Monday, August 21, 2006

What's New, Pussycat?

Well, she's done it again... Melonie, aka The Human Steamroller, has brought my hum-drum existance to a new level of fun and fantasy. She called me Friday night and said tersely into the phone, "Can you be here in two minutes?" And I, naturally assuming that 1) one of her kids is sick/injured, 2) her husband / father-in-law was sick/injured, or 3) some combination of the former, jumped in my car and FLEW to her house in something like 2.5 minutes.

As I rounded the corner to her street, I didn't see smoke, an ambulance or police cruiser lights swirling. There was only a red wanna-be SUV parked diagonally in front of her house, with a boy squatting by the curb looking into a laundry basket. Filled with kittens.

Most unexpectedly, I found myself driving home with a we-e-e-e-e-e tiny fuzzy, rusty black girl kitten with blue eyes-- now named Stella. The poor little thing is smaller than my foot, weighs less than minute, and is quickly winning her brother Harpo over, in spite of LOUD protestations on his part when I introduced them... She's awful cute-- I think he'll get over it, forgive & forget, learn to accept the inevitable. Just as I have with Melonie-- the less I fight, the easier it goes ;-)

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Oh the Shame of it All

It was a horrified Wahwer who pulled up her blog today and saw that nearly an entire shameful month has gone by since my last post. What does this mean? Have I lost the belly fire that kept me "regular" (in blogging terms) for over a year? The answer would be a large NEGATIVO...

I been busy (as they say, whomever THEY are).

I've actually been WORKING (which is miracle enough). While one of my three bosses still cannot seem to find a single project which demands my skilled attention, the other two have been keeping me hopping. And finally, in what I see as a positive step in the longevity of my newly hatched position, people are actually calling ME (or rather, my office) because "so-and-so told me you might have the knowledge / information / access, etc" regarding new projects & old problems. Yay me! At least now if my bosses decide to not renew my contract at the first of the year, or even hint that they're leaning that way, I'm gradually gathering ammunition to support my case.

The downside of this up is that I've had to spend mu-u-u-u-uch less time at the soul-eating pastime known as blogging / blog-surfing. Whereas this time a year ago I literally had HOURS of time each day when the only thing I could to fake-it-till-you-make-it (READ HERE: look like I was actually working on "something" while at the office) was spend a large portion of each day surfing aimlessly through other people's blogs. I have a select mental blogroll (forgive me, technocrats-- I've been too busy to have Melonie show me how to insert the code) of personal favorites-- and NO, I won't start naming them, lest I forget a few and cause forgotten's knickers to get in a twist...

So now that I have stuck my Oprah-sized head back out of my badger hole for a moment, what exciting news do I have to share? Let me share two stories if I may.

The first pertains to my making the final decision to take my cat, Milo, to the local no-kill animal shelter. I tried my damnedest for a whole year to make the adoption work-- a year in which he urinated and / or defecated on nearly every square inch of carpeting on the first floor of my house (and possibly a few spots upstairs which look / smell questionable). I had even ripped out said offensive carpeting in hopes of removing the carpet and removing temptation. No dice. Within weeks he'd started urinating on the kitchen linoleum next to the litter box. And while cat urine on linoleum is more manageable than in shag carpeting, I was regularly greeting the day by stumbling into the kitchen each morning, checking to see if the phantom pisser had struck yet (50/50 likelihood)-- if he hadn't, he typically did shortly after I'd start trying to eat breakfast. Lovely...

So with the help of an able & most sympathetic partner in crime (not to mention the 10mg of Valium, also supplied by another helpful co-conspirator), I did the deed. Sparing the details, I got through the betrayal (Milo cried with EVERY... SINGLE... BREATH as we drove off towards the shelter). Since then I've been spending large amounts of time trying to console my remaining cat, Harpo, who is quite the sensitive child and who appears most confused by Milo's absence. Mel insists I need a NEW kitty to comfort us, but for now I'm still a bit tender. Even though I am closer to Harpo than I was to Milo, I just don't know if I'm ready to start all over again with a new "family member" just the now...

Funny (sad) tidbit: This morning, as I was making my way into the kitchen, I heard a couple arguing in my alley (frequent readers of my blog KNOW about "my alley"). It was 7-0-freakin'8 in the morning, and all this couple had to argue about was 1) why she didn't have the shit (i.e. drugs of some kind), 2) why that mutha fucka hadn't given her what they'd agreed on (amount not disclosed), and 3) "why you keep fuckin' that brutha when you KNOW he gone play you???" This conversation is neither unusual or unheard of on my block. I just thought I'd share the first things I heard this morning ~