Single By Choice

One of the things that I think goes unaddressed is how failing to fulfill people’s social wishes for you and who you are affects your relationships with others.

Let me enlighten you:

If your friend is avoiding your buddy that you are trying to fix them up with, it may not be because they are secretly in love with them. It may be because your buddy doesn’t have a job and was fired for stealing from his previous job.

It may be that he gets on her nerves.

It may be that he’s has money spending patterns that are not in line with her values and future goals for herself.

It may be that he doesn’t take care of himself in the least, and she isn’t interested in ‘fixing’ him if he is older than say, 25. Because its damn well past time to grow up and use deodorant.

It may be that she is focused on herself in a positive (non-narcissistic) way and she does not have time right now- she is taking classes, focusing on self-betterment, or realigning her own values.

It may be that you need to re-evaluate the friends you think she should be with.

Why are you trying to fix up a friend with accomplishments and goals with someone who has done a stretch in prison? How are you being a good friend to the accomplished person in that situation? Why are you trying to fix up someone who has their act together with someone who in on track to declare bankruptcy at 35? How are you being a friend to the person who has their act together? Do you think that having someone else is so paramount as to void common sense at all costs?

Then you go around telling everyone that she’s probably gay. She isn’t gay. She just is strong enough to know that your friends aren’t going anywhere. They are still waiting tables at 45 because they don’t want to have to pass a drug test. She had a real job at 21. She has been working since she was a teenager. She has 3 degrees. She watches productions of Shakespeare for fun. She isn’t some uptight character from television that can only find love by getting some man to loosen her up. No. She has plenty of fun. ON HER OWN and paid for BY HERSELF and she isn’t about the pay for HIS.

She can’t date at work because it would ruin her level of respect and how people may perceive her. The one who supposedly “slept her way to the top” or “dated her way to the top” or “married up” is always seen with a side-eye. She realizes she has to be appreciated for her work, and that her partner will be a part of how she is perceived in the work environment– he will come to parties and events and in a sometimes very very very classist world, what he does WILL matter in terms of whether she moves ahead and ends up with a decent retirement.

But you aren’t interested in that. You want her to be something you have predicted because it will make you feel good. It will give you something. Something you should be able to give to yourself instead of seeking it out of the social outcomes of a third party.

But the way people perceive you and your life choices and who you choose to be with can affect things without your knowing. I’ve heard comments and conversations about things that people do not realize affected their ability to be taken seriously in the work environment. I’ve been thinking about careers and my own retirement since I was a kid and was aware of people retiring.

I’ll be honest with you: All I have ever wanted to do is retire. I am exceptionally good at filling my own time. I was the firstborn of the youngest kid my grandparents had. I was the baby. The only kid around during my first 3 years of childhood. My mother didn’t trouble herself much with me. When my brother came along, it was a different story. She had to keep him at her side all the time because he was a boy.

As a result, I had to hang out with kids much older than myself. There are tons of photos of me hanging out with teenage cousins. I had a radio when I was very young and listened to pop music all the time. I had leftover makeup samples from Avon when I was 3. I had a sense of independence that was sometimes encouraged and sometimes loathed by my mother: I was supposed to be adult enough to do x and y but not adult enough to think for myself.

I did not relate well to children my own age when I did go to school. I read early, swam early, and just was… early. At the same time, my mother was trying to hold me back into not just childhood, but a childhood that wasn’t at all normal for the 1980’s. She wanted me to want to stay home. She wanted me to not want the cool things. My wanting things like a pair of Nikes or a Levi’s jacket was a fundamental betrayal of something, somehow.

It was hard to relate to other kids. They didn’t understand. It was very hard. And now, I find it is hard to relate to other adults. My parents were giving me dolls at 25 and I had to beg them, absolutely beg them, to stop. But I was doing adult farm work at 13. And I had makeup at 3. And I had a radio of my own by age 5.

At 16, I went on vacation with relatives who were all in their 40’s-60’s. Alone. The only teenager.

To say that I lived in a space of strange contradictions is an understatement.

Sometimes it is still hard for me around people. It is hard to relate to people who didn’t come from my unique set of 80’s era behaviors in the first place. When you add in my own unique blend of inner assessment-making tools of other people, well, it tends to hamper things.

I went on a short vacation recently. A short, cost-effective vacation.

