I have a question. Can anyone describe the figure below in fewer words?
a trapezoid with the longer parallel side at the top
That seems like an awful lot of words for such a simple shape.
(And yes, I do have better things to worry about, but it just so happens that my life is rich with excitement. How often do you get an opportunity to describe flowcharts in words, huh?) (I didn’t pay $50,000 for a fancy English degree for nothing.)
Here’s hoping this is a one-part entry.
I have had “Puff, the Magic Dragon” stuck in my head for some time now. (I’m blaming it on the Renaissance because it started right after that, but I do appreciate that correlation is not causation, so you don’t have to remind me, thank you very much.)
Have you ever listened to the lyrics? I mean, really listened? To more than the first four lines?
It starts out pleasantly enough. You remember: “Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff, / And brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff.”
But by the end of the song little Jackie Paper doesn’t come to visit Puff anymore: “A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys.”
Damn, that song is sad.*
That, unfortunately, is all.
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* At least there’s a comma in the title. (I’m afraid, though, that whatever happiness there is in that is completely negated by “Peter, Paul and Mary”’s comma usage. Arrgh.)
Some people might say that I don’t know an awful lot about history. Those people would be correct, but I have long wanted to visit a Renaissance Faire, because I am easily amused. And on Saturday, the aforementioned new-fun-to-go-dancing-with person and I went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival. A good time was had by all.
There was a heat advisory, because I live in the 6th circle of hell. (I always think of it as the 9th, but the 9th was ice, a fact I would like to claim to have known because of my deep familiarity with Dante’s Inferno, but instead have to admit I simply looked up on Wikipedia). Armed only with a large bottle of water, my wits, and a charming and extremely patient companion, I started my day.
I had been to historical villages before, but only two: Den Gamle By, in Denmark, was simply delightful, particularly the exhibition of historical toys (although we all know that I am also a sucker for historical textiles and historical clocks, because I am nothing if not a dork). And I’ve been to Mount Vernon, which is kind of awesome, especially the candlelight tour of the mansion. It brings history alive and stuff (although when the tour guide said something remarkably silly that I knew not to be true, I did collapse into giggles - the candlelight tour was preceded by a cocktail party: you might want to have up to three glasses of cheap red wine before you go). (And although I live in the very birthplace of America, I have never, ever been to Colonial Williamsburg - that shall be soon rectified, if I have anything to say about it.) (And shall we speak now of the visit to the George Washington Masonic National Memorial? No, no we shall not.)
Anyway, even though I had never experienced the magic before, I did have a pretty good idea of what to expect, and I was simply delighted by four things I knew but could not confirm:
First off, there was no recycling during the Renaissance, which is why I had to discard no fewer than three empty water bottles in a trashcan, instead of a recycling bin.
Second, Mensa, which I believed to be a modern phenomenon, apparently existed back then, because I saw a man with a t-shirt that read “Mensa”*. I suppose maybe his t-shirt was actually in Latin, and actually read “table”, but I can’t imagine why this man would be wearing a “table” top**. Then, again, what do I know about history?
Third, at one point, we listened to a band for a while. Somehow Dick Dale influenced the Renaissance, or at least his “Hava Nagila” is currently played by entertainers at Renaissance festivals. That, in a word, rocks.
Finally, although one could not actually recycle the bottles, I had a historically accurate Pepsi. Okay, so it didn’t come in a bottle, it came in a waxed cup (comme ca), and I couldn’t get a straw, because straws had not yet been invented, but still, I was not aware that high fructose corn syrup was around in the 1540s. I mean, I had an idea, but I couldn’t really know for sure, until I went to Maryland.
