1. My new washer and dryer are all fancy and digital and thus show you how much time is left on the load. This is awesome, especially when they’re neck and neck — currently, for example, the dryer has 38 minutes and the washer has 37 minutes left. Sadly, I know from experience (i.e., running in there every few minutes to announce the time situation to Larry and ask him yet again which one he’s rooting for) that the dryer is going to win.

2. So, to recap our animal situation: there is Pete, o he of the murderous nature towards everyone on earth except the inhabitants of this house; Bob, Larry’s former office cat; Icky, the crusty outside cat who JUST WANTS TO COME INSIDE FOR CHRIST’S SAKE; and Lulu, the long-suffering dog. Pete sleeps wherever the hell he wants to, either on one of Lulu’s beds or on my shoulder, Bob sleeps in the laundry room, and Icky sleeps outside in the shed. On a heating pad! It is luxurious! But yes: we are assholes who throw poor Icky outside every night.

The other night, however, it snowed. And apparently my cat-inspired assholery has a limit, and thus everyone slept in the house at the same time, and I didn’t even put Bob in the laundry room, and no one clawed anyone else’s eyes out, and Icky got to wind his long black tail around my neck all night. The moral of the story is this: for years we have tried to make stupid Pete happy by keeping the other cat(s) away from him, but screw that. Nothing is going to make Pete happy! With that knowledge, the other cats are now much happier. As I type this, Icky is asleep beside me in the bed and Pete is perched atop a piece of furniture I will call a dresser but which we call “the yellow thing” because it’s really a weird, possibly Scandinavian kitchen cabinet thing with doors and drawers and a pretty glass detail and also: vents for hot pies to cool. It houses stationery and old videotapes. Bob just walked through to get a snack. No one growled, fought, or died. The end.

3. So I finished A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book last week, and whoa, what a ride. Do I sound like Keanu when I say that? It was, though: lots of characters, lots of time passed, lots of historical events [that occasionally I skimmed when it became clear that one of the 10,000 characters wasn't going to interact with someone famous in that passage], and near the end, everyone’s fates were sealed and reported and it was tragic and awesome. Oh, and then I tried to go immediately to sleep. Didn’t work.

4. I also read Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked — finished it last night. It is good: maybe not as good as About a Boy but better than How to be Good and A Long Way Down. I think I would like to come back in another life as Nick Hornby’s career. Stable, entertaining, straddling the line between art and pop.

5. Yesterday during Spike’s nap I decided I would wrap all of his presents so I wouldn’t have to keep shooing him out of the guest room. So I did that, and then moved on to Larry’s presents. Still asleep. People, at the end of Spike’s almost three hour nap (!), I had wrapped all 46 presents. The tree looks lovely.

While I felt slightly ridiculous for getting out into the Black Friday insanity this morning, my defense is thus: I left the house at the reasonable hour of 9:00 and went to Steinmart, where the $10 off coupon was good until 10:00. For hobnobbing with the unwashed masses, I scored a pair of cute sterling earrings for my mother in law for the low, low price of…are you ready? $1.64. Holla!

In unrelated news, for being such a turd of a cat, Pete is also the one most likely to sit in your lap and is by far the purriest. Stupid cat. I am currently locked in the back of the house with the said turd, as he attempted to slash the achilles tendon of one of my houseguests yesterday. Of course, he is sitting in my lap. And purring.

Here was what was happening in my house about an hour ago: Spike was pissed off, tired, screaming, and ready for bed. We went to start running his bath water and discovered that Pete had exploded all over the bathroom.

Turds. Turds and barf and a pile of something that could’ve been either one. Pete is fond of barfing into an article of clothing or a towel and then politely folding the garment in half — this time it was the rug that looked like it had just fallen, folded and barfless, out of the cabinet. Because Spike was a thrashing howler monkey and was attached to my person, I dumped him into the pack and play, which he did not appreciate, and which caused the already horrifying noises to come out of his tiny body to become louder and more murderous. So then I threw away the rug, dumped Pete’s litter box, refilled it, and coughed through a cloud of dust kicked up by the cheap clay litter Pete’s delicate sensibilities insist upon (he does not care for clumping kind, thank you very much, and he does not care for scented litter — and, while he is an asshole, when Pete insists upon something, I listen). THEN I had to mop the bathroom, all the while listening to Spike scream and sob.

