I’m a dog person.

Unfortunately I’m also a crazy person. Any dog I’ve ever had has ruled my life. If I couldn’t take him with me I didn’t go. The solution used to be Rupert but he’s pretty much taken up residence in Santa Fe.

I think it’s the right to carry guns that drew him.

I may not have mentioned it before but my husband is on the lam. Anyway I’ve thought for awhile that I needed someone to share my life with, obviously a dog .

My niece Randy once gave me two parakeets. They hated me and I felt sorry for them for being in a cage. Whenever I let them out, instead of sitting on my shoulder and singing sweet melodies into my ear like in Cinderella they flew up into my curtains and hid and one time one of them fell in the bathtub. So no birds.

Even with my crazy pills, or anti crazy pills, I feel like I’m standing on thin ice and I’m afraid to upset the applecart. I keep trying to think of a way to get a dog without threatening the life I’ve built in the past two years.

I figured it would have to be very tiny so that I could put it in a bag and take it with me wherever I go. That way I wouldn’t have to feel guilty if I left him home. See? I told you I’m crazy but I know myself. I used to think a million times before I left the house when Rupert was here. I was tied down by a dog that wasn’t even mine.

I went back and forth on this and then about a month ago I went to dinner at my friend Brenda’s house. I was enjoying a cocktail and chatting when in walked Brenda’s cat. It felt like the room came to life.

Before that a cat had never occurred to me. I never had one and dave was allergic to them so the thought never came up. I did mind Liz’s cat, Puss and I loved him in spite of his occasionally murdering pigeons that had the bad luck to land on his terrace.

Stephanie has two really sweet cats. They too are killing machines but they live in the country and you know those country folk, always killing stuff.

Once the idea of a cat entered my mind it wouldn’t leave. It seemed like a perfect solution to my empty house.

What kind of a cat owner would I be though?  I was driving with Steph a few years ago and there was a woman driving in the next car all hunched over with her cat lying across the back of her neck. Steph remarked that if I had a cat I’d probably be doing something like that.

And Liz said that I ruined Puss. She claimed that he was a great cat before I started minding him. For some reason Liz thought it was bad if a little kitty jumped up on the table during dinner and ate out of your plate. To me nothing could have been cuter.

I had pretty much decided that that might be the answer for me when once more Randy came to the rescue.

It seems that she rescues cats. I mean RESCUES CATS. I believe she has about thirty. She made it clear that any cat I got should be gotten by her. She would find me a cat that was affectionate but not needy and was fixed and healthy.

Then she sent me a video of the kitten of my dreams. He is grey with white feet and a lovely smile. I fell in love.

Never one to mince words, Randy said that although she never lets anyone over 65 get a kitten she would make an exception for me and take it back if I corked off.

Since he wasn’t quite ready to be adopted and I have plans to take care of Steph’s animals for a week in January, it was decided that he will come to live with me on or about January 18.

I’m both excited and scared. I know nothing about kittens or cats. I will have to get a bunch of equipment to care for him and make him happy. I hope he likes me.

Since I have a bit of a wait I decided to choose a name. I thought of Stuart, and Bob or Stephen but none of them seemed to stick.

Then in the middle of the night I started thinking about this new experience I was venturing into and I thought of my first love. The one who got my  heart beating in a way it hadn’t before. When I said it I knew it was right.

I can’t wait to meet Elvis.

I woke up at about 4 a.m., watched The Real Housewives of Atlanta and one or two other gems and went back to sleep.

The other day  I went over to David’s house to share the morning. When I got home  my sister Marcia called and screamed at me because I didn’t answer my phone. Naturally she assumed I was dead. She wanted my doorman’s number so she could call and see if I went out. Clearly that wouldn’t have solved the problem because I never left the 18th floor but I didn’t want to argue.

Marcia calls me every morning at 8 a.m. I usually get up at around 6 or 7 but sometimes I fall back asleep and when Marcia calls she wakes me up. Then she yells at me because I should have taken my phone off the hook.

Don’t think I don’t know how boring this is so far but it lays the groundwork for what happened this morning.

After the tongue lashing I got yesterday I was very careful to take the phone off the hook before going back to sleep today. I did sleep a bit later than usual because I was dreaming about the cat that I’m thinking of getting but as soon as I woke up I called Marcia.

“Call Julie and call me back. She’s worried sick about you.”

“Huh?”

I called Julie who said  “Thank God. I just sent an email to Liz and David asking for Lester’s (my super’s) phone number.”

“Why did you do that?”

Images of my hunky super coming into my house and seeing me sleeping in my penoir, which looks very much like a big tshirt, with my breathing machine attached to my face and my dining room table still covered with the dirty dishes from last night was more than I could bear.

