Zzot!

1. You find an envelope on your desk claiming “2008 is almost here”
2. It’s currently May. Of 2008.¹
3. The envelope contains the 2008 edition of your current desk calendar.
4. The older model is displaying its cover page, rather than a month.
5. It’s a 2006 calendar.

1. Substitute any other year as needed. [↩]

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I’ve mentioned the furry contingent of our household in my writing here; their names are Miesha, Sasha, and Chi-Chi, oldest to youngest. Miesha and Sasha have been together forever, and Sasha tolerates Chi-Chi like an annoying kid brother who’s always following him around. Miesha and Chi-Chi don’t really get along.

If they’re all scared, they can all hide in the same cupboard. Miesha, being the biggest and the meanest, sits in front. Sasha, being a giant furry chicken, hides behind as many other cats as possible, leaving Chi-Chi in the middle. Chi-Chi’s healthy weight is probably half Sasha’s,¹ so this sort of looks like a montain lion hiding behind a rabbit hiding behind a fuzzy godzilla, but at least Sasha is trying. At any rate, this is the only circumstance where Miesha and Chi-Chi don’t start hissing and growling at each other on sight.

The following occurred on Monday of this week. My apologies to any friends or family who learn of these events from my blog. If you’re new here (and a little slow), L is a pseudonym for my wife; I do not have our cats’ permission to use their real names on my web site.

4:10 pm

Miesha pretty much always has attitude for everyone. She gives L attitude, and they’ve been together for all of Miesha’s life and close to half of L’s. If Miesha doesn’t want to be petted, or if she’s decided she’s done being petted, she’ll warn you and then she’ll bite you. She’s also got some back pain. Most of the time Miesha is a “you can look at me but that’s it” cat.

L notices Miesha is violating most of what I said in the last paragraph, to the point of seeming delirious. She texts me that she’s taking her to the vet because “she’s really weird.” Our friend D helps in this production. If you’ve never taken a cat to the vet, you’ll have to take my word that it’s best done with a friend when one is available.

4:45 pm

D is livid.

L doesn’t remember the conversation at the vet that clearly, and I haven’t talked to D about it yet, but after they all left, she told L that we’re not taking any of our cats back to him.²

5:30 pm

L needs some time alone. D leaves her at home and calls me at work to tell me that Miesha has passed away. She passed quietly enough that L might not have immediately noticed.

6:00 pm

I just get up and leave, basically. I don’t tell anyone that I’m leaving or that one of our cats just died. I’m sure it’s been an hour since D called.

6:30 pm

Miesha and L have been together for 16 years; longer than I’ve known L. Miesha got L through some very hard times. I come home to my wife holding Miesha for the last time.

7:30 pm

It’s eerie how much she looks like she’s just asleep. So much so that neither of us can really think clearly until we wrap her body. We put her in my car for the night. Part of me is thinking “we can’t just leave her out in the cold.”

We had pretty much just finished this when my boss calls and asks me about something I really can’t remember. From my voice, he guesses that I’d been asleep. After answering his question I tell him that “we’ve had a death in the family” and that I wouldn’t be in on Tuesday.

I’m calling this the first time I’ve lost a pet. Technically it isn’t, but I was young enough when my sister’s dog passed that I scarcely remember it. My wife and I spent the night curled up together watching who knows what on TV. We also updated our address books — I had a lot of birthdays missing. There’s a really bizarre Proustian question in there somewhere.

1. My theory is stunted growth caused by malnutrition before the shelter found him, if you’re curious. [↩]
2. Don’t ask me for his name; I’m not running the Better Business Bureau here. [↩]

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We finally had our big family gift exchange last night — this is actually a major win for Mom. Sure, she failed in her quest to get it into December this year, but we still had it before the first full week in January.

A little while after my sister had arrived, her children had made enough of a ruckus that I thought to ask if she was looking forward to the calm, relaxing, stress-free environment of graduate school when her semester starts next week — she was, and she’d been thinking that very thing all day.

Anyway, I had a couple of jokes lined up for my “big gift”, but the much bigger story was one of my nephews. The middle one, who is a very strong contender for the coveted International Lost iPod Association Poster Boy position immediately protested me getting an iPhone. Ignoring how unlikely it is that my sister would have a 14-year old carrying a cell phone around, she later said (you know, when the poster boy comment had occurred to me and I tried it on her privately) that he would never have one; I simply added that even if he did get one, he wouldn’t have it for long.

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The following story is true; the dates have been changed to protect the lazy.

Last night, I heard a sound for the first time, although I still somehow recognized it instantly. I was sitting at my computer working and I heard my wife scream from the living room. Mind you, I’ve known her for a lot longer than I’ve been married to her, and I feel like I’ve heard her shriek more than once in that time…but this one was special.

