Taylor is a weird cat. Always has been. He's strangely anti-social, but then will hang out in a room and stare at everyone. He likes to eat carpeting, wool, and thick blanketing. He doesn't like to eat food if someone's watching him. He waits until everyone goes to bed before settling into his bowl. I'm used to all of this as part of Taylor's weird way of life.

But he's started licking his "elbows," for lack of a better word, to the point that he's causing sores, and the fur has rubbed away. I took him to the vet, who diagnosed him with OCD.

This was the day before the honeymoon, so poor Dan had to follow Taylor around and spray bad-tasting stuff on Taylor's elbows a few times a day, and even attempt to wash The Cat Who Hates To Be Touched.

The vet had suggested I put the cat on Prozac. I do not want to zonk my kitty, because I refuse to let Taylor move to Los Angeles and develop a drug habit, like so many cats do on these mean streets. So I administered my own Wonder Killer home remedy: I'm loading him up on catnip. Once a night I pour some 'nip near their favorite scratching box, and the three cats have a weed orgy and love me and you and love love and life and oh! isn't everything just divine?

Taylor's arms were starting to heal. In fact one arm has almost no scab at all. Then today I see he's opened up an old scab on the other side. So he'll let one arm heal and then mess up the other and switch off.

Now. I do not want to buy this book because I refuse to help the man who created that title. And Cal keeps Taylor playing all day long. As do I. He chases around the red dot of his favorite laser pointer toy and sits with us during the day and sleeps with us at night. In fact, his personality hasn't changed in the slightest. It's just that now Taylor's licking for long periods of time.

There he goes again, licking another paw. Sometimes he'll get bored and go lick Cal on the head for a little while. Taylor is named Taylor because his previous owner found him in a dumpster in Taylor, Texas. He's gone through several moves, including a plane ride across the country. He's lived through Feline Leukemia, watched his first friend die right in front of him, and continually puts up with the Dumb and Dumber that is Olive and Cal. Why would he now start licking the fur off his arms? They don't hurt, as you can touch them and he doesn't flinch, and he still swats at us with the same amount of Mike Tyson-like power. He's eating and sleeping and doing all of his normal things.

He's already got acne on his chin, and he binge eats. And now with his secret cutting, we're worried that Taylor's hit the sad part of puberty. Soon he'll lock himself up in the bedroom and update his LiveJournal all night long and won't want to hang out with us anymore because we're so stupid and lame and we totally won't let him stay up all night at Julie's party, just because there are going to be boys there. Gah.

The vet rubbed Taylor's head and said, "There's nothing wrong with Taylor. He's healthy. He's just not very happy right now. He doesn't like something about how he's living. You just figure out WHAT YOU'VE DONE WRONG TO FUCK UP YOUR CAT WITH YOUR SELFISH, SELFISH LIFE. WHY DON'T YOU GO OUT OF TOWN AGAIN, PAM? WHY DON'T YOU RUN OFF TO ASPEN FOR A WEEK? THAT'LL MAKE TAYLOR FEEL REALLY LOVED AND WANTED. WHY NOT INVITE THIRTY-SEVEN PEOPLE OVER TO YOUR HOUSE OR FILL IT WITH BOXES SO TAYLOR ALWAYS THINKS HE'S ABOUT TO MOVE? OH, THAT'S WHAT YOU'VE BEEN DOING SINCE YOU MOVED A FEW MONTHS AGO? WELL, THEN, I DON'T KNOW WHY TAYLOR WOULD BE ACTING FUNNY. SEEMS LIKE YOU'RE BEING THE PERFECT PARENT."

Or maybe that's just what I heard.

Taylor hates rain and it's been raining all day, so maybe that's why he's gone back to the secret cutting. It was raining constantly the two weeks when his arms got really bad (including when Dan was watching him), so maybe once this bad weather passes he can go back to growing fur. Other than that I just keep petting him, which he really hates but also loves, because he hates how much he loves us.

The honeymoon: sun, sleep, sunsets, staph, snorkeling, sushi, sexy-sexy. There you go.

But two things that might actually interest you:

We spent part of the honeymoon on a rather remote part of an island. There was only one tiny market that we'd drive to for food and beer. We walked in one time alongside a woman I recognized immediately. She was dressed like a local (and by that I mean t-shirt, shorts, flip-flops, and a serene smile), and that was what threw me at first. But I knew it was her.

Since we were in a rather tiny market and standing about two feet from her, I didn't want to lose my shit right there at the store. I turn into Cameron in the back of Ferris' cab.

stee: "The beer is over there. Why are you... what are you doing?"
pamie: "Oook over err."
stee: "You have to move. You're blocking that lady's way."
pamie: "Ook oo da ladee iz."
stee: "You're going to have to move your mouth or talk louder. One or the other."
pamie: "Hat iz Hat Ennatar."
stee: "What?"
pamie: "HAT ENNATAR."
stee: "Are you drunk?"

