If Mame is, as I'm always telling her, Tea Leoni in Spanglish, then I am clearly Toni Colette in About a Boy.

Last night, I stood in the grocery store staring at the organic frozen food dinners for approximately 45 mins. The idea, I reminded myself, was to cut corners now as much as possible. Avoid cooking and dishes whenever possible. Used to be, I scoured Gourmet for the most exotic recipes. I even owned truffle-walnut oil and candied my own pecans. Now I sort of want the kids to eat out of the pan with their fingers.

Anyhow, the fact that this frozen stuff was organic seemed important, like it canceled out the lazy inside. The problem with organic food, though, is that it’s prejudiced against meat. There is absolutely no yummy meat by-product in any of it. So I decided finally and irritably on some eggplant disaster with cheese all over it.

Only to get home and remember that I don’t own a microwave.

So, I popped it into the oven. It said I could. Conventional oven at 350 for… an HOUR. For fuck’s sake. And I was starving too. I paced round the kitchen, peering in at it periodically—this wee, pathetic mound of gunk in a cardboard dish. I pulled it out when the plastic started to melt. The instructions said to leave it on, which I felt from the start was the wrong way to go about it. Anyhow, after I scraped off the plastic, I prodded and found the center still frozen solid. I popped it back in for another 20 mins, until the paper started to smoke and burn, and then I pulled it out and dropped it upside down on the floor. Maus was in there eating it. Lapping it right up. But she didn’t get it all, nope, because some of it is Pollocked all over my ceiling.

Speaking of Maus. The thing is, and this isn’t really relevant, but I figure it never will be… the thing is, she’s started to pee when I pee. I’m not imagining it. At first it was just that she ate when I ate, but I figured that was fairly normal. But the latch on the bathroom door in my room doesn’t catch, so she can push it open with her paw and then wedge a leg through, and eventually her whole body comes squishing through this door. Then she gets in her litter box and pees. While I’m peeing. And then we’re in there together. Staring at each other. Peeing.