Someone once said “before you get married, make sure one of you kills bugs.” Usually I just scoot them outside on a scrap of paper or something — assuming we get to it before one of our cats does.¹ This didn’t sound anything like that.²

This time, once my loving wife fetched me, I found a mouse laying in the middle of the living room. Before you get any ideas, I’m not talking about the little plastic numbers with glued-on fur and felt ears and tail. I’m talking a real mouse capable of real bleeding. Oh, and it was bleeding. Fortunately (or is that unfortunately), none of our cats spent enough time feral to know why they can render a mouse into this state so easily.³

The answers to the two questions I remember her asking were both yes. Any guesses? “Do you want a glove?” and “Is he still alive?” — he wasn’t still there the next morning, so either he was playing dead to get the cat to lose interest or something else happened along to finish the job. Welcome to married life, I guess.

1. Anyone with a cat will tell you it’s scientifically impossible for you to notice the bug before the cat does, even if you and the bug are awake in one room and the cat is asleep in another room all the way across the house [↩]
2. If I recall correctly, that event sounds exactly like my wife walking into whatever room I’m in with a sort of tense look on her face [↩]
3. I swear I am not making this up; the most underweight of our cats has been stealing food from the most overweight of our cats, even though the latter is fed separately. I’ve heard of cats preferring one food over another, but the by-prescription-only weight-loss cat food? [↩]

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The second 4,500 was a lot harder than the first — and not entirely because of the number of connections we made. A high point of the return trip was the United agent taking boarding passes for the last hop from O’Hare to Detroit Metro; none of the others had commented on us presenting an Island Air boarding passes. “Back to reality, huh?” (The joke being that it was actually the last flight where someone asked us this)

The trip was fun, and we’ve gotten an assortment of compliments on how the wedding went and everything — although it’ll probably be another few days before the weariness of travel is gone from our faces. Plus, the hotel had neither our cats nor our bed. I think both of our employers missed us — there’s something to be said for that, at least.

For now, at least, we’re stepping boldly forward into the first phase of any marriage — paperwork. (Oh, and that poor woman in the internet café© in Keauhou; she was right that the wedding ring was new, but I didn’t have the heart to tell I constantly fiddled with the previous ring — even two years later)

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At times, I miss the punch and gas economy of my Civic, even though that was two cars ago now. At no time, however, do I miss squeezing my 6′ 5″ frame into a Civic. Where’s a convert any gas vehicle to a biodiesel-electric hybrid for less than a year’s salary service when you need one? :)

Then again, how many years would pass after such a surgery before someone accuses you of wasting money on gasoline so you can tell them “my car runs on discarded fryer grease from my nearby McDonald’s with the wads of potato shrapnel filtered out. From the way they look at me, they must think I’m drinking the stuff.”

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You know what the most important thing in comedy is? Timing.

For this trick, you need a cat and an audience — I used my own cat, and Lins was the audience. Pick up the cat, and hold it in a manner the cat finds slightly uncomfortable. How slightly? Just enough that cat doesn’t miss its cue — this works best with cats you’re familiar with (see the most important thing in comedy for details). Now, feed the cat your straight-line:

I wonder if it’s latent fish DNA; “I don’t want to be here anymore!”

The cat, right on queue, flails its tail around, either because you’re holding it weird or it detests being used as a plot device in bad melodrama (the joke works either way).

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Lins and I went out for dinner with my family on Friday for my birthday, and the craziness started the instant we walked in the door.

Don’t get me wrong, we were really asking for it by showing up early. The time we agreed upon to meet at the restaurant was 7:00 PM, and we got there at 6:50 PM. In my family, showing up at 7:00 PM would have been 10 minutes early, so being 10 minutes early becomes 20. I hadn’t been to this restaurant before, so I didn’t realize the magnitude of my mistake until too late.

In most restaurants, ones with greeters by the door anyway, there’s one or two of them, maybe three when it’s really busy. I couldn’t really tell from where we were sitting, but I think this restaurant had 53 of them. And there were a lot of empty spaces in the parking lot. The thing is, I really didn’t know how many people were coming, so I figured we’d wait until someone came who knew. This was a serious problem for the restaurant staff. They must have had a 90 second rule, because even if all the other crazymakers were busy, the same person would come by again and ask if we’d been helped, smoking or non, like to be seated at the table for an unknown number of other diners, etc.

When Dad appeared on the scene, I told him he’d better go over there and tell them how many of us there are, before 20 of the greeters have simultaneous strokes. Disaster was narrowly averted. Oh, and they apparently had a table open for us — why didn’t they just say so?

(There was going to be more here, but having read my first draft, I changed my mind. The end.)

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I just skimmed the numerous drafts hanging around my blog, and none of them look like they’re cooked yet, so instead I’ll point out an event that seems significant — L L Cool J and Carol Channing appearing on the same stage at the same time, for any reason.

I would tell you which one was singing and which was dancing, but I’m trying to forget myself. Isn’t this about the time the captain is supposed to light the stick your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye sign because this aircraft will soon stop being an aircraft?

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So, my birthday is coming up, and that means that being pestered by friends and family for gift ideas will start soon. If you don’t know me personally (and are still reading this for some reason), you might think that posting a wishlist when your birthday is coming sounds needy or bossy or something — I can only say you’d have to meet my family to understand.

Continue reading…

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