Caterwauling

The thing about change isn’t the change itself. It’s the ripple effects.

We are undergoing a massive, disruptive change right now.

Let’s just say Felicia said “Bye.”  I saw no reason it would be a bad change. Or any at all, for that matter. Felicia had toodle-oo’d long before that.

In any event, the little things are now the big things. The being five miles from mom in case of an emergency, gone. The having a mechanic up the street so I can drop off the car and not miss a beat in my day, gone. The (albeit incompetent) Starbucks 10 paces away that I could wander to, any time of any day, poof. Flip-flops and pigtails, later gator.

For my friends, no more dropping spouses off at work. Or having dinner ready when they come home. Or hanging around late without an hour drive ahead. Or using lunch to run to the vet.

But we won’t complain. We won this round of “Survivor.” The rest, well. I just wish folks knew their true worth. Story for another time. 

The story I will tell today, however, is this. 

The restaurant across the street has Wine Wednesdays. Half-price past 7 p.m. 

 I never did it often enough, but occasionally I would meet my good friend Meiomi for two glasses of her goodness for the same $10 I’d pay for just one any other night. (And yes, I know a bottle is $20-$26 depending where you shop.)

This past Wednesday, I wandered in at 7 between crises. Ordered my glass, and another. 

The guy next to me, another singleton who snagged the other single seat between loads of couples at the bar, said wow. Do they always pour that heavy here?

I said I’m somewhat of a regular. The bartender knows me. 

What I didn’t say, was she didn’t say a word to me. She looked right at my face and instinctively filled that shit up to the brim. That, my friends, is worth a good tip. 

I’m gonna miss her. My bartender, as much as Meiomi at that bar.

As for the guy, I found I rather enjoyed his company. Lives nearby. Was on his way to an event. Wanted a quick beer and salad before he went.

Smelled good, spoke well. Worked it in right away that he’s Italian. A weakness of mine, though I never said that much.

I didn’t say much at all, really. Guys like that. Drives them crazy. Especially when they pump you for information when they can’t put it together that you were calling folks long before you had any information of your own, and you know WAY more than you’ll ever let on. You have friends they don’t know about. And never will. Make ’em squirm. Like they did you.

Anyway, short story short, I knew I was going to meet someone. Didn’t know when or where. Just knew it would happen. 

Hell, based on the fact that he wasn’t a Trump voter qualifies him as husband material. That’s how it goes here. In the Resistance? Check. Likes wine, coffee and beer? Check? Lives in may favorite town on earth? Check, check, check.

What an interesting transition this could turn out to be, to go back to spending my weekends in my town instead of weekdays.

Mercury retrograde. Layoffs. Disbanding the team. Being evicted. What we fought for, destroyed. Products dismantled. Mercury retrograde. And the cause of almost all of it being a cavalier cad. 

And yes, cad. I do blame you.

It’s like playing shit bingo. And being a loser even though you’ve dabbed every damn square. 

I broke today. I bet someone will be happy to hear that. Messr. Bummer that it’s all exploding, what other gossip ya got?

And broke, not just the car stalling breakdown this morning that was thankfully in a school zone and not on 95.  I will miss these school zones. 

But when my dear friend thanked me for making their brief, excellent adventure possible, I was done for.  Finished. Cried a fucking ocean two blocks from a real one. 

I need this divorce to get to court. I need it done. Two weeks of shit bingo is enough. And I know it’s only just starting. 

If it is not your priority to help me understand something you want, it is not my priority to help you achieve it.

I mean, obviously I’m not talking about Donald Gump. 

But something else that has been a boulder in front of the cave is rolling away. And granted, a MOAB just got dropped on the cave and I got smoked out anyway. 

Whatever though. If the times they have to change, let them start a-changing. Really changing. 

When I say my gratitudes to myself each day, I say thanks for my momma, my job, my kitty and my car. 

Thanks for keeping us safe and healthy. For keeping those paychecks clearing. 

I also say a preemptive kudos to the universe for shutting my mouth at the right time. And for giving me just the right words at the exact moment I need them. 

Today I finally said thank-you for the opportunities and also the strife. The strife keeps keeps the pilot light on under my soul, the proverbial fire under my ass that keeps me from getting comfortable. 