“I thought you were dead”

Then David called from Chicago. He had left this morning to spend the next two weeks with Lizzie in Santa Fe and he was in between planes.

“Your family is fucking nuts.”

Speaking of David, I got a lot of comments on yesterday’s blog. Here’s my response.

I’ve decided to take off the kid gloves and show him as he is. No more protecting him from the hoards of Liberals that he is sure are trying to steal his hard earned tax dollars and waste them on frivolities like food for babies or as he likes to say, the millions of minorities that are smoking dope and mugging us so that they can live in fancy apartments and drive Escalades.

He drives me crazy but I get my own in too. Just yesterday I told him that Protestantism isn’t a real religion it’s kind of an offshoot, like Scientology or Wicken.

I thought his arms and legs would fly off.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Here’s a little New York story.

David and I were walking to the diner to have breakfast when we see a guy wearing a Tony Romo Dallas Cowboys t shirt.

As we pass David says  “I don’t like that shirt as much as I did a week ago”.

Something I already guessed because he and his sons had removed his man Tony from the top of his Christmas tree and replaced him with either Jesus or some guy from “Breaking Bad”

(To all you regular people out there it seems that there was some football  scoring tragedy that occurred this week)

The guy turns around and goes absolutely ape shit. He starts screaming about the Dallas Cowboys offense and how the head coach doesn’t know jack shit about football. This rant goes on for two blocks with this guy not taking a breath. When we get to the diner we  nod towards it so that the guy knows that we’ve gotten to our destination. He doesn’t acknowledge it at all, except he finishes his diatribe, turns and continues down the street, no good bye no nothing.

People have been saying that I write about David too much but I can only write about what I know.

He lives across the hall from me and with Liz gone much of the time we see each other a lot.

And ya gotta admit he is a colorful person and he doesn’t know the meaning of shut the fuck up.

Why just this morning we were enjoying the surprising spring weather on his terrace and he referred to something he was reading in  what he affectionately likes to call the Jew York Times, or the Communist Manifesto.

“Everybody should have the right to bear arms except kids, fruitcakes or felons.” He went on an on about gun control, Obamacare, and Obama himself.

I suggested that it’s only a matter of time before he becomes one of those nutty old guys sitting on his front porch screaming invectives at passerbys.

That thought didn’t displease him at all.

What does displease him is that he thinks I don’t portray him as he really is. He says I soften his image and therefore distort his message.

“Are you planning on running for President?”

“You never know”

” I do know and I know something else. If I wrote half of what you really think Lizzie would kill me. In fact that’s why I left out your saying this morning that you hate Nancy Pelosi because she’s a “see you next tuesday”.  Think how mad she’d be about that? .”

He didn’t answer because he’d pretty much stopped listening to me by that time”

I didn’t get his attention again until I mentioned that I asked his son’s girlfriend, Valerie, what David’s ex wife was like.

“Why would you ask her that? That’s none of your business.”

“I’m not saying that it’s my business, but it isn’t “not” my business either. I was curious.”

“You mean nosy”  He was dying to say “pushy” I could tell.

You won’t believe how long this went on with me insisting that as long as I wasn’t asking about someone’s finances or weight there was nothing you couldn’t put on the table and him saying that polite conversation demands that anything other than world events, sports and news was taboo.

That brought to mind a dinner party I once went to at Liz’ house when one of her friends, an absolute knockout, suggested that she and dave, my husband at the time, meet for lunch since they both spoke Japanese. Even then, when I thought dave was trustworthy, I spoke my mind. The whole table got quiet when I said “Yeah, that’s gonna happen”.

“That’s why I hate your WASP parties. No one says how they feel. It’s a load of small talk, something I have no ability in.”

And here’s why I love Liz. She let’s me be me. She even takes me to her fancy Jew Hatin’ Club (She’s going to hate that I call it that. Whenever I say it she’s always forced to name Jews that belong but after Wendy Wasserstein she pretty much comes up empty).

As I was saying, she let’s me be me. Whenever she introduces me to any of her friends she always says ” Just because she asks you a question doesn’t mean you have to answer” and then she leaves me to my own devices.

Whereas if I had a nickel for every time David told me that something wasn’t my business, well I’d have a lot of nickels.

David came home from wherever he was and this morning he sent me an email,

“Coffee?”

That’s one of only 2 emails I get from him, depending on the time. The other one is “Cocktails?”.

I was over there like a shot. He’s usually much more pleasant in the morning before he reads his paper and I wanted to take advantage of it. It doesn’t last long though.

He gets the New York Post, the white man’s bigot handbook, and it never fails in getting him revved up. He added to his usual Obama rant this morning by including Kanye West to his repertoire .  It seems David takes Kanye’s equating his job to that of a policeman or a soldier as a personal affront and don’t even get him started on the Yeesus thing.

