The Secretive Saga of the Lost Keys OR the Cat Done Did IT! OR Did He?

Recently, amidst all of the moving anguish, I lost my car keys.  I had driven home with them, so somewhere between the garage and the kitchen they vanished.  Mildly irritated, I began to search.  The debris of sorting through everything in the house and taking all the items off the walls has left our home in a sort of mid-move limbo, whereupon we merely get to use the bed and make trails through all of the stuff on the floors.  I wanted to make a junk angel in the debris, but I was shot down by Cressy who said, "That would hurt.  Something will stick in your popo, Mommy."  (I love my daughter and her way of cutting right to a point.)

I thought about what I had done with the keys.  I searched the car, the kitchen, and the garage before I started spreading out.  Pretty soon I was ready to shake down the neighbors, HIM, and anyone who had been anywhere near the vicinity in the last ten years.  (If you knocked on my door on Sunday, that's why I was talking about a polygraph test.)  No keys.

After crying, throwing a temper tantrum, (Cressy brought me a tissue box and said she found my patience), looking at the Internet to see how much a stupid Ford key was going to cost me (OMG, you should see what they charge for a frickin' key!), I gave up and went to bed.  (Cressy asked me what I was going to dream about and I said, "Finding my keys."  She said, "I'm dreaming about the sprinkler party next Saturday."  Oh, those priorities.)

The next morning, HIM called up to deliver his theory on the missing keys.  I was, shall we say, less than receptive.  But on the good side, it made for a whole blog, so WTH?  Okay, take a deep breath and ready yourself for it.  It's coming right now.  HIM said, "Have you considered that the cat might have taken the keys?"  And he was completely serious.

I love HIM.  HIM is a smart guy.  HIM has moments of brilliance that astound me.  That question/bleeping thing he said was not one of those moments.  I believe I couldn't speak for a moment after he made the observation/accusation.  I wondered, in the 2.3 seconds of lucidity that remained at that point in time, what he thought I would do with the cat, if the cat were indeed the culprit.  After I calmed down, some funny shizz popped into my head, which happens more than I'm willing to admit to most people other than my psychiatrist.  Out comes the bamboo pad.

That's a police spotlight on Megaroy, my daughter's moron cat,
in case my illustration is less than self-explanatory.

But I couldn't stop.

Really, I couldn't.

It was like I was compelled.

Yes, I misspelled a word.  Funny thing, there's no spell check
on hand writing.  (Well, there's the dictionary, but where's
the fun in that?)

Someone should name a new mental disorder after me.

I'm so wrong but I can't help myself.

It just kept happening.

There.  Now I'm finished haranguing HIM, and to a lesser extent the moron cat.

And for closure, the keys were under the stool in the kitchen, right where I'd dropped them, in my scramble to get the sprinkler ready for outdoor hot-weather watery funness for our daughter.  I hate the keys now.  It would have been funnier if the cat had stolen them.

Ambuigity OR Randomness AGAIN! OR Observations About Whatnot

I realized that among other things I must publish a blog on the morrow and thought, "What the bleep am I going to blog about?"  Nothing came to mind.  We're still moving.  HIM is still a peabrain.  Our daughter's cat is still a moron.  The same daughter hasn't told me a great story about disembodied hands or zombies eating Walmart.  (I still giggle about the hand one.)  But I must blog.

I could blog about politics, but everyone blogs about that.  Republicans suck.  Democrats suck.  The Tea Party sucks.  All political candidates suck.  Their spouses/significant others/nanny's suck.  In fact, the entire continent of North America sucks.  Well, not all of it.  The subject sucks.  There, that's better.

Cressy rediscovering the water for summer.

Yesterday we went to Westmoreland Park in Virginia right on the Potomac River.  There's fossil hunting there.  Apparently everyone else knew about it too.  The ones who didn't know about it were on the road in front of me, especially the more moronic ones.  In fact, no one needed to ask where all the morons went yesterday on that two hour segment of time.  They were all in front of me.  Every one of them.  They got together and decided to do this in honor of me.  I'm pretty sure.  Back to the fossils.  We found a lot of gritty sand, a very pretty park, some pretty shells, a heart shaped rock which I'm pretty sure isn't a rock at all (it's going to vanish mysteriously very soon because it's way too light to be a rock, do you get where I'm going?), and two little rocks that may or may not be fossils.  That beach has been picked clean.  I think if anyone found a shark's tooth, they'd get jumped by all the other fossil hunters.  On the up side, it's a pretty park, we had a nice hike where I didn't have a heart attack, and we did something fun, no matter how snarky I am about it later.

There be fossils on that thar beach.  But ye have to fight off
all the other fossil hunters.  This tree was the only shade around
except for some canny individual who hiked down the hill
with a beach umbrella.  I would have mugged them for the umbrella
but there were too many witnesses with cameras.

Cressy was all into the water and getting the gritty sand in parts of her body left unmentioned by anyone not related to her.  She certainly didn't want to go back up the hill.  We divided up the load.  I got the big bag with the towels, sunblock, snacks, and drinks.  She got the pail with the scoop.  Halfway up the hill, I got the pail with the scoop, too.  When we got to the visitor's center, someone was compelled to buy a small skunk plush and it wasn't me.

On the way back we saw this:

You ain't nothing but a bubba, crying all the time.

Who knew they have bubbas in Virginia, much less at least 19 of them who want vanity plates?  But look, this Bubba drives a Honda truck.  (It's like a pretend truck.  He might as well be driving the Barbie Beetle.)  He should be ashamed of himself, not driving American.  Plus, he forgot to use his turn signal at this light.

