Bad CAR-ma

Some no good dishonest suv-drivin' (e.g. the high location of the dents) person side swiped my Jetta today in the parking lot and didn't even leave a note. So I stand out in the rain to file a police report and I call Geico and they are really great at handling my claim, and the guy on the phone with me is so empathetic and sensitive. Now I feel like I could be one of those people telling my story on their commercials -- who they'd hire an actor for.
"Hi my name is Heather and some dumb shit side swiped my car and didn't even leave a note."
actor: OH GOD my beautiful black New Jetta is toast!
"I was upset and it was raining, but I called Geico and the sweet little guy on the phone made me feel so much better. He said the call right before mine was a woman in Alabama with the same problem."
actor: (singing) It's a rainy night in Georgia and I feel like it's raining all over the woooorld.

If I were a cat.

I have always said that if reincarnation is possible, and even considering inherant risks, I'd like to come back one day as a cat. A male cat, because I don't ever want to go through any sort of c-section type surgery again. I'd like to be short hair, because I know I'd have to lick myself to keep clean, and too much hair in the throat can be an awful experience for a kitty. If you have cats, you've no doubt heard the god-awful sounds that emit from a cat whose throat is full of fur; kind of a cough, hack, wheeze, gasping sort of sound. I'd like to have rich owners who can afford to feed me the food that comes individually packed and looks like something that humans could potentially eat for dinner in lieu of grilled cheese or p,b, & j. I wouldn't want a collar because, let's face it, they're confining, and if I was gonna crap in a neighbor's pine straw or flower bed, would I really want them to read my name tag and be able to shout my name out loud as they chase me up the street? If my owner was mean to me, I'd do what my brother-in-law's cat did -- shit right in the sink that he brushes his teeth over. Wake up and smell the feces man....that'll teach you to adopt a freakin' stray cat off the street whose ass smells like she's from the lower part of town if you know what I mean. And if I were a cat, I'd spend my days lying in the sunny spot on the carpet or the couch or someone's favorite chair, and I'd do my best to shed there to mark that spot as my own. I'd be a one person kind of cat I think, and I'd curl up in her lap every night and bury my kitty face in the crook of her arm and purr like an angel. She'd whisper sweet nothings to me and give me treats and brush my hair. During the nights I'd frolic around the neighborhood or the house and get in to everything I possibly could, and I suppose I'd kill a thing or two and proudly deliver the corpses to different doorsteps. Perhaps I'd meet a companion kitty and we'd prowl through my terriory together, swishing our tails happily ever after.

Cats have the good life, for real. Many times as I have drug myself out of bed to go to work for another day I have wished I could lay in the sunny spot with my cat all day with not a care in the world except getting up to pee and eat and drink. And I guess those cussed hairballs. But I could take a hairball every now an then if it meant I had no mortgage and no job and I could spend the days doing whatever I wanted to do. Hiss at the mailman, arch my back, scare the kids, whatever. And if my owner called me some silly name in some fake nice voice, I could sit under her chair and let out a big tuna fart and listen to her blame everyone in the house but me. :)

I know why Davinci cut off his ear.

What does a girl have to do to get some sleep around here? The child has come downstairs and asked for something to drink two nights in a row, and of course when she does she wakes the dog, who then wants to go out to pee, and when the dog gets excited, so do the kitties, and the whole house is up at one in the morning, or at four, take your pick. I have heard that the less sleep you get the more creative you become, and I've also heard the less sleep you get the more depressed you become. Who was that genius that cut off his ear? Davinci? Did he have a kid, a puppy, 2 kittens, and an outdoor attack cat? Probably not, but it's worth further investigation. I know nothing about the man except that he knew how to paint, but I'll be willing to bet he had a pet 'something' that woke his ass up at night day after day, wee morning hour after wee morning hour, until he finally couldn't take it anymore and figured he wouldn't hear the freaking noise if he cut his ear off. People will do strange things to get some sleep. Of course, I'll bet the first time he laid his knobby sore ear down onto his probably hard pillow his ass woke back up. That's all I'm saying. I know why he did it. It wasn't a good idea, but I know why he did it. To get some freakin' Zzzzzzzs.

Butt Sniffin'

It's funny how addicted I am to the internet, my email, and recently this little blog o mine. My nighttime lack of internet this past week was very stressful, so in some ways I'm glad I was tired and grumpy from work so I didn't have to pace around the house muttering expletives about my cable company.
Tonight I'll call "stinky alert night." Every hour or so my child, who has quite obviously taken a break from the potty training that we started almost two weeks ago, thought it would be funny to tell us that she had a stinky. We asked her over and over, do you have a stinky? Or do you just have a froggy (which somehow became our family term for passing gas)? She would smile and point to her butt and say, "smell it."
I never ever in a million years thought before I had a child that I would be a butt sniffer. I thought butt sniffing was only for dogs and cats and other wild things with small brains and fur. But I have become a world class butt sniffer, and so has my husband Hal. The other day he walked into the livingroom, having just risen from a weekend afternoon nap, and immediately started sniffing the air around him, his face contorting into a grimace. Oooooh, I smell a stinky. He looks at me. Who me, I can't smell a thing! (I'd been stuffy for weeks - damn allergy to the dog.) And then he asks the question. Sarah, do you have a stinky or did you have a froggy? Sarah shakes her head yes. Then he seperates the questions and asked them again. Stinky? She shakes no. Froggy? Yeah daa-ee. I had a froggy. Then she goes hopping across the carpet. Ribbet, ribbet! So he goes and does it anyway. Grabs her up and sniffs her butt. Looks inside the diaper. Yep, just a froggy Sweetie!

