I'm It

Capella tagged me! And apparently that means I have to respond by writing half a dozen unimportant things about myself in this public forum. But I hate to be left out of anything (junior-high backlash) so I will have to hop on this bandwagon.

1) I am desperately afraid of the wisdom-teeth-removal surgery that I have to schedule this spring. Terrified. So much so that I cried in the office of the surgeon during the consultation, as she was showing me the teeth in my head on the X-ray, and saying something about drilling to carve away the bone. Anyway, this fear comes from the trauma I experienced when I had oral surgery in junior high. I remember that before that surgery, the doc had said that I should ask my parents for a CD, which the staff would play in my headphones as I was being sedated. So I asked for Depeche Mode 101; I thought I was being super stealthy because that was a double CD set! Ha! Score TWO for me! But not. What I went through with the pain and the bleeding all over the pillow was not worth all the Depeche Mode tracks in the world, which was saying a lot for 13-year-old me.

2) I can't believe it's the 25th anniversary of Thriller. What happened? Dubin and I used to have that album, which was one of those fold-out numbers on which, if I recall, Michael Jackson had a leopard draped over him or something? A jaguar? At any rate, it was one of the few records I remember us having, along with the theme from Grease, and the story of Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo. (Holla if you remember that too!)

3) My cat, Cali, has a pathological clothes-eating issue, and therefore his insurance policy does not cover gastritis. What's the point then, jeez?

4) I have this weird thing where, if I watch a movie with a lot of hand-held camera action, I feel very nauseated. It's an equilibrium issue or something. This happened for the first time when I saw Murderball at the Landmark Sunshine in New York. I eventually had to leave the theater and walk around the block. This happened again more recently when I saw Babel at Century City. I spent most of the last half hour of that movie in the bathroom over the sink, sweating, and trying not to barf. Nasty.

5) I never pulled all-nighters in college, mostly because I have always hated procrastination. But I came close to pulling one for work on Sunday night after the Grammys, when I came home at midnight from three parties after the awards and still had four stories to file. It was a very surreal kind of thing. I kept rubbing my eyes like a baby who needs a nap, but I totally did it. Anyway, that segues into the last useless tidbit:

6) I am not a late-night person. I realized this early on, when mom let me see a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in junior high (three junior-high references in a single post—snap!) and I totally fell asleep during it. I thought that was so incredibly lame of me, since I rarely got to do anything cool that started late like that. Even in college, I wasn't a late-night person either, and sometimes I would even offer to be the designated driver into San Francisco so that I could manipulate everyone into leaving when I was tired, because the BART had stopped running by then. (Sorry, girls! But I assure you this was not always why—sometimes it was because I was just an awesome friend with a Ford Escort, willing to be selfless for the team.) I just don't have the all-night gene. On Friday nights, I like to do the same walk-to-Trader-Joe's-to-buy-the-same-salad-ingredients routine, capped off by a glass of wine and the blue-eyed boy's signature Tabasco popcorn (next to no oil, please) and a few DVR'ed episodes of California's Gold on the couch. Call me lame, but I cover events for a living. A girl's got to sit on the couch with Huell at least once a week, mmmkay?

So there you have a bunch of useless info that no one with a job will read fully, but whatever. Anyway, apparently the rules of this tagging game mean that I am supposed to tag four other people to also write six things. I can't tag my sister, who already did it, or Capella, who also already did it. So that leaves LF, who only blogs in haiku form, so I'm not sure how that will work. But it sounds interesting. I'm also tagging Megan. And CJ, who blogs on MySpace, but he's hella funny and usually makes reference to some contemporary fashion designer who borrows inspiration from Vanessa's sweaters on The Cosby Show but won't cop to it. And the fourth person I'm tagging may determine him- or herself based on whomever has the time and interest.

No presh.


PS: It took discipline not to write about the gym here, but I have a complex that I write about the gym too much. But a) I am gym obsessed lately, in a good way, and b) it's one arena that it is not dangerous to write about because I don't care what anyone there really thinks of me, nor does anyone—with one exception—even know my last name enough to Internet search my blog. Oh, and look: I just wrote about the gym again, dang.

Crazy Cat Lady

...But not in the way you might think. More like Crazy-Cat Lady. That is, I am a lady who has a cat who is real crazy. I love him, and have historically let him do whatever he's wanted, and generally spoiled him, and made excuses for some suspicious behavior. But it's time to come out from behind the veil of secrecy.

(<---Cali holding down the mini New York fort before the move to his namesake state.)

My cat's pathology is that he eats clothes. This started out as a more manageable, occasional deviance. He would eat things that were stringy, like bathing suits, bras, camisoles, and nightie straps. I thought this seemed OK-ish because it's commonly known that cats like yarn and string and stuff. Although I did think it was a bit odd that he wasn't just severing these strings, he was chewing them up and swallowing them into his belly.

Lately, it's gotten way worse. He's emboldened. He slides the closet doors open with his head, knocks pants and other knit garments on hangers right off the closet rod, and gnaws holes in them and leaves them right there on the floor (R.I.P perfect, classic off-the-shoulders sweater, 09/2001-10/2006). He's insidious. When I went to meet my newborn play niece in the hospital, I came straight from the gym. From my gym bag, I pulled my red-and-gray striped shirt--actually the same soft shirt I had worn on my first date with the blue-eyed-guy--and it was then I discovered all the holes in the arms. And it was all I had packed to wear. Nice, right?

A few days ago, I caught Mister Baby red handed, in the hallway, looking all Urkel-style did I do that? with bits of my brand new bikini around him (it's one of the two new ones I bought after he spent the last year destroying the rest of my vast collection), which he had pulled somehow from a closed bathroom cupboard, and drawn out of a basket where it was hidden, on top of which I'd placed a box as another line of defense. See how well that worked.

That last event was the catalyst for me taking the little guy to the vet today. Needless to say, this dude was not happy about the trip and did some nasty things to demonstrate that. Nearly $200 worth of blood work later, the vet tells me my cat might benefit from Prozac, which they can call into my local CVS pharmacy.

Prozac. My cat is going to have Prozac. Have I already made him that neurotic after only two and a half years in my charge? Jeez. Oy. Apparently it runs in the family.

Update: Some Web research has revealed that this condition is called Pica. Treatments vary. Has anyone experienced anything like this with a pet? Would appreciate any input.