In addition to the Pepsi, I also availed myself of other period food, including a piece of garlic bread covered with two different kinds of cheese, and a piece of cheesecake, frozen and covered with chocolate, impaled on a stick. (Are we having cheesecake-on-a-stick at the October Thanksgiving event at my home? I’m not sure yet. There are some considerations to be made when attempting chocolate-covered cheesecake on a stick, including the melting point of dipping chocolate and the freezing point of cheesecake. I think you’d have to freeze the cheesecake on a stick first, and then dip it in chocolate, and I’m pretty sure we’ll have to do a trial run in September, but given that last year I did a trial run of the dinner rolls before the Thanksgiving dinner, there are clearly no bounds to the things I will do to make sure Thanksgiving goes off without a hitch.) (And if it’s a pumpkin swirl cheesecake, then we have to take into account the freezing point of pumpkin. I was at IHOP this morning, as people are, but I did not partake of the pumpkin pancakes. Being so overwhelmed by the variety of breakfast foods available, I believe we didn’t even notice the availability of pumpkin pancakes until we had already placed our orders, but damn it, I’m going to have to freeze a pumpkin pancake sometime soon. Is it any wonder I never do the things I actually have to do? There are pancakes to freeze!)
I also saw a sword-swallower, which was amusing, and some sort of rendition of Shakespeare that I couldn’t actually focus on because I was sweating from sweat glands I wasn’t aware I had. Anyway, at one point, I had to relieve myself, as people have throughout history. Apparently, in 1540s England, there was no indoor plumbing. I guess I knew that already, but I did not know that the historically accurate outdoor toilet I was going to have to use would look like this:
Please bear in mind that it was 92 degrees outside when I entered one of these charming bungalows, and I somehow lived to tell the tale. Perhaps not surprisingly, the entire “village” did not have one publicly accessible sink. Because I have (admittedly undiagnosed) OCD, I happen to carry alcohol swabs with me at all times, for just such an occasion. But I did not use them then, because if you’re wandering around the Renaissance with a person you’ve just met, you might not want to break out the germ-killing apparatus in front of him until you’ve really covered the whole OCD thing at length, and determined that he is not going to run screaming (and abandon you in Maryland) at the first iteration of the letters. In any event, they did have a hand-sanitizing station, with Purell or something like it, and paper towels, both of which, like Pepsi, were apparently freely available in the 1540s. I did not avail myself of that opportunity either, though, because I was reminded of a joke:
Two men are in a bathroom. One went to Harvard, the other to Yale. They both finish, but the Yale man does not wash his hands, while the Harvard man does. This turn of events prompts the Harvard man to say, “Harrumph. At Harvard, we wash our hands after using the facilities.” The Yale man then says, “Yes, but at Yale, we don’t piss on our hands.”***
Other amusing moments occurred when I suggested to my charming companion that we probably ought to affect accents, at which point we had a really rather amusing conversation about the fact that the British accent was still in development during the Renaissance, which is why everyone was using mangled and confused (or rather confuse-ed) English accents. Later, when I mentioned that it was grossly apparent that Renaissance England suffered from approximately the same morbid obesity problem that does modern America, I learned that some people call the SCA not the Society for Creative Anachronism, but instead the Society for Corpulent Americans.
Am I going back sometime in the next several months, when the temperature is forecast to be something less than 106 degrees? Perhaps.
So it’s looking more and more like the October Thanksgiving will be October 7th, which is not only the day before my birthday (did you write that down yet?), but is also the day before Canadian Thanksgiving. I love Canadia, so it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
Let me know if you’re free, because I’ve got to get to work on the seating chart.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.
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* Wait. A Mensa t-shirt? At the Renaissance Faire? Come on, really?
Really. (And I was among my kind. I’m still not done processing that, thank you very much.)
