Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

Sometimes I Like To Make Lists: v.2

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Today’s list details the hierarchy of pleasures that our cats experience as residents of our household.

1. Bugs That Fly.

2. Bugs That Crawl On The Ground.

3. Someone Opening The Drawer Where We Keep The Cat Treats

4. “Helping” Us Make The Bed.

5. “Helping” Us Cut Our Nails.

6. Lying On Freshly Laundered Clothes.

7. Harassing Me For Food.

8. Napping.
a. In The Sun
b. Next To An Air Vent
c. In The Spot They Just Stole From Another Cat

9. Pretending They’ve Never Seen Us Before So As To Have An Excuse To Freak Out.

10. Running Back And Forth Through The House At Night.

Wild Kingdom

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So the bug guy was here yesterday for the second time in a week. He’s getting to be quite the regular fixture around here. He actually told me last week that he enjoys coming to our house because there’s always something new to deal with. He said we were “well-rounded customers.”

Right now we are having issues with rodents. I’m sure that for many of you the first thing that popped into your mind upon reading that was, “What?! How can they possibly have any kind of rodent problem if they live with 3 cats?” Trust me. It’s not for any lack of desire on the cats’ parts. I know that as far as they’re concerned, they would like nothing more than to have as their goal in life the scouring of all rodents from the face of the earth. Well, at least two of them would. I’m pretty sure that the big cat’s goal in life is to become surgically grafted onto my husband’s body so as to be physically attached to him at all times. (She has some issues.)

The reason we are having rodent issues now is that when I was growing up we had outdoor cats, and they were always bringing us “presents” and leaving them for us at the back door. And frankly, I’ve come face to face with just about all the random bird, squirrel, and chipmunk parts that I can handle for one lifetime. So now we have indoor cats, which is why we also have The Bug Guy. He comes to deal with all of those icky things for me, and I get to continue living in my illusion that the world is only filled with nice, soft, cuddly creatures.

The only hitch in this plan is the fact that The Bug Guy constantly feels compelled to Tell Me Things, including wa-a-ay more information than I would ever want to know about the creatures with which he is dealing. Yesterday he said that he really likes this job because I am always happy to see him. That is certainly true, but apparently that mutual happiness then leads him to want to share things with me, which is why I now know things like how many rodents tend to group together in one spot, or why they are constantly gnawing onvthings, or the fact that apparently they’re playing out their own squeaky version of “Survivor” down in my basement and kicking out the weak members of the tribe.

Next time, just bring me chocolate.

Jenny Ryan: Exposed!

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Hi. I’m Pip, Jenny’s middle cat, and I have taken over her blog today because I think there are some things about Jenny that you all really need to know. I know everyone thinks she’s so funny and nice, but I guarantee that once I tell you about the trauma she put me through last week, you will never look at her the same way again!

Last Thursday started out just like every other day. After Tigger, Bailey and I had our breakfast of 7 cat food pellets apiece, we had all settled down to lick ourselves into our morning nap. Suddenly, I heard noises that made my blood run cold: Evil Cat Mama (or ECM, for short) had gone out into the garage and gotten out The Cages.

“Cheese it! The cops!” I yelled, in an attempt to warn the other cats of this impending doom. [Editor’s Note: Because they are, in fact, cats and not master criminals, their slinking away led them directly into me and the cat carriers.]

Despite our valiant attempts at self-defense, Bailey and I soon found ourselves cruelly caged and constrained. For some inexplicable reason, Tigger was not forced to undergo this inhumane treatment.

Tigger: “Hi, guys. What are you doing? Why are you in those boxes? What’s going on? Can I play too?”
Pip: “Shut up, you, [BEEP] [BEEP] of [BEEP]! Don’t make me come over there and [BEEP]!”

Try as I might, I could not formulate a successful escape plan, so we soon found ourselves in The Car. Even though I have been unsuccessful at preventing the ECM from placing me in this horrible machine, I have had limited success in modifying her behavior during our rides.

I have finally trained her not to drive any faster than 35 mph, or to play the radio when I am in The Car.

I have also trained her not to talk to me with her false expressions of sympathy.

ECM: “I know, babies. I’m sorry. We’re almost there. It will all be over soon.”
Pip: “Shut up, [BEEP]! This is all your fault, you [BEEP] [BEEP]-ing [BEEP] [BEEP]!”

I’m still perfecting the third part of my Vehicle Behavior Modification Plan. This involves experimenting with as many different pitches and tones of yowling as I can, to find the exact frequency that will both deafen her and shatter her nervous system.

Finally The Car stopped moving, and the ECM took us into a building. I was very excited about the possibility of being free from The Cage until I realized where we were: she had taken us to The Evil Vet!

ECM took us into an exam room where The Evil Vet and The Evil Vet Assistant were waiting for us. It all gets kind of hazy after that, but I do remember up to the point where they forced me out of The Cage and onto The Table.

