A Letter To A Good Cat

Dear Mollie,

I'm so sorry girl. You shouldn't have ended like this. As a stray cat, you took your life into your...sweet little multicolored paws, every day. I know that. But, you were never supposed to get hit by a car. You were too smart and cool and original for that. You were going to be the first stray cat to die of natural causes at the age of 25, I just knew it.

I hope a lot of things now. I hope it was an accident, and that the neighbors who complained about you and the rest of the strays we care for a couple of months ago didn't go gunning for you when you were in the street, and then put you in our yard to show us what they think about the strays and our looking after you. I hope whoever hit you felt bad and simply knew we would take care of things if you were in our yard. Either way, I'm glad you weren't left in the street.

I hope you didn't suffer. I hope it was quick, instantaneous, even. If you laid in our yard dying last night while we were watching TV, unknowing, that would kill a much larger part of me than the one that was killed when I found you this morning.

I hope we helped you. We certainly tried to. Remember March 2011, when Catpocalypse came and Animal Control gathered up the old guard of strays? Remember how you, in all your cat wisdom, defied the AC officer and showed her who was boss by sitting ON TOP OF THE TRAP FILLED WITH FOOD, and then sauntering off, un-captured? See, you were really too smart for this shit.

I hope you weren't too scared when we took you into the house, along with two other cats, last month to have you fixed and given your shots by Operation Sterile Feral. I know you weren't happy about it, that was obvious. But I hope you forgave us for trapping you in our basement, taking you to strangers for medical procedures you didn't realize you needed and then putting you back outside. You seemed to forgive us. In the month since we let you out, you rarely left our yard during the day.

I wish you hadn't left our yard at night, either. That way you'd still be with us. Oh, well. Kitties gotta hunt, I guess...

I hope you know you were the original cat. I mean, not really. But you felt like the original cat to us. I don't remember when I first saw you after we moved in eight years ago. 2008? 2009? 2010? I've got no idea, but I know that as the number of stray cats in the neighborhood grew and the number who came to our yard for a morning snack grew, you became a reliable fixture.

Hell, if it weren't for you, (and the resistance of St. Louis County to allow TNR) we wouldn't have most of the awesome new guard strays: Rudy (who's actually been living with us for four years), Sampson, Trey, Tim (who's had a home for over a year now), Keema, Kem, Orange Boy and Creamy. I promise we'll continue to do everything in our power to take care of them.

Mollie, I hope you enjoyed relaxing on our deck. I hope you enjoyed sunning yourself in our yard. I hope you liked all the food we gave you and it never made you feel icky. I hope, however old you were, that you had some fun. I hope you liked it when I patted your back and told you to be careful, have a good day and wished you happy hunting.

I buried you this morning, about an hour after finding you, in the back yard near our cat Luanne, who died just a few months after you refused to be taken away by Animal Control. You're between two flower beds and two two trees. I think you'll like it there. When the muddy ground settles a bit, I might try to plant some cat grass or cat nip on your and Luanne's graves. I think that would be fitting.

Luanne's been gone a long time. Mollie, seek her out wherever you are now. She's a good cat, too. I'm sure she'd love to show you around.

Love and Thanks Always,
Adrienne

Music Monday: What In The Natural Hell

He won't be blowing any horns today...

Hello, all. Did you have good weekends? I certainly hope so, because I need to share a small story with you.

Yes, I took a blog break last week. That is not foremost in my mind right now. What is? The crazy morning I had in the first hour and 15 minutes of my day.

I woke up at 8:45. The first thing I noticed upon opening the bedroom door was that one of our cats had expelled a bit of furball. Not unusual for this lot. I commenced to checking all the carpet and pillows and furniture for more traces (Tux tends to start in one spot and then proceed to carry on all over the house), then headed to the bathroom for more inspection.

I parted the blinds to do my daily check of the garden, since I was near a garden-facing window. Wow, what did I see, you ask? A FREAKING DEAD ANIMAL LAYING RIGHT IN MY GARDEN. NEAR MY FUCKING VEGETABLES!

Now, in the past year I've seen two dead mice in the yard. One was even headless. That, however did not prepare me for what appeared to be a poor dead rabbit in the garden. Not. At. All.