** Is this the funniest entry ever, or what?
*** Oh, the Ivy League humor. Always good for a chuckle, no?
Last night I went dancing, and dancing is fun. I always mean to go dancing and then never do, because no one ever wants to go dancing with me, because no one but me is any fun, and besides that, if I just dance around my own living room the music is more to my liking and no one accidentally spills their Cosmo on me or drunkenly decides that we are going to be best friends forever and then touches me inappropriately. Anyway, today my hips hurt,* because I am an old lady trapped in a young lady’s body, and five hours of dancing is one of those things that I can do, do actually do, and then suffer for later. But now I know a new person to go dancing with, and about that I am glad.**
Before I went dancing, I bumped into someone on the street that I hadn’t seen in a couple, three months. And there are two lessons to be learned from that episode. The first is that if you get an e-mail from me, and then a text message, and then a phone call, and you ignore each of those for several months, I might run into you on the street, and then you’re going to feel like an ass, because you’ve been ignoring me but are now standing in front of me on the sidewalk. (Just so you know.) The second is that it seems that I now officially live here. Sure, I’ve lived here for two years, but until yesterday I had never happened upon someone I knew on the street (except for the clerks at my local 7-11, who I see all the time on the bus, and people from work, and then only within a five-block radius of my workplace). So that’s something: since it seems I actually live here now, I probably ought to start thinking about moving.
Otherwise, not much else is making August look any better. I saw a roach in my kitchen the other day, and it was too early in the morning for me to do anything other than make an “eep” noise and close the cabinet door so I wouldn’t have to look at him any more. I should probably do something about that, but first I have to rest (because I’m an old lady, and tomorrow I am going to the Renaissance Faire!).
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* But my wrist no longer hurts, which is sort of keen. Told you August is looking better.
** I am also glad about the fact that this new fun-to-go-dancing-with person happened to have the CD with that Shriekback song I mentioned in December on it. Funny the things you can do to jump straight to the top of the list of my very most favorite people ever.
No, I don’t actually have anything to give thanks about at the moment. I still hate August. Actually, I hate it more now, because HC, who initially told me that he was going to move overseas in “November or December”, has recently announced that he’s leaving before Thanksgiving, which a) sucks, and b) means I can’t very well invite him over for Thanksgiving. But I like Thanksgiving. A lot.
And so I guess I’ve got two options: I can either go overseas for Thanksgiving or simply have Thanksgiving at my house in October. The first option would be expensive and require traveling on a major holiday, a thing I try to avoid at all costs. The second option has its disadvantages as well, the most salient of which is attempting to locate an entire turkey in a grocery store in October. (The closest grocery store to my house, what with its being in a ghetto and all, is filled with a variety of things one doesn’t expect to find in a grocery store, most of which one would never actually want to purchase: I could buy a tub of lard if I needed one, hooves of pigs*, and, if I’m not mistaken, an entire goat.) But that’s no biggie: I could ask a store to special-order a turkey for me, or I could order one online, I bet. (Granted, an entire turkey won’t actually fit in my oven, which is miniature, but my odious ghettolord keeps talking about renovating the kitchen (get a move on, turbo!).)
The advantages are more obvious. There won’t be a run on marshmallows in October. If I do Thanksgiving at my house early I could go to New York for Thanksgiving and let someone else make me dinner and watch them blow up the giant Big Bird balloon. That would be happy-making. People won’t already be tired of my making them listen to Arlo Guthrie. You won’t have to go to your in-laws’.
So let’s pick a weekend in October and have Thanksgiving at my house. Everyone’s invited, with the same rules as last year: I’ll do the food, including a cheesecake,** and you bring a bottle of wine, a six-pack of beer (fancier than can be purchased at my local 7-11, thank you kindly), or vodka. Maybe the first weekend? (It’s long for some people, because of Columbus Day,*** which is super-convenient for anyone that has to travel far.)
Who’s in?
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* Totally not kosher.
** Pumpkin swirl this year, though - Manuelo, if you’re coming, you’re just going to have to deal. It’s not real Thanksgiving, after all.
*** I will unobtrusively now mention, only in a footnote that is attached to text in parentheses, that Columbus Day happens to fall on my birthday this year. Go ahead, write it down. I’ll wait here.
