Shitty Kitty

I thought cats were supposed to be the low-maintenance pets?  Dogs are needy and demanding, but cats are just supposed to stay aloof and impervious.  Well, someone forgot to tell our little orange cat, Winston.   Actually, during daylight hours he is aloof and impervious.  At 3:30 a.m. he is Mr. Needypants.  Here is a recent video of his night-time activities:

You can try to ignore him, but then your sleep pattern looks like this:

It turns out…he only does his 3 am wakeup routine when I’m home.  So he’s not opposed to ALL sleep – just my sleep.  Or more accurately, he’s just opposed to me being home and infringing on his one-on-one time with his mommy.  I don’t remember requesting a nocturnal cat with an oedipal complex during the adoption process, but here we are.

Rita and I now have an on-going contest to see who can pretend to remain asleep longer than the other. On more than one occasion, we have each caught the other squinting out of a half-open eye checking to see if the other is awake.  For Winston’s sake – he better hope it’s me who gets up.  Because the first step in Rita’s wakeup routine is to loft a pillow at his head.  Now keep in mind, the cat is 6 lbs. and the pillow is 2 lbs., so Rita is bringing some serious heat (if she were able to aim at 4 o’clock in the morning, that is).  

But of course the little orange guy has anger issues.  Here he is, this perfect 6-lb killing machine and we just keep picking him up and kissing him all day long.

Our long national nightmare....

This election.  Or more accurately - the places Donald Trump has taken this election.

But last night was the LAST debate and once again....I read the twitters so you don't have to.  Here are some of the best comments I curated for you:

• Single nasty woman seeks single bad hombre for sipping wine, long walks on the beach and good conversation
•  Friendly reminder that Paris Hilton grew her inherited wealth at 5 times the rate and 3 times faster than Donald Trump
•  Hillary Clinton Invited The ‘Access Hollywood’ Bus To Sit In The Front Row Of The Debate
•  Hillary grabs Trump by his (small) hands, hits him with them and says, "Stop hitting yourself, Donald, stop hitting yourself..."
•  I can't believe inviting Obama's half brother didn't win the debate for Trump
•  Trump is treating the GOP like a spring break rental car.
•  Trump's foreign policy answers sound like a book report from a teenager who hasn't read the book. "Oh, the grapes! They had so much wrath!"
•  The @HillaryClinton team has already purchased http://nastywomengetshitdone.com  and it redirects to the campaign site.
•  It's Hillary. President Clinton if you're nasty.
•  Trump is the first candidate whose rapid-response operatives are focused mostly on refuting things their own candidate said
•  I tried to type "bigly" and my iPad autocorrected to "bigot."
•  The Republican candidate for President had a temper tantrum on national television tonight. America, don't elect someone who needs nap time.
•  Strange of Trump to invite the Benghazi mom to the debate so she could watch him make Hillary Clinton president.
•  Seriously, based on this trajectory, if we had a dozen debates he'd be showing up to the tenth in a military uniform and aviator glasses
•  THIS is the year that the election is held at the last possible day of the year?  
•  Come for the election. Stay for the coup.
•  Trump's debate guest list is best understood if you read it to the tune of "We Didn't Start The Fire."

18 days people.  We can do this.  

Driving Ms. Mavey

Part of the deal on the new job is that Rita comes to Oxford with me 1 week a month (assuming going down Wednesday and leaving Friday constitutes a week, of course).  “Rita in Mississippi” would be the best reality show ever, but there is likely to be so much bleeping as to make it unwatchable. 

First, let me say in 10 years together, I don’t know that we’ve ever driven a backroads together.  (There is probably some cause-and-effect in the preceding sentence and I don’t believe the next 10 years will benefit from a reversal of this policy.)  While I offered to drive, Rita hasn’t seen the passenger seat of my car since El Diavolo forced that condition upon her.  El Diavolo caused a lot of disruptions, but none more scarring than being my passenger for six months.  What I discovered on the 2 hr. drive from Jackson TN to Oxford is that Rita is a “Drifter”- a little loose with the lane assignments – oncoming traffic be damned.  So really...Rita’s approach to traffic is not that dissimilar from her approach to most exchanges – not quite over the line, but often veering close enough as to make me a titch uncomfortable.  

And what’s more, as Rita “drifts” toward that left hand lane of oncoming traffic, I get in trouble for taking a big breath and startling her.  So now you now when my time comes, I’ll be the one who goes silently because I’ve been trained to look death in the eye and not make a sound.

Green Acres - the Tour

If you haven’t read the previous blog post – you’re going to want to do that so you can understand why the hell Rita and I are touring 92 acres of untouched farmland that Rita is interested in buying.  This tour occurred one Sunday in August in what could only be described as a beautiful day to be outside – assuming you wanted to sweat out your entire hangover in 30 minutes.  

So it was Dr. Ann, Rita, me and the lovely, young couple who are friends of Rita's and are looking at buying some of the adjacent land.  They were the right age to be considering this endeavor.  I…on the other hand…looked like I was an "agri-tourist" who had bough an afternoon's tour of a "real” farm experience.

First, I am the only one who attended the tour in their best silver jewelry. 

Second, you can only get around on the property on a 4-wheeler.  And just in case you…like me…have never seen a 4-wheeler before, there is only 1 seat.  So anyone else coming along gets plunked on the metal luggage rack platform right behind the driver.  This probably comes as no surprise, but my ass doesn’t really conform to luggage rack design.  Throw in the fact that it was 90+ degrees that day and every time we got back on the thing to resume our tour, I felt like a brisket.  I think Dr. Ann screens potential buyers by seeing who can stay on the half-bar-b-que, half-mechanical-bull 4-wheeler for hours at a time.

The property includes an electric fence all the way around it and cutting through it in order to keep the goats in and other animals out.  Rita won’t let me near the stove, how exactly do we think the electric fence will work???  Perhaps she should reread the old blog on my attempts to construct Molly’s invisible fence, which I’m pretty sure was lower wattage than a livestock fence.

During the afternoon, I forget exactly how Dr. Ann called me a sissy, but it was something like “now I’m being a sissy too” after she coldly pulled a leech off herself or something.  Like one of those statements where you had been so good all afternoon at not coming out and saying what you’re thinking and then you inadvertently back into the insult.  Noted, Dr. Ann, noted.

As the day wore on and we spent more time chargrilling on the back of a 4-wheeler, talking about crop rotations and the proper number of livestock to yield enough manure for bio-dynamic gardens (what I refer to as the crap-to-crop ratio), I couldn’t help thinking that I did not remember this being in the wedding vows.  All I know is I just got a season-long pass to watch every Titans game, pregame and postgame show there is. 

We toured around for three hours, through the woods, the barn, every corner of the property.  I fear I probably saw the toilet, it just doesn’t look like anything this city girl would recognize.