Being a Twenty-something and Single

                  Being a single twenty-something is simultaneously liberating and disappointing. It’s fun to go out with the girls and flirt but ultimately the guys my age are not exactly up to par. I don’t mean to knock the twenty-something generation: I’m loving it. My generation is going to be remembered. We’re technologically savvy (addicted) and when we rule the world it’s going to be be either crazy awesome, or a complete disaster. We ride the roller coaster of college and unemployment, all the while dealing with eye exam bills from staring at a computer screen all night, whether it be video games or blogging. I feel I’ve got my generation pretty much figured out, except for the daunting obstacle that I will never understand: dating. It is possibly the most uncomfortable, anxiety-inducing, nauseating, exhilarating, and ultimately disappointing venture I have ever set myself on, although high school fits that criteria as well.

                  In popular media, such as TV and movies, young women (and cougars) are always bouncing between guys, glamorously setting themselves up as sexual goddesses for one male and then tossing them aside on a whim for another they only just met. Dates are spur of the moment, and men are romantic and handsome. Men ask us for our numbers suavely, at coffee shops and in the grocery store, begging for even a lunch date.

                  In reality, men my age are still boys, hooked on video games and eating pizza pockets for dinner every night. They have no class and their main goal in life appears to be getting laid as often as possible. The ones I’ve met don’t have a romantic bone in their body and think it’s acceptable, nay, normal even, to chew and spit tobacco throughout a movie on the first date. Because of this I find myself attracted to older men, but there I run in to another problem: I’m actually terrified to talk to them.  I find myself tongue-tied and awkward in their presence, unable to converse in a pleasant or even understandable manner.

What does pump up my confidence when I talk to men is alcohol, and I find that perhaps I am the siren of desire I so wish to be when I’ve had a couple cosmopolitans (I acknowledge this to be blatantly untrue in hindsight: I now have conclusive evidence that it may actually heighten my awkwardness). I dress up sassy, make-up covering my freckles, and totter out in my heels with a gaggle of girls who apparently do this on a regular basis. On this alcoholic high I flirt and deliver witty comebacks (probably not) and occasionally a guy will actually hang out with me for a while. Inevitably my banter turns geeky and I reveal that I am a level 12 Elven cleric who just acquired the coolest ice magic staff and looted this sweet ring possessed by a Pride demon and if I play my cards right, I might be able to use his knowledge to save the world… This is not something that goes over well in bars. The past few times I’ve been in bars I’ve come away feeling humiliated (I danced and fell down, twisting my ankle), disgusted (the guy who grabbed my ass and when confronted said “My hand slipped!”), or deeply ashamed (an almost one night stand where I apologized profusely and went to sleep by myself). Obviously I’m doing it wrong or I’m just not cut out for this. I don’t want a casual relationship built on alcohol and whether or not I’m wearing a cute outfit that night. I hear about girls thrilled over their one night stands and excitedly waiting for him to maybe text, and sometimes I want that. But only when there’s a romantic comedy in the theaters and I can’t convince my roommate to go with me or I see a happy couple holding hands.

The other day I went into a restaurant and there was this incredibly handsome man with the cutest black lab puppy. He had to be in his early thirties and I actually spoke with him in an intelligent way, and had a brief witty conversation. I made eye contact with him, smiled, and pet his dog… and then I wussed out and left without saying anything to him. I thought about him chasing after me and telling me how he loved my smile or the way I laughed and asking me to sit down and have lunch with him, but that only happens in movies, doesn’t it?  

Perhaps I’m too harsh on the men of my own age. Maybe the perfect guy is out there. Disney told me that when I grew up my Prince would come. So far… no dice. Walt Disney lied to me with Pocahontas, Belle, Ariel and Snow White as his coconspirators. I’ll carry on hoping, and trying to spot that quiet guy who might be the one, but until then I will continue to be a twenty-something and single, enjoying episodes of Dr. Who, and going into coffee shops, looking for a guy who might notice a girl with a shy smile and too many books in her purse.