On August 9, 2005, I bought a cell phone. I didn’t really want one, but I was heading to California for a week, and everyone and their mother (including my very own mother) had a cell phone already, so I thought I’d better get one. And it was cheap when I bought it, and pay-as-you-go, and it has served me fairly well until recently. About a week ago, it decided to stop functioning properly, and now it does this thing where a phone call is intended to reach me but the phone simply doesn’t ring, and then, 45 minutes to an hour later, it tells me I have a voicemail. This refusal to cooperate obviously diminishes its utility.
Being a pay-as-you-go phone, one of its more charming features was its ability to accept additional minutes without my having to interact with a human being. I’d go online, give some giant corporation my credit card information, punch some numbers into my phone, and whiz bang! I could talk as long as I wanted.* About six months ago, it decided to no longer accept minutes unless I phoned an 800 number, reached a person in India (invariably named Jake or Sally), and listened to them read a series of numbers to me, but only after they repeated every single word I said:
Me: Hi. I need to add some minutes to my phone, and I can’t do it over the Web.
Jake or Sally: Hi. I understand you need to add some minutes to your phone, but you can’t do it over the Web. Is this correct?
Me: Yup.
Jake or Sally: I apologize for the inconvenience, and I will be happy to help you add some minutes to your phone, since you can’t do it over the Web.
Me: Great.
Jake or Sally: Now, in order to add some minutes to your phone, since you can’t do it over the Web, I’m going to need you to read . . .
Me: The serial number? Here you go: [digits, then more digits, even more digits].
Jake or Sally: Okay. Now let me read that back to you . . .
Me: [the sound of my head exploding]
At any rate, because I’m a complete and utter dork, I just went and calculated exactly how much my phone has cost me over its lifetime. $967.92, including the price of the phone itself. And I have talked for 70 hours, and I can still talk for nearly two more hours without spending any more money. That’s somewhat less than $40 a month, and for a while in there it was my only phone, because I’m flighty and do things like move on short notice without bothering to establish new phone service first. I think I have received more than $1,000 of value out of my phone, because I really like talking, and I have a knack for text messaging that is pretty much unrivalled. (For example, my odious ghettolord** and I once spent longer than we should have text messaging each other increasingly vulgar names for female genitalia, for a reason I cannot now recall. I’d recount that series of text messages here, but I think there are FCC rules against actually doing so.)
So now I am faced with a decision I’d rather not make, because my cell phone is obviously going to die, horribly and not-entirely-unexpectedly, and I need my cell phone. I don’t want it, but I need it, so that I can send text messages while I am on the bus, give the number to strange men I meet on the Internet so they can arrange to buy me cocktails without actually learning my last name, and in case there’s a natural or unnatural disaster and people want to know if I’m still alive. It’s time to grow up and get a real cell phone.
I’ve already discussed some of my desires in this arena. I want to be able to read the Internet. I want to be able to listen to music. I want my phone to pay for things, but I don’t want to move to Japan. And I want to have an actual keyboard, because although I can’t actually calculate how much time I have spent pressing the 1 button 15 times in order to insert an open parenthesis into a text message, and then an additional 16 times to close my parentheses, I know it’s a lot, and I can’t write text messages without parentheses, no matter how hard I try.
Whatever shall I do? Does anyone have a super-cool cell phone that they like that costs something like $50 a month and won’t require an initial capital outlay of 11 millionty dollars? I have a home phone, but I could give it up. Given that whole Skype thing (when it works!), the fact that damned near everyone I like is either already living or soon moving overseas, and the fact that the only people I actually ever call domestically can wait to talk to me until the night or the weekend or whenever it’s cheap to talk on my new, super-fancy cell phone, I don’t need a home phone.
Plus, at least most of the people I know in the States have Verizon cell phones, and I think you can talk to Verizon customers cheaper or something. And since Verizon already serves all of my other communications needs (poorly), and since I get a discount on Verizon cellular services through my workplace, I think I want to have Verizon service.
So I will once again ask for help, and take this opportunity to end an entry in my usual style.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.
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* Yes, I know. That’s a lot. Keep reading. I’ll prove it.