The Evil Vet Assistant: “Oh, what a pretty girl you are. Don’t you have a gorgeous coat?”
Pip: “Shut up, [BEEP]. Wait. Where are you going with that glove? NO-O-O-O…[BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP]!”

Shocking, isn’t it? But it had to be done. Maybe now that the truth is out there, she will not be able to inflict her cruel behavior on any other innocent victims. We can only hope that one day, The Evil Cat Mama will finally be stopped for good.

Sometimes I Like To Make Lists

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For example, here is a list of things I’ve heard people (including myself) say that I think would make great titles for something-I just haven’t figured out exactly what, yet.

1. When Busty Women Meet

2. I Am The Grit In Other People’s Oysters

3. He Walks As If He Still Had Testicles

4. Even In Death, Pumpkins Are Still Useful

5. Me And My Colorful-Ass Monkey Mind

6. Sometimes You Get To Throw Grenades

7. The Beaver Emergency

8. Blame The Wookies

9. How I Was Able To Use The Word “Autopsy” In An Everyday Conversation

10. You Can Never Have Too Many Krumkake Irons

It Really Really Is The Little Things

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My younger brother just recently got engaged (yay!), and as his older sister I am really feeling like I need to pass along to him the wisdom I’ve gained from being married for almost 10 years.

I could share with him that I’ve learned to ask myself this very important question during tense marital moments: “Do I want to be right, or do I want to be happy?”

I could emphasize that fact that it is a really bad idea to come up behind your spouse when they are engaged in performing a chore that you do not want to do, look over their shoulder, and then say, “Hm, that‘s how you’re doing it?”

But I think the most important thing I could tell him is that, sure, premarital counseling may cover things like money, children, and in-laws, but what it doesn’t tell you is this: it really, really is the little, everyday things that have the potential to trip you up in a marriage.

For example, I remember that when we were moving into our first apartment it was VITALLY important to me that I get to arrange the silverware drawer in the order to which I was accustomed (fork, then knife, then spoon). My husband really could not have cared less about that, but he wisely took advantage of that moment to negotiate some household point for himself, which I can’t actually recall at this moment, but which I’m sure was EQUALLY as important as my silverware thing.

But no one ever talks about that kind of stuff.

Nor do they talk about what to do if, one day when he happens to be in a bad mood, your husband goes off on a rant about how nobody (translation: “you”) ever puts the new rolls of toilet paper on the actual toilet paper holder, but how everyone (again, meaning “you”) just leave them sitting there on top of it. So then for the next few years you obsessively RUN to “correctly” replace the toilet paper every time a roll runs out, until one day you notice that the person who was totally freaking out about this situation earlier is doing The Exact Same Thing that caused his freaking out to begin with, so you finally work up the courage to mention this little inconsistency to him, and he has no recollection whatsoever of that particular conversation and tells you that you need to not take things so seriously. And then you have to kill him.

Hm. On second thought, maybe I’ll just let them discover all these fun little marital treasures for themselves.

You Might Have Too Much Free Time On Your Hands

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if you have spent an entire day trying to figure out the funniest way to describe your cat’s obsession with your new laptop.

(Like, is it funnier to say that you’re starting a self-help group entitled, “Help! My cat is in love with my computer!”, or to present it as a possible tabloid headline: “Impassioned feline inflamed by cyber-love”?)

Things That Make You Say,”What?!”: Thanksgiving ’05

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Well, here we are once again, smack dab in the middle of another holiday season. And I don’t know about you, but I think that for me personally, my ability to see things in a slightly quirky way and find humor everywhere is one of the main ways that I keep myself sane during this time.

So in that vein, I offer you these “What?!” moments from my family’s Thanksgiving experience this year.

1. You know how all those commercials on TV show families getting together for the holidays, and everyone is having all of these deep, meaningful, emotional moments? Well, that really doesn’t happen in my family. When my family gets together it seems to bring out our Giant Collective Family Smart Ass. Here’s an example of what I mean.

On the day before Thanksgiving my mom took me, my husband, and my brother out to lunch. We were going to a restaurant that we hadn’t been to in a while, and my mom wanted us to see if we noticed anything different about the shopping center in which it was located.

My mom: “So, can you tell what has changed?”

All of us: “Hm, no.”

My Mom: “Look! All the trees are gone. They were having a crime wave, so they cut down all the trees!”

My brother and my husband: “Those darn trees! If you’re not watching them every minute they’re out mugging you, or stealing your purse, or something! It’s a good thing they got rid of all of them!”

2. Another good things about getting together with family for the holidays is that it gives you a chance to see that, no matter how regular or normal you think you are, to someone else the things you do will seem like the strangest things that they’ve ever heard of. And here’s an example of that.

On Thanksgiving evening during a break in our family card game I had to use my parents’ downstairs bathroom. As it turned out, this particular bathroom was having some flushing issues, and none of the “tricks” I knew were fixing it.

When I reported this to my parents they said, “Oh, yeah. What you have to do is to fill up the trash can with a little bit of water, throw the water into the toilet, and then flush it.”