I was honestly quite shaken and feeling a bit sick to my stomach. What happened? Why didn't whatever killed the poor thing carry it off and finish it? What if it was eating from my garden and something in there killed it?

More likely, there was a life and death struggle in my back yard sometime overnight. And we didn't hear it.

Actually, now that I think about it, hearing it wouldn't have done any good. If I'd heard a struggle in our back yard (which was pitch black last night), I wouldn't have gone out there. Who does that? Only big-boobed, blond horror movie women.

HUBS and I went out to get it up. Then, as soon as we open the back door, what do I see? TWO BIG-ASS FUCKING SNAKES RIGHT BY THE DECK! One had part of it's body in our basement window.

JESUS, NATURE! LEAVE ME ALONE, ALREADY! I GET IT, YOU RUN THIS BITCH!!

I was primed to stay on the deck, but HUBS couldn't get the rabbit on the shovel, so I had to go help him. Which, of course, meant that as soon as I stepped into our snake infested yard and got near him, he got the damn rabbit on the shovel (the poor thing died with it's eyes open).

We got it into a black trash bag I'd lined with grocery bags and poured vinegar over it to try to make sure nothing would mess with it before we could get the sanitation department out here to pick it up.

The only lucky moment? It waited to rain until after we got back inside. Well, that, and I suppose it was lucky that we didn't actually see the bunny I'm gong to call Bernard get attacked. Because, crap, what would we have done about that?

Wow, thanks for letting me vent. Music, now?

Dammit Robin!

I know it's been a few days now since Robin Gibb lost his battle with cancer. If you haven't heard the glory that is How Deep is Your Love, you should play the above video right now. It's in my personal top 20 of favorite songs.

Now, can our music legends stop dying for a while...Please?

Dammit, Donna!

...

Disco lady Donna Summer is gone today. Remember how huge she was in the '70s and early '80s? When I was in college I bought a cassette tape of her greatest hits and wore that sucker out. She was only 63. Let's take a trip back in time, shall we?

Friends In High Places

Debby, during our trip to Branson

My best friend Debby died seven years ago on a hailing, storm-ridden morning in Spring. Actually, I don't know if she considered me her best friend. We never talked about it or analyzed it, we just up and started doing everything together one day.

We worked at the same company. I was the newbie, and also the youngest non-intern there. She took me under her wing, asking me to do something with her during our off hours one day. It was so long ago now that I can't even remember what it was. But, it wasn't long before we were visiting new restaurants together, having pizza parties during the Golden Globes and gossiping about co-workers and bosses and people we didn't know. We took shopping road trips to Branson and Schaumberg, IL, went to movies on weekends, did concerts after work, pulled pranks on our office manager together and dissected the latest episodes of Gilmore Girls and The X-Files over extended coffee breaks.

I don't think I ever told Debby everything. Like about how lonely I'd been before we started hanging out. Or how I'd never been on a date and was a virgin. I certainly never mentioned that I'd always felt like a loser. But it really didn't matter. Because with Debby around everything was better. Brighter, happier, bolder, more interesting and exciting.

Debby was really quite different from me. She was a few years older (You'll think it's silly, but I never asked her age. Again, it didn't matter.) and the kind of outgoing, outspoken person that many people loved. (Unless they disliked her. Which was usually either because she'd put them in their place or was obviously liked by more people then they were.) She'd been around and done stuff and known people, which I hadn't.

She also had the kind of loud, addictive laugh that would stop the whole office and have our co-workers asking What? What's so funny? Tell me! Debby was also the best gift-giver I've ever known. Mention a thing once, briefly and in passing, and you were guaranteed to have it either on your birthday or at Christmas. Guaranteed.

Debby was not the only best friend I'd ever had. There were Danielle and Chiquita in grade school. Sara in high school. Emily in high school, college and a few years after college. I'd never quite had a friend like Debby, though, and I don't know if it'd be possible to have a friend that cool again. But, I'd like to try.