What Mom is Missing

    

     My mother died almost two years ago, but the chronological time often has no relationship to my healing. Some days I am accepting, other days the agony knocks the wind out of me. As the mother of a five year old, I find that most days I am aware not so much that my mom is gone, but aware of all that she is missing. I watched her grandparent my nieces and nephews and I know what a devoted and involved grandma she was. So, I know how much joy she would be experiencing watching my son grow. I know how much laughter and comraderie we would be sharing. The hard part is it leaves me alone to reflect on the differences (good, bad and humorous) between her and me as parents and as people. It is difficult to be the only one on the inside of an inside joke meant to be shared between two people.

     The main difference is that I try to be truthful in accordance with the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism and by extension to model right intention and right action. My mom on the other hand, was not so much a stickler for the truth as she was a ready and quick wit. Which, by comparison, means that I am a bit of a stick-in-the-mud and she was a stand-up comedian. An example would be when my son asks, “Where do babies come from?” I might answer, “Mommies’ tummies.” My mother would have said (to a five year old) “God puts two people with poor decision making skills together and you get a baby.” When my son asks, “What would happen if I put my finger too close to the fire?” I say, “Your skin will get burned, hurt very badly and take a long time to heal.” My mom’s response would have been, “20,000 years of genetic encoding will have failed.”

      My first day of kindergarten was catastrophic, a tale for another day, but I came home in tears just devastated and unwilling to return. I was sobbing so hard that I could only barely get words out. I managed to tell my mom…”Th-th-th-they a-aa-all laughed at meeee!” In her infinite wisdom and insight (and a lifetime of living with our shared klutzy gene) she calmly and astutely said, “At you, with you…it’s all in your perspective. Tomorrow (when something similar will inevitably happen again) you just take a bow and then laugh with them.” Many of my mother’s comments were tasty morsels meant to be enjoyed in the moment, but this is advice that has served me my entire life. The ability to occasionally step back, laugh at myself a little and just try to enjoy the journey. 

     My son’s first day of kindergarten was picture perfect. He had already visited his beautiful, inviting and stimulating classroom at a very loving and compassionate Montessori school. There was a little bit of apprehension when it was time for me to leave him at school, but he was bubbling with joy and lots of news to share when I picked him up. He knew one of his classmates from preschool and he made five new friends on his first day. He is boisterous, intelligent, charismatic and beautiful and so much like my mother that I know they would be reveling in secrets and shared treasures. I tried to incorporate her sense of style, generosity and flair for occasion by bringing some celebratory touches to commemorate his successful first day of school. I bought him a new book about a dragon at school, wrapped it up as a gift, we went on a lunch date out at a favorite restaurant together and I just gushed over his big new accomplishment. Just what I thought my mom would have done for him. I enjoyed our celebration with a melancholy heart, knowing I was a poor substitute for a grandma and knowing how much she would have really loved being here for this and for all of these cherished moments.

     Of course the other downside to being mom and acting as a stand in grandma, is that it was difficult for my child to distinguish between the special occasion that we shared together when I was standing in as grandma and his everyday life. When I picked him up after the second day of school, he asked, “Do I get a present, today?” I said, “No honey, that was just a special celebration we had for the first day of school.” He said, “Does it have to be special or could it be our choice to make everyday a celebration?” I laughed to myself and thought about how much he sounds just like my mom. 

Sweets Eaten In Secret

Marc Twain observed that too much to drink is sometimes barely enough. Substitute chocolate, and you’ve got me covered. Midway in my eight-year adventure in the restaurant on the second floor of Levy’s, a venerable department store in Tucson’s first mall, their marketing department added a bakery just a few feet from our open entryway on the second floor. Insidious fans blew a luscious caramel aroma through the kitchen in the early morning hours, sweetly trumping the odor of roasting meats and sulfite veggie soak. Even more challenging to me, a glass and steel dessert case appeared one morning between my salad station and the wait-staff’s coffee counter.  Rows of tarts, éclairs and cookies reposed at eye level across the narrowest of counters. I resisted their sweet, sticky allure since I had recently lost my teen-aged chubby chipmunk cheeks and was not looking for their return. My resolve was tested daily as I was the one to re-stock the case. I would at times surreptitiously tilt the metal rack and watch the chocolate, or jellied treats slide slickly on their paper liners to my greedy lips, but I was generally iron-willed.

