the day darth vadar did a little heavy breathing

Dear Ms. Blogenstein:

Its me Guardcat. witty is resting. She’s been all crazy the last couple of weeks (yeah, I know, when isn’t she) with several art shows, three days of cyber knife radiation, funerals, Eye-talian guys acting up, computers dying, stalker girl suddenly re-appearing, a new sudden speaking “career”  about how art is healing at various locations….Lookie….

She made me put that photo in since she looks skinny and she says she’s channeling Meryl Streep while she’s drunk leaning sideways after winning a Tony award or something, but you know witty, we never know what the hell she’s talking about especially lately since she’s been running from art show to art show, putting up her group’s show last week in a dark, dank cement gallery at the local university,  a kind of pseudo Soho kind of place with glaring florescent lighting that according to Tall Skinny Guy made it impossible for witty to take any good photos because she was too short and the light was glaring on all her artwork. I’m only a cat, but I think he was just jabbing her because he’s so jealous of her and Charlemagne, so she “accidentally” repaid the favor by putting the wrong name tag on his artwork. It really was an accident. A subconscious one.

High five, sistah!

This was one of witty’s many death oriented art things she’s been doing lately.

Anyways, the next night was her show at the more upper class snooty art gallery. She had invited “A” since it was sort of a big thing to have a painting there. As in there. (said with your pinkie up). Poor witty. She is still controlled by that guy. That night the show was to start at 5 p.m. She was still sitting around playing Facebook at 4:15 in her jammies,  and who calls on her cell phone? “A”. He wants her to meet him there at 4:45….15 minutes before the show even opens and 30 minutes from her house. Gah! So naturally she wigs out and starts throwing things in the air and brushing her hair and getting all girlie. She even wore a short black skirt with black ribbed stocking that made her legs look totally hot. “A” didn’t notice of course. And he was late.

men are so stupid. I’m so glad I’m a cat and don’t have to deal with them.

Anyways, the rest of the night, witty mainly just stood around near her painting, pretending to look at her new cell phone as if she was waiting for text messages from Johnny Depp.  She’s not sure if anyone was looking at her hot legs art work. She did circle the gallery about 50 times and ate some cheese, going, “Woo! This is fun!” Did she mention she was exhausted? Must be the cancer thing. She won’t tell anyone though…or very few people, because she doesn’t want any sympathy. But the exhaustion was pretty obvious when she got home that night.

That weekend she went back to the hoity toity gallery and spoke about how healing art is for the soul and her depression. Her aunt was weeping afterwards. It was a little embarrassing but totally affecting to her psyche, since she’s not really used to people crying about what she says.

Even though I’m a cat I did know when it was Monday two days later and that it was the beginning of radiation for witty…a thing called cyber knife. She seemed really nervous that morning. Like REALLY nervous. Like telling me to shut up nervous.

What? But I’m so fucking cute!

She left around noon. (I know how to tell time too, dammit! I must be smart if I’m writing a blog, right?) I guess she tried to call “A” repeatedly but her phone number was blocked on his private cell phone. Bummer! He had even said he’d talk to her right before the radiation too. Cell phones are stupid.

Anyways, she got zipped into this skin-tight Mary Quant-like (thanks Scott) mini skirt contraption for the radiation treatment and asked if she thought she’d be able to lay still on this long skinny table for two hours or whether she’d needed to be strapped in. witty? strapped in?

Yeah…baby.

But she eventually decided against it, you know in case there was a nuclear event or she needed to pee.  The first day she didn’t realize she had a choice of music, listening to classical music for two hours, but day two it was the Beatles while this large massive machine whooshed and pivoted over the top of her, making weird high-pitched screeches, intermingled with deep Darth Vadar like breathing…sighing…swooning….orgasmic at time. Just witty and him. Darth and Cyberknife Girl.

Who’s Cyber Knife Girl?

I think witty might have gotten a little much radiation, because by the third day she thought she was a Super Hero.  And indeed she did get a lot of it. When she was finally done on Day Three she came out of her little radiation dungeon and her Michael J. Fox doctor came running up to her smiling broadly (of course, she HAD just been asked to disrobe to total frontal nudeness in the radiation room where there were ceiling cameras rolling but I digress) and grabbed her hand and shook it vigorously saying “Congratulations!”. She asked for what, since she was about as lit as a Hanukkah candle by Day  Eight. He then told witty she  had just had 6 weeks worth of radiation in three days and she went “ Whee! WTF??? Am I going to pee neon?” Ok, she only thought  that in her head.

She also knew she didn’t want to miss her drawing class that night, you know, since she would get to see her favorite Frenchman Charlemagne. The doctor said it would be ok, since the tiredness wouldn’t really hit til the weekend.

oh witty, you so silly.

Charlemagne was merely 25 minutes late that night, you know, the night witty had TOLD him she had just been radiated into a hot mess by that dude Darth Vadar, so she was not happy when he was so late. It’s a good thing she thinks Charlemagne is cute and gives good hug, otherwise she might have hit him in the head with something that looked like 12 easals strapped together.

In the meantime, witty is now just waiting for the beginning of chemo, which will start around December 7th. She’s really scared about that, especially in the depth of winter and her time of depression. But she’s gotten pretty good at turning negatives into positives lately. Maybe she’ll just convert herself from Cyberknife Girl into  singer Sinead O’Connor and go sing on some hillside with a herd of goats.

Just as long as she doesn’t forget to come home and feed me a bowl of Friskies every so often.  Priorities, you know.

breathless

I am so profoundly proud of the people who come searching for my blog. People across the planet sit down at their computers, possibly unzipping their pants for a moment and then typing such things as today’s oddities:

Search	Views
go to hell hats	1
gangsta whores	1
boob squisher	1
british guy standing in the park	1
crackhead monopoly game	1
crackwhore phone numbers	1

What???? I guess its always inevidible that I will have the word “Crackhead whore” in my internet Googles, you know, since my life is so obviously awash in debauchery and British men. (Where??) Although sorry to disappoint. About the only action I get is when Guardcat jumps up on my chest, blocks the TV screen  with her big furry ass and  then tries to give me slobbery cat kisses.

The drama of my last blog entry has calmed down somewhat. I did have a somewhat fun visit to the local hospital. It was a planned visit. I was to get what they call fidicial markers clamped to the cancer thingie in my lung so they can eventually direct the radiation treatment to the exact location it needs to go and not wipe out any healthy parts. Right doctors???

Since the hospital call was so early,  I decided not to bother anyone and make actual use of a Medicaid cab for the 7 a.m. appointment. The hospital is a mere 20 minutes away but for some reason the cab company wanted to pick me up at 6:15 a.m. Ok. Whatever. Better to err on the early side, I guess. So I set my clock for 5:45. Basically all I had to do was get up, put my clothes on, feed Guardcat and walk out to the front for the cab.

5:44 a.m.: Riiiiinnnnnggggggg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! “Hi, it Dependable Cab Company. We’re here to pick up a wittykitty for the hospital….”

Me (Still in bed): What???????????????????

Dependable Cab Company: “We’re out in the parking lot….Waiting. “

Me: “But you’re a half hour early. I just woke up. “

Dependable Cab Company: ”Sorry M’aam. We’ll wait.”

Me: Ahhhhhhh!!!!! (me jumping out of bed, running around insanely, probably dropkicking Guardcat over the coffee table.  And worst of all, I was unable to find the keys to my apartment. I mean I NEVER lose my keys. Ever! I finally had to make the somewhat nerve-wracking decision to leave my apartment unlocked since I live in a pretty safe area and what the heck, I’d be home in about 5 hours!! Right?*)

*Ha ha ha. Oh wittykitty. You so silly.

So I got to the damn hospital at 6:15, 45 minutes early, or as it turned out….an hour and 45 minutes early. I know I wrote it down correctly, but the nurse said I wasn’t due til 8 a.m. So I just laid in a hospital bed and listened to some really loud obnoxious women talking to their apparently deaf mother in the next bed.  

