I’ve often spoken about the fun Susan and I have when we spend a day together. Quite often our friend Ronnie comes with us and that only makes it better.

I can’t explain why it’s so great. We don’t do anything special, maybe a hair cut, possibly a mani pedi, often  shopping or any task that one of us needs to do. A few weeks ago we searched Brooklyn for someone to notarize my will . Even that was fun.

One thing we always do is have lunch. We mostly go to the greek restaurant since Susan’s husband Allan refuses to eat there even though, as she’s told him many times he likes everything they have there, he’s just being stubborn.

Since this is a guy who rates his day by whether or not his wife is happy I can’t imagine why he won’t budge. z≈`Q

What were we talking about? Oh yes, how I can’t explain why those days are so great but we just love them and never have a bad time. Even when adversity strikes. We have learned to make the best of every situation and here’s an example of how two of the three of us did just that yesterday.

We were finishing lunch and Sue excused herself to go to the restroom. Just as she came back to the table her cell phone rang and she walked to the front of the restaurant to take the call so she wouldn’t disturb anyone.

Ronnie and I were deep in conversation so we didn’t look up until the sweetest man from the next table leaned over and said in a whisper,

“When your friend comes back, please tell her that she has a long piece of toilet paper hanging out of her pants.” You could see he was really pained to have to say this.

Loving our friend and knowing that this would mortify her we did what we could to give her this information without embarrassing her. Did we :

1. go over to where she was speaking on the phone and quietly remove the toilet paper without letting her know it was there ?

or

2. Scream with laughter and ask the guy to repeat it so that I could record it on my phone ?

I won’t tell you which we did but I’ve been spending the last hour trying to put that movie on here to no avail.

Also I got my toenails painted blue. Big mistake.

I had a lovely evening planned.

I was having Julie, Violet, our friend Brenda and possibly our other friend Claudia to dinner.

It turned out that Claudia couldn’t come but since Brenda has never been to my house I wanted my digs to look nice so I didn’t cook all week so I wouldn’t mess up the kitchen.

Last night David had a big party for his son so he put some bulky things in  my house to get them out of the way. I’m thinking their evening consisted of nine white guys in their twenties and early thirties drinking manhattans and talking rugby and french.

Early this morning I called David and told him to take his stuff back because I was entertaining.

This gave him license to rant about anyone coming over to my house to eat burnt chicken had to be crazy. I explained that I was making something fancy and I had no intention of burning anything. He sneered and followed me home. No sooner had he picked up his crap then I got an email from Brenda saying that she may have the flu and couldn’t come.

So it was just Julie and Violet. I wasn’t sure they would still come without Brenda.

I emailed David, “I think my dinner party may be cancelled”

His answer “Why? Did they hear what you were making?

Then I spoke to Julie and she said maybe we should make it another time.

To David, “My party was cancelled”

Julie called back to say that they were in fact coming.

I knew David was probably counting on me spending the evening with him and his son, Graham since I had told him my plans had fallen through. Therefore I thought it only right to tell him that I was no longer available.

He wrote back “Stop with these updates. We don’t give a rat’s ass”

Ouch.

Here’s why Twitter is great.

You find out how crazy you are or you aren’t because you see that there are or aren’t others like yourself.

Like today I saw a tweet from Ricky Gervais. It was a sweet picture of his face next to his cat’s face and it said,  “Don’t be fooled. She wants to bite my face off”

I can’t tell you what a relief that was to me.

Don’t get me wrong I love Elvis but I wasn’t lying when I said that I don’t get cats at all.

Remember the picture I posted yesterday? I’ll put it up again to remind you.

No one could ever say that that he isn’t adorable.

But here’s the truth. That little fluffy ball of cuteness hides a lot of weaponry.

See those cotton like feet? Buried inside them are needle like knives. Those kissable little lips hide teeth like razors. And he isn’t afraid to use any of them while purring up a storm.

Of course I’m just asking for it, I know. Why should I expect him to just stand by while I try to put on my socks? And typing this now? I might as well slap him in the face.

