told us to bring her right in.
The Emergency Vet is a very traumatic place. It’s in a strip mall, betwixt the Heavenly Ham and the independent news sellers, where I get my literary journals and Utne Reader. It’s stark and uncomfortable and, if this makes any sense, it reeks of pain, both animal and human. The last time we went there, they were very busy, so we had to wait with Chelsea yowling in the carrier. Also, we had been certain at the time that they were going to tell us that she was going to die and we would then have to put her down right then. Also, while we were there, we had to listen to the receptionist talk to a lady over the phone whose cat was dying right then. The receptionist was explaining that she should find a box to put the cat in and the cat might pass away on the trip over. It was very miserable indeed. Plus, it is about 800 degrees in that place and fur is being shed by every animal that walks in because they know that it’s a scary place.
I managed to compose myself by the time we got there. Tilly didn’t want anything to do with Esteban at that point, since he had been the one to put her in the cat carrier and she hissed and swatted at him again. When I put my fingers in between the bars, she nuzzled my hand with her face. It almost made me cry again because for whatever reason, Tilly has decided that I am her mom and she loves me without prejudice. It’s ironic since I pretty much ignore her and Esteban is the one who would just love to sit and hold her for hours and lavish loads of attention upon her.
Esteban did very well at the vets. Normally I’m the one who is the strong one and Esteban is the one who is distraught. Perhaps when he saw me about to cry, he jumped into the position of control.
We got her out of the carrier and she hissed and swatted some more. I can’t stand to watch the cats having their temperature taken. That to me is the worst. My whole body tenses up along with theirs and I’ll bet you could, to misquote Ferris Bueller, stick a lump of coal in my butt cheeks and it would be turned into a diamond.
Then she walked around the exam room and guess what. She was walking fine. No limp. No trouble supporting her gordo ass. Nothing. Essentially we paid $69 for the vet to get hissed at and lecture us for allowing our cat to become obese (which we have done because we must keep the food dish full at all times since Chelsea is 19-years-old and drops weight at the slightest provocation).
We brought her home at 12:15 a.m. this morning. We let her out of her cage and she shook her back foot again and then plunged her head into the food bowl. You see, when she gets upset, she must eat and eat and eat. We go through that every time she goes to the groomer too. She’s an emotional eater, I guess. Maybe we’ve got more than just a fat ass in common.
Then she was back to normal. Apparently, it was hypochondria. Or acting up for attention. Or maybe she lay on her back foot so long that when she got down, her foot had fallen asleep. The world may never know.
We were pretty wired at that point, so we finished watching the movie and went to bed. We knew it was going to suck getting up early to go help the moving.
But we didn’t know one thing.
Our chainsaw wielding, sexually frustrated neighbor had decided to cut down the tree in his backyard (which, incidentally, is seven feet off of our bedroom window’ I hate being the house on the corner of the block!). Not only had he decided to cut it down, but that today would be a fine tree-cutting, chain sawing day. And 7:15 Fucking A.M. on a Saturday Fucking Morning was the time to begin his task. With a friend. Who had a conversation with Sexually Frustrated neighbor at the same level one would speak if one were at a Marilyn Manson concert wearing earplugs, speaking with a friend who was twenty feet away and a member of the Society for Deaf American Lumberjack Cross-Dressers.
They finished cutting down the tree at 10:00 A.M.
I have had exactly four hours of sleep.
Esteban decided that he didn’t want me to help move, for whatever reason, so I took the out rather willingly. I don’t think I can put on a happy shiny face today, so it’s probably best that I stay away from people and spend time with my cat who is channeling Keyser Soze. Or maybe it’s Verbal Kint. I don’t know. That movie confused the hell out of me.
Instead I went to Target, where they’ve got what must be a promotion going on: bring in a screaming kid and receive a free bottle of Windex. A package of Pledge Grab-Its to the shopper who can follow around the buxom lady with the circles under her eyes.
