Pura Vida: a Golden Birthday, big cats, and The Springs

We were in Costa Rica for Becky's Golden Birthday.  IE, she turned 29 on the 29th (don't worry, I'd never heard of that, either; but it's a thing).  We started the day by walking to a bridge some miles from the hotel.  I say we walked, but with the landscape down there it's really all hiking.


Becky and I wanted to find a local artist, a husband and wife team with a wood art shop just up the road from the  tree house hotel.  Of course, "just up the road" is relative.  It wasn't brutally hot compared to Miami, but we're not used to being under the sun for that long.  The sun and the bags we carried made us feel every step.

People kept stopping to offer us rides.  Much as in the US, some of the the locals are just being helpful.  Others offer you a free ride and then demand payment before they'll let you out.  A few want to drive you to a remote area and take everything you have.  We had been warned so we kept to walking.  There was plenty to see along the way.

Pura Vida: Local Flavor

In an interview with Knight Arts, Miami poet Emma Trelles said "Anything can thrive down here. You could fling a tadpole into a gutter puddle and have a colony of frogs a week later. That kind of insistent life is inspiring."  This is true about Miami.  It's true in Costa Rica a hundred fold.

Geckos cover the streets of Miami, those little ones people up north buy at pet stores.  In Costa Rica, we saw these bad boys outside of a restaurant:  

That black triangle in the upper-left corner is the edge of the patio roof.

Iguanas like plaintains.

Meet the Babies

Becky and I were not supposed to get new cats.  We were just visiting the Humane Society, seeing what was out there.  Great plan, no?  Like visiting a pizza parlor when you're starving.  We went to the Miami Shores Humane Society, where the second floor is all cats, all the time.  Rooms and rooms of purring fuzziness.  If not for the fact that some of the rooms were under quarantine due to skin diseases, it might have been heaven.

Becky and I walked around the corner and saw this:

Her name was Mojo - not what Austin Powers has but what you marinate chicken in.  She has beautiful markings, mostly tiger-striped but with leopard spots, and gorgeous, gold-colored eyes.  We fell in love instantly.  Like, we couldn't leave without her.

We felt that way about one other cat, a blue-eyed white cat with fingerprint smudges of gray named Jingle.  Jingle never took her eyes off  us.  She had a sister named Jangle.  Jangle never woke up.  Slept in the litterbox, in fact.  We didn't want the other sister, we wanted the good one, but the Humane Society gave us a guilt trip for attempting to break them up.

Three cats is one cat too many but we had to get two (they charge $50 for the first cat but only $10 for the second), so we "settled" for this:

Frankie wore that same look the entire time, a look that said, "My family might leave without me?  They wouldn't, would they?"

Newly dubbed Dr Seuss (stripey) and Hugo (black and white), they have become playful siblings, night time cuddlers, and best of all, friends with Dylan.  It's fun watching him get over his fear of cats.  He's slowly realizing that he can play with, pet and kiss, and pick up a cat without it turning into a hissing bundle of claws and teeth.  In fact, I don't know that I've ever heard Seuss or Hugo hiss.

Dylan named Hugo after Hugo Cabret.  Me?  I just liked the name "Frankie" on a female cat but I didn't want to go with the Humane Society's tag, so we arrived at Hugo after gentle nudges away from suggestions like Cutey Pie and Fuzzy Face.

Hugo has a little quirk; she likes to suckle.  It started with collars (moist) and progressed to necks (ticklish) and has settled mostly on ears (very loud, especially at two in the morning).  In an updated version of the water bowl picture above, Hugo would be the bigger cat.  But she still hasn't outgrown this urge.

Fair warning: this video is cute overload.

Moo

I'm not linking because most of the post is old news, but thankfully the first line says it all.

A few weeks after this picture was taken, Moo got sick.  She vomited everything she managed to choke down and eventually refused to eat at all.  Apart from a malformed heart, arthritic hips, and the withered lungs of a cat twice her age, the vet found nothing wrong with her.  She advised me to make her comfortable and wait.

Bullshit.  With that giant knot of arthritis around her hips, she was probably just miserable in the cold.  As I blogged about, that was the coldest winter of my life.  My arthritis made me miserable, too.  MiniMooMooMaMaMe just needed a reason to live, that's all.

