Sneezeriffic

At about three in the morning we awoke to a sneezing cat. My inclination was to kick her off the bed and lock her out of the room, but I was too lazy to get out of bed. I have to admit that I would have felt a little bad for kicking her out of the room when she was "sick" too. She was sneezing like crazy though---probably 20 or more rapid fire sneezes at a time. They were shaking the bed. This is sort of how it went...

H: "Sneeze...sneeze...sneeze...sneeze...etc."

P: "Is Henri okay? Should we do something for her?"

(More sneezing.)

M: "Like what? What are you going to do for a sneezing cat?"

P: "I don't know..."

(15 minutes go by, filled with more sneezing and some drifting in and out of sleep.)

P: "Maybe I should give her some catnip?"

M: "You think catnip is going to help the sneezing? I think it might make it worse."

(Another fifteen minutes of sneezing and half-sleeping.)

P: "Maybe I could go look something up online to fix her?"

M: "You're not going to find something online to fix a sneezing cat right now!"

(Another ten minutes of sneezing and Henri leaves the bedroom.)

P: "I'll check on her when I get up for work."

(Two minutes go by. I get up to go check on the cat.)

P: (with relief) "You're going to go check on her, right?"

M: (stumbling) "Yeah, yeah, I'll be right back."

Thankfully Henri appears to have gotten over her sneezing fit now.

Mysterious Appearance

A pair of blue kiddie scissors appeared on my desk this morning. Everything else in my office appeared to be in order when I came in. But, there in the middle of my clear desk was the pair of blue round-tip scissors, proving that someone had been in my office over the weekend. I didn't see any other evidence of a craft project, like glue or little pieces of paper cut out to make a snowflake. Who knows how they ended up there? I can't imagine there were kids in my office over the weekend. Maybe someone was just randomly moving supplies from one office to another. The next thing you know I'll end up with a new stapler and no ruler...

Identity Crisis

P&AF and I had an amusing conversation during a break from work last week.

P: "So, I almost wore your boxers to work today."

M: "My boxers?"

(I am confused because I didn't even know that I really had any boxers, minus a pair of Halibutt boxers that are really more like knit shorts to me...)

P: "Yeah, I almost put your boxers on and wore them. But then I thought they looked awfully small."

M: "What boxers are you talking about?"

P: "I don't know. Your boxers. They say size 6."

(Now I'm really confused because I'm 99% sure that if I do have any boxers that he might confuse for his own, they would be size S, M, or L, not size 6.)

M: "Ummm...I don't think I have any size 6 boxers. What did they look like?"

P: "I don't know. Like boxers. Size 6...or maybe it was 36...yeah, maybe they were mine. Maybe I've gained a lot of weight and they just seemed small..."

M: "Were they the plaid boxers sitting on the basket of clean laundry?"

P: "Yeah, those boxers."

M: "Ummm...yeah, those are yours."

Loneliness Cure

Just in case you were worried about me being lonely, because maybe, just maybe the California DOT had finally forgotten about me and my law-breaking Mazda---well, don't worry! I got a new toll violation in the mail just the other day. It was good to see the old rogue subaru again. And I feel much better now that I've had a legitimate reason to visit the bay area fast trak website again....I don't think it's ever going to end. Ever.

Cricket Jailer

We have been inundated with crickets lately. At dusk, you can't walk on the sidewalk without hitting a couple, even if they just jump and bounce off your leg. I like them a lot better than cockroaches. Henri loves them. Her favorite thing to do is go out onto the balcony and chase crickets into the house. I'm not sure why they aren't as good on the balcony, but she wants them all inside. Maybe she hopes to play with them after we've gone asleep. She's at her very happiest when she has chased a half a dozen inside. She sits in the middle of the floor, gazing at all the crickets walking around her. It's like she is the cricket warden or something. Except for the part where she starts devouring them...

Germophobe

I went into the steam room at the gym yesterday. It wasn't super steamy, and it was supposed to smell like eucalyptus. I thought it smelled like dirty socks. I didn't enjoy it, and I didn't stay long. There was a little green hose attached to a water faucet in the room, and I wondered if it was used to make more steam. After leaving the steam room, I got my answer, as the guy who was in there turned on the hose and started spraying the rocks and the rest of the room down. And, as I watched, in horror, he began drinking from the little green hose. The dirty little green hose that had been laying on the dirty floor in a pool of dirty gym foot sweat in the dirty stinky sock smelling steam room.