I can finally breathe now and let one particular brand of anxiety go. This boulder can’t hurt me anymore. It didn’t make me stronger or better. Or maybe the real test is yet to come. Lord help me find the right words or none at all when the time comes. And it is. 

“Go ahead and laugh,
even if it hurts,
go ahead and pull the pin.
what if we could risk
everything we have,
and just let our walls cave in?”

— Sleeping at Last, “Heart”

I don’t understand why, when someone decides to leave you, they don’t actually leave.

They hang around. They come around more than they ever did, especially toward the end. The end you saw coming from a thousand nautical miles away.

The end you anticipated with a mixture of dread and relief. A mixture whose percentages you’ll never actually reveal.

You just didn’t know how or when it was going to end.

You knew you’d be hurt and screwed seven ways to Sunday when it did finally come. (And you were sure proven right.)

Yet it still seemed a better, or at least a more-intriguing, option than having to pretend you didn’t notice that everything had changed anyway.

And maybe there’s some “better” to be found when the Everglades stop burning. But it isn’t over. Everything is on fire and they are waiting for a reaction out of you that you are never going to give.

Perhaps the more-appropriate lyric here comes from Phil Collins and Marylin Martin …

“You have no right
To ask me how I feel
You have no right
To speak to me so kind.”

Or not. I don’t think anyone wants to know how I feel right now. More like what do I know and when did I know it. And I’ve spent enough time playing Nancy Drew that I don’t have any more time to devote to anything other than catching up on gobs of lost time.

Just trying to “smile because it happened.” Maybe even laugh, even if it hurts.

Fitz said that to Olivia on “Scandal.” On the campaign trail, days before he was elected president.

Back when I believed in legitimate presidents and love, I heard something similar.

What kind, indeed.

Not interested in much else now that Annie is being returned to the orphanage. Really over all this shit right now. 

I am sitting in a hotel lobby in a county that went largely for Trump. They have Fox News on the teevee because they cater to these types, I guess.

I’m seeing coverage of the Tax Marches and am very proud of my fellow resistors. Forrest Trump is a proven liar and cheat, yet the people around me are quietly saying how dumb the marches are.

I had to move away from the TV because my blood was boiling at the on-air idiots going from pooh-poohing the marchers who want transparency to applauding Forrest Trump’s decision to hide White House visitor logs. Jesus Christ. Trumpy is off being a fake Christian at “his” church — he isn’t even watching his favorite propaganda station right now!

In any event, this triggered my memory. I was in a store yesterday and we could hear loud salsa music. Folks started chattering that there was a “Spanish event” on the next block. I said oh, cool, like a food festival or a parade? The girl in front of me said she wasn’t sure — she just saw folks setting up a bandstand.

And the cashier — THE CASHIER, representing the company — says, “Oh probably a revival or something.”

I blinked. “Um, what?!”

She must have thought I was in agreement. “Who knows what they do. Other than block traffic.”

Well, it’s on a back street and not either of the main parkways in this town. First of all. Second, that’s pretty freakin’ insensitive.

I’d call it racist. But it was clear the large black dude behind me in line was her boo. Since she was talking to him more than to any of us who were handing her money.

Oh and it wasn’t a revival. I took an hour to walk through. There were souvenirs and foods and services for people from Cuba, El Salvador, Peru, Argentina and more.

And any culture that puts pina coladas in pineapples is all right by me.

Revival of taste buds, maybe. 

The last time I had a boss leave, she was taken away by security. 

She’d just returned from lunch. The horrible woman in HR was there with a rent-a-cop. 

No one told me or my colleague Sheela. We just wondered what was going on and sat quietly in our cubes in those days before text and IM. 

The guard blocked Ann from going into her office. We couldn’t see or hear much but we could hear her begging to please just let her get her purse. 

As they escorted her out, she cried, “Sheela, get my purse!”

She knew better than to ask me. I’m no one’s keeper. And I wasn’t sorry to see her mostly-absent, disengaged, blathering ass go. 

Sheela was allowed to get the purse and nothing else. 

These days, I don’t keep personal things in my office for that reason. I don’t want to be tossed without my prized shit in-hand. 

And I notice when people do remove their prized shit. So when you get a “sudden” announcement, you have already practiced your surprised face for weeks in advance.

I’ve been worried for a while that something big was coming. And that this isn’t the last of it. 

At least, I keep telling myself that. Now to figure out what on earth is actually happening.