On a certain December Saturday something, a glistening dark chocolate glaze or gentle swell of custard, some promise of gastronomic ecstasy seduced me. I tucked three éclairs into their column, and ate the fourth, and the next, and the next—and the next. I fell, sticky and dizzy with sugar, into utter debauchery. Every time I heard a waitress slide the front case-door open, I’d nudge the back fellow closer to her side, and eat his comrade. Surrounded by tall stainless steel cabinetry, my stealthy decimation of the baked battalion proceeded unobserved. By day’s end, the éclairs MIA were in the double digits, and these were not dainty little finger-sized treats. I could not ride my bike home after work. I had to walk beside it, and was grateful in my glucose-drunken haze to have it as a rolling support.

When I finally got home, I rested my forehead on my crossed arms at the kitchen table for a while. My husband, Marc, was there waiting for our walk across Speedway to the neighborhood pizza joint for our weekly sausage and pepperoni, hold-absolutely-nothing fast food feast. Changing our pattern could provoke inquiry that might reveal my dissipation, so I weakly agreed, passing my lethargy off as just the result of an unusually hard day in the kitchen. I choked down enough pizza to avoid comment on an unusual lack of enthusiasm and again staggered home. I was so full I could not lie down and so hot that the winter night felt like an evening in hell. I paced around our tiny bungalow in equal parts of physical pain and anxiety that my gluttony would be discovered.  My shame was revealed when Marc awoke in the early hours to find me moaning softly and pressing my burning face against the cold glass of our bedroom window. The éclair affair passed into family folklore, and forever after, the offer of a cookie, brownie or any baked treat has been tagged with, “or would you like them all?”

Cafe Cubano

Café Cubano…one of my favorite gifts of the universe.

   I am a bit of a foodie. I notice when there is a drizzle of organic honey on my side of fruit, or fresh basil in my greens (Café Passe). I notice if you make your own bechamel and offer it on the side of my crepes (Café Marcel). I notice if you use a house infused liquor in my spicy margarita (La Cocina). When I am really intrigued by something then I have to perfect it on my own. This is the case with my version of Café Cubanos. Now, there are plenty of places in town to get a great Café Cubano; Café Passe, Caffe Luce, Raging Sage, Revolutionary Grounds and I am sure there are many others. Go out and explore on your own…I would recommend sticking to places that actually have it on their menu. I haven’t had much success when I have had to explain what a Café Cubano is to the barista, but if you’re brave go for it.

   The Café Cubano did in fact originate in Cuba. Shortly after Italian espresso pots arrived in Cuba, Cubans began tweeking their version of espresso. Today the term Café Cubano can mean a variety of drink types even in Cuba. The standard interpretation is espresso shots that have a small amount of sugar mixed into the espresso grounds before pulling the espresso shots. The sugar can be raw or demerara. Most likely, the original drink was made with small hunks of the woody ends of raw sugar cane and utilized the high pressure steam of the Italian espresso pots to extract the otherwise wasted sweetness. Ingenious and tasty!!

    Those of you who could not care less about food science can skip this paragraph and head down to the next paragraph about personalizing the finished product with local touches. I, however, am fascinated by food science. It’s all about the pot with Café Cubanos. You can use a big fancy espresso machine if such a device is readily available, I prefer my stovetop Moka Pot.  Any macchinetta will work. The key factor is that the high pressure steam will hydrolyze some of the sucrose, literally infusing your espresso with the fragrance and flavor of the sugar. The aroma of sweetness satisfies very deeply, you use very little sugar only a small sprinkling, but you get maximum performance from it.

