Tuxedo Cat Island Paradise

On Sunday, Tom and I took the train to Sacramento for a birthday dinner for him and his brother Dan. Here’s who was there: Paul, Eva, Tom, Dan, Julie, me, Melinda, Jim and Abby. Sarah was busy in San Francisco and Steve was home ill. It was wonderful, as always. We came home that same evening on the train.

It has come to my attention that Hammett is a tuxedo cat, which Thelonious was not. I found this out when the plumber came to exacerbate my bathroom sink drip and said to Hammett, “Hello, you tuxedo cat.” A tuxedo cat is black with white markings confined to its face, paws, throat or chest.

Along with having had the dream that Hammett escaped via the fire ladder, I keep waking up thinking I’ve forgotten to give him some important medication and now something horrible is going to happen.

For 20 years, I have been waking up thinking I’ve forgotten to take my medication or follow some other crucial health-related procedure, and it’s quite disorienting because the delusion pursues me into full wakefulness. It always takes a while to convince myself that I don’t take medication (leaving aside the question of whether I should).

Quite often I have thought that I will write down, for once and for all, what it is I’ve forgotten to do so I don’t forget it again, so I now have quite a collection of incomprehensible reminders, if I can even think of anything to write down at all, which often I can’t. It’s rather frustrating, though I’m glad it hasn’t leaked into the rest of my life (so far).

Several nights ago, I found myself sitting up in bed with the lights on saying to someone unseen, “Can you hear me?” Whoever it was didn’t answer, so I didn’t say what was on my mind, which I think was that we needed to give Hammett his medication.

My ex-therapist’s techniques had no effect whatsoever on what I call the “night thing”; we finally decided it was a general expression of anxiety. Obviously I am now anxious about something happening to Hammett, which makes it even clearer that the night thing, in its classical non-Hammett form, expresses some anxiety about my own well-being.

From time to time (read: every year) I’m invited to draft my own performance review at work. I always turn in a masterpiece of fulsome praise and credulity-stretching compliments: “The sun rises and sets over Linda.” “She saved us a million dollars this year.” “The snacks in her cubicle are better than anyone else’s,” this being quite true.

This is kind of a fun exercise, and then, in due time, I get to hear my boss read this all to me out loud, which he does, beaming, as if he had written every word himself. “Linda, here is your review: ‘The sun rises and sets over Linda.’” It makes us both happy.

This year, I can’t think of any new nice things to say about myself, true or otherwise, so I may have to fall back on reordering sentences: “The sun sets and rises over Linda.”

It’s going to be a shock to my system when a new boss actually writes the thing himself or herself next year. “What?! Where’s the part about the sun circling me like a hula hoop? What do you mean you’d ‘like to see Linda striving harder to reach her full potential’?”

We had a good rain earlier this week. I had vowed to ride my bike every day this rainy season and not to take the bus, but it was so nerve-wracking riding home in the dark, in the rain, barely able to see—that’s the thing, not being able to see because my glasses are covered with water—that I will probably end up on mass transit after all.

First, however, I will try the thing of putting a drop of dishwashing liquid on my lenses so the water, in theory, forms a sort of clear sheet instead of clinging to the surface in drops.

I stopped by Freewheel yesterday and asked them if they’d solved this problem yet. “No,” the glasses-wearing Dan said. “Take BART.”

The toughest decision of the year has been made: which wall calendars to get for home and work. One thing that makes it slightly easier is to make the exact same decision every time, though this still requires an hour in the calendar store.

As in November of 2005 and 2004, and having passed up a calendar full of tuxedo cats, I now have wall calendars called Tropical Islands and Island Paradise. This brings back happy memories of oohing and ahhing over the pictures in such a calendar with Frank, who is now in Dublin, and both liking the same picture most.

The handsomer of the two (Island Paradise) will stay at work, since I spend much more time looking at my wall calendar at work than at home. For one thing, the one at home is kind of too far away to see without my glasses on. “Is that a palm tree?”