I'm now four years deep into my friend desert. After quitting the company where I met Debby, I was left with one friend from the old co-working gang who keeps in touch on a regular basis. We meet once a year for our shared birthday and email a few times beyond that. She's got three kids, a husband, a full time job, is running her own business on the side and doesn't even live in the same state as me. This is why we see each other once a year.

Emily found me on Facebook last year and we talk on the phone every month or so. Why don't we hang out? She's got a husband who works crazy hours and a rambunctious three-year-old...Oh, yeah, and in the past year she's moved from Boston to Chicago to a beach-side city in California. I still lay my head down in our hometown of St. Louis every night.

I need some girl talk. Some shopping trips and concert-going hijinks and female bonding sessions that begin with crying and end with raucous laughter. As nice as my family is, I need face time with other women who are not related to me.

If you're looking for the same thing, but are anxiety-ridden about trying to friend folks as an adult (like me), you should read the book I finished last week. MWF Seeking BFF by Rachel Bertsche. Rachel found herself in a new city without her network of besties around and decided to go on one friend date a week for a whole year. It took guts (Debby would approve), but it worked.

And when you're feeling weary and alone there's nothing better than knowing that someone walked the path before you and made it work.

That's All For Now

I don't have any photos of Grandaddy G. So, instead, I offer this picture of my husband and his older sister when they were little ones.

Grandaddy G passed away on Thursday. HUBS, PT and I went to the funeral yesterday morning. It was a nice service, and since he was in the Army they had military rites done at the cemetery.

A bit about Grandaddy G:

- He was a gunner in WWII
- His 92nd birthday would have been in two weeks
- He was always nice to me, and from what I've heard he was always nice to everyone else, too
- He enjoyed the fact that I could always pick him out in super old photos that I'd never seen before
- He loved restoring old cars and worked on them until a couple a years ago
- He was a loyal fan to the end of the St. Louis Browns and until recently still liked to talk about the 1944 World Series
- When he got back from the war he built his own house
- He loved animals
- He loved sweets but had to stay away from them since he'd been diabetic for years
- Because he was diabetic for so long, many of his nerve endings were damaged so he ended up being in far less pain than he would have been otherwise. Talk about everything happening for a reason...

It's impossible (I would think, anyway) to go to a funeral or watch someone deal with a life threatening illness and not consider (Reconsider?) what you're doing with your own time. When I heard the news on Thursday I found myself thinking Well, that's it. The last of HUBS and my grandparents. In 20-30 years our parents will be next. And 20-30 years after that, if we're all lucky, it'll be our turn.

I'm feeling the time crunch, is what I'm saying. For some reason, another 60 years tops just doesn't seem like much right now. Of course, it'll seem like less later because it'll be less. Suppose I better get to work.

Dammit Davy!

I grew up watching The Monkees. That might sound odd for a 37 year old to say, but by the time I was a tween, the '60s were back and Nickelodeon was playing The Monkees in hour-long blocks twice a day.

What's most disturbing about this for me is that Davy Jones was only 66. My mom is 61. It is not time for people my mom's age who were previously healthy to start suddenly dropping dead. That scares the shit out of me. Just...Dammit!

Music Monday: Dammit Whitney!

Just...sigh...



Some much happier news? Adele won a shit load of Grammy Awards! And she's on the cover of Vogue!



Meanwhile, if you need a Grammy inspired laugh...



The world just gets classier everyday.

Dammit, Nicki!!

Oh, Katy...



Ahhh...That's better!

Oh, Heavy D...RIP

I'm sure a lot of you have forgotten all about Heavy D & The Boyz, if you knew about them at all. But for fans of late '80s through mid '90s hip hop, Heavy D was the shit. I wish he hadn't passed away earlier this week at only 44 years old.

Want to get to know Heavy D and his ever present Boyz? Here you go...

Music Monday: Dammit Amy!

I don't know what kind of person Amy Winehouse was, but whether she was nice, flirty, bitchy, sad or a brawler it doesn't matter now. I really wish she had been able to get her shit (whatever the cause of that shit was) together. She had a great, original voice. Too bad she was ready to join the club.




Obviously not her in the video, but it is her singing.

August 2009 - July 5 2011

Well, yesterday at around 11:30 am, Luanne passed away. It's not quite that simple, but I can't get into all the details right now.