Then I got home and I lost my car keys.  This was the straw that broke the fat woman's back.  I pretty much lost my mind.  The keys are in the house but they're missing in action.  I strip searched the entire kitchen.  I went through the garbage.  (the can in the kitchen and the two outside cans.  None of it smelled or felt good.)  I grilled my daughter.  ("Did you touch the keys?"  "No, Mommy, I did not touch the keys."  "Are you sure you didn't touch the keys?"  "Yes, Mommy, I'm sure.  Can I have my skunk plush now?")  I called up HIM and ranted, trying to find a way to blame him.  The missing keys are his fault, of course.  After a good cry and determination that the keys have disappeared into the great black hole into which all socks and earring-backs go, I started checked how much it was going to cost me for a replacement frickin' key for the Ford.  The quotes disturbed me.  I think it actually made me cry harder.  Cressy brought me a box of Kleenex and patted my arm.

So with that, I'm going to search for the keys again.  It turns out that it costs bucks for the replacement key which is so special it has a microchip in it.  Maybe someone could put a GPS chip in it.  Next time.

Moving Sucks, Moving Sucks, Moving Sucks

Warning:  More complaining to come.  Also bitching, griping, snarking, and other words from the Thesaurus.  I may also switch subjects without warning as I have been wont to do.  (Is wont really a word?  Did you see that meteor?  I think Obama is going to start wearing a rainbow clown wig for fun.  What was I talking about?)

Let us discuss how many stupid, fracking things have to be done in a move.  (Do I need to remind anyone that HIM, upon telling me of his job acceptance, uttered these immortal words, which I shall repeat ad nauseum, "Don't worry.  I'll do everything."  Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.  Not.)  Consequently, while he's doing "everything", I have taken all the paintings, wall hangings, stuff from the walls and I'm spot painting.  Some of these freaking holes are like the size of a meteor crater.  (Think Crater Lake in Oregon for reference.  Oh, hell, I'll just find a photo.)  (Whoops.  Small dichotomy here.  Crater Lake is NOT a meteor crater.  It is, instead, a volcano which popped its top a whole long time ago.  The big hole metaphor is the point, however.  Just go with it.)

The holes in my walls are just like this.  I swear!

There.  There ain't enough spackle on the face of the earth that's going to fill that hole.  So consequently one has to patch.  Patching is the art of cutting out a piece of dry wall and inserting it into the hole and using mesh, followed by a concrete like compound that sticks to everything but the walls.  This is concluded by sanding, sanding, coughing, sanding, hacking, sanding, and then painting.  What joy.  What fun.  What utter fun.  (Somewhere HIM's ears are burning.  HIM is likely headed for a bomb shelter at this very moment.  That rotten, cheese-eating surrender monkey.  That's a quote from the Simpsons, btw.  You have to say in your mind with a Scottish accent because Willie the Lawn Dude is the one who said it in the show.)  (Wandered, didn't I?)

Then something else happened.  Turns out that I can't keep my Verizon DSL service in Alabama for some, damn stupid reason, therefore I have to change my day to day email address.  (Don't worry the other emails stay the same.)  And anyone who knows about all the stuff we've signed up for and use on the Internet, knows that this means changing email addresses up the hooha.  (I used hooha in the last blog about Paranormal Activity 2 and I had a sudden urge to use it again.  I just like the way it sounds.  I might have to work it in fifty times.  I'll have hooha in the blog up the hooha.  Hooha!)  (I just made up a joke.  What does an owl sound like when he laughs?  He says hooha!  Bad, right?)  (Wandering again.  Warned ya.)  So HIM calls and says something like, "Too bad.  So sad.  Gotta go back to work, babe."  (No, HIM didn't really say that.  HIM is in a state of shock and isn't sure what to say to me.)  And HIM is so broken up that I have to spend hours updating and changing email addresses on all the things I do, that I can hear the crying in his voice.  (I just did a spelling check and the spell check does NOT like the word "hooha."  It suggests changing it to hookah or hooray or hooch.  Stupid spell check.)  (And let me tell you about sprending email around.  There are these cool ads on Facebook.  So when I click on them to go look at their stuff, they want me to sign up first with my email!  They dangle that carrot and then jerk it away.  I don't want to get junk email from them for the rest of my natural born life, or up the hooha, so I say eff them.)  What was my point?

Oh, yes, HIM having such a hard time once he's down there, sitting on his tookus (which is almost as good a word as hooha.) reading his Kindle in his room, watching HBO, wondering if he should have his laundry dry cleaned or have the motel service take care of it.  Oh, yes, life is horrible and wretched for HIM.  (I fork the sign of the devil up his hooha.  Oh, that didn't exactly work but I'm not changing it.)

Meanwhile I'm writing the exploits of Brownie as he has a mystifying mystery to solve and things happen to him and he experiences the rednecked thrill of Pegram County. 

Uh-oh, subject change.  Recently I asked Facebook fans about what kind of fans stuff would they want to see at a writer's convention.  Business cards, postcards, or something else.  I got some great ideas.  One suggested a USB business card, which is a little pricey but cool.  Then someone else suggested trading cards.  I just love the idea of the cover of Bubba and the Dead Woman on one side and a cartoony Bubba on the other with a brief description.  "Bubba Snoddy - good ol' boy and all around scapegoat."  Or something like that.  Anyway thanks to all those Facebook buddies who made suggestions.  They were all great.  So I did a kind of sample.  It looks pretty cool but I'm going to have to raid my daughter's Pokeman collection of trading cards for ideas.

Front of card

Back of card

And with a gentile note, I'm out to write more about Brownie and spot paint up the hooha.

I just checked, for those of you who are keeping count.  I used hooha 11 times.  12 if you count the last one.  So for continuity, hooha, hooha, hooha, hooha, hooha, hooha, hooha, hooha, and hooha.  (That owl joke is sounding funnier every minute isn't it?)