   Here is my procedure for, in my opinion, the perfect Café Cubano. Start with freshly ground organic espresso roast beans. I like Raging Sage, Coffee Cartel or Caffe Luce for local sources, but there are also great organic roasters at the farmer’s markets. Fill the grounds basket of your stovetop espresso maker halfway with ground espresso. Sprinkle a little raw sugar and a dash of cinnamon onto those grounds. Then fill the basket the rest of the way with more espresso grounds. Reassemble your stovetop espresso maker, put it on the stove and turn on the fire. When all of the espresso is in the carafe, turn off the heat and pour your Café Cubano into a cup. Top it off with a dollop of freshly whipped cream and a sprinkle of cocoa. I use Desert Tortoise Botanicals Southwestern Cocoa, it has roasted acorn and a hint of mild chile. When I told you in an earlier blog entry that “Some days a giant plate of super spicy Huevos Rancheros with a Café Cubano is all you need to know about the gifts of the universe.” This is the Café Cubano I was referring to…I highly recommend you try it!!
http://www.cafepasse.com/
http://lacocinatucson.com/
http://www.ragingsage.com/

   

    

Josephine Heals

My Shaman, Josephine.

    My grandmother who lived to be 99 used to tell me that anger caused cancer and that grief would make your body older than your years.  She meant these things literally, that the body suffers and holds onto emotions you refuse or are unable to process and that by doing so your body becomes damaged and susceptible to disease.  Despite her sage advice I still developed some unhealthy habits.  Like any habit good or bad, it was mostly through negligence or convenience that I quit taking time to deal with my emotions.  It is true that I suffered through some traumatic experiences and that when I even considered trying to process all of it; I imagined digging myself out of an avalanche.  As a mother, and thankful beyond words to be one, I also felt that it would be selfish to take time away from my family just so I could grieve.  There are probably a multitude of rationalizations to insert here, but the reality is a habit is a habit, and I made a habit of shoving my pain down as far as it would go.  Until I couldn’t breathe.  I spent months visiting allopathic professionals for a host of ailments; pneumonia, pleurisy, bronchitis, injured and bleeding bronchia.  Each diagnosis brought more medications, but little relief.  I was on steroids and using inhalers to breathe at all. I started suffering panic attacks, waking in the middle of the night scared and unable to breathe.  In order to breathe at all while I slept, I had to sleep sitting up propped by pillows. Meanwhile, my immunity completely dissolved. As an early childhood educator, I was suffering from every sickness that came through my classroom; pink eye, strep throat, sinus colds and infections.

    Josephine offered to help me.  Josephine heals with therapeutic massage.  That however, is only one of the many paths to healing that she offers.  Josephine began my process of healing by connecting with my energy to interpret how to balance me with the support of essences; at a microbial level and at an energetic level.  She also worked to open my chakras. I have had people work on my chakras in the past, but I have never had an experience like this. Josephine used a combination of touch and vocalization. Her voice is hypnotic, like the sounds of ancient tribes wailing to your soul. As she worked, I was able to see huge, multi-faceted jewels before me. They seemed more made of light than of beryl. As Josephine worked through the chakras the jeweled lights changed colors, but remained huge and spinning before my eyes whether my eyes were opened or closed. Her vocalizations carried me through many healing spaces. I felt as if I was moving through time and space, long gone caves and hogans and huts, but I always felt safe and nurtured. When Josephine found one of the biggest pockets of stored up grief she stopped and we discussed several approaches to healing me. She gave me descriptions of how each approach might feel and how I might feel. This mass of unresolved emotions was literally crushing my lungs. I could not breathe. I chose one of the more intense paths that Josephine offered me. Rather than peeling away pieces slowly like layers of an onion, I asked if we could, metaphorically, take a railroad spike and crack it open like a coconut.

