Midnight Snack

Was going out on the front porch just now (at 3:00 am), opened the door, flipped on the porch light, and saw this in Cheezburger's food bowl:



He was the cutest little thing. I kinda felt sorry for him wandering around in the cold rain, just looking for something to eat. He was awfully young.

Poor Cheezburger the Porch Cat was hunkered down on the doormat looking terrified. Hurrumph! Some guard cat he turned out to be.

The little guy just kept noshing away on kitty kibble long enough for me to fetch the camera and fiddle with the settings. Only got one good photo before he was through and he wandered off.

He was too little to jump off the porch so he was trying to figure out a way down when I stepped outside and really messed with his head using the flash.



Now that he knows we have free handouts I imagine this won't be the last time we see him...much to Cheezy's chagrin.

The Squeeeeky Potty

Late last night I went stumbling into the bathroom half asleep in the semi-darkness. There's just enough light from a night light so that I don't run into anything. I check to be sure the seat is down because Hubby always leaves it up. (touch, touch, touch) Yep, it's OK, I'm good to go.

I sit down and I hear a squeeeeeeeeet! noise. I recognized the sound. It means the potty has developed a slow leak and the squeeeee noise is the tank topping off. "Dang!" I think to myself, "Gotta tell Hubby to fix that."

But usually sitting down doesn't make it squeeeee. That's odd. So I wiggle a little bit and it squeeeeeees again. Weird.

Then I felt a tickle on my right elbow. OK, wide awake now.

I turn to see whiskers poking out from behind me. It was Smudge the all-white kitty! She must have been standing on the back of the potty seat about to get a drink when I sat down and squished her against the lid. It was her making that squeeeeee noise.

She's the same white as the potty lid so I missed her in the gloom. I felt so guilty.

I squeeeed back at her as I jumped up all aghast. Why hadn't the silly kitty moved when she saw my big be-hind coming?!?

She didn't seem all that upset about being squished and didn't run away. She nonchalantly circled the rim, sniffed a bit, then went in for a drink. Of course the germy potty water tastes *much* better than the water in the sparkling clean kitty bowl. She drank and drank and drank and drank.

I felt pretty foolish after a while standing there with my undies around my ankles watching the cat drink from the toilet.

I finally hiked up the ol' Granny Pannies and went off to find a camera. Had to rummage around for a while to find it. Figured Smudge would be long gone by the time I got back, but oh no, she was still there lapping away. Took several pics.



As I sat there in the early morning darkness watching her I thought, "Man, the sacrifices we make for our kitties."

Stoopid cat.

And I still had to pee.

Next time I'll flip on the light.

Technology Leaves Me in the Dust

Caught a story on the news that the last big box music store, Virgin, will be closing its doors forever. The company president said that the music CD has gone the way of the 8-track tape and business was no longer feasible. Apple iTunes had 20% of the current market, Amazon Music had 8%, and the remainder of the market was illegal downloads.

He gave an example of the state of album sales: In 1992, Backstreet Boys had the #1 album with 2.5 million units sold. In 2008, Green Day had the #1 album with only 500,000 units. He said that kids today didn't even own a device on which to play a music CD; they're all plugged into iPods. Sigh.

Part of the allure of purchasing a music album was to look at the photos, graphics, liner notes and lyrics. Sometimes there was a sleeper hit on the album that I wouldn't have purchased if I were buying the songs individually. I suppose there's no real need for an artist to produce an "album" any more. Sigh.

I actually have an iPod, but I don't want to listen to music in my ears, I want to rattle the windows with some big, honkin' stereo speakers. Does anyone even own a stereo anymore? Sigh.

Next my sister tells me that movie DVDs will soon be obsolete because of Blu-Ray technology. The other sister bought us a DVD player back in 2002 because she thought we were pitiful because we didn't own one. We've watched maybe 20 movies on it in the last seven years. Maybe we are pitiful. I do however, have a VHS player and watch one of my seven or so favorite VHS movies on dull afternoons.

My on-line art group has decided Yahoo! Groups is getting too buggy and has switched to Facebook. I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid and joining Facebook. I'm *very* sure I don't want anybody to find me, being in the Witness Protection program and all.

I suppose I could join under my assumed identity, but that would be one more place I would have to go check every day, and that ain't-a happening any time soon. I can barely (and sometimes don't) keep up with my two little blogs, the art group on Yahoo, their accompanying Flickr pool, and Twitter.

I don't text on my cell phone and I have never, ever done the on-line chat/messenger thing. That's a little too immediate and invasive for me. Either call me on the phone if you need an answer right now, or send me an email and I'll get back to you.

Oh, about the blogs...apparently blogging is so "last year" and all the cool kids don't blog anymore. They Twitter or update their Facebook page. Eeh. The blog for me was never about my day-to-day activities, but more a space to share my timeless, long-winded thoughts about life. I'll stick with blogging until Blogger becomes obsolete too.

Great Big Sigh. I'm feeling a bit obsolete and behind the times, but then I've never been on the cusp of fashion and chic. And I have never, ever been one of the cool kids.