MORE Paranormal Activity OR the Attack of the Sequel!

Okay, not too long ago I wrote a blog about a movie I watched, Paranormal Activity.  Go read the blog first so I don't have waste a paragraph summing up.  See Paranormal Activity OR Why Demons/Ghosts/Supernatural Thingymabobs Never Possess Fat Women.

Now for the funny part.  So I was lying about yesterday, having been decimated by painting, Girl Scout drama, mama drama, moving issues, possible new house foundation problems, and the fact that my brain had melted into primordial goo, and I flipped through the On Demand movies from Starz.  (Think it was Starz but who really cares?)  There was PARANORMAL ACTIVITY....wait for it....2!  Not PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (No number - pretend this isn't here) but PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2!  OMFG!  MORE paranormal extravaganza!  I looked at the description, not really interested except in a what-the-hell-else-am-I-going-to-watch manner, and it said the events in this movie take place four months before the first one.  This, of course, intrigued the writer in me, which is always trying to dissect other writers' works.  (This also ruins movies for me so I try not to do it.)  So I watched a little of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2!  Then I went ahead and watched the whole thing.

Why?  Why, why, why, you ask.  I was wondering where their plot could go considering that PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 is a prequel to PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 1.  (I added the number for clarity.)  (Also you ask why must I italicize the movie title and put it in caps AND make it red?  Because it amuses me.  Also I think there's a rule about movie titles being italicized.  Then I just made up a rule about all supernatural related theme movies being in RED.  I would have it dripping in RED but I don't feel like doing that many illustrations.)  Where was I?

See, dripping in redness.  Redity, red, red for all the imminent horror to come.

Ah yes.  I need to warn those of you who haven't seen PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 1 or PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2, because I intend on spoiling the holy-living-heck out of it.  I'm going to be snide.  I'm going to make subtly denigrating comments and I'm going to tell you what happens to the last bloody bit of film footage.  So here's the warning:

SPOILERS COMING UP NEXT!  SPOILERS ABOUNDING!  THERE THERE BE SPOILERS, AVAST!  SPOILERS APPROACHING!  THE AUTHOR OF THIS BLOG DOES NOT TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY IN YOUR SPOILAGE OF THIS PARTICULAR MOVIE!  GO BACK NOW!

There, no one can say they haven't been warned.  Well, they can say it, but it ain't true.  In the first movie, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, we've got Katie and Micah who live together and have a little supernatural fun with a demon.  There's a camera that Micah loves to film with (and without there would be no film), there's revelations about Katie having a par-ree-nor-male friend as a child, and there's baby powder on the floor which reveals something walking through it while the couple are sleeping on the bed next to the door and the floor where the baby powder is.  Let's just say nothing good happens in a movie where the supernaturalness is not presenting flowers and chocolates to their human cohorts.  (No sparkling g**d**n vampires running around that house.)

Okay, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2.  It starts all black screen and thanks the Police Department and the families of the dead people and is supposed to be pseudo real.  It says it happens FOUR MONTHS before PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (1).  This time it's Katie's sister, Kristi, who's house is the focus.  And we've got lots of people with camcorders galore.  In fact, Kristi's step-daughter, Ali, has got one.  Kristi's husband, Daniel, has got one.  The only one who hasn't got one is their year-old-son, Hunter (and that's probably because his is made by Tonka).  Early on, something happens to the house and all the rooms get messed up except HUNTER'S, because we wouldn't want to point a flaming finger at any possible victims of the movie, would we?  This becomes a plot device to have Daniel hire a security guy to install cameras all over the frickin' house.  (This way, we get to watch all the camera angles AND the camcorders AND the camcorder plot device doesn't become old and trite.  Think of Micah from the first one following Katie into the bathroom and her not clobbering him with it.)  (If HIM followed me in the bathroom with a camcorder I would have stuck the camcorder where the sun don't shine.  The proctologist would have to remove the camcorder.  End of business.)

So we start seeing stuff happening.  Doors opening by themselves.  Pots falling without anyone touching them.  Kristi getting freaked out.  Ali getting freaked out.  Ali and her boyfriend in the hottub getting freaked out together.  There's a guest appearance from Katie and Micah, who haven't been possessed and murdered yet.  Katie and Kristie throw out hints about a "strange" set of incidents from their childhood.  The photograph of Katie from the first movie appears.  But the following isn't a photograph of Katie.

And most importantly, the cinematic viewer gets a whole crop of would-be victims to choose from.  We have the nubile step-daughter, Ali, who luvs her brother, but also luvs to think about various theories on why demons choose to hang at their house.  (In fact, it is she who determines that some ancestor made a deal with the devil in exchange for a first born son, and there wasn't any sons until Hunter.  Her theory was a little weak and lacked evidence but it's a horror movie, so we're stuck with it.)  We have a nanny, Martine, who warns all of the family in Spanish, because if she had spoken English it would have been a really short movie.  We have the dad, Daniel, who basically pooh-pooh's every one's supernatural suspicions.  ("No, people, there is nothing going on.  It's an electrical confluence of metaenergy.  Or swamp gas.")  We have Kristi, who looks like she's having post-post-post partum depression and really isn't happy about anything.  We have Hunter, the cute little baby who talks to the nonseen entity just off camera.  (Hunter was having a good time.  I suspect his real mommy was waving Cheerios at him.)  And we have a dog.  A German Shepherd named Abby, who is a big, fat, flaming target walking around woofing and eating doggy biscuits.  (You know that everyone in the audience is going, "Poor damn dog.")