They finally put an IV in my hand and then lots of nurses came in and out talking to me about what was going to happen. And then some lady from the American Cancer Society came in. As we were talking she seemed OK, but then she got this really weird look on her face. It was kinda like this…

Apparently, I had laid against my IV and dislodged it and my entire hand was dripping in blood and there was blood all down the front of my hospital nightie and all over the sheets. In other words, it was like the scary part of horror movie, “Saw Part 12″. Yay me!

They did clean me up before the procedure. This one actually hurt a lot more than my cancer biopsy a month ago. Lets see…maybe because I knocked the IV out, and wasn’t quite medicated enough? Ya think?

They kept me on a stretcher in the hospital room, I guess for good reason. Why? Because apparently Mr. Doctor Guy punctured my lung causing it to partially collapse during the procedure and then I had to keep going back downstairs to get x-rays.

When I was telling my artist friend Professional Artist Guy this story he came up with the best and most calming explanation I could ever hope to hear. He said, “You’re getting all the bad stuff out of the way first, so you can have all the good stuff happen later.” I could have just hugged him for that, because when you’re in the middle of all these seemingly insurmountable things and you’re just barely handling things, its nice to hear that good things are on the way.

So I unexpectedly ended up spending the night in the hospital that night, since I didn’t have anyone at home to keep an eye on me and my partially collapsed lung. And so it was just me and some Filippino nurse who came in and did a lengthy rave about how prejudice white people are about Filipinos. Oh, if she only knew how I felt about them myself.

Anyways, the next morning I went down for yet another x-ray and my lung was still partially collapsed but they decided to release me since it hadn’t changed (gotten worse). Naturally my Medicaid cab had canceled itself the day before. I called my mom from the nurses’ station but she was in terrible pain and couldn’t come. My aunt was having a luncheon. shit! Who could I call? And then I thought about Charlemagne. He had thoughtfully left me with an open offer for medical rides (he likes flowers too-ha ha, inside joke), so I called him and since he lives near the hospital, he was there within a half hour or so.

Almost as soon as I got into his car he asked if I liked Run DMC. I really don’t know their music other than it being rap. So I said, great! And since it was such a nice Autumn day we rode through the university area blasting RUN DMC being total bad asses. I really needed some fun and that quite possibly is Charlemagne’s middle name.

Since then, its been a mad whirl of either doctor appointments or art shows. The Saturday after the lung puncture thing I went to my favorite Goth/Big Boobed Women/Monsters/Alien Art show. I was pretty worried because the dive bar where the show was, allowed smoking that night. And I knew it and my friend Sci Fi Guy felt bad about it, but its a tradition, and I knew my risks. The first hour wasn’t bad. I’d step outside to get a breath of fresh air when needed, but by the second hour I felt pretty queasy, so I finally left. But my artwork for the show did garner some funny comments. It was called: “My mother was a Serial Killer Super Model”.

 See what happens when you stop going to therapy.

And then I had another art show at the premiere art gallery in town. I had submitted a piece to this local organization back in July and they had accepted it to be published in this book called “Unique”. And then they had an opening. It was the same night I was supposed to co-host with Charlemagne, so I had to miss my hosting duties. And I felt pretty tired. Too tired perhaps to do much Schmoozing.

And then my art class had our annual Halloween party last week, during which weirdness ensued of course, since artists are known for weirdness. I mean we eat weirdness with bologna on rye.  Sci Fi Guy and Johnson brought in a bunch of weird creepy props in for maximum weirdness, so people were scooping chipote dip out of skulls, chatting with skeletons and then there was the weird chick looking for a new photo to put on sMatch.com…

Someone rudely speculated that it looked like I had a penis. Oh dear! Definitely not. I WANT one. But not attached to me. Oy! Guess I was just really showing off my weight loss. That’s one phrase I haven’t gotten sick of hearing, “Wow, you’ve really been losing weight.”

I’ve finally just stopped using my not-so-funny “Yeah, its the lung-cancer diet” Ha ha ha ha ha. For some reason that joke has just been totally tanking. Oh well. Some people just don’t have a sense of humor.

poetry at a thruway rest-stop

The last five days, minus my night at an art show hosted by Charlemange, have been some of the most stressful, not to sound like a drama queen, but like ever. I’m sure its the cancer speaking. The events aren’t THAT bad…except maybe my trip to the Buffalo Cancer Center Tuesday, but fucking hell, why am I being tested so much? You know I can’t handle things. I mean, I’m the person who yells in my car if I see a person talking on a cell phone at a stop sign.

“Fucking idiot! Drive, why don’t cha!!”

So let’s start at the beginning, shall we. My car. My dear delightful rust bucket of a car bought on 6/6/06. Its been a pretty decent car, other than costing over a $1000 in repairs last year. But in the last month its been having trouble starting. How many times have I had one of my many, many doctor appointments, gotten in the car and it wouldn’t start. A lot! And then last Wednesday after my art class I sat in a church parking lot (it probably didn’t like my 6/6/06 car sitting in its holy parking lot) and it wouldn’t start for over 10 minutes and then sputter-sputter…cough.

In the meantime I had been talking to my neighbor Freaky Eyebrows about her car. She’s 57 and owned a ‘96 Toyota Camry and never drove it because of driving anxiety.  So she decided to sell it. I decided to buy it after a test drive out to my cousin’s house who pronounced it in excellent condition. So yay! What I didn’t see coming was how incredibly wanky Freaky Eyebrows was going to be about absolutely everything.

OH MY GOD.  Is murder legal in New York? Quick…could someone Google that for me? She nearly drove me insane in the ensuing couple of days. Calls filled with rapid nervous talking about the car and the money filled my answering machine.  Especially the money part. The most important thing!!! As in  “ YES!!! YES!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ” (that’s her having an orgasm over receiving a somewhat large sum of money…only large because we’re poor. I had to borrow money to buy this of course).

Naturally I had to fuck things up by not getting the money to her on the correct day. Thursday, witty…not Friday!! You would have thought I had kidnapped one of her cats and taken porno shots of it or something. She called and whimpered and moaned and complained and reprimanded me last Thursday, as in bad witty bad.  It suddenly seemed like a really bad idea…buying a car from the woman who lived right across from me.

Anyways, I guess she was so desperate to get her mitts on the money however, she abruptly decided to take the day off from her 4 hour work day at the yuppie grocery store sweeping the floor, to do the transaction with me. Unfortunately on Friday, I had one of my myriad of doctor appointments. A brain scan.

Great news! I have one! Although it really hasn’t been working much this last week. Bygones.

So I had to go to that appointment at 12:30. Naturally Freaky called me just seconds before I was leaving. Frankly, I don’t remember what she said. Probably something about the fucking plastic screws in the license plate. She talked about those a lot between Thursday and Friday.

So I went and got my brain scan. And then made several money stops. And then  away we went. During my doctor appointment, she had found out that the DMV in the north side of town was closed and that we’d have to go to one on the west side. Naturally my insurance company was on the north side. This was just the beginning of the psychotic OCD  Freaky Eyebrows that nearly drove me to murder- part of the day.

I attempted to get on the freeway for the first time in about 4 years that afternoon. I have anxiety about driving on the highway, but I figured with the purchase of a  ”new” car that wasn’t ready to drop a muffler, I’d be ok. But no…Freaky Eyebrows never  stopped talking and was doing all these nervous twitchy things like looking at her watch every 34 seconds , which made me so uptight I missed the on ramp.

I’ll just edit the rest of what happened, since it was mostly about me wanting to hit her in the fucking head with a tire iron because she talked so much, but by 5 p.m. Friday, her 1996 Toyota Camry was now mine. Booya!

Monday was going to be the day I sold my old car. I always loved my old Subaru. It was rusty. It sometimes didn’t start. It  recently flunked all 5 of its inspections, but I still loved it. But I also had to sell it quickly because I have an asshole landlord who had told Freaky Eyebrows (because she called and told me how many times over the weekend??) that he was going to have it towed since it now didn’t have any license plates on it.  

