Writer's Workshop - Petly chaos

It’s my second attempt at writing from one of Mama’s Losin’ It’s prompts, and I chose Describe a time when your pet caused chaos.

I’m not a cat person, but when my sister Sissy broke up with her boyfriend back in the early 90’s, I agreed that we could get a cat for our apartment. She and her boyfriend had a dog together, and she missed the companionship of an animal once she was living with me. I didn’t want the responsibility of a dog when she wasn’t there, so I told her she could get a female cat. She brought home a cute little black and white kitten. The kitten’s very first night with us, Sissy and her boyfriend got back together, leaving me alone to take care of a cat I didn’t want in the first place. Sissy never even named it, and I refused to get attached to it so I wouldn’t name it either.

My sister moved out eventually and didn’t take the cat with her. When no-name went into her first heat and started howling about 9 months after Sissy brought her home, I figured I’d better get her fixed. I made an appointment and took her to the vet, where the receptionist asked me a question I couldn’t answer: What’s her name? I looked at her blankly and said, “Um, she doesn’t have one.” She insisted they had to have a name for their paperwork, so I shrugged and said, “Well, when she’s getting into trouble I call her a little monster.” So that’s how no-name got a real name: Monster. It was official. The receptionist even wrote it on a piece of tape and stuck it on the top of the cat carrier.

A few hours after I brought her home from the vet’s office, she started bleeding from her incision. It was around 9pm and my vet’s office was closed, so I had to take her to the nighttime emergency vet. I knew I had fallen for the little fuzzball (that hadn’t even had an official name the day before) when they took the carrier from me and told me she’d have to stay overnight. I sat down in the lobby and started crying because I had to leave her there.

In October 2005 I went with my friend Diane to England for 2 weeks. Monster had met Diane many, many times before, but she was getting a little old and crotchety at this point in her feline life. I think she may have been mad at Diane for taking me away, because after Diane left to go back home to Virginia, I saw that Monster had sprayed the door of the bedroom where Diane sleeps when she visits me. Marking her territory, I guess? The whole point of me telling Sissy to get a female cat in the first place was to prevent the spraying that male cats do.

A few months later, Diane and her daughter (my goddaughter) Ryan visited for a long weekend. Thinking about the spraying incident, I had closed up Monster in my 3rd bedroom, which also happens to be where my computer is. Diane went in to check her e-mail and Monster got out. Not a big deal. That is until I got a panicky call from Diane asking me when I was going to be home from work.

Apparently, when Monster got out of the computer room, she was her normal, loving self. For a while. Then she got a wild hair up her cat behind and scratched Ryan, who had made the obviously gigantic mistake of sitting down on the sofa with her. The thing is, Monster only had back claws (yes, I’m one of those horrible people who declawed her cat), so she really had to work to scratch someone. Then, she started hissing and biting at Diane and Ryan, and ended up chasing them into my downstairs bathroom. Diane realized that they could be trapped in the bathroom until I got home from work and she didn’t have any idea how long that would be. She needed her cell phone to call me, but her cell phone was in the kitchen, which would require her to leave the safety of the bathroom. When Diane would open the bathroom door, Monster was waiting there for her, like Cujo outside of that car. She armed herself with the plastic trashcan from the bathroom and performed evasive maneuvers by waving the trashcan back and forth in front of her vulnerable ankles as she scooted from the bathroom to the kitchen and back again. I received the panicky call after that daredevil mission.

On a normal night, not during rush hour, it would probably take me about 35-40 minutes to drive home. On a Friday night during rush hour, it took pretty close to an hour, if not more. When I opened my front door, Monster was sitting guard on the bottom step of my staircase. As soon as she saw it was me at the door, she ran to me and started meowing very loudly, winding herself around and around my legs. I’m sure she was trying to tell me about the horrible woman and child that had invaded our home while I wasn’t there and how she had them corralled in the bathroom to keep them from doing further harm. I picked her up and hollered to let Diane and Ryan know they could come out of the bathroom safely. Even though I was holding her, Monster still growled at them when she saw them. My cat growled.

