4/27/05

One Coffee With, by Margaret Maron. Finished last night: Meet Me on Platform 8. Good book – which surprised me, because I’m a total snob, and the fact that Kelly Ripa was quoted on the cover of the book put me off. I’ll never doubt you again, Kelly Ripa. I promise! I feel like I’m always saying “It was a good book, which surprised me…” and “It was a good movie. I was surprised that it was so good!”, which makes me sound like I spend all my time sitting around grumbling “This movie is going to suck. Why bother even trying to watch it??” and “God. WHY did I buy this book? I don’t want to read it!” Um. Actually, I DO do that an awful lot. I guess I’ll just shut up now. Movies we’ve liked lately: Paparazzi, Dragonfly, The Woodsman, and After the Sunset. We tried to watch Suspect Zero this weekend, but got so bored that we turned it off about half an hour in. We also started Hotel Rwanda, but we were having such a hard time understanding what everyone was saying that we turned it off. We’ll probably give that one another try in the future. I haven’t seen The Notebook yet, but so many people have said it’s good that I’ve actually moved it to the top of my Netflix queue so I can watch it soon. Also, I have Birth, which I haven’t watched yet. Hopefully it won’t suck. Oh, and if you haven’t watched any episodes of Eyes, you oughta. I liked it so much that I convinced Fred to give it a try, and he liked it, too. It’s the absolutely perfect role for Tim Daly – who gets hotter and hotter with age.

* * * Spot and Miz Poo had to go to the vet yesterday, because they both needed their immunoregulan shots, and Spot was due for his annual checkup and shots and everything. After Friday, I’ve sworn off trying to get Spot in the box, so I told Fred he had to get the cats in the box before he left for work. Our vet opens to let people drop off their pets starting at 7, so I intended to leave the house exactly at 7, drop off the cats, and then go back and pick them up when the vet had seen them. We live very close to the vet, thank god. So Fred brought both the cat carriers upstairs. One was a cardboard carrier that we got ages and ages ago at either a vet’s office, or when we adopted Tubby or Miz Poo. It’s similar to this one. Fred opened that cat carrier, grabbed Miz Poo, and before she could even whimper he had her in the carrier, with it closed. Spot was locked in the bathroom, because Fred is a smart, smart man. He knows that the best thing to do when dealing with a neurotic, VERY FAST cat like Spot is to lock him in a small room and then bring the cat carrier into the room, so that the cat has very few places to run and hide, and there’s no danger of a bastardly Booger jumping into the carrier and fucking things up. So Fred grabbed the other cat carrier – it looks like this – and went into the bathroom. I sat in bed and listened, sure that Fred would walk in, pick up Spot, push him in the cat carrier, and walk out. All in the space of ten seconds. Instead what I heard was Fred speaking soothingly to Spot. “Come on, buddy, that’s a good buddy, this won’t hurt,” he soothed. And then I heard loud thumping noises, the sound of the carrier sliding across the floor, and the sound that I imagine a demon from hell would make. An UNHAPPY demon from hell. For the next five minutes all I could hear was: Fred: Speaking soothingly. ::thumpthumpthump:: ::demon from hell:: ::the skidding sound of plastic on slate:: Fred: Speaking soothingly, but not sounding quite so calm. ::thumpthumpthump:: ::demon from hell:: Repeat about thirty times. Believe you me, I was sitting on that bed laughing my ASS off. Because I got zero, zilch, nada sympathy when I told my tale of Spot-chasing woe to Fred last week, so I figure turn-about is fair play. As I was sitting nekkid on the bed, the sheets wrapped around me, laughing so hard I was almost crying, Fred called out to me. “Bessie!” he said. “What?” I said. Long silence. “He peed all over the carrier.” Long silence while I try to figure out what I’m supposed to suggest. Spot let out a sad, drawn-out demon-from-hell sound. “I think you’re going to have to take him to the vet and then come back and get Miz Poo,” Fred said. “Take him to the vet… in a carrier filled with cat pee?” I said, confused. By now I’d put my nightgown on and was standing outside the bathroom. “No, we’ll let Miz Poo out of that carrier, put Spot in the carrier she’s in, and you can take him, buy a carrier from the vet, and come back to get Miz Poo.” I thought that over. “Okay…” So I let Miz Poo out of the carrier – she slunk under the bed, her eyes dark, and gave me a look like “What the hell was THAT all about?? – and took the carrier to the bathroom. Fred opened the door, Spot in his arms, and put him in the carrier. “I used these towels to clean the pee off him,” he said helpfully, pointing