Midnight Mauling

I'm a dog person....let's just put that right out there. But when I moved here, 13 years ago, I moved into a cat house.

Get your mind out of the gutter.

Now, you cat folks will relate when I tell you that the kitteh is high maintenance. YOU are the servant. You have to read minds with the feline species. And the part that really got me was "Don't touch me! Unless I allow you."

I've lived with four cats now, in my 13 years. Each, very different from the other. None overly affectionate. Which stinks in my book. I have the hair on my clothes and the scratch scars to prove that I'm a good kitteh mom.

Our youngest addition is a 3 year old tiger who we got when she was but a small handful. Doolin was raised by our dog, Roxy. (I slipped the pooch in between cat ownership after I begged and pleaded for a pet that actually showed love for me....with something other than hairballs in my shoes)


"Doolin & Roxy plan their escape."

Doolin, for the most part, acts like a dog, but once and a while, her kitty tendency come forward. She's not much of a snuggler. In fact she cuddles like Peg Bundy always sleeps with Al - at arms length.

So when she crawled on me at 2 am, a few nights ago, waking me from a dead sleep. I didn't want to push her away. I didn't want her to think she shouldn't climb up and nestle on her momma.

Then she started kneading me. But not just the kneading...she sat on my bladder to knead my stomach. Did I mention it was my full bladder? Do I have to mention that no one wants the fat of the stomach moving that much?

It was over before it began. Then she came back at 5 am. And the next night at 3:30 am....and 5 am again. In fact 4 nights in a row she woke me up to be "affectionate" and I didn't want to reject her. I mean, here she was actually sitting on me and being affectionate. Do I want to make her think that's wrong? I don't think so.

I finally broke down and asked Laura, "Do you think it would hurt Doolin's feelings if I kicked her off my bladder? I mean...I'm getting bruised in places from this "love" stuff."

Without skipping a beat, Laura said, "Boot her! She doesn't care. I use to toss Hobbes right off when he would start in. Of course he would pop his claws....and drool...and it think he thought I was more of a girlfriend then a 'mom', if you know what I mean..."

STOP! TMI!

Not all kitteh experience should be shared in full detail.

Last night I was prepared for her. I was going to gently remove her from my tenderized areas and hope she wouldn't take my name out of the "mother of the year" contest.

Alas....No Doolin.

Now I find myself awake, wondering if she's going to hop up. Once again, I'm just a big, pink puppet in the grand scheme of the all mighty kitteh.

"It's been a long, a long time coming but I know, A change gon' come oh yes it will" ~ Sam Cooke

Did you hear the president speak last night?

I was takin' a-back when folks cheered. More like a pep rally then a memorial.

But then, something hit me. We, the American people, are sick of it. These people died because politicians want to appease lobbyists over their constituents. They want to get re-elected over doing their jobs.

Last night was about remembering what was wonderful about those people, senselessly slain in the streets, and bonding together to say, "We won't stand for it anymore!"

A bulk of our society came together last night. We are over "business as usual." And like those individuals that tackle shooters, hit them with purses or keep them from flying planes into buildings, we won't have our government hijacking our country for their own greed.

If you stop...and listen...through the chatter of the talking heads. You can hear it. It's faint. And we haven't heard it since the 60's.

Change.

We, the people, are ready for it....finally.

"Dreams are answers to questions we haven't yet figured out how to ask." ~X-Files

I just got back from a week at home with my mom and sisters. I stayed in my folks house. I have to say, I didn't feel the presence of my father once. If you're just tuning in, he passed suddenly last April.

I've said before, I come from folks that are, shall we say, "sensitive" to certain "other-worldly" things. So, while I have been resistant in opening myself up to a visit from my dad, I thought being home for a week would loosen the doors a bit.

Nothing.

I cussed him out a bit when I was trying to help my mom and none of his power tools would start. "Really? You can't help me help her a lil?" was what I said to a passing cloud overhead.

My dreams have been void of him. Other than a reflection or a passing hint that he was present. Last night was much like that, but different.

Dreams are like bowel movements.

Everyone has them. No one wants to hear about yours.

Well...this is my blog...so suck it!

I was in a country 'kitch' kind of restaurant. Perhaps something like the Apple Farm, which is a favorite place to eat for my folks. We ate there, in fact, while I was visiting.

I seemed to be cashing out at a counter near an open door where I saw a number of my high school classmates coming from a house outside. They were lining up and walking past the restaurants open, daisy covered arched doorway. They were their current age, and chatting and walking in a line, as if they were leaving a show at a theater. Some of them saw me and waved and said hello. Others didn't look up.

