11:46 p.m. - 2004-03-14
Sex and the City and Kitty.
Two embarrassing things for one night. Geez. OK. First of all, today I was reading the obituaries in the Times, thinking "I'll know I'm really a resident of this town when I start recognising names in the obits." And I spy a last name I recognise: Sather. I have a former supervisor named Kim Sather. I peruse the elderly man's write up and it says "blah blah, survived by his daughter, Kim." Gasp. He is 71 years old, Kim is probably 40-46 years old. It must be her dad. I write her an email, and offer to cover any shifts at the shelter if she has need, etc. Well, as you can imagine, because this is ME and this is MY LIFE that we're talking about here, I get an email back from her, thanking me but letting me know it's not her dad. How can that be??!?!?! I mean, I know I should be glad her father is alive and well...I am...but....oh well, you get it.
The second thing that happened was when I went to my friend LInda's tonight. She has this insanely amazing apartment downtown, right on the water, filled with beautiful artwork, expensive furniture, etc. Well, we have some wine and some snacks and watched this fantastic movie called "Iron Jawed Angels" which is an HBO movie about women's sufferage, that you should most DEFINITELY watch if you have the opportunity. Well, after the other ladies leave, she invites me to hang out to watch her taped episode of the Sex and the City finale, which I missed. So I run to the potty before it starts. I go into her massive guest bathroom, which is only slightly less massive than her master bathroom, and shut the door. I have been in here before and am always struck by the kitty litter smell. She doesn't have anywhere else to put the cat box, so it goes in the shower. I turn on the light, shut the door and suddenly become aware of the fact that Iam not alone. I guess I walked in on Annie, the cat, who reacted substantionally more dramatically than Linda might have, had I walked in on her taking a leak or a...so, now Annie is making strange, franitc cat sounds and ZOOMING around the little space between my feet and the toilet, all the while I am trying to calmly address the cat as though it were a human, saying "OK, now don't panic, ok, I'm just goign to open the door for you..." ...and she swooshes onto the sink, back down onto the floor, and up, over the rim of the toilet and SPLAT, half in the toilet. Now the cat is dripping wet, just as I open the door. Of course, she takes off through the door, making a break for the living room. Sigh. Every time I go to Linda's, something happens that makes me feel very out of place in this amazing apartment. I heard her, down the hallway, having a quizzical one-sided conversation with the cat as I used the bathroom for the reason I went in there in the first place...I couldn't think of any way to explain what happened, that wouldn't end up sounding like I had actually thrown the cat in the toilet, and was trying to cover it up, so I just decided to say "I think I took Annie by surprise in the bathroom." But halfway through my sentence, the phone rang, and she answered it, and it seemed silly to bring it up again.....so now I'm sure Linda thinks I tried to drown her cat, or something....
Oh, one more embarrassing thing that happened. As I was going into the apartment building, having just been buzzed in by Linda through her intercom, a man was standing behind me, seemingly also waiting to be let in...though I always feel kind of like I'm an accomplice to a potential crime in this situation, I can't quite imagien myself pulling the door firmly shut behind me and mouthing through the closed door "you'll just have to buzz whoever you're visiting, sir." So I held the door for him, and out of my assumed public safety obligation, jokingly said "You're not a mass murderer are you?" and he actually stops, sighs and goes "I LIVE here." and *jingles* his keys at me. Yes, I starred the word "jingle." Just think about that for a second. Him holding his keys out in front of him, and jingling them at me with exasperation. THEN...to make matters worse, we had to share the elevator! Ack! Awkward!
