#59 - Changing The Duvet Covers

I yelled at BooBoo on Wednesday. (I still feel a little bit guilty about it.)

I was in a rush to finish journaling (because it’s urgently important that I achieve a zen state before 9AM) and she was sniffing around my desk and immediately started fucking around with the croissant I had left vulnerable in the brown paper bag from the bakery.

I clicked, I did the silly little “ah ah” noise reserved exclusively for toddlers and pets, and then, I shouted. Just a little bit. Two words. “LEAVE IT.” She looked at me with full betrayal in her eyes and scampered out of the room.

I called out an apology, I kept writing. I felt the guilt settle in immediately. I wrote through it. I fed the cats, I pet her head, I started work. I realized she wasn’t coming in the room like she normally does. I found her in the box I’ve left unrecycled for a week because I know she likes to curl up in things. I pet her, but she didn’t purr.

Dammit.

I sat on the ground and gathered myself and started to apologize. I informed her that it was my short temper, that I know she wasn’t a bad cat, that she hadn’t done anything wrong. And, she hadn’t. Yes, my life would be easier if one of my cats hadn’t experienced extreme hunger when she was a stray, but I don’t actually get to fault her for behavior that I have the capacity to control via…putting some shit away. I apologized, very sincerely, and then she climbed out of the box and let me pick her up, and I carried her to the room and placed her gently on the bed where she likes to spend her days atop the fresh duvet cover and she started purring and grabbing at my hand because in the last two weeks I’ve discovered exactly how she likes the base of her ears to be massaged and now she demands it all the time. We were back, baby!

Both of the cats were obsessed with the new bed sheets this week. They’re percale, I bought them solely because I fooled myself into thinking that we were almost through summer, I let myself get foolishly hopeful that august wouldn’t be so terrible, that I could stop feeling like I was being cooked alive by the sun when I stepped outside. But I can’t sleep in the summer, and it really sets off a terrible ripple effect. Hence, cooling sheets. Weem is always a bed hog, but she like…literally didn’t move all day after I put these sheets on. The day finished, I went to sleep with the fresh sheets and laundered duvet that made my bed resemble a cloud.

The next morning I slept in for the first time in weeks, all the way to 7:30 in the morning, when I was woken by the sounds of BooBoo coughing up a hairball. All over the new sheets and duvet.

I wanted to cry. I wasn’t fully awake, I couldn’t have pushed her off the bed while she was actively heaving because I’m not a monster, and I wanted to let out a shout of frustration but I knew that would just terrify her further. This wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t on purpose, she was cuddling with me while I slept and then threw up.

It was weirdly overwhelming—just too much—between the fact that I had just done laundry the day before and that it was the new sheets that would inevitably be slightly stained. But I got up and went to the laundromat, and because I was out I decided that this morning was a morning on which I should deffo treat myself to an iced coffee, so I headed to the bodega.

Me and my bodega guy (at Top Deli as it is affectionately known because it’s at the…top of my block? I guess? I should really start listing all of the bodega names—Fruit Deli is the one by Variety that always has incredible watermelon, Flashing Deli was the one off the J train that never fixed its lights so the signs were always sputtering and we chanted deliDeliDELI as fast as we could to keep up with the chaotic rhythm) have been becoming buds for a while. I was dead nervous the first few interactions, and I felt like he haaated that I often paid with credit card (and I get why, credit cards are extremely exploitative to small businesses, credit is actually bullshit and shouldn’t exist at all but that might be what we call a separate issue) so I now try and pay with cash and recently had a nice moment where I insisted he finish a smoke break because I used to work in retail and am never trying to be That Customer. Anyway, yesterday when I walked in I was just expecting to get a La Colombe can and instead found…Jimin staring back at me from the fridge.

The owner often imports Korean snacks (shrimp chips 4ever, thank you Korea and Ireland for being in agreeance about how well potato+prawns go together) but I never expected to find BTS merch in the sandwiched between the Red Bull and Starbucks Frappacino’s. I bought it—of course—and I became immediately aware of the fact that I can identify most of their photoshoots now from outfit choices, so, what a day, last year me would be so proud. And then during checkout, he picked up the bottle and asked if I “knew BTS”. Which felt like a sentence I was never going to hear said seriously. (And I had a moment of shame flare up which surprised me—not only because I don’t believe in guilty pleasures but I am also like…very willingly vocal about how BTS is actually an incredibly impactful band—beyond the music and dancing, the community building that ARMY does is genuinely so admirable and like, it was a surge I wasn’t expecting but disregarded immediately because first thoughts do not equal first actions.) (Anyway no matter how much untangling of my internalized misogyny I have done, there are clearly more knots left that I had not noticed and must exorcise!)

“Yes, yeah, I am.”

“They’re very nice boys, my daughter went to see them at MetLife. Jimin’s is her favorite too.”

