Overly Verbal

So Mouse’s teeth have been bothering him for a while now, and I’ve been trying to make sure he gets enough calories, so I’ve been feeding him all the wet food he’ll eat. Sometimes he gets bored of eating the same thing over and over again, though, so I’ve been purchasing various “meat” “products” at my local 7-11, and grinding them up in the miniature food processor (so as to prevent sullying the Cuisinart with things purchased at my local 7-11). I thought I’d just make a list for you, to prove two things: one, how much I love my kitty cat and the lengths I will go to to make him happy, and two, why I don’t have anything interesting to say anymore. So here we go:

Gross Things My Cats Will Eat

• Baloney
• Clams
• Crab meat
• Human Baby Food

The crab meat and clams come in liquid, and if you mix one or both of them with standard-issue tuna fish, it’s like a disgusting seafood mélange (if you will), but they like it. Baloney, however, while filled with nitrites or nitrates or something else that humans aren’t supposed to consume, somehow is not packaged with enough water to make a suitably paste-like paste, so you have to add water if you’re going to grind up a slice of baloney in your food processor to feed to your elderly cat.

I, being allergic to crab meat and completely disgusted by the smell, texture, taste, and very idea of clams, did not believe that anything could smell more vile than ground tuna, crab, and clams. But I was wrong. Ground baloney is more disgusting than that.* I think it’s got something to do with the fact that fish actually occur in nature, where baloney does not.

So now you know. (You’re welcome.)

Next, we’re going to try hot dogs, I think.

In any event, so far I’ve only mixed Mouse’s antibiotic into the seafood, and it will likely come as no great surprise that he did not notice that there was any clyndamycin hydrochloride in there. (He might have noticed, though, and just thought, “Well, maybe if I just eat it, she won’t squirt a syringe full of it into my mouth. That’ll be better.” He’s pretty smart.)

Molly is going to have to have her teeth cleaned soon, to prevent any future difficulties with her teeth, but in the meantime, she is happily eating whatever I feed to Mouse, largely because she thinks that whatever Mouse has must be the most desirable thing on the face of the planet. She wants to be just like him, and while she’ll never be half as smart as he is, it’s really very sweet that she looks up to him and tries to emulate him. She’s a lot like my neighbors, though, who, no matter how often I display such behavior as not driving shopping carts home from the store, not putting my trash near the Dumpsters (but instead inside the Dumpsters), not having more children than I can afford, not purchasing produce from the men who drive around in an unmarked truck and announce their arrival via bullhorn, not walking willy-nilly into quickly-moving traffic, and not leaning out my living room window into the common areas of the grounds while shouting into my telephone in one or more foreign languages, do not seem to grasp that if you want to be just like someone else, you have to not only do the things they do, but also refrain from doing the things they do not do. I don’t think that’s such a hard concept to grasp, and I’m giving Molly a bye on this one, because her brain is only as big as a walnut, but my neighbors really should get with the program already.

_____
* Human baby food falls somewhere between those two things on the gross-ness scale – I’m not sure how anyone actually feeds a human baby without gagging on the smells emanating from any given jar of baby food. That stuff might be organic, but it strikes me as the same kind of organic that, say, cow poop is. Just because it’s natural doesn’t mean you’d want to eat it.

So say you were going to make a Hawaiian pizza, but you went to 7-11, and they didn’t have any pineapple, they only had “mixed fruit”, which includes pears and peaches in addition to pineapple. Heck, put that on a pizza. It’ll taste good, even though the peaches are just a little too sweet. (Imagine a Hawaiian pizza with fresh pear, though. Soon, it will be spring, and there will be farmer’s markets, and everything will be right with the world again.)

And say you really didn’t want another pizza with cream cheese and apples. What if you mixed condensed milk with melted chocolate chips, and then put marshmallows on top? It would be like s’mores, only on a pizza, and I haven’t actually tried that yet, but golly gee whiz, I should probably get out more. (I should also not go out and purchase graham flour, in an attempt to make a s’mores pizza that truly tastes like s’mores, but I think I might. (Then I might just enter that recipe into a recipe contest, and see if I can’t win a million dollars, because yesterday I bought a $5 lottery ticket and won $20 (well, $15, really), so maybe I’m on a streak.))

In other news, Molly has a rubber fetish. I know, that’s hot, but it’s a little annoying, too.