My aunt had suggested junk car dealers, who usually start at about $250. Guess what? That’s a lie. I had started calling people the Friday before but nobody was calling back. One guy I called back, had even blocked my phone number. WTF! Its not like we went on a date. So by dark and after 3 calls from Freaky “reminding” me that the landlord was probably going to tow  the car like momentarily, I was stressed out to the max. Why? Because the next morning I was leaving for Roswell Cancer Center in Buffalo.

I finally called my mom at about 5:30, crying. We did briefly conspire to tow it over to my uncle’s to “hide” it, but AAA wouldn’t tow anything without plates. I finally just said “FORGET IT. FORGET EVERYTHING!” and cooked a microwave dinner. Just then the phone rang. It was the guy who had bought my last car, who works at my mom’s apartment complex. By then it was dark out. Him and his wife were out in my parking lot. So I ran outside.

Blah, blah, blah. My mother had told him not to cheat me out of my $300 asking price. His wife handed me $150. I took it. The end.

Don’t you wish you were me?

Anyhoo, the next morning I went over to my Art Friend “J”s house at 8:45. He had agreed to take me to Buffalo since, as mentioned I’m afraid to drive on highways. The trip was fine until we heard a very quiet…ding…ding…ding. “J” got off at a rest stop and checked under the hood. Everything looked fine. We got back on. ding…ding…ding. WHOOOOOSHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  A sudden huge cloud of smoke blew up from behind the car and then some billowing smoke  started to curl up from under the hood.

FUCK!

“J’s water pump was a goner about 25 miles outside of Buffalo and we were still about 40 minutes from the Cancer Center. “J” was incredibly level headed about the whole thing, but not me. I was having a meltdown inside. Neither of us had a cell phone, so he walked over to the side of the thruway where everyone was going about 85 mph and amazingly flagged down some trucker within about 5 minutes. We used the trucker’s cell phone. I called the hospital and he called a tow truck and I did something I probably wouldn’t have done five years ago. I accepted a ride from a total stranger.

Thank god he wasn’t like Jeffrey Dahmer’s brother or something.

So I got to the Cancer Center about an hour late. It didn’t really seem to matter. They just dovetailed me in.

The next part I’m a little embarrassed about. This world famous cancer doctor came in to talk to me about their chemo program and I was really rude to him. I didn’t know that that was  the reason I was there. A commercial for a chemo program. Why couldn’t they just have told me about it over the phone, god damn it. Don’t you know what I’ve just been through??? He smiled kindly and shook my hand and thanked me for coming to Roswell. And then two other chemo sales types came in and I was rude to them too, so much so that they called a social worker, because apparently I was having some kind of meltdown.

Really?

So I did talk to him for quite a while. I guess I felt guilty about my friend’s car breaking down, because by then “J” had called from the garage and they were going to keep his car over night and he would have rent a car to drive us home and then back to Buffalo the next day and I felt like the worst, blood sucking friend in the universe. The doctor told me I must have a lot of power to create so much chaos.

Ha ha ha ha! Yes, I do. So don’t piss me off, Republican Party.

“J” finally picked me up just after the hospital closed at 5:30. Did I know what he was driving? Hell, no…We didn’t have any cell phones! Remember?

(Incidentally, I am joining the Cell Phone Nation. My uncle is putting me on his Family Plan after hearing about my nightmarish adventure. So I guess I can’t make fun of people with cell phones anymore.

We finally got on the Thruway to come home. I hadn’t really eaten anything since a bowl of cereal at 7:30 that morning, so we pulled off at a rest stop so I could get a sandwich. I had previously bought “J” a gift for his efforts…a little something long before I knew it was going to be such a sucktacular day. Since we’re both writers and artists, I had found him a used book called “Love and Art” with artwork and love poems. I made sure he knew it was for him AND his wife. (ahem)

Anyways, I was sitting there utterly exhausted, eating a sandwich,  as he  gingerly unwrapped the book. His face really lit up when he saw the cover. As he leafed through it, suddenly stopped, looked up at me and started reading me poems across the table. I felt so utterly touched, I almost started crying. I’ve never had anyone read me poetry aloud before. It felt so personal.

Thank you “J”. That made a really horrible day, just a tiny bit better.

why do most of my doctors look like michael j fox?

In the last three weeks I’ve been to so many doctor appointments in so many places, with so many nurses and so many waiting rooms with so many crappy magazines (except for the last two which had the New Yorker) with so many people asking me for blood and to stand on scales and to lay quietly and  giving me bad news (yes, I do have cancer again) and making me feeling all tired and handing me large folders full of information about cyber knives and them wanting to send me to a cancer center in Buffalo even though my car looked at me and sarcastically said, “Buffalo….you’re kidding, right?”

The fact that my car talks should be scary enough.

And then there was that huge fight with “L” the Hippy Chick two days before my lung cancer biopsy. I was a wreck waiting to go to the hospital, so I had been trying to fill my days with fun, relaxing activities so I wouldn’t think about the upcoming medical “event”.

For instance, I went to my favorite artsy/hippie festival the weekend before.  My art group had a tent set up and I mostly hung out there since  I had been feeling really tired lately. But I did walk around a little to see all the lovely whack-a-doos  in my town. Artists. Belly dancers. Musicians. Hippies. Flower Children…

And even Republicans trying to shake our hands, like they liked us.

For me, the argument had actually  briefly started the day before. I had parked quite a ways from the center of activity mainly because, well shit, there were no parking places any closer. Do you think I would park a half mile away if I could park 20 feet away?  So I offered “L” and her grandson a ride home like I always do. I have no problem giving people rides. None. I do it all the time.  If I’m lucky enough to have a working car, why not help people out….right?

 So “L” was spouting off angrily about something. I had sort of tuned it out for the first time ever. Why? Because I was still  grooving off the good vibes of the happy hippy day. Then she says, “Well, if I had known your car was this far, I would have just walked home!”

I bit my tongue on that one, but decided to take the high road. So I offered to go get the car and pick her up, but no, no, no, she said,  I’ll make it…somehow (groan).

Anyways, the next day I went to an art event up at the university in their lovely  art gallery. It was very relaxing and pleasant and quiet. We didn’t have a huge turn out, but we were sitting amongst a very famous painter’s artwork  drawing a model and I was incredibly relaxed. Which was good. And also the reason I went.

And then “L” shows up with her grandson who’s 7. And suddenly she was chatting loudly. Joking with the model. Her grandson was running amuck around the galleries. “D”, who was running the session, tried to give him some paper to draw on, but after about 5 minutes, he was running around once again. “L” wasn’t doing anything about it, as usual.

At the time, instead of drawing the model, I was actually attempting to draw one of the famous paintings. Silly me. Anyways, suddenly out of the corner of my eye, I see the grandson walking around with what looked like a pencil. He looked at me coyly and then turned around and started making a stabbing motion at the painting. I totally freaked out. This painting is probably worth about $80,000. So I leaned over and whispered, “Please don’t do that!” So he runs back over to “L” and I could hear some loud whispering and then some whimpering. Great. I made the kid cry.

We finally finished up around 3 and went outside. I offer her and her grandson a ride home but warned that it was about 5 blocks to my car since I couldn’t park on campus. “L” suddenly got absolutely  livid and started doing this loud mock talking to “D”, as if I wasn’t there and then stalked off. WTF? Ok, fine. Whatever. 

So “D” and I started walking to our cars and I’m blowing off a little steam about how weird she was acting and and then suddenly at the first red light she jumps in front of us and sarcastically wishes “D” a “Good Day” and just glares at me. I told her I hope she had a good day too. It was just getting too weird. Then she disappeared again. “D” and I walked together another 2 blocks and he went up that street to his car and then suddenly there was “L” again…yelling at me at the top of her lungs in the middle of a busy thoroughfare.  I just kept walking.

I’m really pretty innocuous in real life. Very quiet. Not someone to pick fights. And here is this woman, who I’ve been friends with for 5 years screaming all this crap at me. I finally yelled, “I’m going in for a cancer biopsy tomorrow. I went today so I could relax. Can you please stop yelling at me?” And then there was a brief silence and then she yelled something to the effect that “We all have to go sometime. That’s just how life is.” By then I started crying. How could anyone say that to someone going in for a cancer biopsy?