** A recent trip to the Holocaust Museum has had me rethinking that whole “livin’ in the ghetto” thing. I mean, really, but it’s too late now, and I can’t exactly let my odious ghettolord have another codename, because he’s had at least 17 already, and I don’t want to make it any harder for my eventual Library of America editors to write the illuminating footnotes. (But just so you know, I appreciate the fact that my current housing situation is not so bad as it could be.) (I mean, it seems like it is, but that’s only if you’re a Holocaust denier, which I am not. I’m not sure about that whole moon landing thing, what with the shadows and all, but the Holocaust? Yeah, that actually happened. Can’t deny that unless you’re an asshole, which I am not.)
My left wrist hurts, and that’s a metaphor for something, but I don’t know what.
In other news, I just went back and re-read my entries here from last August, because I am seriously hating this August, and I wanted to see if I simply hate August in general, or if this one is just getting to me more than normal. As it happens, I was slightly grouchy last August, but really pretty amusing, if I do say so myself. I complained about stuff, sure, and many of the same things I’m complaining about this August, but I somehow kept my sense of humor throughout. I’m afraid that if I hadn’t written down a whole bunch of really stupid stuff that happened to me last August (and then published it on the Internet) I would think that I’m just always this grouchy in August. But since I can go back and see what I was thinking this time last year — well, no. Since I can go back and read the things I told you about last August, I have a way to remember what I was actually thinking but didn’t tell you about,* and somehow going back and reading all that has given me a perspective that I wouldn’t have otherwise had.
So hooray for my blog! Go back and read last August again, or, if you haven’t read it in the first place, read it for the very first time. It’s fun! I’m funny! And there’s Froot Loops, and DeBarge,** and the birth of the running joke about my dying alone in a doublewide (or perhaps smaller) trailer, alone save my 47 cats, I mean, each of which is wearing booties and a hat that I personally knitted.***
So I am seriously feeling about as grouchy as I can remember feeling in a very long time, and my new-found perspective just helps to show that I hate this August for several very good reasons, and that ain’t nothin gonna happen about those reasons unless I do something, but it’s too fucking humid to do anything, so I’m going to simply wallow in my anti-social-ness, and hide in my home with my cat and my knitting and some books and some cookies until I feel like being social again, which, based on my assessment of current conditions, should be right around the first of September. In the meantime, here’s a list of things I like about September, which is totally forward-looking and optimistic of me, and just goes to show that I can, even at the height of all grouchiness, make lists of things to look forward to. Hooray for me!
Things that are good about September: a bulleted list
Okay, that’s all I’ve got. But I am feeling somewhat better now than I’ve felt in the past week or so, largely because the people I know are funny. H.C. was picking on me yesterday, as people do, and when I was complaining about my wrist hurting he was pretty nice about it, right up until he suggested I could type less. I said, “I can’t type any less than I do. It’s impossible.” He then said, “Well, you could just eliminate all the footnotes from your blog.”
See, I told you the people I know are funny. Eliminate the footnotes from my blog! Ha!
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* I could go on for quite a while now about how I never could successfully keep a journal until it occurred to me to publish a journal-like thing on the Internet. I won’t, because I’m pretty sure that several paragraphs about why writing things that no one will read doesn’t at all fit my personality would a) be painfully obvious, and b) probably reflect poorly on me (unless you find general laziness, a blatant desire for attention (even if it’s only from 12 people that I already know), and an overly robust self-awareness attractive traits, in which case, let me know, and I’ll go on and on about my bizarre inability to write without an audience. Won’t take me long - I type fast!).
** Which is a little weird, because I found myself just the other night talking about DeBarge. I am some kind of special.
*** Okay, that’s not a joke, is it? I mean, if it was funny, maybe, but I really am going to die alone in a doublewide trailer with my 47 well-attired cats. Oh well. Frankly, I’m too grouchy to worry about that right now.
So they say if you don’t have anything nice to say you shouldn’t say anything at all. If only I believed that, everything would be much, much nicer.
I do believe that you should accentuate the positive, though, so here goes:
That is all.