1300 Days

I have a doomsday countdown thingy on my home page. I noticed that there are 1,300 days left until The Big Poof on Dec. 21, 2012. The Big Poof may come a little sooner than that if somebody doesn't slip a little Thorazine into Kim Jong-il's tea. Dude is a little psychotic. Needs to have a heart-to-heart chat with Hirohito about history and the side effects of souped-up atoms.

When I read what North Korea is up to a scene from an old movie sifts up from the gray matter. The name of the movie is long gone and I don't remember any of the actors. The plot is that some kid hacks in to The Big Military Nuclear Missile Computer (TBMNMC) using an old boatanchor of a computer that isn't even capable of running Pong. TMMNMC goes on the offensive to launch a nuclear strike. It plays a zillion games of Tic-Tac-Toe, the runs a zillion nuclear strike scenarios.

The nuclear strike scenarios are what stick in my brain. On the wall is a huge map of the world. Arcs of light run back and forth between the continents, over and over and over. Somehow I can see that happening in real life sometime soon. Bright red arcs going east, bright orange arcs going west. Big blobs of color obliterating all the continents. Humm....

In the end the computer decides from playing all those games of Tic-Tac-Toe that it is pointless to play because there is no winner. Therefore, a nuclear strike is pointless because there would not be a winner either. The computer goes from DEFCON 5 back to DEFCON 1. The world is saved from nuclear destruction.

I think this movie should be translated into Korean post-haste and shown at video night next Friday in Mr. Kim's palace.

Now is not the time for the military to be kicking out any nice gay Korean-speaking linguists who can run a VCR.

At Wit's End

This true story comes from an old clipping from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. It's a tragic story, but Sissy and I rolled on the floor laughing because it's just so *Arkansas*.

"He needed killin'" is still a valid defense here.

Names were changed to protect the guilty.
--------------------------------------------------

"Myrtle", a 75-year-old woman remained in jail without bail on capital-murder charges in connection with the shooting death of her husband "Walter", age 74.
Myrtle told police she was "at her wit's end" and decided to shoot her husband because he wanted sex.

"I was just at my wit's end," Myrtle told the police. "That old peckerwood was always chasing me around the house. I couldn't get anything done!"

After drinking four or five beers, she took a gun out of the nightstand beside her sleeping husband and took it into the bathroom to see if it was loaded. She returned to the bedroom and, in the dark, shot him three times in the head.

Myrtle told police she was sorry for what she had done but was relieved her husband was gone...

...him *and* his damned Viagra.

----------------------------------------------------

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

So, if there are any peckerwoods reading this post, take heed. As you gaze down at your little blue football, remember there are southern women at their wit's end who have accurate aim...even in the dark.

The Conspiracy of Women

Hubby thinks there is a conspiracy among women. He claims we use our feminine wiles to control, cajole and manipulate men to do our bidding. Then we tell them they're doing it wrong.

He's correct but I'll never admit that to him. We teach this to the young girlings starting sometime just after potty training.

But the fact is girls are hardwired with this ability. The more time spent around the male of the species, the faster the skills sharpen. Yes, we old crones pass along pointers to the younger generation every now and then, but they do quite well on their own, thank you very much.

As an example, a recent conversation with my eleven-year-old niece Jen:

Jen: Did you see my new bowling ball?

(A glorious purple sparkly thing, custom drilled for her tiny hands. Nice ball bag too, and shoes.)

Me: Very nice! Why do you have your own ball? Do you go bowling a lot???

Jen: No, not really. We went once then Daddy bought me a ball. You know how he is.

Me: Spoils you rotten, huh?

Jen: Yep.

Me: Take advantage of that while you've got the opportunity kid.

Jen: Oh, I intend to.

Sometime you guys just make it easy.

Hubby has PMS

Hubby jumps up suddenly and announces he's going to the store for ice cream. Asks me if I need anything. Yes, milk and lettuce.

Here's what he bought:


...and milk and lettuce.

Snapping Turtle!

Cheezburger the Porch Cat was lounging around all slit-eyed when he suddenly went into attack mode. Following his twitchy-whiskered stare I saw a lumbering medieval gray thing ambling up my neighbor's front walk. It looked for all the world like a Komodo Dragon - long legs, swaying from side to side, thick tail dragging on the ground.

Dang, I thought to myself, I need to lay off the caffeine and quit watching Discovery Channel. I'm hallucinating. But Cheezburger could see it too.

On closer observation it was a ginormous snapping turtle! Snapping turtle identification: Pointy nipple thingies on the top rear of the shell and a serrated shell edge near the tail. (Click on photos to embiggen)


He was headed up to the third step in this first photo. He stepped up onto the first and second like it was no big deal. He had some big ol' long legs. He kinda hunkered down when I accosted him with the camera.



Get a load of that tail! I've never seen such a thing on a turtle. The little box turtles around here are about a quarter of this guy's size. You can barely see their tails.



See all the cut grass on his head? My next-door neighbor had the thickety back of her property cleaned out this morning. It probably roused this poor guy out of his habitat. I kinda felt sorry for him. He has that deer-in-the-headlights look in his sweet little eyes.



His claws are larger than Cheezburger's.



The Spousal Urban Wildlife Relocation Unit arrived with a shovel to move Mr. Turtle to safer surroundings at a nearby creek. The poor turtle is looking pretty miserable at this point.

Turtle sez: "Now what? This day is just going from bad to worse."