Later Diane sent an e-mail to everyone she knows about the incident, and since Diane knows people on virtually every continent in the world, my poor, normally sweet Monster was maligned from New Zealand to New Jersey, when all she was trying to do was protect her home from the mean woman that took her mom away for two weeks the year before.

Monster's in kitty heaven now, but this is her with her head trapped in a Hecht's bag. Goofy cat.

Writer's Workshop - I Remember When...

Diane suggested a few weeks ago that I try the Writer’s Workshop prompts from Mama’s Losin’ It. Even though I’ve written down the prompts every week, I’ve never gotten around to actually writing anything from any of them. I thought I’d give it a try this week. I chose the prompt “I remember when…”

I remember when my mom told me about the facts of life. I was reading The Secret Garden in my room one Saturday when I was 9 years old. My mom came in and asked me to come with her because she “needed to talk to me.” Uh-oh! This couldn’t be good!

My mind started scrambling, trying to think of what I had done that was going to cause me to get in trouble. I was a pretty good kid, but when I did screw up, I tended to do it in a spectacular go-big-or-go-home way. But, aside from getting fussed at in ballet class when Mrs. Gravely caught me standing ON TOP of two barres where they met in the corner, getting ready to jump down (a la a wrestler in the ring), I couldn’t think of anything I had done lately that might require the dreaded talking to I was about to get. And, I didn’t think that Mrs. Gravely had told my mom about my Ric Flair impression.

The only other thing I could think of was that I had lost almost all of my earrings. I had gotten my ears pierced the year before and had gotten tons of earrings for my birthday and Christmas. Those little cards that contain about 10 different pairs in the shape of hearts, stars, and all the things little girls like? I had gotten so many of them. I could literally wear a different pair of earrings every day for 2 months or more. But, it turned out that I had very sensitive ears and no matter how much peroxide I put on my ears and on the earrings, by lunchtime everyday my ears were aching. So, I’d take my earrings off and put them in my desk. I had to leave my classroom to go to another to take a TAG math class. While I was gone, another kid came into my regular classroom to take the math class my teacher taught. That kid took my earrings every day. So, by the time my mom told me she needed to talk to me that Saturday, I only had 2 pairs of earrings left. That’s the kind of good kid that I was: I thought the worst thing I had done was accidentally have my earrings stolen because they hurt too much to wear.

I really thought I was in for it, though, as I was walking down the hall from my bedroom to the living room. I knew we were alone in the house. I knew that she had sent my little sister with my step-dad to a softball game. I was a dead girl walking.

When I came into the living room, Momma was sitting on the floor and she told me to sit down with her. She had a big box in front of her that she opened. Inside were things I’d never seen before. Then she started explaining all that I needed to know about becoming a young woman. She had ordered the box from the Kotex company and it had samples of different feminine products and a couple of little booklets that Momma said I could read and hold onto in case I had any questions about things. She had gotten me a couple of different styles of training bras too so that I could decide which one I liked better.

I’ve always been a pretty private person and I’m fairly modest. I think normally I would have been horrified that we were even having such an intimate discussion, but I hardly paid attention to what she was saying because I was just so relieved that I wasn’t in trouble over the earrings (or my ballet-wrestling)! Thank goodness for those booklets because I’m pretty sure most of the stuff that she told me that day went in one ear and out the other.

I hid my training bras in between some sweaters in a drawer because I didn’t want my little sister to know that I had them. A couple of weeks after our Big Talk, my mom, step-dad and I sat down to dinner. Momma called for my sister to join us. My back was to the hallway, but I knew when she had arrived because Momma and Dennis started laughing. I turned around to see what they were laughing about and there was my little sister, wearing my bra on her head like a hat. So much for being private and modest.