If there's one substance guaranteed to changed Moo Cat from a house pet into a safari savage, it's turkey.  It looks something like what happens to Bruce, the shark from Finding Nemo, when he smells Dori's blood (:33).  I bought two pounds of Boar's Head Mesquite Wood Smoked Turkey and fed it to her gradually over two days, switching to regular food when she ate several slices in one sitting and kept it down.

She stuck around the Treehouse, helped Becky and I move in, and terrorized poor Dylan non-stop.  I assumed that's were our relationship would settle.  She'd be boney and fat-bellied at the same time, we'd play Spot the Vomit when we got home and when we woke up, and she'd purr in bed all night long.  I mean, she was an indoor cat.  We had at least another decade, right?

Then, she started peeing.  As anyone who knows anything about cats will tell you, when an adult cat starts peeing outside her litter box it means something is wrong.  We assumed it was the fleas, which were especially bad this year.  We bathed, we Advantaged, we bathed, we Frontlined.  We made a healthy dent but never managed to erase them.

Moo stopped peeing in the bathroom and started peeing in the hallway instead.  And the living room.  And my closet.  She barely ate.  She became skin and bones.  She developed a weird walk.

She also started being super-affectionate, even with Dylan.  That should have been the big red flag; she was a little snurtbag, and only gave affection grudgingly, but that was her charm.

Two days before we took her to the vet, I dropped her from my arms and she fell instead of landing on her feet.  I thought it was the arthritis, and being underfed.  I started gently placing her on her feet when I put her down.

The day before we brought her to the vet, Moo tried to eat and fell over.  Becky put her foot and water on a stool so she wouldn't have to bend over, and fed her a package of treats by hand.

But she was still pooping, still jumping (albeit to lower heights), still lovey-dovey.  I fooled myself that they'd give her pills for arthritis and she'd bounce back.  Still, I'm not a complete fool.  Before I went to work and Becky and Dylan brought her to the vet, I said goodbye.

I wish I'd gone with them.  I wish I'd taken Moo to the vet sooner, even though they can't do much for kidney failure (at least not much that we can afford).  I wish I never lost my patience and forced her outside when I found pee on the floor.  I wish I'd done better.

Goodbye, Moo.  I hope where you are the beds are cushy, your body is healthy, and they serve turkey three meals a day.

Breaking the Fiction in the A.M. Rule

Because the days are just packed!  If you're unfamiliar with the Miami International Book Fair, it's in its 28th year.

Circa 1984. That's my boss on the left.

Because of Mitchell's involvement with MBFI, and because of our rather large sales tent, folks assume that Books & Books always handles sales for the author events.  This has been true from time to time over the years, but it's never a given.  2011 is a make or break year.  We're trying to be more organized than ever, looking at everything as hard as we can, to determine once and for all whether handling event sales at MBFI makes us money, or if we should hand event sales off to someone else (again).

I mention all of this because MBFI is consuming me.  I do the event appearances for Books & Books, among other things, and I've been tapped to order for this event as well.  It's like being handed a second full-time job on top of my regular full-time job.

Thankfully, some co-workers have stepped up to lighten my load.  Not a lot, but enough to where I haven't actually torn my hair out.

I know, I know, I'm lucky to have a job in this economy.  Particularly a book-industry job.

Then there's being a husband to my love, a father to my other love, Halloween, the After-Wedding Karaoke Jam Party, costumes, cleaning, meals, scratching the cat (no, that's not some gross metaphor).  You know- life.  I could be selfish and lock myself in my room until I'm published, but I don't think that would make me happy.

Besides, art doesn't happen in a vacuum.

I'm trying to keep the faith.  Pushing the cursor isn't coming as easily as it has at certain moments in my life, but I still tell myself most days that it matters.  I will dream big, and not listen to people who aren't.  I will stop listening to the little voice in my head that says "It's been five years, Curtis, who you trying to kid?"  I will follow The Rumpus's rule and Write Like a Motherfucker.

In the meantime, you'll probably find me in Books & Books buying office.  Please send dark chocolate peanut M&Ms and Tito's Handmade Vodka.