I pushed him out the door and into the parking lot.

pamie: "We are shopping with Pat Benatar!"
stee: "Oh. You ARE drunk."
pamie: "I swear it is her. I know it's her. Hell! Hell is for Children!"
stee: "Don't embarrass us in paradise."
pamie: "This is the coolest thing ever. Why don't our cell phones work? I should call EVERYBODY."
stee: "Let Pat Benatar buy her papaya."
pamie: "Do you think it's really her?"
stee: "Here we go."

So then I'm doing that staring where I'm trying to not stare but clearly I'm just staring right at her and she stares back and she gives me this look: "God damn, girls in their thirties go ape shit when they see me."

It took an Internet search yesterday to prove to stee that I was right. Because Pat Benatar's second daughter is named after exactly where we were. Which is where she lives. Because who lives in paradise? Pat Benatar.

Second story:

Other side of the island. More inhabited, a resort. It's our last day of the honeymoon and we are sad to be leaving paradise. We're walking back to the hotel to flop by the pool with a pina colada, having spent several hours on a private-ish beach. We'd been having fun eavesdropping on what all the other tourists are reading. Three in five sunbathers prefer The DaVinci Code. Stee loved the one incredibly sunburned, pot-bellied man reading Michael J. Fox's autobiography. (Stee: "It's good, but the prose is a little shaky.")

Nick Hornby wrote in The Polysyllabic Spree that if you're a certain kind of writer of a certain kind of book that you can never pass a crowd of vacationers without scanning their reading material to see if anyone's holding your novel. So when stee went, "Oh, my God!" I figured he'd finally spotted a girl having the time of her life with my paperback.

But then I heard, "What the fuck, BITCHES?"

And then I looked up and saw Mr. and Mrs. Muppet Blowjob. Faye and Jason married one week after we did, and we had all been staying in the same hotel for the past three days.

I am sad to see my tan is fading because it is a reminder that I'm back to work. Neither of us had ever really taken a vacation before, and I have to tell you, it was pretty easy to fall into a pattern that involved reading, sleeping, tanning and swimming for eight to ten hours. Our biggest decision of the day was whether we'd soak in the hot tub before we went to the pool or after.

Now it's cold and rainy and there's a stack of bills to the left of me and a script that needs finishing and a recap to do and my life has come crashing back in full effect. Aloha!

I'm telling you this because I've never heard of it before, and I think it's something we should learn, like in school. I think Home Economics should be brought back, and mandatory for males and females. Like the second semester combined with Health.

Do not put potato peels down the sink. The disposal does not like them and it will cause a clog and you will have to take apart your sink with your husband.

However, once you fix it yourselves using a bucket, a wrench, Teflon tape and the Internet, you will feel like Supercouple.

Hi, everyone.

Help.

As many of you know, I am living in LA at the moment. I have a fabulous brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, which I've been subletting. As I'll be out here for an indeterminate length of time, I've decided to keep subletting the place, at least for the next two months. The current subletter is moving out, and I need to find someone come February 1. Which is, according to the calendar, soon. As is typical for the New York real estate market, things have gone as badly as possible. We had someone lined up who has gone AWOL before writing a check, and now I have five days to get someone in there or things will end in grave poverty for me when I'm suddenly paying to live bi-coastal. And this I cannot afford.

When I first came out here in October, my post to Craigslist yielded over 70 responses. I'll let Pam tell you how pretty the place is. Please help me find someone. I will really buy you pretty presents. More info:

I will be working out of town for two months and need someone to sublet the master bedroom of my fabulous Park Slope apartment. The apartment is available February 1, and the sublet goes through the end of March with the possibility of a continuance after that. The details are as follows:

*It's at President Street and 7th Avenue, in North Slope.
*It's the first floor of a brownstone in a perfectly-maintained building with nice tenants and a delightful roommate named Mike. Seriously. He's a pleasure.
*It's the larger of two bedrooms in an apartment that has a full living room, monstrously high ceilings, a dishwasher, and no bugs.
*Near everything, and steps from all relevant subways, including Q/B/2/3/R.
*The room is completely furnished with a bed, a bureau, and a television with the full package of cable TV.
*The rent is $950 a month, with the two months paid up front in one easy installment of $1900. THIS INCLUDES ALL UTILITIES. You won't have to drop a dime after this easy, one-time fee.

I can be reached at the email address on the left of this page.

For this website, this is a pretty selfish request. It’s not a book drive and it's not glamorous and it doesn't help anyone but me (and the lucky tenant who gets to look around at all of my stuff), but the readers of Pamie.com have never let us down before. So help.

Thanks.


[And it's Dan's birthday today! Help him! (please use the comments for the apartment, not for birthday well-wishes. thanks.) -p.]

The train crash is just a few miles from our house. Right now we can see about ten news helicopters hovering above the scene. It's a strange sight -- ten frozen helicopters, like we're staring at a picture instead of the actual sky.