I'm really sad. I feel like I'm sadder than when my grandmother, uncle or cousin died. I know time is severely compressed for cats, but they had all been sick for so long that the possibility of death seemed more imminent. Plus, I wasn't directly caring for any of them on a daily basis. Even though they were people and family, I think that proximity to illness is a factor in how much this hurts.



As you can see from the dates in the title, Luanne wasn't even two years old yet. What sucks is that just a couple of weekends ago (on June 24 and 25) she seemed to really be starting to adjust to her anemia. She started jumping around onto things and into windows that she'd ignored for weeks. She jumped up in my lap and curled up there for a bit. She even spent most of Saturday night that weekend in bed with HUBS and I. The power had gone out and I think she was nervous. After chasing a little flying creature around on our dresser in the light of a flashlight, she jumped right over to the bed and curled up between us.



It was pretty sudden, on Monday she was fine. On Tuesday morning she took a turn and died on us.


Luanne's most recent nickname was Poodle Paws

I'm always going to wonder if I had done just one, or two or maybe three things differently if she would still be with us. Long enough for her birthday at least. I am glad for the time we had with her, though.



And yet, I'm still really sad.

Music Monday! Teenybopper All Grown Up

I hope everyone had a good weekend! Saturday was good and sad and also a bit fun. We went to my cousin's funeral that morning, which, of course, was sad. But then we went to the repast, and as in the past this was basically a family reunion-style party with good food and lots of family I'd either never seen before or see rarely. That was fun and good.

What wasn't fun was my cry-headache. I always get brain pain after crying, but this turned into a serious threat level RED brain beater that almost made me vomit from discomfort. I needed an Advil and four full hours of sleep to tamp it down.

I was so pleased to feel like a normal person after my nap that I made HUBS go shopping for office supplies/household essentials when I woke up. We took a break in the middle for dinner at IHOP. We did a lot of talking and good eating - two more things that are always fun.

So, now that I'm getting back to Music Monday thanks to Youtube, I hope you like this song from one of my favorite still-active late '90s teen sensations, Robyn. You probably remember her '98 hit Show Me Love:



It's always good when young stars don't implode, isn't it?

And We'll Start Our New Year With Another Funeral

My cousin died on Sunday. Last I'd heard, he was doing astoundingly well, so I have no idea what happened. Say a little prayer for my uncle.

We'll talk more tomorrow.

You Have Reasons To Be Excited!

I've been meditating at work. See, I need something to keep me focused on positive stuff during the breaks between calls (which can last anywhere from a few seconds to 10 minutes). I wrote down some affirmations to repeat to myself in the down time. They do seem to be helping me deal with work.

Last night as I was repeating one of my sayings (I have reasons to be excited) I realized that I was actually feeling sadder and sadder. So I made a list of my reasons to be excited.

Here goes:
-we're closer to fall
-we have $115 extra coming to us this month
-we might get into consumer credit counseling or debt relief
-I won't be doing this job for much longer
-I've done this work now and know I never want to do it again
-I've had another book idea & started working on it
-I still have gas in my car
-I might finish a book I got from the library in time to return it in two days
-I have a car
-we have pet food & litter to last a couple weeks
-we have shelter & some food
-I have a free career counseling session scheduled (for today, actually)
-found job & photo selling opportunities online over the weekend (thanks Sugar!)
-we are healthy and not dead
-no one has died for a while (As I wrote this one I was afraid I was jinxing it. Sure enough, HUBS and I found a very small black kitten in the road last night, he'd been hit by a car. Just a few hours after writing how nice it was to not have death hovering over us, there he was laying in the street. I picked him up and said a little blessing, but can't for the life of me think of a name for the little guy. I hope he went quickly.)

The net effect is that I wrote all this cool stuff that I've got going for me (we've got going for us) and yet when one bad thing happened it really did ruin what was left of my night.

I pray that you all have reasons to be excited that make the bad stuff bearable.

Happy Wednesday :)

Is Anybody Else Sweating Through Their Clothes Yet?

This is pretty. Heat stroke is not.

