Monthly Archives: August 2014

Tolerating Tweak

“Party Animal”

Me: “Tweak, we’re going to have a party soon.”

Tweak. “We.” (Not a question.)

Me: “You’re right. I’M having a party. YOU are having a collapse.”

Tweak: “I am NOT collapsing. I am simply going underground until the ‘fun’ is over.”

Me: “Where do you hide, anyway?”

Tweak: “If I told you that, I’d have to kill you.”

Me: “You mean quickly instead of this slow inexorable descent into madness?”

Tweak: “Tom Waits called. He wants his Renfield back.”

Me: “No live insects for me, Tweak. YOU will make me immortal. The ultimate gift. You are Lord of the prize.”

Tweak: “I’m pretty handy with a Brussels sprout too.”

Me: “Anyway, I just wanted to warn you. We are having visitors.”

Tweak: “I will be in the dungeon. Eating spiders.”

Me: “Would you like flies with that?”

 

17 July 2014, “Tolerating Tweak”

renfield tweak

Tolerating Tweak

“You Catch More Flies with Sarcasm”

Me: “You tried to catch a fly last night.”

Tweak: “I did not.”

Me: “I saw you.”

Tweak: “You didn’t film it.” (Sort of a question.)

Me: “No, I was too busy not laughing.”

Tweak: “You shouldn’t let those revolting mouth-breathers in the house.”

Me: “I don’t LET them in, Tweak. Flies are Spartan warriors. They are the hyena of insects. They find the path of least resistance to the stench of rotting meat. And shattered ambitions.”

Tweak: “They taste with their feet.”

Me: “Flies don’t breathe through their mouths. They take in oxygen through their skin.”

Tweak: “They barf on their food. YOUR food.”

Me: “The plate on their back is called a ‘scutum.’ Flies are scutum-breathers.”

(The fur on Tweak’s back has a seizure.)

Me: “So why didn’t you catch the fly? Bowie catches badgers.”

Tweak: “That dog is a scutum-breather.”

Me: “Flies only live a couple of weeks. You still have time.”

Tweak: “To commit suicide? Here, hold my scutum.”

 

12 July 2014, “Tolerating Tweak”

Tolerating Tweak

“Plays Well with Others”

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Me: “Tweak, how would you feel about sharing me?”

Tweak: “DID YOU GET A DATE?!?”

I pour coffee into my mug.

Me: “No.”

I add caramel sauce and Splenda.

Me: “No, I haven’t been that lucky.”

Tweak does not care that I’m turning my morning inoculation into a liquid candy bar. Until I open the fridge.

Tweak: “Does getting a date depend on luck?”

I pour cream into my coffee. Tweak watches me manipulate the carton like I’m David Copperfield conjuring, well, cream. Tweak begs in and out of my legs, purring like a Kardashian. I disappear the cream back in the fridge.

Tweak: “Or are you just a bitch?”

Me: “No, Tweak. I have high standards.”

Tweak: “Like what?”

Me: “I prefer men with hair. And brains. And a tiny birthmark on the back of one leg in the shape of an otter.”

I snap the lid shut on my Tim Horton’s mug and stick an extra-long straw through the hole. Tweak shakes her head.

Tweak: “Women who drink coffee from straws otter re-think their standards.”

Tweak licks the shame of association from her hands.

Me: “You’re hilarious. Besides, I wasn’t talking about a DATE.”

She combs a corrugated trail down her pink belly.

Me: “How would you feel if I got a second cat?”

Tweak halts mid-lick and slowly retracts her tongue. Cleopatra’s asp bore less malice.

Tweak: “Do you suppose that your dates prefer you dead or alive? Or can they even tell the difference?”

I sip.

Me: “You have been raised by wolves.”

Tweak: “Just one. Do you know what they call a she-wolf?”

Me: “Bitch.”

Tweak: “Uh huh.”

 

11 July 2014, “Tolerating Tweak”

 

tweak sinister

Tolerating Tweak

“Unmaking the Bed”

I peel the case off an overstuffed pillow. It is too snug; the pillow fights like a fat kid. I shake the lump up and down until my eyes burn and my thumbs hurt, and finally the naked pillow plops to the floor. It’s like undressing an Oompa Loompa. Drunk.

I start to strip the second pillow, and the rustling in the air is a Bat-Signal. Tweak bounds onto the bed.

Tweak: “I AM HERE!”

She stands proud, toes splayed, tail lashing the air like a cape.

Tweak: “I am here to save the day!”

Me: “Cool. Grab the edge of that blanket and bring it towards me.”

Tweak: “You mean, like THIS?”

She leaps onto the blanket and stabs it with her cotton-ball hands as if “cute” were her super power.

Me: “You’re not helping.”

Tweak: “Oh, I think I am.”

