C.L.I.T. Cat Lady In Training

When Roommate and I adopted our cats back in January we spent a lot of time making nervous jokes about how it marked the beginning of our inevitable descent into crazy Catladydom. We'd spent the past year and a half staying in most Saturday nights to watch the Food Network and complain about not meeting anyone, and by that point we were reluctantly resigned to our fate. It would only be a few short years before we were living in New Jersey surrounded by mewing fuzzballs with names like Queen Elizabeth and Pot Pie who would look on with pity while we sat on the couch and ate tubs of vegan ice cream covered in french fries.

Well, now it's six months later. Roommate has a boyfriend and I have an anorexic looking Siamese who wakes me up in the morning by falling ass first onto my face and who bears a disturbing resemblence to Bat Boy on the cover of Weekly World News when she cries for food.

I'd like to think that I do a pretty good job of keeping my latent CL tendancies in check; formerly ferel Siamese aren't known to be the cuddliest of creatures and even if I wanted to wrap her up in a blanket and force her to watch The Bachelorette with me I'm pretty sure I would end up getting something important scratched out. Then there are those rare occasions that I scare myself and become convinced that no amount of going out or eating baby carrots instead of chips can save me from my fate.

Like the time a couple of weeks ago when I was getting ready to go to a party and, while doing my make up and listening to Pink, asked the cat for confirmation that I looked hot. She stared at me, stretched, and licked herself. I chose to interpret this as "If I were a person I would do you." I then sang louder and decided to go with that outfit.

I am doomed.

Close Encounters of the Depressing Kind

I spend a lot of time having imaginary conversations with people I used to date. Specifically people who broke up with me. More specifically, people I didn't go out with long enough to technically break up with me, but who, in lieu of letting me know they no longer wanted to see me, simply never called me back.

These mental confrontations never go how you might expect. In my head I never run into the person when I'm out at a bar wearing something that smashes my boobs up to my chin and looking so devestatingly hot it will either make them go home and hang themselves in despair or fall down at my feet and beg forgiveness for ignoring me. No, the scenes that run through my head when I'm sitting on the subway or zoning out at work tend to go something like this:

Said person and I bump into each other while I'm wandering around the village on my lunch break or on my way out to dinner or something. It's mildly awkward , but I maintain my composure acting chilly and polite and in no way bitter about the fact that I haven't heard from them in months. We talk for a few minutes, I mention my new job, and then . . . and then that's usually it. We say goodbye and I get the satisfaction of knowing that the whole encounter was probably more uncomfortable for them than it was for me because they're the one who was a spineless asshole and I got to look like a mature adult.

I used to think my creative limitations when it came to these little fantasies was a little sad. Where's the part where I kick them in the crotch with my leopard print stilletto? Or at the very least sneak in a casual mention of my supersexy new boy/girlfriend who feeds me peeled grapes and rubs my feet in between giving me 50 orgasms a day? Then last week I actually did run into someone I used to date. Well, kind of. I was walking to the subway on the way home from dinner in the East Village when I saw a girl I'd gone out with for a month and who, when things started to look like they were going somewhere, suddenly fell off the planet, only to reappear two weeks later to let me know she "wasn't in a place to be dating anyone."

She was with a group of friends and didn't see me. I made an uncertain attempt to make eye contact, but she was talking to someone and didn't notice. And that was it. After four months and several hours spent rehearsing what I would say if I saw her again, those 20 seconds were all I got. Not that I'm disappointed. Seeing her again hurt, but it would have been worse if we'd actually talked. She would have been polite and I would have been sad and reminded of how it feels to be rejected by someone I thought I could really like. Because that's how these things go in real life.

People Are Overrated

Yesterday my roommate told me she didn't think I should have a job where I worked with other people. This was in response to me coming home last night and immediately sitting on her bed to whine about my new job. The job I have had for all of one week and that I had been searching for for over a year. The one that I flipped out about when I finally got it because it would presumably demand more of me than my previous positon which largely involved putting romance novels into boxes and shipping them to Latvia. Well now I've started and I'm freaking out because it's something new and I don't know where things are or what I'm doing or how I'm going to adjust to working in a one room office with four other people when I'd gotten depressingly used to being a drone in a honeycomb of cubicles in a giant corporate building. So basically I'm going to be frustrated no matter where I am and what I'm doing which has led me to believe that there is only one option: freelance.

I used to think that I would go crazy if I had to spend the day alone. Without the distraction of other people around I always assumed I would devolve into a depressive recluse who sat on the floor attempting to braid the cats' tails together and writing poetry with my menstrual blood or something. After two full years of going off to work every morning and pretending to be a grown up though I'm not so convinced that hanging out by myself in my apartment could really be any worse for my mental health than spending 8 hours a day in a cubicle.

So now my new mission in life is to find a way to make this happen. I don't really know how to go about this and I know that it won't happen overnight, so for the time being my plan is going to involve updating my blog more frequently than oh, once every two months in the hopes that someone important and influential will stumble across it, decide I am the brilliant new voice of my generation and offer to "freelance" me a giant advance for a book or series of articles full of my general observations and musings. Because that's how it works right? I might be feeling a little restless right now, but starting with this post I am clearly on my way towards years of happily isolated success.