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*Which is good, because the other day while I was on one of my frequent walks to the Dumpster, I saw a dead rat. Earlier that day I had seen a dead bird. Later, while walking to the laundry room, I saw a squirrel’s tail that was unfortunately no longer actually attached to a squirrel, which a) is sad, but makes perfect sense since I had recently seen a tail-less squirrel, and b) reminded me of the time we moved into a new apartment when I was little and I found in the closet a braid that was no longer attached to the person it had grown from. I was old enough to realize that hair is just hair, and not alive or anything, but young enough to be deeply disturbed that I had found a hank of human hair in my closet. I am actually still disturbed about that today. (And I’m sorry I just disturbed you about it, but isn’t part of the value in my blog the cathartic-ism?) (Why, yes, yes it is.)
** Which is good, because earlier today I had to tell a man off on the subway. He was pushing the person behind me with such force that the man behind me pushed me into the woman in front of me. I’m little, so I push easy. So as I’m being forced into the woman in front of me, I have to say out loud, “I’m sorry. It’s not me doing the pushing.” I then rather loudly suggested that the last person to get on the train might simply get off the train, since he was blocking the doors, at which point several people pointed to a man who said, “Sorry”, just as I started to say, “I don’t get any skinnier than this, no matter how hard you try”. I didn’t mean to, but I looked at him and said, “No, that’s not good enough. Why don’t you try acting in a manner that doesn’t require apologizing for your behavior? You could just be polite, sir. I mean, really.***” Several people smiled at me then, and the woman he was with looked truly mortified, and I felt better, at least for a little while, but I bet that guy’s still going to be pushing people tomorrow. Oh well.
*** Secretly, I sometimes wish I had instead named my blog, “I mean, really.” Oh well.
Cat treats are complicated. For example, when I visited the PetSmart website the other day, I found that the “Dreamy Duos” are apparently also marketed under the name “Soft Middles”. But they only have Soft Middles in the Milk & Cheese flavor on the PetSmart site, and we already knew that Mouse likes the Milk & Cheese flavor. I was gonna buy some on the web, because I recently learned that when shopping at the PetSmart website I can earn Amtrak Guest Rewards points, but the shipping makes it really too expensive to do that. Anyway, if you see any “Soft Middles” cat treats at your store, buy those, okay?
Well, I actually sort of hate to admit it, because it indicates that I am the type of person that goes to a grocery store and spends more than $10 on cat treats in one trip, but Mouse has now demonstrated fondness for all of the Purina Whisker Lickin’s flavors available in my local grocery store: Dreamy Duos: Shrimp & Tuna Flavor, Tender Moments: Crab Flavor, and Crunch Lovers: Salmon Flavor. It seems that in different markets the “Tender Moments” are instead “Soft Sensations”, but the “Crunch Lovers” remain “Crunch Lovers”. How do you get that job, naming cat treats? I think I’d have a knack for it, especially insofar as I recognize that cats can’t read, and you’re therefore marketing to people, most likely female people who are overly attached to their cats, and that is totally a demographic I can relate to. Still and all, tender, soft, dreamy, who cares? Whatever they’re putting in these things makes my cat actually eat them, and that’s good enough for me.
He also ate some of these. I’m not sure how I feel about feeding my cat things that don’t contain artificial preservatives. I’m pretty certain that the reason I’m not yet dead is that I daily consume enough artificial preservatives for at least two people. I think Mouse might have been replaced by a different cat when I wasn’t looking, but I’m running with it.
In other news, I also learned that when shopping on iTunes I can earn Amtrak points. And the Amtrak points are good for Amtrak travel, so I might never pay for a train ticket again. Hot damn!