Holidays + Retail Job = Internet Silence

Since returning from Thanksgiving vacation, I've put in more hours at Books & Books than a Malaysian eight-year-old in a sneaker factory.  I took last Sunday off to watch Dylan, and this weekend off to scrape paint in the dining room.  These are not days off in the sense of coffee in one hand, Just Kids in the other, lounging in pajamas while Friends on DVD plays quietly in the background (just writing that sentence made me drool).  I worked like an ox before the goad, I just didn't get a paycheck for my efforts.

Between sixty-hour work weeks, interminable renovations, and Christmas shopping, I've barely been able to get out of bed.  I sleep, dream, and then Dylan rousts Becky and I out of bed.  I set my alarm for five as always, but I was so sleepy I'd turn it off and have no recollection of doing so.

Christmas fever has made Dylan a handful.  The other buyer, Z, has been on his honeymoon, leaving me solo during our busiest time of the year.  I've been sleeping through the time alloted for the one activity which keeps me sane.  We're still living hand to mouth, barely.  The walls of our dining room look like the set of Silent Hill.  MiniMe has fleas. So why am I so happy?  Christmas?  Becky?  All the lights and carols?  Coming home to presents form up north?  Maybe a cocktail of all of those thing, with a fresh pine tree thrown in to stir it.

I'm sorry SwF&F has gotten anemic.  I promise more words in the future.

In the meantime, I'm fine.  Busy, exhausted, and fine.

Love and happy holidays!

It Could Always Be Worse

Clichés are the bane of a writer’s existence. They are also comforting for people in turmoil. In titling this post, I asked the writer version of me to turn aside in favor of plain old Aaron.

I just re-read a scrap of diary I titled Dark Night of the Soul, a perfect piece for putting my current misery into perspective. I’m frustrated over how long losing the defining relationship of my life has hurt. Understandable. But think about Tuesday, October 6th, 2009, when I came closer to suicide than any point in my life since 1980 [Yes, I tried to kill myself when I was eight years old, but the difficulty I’ve had editing this proves it’s more than I can explore here. In the end I removed that experience from this post. Suffice to say it was a genuine attempt, and it caused my parents to finally look at what alcoholism was doing to our family]. It’s a common experience for the third-born Child Of an Alcoholic, called the Lost Child, to attempt suicide without knowing why. Last fall, I knew exactly why I wanted to end my life.

A David Foster Wallace character said you kill yourself for the same reason people jump from a burning high-rise. He’d know, of course. I might not be able to describe the exact mix of emotions which leads to the point of desiring oblivion, but the Wallace quote does a decent job.

Although I’ve contemplated suicide often enough over the years, I’ve never forgotten how God spared me as a child (to clarify, I use God and Satan metaphorically, as shorthand to express myself, not to imply a biblical faith or a religious belief; human thoughts can not measure or define God). Even on my worst Dark Night of the Soul, I still believed that God never tests us with more than we can handle. You promise yourself the burden will become easier to bear, so you’ll carry it another day.

Then it gets better.

You’re humble enough to ask for companionship, and your friends surround you like campers nurturing a lick of flame into a fire, and it gets better.

Your family listens to you ramble, and it gets better.

You find a group of amazing women, ostensibly to discuss books, and it gets better.

You see a soul-fueling concert, and it gets better.

Your cat comes home, and it gets better.

The frangipani blossoms fall, Coldstone Creamery serves a Milk and Cookies shake, you write, you drink, you bike, you work, you think, you breathe in and out, and it gets better.

You meet someone special, a Queen of the Nile who feels like finding shelter after months wandering a storm, and it gets better.

I promise, it always gets better.

Movies to Avoid

I watched two different movies this week which sucked in their own distinct ways.

First off, we’ve got David Lynch's Eraserhead.  No one can deny the appeal of The Straight Story or the artistry of The Elephant Man, and Lost Highway and Muholland Drive are two of my favorite movies. Wild at Heart?  Absolutely.  Blue Velvet?  Sure.  Dune?  Well, at least it was one the decade’s top three flops (the others being Heaven’s Gate and Howard the Duck).  If you’re going to fall flat on your face, do it with gusto.

I’ve had Eraserhead on my to-watch list for almost nineteen years, ever since a guy came dressed as Henry Spencer to a Halloween party my sophomore year of college and everyone went nuts.  They all seemed to know who and what Eraserhead was, and I felt like I was missing out. When I later learned the mind-bending Lost Highway that I loved was by the same director, I was psyched.