She dives onto the other corner, spins 180°, and sticks the landing.

Tweak: “TA DA!”

Me: “Move over, Mary Lou.”

I roll the blankets down to the foot of the bed, uncovering the sheets. I turn back to find a swaddled quivering lump. It seems to be giggling.

I whip off the top sheet. Tweak stares up at me, her white hair at static attention like a crazed genius, her dopey face betraying her intellectual famine.

Tweak: “How did you find me?!”

Me: “Super heroes don’t giggle.”

She licks a paw and rubs it over her head, smoothing her Einstein into a Clark Kent.

Tweak: “What are you doing, anyway?”

Me: “I’m making the bed.”

Tweak: “It looks like you’re un-making the bed.”

Me: “Yes. And then I will re-make the bed with clean sheets.”

Tweak: “Why? Who is ever going to see it?”

I open my mouth, close it.

Me: “Grab that blanket over there. And hang yourself with it.”

Tweak: “TA DA!”

 

9 July 2014, “Tolerating Tweak”

tweak sheet white

True Stories Told in the Key of E-flat

“Marching Band Fish – Gorp, Part 2”

[Reprinted from 15 February 2011]

I lost Marching Band Fish this morning. Well, I didn’t LOSE him. Fish don’t ESCAPE.

Actually, sometimes they do. Sometimes fish jump right out of their tanks and gorp all over the floor. Sometimes in the middle of the night, while you’re busy dreaming about soccer players and other floppy-haired mammals, fish try to commit suicide by leaping out of their beautifully-decorated tanks (“A scuba diver? Really? How original.” – MB Fish), landing splatty and dry on the carpet (“Is heaven lined with cat hair?”), then realizing quickly that escape was NOT AT ALL what they’d had in mind. (“Gorp!”). So you pick them up in a paper towel and drop them back in the water, and three hours later… RESURRECTION!

But that was December’s story. Two months ago.

Today, on a cold February morning, I opened the lid of Fish’s tank (A lid! I am trainable!) only to find him floating near the bottom. Maybe not floating, maybe sinking. And not gorping. I must have yelped. The Boy mumbled at me from around a bagel:

“What?” Eloquent, that one.

“It’s Fish!”

“What did you do?” Eloquent and confident in my skills as a care-giver.

“I didn’t do anything! He’s just… he’s not… he’s sideways.”

Marching Band Fish was lying crooked in the corner awkwardly hugging the scuba diver. Or being strangled. I examined the scene closely, but the scuba diver had not trapped Fish; this was not some spiteful homicide in retaliation for Fish’s insensitive commentary. I upshifted from “stunned” to “rescue” mode, sucked water into a turkey baster, and blew some liquid miracle (I’d hoped) over Fish’s head, a kind of gill-fed CPR. The blowing lobbed him up to the surface too vigorously, Simba being lifted by Mufasa (HERE HE IS, BITCHES!), and Fish gorped once, possibly out of resentment. (WHY AM I UP HERE??). His lips moved, and he glared at me.  I blew some more water over his gills and, as a kindness, rotated him to his other side, like they do with old people. In the nursing home. In the dying place. He gorped a few more times then floated gently, a slow see-saw to the bottom, to the coffin of blue stones.

“Dammit, Fish.”

His shiny pale torso was naked, vulnerable, like a surgical patient. There was too much real estate highlighting his surrender, a beacon: “I DIDN’T MEAN TO DIE HERE!” I propelled him gently with the turkey baster back to the corner where he came to rest at the feet of the scuba diver. The gush of foreign water had stirred detritus up from the bottom of the tank, and it swirled around him like shit confetti. A fish parade. A snow globe of death. Fish summoned enough energy to roll his giant eye up at me. If he’d had middle fingers, I think he would have used one. Or two, if the other wasn’t pinned underneath him by the weight of defeat.

“Dammit, Fish.”

“Are you sure he’s not just resting?” The Boy asked around some juice.

“No, he’s bereft of life.”

Settling for the final time next to his guardian diver, Marching Band Fish grew still. Gravity pulled his lacy fins in close to his body. They had no more work to do. His lips gorped once, “Goodbye,” and twice, “Thank you,” then… nothing.

“Dammit, Fish.”

It’s just a fish. An ordinary, unremarkable fish utterly devoid of anything special. Except that he was mine. I fed him every morning, and sometimes in the afternoon, and sometimes in the evening, or really, whenever he asked for it. Because, what other conversation do you HAVE with a fish, except about food?

“How’s the weather in there, Fish?”

“Oh, you know, it’s about room temperature. Maybe you could blow me.”

He’s just a fish, a stupid fish. But… Dammit, Fish.

I haven’t had the heart to disturb him yet. He’s still lying sideways at the bottom of his watery blue casket covered in a shit celebration next to his beloved frenemy, the scuba diver. One thing about fish, they’re easy to dispose of. At least their little pink bodies are. The scuba diver, on the other hand, probably won’t flush.

