Safely Ensconced in My Bathtub

I was going to have a patch test this week to determine what I’m allergic to that causes itching, though, as mentioned, it seemed a bit pointless—since even stuff that has just three ingredients in it and that is billed as being hypoallergenic makes me itch, there probably is no product that lacks the offending substance or substances.

This problem began when a hair product changed formula years ago. It occurred to me that it might be exacerbated by walking around for four days with 120 kinds of chemicals taped to my back: “Here, we’ll saturate one quarter of your skin with chemicals so we can find out what kind of chemical-laden product you may be able to purchase.”

Then I came upon inspiration in Emily Raboteau’s very fine novel The Professor’s Daughter, in which the main character mentions her boyfriend dressing his hair with olive oil. If this fictional character can put olive oil in his hair, so can I, and so have I been, just about two drops, and it’s working great—it quells the frizz and imparts a zesty salad-like smell. Makes one feel healthy without having to eat a salad.

I don’t think it’s making my pillowcase greasy, either. I haven’t actually looked, but it is my feeling, if not my actual observation, that it’s not doing this.

As my ex-brother-in-law once said, “I know I’m safer on an airplane than I am in my own bathtub, but I feel safer in my bathtub.”

Over the weekend, I felt so grief-stricken about Thelonious I began to think I might never get over losing her, but I feel much better at the moment. I can look at a picture and say, “That’s my nice girl cat; she’s dead now,” without it seeming incomprehensible and unbearable.

I wish I’d paid more careful attention to her every day of her life. I lived with her for eight years in my previous apartment and eight years in my current apartment, and I can barely remember the kinds of things she did in the first apartment, which seems like a parenting failure.

I remember she used to sit behind me on the chair as I practiced the trumpet. But where did she sleep? What was she doing when she wasn’t sitting behind me on the chair? What vet did she see? How did she get there, as that was when I wouldn’t have had money for a cab? I can’t remember. I will have to check my old money books for clues.

It’s hard, in fact, to remember her exactly as she was in any moment whatsoever, but it occurred to me that I also can’t remember my mother exactly as she was in any moment whatsoever. So remembering someone must not require a photographic memory, thank goodness, and of course I do have nice photos as such.

An image of my father passing by the window in his broad-brimmed hat the last time I visited my parents keeps popping into my mind. It’s a pleasing image: Dad about his garden-related business. I couldn’t tell you the exact features of the hat or the details of the shirt my father was wearing, but I can still remember him passing by the window and enjoy the satisfactoriness of that moment.

On Monday I left Hammett the new black cat in the bathroom when I went to work, as that was his first full day alone. He had the run of the apartment all day Tuesday, so I was psychologically prepared to find the place a shambles when I returned, but he had behaved himself perfectly. He was under the bedcovers when I came in.

He has obviously been showered with love all his young life. There is no part of him he minds having touched, and he loves to be picked up and cuddled. It took Thelonious many years to learn to tolerate being picked up, and I’m not sure she ever came to love it, though she developed a habit of trying to clamber up toward my right shoulder when I picked her up. Maybe she didn’t trust being held and wanted to be on top of something, though I prefer to think she wanted to be closer to my face, from whence issued the compliments and kisses.

When I was reading yesterday in what is now obviously Hammett’s chair—I feel slightly guilty sitting in it—he sank into the crack between me and the back of the chair and lay there on his back languidly waving his front paws in the air as I got the week’s dose of bad news from Newsweek.

The only thing that could make me feel better about the world situation is a New York Times headline about Laura divorcing George: “I have come to loathe the sight of that Satan-spawned imbecile; nor can I answer for my actions if I hear him mispronounce ‘nuclear’ even one more time.”

Barbara Boxer said on KQED the other night how Bush claimed terrorists hate us because of our freedom and our way of life, and then he removed our freedom and our way of life.