I noticed, the place they were coming from was a house, with a porch that had a double gate on it that created a holding pen of sorts. In it were two dogs. One was the family dog from my youth, a mixed Vizla breed named Socks, who I loved dearly and considered "my dog". The other was a big headed, smokey grey pitbull looking beast. They just sat and looked my direction, from their holding pen.

"Is that.....Socks? Is that Socks?" I remembered saying, as I walked under the archway and towards the porch. One of my class mates said, "Yep..that's her!" and kept walking. I stood in the middle of a dust covered front yard. The only other thing was a slapped together shack, made of dark, wide, wood planks.

I noticed a door with warm amber light coming from the front door. I could suddenly sense that my dad was living here. Someone else was on the porch and they let the dogs go. The were suddenly untamed and aggressive, the pitbull the most aggressive. Socks became another dog that hung back in the shadows.

My dad stepped out on the porch. Jeans and white tee, his motorcycle boots making a clunking sound on the wood plank porch. He leaned against a post and said, "I'm training them." My dad had more of a "tough love" method of training than most folks would.

"Oh...I think they just need a lil attention!" says I.

"I think they need a good kick in the ass!", my dad said and reached down off the porch to give the pit a good slap on it's hindquarters as it paced back and forth in the dust in front of the porch. The pit tucked and yelped to put distance between my dad and itself.

I disagreed and in an effort to make nice with a dog that was causing my anxiety to rise, I knelt to his level. The pit immediately ran at me, rose up on it's hind legs, dropped his massive front paws on my shoulders and brought his muzzle too quickly to my face.

It was going to tear my face off!

His weight on me was substantial enough that I couldn't move more than an arm to keep his muzzle from contacting with my head.

It's mouth never opened, but his aggressive stance was anything but playful. Was it going to eat me alive? I couldn't tell, but I was starting to sweat with the panic. Feeling his dog breath on my face wasn't helping things.

My dad yelled at the dog and he released me and ran toward the porch. By the time I looked up and towards the porch, my dad had turned for the front door.

"I hate to be an 'I told ya so'....but.....", he said, as he walked back into the shack, leaving me kneeling in the dirt.

I never saw my dad's face.

Happy Holidays...where ever you are.

"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit, "who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all out kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us." ~A Chirstmas Carol

May the new year bring the love and understanding that mankind needs to repair its long suffering seperation from kindness.

Blog ya in 2011.

Cookie Porn

Yes...you read that right.

I snatched up a copy of Martha Stewart's Holiday Cookie mag. Now I'm not a 'foodie' by any means, unless you mean EATING food. I love that part of it. The one thing I do love, is baking.

And when the holidays roll around, I dedicate a day to it.

Martha spoke to me, as I waited in line at the Wegman's. I took her home, found a spot on the couch, hugged my xmas mug of mocha and wrapped up the entire magazine with two words: cookie porn.

I will admit, being a graphic artist, it was almost more exciting to see the containers and the way she packaged these gifts of goodness. Brown paper and silver ribbon tubes with small, medallion cookies. Recycled card boxes with ink and stamp names announcing the tasty treasure inside. Wax paper, cut to fold like giant sunflowers, over oddities like "cracked pepper scones".

I needed a candy cigarette after reading it!

While I have my stable of annual cookies that I must bake, for sentimental reasons, if nothing else, I like to add a new one here and there. This mag was going to make it hard to pick just one, so I picked 3.

After completing them, on my ditch day of cookie production, I turned to a three ring binder of sugary love my mom gave my sisters and I a few years back. She index tabbed and clip-arted her way to creating a keepsake I hold near and dear. In its pages are my grandmother's pumpkin pie recipe, my mom's peanut brittle and even one from my mom's childhood that HER grandmother would make: floating island pudding.

As I hunted through to select the old favorites, I came across one that caught my breath and stopped me short.

My dad's Russian Teacakes.

A family favorite. If not for the crumbly, sugary cookie itself, but for the production that my father would put on while making them. Once baked, you have to roll the cookies in powder sugar. Always in a rush, he would "HEE!" and "HOO!" and "HOTSA! the fresh out of the oven dough balls, off the hot cookie sheet and into the bowl of fluffy, powdered sugar. His elbows flying up in an "exit stage left" motion. His fingers, covered in sugar, wiggling to cool off.

It would throw my sisters and I into girlish fits of giggles!