She then yelled after me 3 times…”What time?” I yelled back 7 a.m.” but evidently she couldn’t hear me because by time I got to the street where my car was,  she screamed at me that I was just like her last friend she just lost. That was I abandoning her. Needless to say, I cried all the way home.

Fortunately, not ALL my art friends are lunatics because on Tuesday, my dear friend Charlemagne did pick me up (I think Guardcat told you that) for my hospital visit.  And he does give good hug. You know you do, you cute little Frenchman!

And then in some weird stroke of fate or synchronicity, I was shopping at Target the next week and who do I run into AGAIN? Married Guy. Yup. Right there in the pet food aisle. Something keeps throwing us together. When he saw me the first words out of his mouth were, “You look really pale.” Oh wait, no, he first said, “How come everytime I see you, you’re shopping?” and I said, “Because I’m a rich housewife in *********” Ha, ha, ha. Irony. Love it. Both the rich part and the wife part. So anyways once we both bought our stuff we went outside and I told him about my lung cancer and he looked pretty stricken.  And then he offered help. And then I stupidly went to his wifie’s art show that Friday night. Do I want to see him again? Yes. Absolutely. I’m going through some really rough times  right now and I really need some people to lean on.  He gave me his cell phone and said to call him anytime. Whether I’ll actually be able to, remains to be seen.

Anyways, back to the doctor part,  evidently doctors don’t necessarily talk to each other. I now have about 4 or 5 of them. And except for the hottie oncologist, they all look like Michael J. Fox, especially the one I saw today who told me I’ll be getting something called Cyberknife, which is some kind of high intensity radiation in 3 or 4  lengthy sessions.  I’ve been worried because October is my busiest art month, but it looks like I’ll be able to get most of my events in, before I collapse into a pile of glowing radioactive wittykitty goo towards the end of the month. That is way better than the original suggestion of a serious, big ass surgery though, and I’m happy about that. Of course, ask me about that when I’m sleeping 23 hours a day around October 23rd.

Oh, by the way, “L” the Hippie Chick didn’t talk to me last week in my art group, but she did this week. Pretty much everyone in my art group now knows I have cancer. And for some reason as Sci-Fi Guy and ”L” were walking me out Wednesday, she started asking me if the doctors had given me a length of time I was expected to live. She just kept asking me that over and over.  It was really starting to upset me.  When you’re dealing with this kind of stuff  you really don’t want to think about that, you’re supposed to think about your survival. I finally practically yelled I didn’t know and just asked her to pray for me. And then she mentioned she knew of a prayerline- on the phone with the numbers 666 in it.

WTF? Am I really that bad? I know one thing, I’m never correcting anyone’s kids ever again!

This is me right before my biopsy on September 15th. I’m so 666, dont’cha think?

Guardcat writes another note for witty’s ambivilent blog behavior

Dear Ms. Blogenstein:

Guardcat here again. I turned my back on her for one minute and then witty skips out on her blog for yet another 26 days, cheating on you with I believe,  facebook since, well, you know, she has a very short attention span these days and prefers writing only one sentence updates instead of lengthy whine-fests, since funny can only go so far when your life  makes the movie “Titanic” look like a Seth Rogan Sex Romp (witty made me put that in there. I didn’t think it was particularly funny, but what do I know, I  sleep 23 hours a day and chase imaginary pieces of lint). So the minute I decided to take a nap, witty was off doing stuff like trying to get an inspection sticker for her rusty old pile of crap car which she bought on 6/6/06, (no mistake on what that means I tell ya), because she brought it out to this garage by a lake to this mechanic who looks like a bad-ass Billy Joel with tattoos all over his body and what do you think happened? Well, we are talking about witty and her crap car….the car failed the inspection of course, but the guy said, well, if you go drive it 50 miles maybe the emissions (garbled word) will reset itself and then I can give you the sticker, so witty got in her car and started driving around this lake, like  la la la, I’m on vacation in my piece of crap car, la la la, and then she even stopped at this old antique store with scary clown dolls and NASCAR tee-shirts and really wanted to do one of her weird self portraits amidst the antiques, looking all wacky like she does in her photos until she realized there were video cameras everywhere and all the old people up by the front door were watching her on their panel of TV cams, snickering saying things like, “Ewww, she’s weird, she must be an artist or something”, probably because witty was also crawling around on the floor looking for frames because she’s like totally obsessed with buying every single frame in New York state, you know, in case she paints a painting that size and can buy it for $1.50 in some crazy antique store with Stephen King clown dolls, but unfortunately now she has so many frames in OUR apartment, its starting to look like that TV show, “Messiest Home in America” where that gay guy and his crew makes you throw out everything including that piece of material you sucked on when you were three and then they  re-design your whole house in two days while you stay at a really nice hotel and get a massage, I mean, I really think she has an ulterior motive with this escalating frame problem, but now I actually forgot what I was talking about, oh yes, witty having to drive 50 miles to reset the emissions thingie, so she did do that and came back to the gas station where Mr. Bad Ass Billy Joel Jr. clamped his machine to witty’s little box (the most action she’ll probably evah see–heh heh) and guess what happened? Go ahead guess!  It flunked again and then again and then again and then again and then again…No, not all on the same day.. she had to drive the 20 mile round trip 5 more times trying to reset that goddamn emissions thing and nothing was happening so now her car inspection sticker has expired, so she’s trying to be invisible to the cops, which she’s really good at, since she actually thinks she’s invisible….no really….like she’ll think she’s hiding from me in the kitchen  when she should be feeding me and then I’ll bite her ankle. Heh heh.  Silly girl. Anyhoo, witty has had lots of other stuff going on, like the stalker chick showing up at her art class and wanting to hug her for no real reason other than re-enact a scene from “Fatal Attraction”  or some weird thing.  And then some guy worked on her computer and decided to switch her computer tower for another one and then pretend he didn’t, so she ended up going to the police but since the computer was a gift from her brother and she had no proof of what brand it was, not much happened, although she did feel somewhat vindicated when the cop totally tore the thieving asshole a new arse during his interrogation on the phone, since the computer he returned to witty was totally wiped clean of over 1200 photos, including those, well, you know pseudo-Playboy ones witty likes to do (Officially called Identity Theft in legaleeze). And then for the grand finale nee: witty summer ‘09 wallapalooza  just when things were going especially groovy, fate decided to give witty yet another ride on the cancer merry-go-round it seems. Of course witty was momentarily horrified all excited when her hot oncologist called last week, that is until he actually started talking and she knew it wasn’t good since he usually  has his physician’s assistant call. Sure I was in sleeping on witty’s bed, but I think I heard something like: “The nodes in your lung have doubled in size since your last scan in May. I’m going to be sending you to a Thoracic Surgeon in the next few days. He’ll talk to you about what we’ll be doing” I let her rub my belly a few extra times that night, since she seemed pretty upset about everything. So witty went to meet yet another new doctor on the Tuesday after labor day and they got to watch the video scans on his computer, kinda like DEATH WII. He told witty about the node doubling in size and the two options that were available. If its minor they’ll do something called razor radiation. If its major it’ll be a full fledged surgery which would keep her in the hospital for 7-8 days and out of commission for 6-8 weeks. Yeeks! Who is gonna buy me cat food? So witty of course wrote to “A” and told him and he was very concerned and then on Wednesday, when she co-hosted with Charlemagne at her art class, he was very upset too, especially when she suggested that she put off the possible upcoming surgery because she has a bunch of art shows  in October including one in which one of her paintings just got published in a book and she really wanted to go to the opening, but Charlemagne was aghast and said he would not allow his friend to die because she wanted to go to a….now what did he say? I think it was something like “a fucking art show”, yeah, something like that. He also offered to drive witty to the hospital on Tuesday for the lung needle biopsy. She had hoped “A” could do it like last time, but he had another commitment, although strangely right after she hung up from “A”, Charlemagne called witty up  saying he was taking her to the hospital but they’d have to talk Sunday or Monday about times and directions. Naturally she was worried because he is perpetually late, so she said, “Are you sure?” and then he handed the phone to his girlfriend who is in charge of him and she said she’d make sure he’d be there, which is good because witty had sat for about 2 hours the night before looking at Married Guy’s photo in Facebook trying to get up the courage to write him a note asking for a ride to the hospital which of course would have been really stupid but what’s that saying? “Desperate times call for desperate measures“,  but then Charlemange called, probably because “A” got my subconscious ESP message that witty was considering calling Married Guy. So she is really scared and really tired, but she’s been trying to keep busy, in fact tomorrow she is going to her favorite artsy/hippie festival to cavort with like souls and then on Monday, she’ll be joining some of her art friends at the local university to draw in their art gallery….an event she was originally going to miss because, well, she was going to go back to school, but that is all off, unfortunately. With all these unknown factors, medical procedures, and possible major surgeries all falling in the first three weeks of school and possibly affecting a large postion of the semester, witty figured she better just drop out of school and NOT lose  the government funding she worked so hard to procure. That however, made her very, very, very sad. It was the first thing she had really looked forward to in many years. In fact she’s been like a five year old looking forward to the first day of kindergarten for like the last two weeks. I may have to let her scratch my belly again.

