NCIS: Cat Murder

  When my daughter set off to preschool at the beginning of this year, I was forced to fill out an obscene amount of paperwork. A complete biography of our family, our educational values, our disciplinary measures, and our religious background, including the question, "Who is the authority in your household?"

   I wrote, "The cat."

   (Our favorite preschool teacher later informed me that other members of staff nearly spit their coffee across the classroom upon reading it.)

   But it's really true. Bertie and Jeeves are pleased to have us around as staff, but we know exactly where we fall in the hierarchy. The cats come first, then the Daddy, the Princess, the Patient Boy, and that Person Who Does All the Other Work and is Constantly Stepping On Us.

   In fact, when the Amazing Daddy leaves for work, the cats sit upon the mat and cry for about 15 minutes. Mind you, I'm still in the house, and willing to cuddle and stroke and talk, but I am not to be spoken to unless it is 2 am and I am the Insomniac on the Couch - in which case, it is their pleasure to give me something to do (i.e., pet them). 

   This is no exaggeration. This happened TODAY :

     *blast. I am  bad at the Interwebs and Techonology and I really am trying to post a video here, but it is angry with me. I'll try again in the morning. Seriously. It's after midnight. Nothing good ever happened on a computer after midnight.*


  Bertie is the Loud One. Jeeves, our black kitty vampire, is less loquacious and more circumspect. 

  Lately, Jeeves has been unable to keep up with the absolutely enormous amount of fur he possesses. Our hardwood floors have Jeeves-puffs blowing by on a regular basis, like tumbleweeds on the open prairie. Husband tried to brush him, but the overwhelming volume was just beyond them both - and poor Jeeves was starting to suffer from constant hairballs and tangles and matting and general hygienic misery.

   Something had to be done. Something drastic.


   Tonight, we sheared him. We hauled out the hair trimmers and used that #2 guard and lopped off an entire Jeeves worth of fur. He wasn't happy, but he submitted, as though sensing the weight that was being literally lifted from his shoulders.

   Then we washed him,which was NOT okay, and then we rinsed him, which means I will spend all of tomorrow de-Jeeves-ing the bathroom. Then we rubbed him until our towels were despaired of.

  Then we brushed him again for twenty minutes.

  And we STILL brushed off this much:

  I think Jeeves may have a super power - SHEDDING.
  


 But the BEST moment, the moment that made everything worth it, was the moment that Bertie wandered into the bathroom and saw the aftermath of the shearing:

   

  And he stopped dead - like a really terrible, over-acting guest star on NCIS: Pet Edition. He jumped back and stared in horror at the fur on the floor. He might as well have fallen to his furry knees and screamed, "NOOOOOO!"
     

   Then he spent two hours hissing at his brother, as though a Clean Jeeves was a Traitor Jeeves. Clean Jeeves was an impostor, or an alien! 


   Clean Jeeves, however, doesn't mind being hissed at, because I believe he feels immensely better. And after all that, he's not even close to being bald or hairless - just look at him!
   
   

He is not close to forgiveness either. 

Girl

   There's a ghost living in my house.

   Hi, there. It's been a while, I know, but it was a long year of coming to terms with my finite self, which sounds super deep and mature, but is really just code for stayed-alive-because-I-hadn't-time-to-die. My doctors disagreed about how best to kill me. My careers imploded in a spectacularly pathetic manner. The second grader brought home enormous packets of volunteering opportunities because his elementary school is home to the most militant PTA I've ever had the misfortune to meet. The preschooler attended the local Catholic preschool, where she appalled everyone with her macabre interests and led me into accidental heresy by gifting me a handmade rosary which I mistook for a necklace, and then all the Catholic mommies stared aghast as I struggled to free my head from the rosary and I stammered, "Ha - ha - .... protestant problems...." and no one laughed (except the protestant teacher).
   And then our landlord was all, "Hey - I wanna move back into my house - can you leave?" and then we found a house, and then it fell through because HELLO, asbestos check? - and then the house we managed to find last minute was torn apart by squatters and I had to scrub out the smoker smell and patch the holes in the walls and tape the broken windows and anyway --

    I was just trying to say, blog readers, that I  have missed you. And I owe you a ton of back stories.

