Honey Bear is gone. We returned him today. My mother tap danced on July 2nd and sang, at age 81 years and 361 days, and now must speak only of death and what a bullshit concept it is. I let the cleaning lady go. I got a new job (almost) and began a full-on charm offensive targeting the neighbors, which is a total joy to execute.

All I want to do is chat with people. It is literally all I would do all day if I had my way in careers. That and napping and working on my writing and eating. I would do the chatting in a concentrated way over a one to two-hour blocks. Could I chat it up all day? It’s a question I will ponder.

So this gun-to-my-head-named Maggie is coming round the mountain at us and it is time to make friends, which is my favorite hobby.

Why didn’t I have this knowledge of myself when I was 22?

How did I not know how important friends were? Yes, it’s just another thing to be irritated at my mother about. Why didn’t she say anything about friends and how important they are and how nice you must be to each other? I could have used that info. My mother is so smart and so well intentioned and yet thinks of no one but herself. It is exhausting.

Had I known my hobby was making friends, I could have been doing it in college, say, instead of acting like a horse’s ass. I think I was cute, though, and a little bit funny. Whatever, it would have been nice if she had tried to mold my defensive personality before shipping me off to New York. Which was pretty great, despite the totally raw personality.

Let’s stop the self loathing (fault of my mom) and move on to the tactics

It was so dark and had already been a big night with the PTA parents. I was agitated after being harangued by a guy for a bit and I had not drank a beer, which was a mistake, so I was feeling kind of raw and also I smoked some weed, and then, as one of the most amazing conversatioons of the year just unfolded, my mouth was so dry. Always carry a water bottle, even though they are heavy and horrible.

I told them this very collapsed Daisy bio because the neighbor was questioning every path we took in the school system, a story I regard as very lax on the Wyatt side of the equation. I did not do any prep with him because he didn’t want to do it. On the Daisy side it’s just a wild success thing, so it is pretty interesting. I’ve also started seeing her as very, very smart in a way I hadn’t understood before.

For me, it was a fantastic conversation because I saw Daisy in this whole other way AND we talked about how crazy Maggie is! Double whammy of joy! This new neighbor knew a little bit about her. People know about her and she has been telling tales about us all over town.

Do I need to call the lawyer with this information? I may. Will chat about this with Calvin, who is sometimes a little annoying with my process.

My process is annoying

Sorry! I’m trying to get it less annoying and make fewer mistakes, like adopting (!!) a semi-feral cat. I make these mistakes very consistently—I leap before looking/thinking. Again, I blame my mom. No, I blame the me. This one is mine.

The decision to choose my own comfort over a distressed animal should not be such a charged one. It should not have taken me so long to get there, to get through how embarrassed I would be in front of a pet person. This fear was allayed by my new cat buddy. She was nice to me about how much I wanted to get rid of Honey Bear.

We should always choose ourselves if there is a choice. Like if I had a back field where he could poop and kill birds (nature would be fine in this option of the multiverse), I would have kept him. But if I kept him in situ, I couldn’t have kittens and my house would smell like shit.

It’s like abortion. You can have the baby and be physically hobbled for 9 months and physiologically affected by the experience for the rest of your life, AND be responsible for the baby’s upkeep and happiness and think you can do the best you can, or you can have the baby with all that plus no resources so you and your baby will be financially and physically vulnerable, or you can do all that, plus the first one, at age ten!

I am bad at picking pets. We’re doing the kittens again, and I would be open to a mother and a kitten who love each other very much. New Cat Friend has a lot of kitten access. She is someone who does what she wants all day–she rescues cats. I respect that.