   After my first treatment with Josephine we made a plan for my continued healing. It’s been several months since that  first session. My lungs are healed and I no longer use inhalers or steroids to breathe. My body is stronger and I sleep peacefully, lying down on only one pillow. I have made some other changes in my life, my lifestyle and my health habits.  The main thing I notice is that the overwhelming sense of dread and fear that accompanied all of the health problems, is gone as well. I start my days optimistically and feel peaceful often.  I know I still have some repair work to do for this broken body and broken soul, but I have found a Shaman who is going to help me with that.

www.rememberingharmony.com

Trust and Consequences

What do women want? Sir Gawain knew (or King Henry, depending on whether you’ve got the folktale or the ballad at hand): we want our own way. But doesn’t everyone want that? I’ve only met one apparently easy-going person ever, and he was shamming. I myself have been named more than stubborn—my own mother called me Stalin in drag: the iron fist in a velvet glove. So when taking care of the dead 25-foot sycamore in the back yard was miles higher on my priority list than on that of my husband, Marc’s, I bit my tongue and awaited an opportunity. It would be breaking trust for me to spend without further discussion the $600.00 a tree-removal specialist had quoted for the job, and due to a thorough and well-demonstrated clumsiness I have been forever banned from any power tools lying around.  I figured a little quick, quiet yard operation with hand tools was in bounds. It would be easier if Marc just happened to be away from the house at the time. When he and his brother, Bill, decided to go to a Padre’s spring training game, I figured that the two hour window between the first pitch and their arrival back home would be plenty of time for me to get the tree down and dealt with. I maintain this discreet willfulness was acceptable--the chaos of that afternoon was due to other character flaws.

I rushed home from work on game-day, entering the house through the garage and noting that Marc must have failed to arm the security system—odd, because he was very precise in all things, but just as well since he was usually the one to disarm and I was none too sure I remembered the code anyway. Out through the garage to get the tools, around to the side gate and in ten minutes I had several lower branches down—just enough to realize that it would have been smarter to trim the higher branches first and that apparently yardmen get paid for more than just their brawn. Back around to the garage to get the ladder. Time was slipping away. I sawed feverishly. The higher branches dropped one by one, mostly over the side yard wall--not as rude as it seems, because next door was a vacant lot, and the retainer wall in between was 20 feet deep and surely no one would notice a few yard trimmings down there in the desert scruff. All the tugging and shaking and swaying of the dead tree must have loosened its roots because the mutilated tree slowly fell toward the fence with me, clinging to the ladder, following. The mangled trunk toppled four or five bricks down the far side and came to rest balanced in the jagged new gap in the block wall. The root ball on the near side dropped dirt clods every few moments on me where I lay flat down on the gound and under the ladder.

I staggered up from my cushion of leafy debris, thinking madly how to hide the evidence of my stubborness and selective honesty in my rapidly shrinking alone time. Perhaps I could lever the whole wretched thing over into the abyss. I ran into the house through the back yard patio door, whereupon the earlier absent robo-voice now announced “intruder alert!” I ran to the control panel across the room and punched in several possible disarm codes on the nearby panel, but could not recall the correct number sequence. The secondary wailing, hideously loud siren followed the first alarm. I was stabbing at the key pad randomly, hoping to hit the right code when the phone rang.

“Are you safe?” the Security One rep asked.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine, this is a false alarm—please, please, please turn off
that awful siren”. “Certainly, ma'am, if you will please give me the security answer”.  I couldn't remember that any better  than I did the disarm code. The siren swung into an even louder “whoop-whoop-whoooooop”. I fiercely regretted my habit of handing off everything systematic to Marc and then never listening to his patient, methodical summaries.  “Blackbury? Cicada? 1984!” “Ma’am, none of those are on our list and you seem very agitated—for your safety, we will contact the police for you.” The phone clicked off, but the siren continued its cyclic wails, whoops and blats.