    But the most pressing issue at the moment is GIRL.
    I need to explain as quickly as possible, because one never knows when that creepy violin music will begin and I'll be out of time ---

   As I mentioned above, the new house is  quite a fixer-upper, and since we are renting yet again, several issues must wait upon the landlord. The guest room has two enormous holes in the wall and is painted two shades of brown, so has been dubbed the Snickers Turd Suite. The upstairs drains are confused about where water is supposed to go (down - it goes down), and the light over the shower inexplicably turns on and off; I mean, middle of the night dear HEAVENLY-FATHER-DID-ALL-THE-LIGHTS-JUST-TURN-ON-BY-THEMSELVES?! Or, when one is halfway through shaving a leg (like, super gracefully), the lights suddenly turn off, and there's a very Hitchcok-ian moment where I rip the curtain asunder (while weilding a three-bladed Gillete) and scream, "WHO GOES THERE?"

   It doesn't matter if the switch is on or off or halfway - it simply has no control over the light.

   I mentioned this to Beloved Friend. Friend said, "Oh, you have an electrical problem."
   "Have you met me?"
    She immediately amended, "You're right. I was forgetting. You have a dark demonic force living in your bathroom."
 
    Reader, she was right.



    Since moving into the Yellow Castle-Tree-House, our five year old daughter has found a new friend. Her name is Girl. Girl is three, or four, or five - she has many birthdays. Girl likes particular foods, and despises other foods - and I know what you're thinking, but Girl has completely dissimilar tastes from our Princess Annie (her contract dictates that I use her correct title).  She likes random colors, while Annie only like red. She has moods, and takes naps, and almost never comes with us on car rides.
   Annie will inform me, "Girl says I should do this," or "Don't do that, Mommy. Girl doesn't like that." And while I like to chuckle and gently remind my daughter that we shouldn't do what the Voices tell us to do, there's always a moment of horrified silence. It wouldn't be so creepy if she would only grant this mysterious friend a name, but Girl is apparently very reticent about monikers.
    She is Girl.
 
    Creepy, right?

    It gets better.

    My almost-eight-year-old son, who is Very Responsible and a Medium-Sized Man now (not to be confused with the endearment "Little Man", which is not appropriate for 7 year olds), came to me this evening for his nightly hug and kiss before bed. He overheard me explaining the mysterious Girl to our visiting Grandma.

 
 "Girl," I muttered, "is Annie's creepiest friend to date. I didn't mind the Baby Brother she carried around, or the Dragon with no mercy. But this Girl is weird."
   "Hey!" Jack cried. "You don't need to worry about Girl. We were talking about her yesterday."




   "Oh... yeah?"
 
   "Yeah! We were playing, and I told her to go away and play with Girl, and Annie said, "GIRL IS DEAD."

   *silence*

    "That doesn't make me feel better, buddy."

    "Oh. Okay. Goodnight!"

     Right. Like I'm going to be able to go to sleep now. Or ever.




*if I should die under mysterious circumstances, do not enter the Master Bathroom. It's because of Girl, not because it's a total mess. Mostly.*

   

That's True. So True.

   Scene I: A messy kitchen on a morning before school; Mommy is finishing packing her son's lunch and trying to find a container big enough for all the Halloween candy that has taken over her house. She grabs a brown chest and begins to dump out the assorted stickers. Son enters, Stage Right.)

"Mommy, why are you emptying the Treasure Box?"
   
(Please don't make me talk about this.)
"Because."

"Because you don't have any piano students?"

(Really? We're going to talk about the fact that my blasted infirmities have robbed me of my career, my vitality, even my sense of humor? And my favorite students? We're going to talk about this at 7:41 a.m.?! )
"That's right."

"So you - " he paused over the big word, " - cancelled your studio?"

(Sure, kid. Twist the knife.) "Yes."

Pause.
(... It's ridiculous how much this hurts. Please go away.)


"But you're getting better now."

(Slowly but surely -  now that I've cancelled my whole life.) "That's true. I am getting better."
   
Son dashes across the kitchen and throws his arms around Mommy with enthusiasm. "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"

Mommy nearly falls over, startled. "For what?"

"For getting better!" Son beams with his father's beautiful smile. "Because I want to play with you!"

"Oh. And I can play with you now?"

"Yes! Because you don't need to sleep as much anymore!"

(That's true, little man.) "That's true."