I’m no lover of Kanye but being a blowhard is not punishable by death and his disembowelment suggestion is overkill in anybody’s book.

We were interrupted by David’s cell phone. He glanced at the caller id and didn’t pick it up.

“It’s my boss. I know what he wants. It’s about some negotiation with a company over an equity split. We don’t think they have any alternative so we have a good chance of fucking them up the ass.”

Kanye was starting to look real good to me then.

My cell rang then, it was my sister, Marcia.

“Where are you? I’ve been calling you all morning. I want you to give me the number of your doorman so I can check and see if you went out.”

I told her I was at David’s and I’d call her when I got home.

I told David that I should give her his number so he could check on me if she was worried.

“Of course” he said “But don’t worry. If after a week or two you didn’t answer my “cocktail ” email I’d be sure to notice.”

Went to Brooklyn today to have lunch with Susan.

Since I was in the borough anyway I decided to have my hair cut.

After all if Arturo Toscanini is available to play happy birthday to you, you don’t pass it up.

That’s right! I’m equating my beautician Tony with Arturo Toscanini.

Sure Tony’s shop could use a good cleaning.

Since I know they have running water because there is a fountain in the shrine, I gotta believe that my man feels that if he washes his combs or even the rags they throw around your neck to protect your clothes from flying hairs, he will lose his Chi.

This I don’t want to happen.

If I were to go to any other beauty shop and paid $12 for a haircut who knows how it would come out. You can see why I throw an 8 buck tip at him.

Not everyone is happy with Tony’s place.

I was waiting to get  my coif “styled” when a couple came in. No appointment necessary but first come, first served and I was next with Tony, who happens to be the owner.

The man was kind of handsome, the woman, not so much. She was really fat with bad skin. When they first came in I leaned over and asked Susan if she thought the woman’s hair was wet or just greasy.

That mystery was solved when said woman announced loudly that she washed her hair at home “cause last time they really fucked it up”.

She sat in the chair and not wanting them to “fuck it up” again she gave directions to her beautician.  Then she leaned over to tell the woman cutting her husband’s hair what to do.

“Just the top. Use a scissor, trim it. Just the top”

Since no one in that shop considers english their first or even sixth language this explanation took a great deal of time.

Tony was doing his magic on me when I felt his attention shift elsewhere.

The wife was shouting. “She chopped the shit outta his hair. See? She chopped the shit outta it.”

The husband trying to calm her said “Take it easy Diane. It’s ok”

“Waddayamean it’s ok? She chopped the shit outta it”

“Shut the fuck up Diane. I like it”

Diane quieted down but she still clearly wasn’t happy”

I had a real feeling of deja vu during this and then I realized that I had heard almost the same conversation word for word in Bergdorf’s when Julie was getting her hair done.

No sooner did Diane take a chill pill when a brouhaha started by the cash register.

I only caught the tail end of it. It seems that one of the customers brought in a letter from some organization that she belongs to requesting a donation of money or services from the shop.

The girl behind the desk smiled and nodded and put the letter in the drawer and went back to what she was doing.

The woman said “Well?”

The girl looked at her blankly.

“Ya gotta give me something, money or a coupon”

The girl still didn’t understand. She looked at Tony and said something in chinese to him.

Again, I lost Tony’s focus. The woman turned to him and explained what she wanted. When he understood Tony just laughed and shook his head no

” I gave you a letter. Why do ya think I gave you the fuckin’ letter?”

Tony just kept shaking his head .

“I come here all the time. I send a million people here and you won’t give me a donation?”

She started stomping out but stopped at the door and returned screaming at the receptionist

“Then you can’t have the letter. Give me the fuckin’ letter”

By this time I was getting nervous. Tony had spent very little time actually focusing on my hair. I’d be lucky if I got out with a shag.

I could see my 12 bucks flying away into the sky and if Big T thought this kind of attention would get him a tax free 8 dollar tip he had another think coming.

But I worried for naught.

Even with all these distractions his genius couldn’t fail. I left looking like Debora Paget. (google her)

It was worth the trip.

I’m having a shitty day.

Miss Liz went back to Santa Fe.

David went to someplace that begins with D, and I can’t go to Brooklyn to play with Susan because the streets are icy.

I was already down when I heard that Jim Hall died.

He was a great jazz guitar player and an even nicer guy.

One example of this is that a few years ago dave got a call from Jim telling him that he had just listened to an arrangement dave wrote for him about 15 years ago and he wanted to tell dave how great it was. That was such a kind thing to do.

Of course I can never think about Jim without remembering the time that he and his wife, Jane, invited us to dinner and we came a night early. When the doorman said they weren’t home  we just slinked out of their building sure that we had been dumped by them.  At that time dumping was unfamiliar to me.

Obviously Jane called and straightened it out so I could take that out of my willies box and put on the feedbag the next night.