Spike continued to sob through his bath, pausing occasionally to laugh at his bath toys. It sounded like this: WAH WAH WAH HA HA HA HA! (pause) WAH WAH WAH WAH. Then he cried through drying off, getting his pajamas on, and me fixing his nighttime bottle. The moment the child was finished with the bottle, he threw it on the floor and passed out.

And I totally forgot to tell you that when we were coming back into the living room I could totally smell cat turds and knew that my turd wrasslin’ wasn’t over for the night, but it turned out to be pretty easy to find because there was a carefully folded baby blanket on the floor. Pete is like one of those serial killers who can’t resist leaving a calling card.

Anyway, hi! Hope you’re having a good night.

What the cat dragged in: my pajama top
Where he dragged it: into the litter box

• We keep Lulu’s leash and collar in a bowl on a table by the front door, and if you go near the bowl or heaven forbid, touch the bowl so that the collar jangles a little, she goes nuts and thinks it’s time for a walk. The other day Pete dropped his mousie into the bowl and then dug around in it trying to get mousie out, and Lulu actually jumped up and ran over to him with her little puppy eyebrows up and her tail wagging. Like Pete was going to take her for a walk. I love Lulu, but sometimes she’s such a dog.

• I was totally into American Idol this season, but after Allison was booted, I lost interest in that sausage party. And such uninteresting sausages, too! I was still rooting for the widowed sausage but now that he’s gone, I just cannot bring myself to care for the screaming sausage or the stale sausage. You should type “sausage” a few times and see how doing so compels you to KEEP TYPING IT. Sausage!

• A few weeks ago I told you about my friend from high school, JP, who used to throw me around onto vaguely cushioned surfaces, and how we’d become friends again on Facebook. I was looking through my high school journals for ammunition to use against him and found some intriguing information instead.

A Recap of My Junior Year in High School: A List by Sally J. Nordan

JP is awesome! I love him!
Today I thought we were going to make out but instead we wrestled a lot.
JP is mad at me.
I apologized to JP today.
We wrestled some more.
I hate JP.
I love him!
Wrestling!
Mad again.
Apologized again.
More wrestling.
No making out. Just more wrestling.

You see where this is going, don’t you? JP is gay. Of course he is! It all makes sense! He didn’t have dreams of WWF! He just didn’t want to make out with a girl. It’s kind of heartbreaking and sweet and it makes me want to get in a time machine and pat him on the head and tell him it’s ok and that he can stop pinning me down with his elbow now.

Do you care that I got a flu shot this morning? No? I didn’t think so. Instead of hearing that uninteresting story, take a look at Larry’s two office cats kicking each other’s asses instead, why don’t you:

I have just spent several minutes writing and rewriting a post about how Larry accidentally locked Icky (the outside cat) in the trunk of my car overnight, and how the only reason I even heard him meowing was that I was buckling Spike into the carseat, which I don’t usually do in the morning since Larry takes him to school and I pick him up, and I was buckling him in because we were headed to the doctor, and we were only headed to the doctor that morning because I am an idiot and thought our appointment was the day before in the afternoon, and I left work early and got to the doctor’s office and then discovered that I am an idiot and made an appointment for the next day, and anyway the whole point of the whole thing was that I saved Icky’s life by being forgetful. But man, even the Cliffs Notes version of that story is not all that great.

Sidenote: besides having a poo-poo party on one of my jackets, Icky was totally fine. And Larry feels terrible. It’s pretty much the best thing that’s ever happened to Icky in terms of us being extra nice to him.