 

In Defense of Procreation: Part I

  "The Time has come," the walrus said, "to Talk of Many Things,
      We Might Want to Have Kids -
         So Convince Me This is A Good Idea - "

  "Well..." I answered slowly, "mine just spent four days at their grandmother's so that we could see if eleven prescription drugs could get my migraines under control and guess what? I'd forgotten that you can watch movies without closed captions! Did you know that characters have VOICES?! That there is such a thing as sound design?"
   "Er..." my friend (who is not a walrus) answered.
   "SOUND DESIGN!!" and then I cackled a little too maniacally because really, I  haven't blogged in two months because I've been bouncing from one neurologist to another while they all poked me and stuffed me into machines and went "OOOH!" and "Huh" and "That's rare" and "That shouldn't do that" and "You hallucinate WHAT?" and finally just pushed me on to another doctor because none of them are Dr. House and they are not interested by my rare condition. They are annoyed that I won't fit in their boxes or respond as I ought to their medications. The last doctor simply called me a "unicorn" and said we were in  waters, so "let's try some stuff and be patient".
   Where was I? Right.
   I owe my friend. I owe all my friends. I owe every reader who has ever skimmed this blog and laughed at my stories of poo and thought, 'Thank heaven I have no offspring' because frankly, I've done you a disservice. You deserve all the same misery I've had. More than that, you deserve all the same joys.
   It isn't really a good idea to have kids.
   It's the most crazy, fabulously adventurous thing two people can do.
   So you really ought to try it.

  Why?


 Reason #1: Your children will show you the Worst of Yourself. And the Best.
    Sure, the first thing you may hear in the morning is sarcasm. Your six year old may be helping his little sister get breakfast cereal, and she may be demanding 2% milk, and he may suddenly sigh and snap, "Well, we are out of that milk and I am not a magician so I can't just make it appear!" And you think to yourself, 'That is absolutely my fault. Sorry, kid'.
   And perhaps, later on, while he attempts to set the kitchen timer on the microwave, he will fall into your habit of yelling at inanimate objects: "NO, MICROWAVE, NO! NOT COOK! JUST TIMER! DO NOT COOK! AAARGH!"
  This may be the moment you despair. You may think, 'I am not fit to care for children. I have harmed society by allowing my DNA to replicate. Perhaps it isn't too late to find a good home for them - they are cute and housebroken, after all."
   But then, there is a moment when you hear your son playing a game with his sister where he is obviously cheating FOR her, so that she will win. He whispers the answers to her, and when she calls them out, he praises her to the skies as the smartest little girl he knows. Then he reads out loud to her and gets her a snack while Mommy has to lay in the dark bedroom with her Superhero mask (blackout sleep mask). And when your son comes in to check on your headache and kisses your cheek, you think, 'Well, I suppose I haven't done the worst job ever.'
   Then he clinches it by asking:
     "Can I make you a sandwich? Would that make your headache better?"
  In his defense, not one neurologist offered that as a cure for migraine, so for all we know, it could very well be the missing link.
     
  I guess what I'm trying to say is that kids are a little bit like marriage - the force you to face yourself every single day in a brutally honest way. The make you grow up in tough ways, in good ways, in hard ways, in beautiful ways.
   I highly recommend it.

   Of course, your other kid may flash half the church with her new dress during the Lord's Prayer, and you will spend the rest of the service in a silent facepalm of shame, but hey! A little humility is good for us all.

God is a Ninja

"WHERE IS GOD?!" the four year old demanded from her throne (car seat). Her tone would allow no pathetic minion to fail in producing her desire immediately. "Where is he?"
  Her wise, older brother rolled his eyes, for, being seven, he was infinitely more knowledgeable in the ways of the world. "God," he declared sagely, "is invisible."
   "What," his sister asked, "does that mean?"
   "It means you can't see him."

   Silence.

   Then, the Princess declared with a logician's confidence: "God is a ninja."
   "WHAT?!" her brother cried. "No he isn't!"
   "Yes! Yes, he is!" she argued, "because I can't see him!"
   "MOMMY! Tell her that God is not a ninja!"


 

Thins your Mother Won't Tell You Because She Wants Grandchildren, Part IV: The First Trimester