I realized that what that kid me wanted more than anything else was her own space. Her own time. To not worry about relating to anyone. To just be.

I have my own house. I have my own pets. I can do what I see fit now. And that is enough. That, and a sense of financial stability, is all I have ever wanted.

I realize I’m disappointing people by not being the construct they have thrown on me. Whether that is reflective of the need of their friend who just needs a woman to understand his pot addiction, or reflective of their desire for me to really just secretly be in need of the right church, or reflective of their desire for me to be secretly gay. I’m sorry that none of those are true, because I know that there are people out there that would find those things emotionally fulfilling to view on a social media feed. What is the self these days, except the social media performance of the self? What was the self yesterday, except the public performance of the self?

And what do you do with someone who refuses to be a package neatly tied up in a bow by either? A person who refuses to exist in a character’s story arc, instead determining to favor life itself? The messiness and the un-story-ness of it, the reality of work and its class expectations and choosing to navigate a world that encourages so wholeheartedly for women, especially single and childless women, to make stupid decisions about career and money to participate in a character’s story arc?

I’m just living my life. Alone, and extremely grateful, to be where I am at– with no bankruptcies, and with a small, easily-paid-off house. To not have someone else killing my finances or arguing over the bullshit of life.

I don’t want to have to listen to a partner telling me how I should be handling the care of my pets. Or know that he is bitching to his friends about it.

I don’t want to have to listen to his Aunt Becky talk about my neighborhood. Fuck. That. My house will be paid off before I retire. When Aunt Becky is crying of her husband’s new affair and taking out her third mortgage.

I don’t want a man to bitch because I don’t want to blow a gazillion dollars on drinking during our vacation. Some drinks? Fine. All the drinks? NO.

I don’t want a partner’s stuck up relatives. I don’t want his jealous broke relatives. I don’t want mine. Why would I want yours?

I don’t tend to feel lonely. At least not that emotional “need to have someone around” type of lonely. If I do, all I need to do is be in a store and know that other people exist. That is enough for me. I don’t need real connection in the way that other people do. I grew up having to learn to be okay without it.

But I’m also not some broken little person needing a man to rescue my poor wounded heart either. I don’t need to be fixed.

What I need is to retire one day. That is what I NEED.

The Feminine Price Tag

I can’t seem to get off my mind lately how much the things tagged as evidence of femininity are evidence of financial well-being in our society. It is bothering me every minute of the day. I would love to stop thinking about it, but every second it is there again.

My grandmothers both had 7 adult children. Evidence of lots of sex. But I can tell you that as poor rural women in the south, they didn’t wear a lot of cosmetics (one didn’t ever wear any at all, or any perfume due to her religious husband.) They didn’t have pretty, feminine hands. The years of summers without shoes meant that they didn’t have pretty feet. They never had a manicure or a pedicure. They worked in the farms they were raised on and then lived on as married women. The years of exposure to elements and work, helping to butcher hogs and cows and deer, the hot work of canning food, and not having money for any luxuries… it doesn’t invoke a life of glamour. They didn’t “exercise” and my paternal grandmother was always taller and plumper than her husband. In terms of home decor, they made do with whatever they could afford, find, make. My maternal grandparents were exceptionally conservative. My mother was taught that you aren’t “supposed to” shave above your knee. I’m not sure what the mysterious consequence was supposed to be, but that is what she said to me as well when I started shaving sometime around the late 1980’s.

(Note: I didn’t believe her. )

Women are hit with messages so regularly about the things they must hit to be considered acceptable. But a lot of the messages we hear now are quite new. My grandmothers weren’t going to get pedicures or get their lip waxed or eyebrows professionally threaded. These were the women who made do at home. They cut their kids hair and rolled it and set it themselves. A $7 bottle of nicer drugstore body lotion would have been as much a luxury to them as a an expensive handbag is to me. I can buy it, but Lord knows I shouldn’t.

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a cheerleader. I really really did. But the uniforms were particularly expensive at my school and my mother balked at that. She was shocked and angry because when she was in school, the mothers in the community got together to make the cheerleading uniforms. And her mind just couldn’t understand why they would be so expensive. Or why we couldn’t, for example, wear cheap, white canvas shoes instead of the actual athletic shoes that were in the school colors.