Dammit, Fish.

 

RIP, Marching Band Fish.

Adopted May, 2009, from a Marching Band Banquet,

“Buried” 15 February 2012, Somewhere in the System

marching band fish swimming

Tolerating Tweak

“Paper Beats Rock”

Me: “Tweak, have you ever been sad?”

Some days are better than others. This has not been one of them.

Tweak: “Sad? Like when the center of my food bowl is empty?”

Me: “No, you can fix that if you have a friend. Think of something worse.”

Tweak: “Starving Ethiopian children collapsed on the desert floor like unhinged marionettes while vultures file their nails?”

Tweak taps a cotton-ball hand into the center of her bowl in case I missed the implication.

Me: “Maybe not that sad.”

I shuffle the pasta around on my plate, make a hole in the middle.

Tweak: “Starving Ethiopian children eating my food?”

Me: “Well, now you’re just being silly.”

Tweak: “Maybe silly is a cure for sad.”

Me: “Probably not a cure, but it is a fine distraction.”

Tweak: “What’s the difference?”

Me: “Good point. Pull my finger.”

Tweak: “Oh, god. Not the leper jokes.”

Me: “Never play Rock, Paper, Scissors with a leper. But if you do, always pick paper.”

Tweak: “That doesn’t even make sense.”

Me: “Sure it does. Lepers can only make ‘rock.’ See, their hands are rotted and the fingers are falling off and…”

Tweak: “No wonder you’re sad.”

Me: “You hungry?”

Tweak: “Not anymore.”

 

8 July 2014, “Tolerating Tweak”

True Stories Told in the Key of E-flat

Marching Band Fish – Gorp, Part 1

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Marching Band Fish – Gorp, Part 1
[reprinted from 4 December 2011]

I have this goldfish who keeps pretending to kill himself. Well, today it actually happened.

At 5:30 this morning, like every Sunday morning for what feels like 2000 years, I gimped out of my bedroom at the crack of miserable and lurched like a zombie toward the coffee maker as if it contained life-giving brains. (It does!). And I nearly stepped on Marching Band Fish’s silent body.

“Oh no. Oh, dammit, Fish.”

The burn from the tears in my eyes surprised me.

“What the hell are you DOING down there, Fish?” I asked him inanely, my lip quivering, my heart sideways.

Why did he have to leap all the way out this time?

(And why was I getting worked up over a stupid fish?!?)  

Because he was MY fish. And he was sprawled out on the carpet at my feet. Fish are just wrong on the carpet.

“Dammit, Fish.”

Fish had been my reliable if absurd companion for three-and-half-years. I “won” Fish out of a centerpiece at a marching band banquet (thus, the name) when The Boy was still in high school. Fish had lived in four different houses with me. He had been transported (without complaining) in a sealed Ziploc bag back and forth to two different states. Fish was a survivor! Yet here he was lying on the floor in a hideous juxtaposition, a wet goldfish on a scratchy carpet. It was an illogical composition. The space made no sense. My art teacher would have called it “contrived.”

“Dammit, Fish.”

I looked up to see my cat Tweak perched on the back of the couch surveying the desecration.

“You couldn’t have DONE something??”  I asked her, shaking my head. “You couldn’t have at least come and GOT me when Fish leaped out of the tank?” Tweak licked a front paw and ignored me.

“Wait a second… Did YOU have something to do with this???” I yelled and inspected her face for fish scales. Tweak scowled at me like I’d gone insane, and I realized that the cat had no culpability. Tweak has no more interest in Marching Band Fish than she has in a “Dawn of the Dead” movie. I turned back to examine the warp in the morning.

“Dammit, Fish.”

Despite my peculiar sorrow, I had practical matters to consider. I faced the terrible decision of what to do with the body. Do I flush him down the toilet? No, that was ugly. Plus, what if he was too big and clogged everything up? I really didn’t have time to un-stick a fished-up commode. Fish stick. (Stop it!)

In the trash? No, too heartless. Besides, that smell would haunt me. Probably forever. You can’t tuna garbage can. (Seriously, stop it.)

How about outside? I believe in recycling and letting nature do her thang, because certainly worms are better equipped than Febreze at tackling decay, but do I toss him out the front door or out the back? This was not trivial. Out the front and the neighbors might see me and judge me, but out the back and Fish could rot into a mass of fragrant flesh that would summon Bowie-dog like, well, stink on a fish. This decision blew chunks. Solid, white chunks. (You should be put down.)

I was running out of time. I was cranky, uncaffeinated, and getting later for work by the minute. Still undecided, I stomped into the kitchen and grabbed a paper towel to wrap Fish in until I could determine his final resting place, when suddenly he gorped.

