Linda “Tantrum” Sloat

I wish my parents had thought to name me Tantrum. My mother did say once that she wished she had named me something more imposing than Linda, like King or Colonel, or even Chef. I was just reading about the outrageous Tribe 8, “the world’s greatest dyke-punk band.” I knew their drummer, Slade. Their bassist was named Lynn “Tantrum” Payne. I love that. “Tantrum, did you ever think of trying—oh, never mind! Never mind! What you were playing sounded great!”

When I was in The Peeps, at one rehearsal the bass player said to the singer, “Try busting a Phrygian scale right there.” There was a lethal pause before the singer said, “Why don’t you bust a Phrygian scale right there?” We knew she meant, “I feel abashed, as I have no idea what a Phrygian scale is.”

Thelonious is now gulping nonstop, her stomach is gurgling, she has awful diarrhea, she is barfing about four times as often as she did before we started the wet food (to mix the antibiotics into), and a couple of days ago, she quit eating, period. She seems to be getting smaller before my very eyes. After she left three meals utterly untouched, I had to give in and put out her regular food yesterday morning, which I guess means the experiment with the antibiotics is over.

I called her vet. The person who answered the phone said Dr. Press was camping with his family, having fun. I said, “What?! He’s having a good time while my cat is sick?” 

I was extremely annoyed the day before yesterday at work, both at the coworker I’m partnered with this week and also the vendor of the software I work on. Sometimes we have to call the vendor for help, and, naturally, sometimes we get someone good and sometimes we get someone who’s not so helpful. We joke that the latter type of engineer will attempt to delay the moment of truth by sending a long list of questions like, “What color is your PC? What side is your hair parted on? How long are your shoelaces? What did you eat for lunch before you got the error? How many slices of Tofurky were in your sandwich?” and so on. Then the person no doubt thinks, “That ought to keep them out of my hair for a while.”

I had to call the vendor this week about a problem and got a long email back from the assigned engineer saying, “Gee, it could be this. It could be that. Do this, this, this, this, this, this and this and let me know what happens.” Since the person with the problem had taken the step of complaining to our manager that we weren’t doing anything 30 seconds after reporting the problem, I emailed back and said I would like an engineer to meet with me and the user right away. I hasten to add that we get very few complaints like that, and particularly not when we haven’t even done or not done anything yet. 

Needless to say, I heard nothing back from the vendor until the next day, when I received a note assuring me they would do everything they could, besides actually calling me back. By then, the user had given up and found a workaround. I wrote the vendor and said that the user had found a way to proceed without using their product, so they could go ahead and close the ticket. It gave me a moment of evil satisfaction.

As for the coworker, he has frazzled several people’s nerves. It just happens to be my turn this week. Our team lead scheduled a phone meeting the other day for me, himself and the coworker. I mentioned a couple of things I had found exasperating, and the coworker got hysterical and started ranting. When my blood pressure hit the magic number—I don’t know what the number is, but there was no doubt it had been reached—I said gently, “I have to go now,” and pushed a button that brought instant relief, namely the release button on the phone.

Then I sent my team lead an email saying I was sorry to have departed so suddenly, but it seemed like the better alternative (unless they wanted to hear my rant). That was the last I heard of the matter—no news is good news—but the coworker suddenly became more responsive and has been on his best behavior since then.

I went home after work that day and considered eating a bag of Ruffles (I have cleansed the nearest stores of Natural Ruffles), but I didn’t want to enough to walk 30 feet to the corner store. I made do with what was on hand and then got in bed and sort of lay there. After an hour or so, it became clear I was not going to get out of bed, therefore I was not going to take a shower or wash the dishes or do anything else.

Then I remembered about saying yes to things as they are: Yes to lying in bed. Yes to having been angry at work. Yes to not having my dream career. Somehow Anna Quindlen, whom I don’t even know, ended up with it. After I said yes to a few things, I suddenly sprang out of bed and washed the dishes and took a shower, after all. 

Thelonious is quite happy to eat the canned food if it doesn’t have antibiotics in it, it turns out, but I’m tired of having my whole apartment speckled with dried-up dabs of cat diarrhea (“Aren’t you getting sick of all this poop? I am,” I said to her this morning), so I think she’s going to have to go back to her regular dry food. Maybe I’ll give her a little wet food each day to try to keep her weight up, plus I’ll of course eat plenty of junk food myself to try to keep my weight up.