Sincerely, Guardcat.

now I remember why I’m a neurotic recluse

Greetings from the hot and steamy writing salon of awittykitty. I’m just momentarily resting on my lazy ass laurels a mere 48 hours after the opening of my one woman art show. Oh yeah, it sounds impressive all right.  Fall at my feet you mere mortals. Feed me grapes, oh naked boys who might possibly give me a lap dance in some wildly inappropriate setting like the set of “Deal or No Deal”. But the truth is, its only a bipolar woman who painted a bunch of stuff and then some lady took it to a beauty spa. The end. Ya got it?

But witty, why were you totally off the ledge with anxiety and angst for the last freaking week or 47? The truth is I had a lot happening. I just deleted about 5 paragraphs. Why? They made me sound even more neurotic and crazed than I usually am. Let’s just say its been a combo of “Fatal Attraction” and  ”One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” all kind of dwooshed up together with  a really bad hormonal Movie of the Week starring Meredith Baxter Birney.

Shall we start at the beginning? I guess I mentioned that some rich wife of an artist I draw with had shown some interest in my work at another art show back in May. I was a wreck when she came and picked 8 pieces at my apartment. She’s the kind of person I generally make fun in my blog. Bubbly yuppie type with a cell phone glued to her ear. And then suddenly there she was standing in my apartment. It was a strange juxtaposition. A sort Pygmalion sort of thing, ya see.

So we hung the show about a month ago at a beauty spa. It was a nice place. Not Beverly Hills glamorous, but nicer than say like Hairs-R-Us. And they even had FAUX Marble walls! I liked it. Me and “P” agreed on where and how to hang everything and got along really well. And then suddenly  I didn’t hear from her for like 10 days. I didn’t know what to think, other than the worst of course.

She finally called and said she was writing press releases for a couple of  local newspapers, as well as “an article” for the small local publication in the town where the spa was.  I sent her over some photos of my artwork. And then she sent me a copy of the article. I cringed. People who are bubbly and chatty may not necessarily be able to write I quickly realized.

I had thought I had finally gotten over that thing called “being a control freak” but evidently there were still small fragments lodged in my calm and rather adorable exterior.  So I wrote her back a note with a few suggestions about the article, you know, since I have an extensive journalism background, which I mentioned numerous times to the point of perhaps (cough) totally humiliating her.  It was my mood, people.  I’m bipolar!!!  So I re-wrote the paragraph about me, even though she said she had already sent it to the editor and sent it back. I don’t know why I cared so much. It was just for a crappy little paper  probably scanned by only about 12 people.

Incidentally, this is a painting I was working on while all this chaos was going on.  Do you think it shows the angst and loss of control I was feeling?

Yeah, I think so too.

Anyways, “P” finally set a date for my opening…Thursday, August 13th.  She was sending out info to everyone she could, including local art guilds, like the one Married Guy’s wife belongs to. Erg! She also wanted me to self-promote too.

Self promote?  Does not compute. Does not compute. Does not compute. What’s that?

She then brought some color flyers up to my art class Wednesday night. I had sent her two images of two different paintings, one of the Virgin Mary and one of Johnny Depp. Naturally I had to make a joke when I saw them next to each other on the flyer. Like, “Yeah, I heard  that Johnny Depp and the Virgin Mary have been dating  since the Teen Choice Awards….” (rim shot). 

I’m much funnier in print obviously.

She  handed the flyers out to all 20 some people in the class. I was still worrying about the reason I talked about in those 5 deleted paragraphs. I’ve had a stalker recently who has been making me even more nervous and paranoid than usual, so I had been trying to shield the time and place of my show from this person. I had just planned to ask a few people in the class because I was beside myself with worry as my info went public.

I had also invited my best friend “L” the Hippie Chick but had made a stupid mistake. Her young grandson was up visiting her and this weekend we had gone to see a free theatre production and he had been, shall we say, a bit free-spirited. As in he didn’t want to see the show, so he walked out of the theatre and left the building and I had no idea if he was out on the road getting hit by a car or what, since “L” had switched seats to sit with him in the back and then he came to sit with me and then he just left.  I was freaking out during the whole show. Do I get up and go look for him? Is he safe? Where’s “L”? She must be looking for him. I kept looking in the back, looking for her.

Anyways, I told her I didn’t want him to come to my art show since at our art class he was also constantly running and sliding on the floor and rolling around and making  noises and knocking stuff over. I just couldn’t see him at this tony beauty spa. “L” walked away from me angry Wednesday night. I started crying immediately. I think it was the combination of everything.

Zue, my second least favorite person, talked to me for about 20 minutes afterwards. She wasn’t too obnoxious. She was one of the people I didn’t want at the show, but what the hell, she earned it, listening to all my drama queen whimpering. Now she’ll probably want to be my BFF too.  

Anyways, fast forward to my art opening, since this entry is getting longer than “War and Peace”.  Had a few calls in the morning including “L” saying that she would be there without her rambunctious grandson. Although she added, he would have gotten a lot out of seeing my art. Okay, I deserve that I guess. 

I got there about 10 minutes before the opening. “P”, my “agent” was getting her hair done. She said I looked “fresh and cool.” Ha! I had just driven 15 miles in a hot-ass car with no air conditioning, but thanks. I had brought a few additional pieces, since she said I could, including the sinful “City on Fire” pictured above (which had been rejected by her for the show as too stressful- heh heh! Try living in the body of a bipolar woman during a hot spell with a stalker).

People finally started filtering in. My mom came and was very well behaved. Folks from my art class. My aunt. Even some people who had said they weren’t coming showed up. Good ones, not the stalker fortunately. “P” was flitting around, mostly promoting the salon now. That’s fine with me. Her husband came. He loaned me this book called “Postm0dern Heretics” . Basically it was about sex, art, sex,  religion…and did I mention sex with explicit photos of such things as a semi-ude guy nailing himself to a Volkswagon a ‘la the crucifixtion.. Ummm, interesting.

It soon got even weirder. I was walking around with my camera, of course. One of the male hair dressers asked if I would take his photo. I said sure, no problem. So he grabbed a manikin head used for wigs off the counter. It has a vague female face. He asked me to come into a little side room with a lounger.  So I followed him in there and he jumps onto the lounger and buries the mannikin’s head down in his crotch and says, “Take my picture….just don’t get my face in it.”

Ummmmm?!?!?!

 But I’m an idiot. I took his picture. Nothing like bonding over a little porn with a total stranger during your art show. I should have made him buy one of my damn paintings for that.