I have eczema, so I wear rubber gloves to do the dishes. And yes, I have a dishwasher, and it works, but it has recently separated itself from the countertop it was attached to, largely because it vibrates while it operates, and vibration, screws, and fiberboard are not best friends. So I have to borrow a drill and reseat the dishwasher at least half an inch away from the already existing holes if I’d like my dishwasher to be attached to my countertop. Which I would.

But that’s neither here nor there. (Except insofar as every single time I have to borrow someone’s drill I think, “Damn it, why don’t I just buy a drill already?” Then I think, “No, I’ll just date a guy who has a drill.” Then I laugh and laugh, because I’m not going to date anyone at all if I keep staying in my house making odd pizzas and writing entries to my blog about my cats and the strange things they do. At least I only need 45 more cats to fulfill my destiny.)

So the rubber gloves sit on the counter next to the sink, to remind me to wear them so that my eczema doesn’t flare up, which it does anyway when it’s, say, winter, or summer, wet or dry, hot or cold outside.

The first time I came home to find these rubber gloves in the middle of the living room floor, I thought, “Hmm. That’s odd. Either I have a poltergeist, or some strange intruders, or Molly’s decided to move my gloves around.” She had previously moved such things as a washcloth from the bathroom to the kitchen and a sock from the bedroom to the living room, so I figured it was her.

She put an end to the question a couple of days ago, when she wandered into the living room while I was otherwise occupied, meowing at the top of her lungs with a mouth full of rubber glove. Scary noise, that. And she has since moved the gloves every single time I’ve left the house, and several times when I’ve been inside of it. Friday when I got home, she rolled around on the floor with the gloves for a while, in what I can only describe as a sort of cat-ecstasy. She was spayed before I got her, but maybe before that she led a wild BDSM lifestyle? She sure looks innocent:

But isn’t it always the innocent-looking girls? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

(You know what would be neat? If we could willfully alter the way we see. Sometimes you see a photograph, and think, “That would just look nicer without color. And maybe kind of blurry” I wish we could do that without software.)

So I had this great idea for a Valentine’s Day entry. Last year on the day after, I went to my local 7-11, to buy half-price candy, and the only candy hearts they had were in the Spanish language. I didn’t write about them then, however, because I was in a bus accident the same day, and a bus accident is higher on the scale of things that are interesting to read about than are Spanish-language candy hearts, at least in my estimation.

So all day today, I was looking forward to stopping by 7-11 on the way home to buy some Spanish-language candy hearts, and then coming home and writing a truly hilarious entry about them. Alas, the only candy hearts in my 7-11 this evening were in English. Damn it all to hell. Now I don’t have anything funny to write about at all.*

And if I write about my real life, you’ll get bored. Here goes anyway:

Mouse showed his love for me this morning by attempting to leave a hairball on the bed, while I was still in it. In spite of the fact that I had not yet had enough coffee, I did manage to pick him up and put him on the floor before he got anything out. Molly has not yet attempted to display her love for me, but when she does, it will likely include her poking me to remind me that she needs her claws trimmed. After having a cat without front claws for ten years, I’m flabbergasted at how often one has to trim the claws of a cat with front claws. I think de-clawing is inhumane (infeline, I suppose), but it’s not that hard to understand why someone would do it. Molly is really very good about the scratching, only does it on things designed for cats to scratch on (except for occasional scratching on the hideous ragrug in the kitchen), but I don’t trust that she wouldn’t totally destroy a new chair if I was to buy one. I love these little ones beyond all measure, but boy are they a lot of work sometimes.

In other news, the best (and, um, only) gift I got for Valentine’s Day this year is a McDonald’s giftcard. Sure, it’s only worth $10, but $10 at McDonald’s is easily two meals. At McDonald’s! I’d go now, in fact, but I have to make some cupcakes. (With pink mint icing. I always experience a little cognitive dissonance when I eat pink frosting that is minty, but they’re my Valentine’s Day cupcakes and I’ll make the frosting mint if I want.)

Maybe I should make a solemn vow to rearrange my life so that next year on Valentine’s Day I have someone to share my pink-(mint-)frosted cupcakes with.

That seems like a bad idea, making a vow to do something I can’t necessarily (and might not actually want to) do, however, so I think I’ll refrain. Let’s just hope that I don’t get into a bus accident tomorrow. That seems almost doable.

On that note, Happy Valentine’s Day, you people who are different than I am!
_____

* Lest you think I made them up just to have something to complain about today, I present a link.

So I’m at 7-11 earlier,* and there’s this cute little boy, three, maybe four, wearing his Elmo footie pajamas and running around as if he’s had enough sugar for three children. And he points at the bananas and yells “Bananas! Delicious!”