It may have taken another ten or so years for that excitement to wind its way through my consciousness and my Netflix queue and eventually to my DVD player, but I finally saw it.

In the special features, Lynch talks about dissecting a cat while attending film school and shooting Eraserhead.  The way the organs changed from vibrant colors to dull grays when the air hit them fascinated Lynch.  Eraserhead is like that.  It’s an exercise, nothing more.  It’s solipsistic (and no, I don’t think I’m using solipsistic too much since I’ve learned it, I’m just psyched to be able to use it correctly. And yes, that’s two uses of psyched; quit being so critical and write your own blog), it's gratuitously weird, and it's almost eye-wateringly boring.

But I forced myself to watch it.  It’s Lynch, after all.

The punchline?  When I brought it up at a party the next night to a bunch of pretentious film buffs, no one had seen it.  I wish I had given it my usual treatment, ejecting it when the first twenty minutes didn’t pull me in.

I have no idea how the other movie got in my queue. It’s called See This Movie and it stars Seth Myers and John Cho as hapless moviemakers (I’m laughing already) trying to get a non-existent film into a festival while simultaneously filming the whole experience to put in the festival.  It was so profoundly terrible I can’t help but wonder who these fools are rating it highly enough that IMDB gives it 5 out of 10 stars.

When it started, I couldn’t believe anything so horrible had become a completed film.  I know “horrible” is not specific criticism, so let’s say it had problems with pace, tone, performances, and writing.  I watched it because I didn’t believe it could be as bad as it was and still exist.  Then about twenty minutes in, there was a funny scene.  Seth Meyers gets hit on by Jim Piddick.  Normally a bit player, when given the chance to shine in a large role, Jim Piddick proves the old adage that it doesn’t hurt your career to be in a terrible movie as long as you’re the best thing in it.

This "dumb straight guy rattled by a pass from a man" scene has been mined for comedy countless times, but it was well written, Piddick rocked it, and it seemed like the only time Meyers acted instead of trying to be funny.  This scene fooled me into thinking the movie only started shitty and got better.  Not so.  I sat through an hour and a half of paint drying because of one funny scene.

I will never get these hours back, folks.  But if I can prevent just one person from wasting his or her time on these same cinematic failures, then it will have been worth it.

Another Confession

I was doing fine. I could sit at a keyboard and just push the cursor, exploring my thoughts and saving worry for later (you know worry, right? Worry about plot, structure, and syntax, worry over whether I’m any good, worry if I’ll ever be paid to do what I love). The worlds in my head proved fine places to spend hours of morning frolic.

Nine AM was like a doomsday bell so I decided to move to part-time. Instead of two or three hours of writing, I would do four or five. I'd wander into Books & Books around eleven, then I’d leave early, ensuring Andi and I had a healthy dinner. She’d been lax with her diet (I mean diet in an end-stage-renal-failure, dialysis, waiting-on-the-transplant-list way, not an her-ass-was-big way) and it had cost her.

I didn’t mention to Mitchell that I felt my marriage was coming loose from its railings, but he went for it. When I moved out a few months later and money became paramount, he was just as happy to keep me at full-time. He also offered stellar advice. There’s something good about working for a man, vs. The Man.

I’ve covered how the separation has affected my writing in some detail (like here and here), as well as the tentative steps to recovery. I had a string of days when I’d gotten up to write, and I believed the worst was behind me. Then I agreed to meet Andi for coffee.

I’ve looked back through my journal. Do you know how many times I’ve used the word “divorce?” Three. First was the hopeful and pathetic, “We’re not divorced yet.” Second was in a book title, File for Divorce in Florida Without Children. Finally, I was speaking of how I agreed to have coffee with Andi because I thought it would be odd otherwise. “Haven’t spoken in a while, how have you been? Great, sign these divorce papers.”

How many times have I used the word divorce in this blog? I can’t do a “find” search like it's a Word document, but I’m going out on a limb and claiming a big, fat goose egg. I’ll bet a week of dinners that I've talked separation, dissolution of marriage, failure, etc. the same as in my journal, but have never used the word divorce.

Weird, how you can anticipate a thing, even actively work toward it for months, yet shy from naming it.