Explaining the defective alarm, the damaged wall and damnable tree to the police was mildly embarrassing, but more so was the arrival of a familiar car to pulling into the driveway as they questioned me. The security company’s next call after the police had been to the back-up contact Marc had set up, but I knew who that was no more than I did the disarm code or the security answer. It was Marc's brother, Bill. Of course he’d answered his cell phone there in the Hi Corbett field bleachers with Marc sitting right beside him.  What I did learn from the very married moment that followed later that evening was that if I was going to get my own way on the sly, I needed to be quicker, smarter and a tad more attentive to the details of daily life.

An Incident of Cluelessness

Adding a little Joy to our Lives: an Incident of Cluelessness

      Almost everyone has roommate stories, good and bad. At some point in our lives we have shared our homes in a manner that rewarded or punished us. My husband Mike and I have been together over twenty years and have shared our home with many friends along the way. Friends starting over after a bad relationship or bad job, friends in transition or distress, friends down on their luck or lucky enough to travel and couch surf have all been welcomed to our home. We received many gifts from these relationships; new recipes, new songs, new games and new interests that all found their way into our lives from roommates. We are fortunate to still call them all friends…except one. Having her as a roommate nearly lost us our home, our pets, our car, my job and of course our sanity. It did however lead to me learning, a little too late in life, something that I should have learned in kindergarten. It got me thinking about all the things we just assume that everyone else must know.  Turns out, we don’t always know it at all.

                  The whole situation started typically and innocently. Our friend Joy called from Minneapolis for help.  Joy had worked with Mike and me at Clean Water Action a decade earlier and had been a good friend when we lived in Minneapolis. We had kept in touch and knew she was still a committed activist working mostly on issues of social justice and human rights. She was a good person, but a bit flaky. She had failed at her third business attempt in as many years and was broke. The mutual friend she was living with had, according to Joy, become really aggressive toward her and Joy was frightened to stay. As shocked as I was to hear this about our mutual friend, as difficult as it was for me to even imagine her behaving in any of the manners Joy assured me she had; eventually I accepted Joy’s version of the story because…well, who would lie about such a thing?  So, we made arrangements to get her to Tucson and get her back on her feet.

                  At the time we were renting an old converted Fort on Geronimo. An awesome space that we took over when friends left to go back to Iowa and turned over to another friend when we bought our  own home. La Fortuna, or the Fort, plays a role in over a decade of our lives.  It had a huge Arizona room that doubled as my studio and had room left over for a large bed, dresser and two cupboards of storage. We offered this space and of course the use of all common spaces to Joy. The first problem began within minutes of her arrival. She wanted to smoke…in the house…and not just tobacco. We are more than a little supportive of this type of smoking, but we have never smoked anything inside any of our homes. Also we were renting, our landlord was great, but not lenient about drug use. Smoking “not tobacco” in the house could get us evicted. Just off the Arizona room we had enclosed the portico with screens and a security door. It was filled with plants and a charming little wrap-around corner couch, two other chairs, a French mirrored glass table; it was shaded and cool and smelled of the gardenia, hibiscus and citrus plants that grew there. Via a shutter style window, the cats had access to this room all day, but it was a great place for morning tea or evening wine. Not being smokers, we generously offered to let Joy smoke in the portico (it was technically outside) with the understanding she be extremely careful. We thought that would be the worst of our adjustments, again having never had a bad roommate relationship before this.

                  We set to work helping Joy find a job or source of income. She applied at several places and I also invested in beeswax candle making supplies for her. I spent over 200 dollars on her supplies, but much more on the two dozen pots and pans she “borrowed” from my cupboards and then scorched and destroyed during her candle-making “process”. When she did finally have a product she set them all out to “dry” on our patio. In Arizona. In the summer. That’s right—a giant stain of pigmented beeswax melted into the patio. Her second attempt, also funded by me, had much the same result in the trunk of my car. She was transporting them to a booth I had rented her at a Farmer’s Market and claimed that she thought the trunk was air conditioned like the rest of the car.