And I think, “Well, isn’t it nice of my neighbors to have taught their child a language, instead of just wails and grunts? This isn’t such a bad neighborhood after all. Sure, that kid should be asleep by now, but I also should not be so judgmental about other people’s approaches to child-rearing.”

So there’s this thing we do at work. We anticipate that something isn’t going to go the way we’d like it to, and we say, “I’m afraid it’s going to be something that starts with cluster and rhymes with duck”.

And we’ve expanded that concept, to where even today I had a conversation that went like this:

Me: Are you going to respond to that e-mail?
Co-worker: Well, I guess somebody should. Are you going to?
Me: No, because if I answer that e-mail, I’ll use the word “off”, in conjunction with a word that starts with F and rhymes with duck.
Co-worker: Firetruck?
Me: Yup. I would say “Firetruck off”. Exactly.

Anyway, this little boy in the 7-11, having the capacity to name at least one fruit, and in English no less, also had some other remarkable language skills. When the man who was apparently responsible for this child told the child to settle down, the little boy said, “No!”

And then he used a word that starts with mother and rhymes with pucker.

If there hadn’t have been other small children in my 7-11 at the time, I might not have thought twice about it, but assuming I don’t die alone in a double-wide trailer with my 47 cats, I might someday have kids, and those kids are likely to learn a lot of “dirty” words just by being brought up in my home. (But only when I hurt myself, because if I am describing a pain caused by, say, smashing my finger in a window, or, I don’t know, tripping over one of the extension cords splayed across my living room floor,** I invariably say that it hurts like a son of a bitch.) And I’m not all that likely to take my children to 7-11 in their pajamas, but other people are, so there were other children in the store at the time. And we’re on the verge of welcoming a new little one to the world, and I would like very much for that particular little one not to have to grow up in a world where they overhear anyone saying words that start with mother and rhyme with pucker in public.

So here’s what I’d like us all to do. Let’s think a little bit more about what we say, and when, and keep in mind that although language is a beautiful and expressive thing, if you’re not careful with it, it can hurt people.

Sure, it doesn’t hurt all that much to hear a little boy call his caregiver a motherfucker, but every time something like that happens it takes a tiny part of my soul, and I’m trying rather desperately to hold onto what parts of it are left.

So next time we’re out in public, and you say, “Shit!”, I’m going to correct you. And next time I do it, which will likely be soon, I would like to you to correct me, so that we can all do what we can to make the world (and therefore my 7-11) a slightly more pleasant place to be.***

Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.

_____
* Do I need a sub-category of “Livin’ in the Ghetto”? “Things That I Hate About My Local 7-11 and the People who Visit It”? I’m thinking on it.

** Grounded electricity being a special thing, for special people.

*** And also, teach your children that if a blog’s header reads “This Website Contains Language That Some Readers Might Find Objectionable”, they should stop reading that particular blog.

So I just went to 7-11, and while I was out I was reminded of something that was in my head yesterday when I started writing the entry about words and how I use them, but slipped my mind. Precision.

There’s a sign in the 7-11 parking lot that reads

Parking for
Customers
Only

And there’s a sign in the McDonald’s parking lot that reads

Parking for McDonald’s
Customers Only
While on Premises

Guess which one of those signs I like better? (And it’s not just because I’m a fascist, or because the font on one sign is more pleasing than the font on the other.)

That is all.

Earlier today, a nice man came to pick up one of my odious ghettolord’s cars.

By nice I mean frightening. He called to tell me when he was coming, and during that conversation asked me how to get here from where he was. I couldn’t help him, what with my not being a truck driver and all, but I didn’t curse at him then, or tell him that there are such novel and useful tools as maps and GPS units in use by many a truck driver, because that wouldn’t have helped any. So he arrived only a half hour late, and proceeded to tell me he was surprised he was on time, because he stopped and ate lunch for half an hour.

A long discussion (no, monologue) ensued, during which I learned precisely how difficult it is to be a car transporter, because there are deadlines, and docks, and scales, and lot attendants who sometimes take the cars for a spin when they’re not supposed to, and traffic, and various and sundry other trials and tribulations that I surely will never face because this man alone has convinced me that my sometime dream to be a long-haul truck driver shall forever remain unfulfilled. I already think some of my co-workers are not exactly as vibrant and interesting and clever as I’d like them to be - if this guy was my co-worker I would likely be truly bereft of love for my fellow man.