There were some local branches of two different southeastern chains of department stores, J.B. White’s being one of them, that had “modeling classes” in our area. Two of my friends participated. It was pretty silly- they had a group of kids that took lessons on walking and turning and did a fashion show a couple times a year. I asked to go as well, but the 45 min drive was just too much and my mother refused for several reasons, one being the cost of the gas to drive. The other, she “needed to be at home” when “dad got home”… not that my father even really cared at all and would have possibly been happier with her out of the house. She was raised in such an ultra-conservative manner that she needed to believe she needed to be present.

A couple of my friends also tried doing pageants. I wanted to do that too. My mother wasn’t wild about that idea and all the work and driving it would represent. It represented work for HER, so I wasn’t allowed to participate. I wasn’t allowed to participate in a number of things because my mother thought it was “too much”– selling girl scout cookies, school fund raisers that would win prizes, etc.

I went to school with a lot of girls my age who didn’t even have what I had. My cousin got a pink room only by default because her parents moved into a house that was already furnished with a room with a pink bedspread and curtains. They weren’t about to pay to get new stuff. Her previous room had been an amalgamation of whatever they could find.

For the 80’s and early 90’s, was woman-ing wrong, and I wanted badly to do a different group of things, but I had no options. I had to go with what I could do and make the best of it.

And I suppose I still am.

The pedicures, the manicures, the hair salons, the waxing, the perfect homes… how far is the needle going to go? Am I woman-ing wrong for doing my own yardwork because I can’t afford to hire a yard service? Am I woman-ing wrong by being financially literate? Am I woman-ing wrong by doing my own hair, my own mani-pedi’s? Am I woman-ing wrong by making practical choices instead of impractical ones? Am I woman-ing wrong if I choose to use Ivory bar soap instead of something like Calypso Lime Explosion Body Gel Mousse– the kind of product that didn’t even exist in most stores in the US until the 90’s? My great-grandmother made her own lye soap. Was she woman-ing wrong?

The best analogy I can use is this: I used to live in a world where women were wore pantyhose- you can easily fake smooth legs in them. The fashion expectation in recent years, Kate Middleton notwithstanding, has turned into the expectation that your legs are always perfect enough to be shown without pantyhose. The expectation is that your legs are always smooth, hair-free and ready to be presented to the public without the slightest covering. It becomes almost implicit that you are expected to be able to afford regular waxing, or at the very least, the type of razors that don’t come 12-to-a-pack for $1.50.

The women you know, the women you see every day, the ones you think of as being “unfeminine” may not be that way by choice. They may not have the resources to have developed into the kind of woman that is seen as “correct” in the current climate. They may not have the resources now to maintain what is demanded as “proof” of playing the game the “right” way. They may have been raised in a very different socioeconomic circumstance. They may live in a circumstance that requires them to have a different approach to womanhood.

Reading things into Things

I read an article recently (Good Housekeeping, no less) citing that Kate Middleton’s re-wearing of a certain hat was a “nod” to Meghan Markle.

And I couldn’t help but think–Is it really? Or is it just a lady who likes a hat wearing a hat again?

It’s a lot of meaning to read into wearing a hat more than once.

This was after extra super tons of meaning was read into several other remarkably ordinary celebrity incidents in the same week. The near-nothing made into something newsworthy via a handful of speculative twitter comments and someone in the “entertainment” area of media picking up the story.

Why is all this so common these days?

If Doris Day wore the same hat twice in 1963, no one would have taken the time to give it a second thought.

I am not in any way a celebrity. In fact, in many circles I’m quite unpopular. However, I have had similar things happen to me. Small things trumped up with meaning that doesn’t exist. Blanks filled in without my awareness or knowledge and verbalized as truth based on the barest blush of “evidence.”

I have always wondered- why don’t people just ask? If you know someone well enough for them to take up that much space in your head, why don’t you just ask them? Is asking so hard, or is it just less fun? Is the extending of possible dramatic tension necessary?

Is the fact that the truth is often not salacious the very thing that keeps people from asking the question? Are they avoiding the let-down of something like finding out that you are in the grocery store to buy groceries instead of your purchase of grapes meaning that you are in support of a union of winegrowers that no one has heard of?

You could say a lot about all of this: Markle or our obsession with celebrity or people’s lack better things to do with their time and a general lack of communication skills, modern erosion of manners, and every little thing being seen as action instead of the downright inaction that it may be.