Of course, paranormal adventures are about to ensue!  We've got things happening.  A burning pan in the kitchen that no one owns up to.  Mysterious thumps in the night.  The pool cleaner climbs out of the pool by itself.  (I think the entity had something against a clean pool.)  The nubile step-daughter has a boyfriend over, who may also be a would-be VICTIM!  In fact, I'm pretty sure his t-shirt said, "Kill me, I'm a horny teenager." on it.  (Hey, they were in the hot tub together at one point in time and that's like an automatic, thou-shall-die-wretchedly-if-you-do-this rule they just broke.)

It's halfway through the movie before anyone remembers that they've got cameras up the hooha and that they're recording everything.  ("OMG, don't we have cameras around here?  I can look at the footage!")  Yes, Virginia, there is a bogeyman in the house.  Actually, the bogey's hanging out in the basement with frequent fortes up to the second floor to play with Hunter.  (They're simpatico and the entity has Cheerios!)

Meanwhile, I wanted to play the who-gets-killed-first game.  Nubile step-daughter was top of my list.  Then the boyfriend, and the dog, followed by the nanny, and then mom and dad.  I needed a scorecard to keep up.  But the dad fired the nanny for being all superstitious and wafting incense around and the nanny got away so I had to scratch her off.  (No pun intended.)

Things started getting interesting when Kristi the mom was dragged down the stairs and into the basement while everyone else was gone.  So when she came out of the basement, she was all demonic and wanted to take a nap.  (Pretty sure the movie was still a little short at that point and they needed some more horrifying drama, so she couldn't demonize herself right at that moment.)  Ali the step-daughter shows the chin-bumping-on-the-carpet footage to Dad and Dad suddenly realizes that the nanny was right all along!  Her Spanish declarations of evilness should have warned them but they did not listen.  He gets Martine back and they come up with a plan.  They can pass the evilness off to someone else beside Kristi but it has to be a blood relative.  Guess who's the closest relative?  Yes, it's KATIE!  Katie the demonically possessed one from the first movie!  Katie wins the supernatural lottery in PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2!  (Well, they couldn't give it to the baby, right?)

Dad and Martine perform an ancient-only-known-to-nannies ceremony.  Dad chases Kristi around the basement, along with Hunter giggling hysterically.  (They must have been tickling the kid's feet off camera.)  There's some Blair Witchiness going on with shaking cameras and shoots of intermediate blackness.  (One has to remember that the security guys did not put a camera in the basement, but the director remembered that Dad needed to take his camcorder in the basement to chase his errant demonic wife and to also make the movie not have a big gaping hole in it.)

Phew!  All is well.  Words scroll across the screen to remind us that it's four months later and Katie has just smeared Micah against the wall at another location.  Now we get to see Kristi's house again.  There's Daniel and Kristi and Hunter.  Katie pops up, weirds everyone out by standing behind Daniel for awhile without him knowing it while he's watching a Dunkin' Donut commercial.  (Which would weird anyone out.)  Then she breaks his neck, goes upstairs and throws Kristi against the camera.  (It worked well with Micah.)  Then she takes off with Hunter, who is giggling again.

And they're never seen again...da dah daaaaaaahhhhh.  (But there is a note that Ali comes back from a school trip and finds the bodies, although it doesn't say what happens to her boyfriend, Martine, or the dog.)

You might understand why they don't pay me to review movies.

My Day OR the Secret Life of a Writer OR How It's Still HIM's Fault

The secret life of a writer.  (The glamour, the jet-setting, the amazing events that occur!)

First I put the garbage out.  I made the mistake of putting old freezer food in the open can and maddened squirrels attacked the can followed by voracious ants.  (There might have been a tiger or a bear out there, too.  At least, that's what it looked like after they were done with it and I was picking up five year old, semi-squooshy bits of what I suspect was some kind of home-made bread.)  Then it rained and filled up half the bottom of the open can.  I hid from the garbage men because I'm pretty sure they would have said something nasty to me.

Seriously, I have a secret fear of garbage men.
I'm not sure what I think they'll do.
Refusing to take MY garbage is
at the top of the list, though.

I returned to painting my daughter's room.  Previously it was purple.  No, **PURPLE**!  Really, really **PURPLE**!! and it needed several coats of paint to cover the **PURPLE**! up.  But before I painted I decided to put new curtains in that room after the painting was completed, which was a mistake.  (The decision to put new curtains up was the mistake, not the painting.)  I went to Target and found that they don't like to sell the kind of valances that the old curtain rods have, and no, I am not a person who sews.  In fact, I have problems putting a thread through a needle.  I even have problems putting a thread through a needle using the special-for-idiots tool that those little sewing kits provide.  I'd rather throw the clothes out than sew on them.  ("Perfectly good pair of jeans that needs a button.  Too bad!  In the trash!  Maybe the garbage men will like that better than the old freezer food.")

ANYHOO, no valances at Target.  Presto, I decided to take the old curtain rods down, fix the holes in the walls, and put new curtain rods up that were spiffier.  (If spiffier isn't a word, then it is now.)  I bought everything.  Previous to painting I attempted to take the old curtain rods down.  Hahaha.  No.  The little bolts had been painted on several times.  I pounded, scraped, went and got the correctly sized bolt doohickey tool.  (That's a socket wrench to those of you who have to have details.)  Finally I got all but one bolt off.  My hands hurt.  My back hurt.  I think my butt hurt, too.  (But I don't know why.)  Losing all patience I ripped the thing out of the wall and...left a big fat hole.  And that was only the first window.  There are two windows in her bedroom with all of the **PURPLE** paint.  I took a break before the second one.  That time I managed to get away with a smaller hole.