So then we walk around the car, to detail its imperfections, and he gives me a form to sign transferring liability for the car to him. Had it been, say, my car, I probably would not have signed the form, because I didn’t believe this man, who apparently doesn’t own (or perhaps cannot read) a map should be entrusted with anything of any value whatsoever, and this car’s gotta be worth at least a couple hundred bucks. But it wasn’t my car, so I signed the form.*

Then he wants to know whether the owner of the car is my husband. “No, he’s my friend,” I say, because I’m stupid sometimes. “You’re not married?” he asks. “No,” I reply. (This is going to take a very long time if I have to make it read like a Hardy Boys novel, with all the “he exclaimed”, “she protested”, “they queried” stuff. Let’s try a different format.)

Him: “Me either. Why not? Just can’t find the right person?”

Me: “Something like that. I’m picky.”

Him: “Me too. Do you have kids?”

Me: “No.”

Him: “I just had my first.”

Pictures on his cell phone are politely cooed over.

Him: “But I only get to see her about once a month. She stays with her grandparents.”

Me: “Well you better hurry up and get back to her!” [read: “Would you kindly shut up and put this stupid car on your truck, you mindless Neanderthal?”]

The car somehow winds up on top of his truck, after I learn many a detail about the living arrangements of this man’s young daughter, which I shall not recount here. So I think we’re done, until he starts talking again.

Him: “Yeah, I’d like to get married. I just can’t find the right person. You know, there’s three kinds of people: golddiggers, carpet munchers, and cake eaters. I don’t want any of those.”

Me: “Sure. That makes sense. Thanks a lot. Drive safely.”

So you know how people employed in the service of our government get hazardous duty incentive pay when they’re doing something maybe a little dangerous? I now believe I should get a “hazardous duty rent discount” when, in the course of my day, I am forced to have a conversation with anyone who is being paid to provide a service to my landlord. You just never know what’s going to happen. So there’s that.

There’s one other thing, though. Recently Coors Light** has become available in special “Cold Activated Bottles”. The labels are created so that the mountains on them are white, but “When The Mountains Turn Blue, IT’S AS COLD AS THE ROCKIES!” Initially I wondered why someone would need visual evidence that his or her beer is cold, since simply touching a bottle of beer should allow one to determine the relative temperature of the beer. I mean, maybe it’s a little silly to go through all the trouble of creating special cold activated bottles. But now I realize that many of the people who drink Coors Light are probably somewhat like our pal Mr. Truck Driver. And he very well may get a special thrill out of knowing exactly when his beer is cold enough to consume. I mean, when you’re keeping your beer in the cab of your truck, as I imagine he does,*** how else are you gonna know?

I can’t wait to hear how the conversation on the other end of this trip goes, although I am quite sure it will take far less time to get the car off of the truck than it took to get the car onto the truck. (And my landlord ain’t nearly as purty as I am, so Mr. Truck Driver might be less inclined to chat with him.) I’ve got Mr. Truck Driver’s card, though, so if you need a car moved, let me know. I’ll hook you up.

_____

* If you can call it that. Because Mr. Truck Driver had so much trouble yesterday, he didn’t have a proper form, only a handwritten monstrosity that probably holds no legal weight whatsoever. When the car arrives at its destination, I hope the form can be scanned and shown on the Internet. It was that good.

** The Breakfast of Champions, and I’m sad to say the most palatable beer regularly available at my local 7-11 (except sometimes they have Killian’s, and then I buy Killian’s even if I don’t want it, in hopes that my local beer distributor will realize that there is at least one person in my neighborhood that wants to drink beer from a country other than Mexico - yes, it’s still made by Coors, but I’ll take what I can get).

*** I actually was really curious about what was in the cab of his truck, but given that it was idling in dry, somewhat tall grass, perilously close to a major highway, I didn’t think it would have been safe to get close enough to look. Well, that, and this story would not end nearly as well if I was hit over the head, driven somewhere to the south of here, and forced to resume life in a mobile home, caring for a small child who is spoiled by her grandparents, bemoaning the fact that my truck driver common law husband is never home, and dealing with the attendant babymomma drama. (Or maybe that would be fun.)

After telling someone last night the story of the shopping carts, even walking with him past one of the Dumpsters, and pointing out to him the creek (because I’m cool like that), I realized that I haven’t caught you all up lately.

