The Art of the Deal

It’s 9am on Tuesday and I get five minutes to do this blog. That’s the deal. I didn’t write last week cause it was a hell of a week and I trusted neither my wits nor my civility to do anyone or anything justice. So here I am, 5 days late with five minutes on the clock and that’s just one of the new deals I’ve made with myself today. I’ve been cutting deals all week and some have gone well, others have gone poorly and others have taught me that you really can’t bargain with an 8 month old or a dying cat and to try sidesteps the facts of a rich life, even when you’d rather.

Okay, yeah, so after the rest of the shit that happened last week that I’ll eventually get around to euphemizing, my 19-year-old cat, my friend and companion from my adolescence to my maturity, through four states, three degrees, countless boyfriend and two husbands finally got too sick this weekend. He had been pacing the house and howling for a couple of days so I took him to the vet and got a prognosis of growths in the jaw that were preventing him from eating. It wasn’t going to get any better and he wasn’t probably going to survive surgery at his age, weight and condition, so the only humane thing to do was to give the poor faithful animal to his peace. Even knowing it was the right and honorable thing to do, it sucked. I cried and the vet was very kind and respectful, but I felt like a ten-year-old again, snuffling and petting his head. He looked godawful, too: skinny, hairless, snaggle-toothed and unwashed. Even his fleas left him. Sad state of affairs for such a magnificent animal to come to that. Especially after the death of The Fish, I was just bereft. Now I keep thinking that I’m seeing cats underfoot, but it will be a sweater thrown on a chair, or a trick of the light or my own black socks.

This came hard after a weeklong negotiation for time. I think this must be the purview of new parents – you always have to negotiate for time. I traded dishes and laundry back for two hours a day. It might not sound like a good deal, but my brains are mush by the end of the week. I can do dishes and laundry; I can’t grade or hold much of a sustained thought (and grading essays – even the Freshman variety – requires sustained thought). So far, it feels like a good trade. We traded our family friend, the Nanny, a dollar an hour raise for Fridays. If I can get through this week and next, I might live. Hopefully, I’ll be saner than when I began. Sanity is worth an extra dollar an hour and laundry on weekends, believe me.

And this year we’re doing those terribly suburban Christmas cards with the photo of the family on them. It took a couple of hours yesterday to take a bunch of photos with our friend the photographer (but we all had a glass of wine and it was fun). Those hours, too, will save me a great deal of time when I go to do Christmas cards this year and don’t have to inscribe each with these long scrawling letters written in haste promising a better letter. We haven’t descended to the family letter yet, but might have to, just to fulfill my desire for written correspondence over the holidays. I can hear Papa Zook’s vehement objection already, nonetheless, as soon as I get the mail merge sorted out on the computer, days of Christmas cards will be reduced to hours. Because that’s another part of the deal – starting Christmas in November so that I can have a decent December. The shopping is more fun when it doesn’t resemble a Battan Death March with a Visa and a travel schedule that looks like Bob Hope on a bender.

So we’ll plunge into the holiday season with more time to experience it with Connor. The Grinch he loved, but it kept him up a little late, which was fine because he slept late. In fact, we’ve been folding real food into his baby cereal lately: little bits of roast chicken and potato, asparagus, broccoli, carrots. Yesterday, I mashed up some stir-fry and fed him nearly a half-cup of food before his eyes glazed over and he started in on the Banana Mango Surprise. He slept again last night, all night. I awakened to the sound of my alarm clock, which has been really only an extended snooze button for 8 months. So his dinners have gotten more substantial and so has my sleep. A nice tradeoff, I think.

It’s all just in the art of the deal.