What? I decide to wear something with a drawstring? Or pull a blanket over me? I might as well cut my own hands with a knife if I’m going to live that dangerously. Luckily I don’t have to because the movement police are always watching.

I know that many people complain that cats ruin their furniture. Not me. I wait until he’s happily sharpening his nails on my couch to put on my shoes or drink a hot beverage. Wouldn’t want him to burn himself on his way to my throat.

If I had a dime for every time I say “ow” during the day I’d have enough money to afford all the band aids and tourniquets I’ll need to  avoid a full transfusion.

When my niece Randy gave me Elvis she warned me to be careful that he doesn’t trip me while he winds himself around my feet when I walk. What she didn’t mention was that he’s only doing that to see if he’s left any part of ankles that don’t have open wounds on them. Something that would surely fill him with dismay and he’d be forced to rectify.

But don’t worry he’s not going anywhere. Mainly because he’s really smart and if he hears me planning to give him away he’ll finish me off before I get a chance to act.

Luckily  he can’t read. At least I hope he can’t. What do you think?

When dave first told me about this other woman I asked him if he was going to marry her. He answered I don’t know, I don’t plan to. Her family wants us to. Maybe. Now that we don’t have a marriage any more I don’t know what will happen.

This was not an hour after he said that he didn’t want a divorce.

I know you’re saying that anyone in that position would lie but this was the first lie I had ever heard dave tell.

About a month ago I got an email from the Blue Note in Japan. It was clearly about dave’s upcoming tour but it was in japanese. It was also sent to 2 email addresses, mine, that they had been using for however long we’ve been doing business with them and another which was a feminine version of dave’s email address.

That’s when I realized that he may have married her.

I would have no way of knowing this. He lives in Japan and none of our friends would have told me if they knew. I didn’t ask because frankly I didn’t want to know.

So yesterday on my anniversary for no reason at all I google her first name with the last name Matthews and I saw her Facebook page with her and dave on it. This was the first time I knew what she looked like. In case you’re interested, nothing special but not as bad as I hoped.

I can’t really say how I felt. I think mostly numb. I didn’t feel jealous or even sad. I just made note of stuff without thinking why.

In several pictures he was wearing a Central Park sweatshirt that I had given him for Valentine’s Day and most of his clothes were familiar. He never shopped so I had bought them all. That bothered me more than him having his arm around her.

There were some pictures of them with musicians I knew and a reference to “the newly married dave matthews and his wife”.

Still nothing.

I went out to dinner with my dear friends Susan and Allan and we talked about it but didn’t dwell on it. We laughed as we always do and Susan said as her gift to me I can boss Al around any time I want. I immediately felt better. That truly is the only thing missing from my life.

Some people said that the weakness of my story is that it has no end. They’re wrong. It’s over now and the part that surprises me the most is that I couldn’t care less.

I know you’d love me to put a picture of the happy couple on here but I think I’ll give you something better.

As I was saying, the weather and mooning over my new cat Elvis has kept me from experiencing anything interesting enough to write about. You can imagine how happy I was this morning when I realized that today would have been my thirty ninth wedding anniversary.

I sat down at the computer thinking of putting down heartfelt phrases like “How long after divorce before the date of your wedding passes by unnoticed?”.

I love writing and believe me I could have really poured it on. There wouldn’t have been a dry eye in the house.

The response would have been predictable. Stephanie and Susan would be angry. Liz would be consoling, Marcia and Julie would feel terrible, David would call me a fucking idiot and for the most part the people who read my blog would be proud of me for enduring and tell me to keep my chin up.

I’m sitting here trying to put it together.

In 2011 dave told me he was in love with a Japanese woman.

He hung around drinking, mooning around the house feeling sorry for himself, I guess for being such a prick, Skyping his girlfriend from my den ( I could hear them talking to each other through the night. I assume mostly to say “Huh?” to each other since she spoke little english and his Japanese wasn’t perfect), taking her away on our boat a few times through the rest of 2011 and into 2012 when he finally moved to Japan to find true happiness.

In 2013 our divorce became final.

So without realizing it the answer to the question “How long after divorce before the date of your wedding passes by unnoticed?” I have to say is “Beats me but it’s sooner than you think”

From now on February 16th will be the day I celebrate Elvis helping me type

Here’s the story with the weather being so stinky for so long.

