Tag: How?!

Home, Humor, Husband, Marriage, Weekend

A Tale of Two Kitties

“Why the windows are full west!”
– Jane Austen

Small Cat Syndrome?

J.’s nickname for me, despite my legendary Small Dog Syndrome personality condition, is Kitty.  Not from any simliarity to my real name, but because apparently I have a cat-like tendancy to hide things.  Not consciously, but it would seem that after I use certain things they have the obnoxious habit of vanishing into the ether.  I also do admit to tucking somethings away in their “designated place,” the geographic location I immediately forget.  This means that our marriage is a constant smorgasbord of rediscovered treasure.

Hairpins turn up in the oddest places, especially considering I almost never use them, but we find bushels of them every time we vacuum or dust.  Pens!  Everywhere!  They breed in my pockets, purses, and cup holders.  Despite practically never carrying cash, coins (of mutiple currencies!)  rain from me like I’m some fairytale maiden who got on a witch’s good side.  I lose my glasses at least once a day.  They have been found, variously, in my jewelry case, under the couch, in the shower, beneath my pillow, and in my purse which both of us had searched thouroughly four times previous only to finding them smugly nestled besides my wallet.  The possibilities truly are endless.  And without fail, whever something turns up from somewhere it doesn’t belong, J. rounds on me with a pointed finger and an accusatory voice.  “Kitty!”

Just so we’re clear, and so my mother doesn’t wring her hands and ask where she went wrong, our house is not dirty.  That’s the amazing part.  We’re minimalistic in our decor, specifically because neither of us like clutter.  We deep clean once a week.  There is absolutely nothing to attract the wildlife.  People comment on its cleanlines when they come over.  And yet, when I go to plump the pillows – voila!  That book I misplaced a week ago.

And apparently the way to really unearth all the things I’ve “mislaid”  is to install new windows.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful.  Our old windows were nearly a half century old, leaked heat out, let cold seep in, and were generally a source of larger than necessary utility bills.  The largest one in our flat faces west and made summers in the desert a misery!  It got so hot during summer that our blinds would melt – or at least warp to a fantastic and almost unuseable degree.  So, new windows equalled better utility costs, temperatures human beings can survive at, and less destruction of our abode.  Plus someone else was installing them.  Terrific!

Saturday morning at 8:30am (who does that?  On a weekend!) my phone shattered the tranquility.  The landlords told us the contractors wou!d be by in an hour to rip massive holes in our walls.
“J.!  Get up!  Clean everything!  Move move move!”
Despicably undomestic as I am, I’ve got enough feminine pride/residual 1950s guilt to not want total strangers see my house a “shambles.”  Poor J. was dragged from his bed and forced to dismantle window blinds while I made the bed, dusted (before a bunch of workman came to chip away my windows…yeah…) and fell to scrubbing even the bathroom with religious fervor.

It was when we invaded the office/storage space/Room of Requirement that things started turning up.  Piles of papers neither of us could identify.  Chords to appliances we have never owned.  Boxes for things we never ordered.  A couple of cups we never missed.  Ribbons, Christmas gifts bought months ago, a couple of paintings…  J. was laughing uproariously by the time we finished.  We’d thrown out masses of stuff and I’d taken to sulking from his teasing.  “Kitty!”

Then we headed back to the front room to move the couches.  And found sweet, sweet justice.

Beneath the sofa I found an external hard drive, a leather business folder, two textbooks, and a pile of notes.  All J.’s.  The dumbfounded look on his face was priceless.  I danced in a circle around him crowing, “You’re a kitty!  You’re a kitty!”

Naturally ten minutes later, he found my glasses.  Again.  The status quo resumed.

Small Cat sulks.

*Second picture from Hyperbole and a Half.

Family, Humor, Husband

Lys-Dexia

“Check and see the oven inside.”
“Something in the oven there is.”
“…wait, what?  What did I say?”
“Something along the lines of, ‘Do or do not, there is no try.’  Don’t worry, I speak C. fluently.”
“Go die.”
– C. and J.