Out to the garage to find the mega can of Spackle and the little spatula thing that you use to smear it on with.  Also somewhere I lost the sanding blocks I bought from the last round of fixing holes in the walls.  So I dug and found some sanding paper that will work but killed my fingers.  I finally fixed the holes.  (Did you know you can put pounds of Spackle in the walls?  I did not know this.  POUNDS!  And pounds of Spackle take a really long time to dry.)  Then I painted.  I painted some more.  I started singing sea shanties about painting.  (Not really but it sounds funny, right?  *What do you do with a drunken sailor?  Make him paint my waa-allls.*)

The moron cat, Megaroy, came in and decided that he would help paint.  (After putting his paws up on the wet wall, he ran like hell down the hallway because something icky was on his paws.  It did not help that I was chasing him like a loon.  I would have stopped to take a picture of the paw prints down the wooden hallway floor but I was afraid if I waited the paint would dry and I would have to scrape it up with my fingernails.)  I had to de-paint the cat's paws.  (Now I have bandages all over my arms because the cat was not happy with the de-painting of the paws process.  In fact, you might saw he was highly aggravated.)

I locked the cat in the other bedroom and painted some more.

Finally, done with the painting.  I took all the old curtain rods out to the garbage, along with the old freezer food, and scared off the squirrels.  The ants were not impressed and did not leave.  Someone came along an hour later and took all the old curtain rods.  (Maybe they have old valances that those curtain rods fit or possibly they were smart enough not to try to take the old hardware off the walls.)

I collapsed in a chair, certain that the painting will never be over.  (There are four more rooms that need spot-painting.)  Or even better is that I will have to return to Home Depot to get another can of the same color paint because I forgot to paint something.  (That Home Depot guy still wants to talk to me about the "special" program I can be in so they will always know what color paint I need.  Them and the NSA.)

The garbage men glared at me as they drove past.  (They might have put a hit out on me.)  The squirrels gave me the stinky eye.  (It's possible they're in collusion with the garbage men.)  I stomped on a couple of ants because I didn't really want to be on the bottom of the heap.  (No, I didn't really stomp on ants.)  I wrote HIM a nasty email but then I deleted it.

Now I'm waiting on the line for Verizon to help with the telephone bills that we're not getting.  We're supposed to be getting them but we're not and I can't access the account online either.  So far I've talked to a nice lady in Tampa, Florida, another lady in Virginia, and now I'm on hold for a "special department that helps with that thing specifically," which is a direct quote because I couldn't not quote that wondrous statement.  What joy and fun I'm having today.  (Sarcasm.)

But on the bright side, I'm about half way done with Brownie and the Dame.  If I'm really lucky it'll be done by the time the movers show up on our doorstep.

My Daughter's Moron Cat

Recently I taunted my daughter's moron cat, Megaroy.  Please understand that I mean no disrespect to morons, but my daughter's moron cat is quite possibly the stupidest cat I've ever encountered.  A few people mentioned that I was being mean to the cat.  (I don't think he understands how to read, but okay.)  (Also I don't think he understands what we're saying besides, "Here kittee, kittee, kittee," which in a Skinnerian fashion he associates with FOOD!)

Megaroy with a viking helmet, showing his GRR face. 

Being close to the mid-century mark, I have had pets over the years, cats, dogs, fish, parakeets, and possibly some invisible ones.  Also some things I would call pets.  (Boyfriends, odd friends, and people who you don't know how to characterize any other way.  This is a joke for those of you who still think I'm being mean to the moron cat.)  My point is that I've had many pets and comparitively speaking, Megaroy is the dumbest one to date.

Basically, I know cats, I've served with cats, and cats have been my friends, and you sir, are no cat.  (Was that scoring off Lloyd Bentsen or Dan Quayle?  Who cares?)  (I once saw Dan Quayle at Fort Bliss, Texas during the first Gulf War.  He was running with a battalion of tankers, which would have been okee-dokee, except the tankers had all been forced to wear "Scudbusters" t-shirts.  I'll explain.  Scud busting was done by Air Defense Artillery and was infamous at the time.  HIM was a Scudbuster.  But these poor bastards had to run with the idiot vice-president, although he didn't accidentally shoot anyone with a shotgun, wearing a t-shirt that didn't even promote their core job skill.  Embarrassing!  Hey, idiot vice-president, moron cat, they should get together.  I wonder if Dan Quayle would like the moron cat as his close personal pet buddy?) 

I Binged how to give a cat an IQ test and found this site: How Smart is Your Cat?  The clever part about this site is that the human gets to fill in the answers.  No cat interface at all.  And human pet owners are SOOOOO objective.  Oh, what the hey, I'll do it.  Be right back.  And Megaroy scored a resounding 34.  Sounds good right until you read the key.  For 40 and below it says: We do hope you're keeping this cat somewhere safe because he really isn't smart enough to be fending for himself.  Hope he's good-looking or purrs a lot because he isn't the smartest tuna in the sea.  (Poor Megaroy.  If we let him outside he's probably coyote bait.)

BURN!  But then I thought well, maybe I wasn't being objective and picked answers that would predetermine the outcome.  I will look at another cat IQ test.  They have several on the Internet that involves the owner of the cat answering questions and tallying a score like the one above.  Megaroy the Moron does not perform well in those type of tests.

"I'm supposed to do what with what?  You suck."

Therefore there was another suggestion.  This site has an actual test to be performed on a cat and we have all the equipment.  A cat, a hoop, and cat treats.  Cat-Eye Q test here.  Basically, we need to count the number of times it takes the cat to learn how to jump through a hoop.  The higher the number, the dumber the cat.  Using a treat and a cat and a hoop, I begin.