I closed the book, thinking I have enough. I'm going to try and knock out 6 cookies in 8 hours and I still have to go to the grocery store in 2 feet of snow. "Next year." I rationalized, choking down the lump in the throat and leaning my head back, hoping the tears would drain back into the ducts that let them loose, for the millionth time, since last April.

I got the cookies done. They were displayed with pride at our semi-annual Xmas party. But I still felt like I had forgotten something.

A few days later, my phone jumped alive with its chirpy text sound. There on my phone was a picture of a pile of Russian Teacakes!

My baby sister, on top of rising to the occasion of running my parents 'kingdom' in my father's absence, and keeping my mother sane, had found the 'gumption' I was missing to made them.

"I thought I would make them so when mom got back, they would all be done," the type accompanying the picture stated.

"Save some for when I get there!" I responded

Maybe this holiday, so changed forever, might go better with some teacakes and a glass of milk to wash it down.

"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."

The 9th Commandment: thou shalt not lie

Pretty straight forward.

I've blogged before about the 122 abominations in the bible. The one everybody seems to be stuck on is "thou shalt not be gay". They overlook all the others. (women can't wear pants, you can't cut your hair, eat shrimp or crab, blah blah blah)

So I found it very interesting to listen to OutQ news this morning on XM. Don't Ask Don't Tell was, of course, in the news. It seems that a survey of military chaplains shows there will be a mass exodus of the religious if they repeal DADT.

Fascinating.

So you would rather, as holy men and guardians of the 9th commandment, that gay folks in the military LIE?

They should lie about who they are?
They should lie about who they are married too?
They should lie about the family they leave behind during their mission?
They should lie about who they love?

There should be a big lie when they parish in war and their lover can't be at the ceremony or receive the flag that draped over their coffin, when it returns home?

So lying is OK.

It's better.

It's better than that soldier, being stressed that someone is going to find out they are gay, will lose their job. Their families livelihood. It's better that, in the midst of combat, they are thinking about if someone saw the encrypted letter their lover sent them, rather than concentrate on the enemy gunfire overhead. It's better that they have to make up a heterosexual spouse and kids they don't have for a 'cover story', so that no one will rat them out.

You think that's better?

The longer I live, the more I realize religion is the biggest pile of stinking crap! It's thrust upon you as a fear control.

"Don't do that...some one's watching!"

It's good to know that the religious types that are there for comfort and counseling in the armed forces feel the need to put aside their religious duty to judge and discriminate.

If Jesus was a chaplin in the military...you bet your ass he would embrace every soldier equally. If you're going to preach about Jesus...maybe you ought to remind yourself to BE like Jesus.

After all....Jesus himself, had two dads.

“If you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested.” ~John Tyner

No one looks forward to traveling for the holidays. I'm in that group. But when you're 3,000 miles from your family, it's what you do.

This year, being the first Xmas since my father passed unexpectedly, I felt it was even more important to try and get home for the holidays. I was very excited that my job was giving us the week off between Xmas and New Year's Eve, as I had not one vacation day left after exhausting them around the funeral.

I wouldn't think twice about the crowds, the traffic, the hustle and bustle of holiday travel.

Been there...done that.

Then they started touching people. But only if you choose to not be radiated with low level xrays, first.

I'm not sure WHERE I gave up my rights to not have my naked body end up on youtube. I'm pretty sure when I buy a ticket to fly, I didn't give up my rights. I don't have to show my naked body when I buy a ticket to a concert. I don't have to have someone, in a room somewhere, inspect my fat rolls when I buy a ticket to a movie.

And if I DON'T want radiation and xray porn...I have to have a pat down, which includes, someone putting their hands in my bra, in my pant waistband, and in my crotch.

I'm pretty sure the last time I saw a pat down like that it was a MSNBC show called "Lock Up". Now I know....THEY don't have any rights.

A USAToday/Gallup Poll conducted in January found that 78% of the American public were in favor of these new measures, expressing a strong sentiment that so-called "invasions of privacy" are a small price to pay for greater security aboard passenger airplanes. 84% of the persons polled felt that the machines would prevent terrorists from entering planes with explosives.

WTF?!?!

How many folks have been stopped at the gate so far? None. So I'm going to assume that our need for more than a metal detector...not really needed.

You know where they get stopped? In the plane. By other passengers who rat them out. Not even the TSA agents that are supposedly hidden on the flights have caught anyone.

Hey...84%! Let me tell you WHY you have these scanners. It's not for your SAFETY. Hoooooo noooooo. Please. Do you think the big ol corporations that slap these things together, never testing the level of radiation they are pumping, care about your safety?!?!