In unrelated news, today has been fairly awesome: the baby slept for 9 hours last night! And I read The Invention of Hugo Cabret! And I watched 5 episodes of the second season of Dexter! And I read half of How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read! And I made brownies! And a cheesecake to take to a party tomorrow!

So: to sum up, the cat almost died and I had an awesome day.

• A SORHO

I know. I know! I wrote it down! I saw this car twice so I know this is what it says. Any suggestions besides the obvious?

• A few weeks ago I watched this show called Housecat Housecall on Animal Planet where bad cats get visited by a kitty therapist and are magically cured. There was this inside cat named Chumley who liked to attack the visitors and sometimes his owners. SOUNDS FAMILIAR. Instead of the options at our house, which were “let’s kill him!” and then “ok, fine, medicine it is,” the kitty therapist suggested that Chumley needed to exercise his hunting skills. She suggested the owners sprinkle cat food around the house and let Chumley go hunting that way. People, it sounds stupid, but do you want to know something? We’ve been trying it with Pete and it seems to be working! I don’t trust him enough to let him wander throughout the house when the baby is ripe and available for biting, but last weekend Pete came out for a supervised visit while the baby was asleep and sat nicely in a chair next to me for an hour. Bonus: he’s also off his meds! And I have not heard the telltale signs of Pete being horrible, which is Larry bellowing OW YOU LITTLE SHIT.

• This morning I came upon this website (if you must know, I was doing a search for “selena gomez” and chicken). It might be the best thing I have ever read, especially this line:
Just beam her a bottleful of Geritol with a state that says “Suck it, Old!” and permit her undergo that you’re not afraid of her. It’s the exclusive artefact to care with a bully. You shouldn’t be excusing her actions, chipmunk.

Internet, I have not told you about Pete, how he tried to kill my mother the day after the baby was born. Pete has a history of attempted murder (and with an unsuccessful round of anti-anxiety medication), but we have always been able to explain it away with various territory theories — usually, he attacks the catsitter (not a smart idea on his part) or whoever dares to stay in the guest room (where he hangs out most of the time). However, my mom was making coffee and Pete jumped up on the countertop and proceeded to wrap his teeth and claws around her arm. My stepfather had to pry him off and chase him into the back room. I am convinced that if Pete were able to grasp a knife in his furry kitten paws, he would’ve done so and then applied it betwixt my mother’s ribs. (more…)

Y’all, I am tearing up National Poetry Month this year! Each year I forget how hard it is to find interesting poems that I can heartily endorse — ones that I haven’t posted before, that is. Oh well.

Yesterday I took Elsie, aka White Cat, aka Elsers, aka Elser Selsers, over to Rachel’s (my coworker) house to live. Cat abandonment! I know it’s for the best, as Elsie and Pete do not get along and Pete is such a pill that making him happy is kind of a priority. Elsie has been with us for a year and after trying for a year and keeping our house shut off into two halves and having a crazy cat who poops in the dog’s bed when he’s stressed, we had to do something. I was very sad about giving her away but glad she gets to live in a house where she’s the only kitty. I will miss the way she used to sit on the edge of my sink and tell me all about what’s going on on One Life to Live every morning. That’s the only thing I can figure out that she was saying. She’d see me get in the shower and say nothing, but then the moment I emerged she was all rarr rayrrr rarrrr? And I’d say oh yeah then what happened and she would say rar rar rarrr rarrrrrr!! And I would say nuh-uh you are making that up — Dorian Lord can’t still be on that show.

Anyway, so after having a few good boo-hoos about it (when I left Rachel’s house Elsie was hiding under the bed, and imagining what was going on in her little kitty head — which was probably more where’s my food? and less woe is me, no one loves me, here I sit under the bed, totally abandoned — set me off for several hours), I had finally recovered when Larry told me about something he read online.

Larry: I wasn’t going to mention it, but did you see that story where they thought there was a newborn in the trash can at Wal-Mart?
Me: Uh, no.
Larry: It turned out to be a burrito.