What if Kate Middleton wore the hat because she selected another hat and the kids got chocolate on it and this was the backup? But she felt no obligation to share this because, it really is no one’s business if her kid got chocolate on a hat?

What if she just opened her closet, and said, “hmm. Yeah. This matches.”?

You may be wandering all over downtown looking to hook up. But you might be bored and wishing your town had an amusement park and wondering why it doesn’t because really, roller coasters are totally more your thing. You may be wishing more activities were open and freely available to all and that gyms weren’t such an inconvenient luxury because none of them are close enough to where you live to be economical and you can’t picture yourself using the work gym because no one wants to see their boss in lycra.

You may have bad taste in furniture and a lame car because you are without good taste, but it COULD be that you simply don’t have the funds for more plush surroundings that would actually suit your taste.

I never buy thick comforters or duvets. I am style-aware to know that is the “correct” choice of the day. But I don’t care. I always buy a quilt set that I can pop in the regular washing machine. I have pets. The cleaning bill would quickly become outrageous and I would be waiting on the item to be returned from the laundromat more often than not. My point: sometimes pure practicality can be a reason and that is okay. It shouldn’t be a point of “meaning”. I have bought things because they were on sale and appeared to be durable rather than being a color I particularly preferred. Previous generations would have applauded these choices. My bank account certainly did.

But who is to say, upon observing a person, what the “meaning” of their action might be? And why do people tend to jump to the most opaque conclusion rather than the other myriad of possibilities?

And quite frankly, if you jump that easily, who is to say you can’t be just as easily manipulated by these small occurrences?

In discussing celebrity blips that likely mean next to nothing, you can’t ignore the fact that in each incidence, there was a price tag on all the hubbub—the person got clicks. Notice. Attention. When attention is a commodity, getting attention is the same as selling goodwill, albums, and movies. So that small nothing could be easily a piece of the game sent out there for the hounds to sniff at before being told it was nothing.

That nothing is a wooden duck decoy, and it is being used to bait and train you.

The other issue that I have with all of this is a bit more pointed toward the future. When people have nothing better to do, and older people (as freaking adults) normalize reading things into every little thing – especially when there is a community of them that is influential over young minds—you start creating a younger generation that fails to demand evidence in relationships, or thinks that everything boils down to these miniactions instead of actual action. You teach people to rely on these minor whatevers instead of taking the chance to pose the questions, ask for truth, discuss where the relationship is heading and tackle the hard part of building a relationship like an adult. Believing someone is x, y, or z because they wore a yellow scarf on Tuesday is much, much easier than developing the willingness to ask the hard questions directly from the person involved. It is easier to see the world in the language of what you **hope so badly** are symbolic gestures rather than asking a question and getting an honest, yet, ultimately, less psychologically juicy answer.

Review Culture

When I was a kid, we would get in the car and go. On road trips and vacations, We would stop wherever we stopped for food, and we would just do whatever we saw that struck our fancy. We didn’t rely on reviews. We didn’t rely on advice. We didn’t care about the number of stars for our hotel. We didn’t care if someone else didn’t like something, as long as we did. As long as it was good enough. It didn’t have to be perfect. We didn’t dissect our meal experiences. Many of the meals we ate bumbling through South Georgia to Florida and up through the mountains were at the kind of sketchy, run-down barbecue joints and fish shacks that wouldn’t register an ounce of glitter, much less a star. In fact, one of my most memorable moments on vacation was when we went to Washington, DC and we were between two different attractions. Instead of fighting to move the car and find another parking space again, my parents decided to eat a hot dog from a street vendor. It was a cool story to tell our friends back home about– standing on a busy street in DC having a hot dog for lunch.

We wouldn’t have had those experiences if we read reviews and relied on other people’s experiences to determine what our experiences would be.

I eat at uncool places all the time. Sometimes, I make a point of it.

In the end, does it really matter that much, as long as you get fed?

I started noticing something about 7-8 years ago. I had a friend at the time who would not go anywhere without reading Yelp reviews first. She wouldn’t let our friend group just go and eat at some random restaurant just because it was there and we were there. No…. no… she had to review restaurants beforehand and determine which ones were acceptable.

I find that kind of need for external guidance really annoying. I can assess restaurants, choose one on my own, and just.. you know… eat there. I don’t need the guiding hand of the internet reviewers to help me out.