   The greatest irony of pregnancy is that when you most need the love, help, and support of strangers is during the three months when no one can tell that you're pregnant. They can tell that you're bloated, maybe a little more pudgy than they remembered, but not obviously pregnant.
   Unfortunately, that's when you find yourself bent over in the canned goods aisle while praying to every God you can think of and a few you made up (God-of-Lost-Earrings) to please, please, please deliver you from puking in the Food Lion.
   You would think, thanks to heartwarming TV dramas, that Morning Sickness would cause you to throw up a little, so that 27 minutes into the episode it can be - gasp! - revealed that you are pregnant! Then you instantly get a cute bump and six screen shots later, you're rushing to a delivery room with a vaguely Chris-Pine-looking OBGYN and ninety seconds after that, you're presented with a thoroughly cleaned, pink, non-sobbing infant.
   But none of that is true.
   In the first few weeks (or months, depending on your distraction), no one knows you're pregnant - including you. You might experience what doctors call 'fatigue', but what actually feels like carrying an 80lb. pack through a swamp. You suddenly hate the smell of food, or you love the smell of food, of you're surprised that you suddenly notice and care about the smell of food. You may experience 'hormonal changes', which means that you will break out in acne and cry over toothpaste commercials.
   My personal experience was an earth-shattering, overwhelming, incredible rage. The first time I was unwittingly growing a small person, I had to lock myself in a relative's bathroom to cry; not that cute I-need-a-hug cry, but the vicious I'd-kill-if-I-could-get-away-with-it cry. You may be thinking that is a perfectly normal response to spending Thanksgiving with in-laws, but not in this case. My in-laws are nice people. I was just insane. I sobbed and seethed all the way home, while my bewildered husband attempted soothing, "I don't think it was as bad as you're making it out to be". He said it once. Only once.
   The next time I felt that way, I knew that #2 was on her way.
   My mother, on the other hand, had no ill effects at all. She told me that she did feel dizzy, once. Once. So when she felt dizzy again, ONCE, she knew that she was pregnant with my brother. But that was it. I remember answering a phone call from her, whispering, "I think - I'm gonna - puke..."
     "Oh! That never happened to me," she answered. "You shouldn't have morning sickness. I didn't."
     "Uh-huh."
      You might be one of those people who gets glowing skin and sparkling eyes and a general feeling of bliss. I hope you are. I wouldn't hate you. Really.
     Not much, anyway.
 

   The first 13 weeks are LOOONG. And if you want to Keep It A Secret, it's even harder. You have to plan brilliant excuses for why you're not drinking (I don't drink on Days that have a 'Y' in them) or avoiding caffeine (I'm cleansing my auras) and you have to try to remember who you whispered it to (but your brain has started going). You can't even beg your colleagues to lay off the Jungle Gardenia hand lotion.
   No one opens doors for you, or offers to carry groceries, or compliments you on your glow. You're just a desperately pale woman leaning against the cool doors of the Frozen Pizza section for relief. You don't seem pregnant to the customers who avert their eyes - you just look weird and hungover.
    If you do decide to keep it a Secret, make sure you have a few friends who know. People who can be gentle with you and send you back to bed, people who will love you enough to go to the grocery store and buy pastrami because you can't go near the Deli anymore since the smell rotisserie chicken makes you gag. And be gentle with yourself!
   Your mother will tell you that she planted 14 rice paddies and walked three miles uphill both ways to work while she was pregnant. Women all over the world are pregnant and able to complete triathlons and climb Kilimanjaro and you can't handle the smell of olives?!
   In which case, you must retort that you are an educated, globally-minded individual who honors the cultural heritage of Bali. In Bali, any request made in the first 3 months by an expectant mother is believed to be an outworking of the baby's desires. So when someone rolls their eyes at you because you're suddenly ravenous for cheesecake at 4 a.m., just remind them that it isn't you talking at all. It's the baby. And they had better get you that cheesecake right away - because you have to get it swallowed down before the morning sickness kicks in again.
 

60 Seconds of Quiet

   I planned an enormous shopping trip. The kind that required two shopping carts and separate lists because we planned a reunion with friends and I needed to find six different kinds of cereal. Since the second round of antibiotics has knocked me for a loop this week, I didn't make it to Harris Teeter during the day, and finding that all the milk was gone, subsisted on the last four ounces of orange juice and called it 'lunch'.
   So when the headache lifted, briefly, around 7:30, I feebly put on shoes and asked my darling husband to please, please, please help me buy groceries. And he assented most generously, and the children consented most piteously, and we went to the store.
   It was epic and exhausting, and the little Jetta wagon could not have held another bag. I sat with a 24 pack of Dasani on my lap for the drive home. And while the children had really, really tried their best to not ask too many questions, my headache was certainly back. When we were half a mile from home, after the umpteenth question about the fate of the last two popsicles in the freezer, I lost the will to live and simply closed my eyes. Perhaps if I stopped answering, the questions would fade away.
    At last, Daddy intervened.

D: "All right, all right, guys. Let's take a break, ok? Let's all try to be really quiet for 60 seconds."

J (6-year-old son): "60 seconds? That's one minute!"

D: "Yes. Let's try to be quiet for that long."

J: "One minute?"

D: "Right. You're still talking."

A( 4-year-old daughter): "But I'm not! I'm being very quiet!"

J: "No, you were just talking!"

A: "But - no - the before - I was - and you were NOT quiet - "

J: "Why are you both laughing? Mom? Dad?"