Furiously Happy (9 page)

I've never had a psychotic breakdown. I'm seldom delusional. I've never hallucinated anything that didn't come from too much of a drug I probably shouldn't have taken anyway. I'm just broken. But in a way that makes me …
me
. My drugs don't define me. I'm not psychotic. I'm not dangerous. The drugs I take are just a pinch of salt. A little seasoning in life, if you will. Your baked potatoes would be fine without it, but anyone will tell you that a pinch of salt can make all the difference.
I am your potatoes.
And I'm better with salt.

Maybe this is a bad analogy.

How about this …

My taking low-level antipsychotics is like using just enough rum to make a good slice of rum cake, but not using enough to get alcohol poisoning and choke to death on your own vomit. The first is medicinal. The second one is gross and unsanitary.

And I know some of you are saying that cake isn't medicinal.
Really?
Cake isn't medicinal?
Who's crazy now, asshole?
The whole world could be cured with enough cake and antipsychotics. Which actually makes sense because
you can't make a cake without salt, can you?

Wait,
can
you make a cake without salt?

I actually have no idea. I don't know much about baking. I know there's something white in there. Maybe it's flour I'm thinking about. I just wrote “salt” because it brought all my metaphors back together. Sort of. Probably not. It's hard to tell.

I blame this whole chapter on the antipsychotics.
1

 

Why Would I Want to Do More When I'm Already Doing So Well at Nothing?

Victor and I have different ideas about what we should do in our spare time. In
my
spare time I like to stare at shit. I mean, not literally. I like to stare at the TV, or the Internet, or a book, or cat videos. There's a lot of sitting very still and not moving involved. I suspect in a former life I was probably a statue because I am
profoundly
good at it.

Victor, on the other hand, spends
his
spare time creating new businesses, writing reference books, gleefully finding errors on financial forms, and telling me how I should spend my spare time.

In Victor's Type A world there should be no spare time. His motto is, “Time to lean, time to clean,” except replace “lean” with “sleep” and replace “clean” with “build a multinational business and pull everything out of the closet with the intention of organizing it but not actually follow through and just leave it for your wife to sort out.”
My
motto has always been “Time enjoyed is never wasted.” Except replace “enjoyed” with “drunk” and “never wasted” with “never not a good idea.”

I think it has something to do with the fields we work in. For most of our marriage Victor has been a workaholic entrepreneur or an executive of successful companies. He really enjoys it, which makes him dangerously questionable, or at least mildly sociopathic. He easily fills empty time with specific tasks that have a defined start and end. His e-mails are always answered with quick, smart, and often vaguely condescending directives that make people want to never e-mail him again, so he's always caught up with correspondence. My unopened e-mails often number into the thousands, and once every few months I'll panic at how far behind I am and send a form letter to everyone that reads: “Hello. I totally suck. I'm just now opening this. Do you still need me? I'm so sorry. I am
not
to be trusted. Hugs, me.” Then I declare e-mail bankruptcy, delete everything, and start a whole new e-mail account and never
ever
go back to the last one. My old e-mail addresses are like bars I've been kicked out of and can never return to. It's a ridiculous and assholish system but I've found that it works for me and
I've never received a single complaint
. Victor says that's because it's impossible to receive a complaint on an account I never check again, but I suspect it's because everyone is equally behind and they appreciate my honesty.

My job is to write ridiculous things on my blog, in books, and on used napkins that get misplaced almost immediately. It's part of my job to be aware of the latest hedgehog-in-a-bathtub video. It's
research
. There's also a lot of behind-the-scenes work that non-right-brained people don't see happening. For example, when I have writer's block I sometimes have to “refill my creative cup.” This is an actual phrase my shrink has used and I made her write it down so I could show Victor that I had a doctor's note explaining my behavior (but I lost the note in my stacks of used napkins and related flotsam so he just had to take my word for it, which he did not because he is sadly untrusting).

“Refilling your creative cup” means different things to different people, but to me it looks a lot like watching
Doctor Who
marathons or reading David Sedaris books while screaming, “
WHY DO YOU MAKE IT LOOK SO EASY?
” Sometimes it looks like driving to pet stores so I can pull out all the ferrets from their bins and drape them over me to make them into tickly, freaked-out coats. Occasionally it looks like me drawing doodles of penises on the overdue tax forms Victor has passive-aggressively taped on my computer monitor.

In summation, I spend an
impressive
amount of time doing absolutely nothing. Like, I'm at pro level. Because
that's
how artistic genius works. And because I'm
very, very
lazy.

Now, some people will say that if you have writer's block you should just start writing anyway because then you'll at least accomplish
something
. However, I've never liked anything I've ever been forced to write so I'm pretty sure all that accomplishes is a bunch of shitty writing, and I already have enough of that even when real inspiration hits. Good writing cannot be forced. This is why you don't have any classic, beloved books filled with the begrudging and angry mandatory essays of students who didn't want to write them, and why you almost never see college dissertations go viral on Reddit. In other words, if you spent most of the morning reading Twitter and then scribbling weird, indecipherable notes to yourself on your arm then you are probably on the right track to becoming a successful artist. Or to being homeless. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.

You'd think after eighteen years of marriage Victor and I would be more accepting of each other's working styles, but no. Victor spent most of this morning directing several conference calls, yelling at plumbers, and rolling over our 401(k)s into something that sounded even more boring than 401(k)s. I'd stopped listening at that point.

I, on the other hand, spent most of the morning coming up with good names for cats that I don't currently have. My current favorite is “The President.” It's an awesome name because you'd constantly find yourself saying things like, “The President will
not
stop sitting on my keyboard.” Or “The President just threw up on the new rug.” Or “I like sleeping with the President but why do I always wake up with his butt on my face?”

