Pardon My French

In just two days, my fiance Phil Hornshaw and his best friend Nick Hurwich’s book “So You Created a Wormhole: The Time Traveler’s Guide to Time Travel” will be available to nerds everywhere.

It simultaneously feels like yesterday and decades ago that he first found out that his book was going to be published. This moment has finally arrived and I still am speechless. I’m just so proud and excited.

When I was 8 years old, I drafted my will in the back of my “diary,” a beat up Oakland University composition notebook that I wrote in almost every night before I fell asleep.

I vividly remember sitting up in my top bunk bed, in my Laura Ashley floral pattern themed bedroom, drafting a last testament that involved my parents, sister, a few friends from school, one or two other neighbor kids and all of my prized possessions.

What I most clearly remember is what I assigned for my sister to receive in case of my tragic and untimely demise: My purple Tamagatchi (for those who weren’t a parent or child in the 1990s– this is a hand-held computer pet), my Samantha Parkington American Girl doll (including all of her party dresses and shoes) and my entire, massive collection of “Goosebumps” books.

I’m willing to guess that a psychiatrist would say that my choice reading material that made me such a morbid little kid, but I like to think that I always had a weird fascination with the things that go bump in the night.

One time I actually heard my mom refer to this time in my life my “weird stage”–and I guess that might be, depending upon how you look at it. However, I do think there was something important happening here: I was reading and it was inspiring me to create something of my own. Yes it was a death document, but it was creative, innocent and amusing (at least, to me it is) nonetheless.

“Goosebumps” books were the best because they told stories about kids my own age faced with strange and supernatural situations. My parents would buy these books for me as a treat–if I was off to spend a long weekend up north or if I had done well on my last report card. I would often devour them in a matter of hours and would be left hungry for more.

Once, I came home from a neighbor kid’s house late one night and I was grounded from reading! (I clearly am and have always been a huge nerd.)

I bring all of this up because recently, my sister brought this gem of a photo meme to my attention and that I think it accurately depicts my inner, dorky, fourth grader to a T. I just had to document that it exists.

It’s the little things, like the fact that pączki aren’t readily available to me in Los Angeles on Fat Tuesday, that make me a bit homesick.

Perhaps it makes me a bit naive, but I never realized until after I moved to California that this tradition isn’t really practiced (by immigrants and locals alike) outside of the large cities throughout Midwest.

For the uninitiated, the pączki is a Polish donut. Made from fried dough, filled with fruit preservatives or sweet cream, then topped with powdered sugar or glaze, each pastry contains about 420 calories. The traditional reason for making pączkis is based on Catholic Lent practices: because no sweets cannot be eaten during the 40- period, people would use up all of the eggs, lard, sugar and fruit that they had in the home.

In Hamtramck, there’s an annual parade and two day festival dedicated to the confection. Pączki are so popular all over Metro Detroit (and some other areas throughout Michigan) that local supermarkets carry them. I have memories of people lining up to buy these.

There were a few locally owned Polish bakeries near my house growing up, so my mom would always have them at the house. Usually, she’d pick up an assorted bakers dozen with custard, strawberry, apple, blueberry and raspberry. For some weirdo reason, there would also always be a prune filled one. Because it was impossible to tell which pastry had which filling, it was kind of like playing Russian Roulette. Often, I would be the one to end up accidentally eating the prune one.

This city is a cultural mecca, but for some reason, the Polish are pretty under represented here. It looks like I would have to truck out to Santa Monica if I wanted to indulge myself.

I knew that his death was coming, but that still doesn’t really make things any easier for me.

My mom called me this afternoon to tell me that she and my dad finally had to put down Junior, our family’s pet cat of 14 years. He had an invasive, aggressive and inoperable tumor in his mouth that made life difficult for him. My parents monitored him closely so as to give him the longest life that he deserved. He died peacefully without pain and mom said he behaved as if he knew it was his time to go.