Naming something doesn’t help get your mind around it. If there was a word describing how it feels to sit across from someone you’ve been in love with for years and seeing her as a closed door instead of a sanctuary, feeling a bubble of hurt and hate and resentment in your gut and wishing it outweighed the love and knowing it never will, would having a word which encompassed all that help me feel it? Let’s try calling it flarg.

“I sat there, holding my latte, feeling flarg as we discussed our divorce.”

“I looked at her for the first time in months, surprised how her hair had continued to grow despite my absence from her life. Flarg pounded through my veins as she sat down.”

“Our body language makes it obvious to everyone. I see them trying not to stare, pretending to read and talk about other things while they watch us share flarg.”

Nah, doesn’t help at all.

The morning after coffee, the snooze button was once again my best friend. Not a coincidence.

I wouldn’t call this writer’s block. When I think of writer’s block, I imagine staring at a blinking cursor wishing your brain could talk your fingers into moving it, or someone sitting at an old-school typewriter, pulling page after page from the roller and crumpling them in frustration; I’ve just been sleeping.

Whether I go to bed at nine PM or two in the morning, I’ll still hit the snooze button for hours. Soon I realize I’ve squandered my writing time and need to get to my job. Getting out of bed for my job is too depressing to contemplate, so I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, purring cat on my belly, trying to cajole myself out of bed.

I watched South Park on DVD last night until exhaustion took me some time past midnight, but my eyes popped open just before my alarm rang at five. I hit snooze. I lay there, remembering when every morning felt like a reward, a fresh page, a new chance to get it right. I asked myself what I wanted to do with my life. I stopped snoozing.

The few paragraphs of fiction I pecked this morning took an hour and fifteen minutes. I couldn’t believe how much time had passed, how little I’d done, but I know when it’s time to move on to other things… like whiny blogs.

Not much, but it’s a start. Again.

Ownership

My best Saturday mornings are spent outside with coffee and a book. I keep meaning to pack a thermos and bike to a certain stretch of park a few blocks away so I can read underneath the shade of huge banyans, but so far the small porch outside the Treehouse door has suited me just fine. As I sit on the low stucco walls, eye level with the Gables' thick foliage, the sun makes even the coldest mornings tolerable.

A stray joined me this past Saturday. A female calico, skinny and fearless, a frequent visitor before Minime moved in. Something’s happened to one of her eyes. I’ve seen plenty of one-eyed cats before, but none coping with a recent injury. The way she canted her head at everything, so tentative in her steps and leaps, it broke my heart.

Her awkward jump to the wall beside me toppled a low table outside my door and sent my Zephyr Holdings, Inc mug tumbling down the slanted roof (I have an affinity for fictional propaganda: Dunder - Mifflin mugs, Vandalay Industries t-shirts, Stewart / Colbert bumper stickers). The noise startled the poor thing. She dug her claws into the roof, neck cocked at that odd angle as she tried to sweep her head in every direction at once.

I spoke to her in soothing tones as I set the table right. I told her she was fine and hadn’t done anything wrong as I stretched over the roof to retrieve my mug, which thankfully stopped short of rolling off.

I realized that for knocking over a plant and a nearly full cup of water (even though it was sitting out overnight and her water was fresh, she just had to stick her face in my cup…), Minime won herself a stamped foot and a sharp, accusatory call of her name. Not only that, she had to endure some withering admonishments while I mopped up water or cleaned up spilled dirt.

Some people treat what belongs to them negligibly, taking care only with things loaned or borrowed. Some prize their possessions but abuse things which aren’t theirs. I try to care for both equally, but I tend to treat that which doesn’t belong to me more delicately.

There’s got to be a metaphor for relationships in there somewhere.

When it comes to Becky’s son, have I discovered a well of patience I didn’t suspect simply because he isn’t mine? Or am I channeling those few moments when my own father took the time to teach me something?

What happens when I stop wooing Becky, when I start feeling entitled to her company?

To me part of being in love is looking with new eyes, making her feel special every day. My point is more about civility and respect, treating someone as an important new addition to your life instead of the other half of your self. I love that Becky and I have yet to exchange a harsh word (apart from an incident at work with a price gun which I won’t get into). I know I can’t expect that to last forever, but I think I’ve learned something about relationships which will prolong the honeymoon.