Now if they could just make it so that I could earn Amtrak points for shopping on eBay, I would be a truly fulfilled person. I’m on an eBay kick right now, which I generally try to avoid, as there are a number of things that I think I want but don’t really need, and people are selling very many of those things on eBay. I don’t think I’ve ever actually bid on anything that anyone else bid on - my personality doesn’t really fit with that whole waiting around and competing for an item thing. (If I’m not mistaken, the “Buy It Now!” feature was actually created just for me. Instant gratification is not just a river in Egypt.) At any rate, there was a pants saga a while back, and so I’m now engaged in purchasing every available pair of jeans that actually fits me, because the pants I purchased the other day arrived, and I simply can’t take them off, because they are the best jeans ever, so much so that I have taken to singing songs about my pants, which I realize just pushes me that much further towards the inevitable dying alone, etc., but I really and truly love these pants. And it wouldn’t be so bad that I want to wear my new/old jeans every single day, except that it’s too hot to do laundry. Seriously. It’s hot. In fact, the heat seems to be all that anyone is capable of conversing about anymore. Well, that and the humidity. Records are being broken. Cooling centers have been opened. My catnip plant is sadly wilted.* It’s really the sheer lack of other conversational topics that’s getting to me though. Since Sunday almost every conversation I’ve had has proceeded as follows:
or
One of these days I will return to being a person who carries on conversations that are interesting and vibrant and with someone other than my cat. But don’t hold your breath.
Anything new with anyone else so that I can live vicariously through you?
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* I may have overwatered it, though, so it might be my fault - I’m blaming the heat and humidity, because that’s what I’m currently blaming everything on, but it’s probably true that honesty is the best policy.
Here’s how exciting my weekend has been: I found some cat treats that Mouse will actually eat!
The thing about Mouse is that he’s really skinny, so he’s allowed to eat whatever he wants. Over the past ten years, I have purchased untold different kinds of cat treats, and he never, ever eats them. This is good for the other cats I know, because they get treats that weren’t even intended for them, but not for Mouse, who needs to eat as much as felinely possible so that he doesn’t become see-through. Sure, he eats his regular food, and a small can of squooshy gross wet food every day, and various and sundry human foods that you wouldn’t think a cat would like, such as marshmallows, potato chips, and bread. But yesterday when I bought a 24-pack of his wet food, inside was a coupon for a free container of cat treats, so when I went to the store today, I picked some up (and here’s how exactly me I am - the coupon was good for any size package, and the smaller package came in a foil pouch that wasn’t recyclable, and the bigger package is recyclable plastic, so I got the bigger package, even though there was a pretty good chance Mouse wouldn’t eat them).
And Mouse thinks they are the greatest thing since live crickets!
So, lest I fail in my quest to share important information about my cat and his dining habits with the entire Internet, I would share the details, and provide a link so that your cat could have some too, but, in keeping with the rest of my ridiculous life, the product is not listed on the Purina website. What I’m thinking is that these treats are new, and I got a coupon because they’re just testing them in my area to see if they should take this new product nationwide, and because Mouse likes them, no other cats will like them at all, so they’ll stop production of them, and then the one cat treat Mouse has ever liked will no longer be available.
So here’s what you gotta do: go to your local grocery store, discount store, pet food store, etc., and if you see any Purina Whisker Lickin’s Dreamy Duos: Milk & Cheese Flavors, buy them all. Really, all of them, regardless of whether or not the package is recyclable. Then mail them to me, and I will reimburse you, or feed them to your cat if your cat likes them. Frankly, eat them yourself if you’re so inclined. I don’t care, just so long as Purina knows that I would like them to remain on the market. In addition to purchasing all of the suitable cat treats in a tri-state area, I am also going to write an e-mail to Purina, because if the only cat treats Mouse has ever liked go off the market, I will be a sad person indeed. (And if Mouse goes to kitty cat heaven before he has a chance to eat all the cat treats, I’ll be totally set for the dying alone, etc.)
I’m going out later to purchase one container of each of the other flavors, to see whether Mouse will eat those too. I’ll let you know as soon as I know, but for now, let’s focus on the Milk & Cheese Dreamy Duos. (The outside is crunchy and the inside is soft - that’s why they’re so dreamy.)
Mouse and I thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.