                  Maybe entrepreneurship wasn’t going to work out for Joy. I talked to my employer. I was working as a retail manager at a neighborhood bead store. I did purchasing, created and taught classes, managed the schedule and worked with the wholesale manager to coordinate advertising. We sometimes hired people with no bead experience to run the cash register, process inventory into stock, restock and clean the store. Joy got hired. So far, so good. A regular job, no more destruction of our property, Joy was earning money and saving for her own place, great!!

                  The situation turned sour slowly and in a variety of ways. Like something going rotten in a jar undetected at the back of the fridge and then one day exploding so vilely and putridly that no amount of cleaning can save the fridge. You just have to chuck it out.

                  My jewelry was often missing and Joy would say she borrowed it and lost it. She seemed earnestly upset to have lost my things and I didn’t want her to feel worse. I knew her to be flaky and absentminded so, of course I believed she had lost my things. Again because… who would lie about such a thing?   Money, liquor, and household items were often missing. We started being more careful with where we put our money and we quit stocking the liquor cupboard. At work she would fail to show up, fail to learn or fulfill her job responsibilities. She communicated misinformation to co-workers. I gave her easier and easier jobs at the bead store. She also told us that we were oppressing her religion and her race because she was a Rastafarian and had the right to be allowed to smoke (not tobacco) in HER home. We assured her that no religion afforded anyone the right to break the law in OUR home. Let alone the fact that she was a Caucasian Scandinavian American Lutheran from Minnesota trying to pull the racism card.

                  She often borrowed my car and twice brought it back with small scratches and dents. Both times she said that it had happened while she was parked, someone else had done it. That does happen and… who would lie about such a thing?  

She owed money to her former roommate, to all of her siblings and to her parents. They called often to try to collect. We had paid her transportation to Arizona and had been fully supporting her since she arrived and she had never offered to contribute or pay us back, but she assured us she was saving for her own place. I believed her. I knew her recent failed flower shop had been a costly mistake and it takes time to recover from financial disasters. Mostly I believed her because…well… who would lie about such a thing? 

                  Joy was also mean to my cats. In her defense, she said she was afraid of cats. Since she had been living with us she had habitually been locking them out of their portico and worse, locking them up in our bedroom. She was constantly shrieking at them and chasing them around the house. I know, some people are genuinely afraid of cats. However, it is worth mentioning that one of my cats was…what is the politically correct term now?...mentally challenged. Her name was Yeats, but she was so kind, docile, meek, loving, trusting, cuddly and happy that she had always been called Buddha, which was short for Wittle Baby Buddha Bear. She purred every single moment of her life and I know because she slept under my head and purred in her sleep. She hid from dogs by closing her eyes while they sniffed her. She was actually bullied by sparrows when we lived on the farm. NO ONE was afraid of Buddha. Yet every time I came home and found my cats locked up, Joy would claim they had been terrifying her.

                  The rotten food was starting to swell inside that jar at the back of the fridge. My boss called me into his office one day and said he was going to have to fire Joy. He was sure she was stealing, but the worst part was that she had blamed me when she got caught; she claimed I authorized her “use” of store materials. (Lots of people who work in a bead store do so because they love beads. Our store was very liberal about keeping our employee’s bead habits well fed; employees got a great discount and all you had to do was write it on your purchase sheet before you took it. We hadn’t had any problems with this system; people were good about paying off their purchases.) Luckily, my boss was a good friend of mine long before being my boss. He knew me very well and disclosed that she had been complaining to him since she was hired that I cruelly gave her all the worst jobs to do: sorting, pricing and cleaning. He was a savvy fella’ and had been running his business for a long time. He knew she was incompetent and that I had tried to utilize her complete lack of skills and motivation to have her get anything done, but he drew the line at theft. He suggested, as a friend, that I do the same.