I swear I have a speech problem, and not just Foot-In-Mouth disease (a tragic, incurable illness wherein the sufferer is constantly choking on their own stupidity and awkwardness).  I frequently speak in Spoonerisms.

Pictured: a Dad Face.

I blame Dad.  He has a bit of a goofy sense of humor, and one of the things he finds most funny is to switch up words.  Depending on how much sleep the siblings have had, our response to this can vary from a pity-chuckle to uproarious laughter.  So when Mika misbehaves and Dad sighs, “Dupid sog,” accompanied by a Dad Face, we will probably all find it pretty funny.

The irony is that I can’t make a Spoonerism off the top of my head the way Dad can.  But, without even trying, I CAN completely rearrange a sentence into one that utterly defies logic and grammar.  In fact, I do it quite regularly.

More’s the pity for me, J. is just as quick as my Dad in the comebacks.  Curses.

Humor, Life, School, Snark, University, Work

Thwarted

“I don’t need to compromise my principles because they don’t have the slightest bearing on what happens to me anyway.”
– Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

Chief has squashed my plan of taking a class this coming semester to prep for grad school.  The reason given is that Wise (who is enrolled in the very program I’m after) has a lot more leeway to take classes since she doesn’t have a front desk position and work with the public as I do.  A decision that makes sense on paper, and which I can grudgingly understand…if it were not for the fact that several police officers and other supervisors for the department take classes very frequently, often for multiple semesters in a row (and shouldn’t police officers deal with the public just as much, if not more than me?).  AND if it were also not for the department history and manifesto I retyped and edited four days ago, containing an entire paragraph about how the department strongly encourages and accommodates the further education of its employees through university classes. 

Although I find the logic painfully baffling, I also understand that it’s an executive decision on the Chief’s part which, in all fairness, he did mull over for several days (before crushing it into tiny, tiny pieces).  And though I admit I wish I could throw my level-headed acceptance of this ruling out the window and throw a (mild) tantrum, that’s not really my style.

I prefer weaseling around the problem.  I’ve enrolled in some independent study courses and am looking into evening classes as well, which fall outside supervisor oversight.  It’s annoying to try to get into them at this late date, but I have at least three terms between now and when my application would be turned in so I have plenty of time to formulate a new plan of attack!

Small Dog is feeling, er...bulldogish.

I could switch departments (unlikely with the hiring freeze, but I won’t rule it out).  My French course, offered through independent study, could potentially count as my final language requirement and remove all obstacles.  I could say, “To Hades with it all!” and become a full-time student again (plunging us back into poverty, but only for a year or couple of semesters towards the end of J.s degree – very unlikely, but still possible depending on my level of desperation).  I could stage a coup and overthrow the school, take the president hostage, and demand he let me take my one single class (extremely unlikely). 

There are options, my darlings.

Drama, Humor, Weird

Trojan Horse

“I can always tell which is the front end of a horse, but beyond that, my art is not above ordinary.”
-Mark Twain

A new horror!  I go to the gym everyday and there’s a girl who works the front counter there.  Since we see a lot of each other we’ve struck up a sort of friendship: I tell her the dramatic goings on of a police department, she tells me the ridiculous tales of a gym.  The other day she asked me how far off the wedding was and when I told her, “Next week,” she got a dark look on her face and said, “Stay away from horses.”

The last thing you will ever see!
The last thing you will ever see!

“Why?” I asked intrigued.
“My family keeps horses and I’ve ridden all my life.  So I was out riding a couple of weeks before my wedding and when I was taking off its tack when I was done it kicked me in the head.”
My jaw dropped.
“I was in a coma for three months,” she continued, “and had to do months of physical therapy when I woke up.  We got married after all that, though.”

Completely at a loss for what to say to that (“Crikey?”  “Good on ‘ya?” “Congratulations on being currently upright?”) I just mumbled, “Wow…”   She waved me off to the weight room cheerfully, “I’m sure that won’t happen to you!  See you tomorrow!”