I feel quite a bit better today. Mostly because HUBS was home from work and I got to take his air-conditioned car to my job-o. And, since his car's all new and spiffy-like, it has a temperature gauge. Guess how hot it was when I got into the car?

ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN DEGREES!

Jesus, Pete and Mike, y'all!!!

Stay cool everybody!

Weekend Report

Saturday, past about 9 am? Felt like I'd swallowed one of these.

Today is Tuesday. After a boring day at work that went by blissfully fast (I was in an area where I couldn't see the clock. That actually helped a lot.) I got called off for today, which means I'm currently at home.

So far I've done 4 loads of laundry and gone through over 500 neglected emails. Not bad for 4 hours of awakeness and doing-stuff.

I hope everyone had a good Easter. Mine was ok. HUBS and I took my mom out to his parents place for the annual Easter dinner. Mom had never been out there before because of taking care of my grandmother. I was a bit surprised she agreed to go and didn't back out. When I talked to her that morning, she sounded quite down. This is the first holiday without my grandmother and it's been almost a year to the day since my uncle died. She didn't say it, but I know that stuff was weighing on her.

Everything went fine, but my day was only ok for two reasons. First, I was a bit afraid to eat. Why? Because on Saturday, after taking almost the whole week off "sick", I really did get sick. Big sick. Doing-scary-things-in-the-bathroom-that-no-one-wants-to-think-about sick. I was trapped in there for about an hour. Unfortunately, the thing that seemed to irritate my stomach this time involved jalapenos. Just so you know, spicy in = 1,000 times spicier coming out. It took a full day for my throat to stop burning.

The second reason I wasn't that great was because I knew I'd have to go back to work Monday. I actually almost started crying during the car ride home.

Really? I'm going to try to stop complaining about my job in this space now. I've just realized I'm tired of it. That probably means you're getting tired of it, too. Of course, if anything completely outlandish happens you can totally expect me to tell you about it!

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On a completely different note, HUBS and I went to see Clash of the Titans Saturday after I recovered for a few hours. I found it exciting and enjoyable. We also walked around the mall a bit, which wore me out a lot more than I was expecting. We managed to finally get HUBS a new pair of glasses, something that's been on our list since January. Rectangularish, gray frames will be a new look for him. I'll submit a photo when he's all glassed up.

Ahhh...

Things are much better now. Thanks for being patient while I try not to let a feeling of impending doom overtake me.

I had some time off work last week and took my mom shopping on Wednesday. This was after her three day trip to Memphis and Brownsville, TN early last week. Her aunt and uncle (my grandmother's younger brother and sister) convinced her to go with them to visit family. She got a chance to see where my grandmother was born, since the land is still in the family. When she was asked to go the first thing she said was "But, I can't leave momma." Dammit, dammit, dammit that's sad. But she went. And I'm so glad she did.

Unfortunately, while we were shopping mom revealed that she was looking for something to wear to yet another funeral. This time for a guy she went to school with who had just come to my grandmother's funeral last month. He had a sudden, massive heart attack and that was it. You see why I'm fighting feelings of doom, over here?



On a lighter note, HUBS and I went to Chicago for a quickie trip the weekend before last. We only stayed one night. It was fun but, damn was weatherchannel.com ever wrong about the high temperature. They said 55 and it couldn't have been more than 35 degrees. We were totally not dressed for it! And, since we'd decided to go to the Shedd Aquarium and Navy Pier ($24 to park!!), which are both on the water, um...We almost froze to death. Especially because there were about 200 people in line ahead of us at Shedd. And we had to wait...OUTSIDE. IN THE RAIN. ALSO. Thank God Black-Lady-Paddington-Bear let us go in the accessible entrance. She cut our wait time of 2 hours down to 1/2 an hour.



It was a bit of an adventure, we had great pizza, watched bad cable tv, had free hotel breakfast and now...Now I'm really starved for a real vacation.



How have you been?

Never Ending

Guess what my mom and I did yesterday? We went to yet another funeral. This time it was for two of my aunts' mom (they are my mom's half sisters, so they had a different mother).

She died last Thursday. I'd never met her, but wanted to be there for my aunts and cousins, especially since these two aunts did way more to help my mom with my grandmother than the aunt and uncle who were her actual children. Those two did pretty close to nothing.