No one belongs to you. Even if they give their heart and soul, they are still an individual. Any time you win from them is grace, to be respected, cherished, and, if you’re lucky, nurtured into future moments.

Everything in this life is on loan.

Rude Awakening

I lived in a cockroach infestation during my freshman year of college at Syracuse University, in a large four-bedroom home just off campus. A different student rented each room. The kitchen cupboards crawled with roaches, too many to concern themselves with hiding regardless of light or human presence. The only person I saw eating in that house was the Italian grad student, who brewed espresso and milk and poured it into a coffee mug filled with cornflakes. In his heavy accent, he said, “This is how Italians call espresso.” He kept the coffee and cereal right next to the milk, in the fridge, the only place the roaches didn’t go.

These were tiny northern roaches. Disgusting, and I can’t get some of the images out of my mind, but seeing layers of them squirming over the trash and sinks didn’t instill the spine-crawling revulsion I feel looking at a single Florida cockroach.

This morning, I hit snooze a few times but stumbled out of bed at 5:30. For those of you playing the “What Time Will Aaron Wake” home game, yes, I’ve been better about rising early to write. A combination of Minime’s hunger, getting to bed earlier, and not being so hard on myself about what I choose to write has made this easier.

After the accident, it took a year for my energy level to return one hundred percent. I can’t expect my mental state to be balanced and my heart to be harmonized right away. If I need to write blogs and whine in my journal at five in the morning instead of pursuing murdered children on an Indian reservation or an adopted Chinese girl with a dragon living in her basement or Barbie fighting in a tournament of toys, I’ll do it. I just need to get back into the habit again. Alarm goes off, cat gets fed, coffee gets made, and work gets done.

Anyway, a forcible reminder of the reason I started pouring bags of cat food into a large, airtight container for storage came home this morning, in the form of a medium-sized cockroach. You’ll be able to skip your morning coffee when you see one of these bad boys scrambling around inside a bag into which you’re reaching.

Heart pounding, wide awake, I snatched the bag closed. Minime was freaking out. The food is out of the cupboard, yet my dish remains empty. What gives, Man?

The cardinal rule of cockroach control – and by “control” I don’t mean getting rid of them, I mean maintaining the delusion of cleanliness which allows Floridians to inhabit these great old Gables homes Palmetto bugs seem to love – is not letting one get away once you’ve spotted it. When that happens, it’s like the dealer who lets people accrue debt. Word gets out that you’re soft, and then you’ve got problems.

I turned on every light in the place. I sprayed a circle of lemon-scented death in the living room and set the bag inside it. I let the bag open, prepared for anything.

There it was, crawling around on top of the cat food, freaked out by the light and the sense of two predators in the area. The small, furry predator’s threat was nullified by the stench of lemon-scented death. Moo Cat sat at some distance, ears flat, glaring at me. The large “predator” fairly cowered nearby, wearing hastily donned rubber dishwashing gloves and sneakers, spray can in one hand, waiting for his nemesis to emerge.

Its hairy little legs couldn’t gain purchase on the slick insides of the bag, so I got the chance for a nice, long look. To survive, cockroaches either freeze or run. You never get a chance to see them move in a leisurely fashion, because you’re too busy trying to stamp them into oblivion.

Devoid of the scrambling frenzy to find a crack in which to disappear, antennae blending into the brown of the cat food, the roach looked like a large beetle. I wondered why this insect made my skin crawl more than the spiders of my youth. Spiders bite, after all, and cockroaches don’t (well they do, but only when you’re sleeping). Is it the size? The heavy buzz when they fly across a darkened room, reminiscent of a Biblical plague of locusts? The way they startle me when they come from hiding, a survival instinct which feels like intelligent sneakiness?

I thought of what would happen if it got away. Would I be forced to break my lease?

I wondered what vital purpose cockroaches serve in the Circle of Life, whether the world would be better off if they all just disappeared.

I contemplated the absurdity of a six foot three man over two hundred pounds scared of a weightless, inch-and-a-half insect.

Most importantly, what good is Minime if she isn’t going to kill roaches for me?