What. The. Fish.

I stared. Did his little fish lips just move?? I rubbed my eyes (I literally did this, just like in the movies), and looked down again at his shiny pink body.  It was lifeless. Flat. Still. Maybe the gorp was just gas escaping like in those urban legends where the body suddenly sits up in the morgue and squeals, but it turns out to be just some gastric combustion.

I looked harder, and I saw Fish blink. Or, not blink, exactly, because fish don’t have eyelids but… twitch. His eye twitched. No, his eye SHOUTED. It was like the Whos on Horton’s clover. The tiniest “yop” escaped through Marching Band Fish’s eye.

“No way.”

I picked Fish up by his tail with my bare fingers (paper towel be damned!) and laid him in the tank. He swam, lips-up. No, not “swam.” He kind of bobbed, floating in the water like a Goodyear blimp, but long-ways, his tail pointing down toward the rocks, his face to the ceiling. His eyes bugged out at me, startled about birth. He looked silly. And stupid. And alive. His lips gorped once, then twice.

“No way.”

Cat hair stuck to his sides. He was a Chia fish. His eyes shouted again, and his lips gorped more rapidly. Finally one gill, then both gills flapped, sloughing off cat hair and rug fuzz into a halo of freedom. I sort of wanted to lint-roll him, but I didn’t want to impede his resurrection. After several minutes of bobbing face up like a retarded Vienna sausage, he twisted to right himself, re-orienting to his more normal… fish.

Marching Band Fish has never been a particularly attractive specimen: plain-shaped, nearly colorless, with zero distinguishing marks. Not even a tattoo. He is a child’s drawing of a fish if a child had only the poorly-named “Flesh” crayon. But here he was, swimming lopsided, one fin moving slower than the other like the punch line of a “my foot was nailed to the floor” joke, his crooked body spiraling inside an aurora of cat hair and slime. And at that moment he was beautiful.

“Fish, you magnificent son of a bitch.” The tears ran down my smile.

I had no choice but to go to work and leave him to his tepid physical therapy, but here it is some 15 hours later and Marching Band Fish is still alive. He is swimming straight and sucking rocks and reintroducing himself to the scuba diver on the left every three minutes just like old times. Looking in on Fish just now, I think I saw him grin. Or maybe it was just gas.

 

Erin Waugh — 4 December 2011

 

marching band fish rug

Tolerating Tweak

“Coming Home”

“HI, TWEAK! I’M HOME!!”

I have been away from the house for four days on a hiking vacation. I took the dog and took The Boy, and I left Tweak alone with a clean litter box, a basin of water, and a pie plate overfull of Purina nurdles.

Having all that food and water available meant that: 1) she would not starve, and 2) she had ample opportunity to beef up her body and rally the forces of evil to punish us for crimes against felinity. It’s akin to locking a violent offender in an Outback Steakhouse with a set of free weights.  And then insulting his mother.

“Tweak?”

I carry in my starter luggage and send The Boy out to the car to schlep in the other 60 pieces. (I travel READY. Like an Eagle Scout to milf camp.)

“Tweak?”

Bowie-dog wags her tail and drinks out of Tweak’s water basin.

“Tweak?”

I wasn’t really worried that she would be huddled in a corner somewhere, unless it was on purpose. For a nap, maybe. Or to poise herself for the kill.

But silence is not like her. Tweak’s love language is yelling.

Bowie-dog, still wearing a leash, rattles over to the pie plate and slurps up the cat food nurdles that cling to the edges.

That’s the trigger.

I hear Tweak’s feet thump to the floor from some high place down the hall. And then the sound of running. And possibly the cocking of a rifle.  No, not running – stalking. It’s the rhythmic, rapid acceleration phase right before the cheetah leaps onto the neck of a wildebeest and the cameraman wets himself.

Tweak turns the corner and halts.

Tweak: “Mrow.”

Me: “Hello, Tweak.”

Tweak: “Mrow. Mrow, mrow, mrow.”

Me: “Tweak, I can’t understand you. Use your words.”

Tweak: “WHERE THE DUCK HAVE YOU BEEN??”

Me: “Duck?”

The Boy: “Duck?”

Bowie-dog: “Goose.”

Tweak: “STOP IT! STOP HAVING FUN!”

I kneel down and put my face right in front of her. She closes her eyes. She has the breath of a decomposing piranha, but I don’t pull away.

Tweak: “I hate you guys.”

I lean my forehead into hers.

Me: “But, Tweak, you hated us before we left.”

She boops her forehead into mine, not a sign of forgiveness, exactly, but she’s momentarily forgotten that she’s armed.

Tweak: “I know, but I didn’t have anybody to yell at.”

Me: “Mrow.”

 

7 July 2014, “Tolerating Tweak”

 

tweak light green