Anyways, the rest of the evening went much better. I mostly talked about art with my friends. Afterwards, me and some of the girls went next door and got some ice cream cones. Naturally after about 4 licks mine fell on the ground. I bent over and wiped off the top layer. Everyone was screaming. “No witty. Ewww!”, but I just continued to eat it. It fell on asphalt for god sakes. Its not like there were ants or dog poop or anything. Anyways, “L” the Hippie Chick disappeared for a couple of minutes and then came back with this humongous waffle cone with a huge pile of ice cream on top of it and said, “Here.” 

See, that’s what friends are really about.

By the way…Virgins are cute.  Buy them and take them home. OK? Thanks.  

 

the british guy in the park

It all started with this tree to be honest….

I had just spent the last couple of hours with my mother.  I had dreaded the day. She was bringing back a cat, aka the Scourge from Hell, she had adopted from the humane society back in June. I had had to listen to the daily horror stories of broken dishes and lamps and bites to the head and how she was jumping on top of the refrigerator knocking things over as well as constantly running between her feet as she walked. Now my mom is 81 and not very stable as it is and I was literally waiting for the “witty (sob, sob), I just fell and broke my hip” call. As it was, she had already wrenched her back trying to avoid stepping on the cat in her bedroom a couple of weeks ago. So this last week, she finally wisely decided to take the cat back. Oh the guilt! But I told her, perhaps a little too snappishly, that this one was just too active for someone of her age.

So I brought Guardcat’s cat cage over to her house since the cardboard one they had given her back in June had only contained ”Psycho”  for only about 1 minute and then she had escaped, as in she had jumped up on the dash board and was running around the vehicle at about 250 mph  in traffic. Its truly amazing my mom didn’t crash her car.

So the day was rough. My mom was crying…that is until we went to the humane society and she was able to play with about 45 cats in two large rooms for about an hour and a half. She kept saying she wanted “pretty cats” instead of  the “compatible” cats. Isn’t that what dudes say, Mom? Anyways, she eventually went home empty handed, but hopefully she’ll come to her senses and get one of the older cats who will sit and watch “American Idol” with her.

Anyways, after all the emotional turmoil in the afternoon with my mom and jumping over cats of every size and shape at the humane society (and yes, of course I totally love cats and played with lots of them), I really needed to take some time to regroup.

I’ve been very very very stressed out about losing my disability recently. “A”, after one appointment after a year on Tuesday, said I’m all better mentally evidently and said if asked by the government, he will tell them accordingly. If I lose my disability, I will also lose my health insurance and when you have cancer, or  at least the possibility of it and have to go get $3300 x-rays every 3 months (along with a myriad of other appointments), the thought of losing your insurance is pretty fucking  scary. So I’ve been crying ever since he sent me an e-mail to that effect Wednesday afternoon. Thanks “A”.  

So I went to our nearby lake for a walk. It was really busy because it was a beautiful summer day. Naturally I had my camera with me. Its like permanently attached to my hand, kinda like you yuppies and your cell phones.

Anyways, I saw this tree (see above). Recently when I was in my nekkid drawing class I had been bored drawing this certain model who was standing there with her arms raised above her head. Sometimes witty is naughty. She’ll do things like draw horns or spikes on models or write something like “I wonder if I have a spine” down the back of a male model. Anyways, with this particular model I had drawn her arms raised upwards and then started adding branches growing out of her body, kinda like a naked model tree!

And I wasn’t even stoned!

I actually liked the idea so much I’ve been thinking of doing a painting. Anyways this tree looked a lot like that particular drawing. The shape was almost identical. So I was standing there shooting the photo when suddenly I hear this male voice with an English accent say, “Why are you photographing a tree?” It startled me 1) because, as you know if you’ve read me for a while, I think that I’m invisible, so when somebody acknowledges that I’m there, I’m usually pretty startled 2) He was way closer than I realized, as in standing right next to me.  3) What a strange question to ask. I’m just photographing a tree.

And before I knew it, this tall British guy, who I had actually seen sitting on a bench when I sat down just five minutes earlier,  was standing RIGHT THERE and he was incredibly verbose, telling me he was a writer, and then breaking out into this  lengthy hilarious “Roses are read, violets are green…” poem about a shopkeeper breaking dishes and cats jumping over taxis. Who knows. He even managed to interject the word “genitalia” in there, although I can’t remember in what context. I was just standing there with my camera nervously clutched in my hand, looking at him, wondering what part I was playing in  all this. He then  wanted to guess what astrology sign I was and actually nailed it. Aquarius. WTF! I said I thought he was probably a Gemini because he talked so much. He said I was close He was on the cusp of Gemini and Cancer. He asked what I did. My stock answer now is “artist”. I don’t actually make my living at it, but its my vocation. And he asked about that. How can you make a living at art?

Pretty cheeky there, Brit Boy! How do you know I’m not like some famous woman tree photographer or Picasso’s great step-grand niece.

He was talking so fast and fluidly and leaping from subject to subject, I was having a bit of a problem keeping up. There was a brief jaunt into psychotherapy. My quote: “Therapists are paid friends”. He didn’t agree. He wondered how hard it would be to find an illustrator for his children’s book.  Are you trying to pick me up, dude? I mean, professionally? And then we were talking about biorhythms. I wondered aloud why mine were always below the line instead of  above the line. He didn’t know.  And then he asked me what I was doing with my life.

Yikes? Do I even know? True I just got a letter which has given me a full grant for 2 classes a semester through Spring of 2010 towards my long awaited Bachelor’s degree in art. But instead I chose to remain mysterious. I told him I was walking. Just walking. I think he was perplexed. Or maybe that I was really deep or something. Or was possibly that I was just avoiding the real question since I didn’t know who the hell this British Guy was or why  he was asking me all these probing questions.

He then asked me to sit down. The blissful, we-just-met-and-this-is-going-well did slow down noticeably when we sat. In fact, there was like a full moment of silence. I could feel the breeze blowing off the lake through my hair. Fortunately he finally started chatting again about the boats out in the lake. I told him I liked kayaking. He said his kids “liked to fucking jet ski since it was better than talking to each other. “

I then noticed he started patting the pocket in his shirt intermittently. I knew what that meant. Pat, pat, pat. We chatted a little more. Pat, pat, pat. And then he said, “Do you smoke?” and I said, “No.” and he said, “I better go.”

Just.like.that. A whole relationship played out in a matter of 15 minutes. The blush of first love. Intense interest in what each other has to say. Sitting down, as familiarity takes hold, talking like an old married couple. And then the one thing we always knew we never had in common, suddenly hits our “relationship” like a meteor and it was over!

He never even asked me my name.

In other news, I had some guy with a blue painted face come up to me at an art’s festival last weekend. He asked if I wanted to come paint a man in this certain art gallery. I know the gallery. The woman who runs it had actually expressed some interest in my work last November and was going to come to my house to look at my work but then I got the cancer and we never connected. Naturally I said yes. I always want to paint men.

So I went up to the gallery. Little did I know that I was going to…well you’ll see…

 

actually paint a man.  See, if the damn British Guy had played his cards right….

a note for my teacher

Dear Mrs. Blogenstein:

Please excuse wittykitty from her blog for the last 25 days. She’s been a little under the weather and yet suddenly overwhelmed by popularity, but also depressed, and yet hanging solo art shows, registering for school, acting like a poser while standing in the line at the yuppie grocery store (ha, ha, I just added that one), not to mention exhibiting an extreme addiction to home makeover shows since she got cable in June, bumping into people she’d rather not see,  exhibiting extreme road rage thereafter, eating far too much chocolate, still nursing a sore knee, taking naked photos of herself and then deleting them from her digital camera, running into her shrink and making an appointment with him after almost a year (all I have to say about that witty is OY!), spending way to much time Twittering and Facebooking, staring at her male neighbor across the complex who walks around naked in his apartment, celebrating the fact that Garden Hacker is gone, being so manic that she painted three paintings in one week, talking to strangers, joining a women’s writing group, going to nearby nearly abandoned carnival and riding on a ride called Laffland which she accidentally thought was a new diagnosis for her mental condition, drinking vast quantities of caffeine, not sleeping, plotting the murder of her next door neighbor who leaves her loud bathroom fan on for hours and hours and hours including 3 a.m. in the morning which makes witty so angry she wants to take an exacto knife and carve “redrum” into her  planter, listening to my mom’s endless stories about her new kitten who she named after witty’s deceased cat which makes her really sad, like why did she have to name it that, and who cares if her cat jumps up on top of the refrigerator 12 times a day, there are worst things happening like all the government offices witty had to go to this last week whilst dealing with the 1,020th sinusitis infection in the last six months, like wtf, no wonder she’s all grumpy and depressed all the time, sniffling AND seeing former people she was in love with and logically knowing it would be stupid to go to their house, and yet having that stupid tweaking emotional gland near the chocolate intake gland which is obviously malfunctioning saying hey, remember all the fun you had “being part of the family” and all the good massages he gave you, but then all my real life people are saying, you idiot, you’re such a fucking idiot, and I’m like back off, I just had to  buy my 300th package of M&Ms as a way to console myself, but of course I also had to go to my cousin’s wedding this weekend, which is exactly the place witty would want to go, given her state…a wedding…like whee, two people in love, two loving parents there to see their beautiful blonde daughter joined in happy matrimony and she absolutely didn’t hold anything against them, but having to sit there for four hours looking at all these happy people in the name of love just seemed to hold a giant magnifying glass up to witty’s miserably solitary life even though, my god, people have been absolutely flocking to her, but she just doesn’t see that, you know, or understand why people are trying to be her new friends and offering her help and the head of a local arts organization actually coming to her little eentsy apartment and looking at all her artwork and acting all bubbly and excited like she had just found a lost Michelangelo or in witty’s case maybe an Andy Warhol and then coming a week later and taking them to a fancy beauty salon to hang, although naturally witty forgot one, since her brain has gone on strike indefinitely its seems (which is exactly why she’s going back to school! Yay!), so then the poor lady had to come back to her eentsy apartment and pick up the missing painting and discovered another painting of Johnny Depp which totally demanded to be hung in a beauty shop full of women and gay men, so off he went, and yet the demure and extremely insecure witty is still nervously waiting for the opening but what does she expect, this woman is important and witty is just someone who dabbles and has little self esteem and thinks going to college will really help her and she even had to lie to the government agency helping her, because they kept asking and asking, like what could YOU ever do with an art degree you silly 51 year old woman with cancer and low self esteem and a funny looking chin and she then blurted out, almost like a brave person, “Well, since I’ve been mentally ill since 19 and I can suuuuure paint perty pictures, i wanna be an art therapist!! Ha! Ha! You know instead of working at McDonalds like you suggested last year, since I can’t stand the smell of rancid meat, but I do love me some snorting of pastel dust.” but the woman just looked at me like she always does, like I’m a statue of a transvestite hamster with a disco ball, you know, since she doesn’t realize that almost every single thing you look at in the universe was probably created by an artist including a stop sign. So Shut the hell up. Right?

Despite everything, including witty’s rather low mental health state at the moment, you really can’t keep her down. She did all her paperwork for college. Got all her damn shots including mumps, fercrissakes. She’s going back to her shrink for the first time in almost exactly a year. Will it be good? I’m not sure. I just think she needs someone who knows her, to say its ok.

Sincerely, Guardcat

Our Lady of the Boo-Boo Knee

Its been a busy couple of weeks. This new “having a lot of people in your life” thing is truly a mixed bag. I’ve been trying to act all cool about it and letting people talk TO ME, rather than me acting all needy and pleading for attention. Nope! That wittykitty is gone. You make one mistake, like calling me on the phone and acting nasty. Let’s just say, this goddess ain’t for kicking anymore.

But with all this talking to people has come the rather unwieldy responsibility of having to actually listen to them. And grit your teeth when they’re acting weird (and when you’re friends with a bunch of artists, that’ll probably happen pretty quickly). And then there are even times when you have to nod your head in wide eyed wonder like when “L” the hippie chick’s friend told me  she wanted to hook me up with a “37 year old 4th level manic depressive professional bowler”.  Now I’m manic depressive too but I’ve never heard of a fourth level one. I didn’t even know we had levels.  “Hi, I’m Bob a Professional Bowler.  I’m a Fourth Level Manic Depressive. I can levitate, write poetry and throw strikes. Oh, and I’m Pisces.”

Heh, that’s me running in the opposite direction, by the way.

Last week was Charlemagne’s big bi-yearly art show in The Factory. This time instead of lugging a bunch of heavy paintings down to the ‘Hood, I decided to just bring nine of my self portraits. I’ve been doing these Selfies for about 2 1/2 years now and this was the first time I ever really  had then printed out professionally and took them somewhere. There was some interest, although most people didn’t realize 1) they were all me or 2) that they all were the same people.  One of my friends was even stunned to learn that I had…BLUE EYES! OMG! Really??? You’re fucking kidding!  Jesus, people, do you even look at me when we’re talking?

(stop looking at my boobs, BTW!)

Anyways this was the photo that also startled my old date mate  from a couple summers ago, Handyman.  Remember him? He came over all smiley, with a kind of  “I bet she’s gonna date me again” look.  I was indifferent. Meh. The last time I saw him was when he went on a date with another woman WHILE we were on our actual date. Yeah, THAT guy.  So he was looking at all the photos and he was particularly taken with the one above and I said, “I bet you didn’t realize I was so hot, did you?” He grinned all goofy like men do when they suddenly  realize you have boobs.  And then for the rest of the evening  he kept returning to my booth, chatting with me, telling me really pertinent stuff  like that he was still single and his daughter was going to camp, so he had a lot of free time.

And you’re telling me this why?

Anyways, this last Tuesday I had my yearly physical. I’ve had some not so great  news in recent weeks. And my Tuesday appointment wasn’t much better,  turning up various infections and needing antibiotics. I guess my body just can’t fight things anymore.

Once I was sprung from the doctor’s at around 1:00, I went up to my Spanish friend’s house for some more kayaking. I really shouldn’t have since I was feeling really tired, but when haven’t I  felt tired. 

Once “E” dropped off her teen-aged sons in town, we went over to her cabin. The lake looked a little rough. You could see white caps across the top of the water.  I was a little apprehensive, but I’ve been trying to be a hard-ass lately and do absolutely everything I can each day, so off we went. Naturally we were paddling against the waves, which were smacking against the front of the boat.  “E”s a little bossy so she was yelling out directions in Spanish I think. Or maybe I was just not hearing anything since the wind was blowing so hard.

Or maybe I was just starting to feel a little fearful.  I mean I wasn’t totally afraid since we were fairly close to the shore, but I was starting to feel a little anxiety as each subsequent wave slammed the front of the boat and sloshed up over the top.  

I finally started asking “E” if we could possibly turn around and go back. By then I had stopped paddling because I felt so tired. She didn’t want to at first. She kept telling me it would be calmer around this certain  jut of land. I then told her I wanted to row back to shore to get off the boat. She said no but finally agreed to get the kayak to a nearby pier. I said I wanted to go to the shore. She said no again and rowed us to this large pier.  Naturally the boat started slamming into the pier. She then started yelling at me to stand up and just step up onto the pier. But how could I….the boat was unstable, as in one moment we’d be flush with the pier and then the  next I could only see a wide chasm of water.

But then suddenly, perhaps as part of my new fangled Bad-Ass persona  (and perhaps just a smattering of fear too), I decided to do  step thing. What happened next was not pretty.

I don’t know if you have ever seen that reality television show “Wipe Out”, where contestants have to go through elaborate obstacle courses designed to inflict horrific bodily harm, but when I jumped stepped onto the pier, I landed on my left knee  really hard.  The pain was excruciating.  “E” immediately started yelling at me, telling me I should have stepped up on the pier faster. I really can’t do anything fast with my fibro, especially with the waves affecting the stability of the damn boat. I  immediately looked down, since my knee was stinging really bad, and there was a huge bloody gash on it.  She yelled up to me to walk back to her cabin and she would just paddle back.  I secretly wondered if I could even walk since blood was starting to well up. 