                  I just could not reconcile my opinion of Joy as a kind, compassionate albeit flaky individual with all the events of untruthfulness. I wasn’t completely naïve, I knew Joy’s perception was extremely skewed and misguided. Now she had accused me of treating her cruelly and of authorizing her to take materials from the store!! If my boss hadn’t known me as well as he did, this could have jeopardized my job!

                  My husband Mike is a patient and kind man, but he had gotten fed up long ago. He argued she was bleeding money out of us, lying, laying around doing drugs, using an entire roll of toilet paper inexplicably every day (which I think secretly upset him more than any of the other problems) and that I was being taken. He called in reinforcements in an intervention-like style; a group of half a dozen trusted friends, who had known me for years, all sitting in the living room calmly inviting me to pull up a chair one evening when I arrived home from work. I knew I wasn’t drunk or on drugs, but it was obvious I needed some sort of help. I sat down with Mike and my friends to review the evidence. They said Joy was intentionally using me. I said she was mistaken and confused. They said Joy was stealing from us and I said she was losing things.  They said Joy was mistreating my cats and claiming to be afraid of BUDDHA and I said I did think that was delusional. They said Joy stole from the store and I said I had no explanation for how she could have misunderstood the purchase policy. They said she didn’t misunderstand, she was a thief!! Then Mike handed me my mail for the day and in it was a fine for not paying a ticket I had received for rear-ending someone. Joy had apparently used my car and my license and gotten into an accident and never said anything about it.

Ed has been my friend since college and knows me to be a very intelligent person, but he has on more than one occasion in my life had to point out the obvious. Or to be clear, he had to point out the giant pink elephant standing in the middle of the room that everybody except me could see. I sat quietly shaking my head and then Ed said, “Cas, you do know that people lie on purpose, right?” I said of course I knew that, people lie all the time, they believe all kinds of things that aren’t true. Everyone in the room shook their heads at me with that look that says, “Oh, you poor sorry sap.” Then Ed said, “No Cas, that is not what I mean. I mean there are people who know what the truth is and tell you something else on purpose. People lie on purpose, they aren’t just confused or misinformed, they are dishonest.” I said okay, yeah, I knew that that happened. Mike said, “Not just in books as a plot catalyst, but actually, in real life.” In my mind I might have heard the sound of glass breaking, it might have been the jar of metaphorically rotten food in at the back of the fridge. She was lying. She was LYING!!! People lied to their friends and to people who trusted them. I agreed she had to go. The next day we told her so.

The following day was catastrophic.  A friend of Joy’s, friend - drug dealer – whatever, had agreed to let her rent a room from her. We were at the house packing Joy’s things when I heard a sickening cat shriek from the kitchen. I ran in to find my sweet baby Buddha trapped on the stove between two lit burners and Joy just standing there staring at her. I ran to Buddha and pulled her off the stove, patted out her burning whiskers and tail fur, turned off the stove and wrapped her in a cold wet dish towel all the time screaming, “Why would you do this, what is wrong with you?” Joy claimed that she had been terrified by Buddha sitting on the counter and had tried to shoo her away. Then, in frightened desperation, she had turned on the stove burners hoping that the fire would scare Buddha down off the counter. Unfortunately, Buddha had run onto the stove instead of off of the counter. It was a lie. She was a lying liar and she was lying right at me!! Her scraggly little “cigarette” was right there on the counter! Out of oblivion to Buddha’s whereabouts or with sick animal cruelty, she started those burners, (two burners!!) and trapped Buddha in terror just to light her “cigarette”. Then stood there doing nothing to save Buddha. Then she LIED about it.

“Get out.” I said. “What? What are you talking about?” she stammered at me. “I said get out of my house now!” I shoved her out the door. “Get out!! We’ll bring your things over tonight, don’t ever come back.” We drove her things over to her new apartment that night. Her new roommate blissfully unaware said Joy had agreed to pay half the rent as soon as she paid off a few other bills of course. I laughed and told her that she should get paid up front. Then I went home to nurse my wounded cat and wonder really how you could possibly use an entire roll of toilet paper everyday.