We went to Burger King afterwards. I felt bad for mom, yesterday it was three weeks to the day that my grandmother died. Going to another "mom funeral" made things really hard for her, but she felt, like me, that she had to go.

Can we please stop with the family deaths now? That makes seven in less than a year. So...Please?

Silence

Last flowers

I know I've been away for quite a while now, but a lot's been going on. My grandmother died on February 16 at 7:26 am. Maybe I'll write more about that later, maybe not. I was going to post a picture of her above and started crying, so it's possible I'm not as ok as I thought I was by now.

So, I'll be back to regular posting soon. For now, enjoy the photos here. Pictures are so much easier than words...

Things We've Done Recently

We have had an interesting time of it lately. Here's what's been going on...



1)On the first Tuesday of this month, I noticed a opossum hanging out in our neighbor's driveway in the middle of the day. And it freaked me out, I thought that's all we need now, opossums running amok during the day. Well, by the same time the following day, that poor thing was dead. I guess it was sick and disoriented and that's why it was hanging out during daylight.

2) Almost two months to the day after this, I found another cat left in the road in front of our house. HUBS was at work, so I had to dig the grave myself. I don't think I'd ever really used a shovel before, and I was not very good at it. A lot of that had to do with it being hot and me being very sad. I named her Sheila and put her in the little dirt pile left after we got the tree in the front yard removed. Our neighbor, Fred, saw me digging and when he realized why got very upset. He puts out food and water for the strays like we do. When I said that someone must have hit her with their car her responded angrily with "Who! Who hit her!" and I appreciated his seeming desire to find the person and make them wish they had driven more carefully.

Then, two days later on Saturday, after a night of really hard, ridiculous raining, I went to put out food for the strays and found another kitten in the street. It was all very dramatic; me running through our flooded front walk, out into the rain and picking him up. He was wet and cold and already long gone. I brought him into the house and covered him in our doormat until HUBS could find a spot to bury him. I named him Stanley. RIP Sheila 9/3/09 and Stanley 9/5/09.


Boat. Not as big as you may have imagined.

3) That same day we went to Grafton, IL to see life-sized reproductions of Columbus' Pinta and Nina in dock. I was too upset about Stanley and Sheila to have a good time. Also, we went with his parents. They thought I was just tired. I realized that every time I've seen them this year has been on a day I was already in a crap-ass mood about something else. God only knows what they think is wrong with me!

4) With three cat deaths in two months we (me, HUBS and Fred) were starting to think it was time to get some of the strays adopted. Fred and I made calls to the Humane Society of MO, but they don't pick up strays. Animal control will give out humane cages to catch the animals, but a) they only give you one at a time, and that would take forever around here where we've got about 30 cats wandering our street; and b) if they don't have room for them after getting a clean bill of health, they still euthanize them. None of us wanted that, so we're leaving the cats alone. I still can't decide if that's really the right thing, though. Ideas?


Manny and the freakish eyes.

5) Life hasn't been all bad. For a brief period of time last week, we adopted a praying mantis that was hanging around our windows. HUBS named it Manny, which could be short for Manuela if it was a female. It was odd how responsive it was. More so than any other bug/insect I've seen. If you looked out the window at Manny, his head would immediately swivel to look at you. And if you moved around in the window you could actually see his eyes following you. HUBS looked up some mantis facts and found out they have 5 eyes, can see 60 feet and their heads turn 180 degrees. Freaky! After two days Manny moved on (we hope none of the kittens got him) and now we kinda miss the little freak.

6) During one of my many times at the window watching Manny, I accidentally saw him poop. Don't ask.

7) In a break from watching Everwood Season 2 or Friday Night Lights Season 3, I looked out to make sure no cats were in need anywhere. I found a baby opossum and a kitten eating the remainder of the food I'd put out that day. That damn kitten just couldn't leave well enough alone, and kept trying to play with the opossum's thick, ugly tail while it was eating. Opossum baby was coming real close to attacking the kitten because of it, so I stepped outside hoping to scare them off. Uh, you know they both just stood there and stared at me, right? For like a full two minutes, before opossum baby finally ran away. Baby animal crisis averted. See how brave I am when I can hide most of my body behind our front door?