Back at her cabin she again started yelling at me once again for not getting out of the kayak fast enough. So I guess that’ll always be my main memory for the month of June 2009: Kayak Exit Failure. Grade: F. My bad.

We continued to sit on some lawn furniture for about another 45 minutes chatting. My knee was stinging like hell. I really should have been more assertive like OWWWW, I’M BLEEDING, I NEED A BAND-AIDE. But I’m still new in this new friend phase and was unable to say “WTF!”, like I could have said to Charlemagne. We finally went into  her cabin and she casually got out a first aide kit from like 1972 and I found a tiny package that said: antibiotic, so I gooped it on my knee.

She drove us back to her main house, telling me about every 7 minutes how I had incorrectly jumped from the boat to the pier. Okie dokie, I think I got that now. We then sat and chatted for about another 45 minutes or so but I was starting to feel a little queasy and light headed, so I finally told her I had to head home.

About ten minutes from her house I started to feel really dizzy and I could feel and subsequently see blood dripping down my knee. I live about 30 miles from “E and I wasn’t sure if I could make it all the way home in this condition so I decided to stop at my favorite aunt’s house. She’s a major caretaker person and within minutes of arriving I was like 6 years old again as she  cleaned up the wound in the bathroom and put Bactine and a large bandage on it. She even gave me some home baked cookies.

We chatted for a while. I was feeling less dizzy, but I looked down and it was bleeding once again from under the bandage. Plus the skin was starting to turn a bright red around the edges and traveling. I thought it was probably getting an infection…you know, since I had just been at the doctor’s that morning and told I was suffering from several simultaneos infections and put on antibiotics and yet stupidly went out kayaking in choppy waters with a highly excitable Spanish woman.

So I decided to go to the ER. Not at a big hospital…just one of those little ones in the suburbs. What a revelation they are! I was in and out in about 20 minutes! Booyah!  Of course the doctor was older than Larry King and he made a joke about giving me a tetanus shot in my knee which I didn’t think was particularly funny.

So I’ve been trying to rest the last couple of days. The pain has been pretty significant in both my left knee and my right calf which now has a huge yellow and purple bruise and I have a fever.  I even missed my beloved drawing class on Wednesday night. But I have been working on my various paintings. Starting new ones. And finishing up ones that I started in the last month or so.  Even though the pain hasn’t been much fun, the time I’ve been spending on my paintings has been invaluable.

Here’s my latest…

Our Lady of the Boo-Boo Knee.

the cloak of invisibility is lifting…

Now I don’t want to sound egotistical or anything, but I’ve been having this really weird conundrum lately. Oh wait, let me explain something first. I have always felt invisible. Whether it was my dysfunctional upbringing or the fact that I’m very quiet in person, I have always felt like I’m walking around under a Cloak of Invisibility.

Like I’ll be on a hiking trail and somebody will walk by and I’ll nearly jump out of my skin if they say “hello”. Why? Because I thought I was invisible, silly!

But recently that has all been changing. People are suddenly seeing me. And talking to me. And inviting me places. And you know what? Its freaking me the hell out.

What’s the difference? I think it has to do with the having of cancer in January.  I’ve been living every day like its my last. I’ve been letting my guard down. I’ve been “LETTING” people like me (Isn’t that nice of me? Ya wanna like me? Permission granted!)

And then perhaps the biggest thing….I’ve been slowly deleting the negative people out of my life. That’s a big one!

The Spanish artist lady, who I have now gone kayaking twice with, has absolutely no filters when she talks. She tells me everything that is on her mind. She tells me I’m pretty, but also that I’m fat. In the kayak this last week, she was chatting away and she said the reason she was now inviting me to her house was that I seemed more positive. “Before you were quiet and strange”.

Well, all righty then!

I’m just here to report, I’m still quiet and strange, and proud of it, but I’ve opened up to people more and its amazing how they’ll just invite you to their house just by opening up a little. I mean I’ve been kayaking twice in the last 3 weeks. I went to “L” the Hippie Chick’s house for dinner on Memorial Day. Her friend at the dinner called me and we chatted for an hour. She’s trying to hook me up with some 37 year old guy. The Spanish Chick rowed our kayak up to this single guy’s house on the lake and we chatted with him and he  invited us for quesadillas and asked me if I was single, telling me in the same breath that he was too (smile, smile). Funny how everyone is suddenly trying to hook me up. I guess I must look like I need to get laid or something.

Anyways, on the professional front things have been looking up too. I had the wife of one of my artist friends contact me and say that she wanted to look at my artwork for a show at a local beauty spa. I had met her twice before. Her husband was the one who used to pick up women  by flaring his nostrils suggestively at bars. I had also met her at my show in early May and tried contacting her, but her hubby had given me the wrong e-mail address, so no contact.

She finally called me this last week and we made arrangements for her to come see all my artwork at my apartment…you know,  the wittykitty MOMA museum. Naturally I was angsty. Why? Well, duh! a) Having a stranger in my apartment. b) Having someone saying “I like this. I don’t like this. c) Having to unpack and arrange about 20 paintings on all the furniture around my teeny tiny apartment much to Guardcat’s extreme displeasure.

So she came over this week. She was very nice. She was at my apartment for about 45 minutes, arranging and rearranging various pieces of art on the floor to see what would make a good art show at a Eye-talian beauty spa. She was very chatty and said only positive things fortunately, but I still felt nervous as I sat on my couch with Guardcat. In the end she selected 8 paintings and said she’d get back to me about the date of the show.

In the meantime, I got an e-mail from the art gallery where I just had the show. A guy was interested in buying one of my paintings and suddenly more angst! Hey, I’m still angsty. I don’t think I’ll ever get over that. So I called him up. He sounded gay, which of course made me feel more comfortable about offering to take the artwork to his house. There aren’t THAT many gay serial killers. So we made arrangements for the next day.

The next day I went to the Warehouse where I put up a small  display of my photos for Charlemagne’s show this Saturday. I didn’t like the way it looked. Nine 8X10 frames in the middle of a huge wooden box. They looked so forlorn. So I started hunting around for garbage. Yup! Nearby somebody had been spray painting some paper so I took the scraps off the floor and ripped and spray painted them some more and tucked them around the frames. I also ripped apart some plastic bags and found two long metal strips which I hung on nails. Oh yeah, so…so SOHO. Ok, maybe not. But it looked a little better and lets just say I was also a little stoned on the spray paint.

Being stoned when you deliver art is really the only way to go, especially when you keep driving in circles and you’re like OMG, he was like totally expecting me 5 minutes ago and all these suburban houses, like, totally look alike.

I finally found his house and this tall, deliciously handsome gay man came out and welcomed me. We went into his house and he gave me a  tour of all the art around the house, including in his bedroom. I finally unwrapped the Koi fish painting and he just squealed and squealed. And it did look nice against his sunflower yellow walls.

He then turned to me and said, “Well, I always negotiate the price with the artist.” I knew this was coming and considering the original price I had offered it to “A” two years ago and even last summer for $75 (and he  never took it. tsk-tsk!), I had now doubled the price. Why not? Inflation, you know! So he said, “One hundred and a quarter”. I said, “No problem”. He looked at me and smiled and said, “You’re so cute. I love your painting. I’ll just give you full price!”

It was now my turn to squeal, except I did it on the inside of course. He was very very complimentary though. It was like being washed over by warm sensuous waves, all the nice things he was saying. So he wrote me a check in the kitchen. He showed me his garden from the window and said, “Oh, I have a koi pond in my backyard. Do you want to see it?” I really did. I love koi  fish. So we went out back and I shot some photos and got to meet his partner. They had a gorgeous yard.

As I was leaving I told him I was glad he liked the painting and that it was going to a loving home. He stopped for a second and then said, “Can I hug you?” Dang, I love having gorgeous gay men hugging me. So we hugged and then it was off to the Yuppie Grocery store for a congratulatory dinner by myself.  

No…Married Guy has never called back. But I have better things to do, you know, like maybe paint some new things to sell.