to the sodden pile of urine-soaked towels, which were reeking so badly that you could actually see the stink lines coming off of them. He left the room, plastic carrier in hand, and I picked up the stinky towels, put them on the washing machine, and cleaned the spot where the towels had been. In the cat carrier, Spot howled mournfully. Under the bed, Miz Poo gave me the stink eye. Mister Boogers sniffed around the carrier, and then stood up, pushing down on the top of the carrier. He’s broken Miz Poo out of the carrier before using this exact method – he pushes down the top enough so that the cat inside can push his or her way out – so I knew to shoo him away from the carrier before Spot could escape, because if that had happened? I would have refused to ever take him to the vet again. Fred came back upstairs, grabbed Spot (he was going to leave the box in the garage so we wouldn’t have to worry about the Bastardly Mister Boogers), kissed me, said “For a few minutes there, I understood how you felt on Friday”, and left. From her spot under the bed, Miz Poo gave Fred the stink eye. I got dressed quickly and headed downstairs to grab Spot and leave for the vet, when I glanced at Miz Poo – who had come out and was, for some reason, hanging out in the spud’s bedroom – when I got an excellent idea. Rather than take Spot to the vet’s, buy a carrier, and come back to get Miz Poo, why not get one of the thirty-three thousand boxes out of the garage – shipping boxes, not cat carrier boxes – put her in that, and ask them to put her in a cat carrier after her exam? Guess what? It worked perfectly. Miz Poo is scared of the cat carrier, but not of regular plain-old boxes, so when I carried a box upstairs, she glanced at it, saw that it wasn’t a cat carrier, and continued sniffing the spud’s shoes. I picked her up, and by the time she realized I was going to close her in the box, the box was already closed. Of course, the part that sucked was that it was a big box, big enough that all four of the cats could have fit in it and stretched out without touching, but I managed to carry that box in one arm and Spot in his carrier in the opposite arm. So now we have two cardboard carrier boxes that are easy to get cats into (as long as no Bastardly Booger is blocking the way) and no crappy plastic carriers that are impossible to get fully grown cats into. I’m thinking we need to buy a couple more of the cardboard carriers though, because first of all if something happened (fire!) and we needed to get all the cats out of the house (though let’s be honest, if there was a fire, all the little dumbasses would be hiding under beds and couches and would be impossible to find), we’d be screwed since we only have the two carriers. And secondly, if Spot pees all over one carrier when he goes back to the vet Friday, we’ll need to have a backup. I mean, we have a second carrier, but Spanky’s also going to the vet for his yearly checkup on Friday, so we’d need a backup other than that one. My god. This sure is fascinating, isn’t it? * * * A few weeks ago, we got a card in the mail from B3llSouth. A year ago we switched our phone service from B3llSouth to M-C-I, because M-C-I is cheaper. At this point, all landline phone service is pretty much alike, so why not go with the cheapest? So anyway, the card from B3llSouth begged us to come back to them, and said that if we did, we’d get all the bells and whistles – 3-way calling, caller id, call waiting, so on and so forth – for $49.99 a month. What really caught my eye, though, was that included in the $49.99 per month was unlimited long distance. UNLIMITED LONG DISTANCE FOR $49.99 A MONTH. Since we were paying M-C-I about that, without the unlimited long distance, I left the card on Fred’s desk and instructed him to call B3llSouth and make the change. Except instead of calling B3llSouth, he called Knol0gy. We get our cable and internet through Knol0gy, and they offer multi-service plans wherein if you get more than one service through them, you save money. So he called Knol0gy and told them what B3llSouth was offering, and the Knol0gy guy countered with the exact same thing, and since we’d be going with the multi-service thing, the phone bill part of it would cost about $35. $35, and we get every special feature you could ever possibly imagine AND UNLIMITED LONG DISTANCE. Now, that is just awesome. I mean, I don’t really make all that many long distance calls, but I have an easier time hearing on the landline phone than I do on my cellphone, so this will make Sunday calls to my parents much, much easier. Also, I can talk to Debbie without using up either of our cellphone minutes! “Yep, minding my own business…” “Hey, what’s that?” “What-what-what… WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED HERE?” (The look on his face cracks me UP.) * * *]]>