So at the high point, there were 17 shopping carts on the grounds. Might have been 18 - the details are a little hazy (that happens when you try to deny reality.). Half of them were by one Dumpster, half of them by the other, except that there was one still in the creek. Then one day, all of the shopping carts by the Dumpsters disappeared. I don’t know where they went, but I do hope they weren’t scared. Happily, one stayed behind to join his friend in the creek, perhaps to keep him company. (Although I am occasionally softhearted, I can’t say I’ve ever been as concerned with the feelings of shopping carts as I am now.) Then one day, both of the shopping carts were removed from the creek, and placed by the Dumpster. So there are now only two, and I suspect they will be removed in due time, and then I’ll have to find something else to go on and on about. (Um, yeah, like that will be hard.)

So I was going to maybe take a photograph of the two remaining carts when I got home today, because I know you all miss that, but on my way home I had a truly enraging encounter. You will never guess who emerged from the parking lot of the 7-11 just as I was walking past. (Okay, maybe you will, since a) I mentioned plumbers in the title, and b) that’s all I ever talk about any more.) Yup, it was R_____ C_____, plumber. “Excuse me, ma’am? Are you going to your apartment now?” I didn’t say yes, didn’t even nod, just looked at him in a way that I hope said “F*ck you, you lazy-ass plumber. I will see you in hell.” So then he says, “I can be there in five minutes.” To which I replied, “No.” And then he said something about how he was sorry, and he even looked a little downtrodden, but I think only because I was depriving him of revenue, and not because he had any concern whatsoever about the state of my plumbing. But I’m a little pissed off that I didn’t know before that that’s where he hangs out, because I would have totally enjoyed going to 7-11 only to find him gorging himself on Slurpees and Go-Go Taquitos in the parking lot. (I can see the headline now, “Mild-mannered woman finally snaps, kills plumber with bottle of Mad Dog, pushes body through neighborhood in shopping cart”.)

So after convincing my landlord that I was going to have nothing further to do with our local plumber, I am now waiting patiently for him to call me with contact information for reliable plumbing services, as recommended by his realtor. In the interim, I took a go at it myself. “The clog’s close to the sink,” I thought, “I can do this.” Alas, even after venturing to Home Depot and buying a longer, thicker plumber’s auger, with a spear-like tip, I did not succeed. In fact, after the seventh or eighth time I fed a long metal tape far into the pipe, I thought, “Well, maybe I’ve loosened the clog. Where’s the plunger?”

Shortly thereafter, I actually broke the plunger. If you had asked me Saturday whether I had the strength to break a plunger, I would have said no. But, apparently, in addition to being brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous, I am also possessed of enough upper body strength to force a wooden rod through a somewhat flexible inverted plastic bowl. (Or else I just happened to own a really cheap plunger. Maybe that’s it.)

So that’s all I’ve got. Nothing else has happened to me in days. (Well, okay, maybe one thing happened, but I’m not going to tell you about it, because it might be a harbinger of the coming apocalypse.)

Anything happen to you?

So approximately five minutes after I wrote about having “The Rose” and “You Light Up My Life” stuck in my head, I went to 7-11.

And somehow going to 7-11 made me get The Pointer Sisters’ “Jump” stuck in my head.

And then, the very instant I returned home, I got “Been Caught Stealing” stuck in my head.

Because there’s clearly an incontrovertible link between Jane’s Addiction and The Pointer Sisters. (And also, that should totally be “Been Caught Stealin’”. But I’m not in charge, so it isn’t.)

Sometimes, I feel like if I could only figure out the segues, I could rule the world.

Luckily, even though if I were in charge things would be much, much different (including the proper use of commas and apostrophes at all times), I don’t actually want to rule the world.

I just want to understand the segues.

The fact that after Jane’s Addiction comes Jessica Simpson? That’s easy. It’s the alphabet. I’ve got a pretty firm grasp on the alphabet, both in it’s proper form, where artists are alphabetized correctly, and in the iTunes form, where everything’s all mixed up and 10,000 Maniacs comes before 50 Cent*, Ben Folds follows Bell Biv Devoe, Madness and Marc Anthony are right next to each other. I can follow that. It’s wrong, but I can follow it.

But the part in my brain, where The Pointer Sisters yield Jane’s Addiction? It just doesn’t make any sense.

But here’s something: when the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long, and you feel that love is only for the lucky and the strong? Just remember, in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows, lies the seed, that with the sun’s love, in the spring, becomes the rose.

I should probably go do something productive, like practicing playing “Edelweiss” on the piano. (I’m kidding. I’m working on Billy Joel’s “Honesty” at the moment, not some goofy song from The Sound of Music. I mean, really.)

Should I even ask? What did we all do before I had a blog?

_____

* Don’t they belong under T and F, respectively? Why yes, yes they do. But I’m not in charge.