Category: Uncategorized

Well, it’s Monday morning and I have no idea how last night’s Yankee/Sox clinching game went. I know it was 4-4, and I know it was in the 12th inning at Fenway, but I just couldn’t stay up. It was past 1 AM and I just couldn’t deal anymore, so, with Tivo (or the cable equivalent) in hand I pressed record on some random show that was listed for the next hour on that channel and went to bed, hoping to watch it this morning before seeing, hearing or reading any news source. However, as a result, I spent half the night with Joe Buck telling me what happened in my head, giving me a play by play about how the Red Sox (or at times, the Yankees) won. Many of them were quite convincing, but at one point I actually found myself telling myself that that voice is not attached to anything that would be attached to anything that’s turned ON, so there’s no way it knows the score.

NOTE: I didn’t say that voice didn’t exist…’cause it might have. 😉

Also, a part of me WANTED the Sox to win, so there’d be more baseball to watch tonight’s 5 PM game, which is much more managable, especially on a day I’m remaining sick-ish and billing from home).

I’ve been looking forward to one of my favorite authors to resume his blogging, William Gibson. When I read on Neil Gaiman’s blog that “Bill” Gibson had started again, I was very excited. Having read everything “Bill” had written, I was looking forward to the clever, cutting edge thought that I had come to know and love from books like Neuromancer and Idoru.

Well, thus far, Gibson’s blog seems to be a simple anti-Bush blogroll. In Karen’s words…”meh.”

There aren’t enough blogs out there, pundits out there who can barely string a few paragraphs of fantasy together to keep a 6th grader interested, but can wrote to the ends of the earth as to why Kerry, or Bush, is a fraud and the worst thing since sliced bread?

But there’s only ONE William Gibson, only one who could have put together a Tour-de-force work such as Neuromancer, which had the appeal of Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” for me. And for him to turn his attentions to the political race like this in a forum where we’d like to see insights on WRITING, and the process that only he can enlighten us on, is..well…meh.

With heavy heart, I have to report that, after hearing the doctor’s
diagnosis of severe kidney problems and imminent renal failure, we brought
Angel back to the woman we adoped her from for whatever disposition she’s
going to do. We were all very sad today.

The kids did not get the real story. For better or worse, I came up with
the following story. I told them that Angel had a sister cat, and that this
sister was going to be adopted by a family. But, I said, everyone thinks
that the two cats would be much happier together, and since we can’t have 2
cats we wanted to know if it was OK for us to give Angel to this family.
Their main question was “Can we get another one?”, to which we responded “Of
course you can. And you can help pick her out this time, too.”

They were pretty happy about this, but sad to say goodbye to Angel. And
when I left and it was bed time, they were both pretty upset. Ellen drew a
very lonely kitten, and Katie took her “Fur-Real” cat to bed and wanted to
change her mind–wanted Angel back.

The truth is, we all do. But she’s not coming back. We’ll have to find a
new Angel to follow Kim around, to curl up on Ellen’s bed, and to run away
from Katie and I.

And this time, Ellen requests, she should be orange with stripes. And Katie
wants one that won’t run away from her.

I think we can try to accommodate.

Maybe with my surgery, I can convince someone to get me this to help me…um…recover.

Yankees. Red Sox.

Bring it on, baby.

Yanks in 6.

Angel the Cat: 2
Mice: 0

Who knew we had so many mice? I’ve never seen any signs of mice, so they must be coming in from outside, but Angel makes quick work of them. And she drops them in the same place for me to find, and makes the same, very specific, meow. I knew before I turned on the light that she had a mouse or some other creature.

Danger: Attack Cat!

Tuesday, October 12th, for anyone who is interested, I’m getting several things removed–My tonsils and my uvula. That’s UVULA. That little thing that hangs down from the back of your throat. I can save them for anyone who wants them…

Supposedly, this will help my out with my apnea. I hope so. Supposedly, also, it will hurt for 6 weeks or so. That should be nice.

Last night, an extraordinary thing happened in our house. This thing is in extraordinary in the sense of “this has never happened to anyone before in all of creation.” However, it IS extraordinary in that this thing has never happened to anyone in this house before, at least, not that I know of.

We were all sleeping, sort of, at 4:00 AM. Katie has a cough which means that there is lots of “Mommy!” and lots of waking up, and lots of snuggling to get back to sleep, etc. However, at the time this local-extraordinary thing happened, it was indeed 4:00 AM and we were sleeping. Mostly.

But then none of us were sleeping, because downstairs came the sound of Angel “playing”, which in this case consisted of her running around downstairs pell-mell, her little bell jingling wildly, things being bumped into that probably assumed they would be left alone at 4:00 AM, just as we, wrongly, did.

The sounds downstairs stopped for a few moments, only to be replaced by Angel, just outside our room, meowing. Now, this last part is not the least bit extraordinary. She meows all the time, especially at 4:00 AM, but in this case, she went on meowing and meowing for what seemed like 10 minutes in a row, even to shouts of “enough!” and “Angel, Stop!” and other useless cat-be-gone tricks.

Eventually, I got up, because it was pointless to continue to pretend to sleep with her essentially calling me from about 10 feet away, and walked over to where she lay, crouched over something.

Yes, you guessed it. We’ve had 2 mice in the house in the time I’ve been here (4 years now.) The first raced around our basement for months before we finallly killed it. The second, this poor fellow, probably didn’t last a day before our new cat got a whiff of it. It didn’t have a chance.

Amazing what instinct can do. When we had tossed the mouse away, Angel lied down on the carpet there and waiting to be petted and cooed at for having done her job–an expectation to which we obliged, having been awestruck at the facts of nature that has, as I mentioned, most assuredly happened before to other people in other places.

But not here.

Ostensibly, I sleep from around 11:30 to 7:15, a total of 7 hours, 45 minutes or so. However, I think I’ve identified a list of “zones” where I lose sleep. See if this matches what you all have in your notes:

1, Going to bed too late–This is my fault mostly, and it runs from a little to a lot late. Lets say, on average, 12:00 am. So there’s 30 minutes gone.

2, Falling asleep. These days this isn’t an issue. It used to be, when I got more sleep, but now, mercifully, i fall asleep quickly. No real loss here.

3, Children coming into bed: anywhere between 1 and 4 AM, figure 15-30 minutes of being awake with them, or having trouble getting back to sleep after.

4, Cat. The cat likes to play at around 4:00 AM. She doesn’t come wake us for this fun,but her little bell, and the fact that she’s ZOOMING up and down the hallway and stairs…Figure 15-30 minutes.

5, Daylight sounds. This depends on the time of year. Summer, stuff starts getting loud by 5:30. Again, figure 15-30 minutes at best, longer on a loud bird day.

6, Kim’s alarm clock. She has one that I bought that lights up slowly to wake her as if the Sun were in the room. Lovely. And she has it going off usually about 6:15. If I catch a wiff of it, I’m out 45 minutes sleep.

7, Garbage trucks. Twice a week, 6:00 AM. Bang bang. Whee!

8, Bathroom break. Figure 15 minutes every night, depending on how dry it is in the house (e.g., how much I need to wake up to drink during the night).

So, sum total? A lot of lost time of a night that’s not that long to begin with. Add in waking imperceptibly 50 times/night and one might see why I’m tired.

The other day (I meant to blog this earlier), this conversation took place between Kim and Katie:

Katie: Mommy, what was your name when you were my age?
Kim: My name was the same when I was four as it is now, katie.
Katie (wide-eyed and solomn): ‘Mommy’?

What can you do but giggle.