Then there are the farting kittens. Two weeks after I adopted the dog during a minor bout of depression, I saw on a listserv the little orage tabby of my dreams - for adoption. I've always wanted an orange tabby. When we drive 35 miles to the farm, there are six of them and we wind up taking two because we think they'll be happier if we get two. We love them; they are really great. As if we didn't have enough things producing poop, these little guys make lots of it, but they are great with the litter box. Never any accidents, that is, unless you count the big potted peace lily whose soft dirt wildly attracts them. But when they first moved in, we didn't realize that little cats have so much gas. They'd be under our chair and we'd smell something awful and then we'd be over sniffing Sarah's butt, asking her if she had some kind of mega tuna stinky. These little kitties who barely weighed a pound a piece were producing some whopper farts. They were turn on the ceiling fan and run out of the room laughing histerically kind of farts. I'd accuse Hal and he'd accuse me. It was you! Yuck! No, it was you! It wasn't me!

So because we have, as Hal calls her, "the poopin'-ist dog on the street," and the fartin feline duo, and the toddler who teases us with the new smell my butt comments, we have decided to install a wonderful new invention. The Lysol wall mounted automatic mist air freshener. Every nine minutes we get a quick snort of lavender scented air just to remind our nostrils that there's more to life than "elimination."

Go to sleep (because you're bored)

Wonder what I could write about if I went downtown every Friday night and just bar-hopped (without drinking)? Anthology on Athen's alcohol problem?
My blogging abilities have been severely hampered the last few days, as I have no working cable at home. That's gonna be fixed soon so everyone be patient. I know you've been checking! Just kidding, seriously. If one person other than myself is reading this, thanks. Send it to all your friends. I wanna be a famous writer. FAMOUS. WRITER. No day job. Just writing and musing and speculating and being. I want people to read my thoughts. Is that weird? Seems weird. The fact that I'm already thinking about writing a second book seems a bit over the top too...like I'm assuming that the first one will make the press. We shall see.
This week is stressful - work is starting to get busy. That's one of the reasons I wanted to finish the book before August. Still working on the name changes. My best thinking and writing is late at night or in the middle of the night so this afternoon attempt is boring I know, but I felt like I had to give all of you loyal followers some kind of update... :)
Here's a song I wrote for Sarah: I sang it to her for probably 30 minutes last night. I stopped and with her fingers in her mouth and her copy (soft white cloth attachment thingy) in her hand she said, "mommy, do it again." This produced an awesome mommy moment. Yes.

Go to sleep, go to sleep
Dream a sweet, sweet dream
Go to sleep, go to sleep
Dream a sweet dream

Nobody loves you the way that I do
Nobody loves you the way I love you

Go to sleep, go to sleep
I will be here
Go to sleep, go to sleep
I'll be right here

Walk on a cloud with a silver star
Walk on a cloud with a silver star

Nobody loves you the way that I do
Nobody loves you the way I love you

Dead man (almost) walking

Sunday morning at around 1:45 AM I'm headed home from a visit to my cousin's house and I'm sleepy but I've got Evanescence cranked up loud on my stereo and I'm thinking about everything that's going on in my life when all of a sudden, and I mean this was super strange, a dude in a white tee shirt walks right out in front of my car. I saw him coming about two seconds before I would have hit him but I had time to stop because I had just gotten off the bypass and was going to start breaking for a turn. He walked right out in front of me and I actually had to wait for him to stagger out of the way of my car. He had NO idea that he almost got hit by my car. I knew cats had 9 lives, but people? It really freaked me out, and I sat there watching him for at least ten seconds or more before I started driving again. Just thought I'd share.

So sue me Bubba.

Okay, some good things happened today. Number one is that I took my last three dollars and forty one cents and got the combo at Dunkin Donuts and gave the kid another donut this morning and she now knows beyond all shadow of a doubt that I am in fact the coolest mommy ever. Of course, the time out she got tonight for pitching a screaming fit on the potty might have erased the aura of the donut...don't know for sure.

The doggie I'm trying to find a home for is right now underneath my feet shreading a little foam football I got while I worked at Clemson. It's keeping her from jumping in my lap and slobbering all over my favorite sweats so I'll let her continue to shread and I'll pick up bits of foamy orange and white in the morning. The sacrifices I make for this blog and my future fame!

I started the process of changing the names in my manuscript today, you know, to protect the guilty. This was a disturbing thing. I find that I don't like creating falsities. I mean, yeah there will be that little disclaimer at the beginning of the book, but I can't stand reading something when I know it's not the person's real name. My name of course will be correct, and if my family promises not to shoot me, their names will be correct, but most others will have to be changed. What have lawsuits done to America?! And then there was the task of trying to come up with the "right" false name. I found myself wanting to give stupid characters names like Bubba. No really, just kidding...but it was strange. I couldn't decide on each one if the new name I came up with sounded authentic enough. I went on the Social Security website and researched popularity of names and tried to find a real name that would have been given to the person in the same year he/she was born. I went on baby naming websites to search for cool sounding names I wouldn't have otherwise thought of. I even pulled out the phonebook to look for authentic Southern surnames. I mean, I put a lot of effort into this. Who knows..? Might be a movie one day and who'd want to play a guy named Bubba or a girl named Jonnie Sue? The real names will always be the coolest. Even as a novice author I've already found something that irritates me. Changing the truth.