What would you do if you were in the middle of nowhere and the only restaurant to eat at had a negative review? What if you ate there and it turned out to be outstanding? What if that negative person just was a crappy person? Reviews don’t consider the variation in human perception of an experience.

Consider this: There are people in my life who I never take advice from. In fact, I tend to endeavor to do the opposite. What if similar people are out there writing reviews? How would you know the difference?

The amount of paid reviews on the internet for goods and services that have come to light in the past couple of years is no surprise to me. It was bound to happen. From the beginning, I gave a lot of side-eye to my yelp-loving-enough-to-have-its-babies friend, because I thought it was kind of stupid to believe random people on the internet. Especially since we live in an age where damn near everything isn’t good enough unless it is a fully perfect experience all the time.

Why do people care so much about other people’s reviews? Is it about living through the permission of someone else to enjoy an experience?

When I went on my trip last year, someone wanted to tell me the places I “have” to go in Chicago. My thought was “I don’t have to go anywhere.” I have been on oddball vacations where I did nothing that was part of the usual script, but it didn’t remove the fact that I had a vacation in that town or state. Why do I need to check of your particular list to validate the worth of my trip?

The things you like– the restaurants, the hotels, the clothes, the decor– do not have to be filtered through what other people like in order to be valid for you.

To be perfectly honest, I have written only a few online reviews for things. I posted a review for a pair of boots sold by a major department store chain, and I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 and explained why. The remark got removed for violating something. I didn’t say anything truly negative. I commented on the fit of the boot. That was all.

You don’t know if what you are reading is real with any review, anywhere. Reviews are the modern hall of mirrors- distorted, cheaply framed, stretched and lumpy all at once, and far too many of them. Star ratings for hotels are all but pointless.

Look deep and ask yourself: how much of this experience is the experience, and how much of it is my determination to enjoy my experience? What is the absolute worst thing that can happen if you don’t enjoy a restaurant (barring actual safety issues)? You have a story about a restaurant you don’t want to go to again. That’s all. Something to laugh at later that evening.

You may be missing out on something great, something real. You never know.

HGTV and the Perfect Home

What does your bedroom say about you?

Think about how odd that statement would sound to someone scraping to get by. Someone who couldn’t afford minimalist chic but instead was living in minimalist poverty.

My childhood home didn’t change much in the 18 years I lived there. There was an addition in my early teens to create a separate den and a porch, but those additions were created by my father and blended in with the 70’s decor that was already 20 years out of style.

We are flooded all the time with the perhaps shockingly strong influence of a channel based on home and garden decor. You see the stars of these renovation shows licensing products in big box stores. The styles they promote become what is considered necessary and “good taste” among a certain set. It all dovetails into the current bunch of Youtube and Instagram “influencers” who are surrounded by just the right thing on the wall and the completely right bed linens. It is existence as permitted by tastemakers who are all exhibiting nearly the same things all the time because someone said it was in “good taste,” or “the way you are supposed to do” interior design.

We live in an approval culture.

The only time in my 18 years of growing up that I was allowed to pick anything in my room came when I was about 14 or 15. I was allowed to pick my own bedspread and curtains. This only happened because my mother finally agreed that I had outgrown my Hollie Hobbie knock-off blanket that I had been using for years. It has started off life as a sleeping bag. Even then, the set I chose was purchased by my aunt, as a birthday gift for me. My mother would have been happy to let me sleep in fake Hollie Hobbie until I was 118 and would have probably made me take it to college.

When I did choose something new for my bedroom, I got something that was a little offbeat and a little different. I didn’t worry about it being like the photos in a home decor magazine. Nothing like that was ever on the mind of anyone I knew.

Now, it seems that home decor is everywhere. As ubiquitous as showing heroin-thin models, the images of home decor as personal achievement are everywhere, seeking to show us what we could become, if only we would embrace the perfect rules of how to decorate that are fixed forever until two years from now when they will change and another person will scold us about our bad taste and implore us to invest in another color palette, fabric, or finish. Someone will come on television and dictate to the audience “you CAN pair orange with red IF.. ” when the fact is, no one was coming into your home to stop you from doing it in the first place. You could always have paired orange with red. It is your damn house. Do what you want. The Interior Design Police do not exist.