The first time Megaroy sniffs the hoop.  He looks at me.  I define his expression as "Yes, it is a hoop but what is my treat doing in there, weird human with the warm feet?"  Attempt no. 2: He walked through the hoop and got the treat and then lay on the floor and looked at us.  "Why are you not raining treats upon my furry head, human slave?" was his expression.  Attempt no. 3: He went under the hoop and that wasn't exactly easy for him to do because the hoop was about six inches off the floor and he's a 12 inch tall cat.  Attempt no. 4: Megaroy walked off and got into the cardboard box because it was much more interesting.  ( I couldn't get him to come back which means something but I don't know what.)

Here's the scores on the test.  Oddly it does not include Megaroy's score.

Here are the "Eye-Q" scores:

60 or more commands = Sorry, your cat is below average

50 - 59 commands = Your cat is slightly below average

40 - 49 commands = Just your average cat

30 - 39 commands = Your cat is above average

29 or fewer commands = PURRFECTLY WONDERFUL!

YOUR CAT IS EXTREMELY INTELLIGENT!

Either Megaroy is a secret genius or he's the stupidest cat on the planet.

There was one more test.  The towel test.  Put a towel over your cat.  The faster he gets out from under the towel, the smarter the cat.  (When I told my MIL about this test years ago, she asked, "Does the cat have to be awake?"  I said, "Yes, the cat needs to be awake."  Part of the whole intelligence thing and all.  Well, I said other things, too, mostly about my MIL, but I won't repeat them because it's mother's day.)  (Whoops.  I broke the Thou-Shall-Not-Blog-About-the-MIL commandment.  I'm a bad, bad girl.)

I placed the towel over the cat's head.  The cat said, "Mmmrr?"  The cat sat there for a minute.  He moved around a little.  He said, "Mmmrrr?" again.  He laid down.  Then he got up.  About a minute later, he finally found his way out.  Ideally, the cat should get out from under the towel in under five seconds.  It took Megaroy about two minutes.

I can now officially and without guilt call Megaroy a moron.

Cressy wanted to be in on all the kitty action,
but she wouldn't let me do the kitty IQ test
on her.

Stuff Besides Moving OR Back to Other Stuff

Okay, I won't blog about 1) doctors (evil sadistic bastards who harp on and on and on and on about weight) 2) my sister's cat, Mellow (evil sadistic cat who hissed on me once for thirty minutes straight), 3) dentists (evil sadistic bastards who like to play with tools too much, although that might also apply to car repairmen) 4) contractors (evil sadistic bastards who invade my house with calculators in one hand with an avaricious eye for gauging) 5) moving (evil sadistic practice of leaving one domicile for another), OR 6) HIM, the man to whom I'm married (evil sadistic husband who's making me move in the middle of writing a novella).

Instead I will talk about my beautiful daughter, Cressy, and our recent trip to Chuck E. Cheese.  (Sometimes Chuck E. Cheese is referred to That-Place-With-the-Giant-Rat or Chuck E. Effing Cheese.)  I have discussed the Chuck E. locale before.  While the food is not bad and the prices for the food economical, it is a haven for screaming, rampaging rug rats and the parents who do not care to watch over their hell spawn.  (It's like clubbing on December 31st at 11:30 PM and all they have left is Red Bull and vodka, except I never did that.)

Anyway, the school had a fund raiser.  Go to Chuck E.'s, spend your cash, and Chuck E. will give some percentage back to the school.  (Generosity abounds, I wrote sarcastically.  I think I'd rather just write the check to the school, but NO-OOOO, the school makes sure that our offspring knows all about the Chuck E. Cheese event ahead of time and even provides stickers to slap on their shirts to help them remember to prompt us.  I was at the school one afternoon when they riled up the children five minutes before dismissal about their academic carnival and it was an ugly event.  "Don't forget to tell your parents!  Oh, yes, don't forget to tell your parents!  And also, don't forget to tell your parents!  You're a poo-poo head if you don't tell your parents!  Your parents are poo-poo heads if they don't bring you!"  I'm telling you, fund raising in schools has descended into the ninth level of hell.)

You can't tell me that doesn't look
like a giant frickin' rat.

So we went.  I cleverly invited a mommy friend with whom to share the agony.  We brought coupons and split up all the coin booty.  The three children pretty much lost their little freaking minds.  Cressy kills herself trying to do every machine in the place.  Sometimes she misses one, and she talks to it.  "I'll get you next time, my pretty," she says and she sounds just like the Wicked Witch of the West.  "And your little dog, too."

Sharing the arcade like madness with other children is like crack to Cressy.  Her pupils dilated.  Her adrenal gland activated.  She sent off invisible signals to the other children.  (These signals say, "PLAY NOW OR DIE!" or something equally sinister.)  She did stop to eat one piece of pizza but otherwise she spent the next two hours in computer animated/arcade bliss.  When I finally gave her the five minute warning, she was like, "Sure, Ma," because she was crashing fast.  She had come.  She had conquered.  She was going home to write her memoirs.

(My favorite moment: My mommy friend's three year old son ran back to us.  He sort of charges everywhere at breakneck speed.  His head is down, his little arms are pumping, he's going for the gusto.  Then he bellows, "I MET CHUCK E.!" because it was the best thing that had ever happened to him as of that very moment.  It wasn't a, "Oh, by the by, Mother dearest, whilst I was playing of the arcade games at the club, I ran into Charles E. Cheese and was most enamored."  No, it was, "I MET CHUCK E. CHEESE!"  Like "OMFG, Chuck E. Cheese is like God, except I met him!"  It was totally awesome to the kid.  Oh, for simpler times.  I think the only time I would charge back to my parents and scream I met someone was if I met Stephen King or James Lee Burke.  I'd probably embarrass myself by drooling on them, but hey, they're probably used to it.)