8) Last Friday night, on our way to one of my bar reviews, we saw a opossum get run over by a car. Now, let me just say that I am no opossum fan. They are creepy, disgusting looking and I've heard they're pretty mean. But, I don't want to watch anything suffer, and Goddammit that thing suffered. It was horrible to see. I'll leave it at that.

9) With all this death-of-animals stuff going on, I asked my mom last week if she thought it was some kind of sign. She believes in that type of thing and so do I. I mean, I was starting to worry that God, The Universe, Whatever wasn't getting through to me about something so they were using dead animals to get me to notice what the fuck ever I need to notice. My mom didn't think so, and that really helped ease my mind. It might sound crazy, but there you go.

10) Speaking of my mom, we went to a job fair together last Wednesday with one of my aunts. Mom got laid off after her brother died back in April and hadn't really been looking for work much yet, but heard that the companies at this fair didn't need to see people with degrees, which was good for her. Unfortunately, she got some misinformation. But we still got our resumes to the company she was hoping to talk with. And, I got lots of goodies from the company tables at the fair. Thank you Brown Shoe Company, I've always wanted a tiny pomegranate lip balm!

11) I also spent a day last week trying to help my mom get her room organized. See, she's become quite the hoarder of paper; she's thrown very little away for the past 14years. Her bedroom is filled with bags, boxes and baskets of old bills and mail. How did this happen? Oh, that's easy; it's my bastard father's fault.

See, back in 1994 when he left her, he bought over $3,000 worth of crap for his new place on their shared credit card...And then filed for bankruptcy. So, for years and years they came after my mom for the money. For things she never bought or even saw. She has been afraid to throw anything away for fear that if she couldn't hide from them anymore she wouldn't have the proof that she never bought that crap and shouldn't have to pay for it.

That crap finally fell off her credit report in 2002, but she can't stop saving things. When I went into her room last week I realized that she even has papers under her pillow and comforter, under the bed, in the closet and in the laundry room. I didn't know how bad it was. So I decided to help her get things straight. I was there one day from 10am to almost 7pm and we cleared out three baskets filled with old bills, receipts and pay stubs dated 1995 to 1998. We have a long way to go.

12)Last Friday our house was almost eaten by a woodpecker. I heard this horrible noise that sounded like someone was trying to pick open our locks, looked out the window and saw nothing. The noise kept coming, and it was freaking out Tux, too. I looked out again and this time looked toward the top of the door and found the bird pecking away at the door frame. I beat on the door and got it to leave for a bit, but it came back to the same spot and tried to make a home. Finally the thing got tired and went someplace else. Is that crazy, or what?


Miller, on the left, with her sister Harris. Miller is currently the only stray that likes to have us pet her.

13) Again with the death. I woke up Monday afternoon (that's right, I'm unemployed and loving the freedom) and saw a dead bird on the sidewalk. One of our favorite strays, Miller, eventually came and picked it up. I hope the bird wasn't diseased, I would hate for Miller to get sick and not be able to help her.

14) Do not believe the hype about ladybugs. When I was burying Sheila, one landed on my arm and bit the shit out of me leaving a nasty little bump behind. I am not happy with you, ladybug!

15) We have a bar stool in a corner of our bedroom where I keep a favorite pair of shoes. I went to put them on Saturday and found a cricket up there with its...Aw hell, I'm gonna say it, poop. What is it with us and droppings?


I'll have a special paw gun made if I have to, Sebastian.

16) And...Just a few minutes ago, I watched one of the strays (we call her Sebastian) fight a pretty big snake...IN OUR FRONT YARD. It wasn't just in the front yard, either. It was dangerously close to the front door. Sebastian kept getting tired and walking away to lie down for a bit, and every time I hoped she'd come back with a tiny little gun and blow that snake away. I watched her for over a half hour, and then ran around putting glue boards (thank you, Orkin Man!) down near every basement window, the front door and two openings around the back door on our deck.

Can I just say, internet, I'm tired of nature, death and shit. Absolutely wiped.