Remember Michael Chertoff? He was Mr. Bush's Homeland Security Czar. As of January, his consulting agency, the Chertoff Group, counted among its clients one of the machines' manufacturers.

"There is no evidence these new body scanners make us more secure. But there is evidence that former Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff made money hawking these full body scanners," Rep. Ted Poe (Texas) said from a speech from the House floor.

Anyone heard of the 4th amendment?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Wake up America! You're letting them take away our rights on the basis of fear from the boogie man!

If I don't see you for the holidays....you can see ALL of me on youtube as "fatladypassengerTSA.wvm"

I think I've written about the family cabin, my folks mindlessly tossed on the market and sold out from under us kids.

It's an open-wound....still.

And I think I've mentioned that I've had problems dreaming about my dad, since his death. I can admit I'm still not ready to open myself up completely to him 'visiting' me in some dream world. I've 'visited' with other relatives after they have passed, but this...this is still so fresh and raw.

The closest I've come to having him in a dream was seeing him in reflections while everyone else saw him clear as day.

I don't need my dream analysis book to figure that one out.

Last night I dreamt my folks and I were setting fire to our family cabin to get rid of it. My dad telling me where to put wood and paper to spread the fire that would burn the place to the ground.

My waking moment came when I tried to write on an exposed beam, "Poppa, don't be mad." Cuz you see...he built it. My grandfather, so the story goes, "Carried the main beam on his shoulder while Nan read a book on 'how to build a house' to him."

This is the same cabin my folks decided to sell and never bothered to ask us if we were even interested in keeping it in the family.

As I tried to finish my dream note on the pine beam, under the stairs, the ink ran out of the marker before i could finish the message.

I woke to tears and wondering if my parents asked for my grandfather's forgiveness before the heartlessly sold our cabin.

I know they sure didn't ask it from us kids.

"You know, it just occurred to me that we really haven't had a successful test of this equipment." ~Dr Ray Stantz, Ghostbuster

I've collected a few pieces of ghost detection equipment over the years. The simple fact is...I've never been able to use them. Thankfully...our house is NOT haunted.

Well what better time to use them, than when a friend moved into a former funeral parlor, with the back story of an old woman falling and dying in the snow.

Really....none better!

The weekend before Halloween, a group of friends met for cocktails, cuz what grown adult can get up the courage to stand with digital recorder in hand and ask silly questions into the air without liquid courage? We descended into the basement of the now two apartment flat.

The basement is where they would embalm the bodies. Spooky enough on its own. I had gathered up all my haunting materials into one big tool box: EMF, dowsing rods, digital recorder, flash lights, candles, camera. I mostly packed it for the comedy effect that I actually had a "ghost hunting tool kit", but it came in handy to haul suff around.

Beverages in hand, we attempted to be hunters. Mostly folks jumped out at each other. My friend who lived there decided to put fake limbs and hanging props to be released at the right time.

It was fun, but certainly not serious.

We moved up to the second floor, which was the family residence when it was a funeral parlor. The first floor was the viewing rooms. The couple downstairs, unaware of what the building was, had felt cold blasts of air, as if someone had passed by and one of their dogs would track empty space in the thin air, as if someone was walking to the back of their apartment.

We went back upstairs and four of us sat at the dinning room table As we talked, I felt cold air at my back. I decided to turn on the EMF meter sitting on the middle of the table. There is no reason the needle in this contraption should move, unless there is electro magnetic waves. There weren't any on the table, till we started talking again, and the needle started responding.

The needle would pop up and down with the conversation. We started asking questions and getting some responses. I pulled out my camera and snapped random pix around the room. When I looked at the pictures later...there was actually stuff in the picture! The front of the apartment having the most 'activity'.

Now I'm no expert, but I find it very interesting that there was all these light 'orbs' as we were talking and the EMF meter was very active. There doesn't seem to be a flash in the windows that would cause the orbs. There is no reflective surface that the light is bouncing off of.



It was also interesting that the 'ghost donut', which is zoomed in on above, was actually on the other side of the room in another picture, as if it traveled across the room. It's the same light anomaly, with the bright ring and a hole in the middle.



We decided to take our search upstairs. The EMF meter only went off at the front of the attic. We couldn't get another reading when we took a second sweep of the same area. This means that when we came up into the attic, something was standing in the front and then left. When I looked at the pictures, I had an orb when we first got up there and there were no more orbs in any of the other pictures there.



It was also interesting that the needle went completely flat after the initial spike that actually got the lights and sound to activate.

Probably the creepiest find, after looking at the pictures, was the profile peeking over the door. I've looked and looked at this one and don't see anything on the corner of the door and there is nothing that would cast a shadow at the height.