I tried to tell Victor about how awesome the President would be in bed on a cold night and he was like, “NO MORE CATS. YOU HAVE TOO MANY CATS ALREADY,” but then I just stared at him and said, “Too bad.
Overruled.
You can't turn down a request from the President.” He disagreed but I'm pretty sure that's considered treason. I called the pet store where I snuggle the ferrets to ask if they had any leads on patriotic-looking cats who need a new home, but they recognized my voice and informed me that the manager had just enacted a policy of “only one loose ferret at a time.” And that's
ridiculous
, because the most you can possibly make with a single ferret is a small pillbox hat (which uses claws instead of bobby pins). I was a little upset and I may have said, “THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS. THE PRESIDENT
WILL NOT STAND FOR THESE KINDS OF CUTS
.” And then they asked what I was talking about and I considered explaining that ferret cuts were much worse than government budget cuts because
everyone
suffers when you cut ferrets. Especially the ferrets. But then I remembered that I hadn't adopted the President yet and I thought it might be inappropriate to throw around the weight of my nonexistent cat all willy-nilly. Victor agreed that it was extremely inappropriate, although not for the same reasons.

I told Victor that
not
having a cat named the President had already crippled me once today and that the President would probably get in all kinds of crazy shenanigans that I could write about. I argued that my buying the President was basically the equivalent of his buying office supplies, so it was fiscally irresponsible to
not
adopt a cat called the President. At this point Victor may have screamed, “YOU CANNOT HAVE ANY MORE CATS. I'M THE ONE THAT HAS TO CLEAN UP AFTER THEM AND I'LL BE DAMNED IF I'M GOING TO SCOOP THE PRESIDENT'S SHIT TOO.”

He paused and shook his head at his own questionable phrasing but I smiled contentedly because he'd just proven my point, as that was
exactly
the kind of argument that would be gold on my blog. In fact, the President has already given me four paragraphs in this book
and he doesn't even exist yet
. It's possible he might be the most productive President we've ever had.

Victor walked away before we could finish discussing the issue. So I wrote myself a reminder on the tax forms he'd taped to my monitor: “GET A LITTER BOX FOR THE PRESIDENT.” I suspected the IRS would be confused (and possibly not in a good way) so I added, “I'm not referring to your boss. I totally voted for that guy. Please don't audit me. I'm kind to animals and small children. If anything, you should audit my husband, who thinks the President should just live in a cage rather than get adopted by my daughter, who would totally dress him up in old Cabbage Patch Kid clothes and snuggle him like crazy-cakes.” Then Victor came back in, saw the now-vandalized tax papers, and just stared at me in disappointment. I explained that it would probably be better if he just did all my tax papers in the future. He claimed that that would be illegal and I told him that if the President were here he'd be just fine with it and that's basically the same as getting presidential approval on everything. Cats don't give a shit about stuff, so basically the President would automatically approve of everything we did by default. Except for maybe Victor's use of the Super Soaker to keep the cats off the kitchen counters. The President would probably
not
approve of that.

Case in point? Just this moment Victor walked in and asked what I was doing and I told him I was writing about how much he hates the President, and he started yelling at me about using my time more wisely. Frankly, it's not even that we disagree about my use of time. It's more about how completely far we are from agreeing about what would be a credible use of my time.

Actual things Victor has suggested I should do in my spare time:

•
Idea 1:
Open an art gallery.

•
Idea 2:
Open a comic book store.

•
Idea 3:
Open a restaurant.

•
Idea 4:
Anything that doesn't involve ferrets.

Actual things I'd consider doing in my spare time:

•
Idea 1:
Start a club for small monkeys. Set them up with people who like to have their hair played with. Note: There might be some technical problems because typically monkeys only pick out bugs in hair, and some people might be weird about getting insects dumped in their hair, but people who'd pay to have monkeys play with their hair are not entirely predictable, so it could still work. Or maybe we could just dump edible glitter in people's hair.
     That's where we'd make our money.
Selling edible monkey glitter.
I don't know how monkeys are with edible glitter but it's gotta be a step up from their current diet. I mean,
YOU EAT BUGS, MONKEYS. Stop being so goddamn pretentious.
Also, I have a real-life model to base this on because my dad's friend has a pet monkey, Amber, who likes to pick off scabs on people's scalps, so we call her Amber the Scab Monkey, which is a terrible name. Who names a monkey
Amber
? Total waste of a monkey. Also, I'm not sure how many people have scabs on their heads, but I suspect if you're letting monkeys dig around in your hair you're going to end up with scabs. This business builds itself.

•
Idea 2:
Adopt a stray cat and name it the President. Set it up with a Twitter account. Sell pardons from my cat that you can buy for whenever you forget your wife's birthday or for when you accidentally let too many ferrets loose in a store. Like, “I know you're still mad at me but I do have a pardon from the President. That's gotta count for something.”

•
Idea 3:
Watch videos of goats doing funny things.

In the end, Victor and I both want the same thing—for me to get my shit together. That's where we find the common ground. And when Victor starts up again about opening an art gallery that sells comics and crepes I respond with some variation of what I always say: “It's a very good idea, Victor, but right now I'm just too involved with writing/catching up with TV/developing edible monkey glitter/the President. But maybe in my next life I'll do it.”

And it could be true. Maybe in my next life I
will
open a successful business, and buy and sell stocks, and memorize my driver's license number, and do my taxes on time.
Or
maybe in my next life I'll open a deli that specializes in mashed potato sandwiches (mashed potatoes and tater tots stuffed inside warm potato bread) and spaghetti pies (no definition needed) and I'll have a big sign saying “The President Eats Here!” And he does, because cats fucking
love
spaghetti. And at least Victor won't be mad at me in my next life.