They might as well have said, “What you have to do is spin around in a circle three times, and then hop up and down on one foot while patting the top of your head and chanting a special hymn to the god of plumbing.” Because there was as much chance of my coming up with that little routine as there was of my intuiting the whole water-in-the-trash-can solution.

3. But my favorite part of getting together with other people are the times when something so unexpected happens that everything comes to a screeching halt. That is the epitome of a “What?!” moment, and is exactly what happened to my family in the following example.

In all outward appearances, it looked like a storybook holiday moment. It was Thanksgiving evening, and we’d all enjoyed a nice dinner together as a family. We were all gathered around the kitchen table, chatting and sharing stories, while my husband made homemade ice cream.

Then all of a sudden my mom, who grew up in the 50’s and 60’s when women still wore gloves, whose family discussed the finer points of etiquette at the dinner table, who I’ve never once heard swear or curse, who is always pleasant to everyone and is the epitome of “being a good example” said to me:

“You know how you were talking about crap earlier?”

Me and The Whole Entire Universe: “What?!”

And for the record, I still have no idea what she was referring to. I have a hazy memory of someone trying to introduce bat guano as a topic of conversation, but that’s it. (Don’t ask).

My Name Is Jenny, And I MUST Have Access To The Internet

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It’s a happy, happy day here in our household, because my Internet connection has finally been restored.

For the past couple of weeks our connection has grown increasingly worse, and I have grown increasingly more crazed.

As my husband has flitted from his office, to his various business-related travel destinations, to his various hotels, all with their perfectly functioning Internet connections, I don’t think he was really getting just how frustrated I was. When I told him last night that I was ready to throw my brand-new laptop-which I had just received a month ago for my birthday-out the window, that seemed to spur him into action.

He got online and set up an appointment for a technician to come to our house today (did I mention that his Internet connection was working just fine?) So I was starting to feel much better, until he shared the following observation with me.

“I wonder if we have rodents that are chewing through our lines?”

Then he said, “What are the chances of you going down to the basement to check that out?”

Have you ever been under the influence of an irrational belief so strong that, despite absolutely knowing that you are totally making this fear up, and despite never once seeing any shred of evidence that there is cause for this fear, it still powerfully controls your behavior?

I am that way about snakes. I am terrified of snakes and, despite all evidence to the contrary, I am CONVINCED that huge groups of snakes totally surround our house. There are certain places around our house where I will never go because I just KNOW that the snakes are waiting there to get me.

That information is important to this story, because in order to get to our basement you have to go outside, down the deck stairs, and across the backyard. There is no access from inside our house. So my husband was asking me to go outside, in the dark, past two of the places where the imaginary snakes live, into the basement, where he was pretty sure I would find REAL rats.

On the one hand, I suppose I could have been flattered that he thought I was brave enough to do this by myself. But I decided to respond with, “Are you insane?!”, with a little dash of, “Have you met me?!” thrown in to “kick it up a notch.”

I am happy to say that it was not necessary for me to go down to the basement last night, and even happier to say that when the technician was here he did not say one single word about rodents. And now our Internet connection is working perfectly.

Now, if I could just figure out who to call about those imaginary snakes…

True Confessions (v.2)

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As much as I want to tell you that I consistently spend the bulk of my time in deep, meaningful reflection as I ponder The Meaning Of Life and How To Positively Affect My World, I just can’t. Well, I guess I could. It just wouldn’t be the truth.

Here’s why. As I move throughout my day I am constantly seeing, hearing, or reading things that are REALLY funny, especially if you look at things the way I do. And very often these funny stories involve topics that are pretty much the opposite of anything deep or meaningful. So then I am always faced with this choice: Do I let the humor go and try to maintain an image of polish, culture, and refinement, or do I tell the funny story? And of course, telling the funny story ALWAYS wins.

So here’s what happened today.

My husband called me this morning just to say hi and chat, which I always enjoy. Suddenly, apropos of absolutely nothing he said, “Did you know that there is someone out there who makes their living by providing prosthetic dog testicles?”

Me: “What?!”

My husband: “Yeah. It makes you wonder what they do with the originals.”

Nuh-uh. What it makes me wonder is, “Why on earth do you know something like that? And how do you even find that kind of information?”

Well according to him that kind of knowledge is readily available on the Internet (Important Side Note: although it’s not on any of the sites I personally visit). In case you’re wondering, he also passed along the helpful tip that if you Google “replacement dog testicles” you can read the original article.

Me: “It would never IN LIFE occur to me to combine those particular words.”

My husband: “Well that’s just in case you don’t know how to spell ‘prosthetic’.”

We now return you to your regularly scheduled day.

You Know You’re A Good Match When…

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…you ask your husband if you can drive to his office and switch cars with him at lunch. He says yes, and then stops getting ready for work in order to draw you a diagram of his office parking lot and circle the exact space in which he wishes the car to be parked. You respond by laughing in amusement, and then actually doing what he asks. But only, you inform him, because it will give you something to blog about later.