With a mighty barbarian yell, I snatched the cockroach from the bag, opened my front door, and smeared it above the frame as a warning to any of its brethren who would dare to enter. Afraid the remains – food now, after all – would attract more of its brethren, I sprayed it for good measure. This wouldn’t kill them of course, but it ensures the next generation spawned will be that much more immune to lemon-scented death.

When I got back inside, I finally fed Minime. I’m sure the feline judgment I imagined coming from her was just the shame I felt at my squeamishness.

Ants Dig Cold

There’s an entomological adjustment involved with moving to Miami. If you’re easily startled, you brace yourself when flicking the lights on, mentally prepared for the mahogany sheen of a cockroach the size of your thumb, sometimes frozen, sometimes running for its life.

Cockroaches run on two legs. Just so you know.

You might shake your coat or clothes out before you put them on, or snap your shoes sole to sole. Okay, maybe you did that up north for spiders, but did you rattle your front door before you left so cockroaches squeezed between the door and the jamb didn’t fly into your face?

Cockroaches can wriggle through a crack the thinness of a dime. Just, you know, FYI.

And Florida cockroaches fly.

If you don’t want an ant problem, you make sure your counters are spotless. You keep your pantry items – the cereal, sugar, flour, corn syrup, bread crumbs, etc, etc – packaged in gallon bags. Even that isn’t always enough.

My first job in Miami was in the kitchen at Bennigan’s. I’d transferred from the Syracuse Bennigan's, where I’d worn the same pair of work boots. When I went to put them on for my first shift in Miami, the boots swarmed with ants. Northern bugs were apparently too sluggish to find the bits of food ground into the treads.

I tried hosing the soles down when I left work for the day, but it didn’t help. The tiniest bits drew crowds. Eventually, I ended up putting my boots in plastic bags and hanging them up when I got home.

To heat my place during the recent cold snap, I closed all the windows and opened all the blinds. I turned on every light in the place. Ants gathered around my lights and died. This is something I’ve never had happen. I’ve fought trails of live ants, but coming home or waking up and finding their corpses in droves around heat sources is new and frustrating. It could be the bug spray. They’re attracted to the heat but they have to pass through lemon-scented death to reach it, so all I find are ant corpses. Or maybe the cold is already killing them when they come inside and the light bulbs just delay the inevitable. Whatever the reason, I got tired of wiping or sweeping them up three times a day.

When the cold snap ended, I went into full-on spotless mode. I basked in a home without little black dots drifted everywhere for a few hours, then went out for dinner. When I returned, there was a cockroach near the coffee table (toe up and struggling, thanks to Minime, who provided torture but couldn’t be bothered to finish the job) and a silverfish on the stove. Damn.

You’ve heard that man plans and God laughs? In the Treehouse, Aaron cleans and Mother Nature sends small, hairy, armored guests.

My Girl is Home (at Last)

I want to smooch her fury face.

Minime’s fuzzy little presence makes the Treehouse home.

I feel about my living quarters the way I feel about my job.  Unless I’m signing a book deal, never again do I want to sit across from a stranger, presenting some limited version of my best self, trying to convince her / him that I’m worth his / her investment.   Likewise, why bother moving unless it’s for something really great?

Up north they call it a FROG room, for Front Room Above Garage, but “Treehouse” fits.  Except for the tile floors and bathroom walls, it’s all wood.  It’s shaded everywhere by a variety of Coral Gables’ foliage.  The name also gives my dwelling a little je ne sais quoi.

I’ve hidden all sorts of fun things in the Treehouse for myself.  There’s a Hopper print, a signed Palahniuk poster, my 2nd-place cook-off ribbon, and a Bright Eyes concert poster taped inside various cabinetry.  A framed Tank Girl picture hanging in my walk-in closet.  A typewriter by the door is my mezuzah. There are tiny stone turtles and large dream catchers in the windows.  As a little bit of cheer to ease the transition into living alone, the name works.  I’ve only realized now that the name has allowed me to avoid saying “home.”

I used to have artwork from Cake CDs in the archway between the kitchen and the living room, but I took them all down this week. They stopped looking cheery and started looking like clutter. I must be more acclimated to my own space.

I also realize why I waited three months to bring Minime here; she is tied into my past with Andi.  Of course she is, you vacuous, imbecilic moron, I hear you saying (I’m just kidding; we rarely think thoughts as hateful of others as we think of ourselves), what’s your next keen insight? Teenagers are hormonal? Chocolate is yummy?