The Red Carpet

I grew up in a small town in Virginia and I dreamed of having friends from other countries. It fascinated me to think that other kids could be growing up so different from me. I still like the thought of having friends in other countries. I mentioned last week that I held onto Diane’s coattails while she was blogstalking. The very first place she led me was to Protégé’s blog: Life, Work, Pleasure. It also led to another friend, and she’s from another country! Protege is so smart and has the most beautiful pictures on her blog. She writes about the coolest things. One of my favorites was about Skagen, where Ålbæk Bay and Tannis Bay meet, and the waves from each crash into each other. The video is kind of amazing. She’s very thoughtful, in all senses of the word. She was the first person aside from Diane and my family to comment here, which meant a lot to me. Also, she thinks I’m funny, and that’s like pure catnip to me.

Last week after I gave Diane the Proximidade award (for the friendships we've made through blogging), I realized that I should have passed it on to Protégé also for how sweet and supportive she’s been to me. So, since I only gave it to one person and you’re supposed to pass it on to 8 people, I think I’ll just dole the other 7 out as I see fit. It’s my blog and I can do what I like with it. So, I’d like to pass it on to the first friend I made in the bloggy universe, Protégé.



Another thanks goes to Protégé since she gave me the Superior Scribbler Award. THANK YOU! It really means a lot to me.


Okay, now to my task…I’m supposed to pass the Superior Scribbler on to 5 people. Don't forget to add your name to Mr. Linky.



Heather – Here’s to your natural talent! Okay, it might not be musical and you might not be George Jones or Keith Richards, but writing (not to mention book reading, movie watching, and rollercoaster riding) is talent, and you happen to do it well. So there!

Diane – We’ve known each other for almost 19 years, and I’ve read and heard countless things you’ve written, but I’ve really enjoyed reading your blog (even if I did learn about your plug/wipe tendencies!). I’m glad other people are getting the chance to read what you write now and I'm proud that they're loving it!

Protégé – See above for all the reasons why you deserve this award back from me.

Shanna – Any blog that can make me laugh at kids throwing rocks at cars and the wild hairs and joint creaks that come with aging is okay by me. And, that list of funny things your children have said cracks me up. Lola and Miss Rumphius approve of your award-getting.

Candace – I came for the mutual Lochte love, and stayed for the lulz..and your writing. It’s funny and real and I love the stream-of-consciousness feel of it. I also kind of love that even though you live in the north, you spell y'all correctly when there are so many southerners that don't. That and you have great taste in music.

So, that's it! To quote Air Supply, I'm all out of love...

Boring Saturday

First of all, please let me say that I am NOT a violent person despite my Halloween post and my Meme post from a couple of weeks ago. Really, I'm not. I'm actually a very passive and peaceful person. And, those incidents took place many, many...um...many years ago. Plus, I was defending some friends in the story from the Meme post and I was protecting myself and my sister in the Halloween story. You should have seen me in all my 5'2", 90-pound glory with my arms stretched out across 6 of my friends at one of those Haunted Houses at the beach screaming at the Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy to leave my friends alone while they all cowered behind me. My bravado is sometimes bigger than my common sense, I guess.

I was just thinking that if someone happened upon my blog from wherever and they read something about me kicking my sister's boyfriend while he lay in the fetal position in my driveway...well, that might seem like I'm an awful person, and someone whose blog a person might not want to read.

Along with my friend Diane, I've committed to writing a 50,000 word novel in November on Nanowrimo.org. She says it's 1,700 words a day. That's a lot! Thankfully I've had most of an outline written for a while, so I'm going to see what I can make from that. Actually at the last writing retreat I went to, one of the promises I made at the end of class was to work on writing the story from my outline. Maybe this is the push I needed to follow through. The website is really slow and kept timing out on me, so I didn't research much about what's required, but Diane says they don't care how crappy it is, just that it's written. If I can write it in the 30 days in November, then I can edit it afterwards, so that takes a little pressure off. So, 1700 words a day, here I come! For better or worse.

This month Jupiter and Venus will be sharing the sky. Tonight, find the moon, just to the lower right you'll see Venus and the upper left you'll see Jupiter. The news said the best view should be around 6:48.

Well, that's all I know today.