This set me off into the most hysterical laughter I have experienced in years. I was crying, I was choking, I was laughing in a totally new way that sounds nothing like my actual laugh, and when I was able to speak I kept asking questions that made me laugh more, like “was the burrito wearing a diaper” or “was the burrito crying” only I don’t think it sounded like English. Larry sort of laughed nervously the way you do when you see someone have a fit or a seizure (ok, imagining Larry standing around laughing while someone has a seizure is now making me laugh all over againl). He found the article and printed it for me, and then reading it in black and white made me start hysterically laughing all over again, and I could only make it through the first line without crumpling up the paper and laughing some more.

Here it is. I hope the word “only” in the second sentence brings you as much unbridled mirth as it did me.

There are many ways a cat can express his discontent — my old cat Tom, for example, was fond of spraying — but I have to hand it to Pete. When he is pissed off, he poops in Larry’s tub. Not just in the tub, friends! But in the drain. He aligns his little kitty butt just so and poops into the drain, which means that Larry then flies into a rage and is forced to fish cat turds out of the pipes while I try really hard not to laugh.

Larry has been working on fixing the windowsill in that bathroom (why did the homebuilders of 1947 put windows in the tiled bathtub area, only to rot years later? discuss) so he isn’t showering in there right now. Last night it occured to us that we should put something over the drain so at least if he poops in the tub again at least there will be no fishing expedition. (Admittedly, this thought came to us rather late in the cat-poops-in-drain-repeatedly game.)

So, I ask you: what would you put over the drain to prevent your cat from depositing turds in there?

We used a jar of marshmallow creme.

We went to see Sweeney Todd on Christmas Day (loved it! singing, murder, and Johnny? sign me up), and afterwards, I decided that the scene of Pete and Elsie’s demise needed revising.

WARNING! Sweeney Todd quasi-spoiler ahead! (more…)

My mother sent me this yesterday — the sweetest kitty picture ever:

That’s Tom (age 16) with my mother’s two kittens, Henry and Lizzie. I must say I am jealous. Here’s what would happen if Pete and Elsie were to attempt to take a nap together: (more…)

(more…)

Five things for Monday.

1. I went to a new dentist on Saturday (I know! Saturday teeth cleaning!) and apparently I have exceptionally clean teeth. The hygienist complained that there was little to scrape off. Let me tell you: I have never had this experience before, so it must mean that the Sonicare toothbrush I’ve been using for the past 9 months is kicking plaque’s ass. (I have the cheapest one, so if you’re in the market, please know that it works great.)

2. It’s not a vanity tag, but I saw this in a fancy script on someone’s back window the other day:

3. Rock of Love, dudes. I can’t even say that last night’s episode was awesome because I was too busy spraying myself with a fire extinguisher after I burst into flames out of embarrassment. First off, ladies, do not let your dad wear a peach short-sleeved mock turtleneck, especially if he is going to be appearing on television. Also, refrain from being in situations where someone might tell your dad you gave Bret Michaels a blow job. Also, refrain from having a dad who will then WALK UP TO BRET MICHAELS AND ASK HIM ABOUT THE BLOW JOB YOU GAVE HIM. I know you can’t choose your parents, but maybe if your dad is gross and weird and is going to be on tv, you could hire a nice actor instead.

4. Pete Drug Report: there is still relative peace in the valley (if you ignore one errant turding incident), and this morning, Pete and Lulu were caught sleeping together on her bed. You couldn’t call it cuddling or nestling, but there was a cat and a dog sleeping within inches of each other and nobody was crying or bleeding, so I consider that a huge victory.

5. Did you know that America’s Next Top Model starts this week? I would be more excited except I read that this season the whole gang is on a cruise ship. It reeks of that dreadful “semester at sea” season of Road Rules (you know, the season where I stopped watching Road Rules). Ty-Ty, you better have chosen some crazy beer-throwing-on-weave bitches to make it up to me.