My world is getting even smaller. How do you find anything interesting to write about when you never leave your apartment? There’s just so much you can write about a cat. And frankly I gotta admit that David is right.  Nobody gives a shit about my cat.

Stephanie threatened to punch me if I sent her one more photo of Elvis and even my sister, who is the sweetest person in the world, starts humming when I mention him.

I know that since I know nothing about cats  the things that I find interesting may not be to everyone’s taste. For example, did you ever see a cat use the litter box? It’s brilliant. He digs a hole, does his business and then covers it all up without touching it.

Did I just hear you snoring?

Absolutely no one is interested.  I had to send dave an email about business and at the end I wrote “I got a cat”

Nuthin’.

At one time I was able to fill my blog with stories about David. He used to never disappoint but he’s been traveling a lot and even when he’s here it’s just same old same old. He hates this guy. He wants to shoot that guy.

How can someone write a blog when their life is so fucking boring?

My sister and I are going to spend a week in Italy in April. If you can just hold on until then maybe if I go to another land something worth writing about will happen to me.

Until then 7uuuuuiii[000 you’ll just have to settle for/23MMMM my cat walking on the keyboard.

Or as my mother used to say when I said I was bored. “Clean your room”.

When I have a conversation with David  in public my eyes dart around to make sure that no one can hear us. When I say “us” I mean him.

If someone picks up even a bit of his conversation they will know immediately what he believes. You can say a lot about him but you can’t say that he pretends to be anyone but who he is.

I went out today. You won’t be surprised to hear where.  Stephanie said that Elvis would be much happier if I had a fluffy shelf on the window sill for him to sit on while he admires the view. But after dragging myself to 4 different pet stores searching I finally came  home empty handed.

On the bus three senior citizens, one man and two women, struck up a conversation with each other. The interesting thing about getting old is you just don’t give a shit. The inability to hear well was the cherry on top of this since these people had no idea how loud they were talking.

They were discussing cab drivers.

“None of them can speak english”

“They have no respect for women”

“Sure, in their country they think nothing of killing women for not wearing hats” (Not wearing hats?)

“They” and the lone man nodded his head towards the black bus driver “make much better cab drivers”

I’m cringing here hoping the driver was born deaf when one of the women goes back to the dead hatless thing and says “They’ll get theirs when we put Hillary in the White House.

“We?” “Hillary?” These people are democrats. These are my people spewing all this bigotry and racism.

See why I’m only writing about cats now?

Today is a good day.

When Lizzie went back to Santa Fe with Rupert I thought I had seen him for the last time. He was 15 and he had cancer.

Liz called before and told me that Rupert had his 2 little lumps taken out and he was fine. The rest of him was clear and he was in great shape.

I explained it all to Elvis who peeks down the hall looking for Rupie every time I open the door. I believe he was relieved.

I’ ve always been a little odd. Ask my niece Julie. But I think this cat has put me over the edge.

I see him scratching my couch and I mumble “Ohhh don’t do that” but I don’t really stop him.

I put away a beautiful needle point rug that gave me pleasure every time I passed it. Elvis considered it a personal insult and kept attacking it.

At first I was sad but then I thought, other than my family I don’t entertain any more. Does it matter that that rug is replaced with a round piece of cloth that has a motor so it appears that a mouse is popping out of it in different places?  I think not.

This is only after having the cat for a few weeks. It won’t be long before my couch has tufts of stuffing sticking out of it and my whole apartment is littered with fake mice and torn tissues.

Why do I feel so happy?

I am a perfect person.

I actually went out and braved a huge snowstorm to make a deposit in dave’s account so he can buy bon bons for his lady love (may they both get cholera).

The fact that I can hold a grudge while still doing the right thing only makes me perfecter.

Did I mention that I got a cat?

David says that since I got Elvis my blogs are boring and no one will read them. He says I have replaced writing about him with writing about Elvis which is why my blogs stink.

This is why I am going to slip a picture of David in while telling you how clever and beautiful Elvis is.