When I was packing up to move, some of the things I left behind surprised Andi.

“Are you trying to eliminate any trace of me?” she asked, only half-joking.  As if I could.  If I stripped naked, tossed all my possessions, and moved to a new city, my tattoos would follow me.  I don’t have “Andi and Aaron Forever and Ever” tattooed on my heart or anything, but we used to go to Zopie’s Caffeine Fix together.  Does that reminder of Zopie's count as a reminder of Andi?  What about the time we were tripping our balls off, making fun of the Tank Girl tattoo on my thigh, which barely looks like Tank Girl’s tattoo?

This is my problem with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; “Go through your house and take away anything which reminds you of her.”  It’s a neat idea for a story.  Charlie Kaufman looks at mementos of past relationships and thinks, what if one could use these objects to map the human brain and eliminate memories?  There is no collection of objects which can contain a person, and no way to remove all traces of a person from your life without removing yourself.  The way every song speaks to you when you’re falling in love, it works in reverse when you’re falling out.  Even if I had those tattoos removed, our sixteen years together would remain in me.

Is Minime a stronger connection to the past than my CDs, DVDs, clothes, dishes, shoes, and sheets because she’s alive?  Is it harder to make new memories around a fuzzy, pink-nosed baby than an object?  If Minime hadn’t scratched a little girl's eyelid badly enough to warrant a trip to urgent care, how much longer would I have dragged my heels?

Both my delay in bringing her here and the motivations behind that delay are obvious in retrospect. Most likely, they were obvious to an outside observer.

It makes me worry about what other obvious things I’m missing.

Significance

People about the tattoo on my forearm all the time (apologies for the cellphone picture, but my wife got the camera in the divorce settlement). It’s a cute one, for sure. The other day at my new book club, the coordinator asked if it had anything to do with Rita Mae Brown's cutesy cat detective series. Turns out Rita Mae – whose Venus Envy I enjoyed very much – broke up her grandparents’ marriage. I assured my new book club boss that it had nothing to do with Sneaky Pie Brown.

Zopie’s Caffeine Fix was a basement coffee shop on S.U. hill, below a frat bar called Harry's. It was filled with smoke, student art, books, and live music and poetry. I tell people the tattoo is similar to their logo and it reminds me of home. In the actual logo, the cat had a lit cigarette dangling from its mouth.   I still remember going there for intense debate fueled by caffeine and nicotine, reading poetry on open mic nights (God help us), and seeing my friends play music.

A fractious relationship with the landlord (and owner of Harry's bar) kept Zopie's on shakey ground until Starbucks moved in two blocks away and buried it completely.

But the tattoo means more than memories. I love the idea of ascribing human desires on animals, the stupid addictions and interactions we obsess over which mean nothing to cats. I’ve spent hours crafting a painting I’ve loved only to have my cat sharpen his claws on it. This keeps me humble. What’s the importance of my painstaking efforts in the grand scheme of things? Not so much.

Today is the day of my final walkthrough on the Treehouse. The real estate agents and I will inspect the modest space, note any flaws, and I’ll get the keys to my new place. It will take all of eight minutes to say goodbye to my old life.

Every time I think I’m done being surprised, some new development knocks me on my ass. When I think I’ve shed my last tear and really moved on, another jag hits me by surprise. I suppose it would be odd if I was completely healed at this point, but I’m tired of even brief moments of misery. I’m excited at the changes in my life, and I’d like to focus on that.

Unfortunately, although my wife rang this bell, she’s finding it much harder to stop the vibrations. She’s looking to me for support, and I’m the last person who wants to be a friend to her right now.

After a decidedly odd weekend, I’m looking at a Google map of how to get to my new studio, feeling sorry for myself, when Minime jumps on the counter and flops down on my paper. Minime knows she’s coming to the Treehouse with me. She’ll finally be the only woman in my life, the way she’s always wanted. Covering the map with her furry little body, she gives me that half-lidded, I’m so over this look, as only cats can. Her half-grunt, half-meow is filled with disdain.

“What’s with the moping?” she wants to know. “You eat, you sleep, you lick yourself, you move on. Stop making everything so complicated.”

I can’t argue with that kind of reasoning.