6/27/05

Inconceivable, by Ben Elton. Finished over the weekend: The Innocent, by Harlan Coben – kickass as usual – and Dry, by Augusten Burroughs, which I enjoyed so much I stayed up late to finish it even though I knew I had to get up early (for me) this morning. I don’t know why it is that I was less enamored of Running With Scissors, but I really liked both Magical Thinking and Dry a lot. If pushed, I’d say that Magical Thinking was my favorite of the two.

* * * So I was in Target this morning looking for toilet bowl cleaner (and, may I ask, back before toilet bowl cleaner, what did people use to clean their toilets? Oh, right. People used outhouses back then, didn’t they?) and I walked past the tub and shower cleaners, and I stopped and stared at the Scrubbing Bubbles, seriously tempted to buy a can. When I was a kid, I watched the damn Scrubbing Bubbles commercials, and I thought that when you sprayed the Scrubbing Bubbles onto the tub and shower, the little bubbles would come out looking exactly like they did in the commercial: And I harassed the shit out of my mother to buy a can of Scrubbing Bubbles to use for cleaning, because there is NOTHING ELSE IN THIS ENTIRE WORLD I wanted than I capture one of those scrubbing bubbles and keep him as a pet. I’m still a little bitter at the memory of my mother spraying the tub with Scrubbing Bubbles, and my disappointment when all that came out was cleaning product. Not a damn smiling scrubbing bubble to be seen anywhere. Can I sue for emotional distress? * * * I’m afraid I’m going to have to divorce my husband. He told me that he thinks the foster kittens are ugly because – and this is a quote – “their markings are asymmetric and random.” He went on to defend his point of view, saying that as a computer geek, he wants everything to have symmetry and logic and a pattern, but I was so busy spluttering like Sylvester the Cat that I couldn’t come up with a decent response. I mean, I’m sorry. How can you see this: and think “ugly”? It baffles me, it really does. * * * Fred went to the movie store and rented Hostage, Hitch, and The Jacket yesterday. We watched Hitch in the afternoon, and Hostage last night (then followed it up with a couple of episodes of Scrubs, because that is one fine damn show). To our surprise, they were both pretty good. We were disappointed that Hostage was dumbed down a little – we both read Hostage earlier this year and it kicked ASS – but all in all it wasn’t a bad way to spend a Sunday evening. Only, except, remember back when I said that Autumn Chiklis – daughter of Michael Chiklis, star of The Shield – was possibly the worst young actress in all of Hollywood? Yeah, well, Rumer Willis is definitely in the race for that title, for sure. Hollywood nepotism at it’s best, I suppose – putting young, extremely untalented kids in roles that should have gone to kids who don’t have their mommies and daddies to pull strings for them. And yet they’re confused as to why movie attendance is hitting record lows. * * * The kitten section. So Friday night Fred and I were hanging out in the room with the kittens, and Mia started rolling around on the floor making a lot of noise, and every time either of us would touch her, she’d immediately raise her butt in the air. “Bessie,” Fred said. “I think she’s in heat.” We watched her for a while longer, and she got even more agitated, and rolled around on the floor even more. “Well, shit,” I said. “What the hell do we do?” “We can’t do anything. And she’s going to get loud.” Fred once had a cat who went into heat, and she was so loud all night long that he spent the next morning calling vets and begging them to spay her that very day. So we came downstairs where I called and left a message for the lady who runs the shelter to ask her if there was anything special I needed to do – separate her from the kittens, perhaps? I mean, I have NEVER dealt with a cat in heat before. I did some looking around online, and found mostly unhelpful advice that the way to keep a cat from going into heat was – can you guess? – have her spayed. She’s scheduled to be spayed on Thursday. Figures, right? I did run across a page where they offered up the suggestion to relieve the cat’s distress with a q-tip, and then I passed out from the sheer horror of the thought. We went to bed and discussed it some more. I said, “Well, should we separate her from the kittens? I don’t want them to be mentally scarred for life from seeing their mother in the mood for love!”, to which Fred replied “We should send Mister Boogers in there to take care of business!” I don’t know. Can neutered cats even get it up? We decided that we’d just keep an eye on her, and if she got aggressive with the kittens in any way we’d put her in the study for a few days. You’ve probably figured this out by now, but when we went in Saturday morning, Mia showed no signs of being in heat at all. AT ALL. In fact, she hasn’t shown any signs since. What the hell is up with that? I mean, not that I WANTED her to be in heat, in fact, I’m quite grateful that she’s NOT, but we were really sure she was, Friday night. There’s a new kitten movie up, here. It’s a fairly short one, of the kittens being teased by Fred with a toy. As always, it’ll only be up until I upload a new movie. Snoopy. That boy sleeps like a rock. Sleepy babies. A rare picture with all five of them (you can’t see Snoopy’s face, since Oy and Edgar are laying on top of him, but he’s there!). This picture cracks me up because of the stretching kitty paw over Flossie’s head. It looks like someone’s doing “jazz hands”! Heh. It’s a rough life, it really is. “I think I’m in Hell. I’m in Hell, right? In a small room with all these little wild kittens? Yeah, I’m in hell. I wonder what I did wrong…” Edgar, mid-lick. It looks like he’s showing us a trick, doesn’t it? “Look, I can make my tongue go in one direction, and THEN I can make it go in the OTHER direction!” Oy, cleaning. I sure do love this little guy. He’s little, but he’s scrappy. * * *]]>