This week, I had to put one of our three cats, little Nosy to sleep.  The vet said she was in pain and kidney failure.  Nosy was Phyllis’ favorite cat ever.  Very small (Phyllis called her ‘petite,’ exaggerating each consonant).  Black, as all Phyl’s cats, but with a white nose.  Beverly called her ‘Boots’, because her feet were also white.  She was kind of like Phyllis.  Gorgeous face.  Big eyes.  Very energetic.  Cute as hell. .Very, very, very loud and brassy.  She didn’t meow, she honked.  Phyl adored her.  “Nosy Knows,” she’d say.  When I left Nosy, I kissed her goodby, and said, “Now you can be with your mommy.”  If it’s one of my days to believe, then i know Phyl will be thrilled to have her back.

i do feel a tiny bit guilty for writing the ‘I hate cats’ story last week.  As a neighbor asked, ‘guilty enough to replace Nosy and get another cat?’  Are you fucking kidding me?  Two to go.

Our house is overwhelmed with 100s (no exaggeration) of cat items,  “You married a cat person,” she’d say.  Don’t I know it.

These gad damn cats won’t die.  Back in the 90’s, our cat Wolfman had been taken by coyotes.  Phyllis was distraught.  I couldn’t hide my glee.  I became a big coyote fan.  But, despite letting them out daily, which would anger Phyl, the coyotes have not done their job in over 18 years.

Phyl found newborns Nosy and Beauty (Beauty was Phyl’s name for the latter: I’ve always called her Cuckookitty.) being attacked by birds, in a box outside her library.  Phyl brought the cats home.  A year later, an executive producer  gifted Jody a cat he called Webster. Jody brought the cat home.  I’ve regretted those moments only a tad less than 9-11.  I’ve tried bad food, owls, possums, lockouts, yelling, incarceration, throwing things, and, if wishes could come true, their nine lives would’ve been gone, twenty years ago.   They do nothing but poop, barf, and shed.  And taunt, “We’re here.  We’ll always be here.  Fuck you.  Where’s the Fancy Feast?”

A story I’ve never told anyone….Webby was going out hunting at night.  He’d bring back “presents” like birds, lizards, and mice.   He was also eating grass, and, as cats wont to do, throwing up.  Except, no matter how hard I tried to prevent him, he was coming back in the house to throw up.  Phyl said it was normal.  Phyl would’ve excused our cats if they were axe murderers.  I wanted to hit Webby, but Phyl would’ve gone ballistic.  A clear yellow floor cleaner bottle had leaked.  I thought Webby had peed the floor in the house.  Phyl was asleep, I was the one who went ballistic.  As Phyl often used to say, “Yauh th’one with the tempuh,” and she’d take the cats with her to the bedroom, telling them, “Let’s get you away from the mean daddy.”   That night, I grabbed Webby and tried teaching him a lesson, sticking his face in the cleaning fluid that I thought was his pee.  He licked and cleaned himself, as cats do, and the next thing I remember is Phyllis awakening me at 4 a.m. screaming that Webby was dying.  He was severely distressed, hidden on the closet floor, barely breathing.  We raced him to an emergency pet hospital in Los Angeles, where he was operated on, as we missed school.  Cost: nearly $2000 for 4 hours and, so far, 15 more years of that god damn cat.  The fucker is smirking, watching me type this, in a pose Phyl used to call, “Webby licking his lips.  Right now he’s incessantly meowing, ‘Get off the computer.  You’re late, asshole.  Where’s my gad damn expensive Fancy Feast?”

Three or four times a year, Phyllis would, nearly entirely by herself, run huge two-week book fairs to make money for the school. Once in a while Pam or Wendi or i would help, but mostly it was just Phyllis, her kid aides, and 50-70 or so kids perusing. These were incredibly time-consuming, massive efforts that served nearly every class. They would visit for half a period. More often than you can imagine the teacher\ would leave, and phyl was left to watch the teacher’s kids. She never complained {unless it was one of the two teachers she didn’t like.} There were books, mags, posters, pens, small toys, tzutzkes of all sorts, and educational games and videos. If a kid didn’t have money, she’d give the kid ½ off , or more often, just say, “take it, but don’t tell anybody”. Teachers often took advantage of her generosity and freebeed literally hundreds of dollars of books for their classrooms or even home for their own kids.
Phyllis worked the library before and after school of course, but also all of lunch and nutrition, every day, none of which she was required, and something very few librarians would do. More days than not, she covered classes for late or absent teachers, babysat classes going to or returning from trips, and proctored all late, excused, or finishing-up test takers, all year, including the state test. I used to be livid at teachers constantly taking advantage of her. And at her for letting them. She’d just say, “What’s the big deal? I love my job.”

happy valentines day, mybeauty

God, i miss you.

i’ve already posted this card once, but it’s my favorite.  Phyllis often gave me this same valentine.

i was as nonplussed at gift-giving as she was at gift-getting.  She did not like flowers; “they die”.  She’d always say,“Don’t buy me any more jewelry(joolery), because I’ll just lose it.”  She loved chocolate, but would get mad at herself and me afterward.  For years, whatever i bought her would beget a polite, “Oh it’s very nice.”…and, if you knew Phyllis, be secretly returned a week later.  For obvious reasons, here’re three literati bling that scored….

1The Librarian Action Figure….with shushing action

2An original first edition copy, just like the one she had as a child, of Theodore Geisel(Dr. Suess)’s Gerald McBoing Boing

3Frederick the Literate by Charles Wysocki.  It was her fave of the 623,000 works of cat “art?” that adorn our house.  She bought the Frederick the Literate cups, rug, handbag, cards, tzutkes, and even the humongous tapestry of it that hung in her library. 