Why are people listening to these designers? There have been more articles than I could name discussing the impracticality of a number of the design choices that are consistently made. There are more learned people than I who have verbally beaten down the unsaleable aspects of homes with various design elements and the annoying blank repetition of themes.

Can any of us just buy a bedspread? Do we need the certified approval of a Gaines or some 23-year-old with a “following”?

Today, I did what I did when I was a teen. I went online, and I bought a bedspread, and matching shams and curtains that coordinated. I just bought what I liked and what was in my budget, safe in the knowledge that a home decor inspector general is not likely to appear at my door to arrest me for imperfect taste.

I went to Hippie Fest. It was lame.

I have been feeling of late the need to escape out of the Augusta mentality and into a different zone. Because my family has gone different directions over the Easter Weekend, I found myself with nothing to do and a pile of “Get out of this city” building up inside my head.

Apparently there is a group? company? something? that puts together several Hippie Fests in the country and calls it a “tour.” One of the stops happens to be in Cayce, SC, about an hour from my home. While I winced at the idea of a trademarked hippie anything, and winced again at the idea of paying a $10 cover to get into something called a hippie anything…. I sucked it up and decided that might be just the thing to get my head in a different zone. I looked a photos online and it looked kind of hokey but also kind of fun. It promised music and crafts. While I don’t buy crafts at craft fairs (more on that later), I do go there and look for inspiration for new ideas. I did stop a moment at the words “family friendly.”

Augusta is full of yuppies and wannabes. My career puts me constantly in the middle of knowing all about the trials and tribulations of those who have no idea how to iron pants on their own.

Like I said, it has been getting to me, and I needed to get in a different mental space. I wanted to mix with new people. People with a different value set.

The hours for the Hippie Fest event was 12-7. I figured that the worst-case scenario would be that I would just go, eat some granola, look at crafts and enjoy some cover bands while I walked around.

In reality, after getting there, I had to pay another 5 dollars for a
“drinking” arm band, in the event I decided to consume alcohol. So that is $15.00 already down the drain… for a “Hippie Fest.” I went in and there were only a few paltry food vendors, all offering standard festival food: corn dogs, gyros, funnel cake. No chance of any granola hippie vegan stuff here. Not a bit. I gave up, settled on some fries and an extremely watered-down 5 dollar Coke. I didn’t see any alcohol anywhere.

I saw the incoming people. Many were dressed in Halloween costume hippie garb. I am always extremely conscious of looking like I am “trying too hard,” – such that I avoided wearing either tie-dyed shirt I own.

I shouldn’t have worried. But given what I saw, I am also, once again, thankful for this particular tendency of mine.

I did enjoy seeing the VW vans. They have a special place in my heart– my father’s dead Vanagon, parked in our yard, was my first outdoor playhouse. I have gone through occasional bouts of wanting one of my own.

The music playing on the loudspeakers was great.

The layout was orderly.

The craft booths were mostly fairly predictable. For the most part, the kind of “crafts” that someone assembled quickly out of stuff widely available at any Michael’s or Hobby Lobby. Nothing new or exciting, really. The occasional goat milk soap (the base for this is also available at Michael’s, no goat ownership necessary, FYI.) As with all craft fairs, my skepticism was on high alert. Many, many of these events I have been to involve at least a few booths full of people who have “made” things that have suspiciously professional tags or the plastic pull-through type tag attacher from a retail store, or a forgotten “made in China” or “inspector 12” sticker somewhere on the merchandise. I did see some of that. I specifically saw hammocks that I saw on the clearance rack at Walmart last year for $5.00 being sold at the event for $15.00. I also saw a suspiciously well-boxed Chindi rugs for $20.00 each, which made me pause (stay with me, I’ll get back to this.)

With nothing in hand and no real new inspiration, I finally managed to end up near the stage. And I saw the one alcohol purveyor’s booth. I decided I would wait- the sky was clouding up quite a bit.

There was a man on stage. He was… ranting. Something something about Native American spiritual beliefs that I know enough to know was bullshit. And worse, he called himself a Native American. Apparently, he made the rain gods mad. Because that was about when it started to rain, really really rain.

I gave up and headed to my car. I could find no inspiration, no new people, and heck, not even a morsel of granola at this Hippie Fest. The Hippie part of it was just another marketing ploy. Another modern even that makes for exciting Instagram photos but is ultimately toothless and without substance, the appearance of rebelhood without depth or self-awareness.

