(who has time to cover their nipples when their allergy medicine is swarming with bugs)

One can be a cat lady without owning cats. I obsessively splay the blinds apart with my fingers and check to see if Tyrese is huddled in the alley. Last night he actually laid down to actually rest-- "he's lying down!", I called from the back room-- and today he (or she, I have yet to know for sure) started cleaning himself with his tongue. "He's cleaning himself! Come see!" And why hasn't he eaten all of the Meow Mix that I left out for him? I thought he would like salmon topped with tuna, but perhaps he will prefer the self-labeled "REAL beef!" that I plan to leave out for him tomorrow. He seemed in good spirits today-- this morning I watched him bound across the fallen boards almost as if for fun, a far cry from his hurried slinking attempts to press himself into the concrete so that I will not see him or touch him or, I know he fears, hurt him as I step into the alley, cooing, to leave him water and salmon pate.

I have decided to open a Roth IRA. I am trying to be smarter about my investments. I resent this.

On Saturday we drove 27 minutes to Target and bought two large plastic containers for $2.79 each in which to store all of our dry goods. I transferred soup cans and bags of quinoa into the clear tubs, then reached for my Zyrtec D-- yelped, and dropped it to the kitchen floor. Roaches fled in every direction; even after the exodus there were at least six more in the bottom of the box. I grabbed the newly-dubbed "roach shoe" and got swinging, then plunged the box into a plastic bag, sealed it off, and carried it hurriedly at arm's length out of the apartment building and up the street to the public trash can. The men stared because I was wearing a thin white tshirt without a bra and my too-large skirt was slipping down over my hips. Who has time to cover their nipples when their allergy medicine is swarming with bugs?

I am working to make choices again from a place of hope, not fear. I save the bottle top from his can of beer and glue it onto a magnet which I then stick to the freezer door: Raise hopes not fears.

"Let's make this our house motto and design it into our crest," I say. "You know, like in olden times."