Before this day took a total dive I had planned to write something typical that David said.

Liz, David and I were driving back from Costco and we were discussing a friend of ours who knew someone who everyone said was mentally ill because she was a sex fiend.

David mumbled something like “Since when is giving blow jobs classified as mental illness?”

I said “Good blog material” and Liz jumped in and said I couldn’t write it because every time I put David in my blog it bites her in the ass  since she’s engaged to him.

Maybe it’s good that Liz went back to Santa Fe.

With her around second guessing me I can kiss my Nobel Prize for Literature good bye.

I lost my will. Not the one to live but the other one.

I tore my house apart looking for it.

I asked my nephew Jim, who is my executor and will lawyer of record if I had sent the signed copy back to him.

His response of “Beats me” might have made another person nervous but another person wasn’t remembering how cute he was from the time he was little and still is.  I just asked him to send me another copy.

Now I have to find a notary which isn’t easy.

My house search did bring to light several items that may or not be useful in the future.

I found my wedding certificate, some savings bonds that my mother got when I was born, my car title, some crap that dave may need when he sells the boat, a copy of a threatening letter that my good cousin wrote to my bad cousin in 1986 telling him what a shit he is, and a paper that Stephanie wrote for school about how wonderful I am. She obviously wasn’t that convincing because her teacher wrote in the margins in red “I hate her already”.

You figure out which of these things isn’t worth having. You’ll probably guess wrong.

Miss Liz is home for the week. It’s been heaven.

Today we went to Costco and out to lunch.

David took his jacket off in the diner and Liz asked him if that was the same t shirt he slept in.

Ignoring that fact that he still should be wooing her since they are not married yet, he said “Yes but don’t blame me. You wouldn’t let me wear the “I Heart Strippers” shirt that I got at the Daytona Biker’s Weekend to bed. I love that shirt. I’ll wear it to the gym”

Even though, as you know, I like to keep my own council, I was forced to intrude on their love talk.

“You will look like such a schmuck if you wear that to the gym”

“Let him” Lizzie said “Then no women will give him a second look”

I was forced to remind her that that’s what I thought. I felt totally safe with dave wearing big pants, a captain’s hat and crocks but someone still scooped him up.

Of course she was from another land. Maybe that’s hip there.

David just has to find a self hating woman who long ago gave up any hope of meeting a man with an ounce of dignity.

I guess she’ll have to be french.

Here’s the thing.

When you have a big family spread all over and you’ve gone through something, they kinda want to hear that you’re okay. My blog does that.

After dave left I was writing almost every day because I had a lot to deal with. That made my family happy, not the “a lot to deal with” but the writing part because they knew what was going on with me.

Well time passes and things have settled down for the most part so I don’t have as much to write about.

Oh there are snippets, but nothing really blog worthy.

For example, last night David was calling the chinese restaurant and ordering take out.

As he was dialing he murmured to himself, “I think I’ll do a hare lip”.

This was a new more disgusting choice for him because he usually does John Wayne, calling the woman who barely speaks english “Darlin'” and using all kinds of down home slang.

Now I could write about that but why? To prove once again what a piece of shit he is? I think I’ve brought that home more than once. No point in beating a dead bigot.

Anyway Miss Liz is coming home tonight so she’ll  take care of him. In a few days he’ll be using a napkin and not eating with his feet.

Thanksgiving this year was perfect. Everyone came and loved each other. You can’t write about that.

I have the same worries that everyone else does, that I’ll get sick and die or I won’t die and I will run out of money, that’s not blog worthy. That’s just life after sixty.

Here’s something.

I made a joke the other day to my super and my doorman that since I’ve started drinking I’m much more fun. What I meant by “drinking” was a cocktail or two but saying that would have ruined the punch line.

Anyway, I hadn’t totally cleaned up from my company when the super came up to turn off the water on my terrace the other morning.

When he was leaving, he was looking at me strangely and patted my arm on his way out.

I didn’t think much of it until I walked in the kitchen later and there was an almost empty bottle of scotch and a half full bottle of sake (neither of which I drink) on the sink. Well not the scotch anyway.

Now I cringe every time I go through the lobby.

See? my world has gotten so small. Maybe I should branch out from my family and get involved.

My niece Stephanie is doing meals on wheels. She said when she visits these people they are so happy for the company. She sits with them and listens to their stories.

She told me one about this woman with a blind cat that acts like a dog and greets you at the door and purrs and purrs. The woman said it was a rescue cat and the people told her it was a siamese.

Steph, never one to mince words, was forced to tell her that since the cat was yellow and had stripes she had clearly been taken for a ride.

Hey, maybe that’s something to do. I could visit people who are lonely and listen to their long stories and let them know that someone cares about them.

Either that or I’ll see what’s on channel 7.