The Circle

What’s worse than waking up in bed with a blurry black and white photo of a one-armed man, a post-it note that says “Warning: zombies will eat your br---” four feet of braided twine with a tin can on one end, and a handicapped parking placard?

I’ll tell you what’s worse. Waking up with a premonition of doom, opening your eyes and staring into the green eyes of a cat who is invading your personal space, smelling your morning breath, and purring ominously. How can a cat’s purr be ominous?

I’ll tell you, how a cat’s purr can be ominous, and by the way, remember that my mom says cats don’t have souls. Purring cats are ominous only in retrospect when, at the end of the day, you realize the cat’s blank eyes dramatically foreshadowed the subsequent realization that your day turned out to suck worse than a draining bathtub when only the hair-infused grey soapy scum is left.

My day also included the near-death trip du jour, with a driver whose skills are declining sharply. This was after a dinner or waffles in which TCG poured 4 Tablespoons of HFCS on his waffle. Did I mention, he’s hypoglycemic. Usually his post-dinner sugar crash coincides with is post-dinner nap on the couch and no harm is done. Last night, it happened like a kick to the back of his head, halfway to Spring Valley to pick up eggs. Clammy sweats, woozy head-shaking that could easily be mistaken for a swoon of love. He made it to our destination. I drove home, amid rumblings of diarrhea .

I went to my happy place where there were no conversations about practicing my skills at fellatio or other metaphors about sucking. I made myself mad crazy cranberry vodka martini with enough tomato juice to make me feel like a youthful werewolf, at twilight, drinking the blood of a young virgin goth boy, with facial piercings and a blue-hair dye-job that would outdo my Grandma’s blue hair circa 1965.

We must have had angels on our bumpers as I drove home in the dark with only the light from my white knuckles reflecting TCG’s shiny face, scrunched into a rictus of cruciatas curse. Kidding. We do have the saving grace of growing old together, still making each other laugh, bugging the crap out of each other, and getting the heck over it. Whether it is for better or for worse, we’re in this together. And what could be worse than that? I’ll tell you what’s worse…