We then had a quick little chat about Jimin?? And BTS and the fact that the coffee can be warmed up—which is apparently how he prefers it. And then we chatted about the air conditioning in the store and how hot/miserable it’s been and then when I left he called me honey and wished me a great day and I left and felt like crying tears of joy??? Like, to the point that I immediately sent a voice memo to a friend because I was just bursting with an energy of connectivity I had never felt before? It was just this very…nice feels like the right word but also too small at the same time. It was the most redeeming form of conversation I could have had. And it was this fun tiny thing that we shared, and he has no idea that I have spent more time in this cultural fixation than any other…ever, he just got some cold coffees and stuck them in the fridge. Maybe he ordered them for his daughter, who knows! But now I have one, and honestly, it was like really decent coffee. Sweet, but not overly sweet. Would recommend!

I couldn’t have predicted it, but it really did make my day. And then I thought about how I definitely wouldn’t have gone there without BooBoo hairballin’ all over the place, and how commuting to work pre-covid allowed me to see faces (and outfits and purses) and like a lot a lot of faces before 8AM and interact with strangers and be reminded that the real world is full of friendly people who are also ignoring the Loud Man On The Train in solidarity with you. It was nice to be reminded that we were all doing it together, all going through this same experience even if we were headed to entirely different places. Those brief moments of human connection are really important, and I think I had decided that those were not necessary to my overall happiness. But they are! Of course they are! Of course bonding with the man who sells me snacks is key to my overall enjoyment of my immediate community!!

I got the linens out of the wash an hour later, I put them back on my bed while making a conscious effort not to get flustered when I put the wrong corner in and couldn’t figure out which part to flip to correct it (with the lovely bonus of immediately getting sweaty because hot sheets + down duvet + weird movements + me is a bad combo) and I managed to actually be mindful and step away until I had taken several deep breaths and realized I just had to flip the sheet and not the unweidly part hooray! And then BooBoo jumped back up on the bed, Weem took her place amongst the pillows, cloud bed was restored, and I had gained a nice little meaningful interaction in the meantime.

I can’t control my cats. Goob is going to be a little hungry at all times forever. I can only continue to put my food behind the baby locks installed on all of the cabinets, and have patience and grace for both myself and her in the moments I forget. They’re going to “ruin” carpets and bedsheets and couches, and that’s okay. Those things are replaceable, but the cats are not. It’s very human to react, and be frustrated, and give into those urges—I know why I yelled at her the day before. But because we went through a meaningful reflection —> apology process together, and I let that actually matter to me and I didn’t brush it off and was selective and purposeful about my energy, I didn’t get frustrated at her the next day even when I was half-awake. (I saved that emotion for when I was shoving the blankets into the barrel of the washer surrounded by the little old ladies folding the six dryers worth of clothes they had hauled to the laundromat as Paradise City blared in the background.)

So, thanks BTS for actually helping me get over some of my lingering anxiety in the real world, thanks to my bodega guy for being a really decent human being (and also ordering that coffee), thanks to Weem for getting even cuddlier in the last few months (sometimes she even lets me pick her up and rub between her ears really voraciously), and thanks to BooBoo for being her unrelenting self and continuing to demonstrate in live time what unconditional love looks like for me. (Also, shoutout to BooBoo’s nose which has carb-seeking capabilities built right in, I temporarily hid the croissant in a purse and she found it in no more than three minutes. Cats…don’t digest carbs how is this her thing?? Is it all the butter in the croissant? I need to know!)

Honestly, I had written a few drafts of this weeks ‘stack that were about bigger things and topics that are hard to broach and I kept beating myself up all week for not being better and faster and more efficient with my thoughts, and words, and the actual writing down of ideas. I kept catching myself having really nasty thoughts about my abilities, the quality of output, and the meaningfulness of doing whatever it is that I’m doing. But I think I forgot that silly stories and small moments are sometimes worth capturing. I will actually never hesitate to interact with my bodega guy again—we had been crusin’ towards me having less anxiety, but I never expected it to be free & clear of any. But like, he’s someone I now know things about, and that’s really fucking fun and cool for me because I wouldn’t have believed it possible a year ago that I could have ever walked away from any social interaction without needing to debrief about just how weird I was during it with a minimum of two people. Summer affects my mood more than I care to admit, August has been weird because of the mix of poor sleep and my brain’s belief that it should be back to cooler weather again only to be cruelly reminded of just how untrue that is. (I truly cannot wait for sweater weather even if it means more trips to the laundromat because sweaters are fucking buuuulky. Let me layer up again, I beg!!) But summers almost over, and until it is I have to continue to extend some of the endless grace I maintain for BooBoo to myself and my brain chemistry as well.

The worlds cruel enough, there is no point in being cruel to yourself. Y’know? We’re all trying our best, in our own capacities, and that’s really wonderful and heartening. Okay, enough of the sentimentality, I am off to once again try and trim BooBoo’s back nails whilst she sticks her head in the bag of freeze-dried minnows as a distraction technique!