They are all kind of hard to start but this one is trickier. Maggie is busy being crazy more loudly than before. Today she was in front of the house playing music when Calvin and I came home from exercising. She did not look at us.

This last Sunday Calvin went outside (yard work or yard checking) and Maggie was there swanning about. I know I use that phrase a lot but it fits so well. She said to Calvin, “DGA in your dreams!” This refers to the Directors Guild, which Calvin belongs to and Maggie used to be. I’m restraining myself from saying she worked as an Assistant Director, which is a Guild position. Calvin has also worked as an AD, but a while ago.

It would be tacky to stoop to intra-Directors Guild snobbery, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, we get our health insurance through the DGA, and that’s a big deal. I don’t know what she meant by “in your dreams,” but I think it’s part of the “Calvin is a loser poser TV person” narrative that she enjoys so much.

Calvin responded with, “How’s the family?” which was masterful! Masterful!

She reported us to the city for violating the building code

We didn’t. We bought the house like that. Her house is the same way. It’s so not up to code. Barely anyone on the block is—welcome to Queens.

But we will be fined and we will have to hire an architect and submit blueprints and pay thousands of dollars. Which we think we will have but the WGA is on strike and that is a big dampener on work. So there is worry.

And we have to find a new lawyer. Ours sucks.

I haven’t fretted over Maggie in a long time and it feels crapola

Also I’m telling people again about it, and that is very tiring. I’m making annoying phone calls and will disclose to my work that something things get very weird around me. Like sometimes cops come in or I have to take time off to go to city buildings.

There are so many echoes of past summers flying past me. Like the spring crackup followed up cleanup and phone calls and weird sleep patterns. Or of last summer, when Calvin and I were both underemployed and had to work very hard to get along and not turn on each other. Or just spring, when you have to go outside and chat with a lot of people and try not to freak out before hand or say something stupid to someone.

Complaining over. Things are fine.

I truly think things are actually fine. The cats are thriving. Venus patrols the house making sure we know she’s there, cracking the whip. You go into the bedroom and there’s no cat. You look away from the bed, look back, and there Venus is, stretched out like Kate Winslet in the Titanic when she said that cringy thing about French girls (the kids yelped when they saw that scene), like she’d been there forever. She’s just hanging out in every room you are in.

Cleopatra is a different type of cat. As I’ve mentioned before, she’s a flopper. She flings herself on me, and then kinds of flops around and then falls off. It’s not that relaxing for me and it’s can’t be relaxing for her. I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t know what she wants from me. I pet her and she’s not that excited about it.

I don’t really know the right pets for the cats

I hope that isn’t a failure. Venus likes her head scratched and then gets sick of it. She also flops but is mostly in charge of her body. She brings her blasted pink ball onto our bed and then plays with it on top of us. Then I confiscate the ball and stash it under my pillow, so she brings Pink Feather (No Stick) on the bed, until I kick her out at 4 AM.

They are teenagers, these cats.

Working on my executive skills

I’m listening to this book, Disney War, which is the most relaxing type of book you can read. The worst outcome is that Michael Eisner will make someone feel so worthless that they will quit and have to fight for their $100 million dollar payout. I’m sure there are worse things to come, but I totes ignored this entire saga as it happened (every though I WORKED FOR DISNEY for a year), so it’s all a surprise to me. (I skipped those articles in the New Yorker. Anything by Ken Auletta I just breezed past).

Wyatt knows a lot about this. I learned this when we talked last night about his class. It’s a World History class and they have the exam so he’s watching study guides on YouTube. That’s not cheating, right?

I have no history education, except what I gleaned from podcasts and books. Talking to Wyatt about what he’s learning, which seems like pretty decent information, I get so jealous and kind of competitive. He know a lot about Ghengis Khan and how their tolerance of others meant they were at the mercy of dogmatic, fascistic colonizers.

I still remember how shocked I was when I understood the Catholic Church stepped into the Roman Empire’s skeleton and drove it. I didn’t get that they were connected. I had no framework. We learned magical history in western Colorado. We memorized the names of counties of Colorado. My social studies teacher told us that the atomic bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were good ideas and effective military strategy.

I’m jealous of the kids’ education and I try to compete with them sometimes, but mostly it’s very informative.

I could read history rather than being jealous of my children, but I’m busy listening to a 25-hour book about politics at the Disney corporation.

I think I’m trying to get executive tips from this book, so I’ll be a better PTA president and have better phone calls. I made someone cry a few days ago. I didn’t mean to. I think I spoke too sternly but not enough to be mean, so I was freaked out when she started crying. I know when I’m mean and I wasn’t mean.

That’s the benefit of having been mean–you know the mechanism of delivery

So Michael Eisner was a creep. He lied, he was very threatened by other men, and thank goodness I don’t think he was a groper. The drama is all in the mens’ friendships. But he was apparently a great manager, mostly. Until he knifed you in the face.

I’m trying to get management tips from this guy. I also would enjoy a house in Aspen. Why would he turn on Katzenberg the way he did? I do nap through some of the book sometimes, so I do miss things, but it’s mostly a joy and a great escape from the scary world.

I do think Eisner would have texted a “are you okay” to someone he made cry if he thought there was an issue, as I did.