On the way back home, I attempted to salvage the trip by making my grocery stop. There, at Aldi’s, I happened across the rugs. The Chindi rugs with the green professional tag, in the green professional store display box.

They were $4.99.

Veterinary Frustrations

I haven’t googled this, but I cannot imagine I am the only person who feels this way.

I hate hate hate going to a veterinarian with my cats. I have two cats. I have seen upward of 10 different veterinarians (most cycling through the big practice I have been going to – the partnerships seem to change every few year.) The treatment I seem to get and the conversations I have … frequently make me feel like I’m talking to an alien from outer space. An alien that doesn’t understand either cat or human ways.

I get stressed about it every time now because of these repeat incidents of crazy.

To begin, let me say that when I was a kid, we never ever made appointments to see the veterinarian. We just went. Everyone was just a walk-in. And everyone, nearly, went on Saturday. Because you work all week. When else could you go? Unless you were a farmer or a housewife, you went on Saturday. Everyone just did.

The larger vet practice (a certified animal hospital) I have been going to only has a half-day on Saturday, they discourage walk ins at any time, and prefer to give you an appointment time during the week. So you have to look your boss in the eye and tell them you need time off to take your cat to the vet’s office. And while some bosses might be sympathetic, not all of them are. Some workplaces have strict rules about how you can take time off (including “vacation”), and the reasons that might be acceptable. We are all working harder all the time and taking less time off, and are frequently discouraged in work culture from taking time off (even if the public face of our organizations says otherwise.)

I’m saying that going to the vet’s office on a random Tuesday at 9 a.m. is a hard ask for just about anyone with a job. Probably more so for single people where they are the only means of support for themselves and the pet, a population that is going to keep growing in the US as time progresses.

Years ago, when I first got my cats, I asked for a recommendation for a veterinarian from a friend who also had cats. While there were few vet offices near me, I wanted to take the time to do some checking first. She recommended the office nearest me, which is where she went. At that time, this office was also known for wild animal rehab, and thus has a glowing local reputation. And best of all, they were open on Saturdays, which would make things more convenient.

I took one of them in with the intention of taking the others in when I had the funds to do so. In the meantime, I needed flea treatment for all of them (I had 3 at that point, one of which has passed on since that time). I was very clear at the appointment that I had 3 cats. I was very clear that I would be using the flea treatment on all three cats. I was totally up front about it. Then, in a few months I asked for a refill on the flea medication and was told, “It is clear you are using this on all three of your cats. We can’t continue to give this to you… ” DUDE. I TOLD you I was going to do this and the veterinarian all but signed off on this plan. This has been discussed. Someone should have written it down clearly, but YES, we TALKED ABOUT THIS.

Fast forward a number of years later. Things have gone more or less smoothly. There are occasional eye rolls and whatever, but you must keep in mind– this is the only veterinarian near my house. The others are mostly clustered around the wealthier part of town. And I had been there for a few years now.

Over the years I have seen these folks rehabilitate squirrels, save turtles with a cracked shell, and so forth. All excellent works.

However, about 2 years ago, I found a kitten that had been hit by a car and was clearly in a great deal of pain. I took this kitten in, and was told by the desk clerk that they “don’t treat strays.” WHAT? Squirrels, yes? But not a stray cat? Not brought in by someone who is a repeat customer???? For years now??? Not someone who (at this point) had the resources to pay for its treatment or, if necessary, euthanasia?

WHAT?????

I wanted to punch that smug looking woman so badly. I ended up taking the kitten to the local animal shelter which was another 20-30 minutes on the road, and the kitten died on the way– unnecessary suffering that they could have lessened.

And I WOULD HAVE PAID FOR IT. AND THEY HAVE REHABILITATED SQUIRRELS.

What the ever lovin’ fuck?

Well, that began my true start down the road of leaving this particular vet office. Although I still really wasn’t 100% ready to go. My cats were still on the same flea meds. And, they were healthy and happy most of the time. Since I obtained my flea meds there, I ended up spending plenty of my hard -earned money at that particular office. Finding another vet is intimidating.