Junior, wearing the tie collar I bought him

When I was last home for a visit, this past November, I noticed that the little guy was missing one of his front canine teeth and had some swelling along his gum line. Later, when my dad took him to the vet, the doctor’s informed him of Junior’s tumor, a fairly common condition in older cats, and gave him a month to live.

During that time, he ate the best of moist cat food, tuna and pate. When he could no longer close his mouth and had difficulty eating, that’s when my parents made the decision to take him in.

Mom and dad are taking him up north to bury him at the family cottage. A friend of my dad’s made him a coffin from wood and each of us wrote a few words of love that he is being buried with. This is my contribution:

To Junior Boy

Childhood meant I had all the time in the world to cultivate meaningful bonds with my pets. The white cats I grew up came when I called their names, slept at my feet at night and left dead chipmunk “presents” on the front porch.

You were never my kitty cat, though.

I was 12 when we brought you home and it was clear from the first few days that we weren’t ever going to be best friends. When I tried to hold you in my arms, you violently squirmed away and slashed my skin with your claws.

When I shared my warm bed with you, you woke me from a sound sleep by piercing the tender parts of my arm with your baby teeth.

I tried to charm you with treats, toys and cans of tuna. It took years before I accepted the fact that you couldn’t be bought and I gave up trying.

Some may say that you belonged to no one in particular, wandering from one neighbor’s yard to the next, and cycling through a rotation of sleeping in front of vents, empty beds and warm laps.

You were my dog’s best friend, my mom’s little boy and you kept my dad company when he would read in his blue recliner.

You were a loyal pet and a key part of our family for 14 years. I’ll miss you, but I’m so happy that you’re no longer suffering. Rest in peace, little man.

Last week the vet put my cat Kiwi on Fluoxetine, or a generic form of Prozac.

They don’t make tiny versions of the drugs for animals. This is the same stuff that people take, only it’s in a much smaller dosage: the vet broke up her pills into smaller pieces.

A few days ago, a Facebook friend from high school joked: “just couldn’t take all the pressure of laying around, eating out of a bowl, and shitting in a box?”

She is a pretty high maintenance little cat, but it is a bit more complicated than that.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that Kiwi had an accident on our love seat. Fearing a urinary tract infection, I took her to the vet right away.

Other than a pretty nasty case of fleas (which she picked up from my friend Jeannette’s cat) the vet found that Kiwi had cat crystals, which are essentially kidney stones in cats. These crystals block her up and hurt her when she tries to pee so she goes where she’s most comfortable: on our furniture.

Believed to be caused by her food–which has high levels of protein in it–I was recommended a more appropriate and rather expensive brand of food. Because she had a negative association with her box, I also had to buy her a new litter box and a new type of litter.

(Also expensive was the 9 months of Frontline, flea powder for carpet and the urine removal cleaner.)

Because I don’t want my little baby to be uncomfortable, I don’t want her to ruin our furniture and I don’t want to stress Phil, I knew I had to do all I could to make this stop immediately.

After two weeks, the accidents started happening again. I took her back in and the lab techs found that she had a whole lot of bacteria in her urine: she was prone to making these crystals.

Two visits later, for a total of three vet visits, the doctor ruled out a whole lot of conditions, leaving Feline Idiopathic Cystitis as the remaining cause for her problem. Kiwi gets stressed out, it irritates her bladder and she makes these crystals.

She’s already pretty skiddish and has been that way since she’s been little–she was taken from her mom too early. It took some process of elimination, but we were able to determine exactly what was causing her so much unrest: the cat who lives across from us, a huge, male tuxedo cat named Achilles is making her anxious. He sits outside atop his carpet covered cat tree, howling, sometimes for hours at a time.

She hasn’t had any accidents since she went on the medication, but the vet said it will take a few weeks to fully have an effect on her.

In the meantime, we’re doing our best to reduce her stress –we got rid of her fleas and we’re keeping the blinds closed when Achilles is outside– and just hoping that that Prozac helps. Keep your fingers crossed, all.