I’m moving like a pinball – behind as always getting ready for a week out of town – and thinking about chickens without heads. The last thing I need or intend today is an 11-minute video by some shock-talk comedian.
Cut to: Sue finishes second viewing of the clip and thinks, I need to share this.
Inspiration always trumps packing.
P.S. The clip thinks it is 18 mins long but it is not.
A few millennia ago, by internet time – that is, earlier this year – there was social media hoopla about a great Reddit poll which collected the creepiest sayings of kids. I suppose every parent has contributions to that list. I know I do!
When my son was oh, I dunno, maybe 4, he went through a phase of making ridiculous demands early Saturday morning. Sure enough, early one weekend morning as I tried to catch up on maybe 4 years of sleep, he wanted something. I don’t remember what, exactly. Perhaps that was the week he wanted to climb out his window and sit on the second story roof. Anyway, I said no, as I did each time, and he threw a tantrum, as he did each time. He went back to his room to fuss.
Laying there, pretending I would fall asleep again, I realized the house had grown quiet. This was so unusual I had to worry. I called softly to my son. Maybe he had fallen asleep?!? Nope.
“What, Mom?” he replied. The mystery deepened. He sounded downright cheerful.
“Everything okay in there?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh. Good. Whatcha’ doin’?”
“Oh, I was just thinking about a bear eating you.”
Discipline is always more difficult when they make you laugh.
**************
When my twins were young, I would occasionally suggest that when they went off to college I would come with them so we could stay together. They thought this was a great idea until they hit about 10. After that, there were a couple years when they reacted guardedly, unsure whether I was kidding. After that, they reacted like teenagers.
Back when they wanted us to stay together, my son developed a long-term plan that he shared with gusto. When he was grown, he would build a house behind his own house, and that would be the house where I lived. Then, after I died, he would bury me in the walls so that I could stay there forever.
He has always been a thoughtful person.
**************
Surprised to say, I can’t recall any creepy sayings from my daughter. However, I will never forget – and am eternally uplifted – by one thing she said to me. She was 3 or 4 at the time: “If ever you fall low I will raise you up.”
And that has proved true ever since.
Now that Mom is 89, her lifelong interest in cooking has become sporadic. This does not, however, explain the dish she had waiting in a rice bowl.
Equally tasty served hot or cold.
The Weekly Photo Challenge wants to see “Inside”.
When you enter Mandalay Beach in Oxnard, California you see a sobering sign:
Welcome to our beach. You’re on your own.
Now, millions of folks in California speak Spanish – and quite a few of them speak Spanish, only. Recognizing the need for a sign in Spanish, attached to the back of this sign is the same warning, translated to Spanish:
Something to talk about as you head home.
Just one problem. You won’t see this sign unless you are leaving the beach. So. If you speak Spanish and you survive your day in the Oxnard waves, as you depart you will learn just how lucky you are.
One of these people has won every round of Sequence. Want to hazard a guess which one it is?
Dear Family Cats (and also the dog),
Thanks for giving me an unforgettable experience. A night of induced insomnia and – okay – a couple laughs.
The perpetrators, Bop and Luna.
It all started about 130 am. The dog woke me up, walking in and out of my room, flopping down in the hallway, jumping up again to tick tick tick tick another circuit of my room. When she walks at a certain pace, her nails on the floor sound like the Sixty Minutes clock. At 130 pm, I find this charming.
After a moment of consciousness, I heard what had made the dog restless. Cat fight, a couple houses away. I recognized the voice of my beloved Luna, whom I had failed to lock inside. I keep the cats in at night (coyotes), but on hot summer nights Luna often evades capture.
Luna is 10 years old and I had never heard him fight before. He is a peaceable fellow who gets along with most other cats. The part of my brain that was awake decided it was a good idea to break up the fight. I filled a glass with water and headed down the street. No noise, no cats. Okay. I dumped the water and returned to bed.
Turn out my light, cue the fight, which resumed a few feet outside my window. Refill the water glass, take it outside, toss water at the cats. The other cat ran north. Luna headed west, stopped, stared at me, then sprinted after the other cat. Jerk.
The really!-I’m-mean-and-I’m-going-to-hurt-you! howling resumed in the backyard. By now I was too invested to shrug and lie in the dark listening to fake loud cat aggression. In the backyard, I decided to turn the hose on them. I turned the hose on full bore and I blasted them —
— with a dribble of water. Oh. The hose had kinked.
While I worked on unkinking the hose, from the house behind ours came brutal THUNK-thunk-THUNKs as the pit bull tried to slam his way outside through a closed dog door. He wanted in on the cat fight.
Suddenly I realized that what I needed was to be asleep. I left the hose and returned to bed. Where I lay, very very awake, for 3 hours. As many of you know, time expands at night and those 3 hours lasted for days.
I finally drifted off to sleep shortly before dawn. Not long afterwards, I jolted awake to shrill cat screeches. For the first time, our cat Bop had ambushed the kittens during the night, which is usually a time of truce. Perhaps Luna had inspired her.
There we were, stumbling into the hall, squinting at the lights we each turned on: my daughter and I, armed with water bottles, looking to spray Bop for messing with a kitten.
A peacekeeper.
Actually the “kittens” are now 11 months old and two of them are bigger than Bop, but she knows how to bully and they will always consider her enormous.
Recent runt kitten Leo stands outside window and watches his hero Luna snooze. Leo doesn’t realize he has grown up to be the biggest cat in the neighborhood.
Now the dog was energized. With two humans out of bed, it must be breakfast time.