But wait, Chuck E. Cheese has the insidious additional feature.  Playing all the arcade games provides tickets.  (OMG, TICKETS!)  The kids raced back to give us the tickets.  Then at the end we feed the tickets into a machine that makes munching noises as it counts them.  (I'm not making that up.  Ask any mother in your vicinity.  They know.  Really, they know.)  They get to print out a final ticket that says how many tickets they got and then they can go to the reward counter and get a prize.  Most of these prizes are cheap things made in third world countries by starving children but does Cressy care about that?  Hell, no.  She wants that prize.  This time she got two little prizes.  One was an eraser in the shape of a heart.  (Does this say something about her school work?)  The other was a pair of glow-in-the-dark fangs.

Yes, this looks exactly like my Ford.

On the drive home, my daughter became the vampire of the Ford Explorer.  Several times she leaned out the window to menace other drivers with her glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth.  Although it was daytime, she was not deterred by the lack of glow-in-the-dark-edness.  She was having a whole vampire moment.  And it didn't stop when we got home.

No, Cressy the Vampire had a new victim.  Megaroy, her moron cat, was sleeping on top of his kitty condo, resting from the aftereffects of too much catnip, when suddenly, Cressy the Vampire crept toward him.  I mean, I think he noticed her but he's used to her creeping toward him.  Neither was he impressed by the glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth.  (Cressy the Vampire had to pause mid-creep because the glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth were making her drool down the side of her face.  So she wiped with her sleeve.  Do we do manners in this house?  Oh, yes, she could have just spit, like most vampires do.)

Slowly, Cressy the Vampire approached her prey.  She got up next to him and took his large, gray fuzzy tail in both hands and prepared to bite him in order to suck all his moron blood out.  (Not sure if the cat would actually act any different without moron blood in him.  Possibly he would become smarter.)

Standing nearby I thought, She won't really bite him,right?

But Cressy the Vampire actually bit the moron cat's big, fat furry tail.  Megaroy made a kind of "Mrrrp?" noise that I took to mean, "What the frak are you doing, you little yellow haired monster child?"  Then he pulled his tail away and sat on it, with an indignant glare at Cressy the Vampire.

I can't decide if this photo was taken before or after his
moron blood was sucked out.  I think before.

Meanwhile Cressy the Vampire had learned that biting Megaroy the Moron's massively puffball tail meant that she got a mouthful of fur and spent the next five minutes wiping her mouth out with a napkin.  Hairy cat tail leaves its mark on the vampire's mouth, doncha know?

I suppose I shouldn't have let her do it, but I couldn't help myself.  Cressy the Vampire, zip.  Megaroy the Moronator Cat, one.

I Shall Blog OR The Blog Has Cometh OR Watch Out, More Stuff OR I'm Going to be Mean to Someone Else Besides HIM

Recently I was chastised about teasing HIM, the man to whom I'm married for decades.  HIM has done something to make me irate and well, it comes out in the blog, many, many times.  What has HIM done?  If you don't know, you haven't been reading my blogs.  (Bad reader.  Go back and read some.  I'll wait.)

I'm singing the blues.  I couldn't imagine anyone but a flapper singing the
blues.  Oh, wait, B.B. King playing Lucille popped into my head.  Too late.

Here's what HIM done.  HIM done me wrong.  (Hahaha.  It's a blues song title.  Sing it with me!)  HIM decided to take a new job and the rest of the family should just shut it and move happily with him.  Meanwhile, I'm in the middle of a schedule of writing and moving means I can't write, which means people write me things like, "I'm having a Bubba withdrawal," and "Why aren't you writing faster?" and "Why haven't Bubba books magically shot out of your aft area?"  (Well, no one wrote the last one, but I imagine people are thinking it.)

Yes, I sound like an eccentric writer now.  ("I cannot move, darling, I'm writing.  Nuff said.")  The last time we moved, I had to go on psychotropic drugs for two years.  The book I was working on at the time has never been finished and it was almost half through.  (Good idea too.  I might go back to it.  It had a guy who had lost his daughter and was determined to find her ghost because he was certain she was dead.  It had a whole ghost hunter thing going on, way, way before all the stuff came out on the Syfy channel.  Damn, it was a good story and I couldn't finish it because my mind had gone down the rabbit hole and not in a good way.)

Bubba fans, please pay attention to the fact that these
are business casual shoes and slacks upended in
the grass.  You know, the kind business casual
professionals use, like oh, um, HIM?

Anyway, so HIM decided to move and although HIM conferred with me, ultimately it came down to the fact that HIM really, really, really wanted this particular job.  Also HIM said, in a particularly dense moment, "Don't worry.  I'll take care of everything."  However, HIM is NOT taking care of everything, because HIM is already in Alabama and I'm here, winding things up with the daughter in school and other random crap.  (Painting, paperwork, contracts, contractors, packing, dealing with other stuff, etc.)

Did HIM commit a crime?  No.  Is HIM guilty of horrible, wretched things?  No.  But I'm irritated and this is the way I work it out.  Besides HIM reads all these blogs before I post.  If HIM had a problem with it, he would say so.  Here is HIM's comment:

I refuse to comment on the grounds that it will incriminate myself.  (And he's a rocket scientist so it's not like he doesn't know what I'm talking about.)

Ways to torture HIM:

1.  Burial in an ant hill.  (The red kind.)
2.  Smear his entire body with poison ivy.  (He's truly allergic to it.  The kind where he has to go to the doctor and get special meds for it.  And by the way, Alabama has LOTS of poison ivy.)
3.  Smear peanut butter on the toilet seat in the middle of the night.  (If you don't know this one, go talk to an adolescent.)
4.  Call his cell phone and ask if his refrigerator is running.  (All right, this is lame.)
5.  Blog about HIM until I'm tired of it.