I'm going to say "not bad" for beginers! I would love to go back and do another sweep. I can see where this can get addicting. Good thing I've already made up my company name and logo. Now show me to your ghosts!

The wheel's spinning, but the hamster's dead

It's kinda how I feel today. Like a dead hamster, floppin' around in a wheel that just keeps spinning out of control.

My account is overdrawn.
My job doesn't pay enough.
My bills keep stacking up.
My exercise routine is null and void.
My sleep pattern is all screwed up.
My attitude stinks.

"Pity party for one? We'll seat you now, mam."

(ugh...he called me mam)

You know when you get in one of those ruts. Maybe it's the time change. Maybe it's the change of seasons. But it ruined my day when I looked in my new issue of "This Old House" with reader's before and afters...and I just know I'll never afford their 'before' to make an 'after'!

sigh

The week didn't start out right with the bank sending me a notice that I was worse than no money in the bank...there was actually negative money in the bank. I just sighed and thought, "Well if I didn't have it to begin with, I can't magically make it NOW!"

"Oh fiddle-de-deeee....I'll worry 'bout it tomorrow."

I was saying to my co-worker that it doesn't seem fair that you work and work and do a good job,and do extra stuff on top of that to bring good karma,and you still have nothing to show for it.

I have this lil radio show once a week, with a pal, and we are ALWAYS chasing the money. I had to layout a billboard for a local guy who makes hand over fist. Scads of cabbage for his show! He's on once a week, just like us. He has local sponsors, just like us. Of course he's pushing SU sports. And no one knows better than I that sports are where the money is at. Especially in this college town!

I said we should start calling ourselves the "SU Power Hour" instead of Irish Power Hour.

We'd be RICH!
And then sued.
And then right back to square one.

Sigh....have I brought you down with me? That wasn't my intention...but it really is true: misery loves company. So pull up a chair. I'll change the reservation. How many should I expect for our pity party?

And life begins again.

It's amazing, what takes weeks to set up, gets picked up in an hour.

After a successful night of scaring the peewaddy out of lil chillin', we pulled up stakes and turned off the lights and ended another Halloween.

Home made props and colored lights and fog juice by the gallon packed into the living room. Babba Yaga, my gypsy witch alter ego, exhausted and cold.

We didn't have as many kids this year, but winter came early. There was actually frozen rain coming down when I put Bryant in his ground breaking coffin. I made him two years ago, inspired by my lord and god pumpkinrot.com. He was scotch guarded pretty good, so he didn't care about the frozen pellets bouncing off his paper machie bones and torn panty hose skin. (hence his name...I used Lane BRYANT panty hose)

Four fog machines hissing scented smoke. My friend Scott, who was the gravedigger in the yard, stiffly stomped after kids, grating his steel shovel on the hard concrete.

"I ain't going up there!"

"I don't want to go to that house!"

"Don't you dare get up in here and come after me!"

"Come on honey...she's a good witch!"

"Could you scare my son. He doesn't get scared of anything."

Just a sampling of those that had to earn their candy from the Babby Yaga.

Three college girls came to the door while I was inside. I had left the cold stoop, strobe at my back, to warm up a little when they knocked. Three fuzzy college kittens. Way too old to be begging for candy. Practically freezing their tails off...literally.

"What do you want of the Babba Yaga?"

All three shot straight up! They hadn't noticed I was staring at them through the screen door.

"Oh crap." one of them whispered.

"Well....WHAT DO YOU WANT!?!?"

The front one moved to the back. The middle one croaked, "Candy?" I swung the door open and moved right into their space, cauldron of candy under my arm.

"Candy you say? Well you're a lil too old I say." They giggled.

"WHAT DO YOU SAY?!" I screeched. They all jumped back, clinging to each other.

"Trick or Treat?" the one in the back worked up her bravey to say.

"Trick or treat..." I put some candy into the first bag. "Smell myyyyyyyy.....??"

"Feet?" the second one says in a whisper, not looking into my face.

"Give me something....gooooood...." I offer to the third one.

"Too.....Eat?" the third one said, trailing off so that I could barely hear her finish.

"YES! HAAAAAAAAHHHAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!" I scream and fill the night air with my best witch cackle. It bounces off the neighboring house and fills the space between.

The three kitty's run from my stoop, shrieking and clinging to each other.

Just as they hit the sidewalk and slowed down, I heard one say, "I wish we had houses like that in my neighborhood when I was a kid."

Indeed lil pussy cat....indeed.