Phyllis would rage against the machine.

For 30 years, I never heard Phyllis use the f-word.  Then Phyl had to take computer classes for her media credential.  “I HATE those fucking things!!!”  Hours of cussing.  She refused to do any banking, buying, or bill-paying online.  She couldn’t let evil technology usurp print, the last bastion of ‘old school’.

One of our dear school friends, Tom Schmidt (congrats on your retirement last month) used to tease her at phms: “Phyllis; soon everything will be online.  Print and libraries will be obsolete”.   Hell hath no fury as a tizzy-fit. ….As he’d leave the library to go back to class, Phyllis would give him the finger, “I know he’s wonderful, but sometimes I don’t like Tom.”

There were two sets of school friends she always truly treasured….her Chatsworth High and her  LAUSD librarian colleagues.  Way back i mentioned those special, dear, forever close friends  from CHS: especially sandy uehara, mark siegel, joyce england, lonnie wallace, renee arst, and judy sheinberg.   Her librarian mutual support system were not only dear friends, but the we’reallinthistogether technohelp that guided phyllis through the morass of glitches from “those fucking things”.   Pardon if i omit anyone, but her dearest library folk (the ones I know, because she talked about them all the time) whom she adored are leslie farmer, susan ball, janet sklar, mark bobrovsky, candy dardarian, and tammie celi.  And these cherished friends are certainly a big reason she loved (she’d say, “I LOVE it”) being a librarian.

She read, among many, those I remember, the entire works of  Edgar Allen Poe, Dr. Seuss, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Shirley Jackson, Scott Fitzgerald, JFK, Truman Capote, and Agatha Christie (and I mean entire: if they wrote under a pseudonym, or a story in high school, she’d track it down): and modern-day; James Herriot, Peter Gethers, Erma Bombeck, Joanne Fluke, Cleveland Amory, Mary Higgins Clark, Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton, Ann Rule, Joan Rivers, and Elie Wiesel(the latter four she met and talked to): as she did her favorite-favorites; Ray Bradbury and Garrison Keillor.  She had all their books, tv, records. movies, and myriad news and mag articles in her library subject folders. They are the two biggest files of her bazillion clippings and lessons from her multiple file cabinets of author, holiday, event, and curricular material. Each year, she’d dramatize her favorite stories for the students.  There were ALWAYS classes in there.  She loved her library, as did everyone, staff or student, at school.  It was an incredible trash dump when she came to PHMS, and she took great pride in making it the center of the school.  And especially, a center of literature.  Its raison d’etre; her readings, book fairs, lessons, events, were all designed to share her love of books.

We’re so,so proud of you, myphyl.

nobody like you, mybeauty

Phyllis read.  And read and read.  Yes, her library was at school, but also at home.   There was always a pile of books to read, next to her side of the bed.  And, over the years, as the pile shrank, the pile grew. In the literal sense, and in a literal sense, there were many thousands of nights that I cat-bookmarked whichever book was laying on the chest of a fallen-asleep Phyllis, before kissing her goodnight on the forehead.

Even if we were in the car, unless Howard Stern was on the radio, it was talking book tapes, and later cd’s.   I must’ve sat driving through every one of the bazillion Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon Prairie Home Companions and Janet Evanovich‘s Stephanie Plum bounty hunter mysteries.  “Honey, I can’t find the cd of chapter 847.  I think I left it in the player in the kitchen.  Turn around and go back.”

I so wish I could.  I miss you so very much.

(paraphrased from 3 yrs ago as prelude to 3 new posts.)
Phyl was a librarian before she became a librarian. She read all the time. Most nights, she fell asleep with an open book on her chest. When the kids were little she read to them nearly every night. She had lists of books to be read and “I’d rather be reading” stickers all over the house and car. Biographies, children’s books, pet and vet books, juvenile lit for school, poetry, and, of course, her mysteries. There are more big, fat biographies in this house than cat hairs. Much ado about the Kennedys and historical English royalty. She had great expertise in both. And fiercely loyal passion. If you dared diss a Kennedy, Phyl’d go for your throat. Once I mentioned Chappaquiddick, and she shot me dead.
From the time we met, she always lugged around her huge LL Bean canvas bag of books and folders to read. The beach, airplanes, kids’ events, 35 years of teaching, every day, that large, heavy bag went with her. Often, I’d tell her how much better she’d feel if she didn’t have to lug it everywhere. But she was Phyllis, and the bag was too. When we first dated, Bobby Orr and the hockey Bruins were the biggest thing in Boston. My friends and I would line up all night, in the cold of Boston Garden to score tickets. Phyl would sit with us in the second balcony, while the place was going crazy….and read Agatha Christie. That’s when my friends knew our relationship wouldn’t last.

Phyllis was a bit opinionated.   Very democratic, very L:GBT, very anti-bullying, very animal rights(I’m not kidding….animal rights).  People were perpetually surprised by the ardor, when she spoke of these beliefs.

Phyl was an all-in, Clinton-adoring liberal.  And Hillary all the way.   Yet when NBC demoted Ann Curry, she actually fled in anger to Fox and Friends every morning.  Before or at school.  She loved to Steve Ducey, Gretchen, and Brian.  But when political commentator Ann Coulter guested, the bitch-slapping began.  Phyl’d snap, “What a slut!” “Go straight to hell, you fucking pig!” “I can’t believe they put that bitch on again!”

I know it’s sexist, but she was so cute, when she was so passionate.