There ya go.  HIM is not a crook.  But HIM is a pain in the a**.  HIM is MY pain in the a**.  I suppose I'll keep him.

But wait.  I DO want to be mean to the driver of this car:

Yes, this is a tan Avalon with the VA plate of XKD-8764,
in case anyone has trouble seeing it.

Why?  Because she went through an entire school zone doing at least 45 MPH!  Then she got to this stop light and had to wait two minutes anyway like the stupid, unthinking person she is.  And look at the back of her car because there is an interesting dichotomy there.  She supports finding a cure for breast cancer (yea boobies!), but screw all the little kids walking home from the elementary school because she has to go fast through the school zone (boo, little children!).  Shame on you, unknown woman driver from Manassas, VA.  I hope someone you know sees this blog and points it out to you.  Your driving sucks and you're going to hurt someone.  (Probably not pink clad boobies, but possibly small children trying to cross the road because it's the only way home and you're driving down it, without thinking.)

There.  I was mean to someone else besides HIM.

Reviews Oh, Those Wacky Reviews! Or Other Stuff, Too!

WARNING!  WARNING!  WARNING!  I am not your father, Luke.  You are going to need a bigger boat.  Read my lips, no new taxes!  Also, I will randomly jump from topic to topic because I'm on the verge of a mental breakdown because of the moving extravaganza I'm currently embroiled within.  Just sayin'.

Yes.  My golden rule #35: Thou shall not read of the reviews.  Okay, I break it all the time.  Mostly I'm okay with the reviews.  They tend to be positive with the occasional one that says something sucks or they just couldn't get into the novel.  Mostly, people seem to gravitate toward one series or the other and don't like going to another genre.  (BAD writer!  Mixing up genres!  You're just like Tarantino, except not as violent!  Hmm.  I wonder if that guy would like Bayou Billy.  This reminds me of something I thought about when I saw his last movie, Inglorious Basterds.

I know all of you people didn't see the movie but basically it's WWII and Quentin decided to play revisionist director/writer.  This is cool.  The very best part of the movie is where Brad Pitt pretends to be Italian while doing an Alabaman accent.  Funny as hell.  What does this have to do with reviews?  Well, nothing, but it's my blog and I'm meandering.  After seeing Inglorious Basterds I said to HIM, the man to whom I'm married and who is presently in the most massive doghouse ever constructed outside of the type where one committed adultery with his wife's sister.  No, HIM didn't do that.  I'm just making a comparison so one can appreciate the size of HIM's doghouse and how long I might be able to rant about it.

Wow, am I really getting off the subject.  I said to HIM concerning Inglorious Basterds, "About a year before the movie, Quentin Tarantino is sitting around with Cheech Marin and Robert Rodriguez and eating cheese doodles while drinking vodka shots, saying,  "I really want to make a movie.  Violent.  Sadistic.  Tongue-in-cheek.  Kick-ass.  But I want everyone in the theater on my side.  I want them to leap up and cheer their asses off.  You know, for when someone really evil gets killed in an icky fashion.  Yeah, that's it."  Cheech does a shot and eats more doodles while Robert talks about Spy Kids 6.

Cheese doodles look funny.

So then Quentin muses, "Now who can I kill in a highly disgusting, bloody, gorefest, hot-mess fashion and get away with it?  Hmm.  Republicans?  Democrats?  Boy Scouts?  Richard Nixon?"  Cheech sticks two cheese doodles up his nose while doing a shot and pretends to be a Russian elephant.  Robert discusses El Mariachi for the twentieth time, then he throws a doodle at Quentin's head.  "No," Quentin says, "none of those guys.  And it can't be Hilary Clinton.  Jesus!  No, not Jesus."  He pauses.  "OH MY GOD, I know.  Who can I behead, gut, disembowel, stick fishhooks into, draw and quarter, shoot into a million pieces, spit on, and make their name MUD?"  "Who?" says Cheech, having preformed a Heimlich maneuver upon himself.  Robert shoves ten doodles in his mouth at the same time.  "Oliver Stone!" Quentin yells.  Then his shoulders slump.  "No, not him."  Then he decides it's got to be Adolf Hitler.  And that's the way it really happened.  In my head.  Man, did I get off the beaten track or what?)

Oh, I know, this has nothing to do with Quentin Tarantino or reviews but I couldn't help it.

Reviews.  Back to reviews.  So I'm looking at reviews and I see that on one of my paranormal romance novels, Blood Moon, there's like a gazillion.  (I had to stop to look if gazillion is in my dictionary.)  But they're not regular reviews.  No, it's like this:

***** Cat
Blossomstar is locked out and said that she wants to move camp to garvey (not typo!) first result!

Then:

***** Bramblebit
*she trys to talk still barley breathing*

Then:

***** Patchclaw to blossmstar

R u still rping

 

Lest we forget:

***** Flamepaw

I need a mentor.

 

Also:

***** Sunburst

Can i joun i am a tawny spotted golden she cat with green eyes.

Just a final example:

 

 

***** Cleverheart

Please join revenge clan. We have changed and we are in need of more cats. Our leader, shearstar, will help you. Please join at night first result. We need warriors, kits an apprentices. Please join.

Oh-kay.  I assume that these folks are playing a game using my reviews as a backdrop.  The good news is they like to give me five stars each time so I'm getting high results.  It would seem somewhat skewed, however.  I suppose it's better than if they gave me a one star each time they leave a review/game thing message.

Again, nothing to do with the blog except in a passing reference to HIM and doghouses,
but this is where HIM would be sleeping if he wasn't hiding out in Alabama.

So what the hell, folks?  What's this and can I play?  I have cheese doodles and vodka.  Also I want to watch Kill Bill parts 1 & 2 in a massive Uma Thurman-butt-kicking marathon.