Soldiers in Vietnam had "fire in the hole," and paramedics have "code blue," but when the siren goes off in my life, we have a crier. This has the same sort of urgency as the first two, because one crying person can make the entire group fall apart into their own individual vicissitudes in about five seconds. And it happens a few times a day. Now I can count the times I've cried all day in the last ten years on one hand (and could even if two fingers and a thumb were chopped off), and I think that I cry more now than I did as a little girl, so all of this is a strange and alien experience.
This afternoon we had a reprise of the crisis from this morning. K loves food, but (or perhaps I should say "because of this") her mother has put her on a diet (actually, the entire house is dieting). So now when the litany of foods starts, the response tends to be "that's fattening" (rather than "my favorite"). Unfortunately, whenever the syllable "fat" is said in J's presence (as it frequently is, since J and K live in the same house), J thinks that she has been called fat, and begins to cry and glower. If this is allowed to continue, K will lose patience with J and give her something to really cry about. As it happens, J takes an active interest in her own diet (J's figure would make Tweedledum proud, and she accentuates the effect by rubbing "mah bellay" and quiring her immortal soul after her stomach's health) but the response she likes is not "that's fattening" but rather "we're trying to take care of you."
I've been musing on the qualities which make a song a hit in The Party Bus. Tonight the gang was getting down to "I Will Survive" with a touching faith in my driving skills as we careened through mid-New Jersey. We had just shouted alleluia to the heavens along with The Weather Girls, and the niggling familiarity of the selection finally clicked: any song best delivered by a drag queen will be a hit here.
The house cat is pretty sick and possibly running through her ninth life, so we're asking people not to pick her up. One of the guys, S, came over to visit, and insisted on picking her up, swearing that all she needed was a hug. When I finally disengaged the poor cat, S's shirt bore the evidence of the cat's (or her bowels') feelings on the subject. He was so shocked and hurt at the cat's treatment that I managed to hold in all forms of "I told you so," but risked serious internal injury doing so.
When I first got here, I played Bingo with the gang. When M won a game, J (her roommate) told her roguishly, "I'm going to tickle your foot tonight!" The next day I asked M if J had tickled her foot, and they both collapsed in giggles. "Yes!"