Have you ever gone for a walk just after dawn? It is such a peaceful time of day.
P.S. As I write this, Bop has knocked the DSL modem to the floor. Twice. So we’ll see whether this exposé ever gets posted.
(This post responds to today’s Daily Prompt, “I’d Like to Thank My Cats”.)
On my evening walk, I passed a mom and her young daughter headed the opposite way.
“Mom, it’s oKAY!” The girl waves her arms and bounces as they walk.
“No, it was not okay that you did that.” The mom hunches forward, pushing an infant in a stroller.
“It was okay.” With no uncertainty.
“No, I really didn’t like it when you – did that.” Mom edits for my benefit. Her lips press together. She is not pleased.
“I wish,” the girl begins. By now they are past me and her voice carries back to where I have stopped walking, the better to eavesdrop. She continues slowly, as though choosing her words, “that I had a mom like you except somebody who didn’t care that I did that.”
I decided against openly stalking them, so missed the mom’s reply.
Today’s Daily Prompt asked what bores me…
I hate knowing what happens next. I used to evaluate screenplays for movie studios, and at a rate of 10 per week, it got so that no plot twist could surprise me. That was a long time ago, but even now, gratitude wells up whenever a book or movie surprises me, even if I otherwise loathe the piece. One reason I loved the Harry Potter series was that in all those thousands of pages and hundreds of plot turns, there were only a scant few that I saw coming.
Curiously, although I prefer surprises and novelty, I have spent most of my life as a control freak. (Working on it! Working on it!) Perhaps as my aging memory worsens I will be able to have it all: exert control, forget I exerted control, enjoy surprise at the events I caused to unfold.
Am I kidding? Control freaks never unfold events. Control freaks have only an illusion of control.
The predictable bores me, and I detest being bored. Being bored. Saying it that way suggests that an outside force imposes the boredom. In fact, whether I get bored or not depends on me. To cop a phrase from a recent movie trailer, boredom is a choice. If I’m bored, I should be able to redirect my attention or reconstruct my attitude and eliminate the boredom.
Which all sounds fine in theory. Routine repetition is the deal-breaker.
Typically I avoid that kind of boredom by tuning out and looking inward. This has some good consequences. For example, I tune out the mind-numbing repetition of brushing my teeth – day after frigging day – and while brushing my teeth I have excellent writing ideas. Moral of that story: if your writing stalls out, brush your teeth.
I tune out while driving. I’ve lived and worked in the same places for several years so I long ago exhausted all the new ways to commute. But the space-out can be too complete. On my way to work and suddenly I come to and I don’t recognize where I am. The adrenaline jolt certainly fights boredom, but the backtracking and rewinding do not start my day well.
I still remember the first time I experienced boredom. I was a kid, it was the dregs of summer, my friends were elsewhere. I lay on the floor of my room, picking at the bedspread, overwhelmed by there being absolutely nothing I felt like doing. I don’t remember all that much about my childhood but that moment is indelible.
Do you remember the first time you were bored?
When I look at this oil stain on the pavement, I see lizards, body-surfing. What do you see?
The dog and I live with five cats. (Insert who-in-their-right-mind rant here.) It is almost a peaceable kingdom, with one glaring – and hissing – exception.
Shadow the rescue dog, age about 8, likes everybody. She terrified kitten Leo until Leo discovered the dog tail as toy. Now all but one of the cats like the dog.
Shadow and Luna
Luna and Bop, age 10, came from the same shelter on the same day. They mostly get along but never much bonded. We blame Bop.
The oldsters, Bop and Luna, age 10.
Luna likes everybody. For a long time he feared the dog. Eventually this fear evolved to a play arrangement with surprisingly specific terms: the dog can chase Luna if the dog is in the backyard first and Luna arrives. In all other locations and situations, no chasing.
A new familiar sight – Luna napping with a youngster, in this case, Bo.
Arrow, Leo, and Bo, age 11 months, came from two different shelters on the same day. They could not be more loving and friendly to each other. All three are the sweetest cats I’ve ever known. Otherwise they have quite distinct personalities.
The youngsters, Bo, Leo, and Arrow, when they first joined the household.
Bop tolerates the dog but chases her if dinner is delayed and she is crabby. Ditto Bop with her life partner, Luna. The reality is that Bop wants to be an only animal in a household where she never will be.
Bop hates the kittens and for months we had to keep them separate – no easy task in our 700 square foot home – lest she kill them. Now that two of the kittens are bigger than Bop, we let them mingle. The kittens are learning to stand their ground. We have six spray bottles of water stationed all over the house and yard. We spray Bop whenever we catch her messing with a kitten. Oh so gradually the violence seems to be lessening. But there are some days – you can just tell – Bop won’t be able to relax until she has kicked some kitten butt.
A peacekeeper.
The situation is further complicated by the similarity in looks between mean old Bop and sweet young Arrow. What amazes me: the kittens can’t tell them apart, either! I thought animals used smell to identify. Maybe not, or maybe they can’t distinguish Bop from Arrow because the smells are so mixed up at our house. Whatever the explanation, the other youngsters, Bo and Leo, are always doing doubletakes when a tuxedo cat walks in.
There were too many instances of Leo and Bo clearly mistaking the two – running from their best friend Arrow, or running toward their enemy Bop – so now Bop wears a collar with a bell. That seems to have helped some.
Typical sight around the household: Bop menacing a youngster.
This time, the target is Arrow, just awakened from a nap to find Bop glaring at her.
Pop quiz: who is this? Bop or Arrow? (answer on next page)
Required Writing 