2003-10-27 @ 8:00 p.m.
battle of quirks

Now I live alone, and you can probably see why (quirks you know), but my list of quirks is growing. As are my cat's. I think we're having the Battle of the Quirks.

My cat is still deathly afraid of walking on the floor. This is like Day 14 of her living on my bed. And she has now devised a clever route to the kitchen. She jumps from the entrance of my bedroom to the living room chair. Then along the couch to the coffee table, one bounce to the floor and then up to the kitchen table where I now keep her food dish. And then to her box, and then reroute back to the bed.

Yesterday I totally freaked her out though. I had used my printer and had inadvertently thrown the printer cover onto the bed. It's a little piece of quilted material.

Well, she comes rushing back from brunch and she always takes a flying leap from the doorway, so as not to touch the floor. Floor -- evil. And she lands on the bed...on top of the printer cover and does an instantaneous backwards half gainer flip off the bed. I guess she wasn't expecting the cover, which of course, wasn't standard issue bed material. Of course doing a back flip off the bed also meant that she was now on the floor -- floor evil, so she quickly jumped back on the bed and was totally freaked out by this little piece of quilted material. And then for like 5 minutes she's cuffing the damn thing and jumping back like it was going to attack her.

But for me, its the Fucking Bastard flea thing. I also go postal every time I hear a cell phone ring. I hate cell phones. I would just soon take every last one of them and melt them down and make them into giant sculpture of a bird or something.

Why are cell phones even necessary? And why the fuck are cell phones necessary when you're driving 80 mph? That's what I'm wondering. Ya see, its against the law to hold a handset when you're driving, yet every yuppie nitwit in a 10,000 mile radius, if they're not sipping their Cappuccino or looking down at their freakin' planner, is yackin' on their cell phone.

I've almost gotten hit both while walking and driving on at least a half a dozen times occasions. One guy even drove up on a curb once in California causing me dive into someone's bushes to avoid getting hit.

I know last spring my Idiot Brother decided that my mother and I needed to have cell phones. Now we're both very poor. Medicaid-types. We both can barely afford regular phones, but he decided we needed phones and paid for like 9 hours worth of calls. Does that sound right? Hell, I don't know. Anyways, I was really annoyed, SINCE I HATE THE DAMN THINGS, but I did carry it around with me for 30 days. One day, out of sheer boredom, and since the time was nearly up, with no rollover, I decided to call my mom.

"Hi, its me on the cell. Buffy and Tiffy and I are at the Salon. We're going for cappies over at Starbucks, you want anything?"

Of course my Mom thought I had taken too much medication, but she also knew of my total disgust with the cell phone culture and their minions and played along for a while. That night I got a call while I was watching TV.

"Hi, its Mom, I'm in the cat food aisle at ******. Should I get turkey giblets or sauteed beef cuts?"

But its really those annoying rings that get me. If you want to make those Taliban talk down in Gizmo Bay just put them in a room full of ringing cell phones. I know that would do it for me. Forget about sleep deprivation. Just let me hear one of these electronic versions of Beethoven's Fifth, and I'm likely to react like a cyborg in a science fiction movie, programmed to kill when they hear a certain high pitched tone.

And they always seem to ring during important conversations. Like my shrink has one. Or several. He has one that rings and then one that vibrates. I guess the vibrating one is supposed to alert him by vibrating, but the vibrating noise is so loud, like say a vibrator on extra high, that we'll be talking and there'll be this weird insect noise emanating from the crook of his chair. And it's like, do you need to get that? I know he has to be available for emergency calls, but does it have to sound like my freakin' vibrator?

Well, I don't know if these things are really quirks. More like things I'm pissed off at. Cell phones and fleas. Hmm. Quirks. Oh, here's one. Playing Broadway hits on the piano at midnight. There's a good one. And that doesn't make me seem so psychotic.

I recently moved to my own little house, after years of apartment living, where I always felt obligated to NOT play my piano, because I didn't want to disturb anyone. I actually play pretty well. Took lessons for about 7 years. Played for all the choral groups and theatre productions in high school.

This summer though, I nabbed, probably one of the all time great garage sale purchases. And I had bought it, intending to sell it on E-Bay, but I fell so in love with it, that it now sits proudly on my piano... "The Definitive Broadway" , a collection of 142 songs from Broadway (obviously) from the 1920's-1980's. Has my boy George (Gershwin). Has stuff from "Oklahoma", "Le Miz". Just everything. I play music throughout the day. But I play mostly late at night, like midnight or later. I mean I can do that now that its colder out and the windows are closed and I don't have any cranky neighbors stomping on the floors (although I've only had that happen once in all my apartment living days -- critics --sigh).

I realize this is a little eccentric...a little bit quirky, but considering I'm bipolar, and lots of bipolars are doing a lot more destructive things with their time, like substance abuse or cutting or eating, I figure, banging on piano keys at 1 a.m. is probably the least destructive thing I can think of so...

Lyrics by Lennon/McCartney. All angst copyright by awittykitty