There have always been little incidents that would bother me. For instance, when I would call, and they would bring up my name on the screen and point-blank ask me what my cat weighs. You … should… have that on the screen you brought up with my patient information, right??? Am I crazy for thinking that??? I seriously DO NOT have a cat scale at my home. Nor do I know a single cat owner that does. I can’t tell you how much they weigh at this particular point in time. I can tell you what they weighed the last time there were there, WHICH YOU CAN ALSO TELL RIGHT THERE ON YOUR LITTLE SCREEN.

The overall attitude of that particular big vet practice has declined in the past 2-3 years. First of all, the stray-denying receptionist is purely awful. I don’t know when they hired her exactly, but she’s the worst. She always looks down her nose at you, even when she is sitting down and you are standing up. I’m sure she talks about people while she knits at home.

There was an incident about 6 months ago when one of my cats was sick. I took him to be seen. I asked if we could go ahead and do his annual visit then. I was told no. I was told I could do it during his recheck in one month. I came in as scheduled. I had to insist that they do all the annual visit items so I would not have to make YET ANOTHER APPOINTMENT. What on earth could it possibly hurt for them to go ahead and finish it up on the same day WHEN THAT WAS THE PLAN WE HAD DISCUSSED? Do these folks have a note taking and communication problem? Do they need a class in shorthand? I don’t know.

My poor cat has been overlicking, an issue I have brought up with the big practice vet practice already, and they didn’t seem to give it more than a passing thought. They examined him but somehow didn’t even notice and I had to point it out and ask. (Much observant, such good eyeballs…)

This has been going on for some time. We have changed flea meds. That helped, briefly. But at this point, the flea meds seem to only work for about 2 weeks after application.

My cat is miserable and I, at my wits end, went to a new vet.

He was a super nice guy. I will say that. It was the kind of no-frills vet office I remember from my youth. He is only open 2 hours on Saturday morning – but as one of the few who are open on Saturdays at all, I was grateful that he let me be a walk in.

We talked quite a bit about my cat’s issues, and he looked carefully at the bare skin and the bump on his lip. He brought up an issue I had previously considered (but was told by big practice vet was not a thing to worry about) that the fleas in my area are getting immune to the flea treatment I had been using for years.

He treated my cat with a different topical solution- the kind that you put on the spine- and gave him a shot to help with the itching. And it was a positive experience.

He mentioned in the visit that with some OTC flea meds, that some animals do react badly and he had seen animals come in to his office foaming at the mouth.

When I got home, my cat begged for food. After he ate… He started foaming at the mouth.

I called him back and spoke with his receptionist.

“Nothing we gave your cat should have caused that.”

And then the question- which boggles my mind and hurts my brain:

“Does your cat usually do that after a car ride?”
Wait…..WHAT? Are there animals that foam at the mouth after a car ride? Is this a thing? I really don’t think it is. There is nothing inherent about cars that causes mouth foaming. Vehicular rabies doesn’t exist.

Finally after some more conversation over the cat’s behavior and symptoms:
“He probably licked it off his back in the car and that is why he’s having the slight foaming… ”

SO…. Let me get this straight:

I bring in a cat with an overlicking problem. So much so that his inner leg is bare. And you give him … Flea treatment he shouldn’t lick? And put him right back in the carrier without a cone on his head?

I’m just ….
amazed. Completely, completely amazed.

The cat is fine. And that is good.

So I can stick with this guy, or keep looking. Every vet office seems to have its quirks, and none of them feel, at least to me, like they are really getting it right. If they are, they have probably moved to the more expensive part of town. That leaves those of us who don’t live in Mcmansions without a lot of resources, and stuck with the vets we do have, which makes good pet care a stressful, tooth-gnashing experience.

You cannot in one moment exhort people with notions about what they SHOULD do, what is right and proper, and then make it so enormously impractical that they cannot do it. What would I have done if I didn’t have a car to drive to this vet practice, 20 minutes from my home?

Would have I gone to the same vet, insisted on being seen, and then been ignored, followed by being scolded for the same issue I brought up previously?

This isn’t helping anyone. I don’t know if the issue is part and parcel of the town I live in- where everyone seems very convinced of their own specialness, regardless of age. Whether its a vet or a hairdresser or a PTA mom, they are VeRy ImPoRtAnT and you should want to fight through hell and high water to see them and give them your money.

Its a special kind of shittiness and snobbery.

It is a part of life that is wearing me out. And I simply cannot be the only one.