Early Blood

(Neither a Rambo movie nor a feministic pondering of menarche.)

I'm up late, or early, or whatever, reading and a mosquito is buzzing relentlessly around my body which is sprawled on my couch. It doesn't seem to light at all the entire time and when it does--seemingly for the first time--I smack the bug, squashing him flat and feeling the squish beneath my palm. When I raise my hand several large and bright red droplets of blood show me that I was wrong. He had landed. And with that realization, I immediately begin to itch.

Cats are fuckin' insane.

I really could just end the post with the title, couldn't I?
I've always loved cats and dogs, but since my first two cats I had who were solely my pets died, I have yet to meet a cat with that special spark with me. I love my cats, but they are both insane. NCL (pronounced nickle) is Evil Insane. Born of incest and the hardscrabble barn cat life, he's just never been "right." Gertie is a lovely cat and happy to be here, but she's as Neurotic As All Hell. If she were a person, I wouldn't even be able to be friends with her, and we all know how mentally healthy I am, right? Somehow, though, the two of them get along. They stage late night pranks trying to get the dogs into trouble by getting the dogs all riled up and then hiding so it seems the dogs are the crazy ones. They picket our bed every morning demanding their fair share of rations as if they haven't eaten in years, chanting little cat versions of militant slogans. If the had thumbs, I'm sure they would have signs, or perhaps even chain themselves to the bedroom door.
Yesterday saw the last of their food, but I didn't know until it was too late to go buy some and it is still too early to go to the store where I buy it, so right now they are rioting upstairs. I'm not kidding. I hear myriad pounding footsteps as if they were an army of toddlers. I hear things falling, sliding, scattering, strange yowling, meowing, shrieking, litter scattering. And yet when I went up I found nothing amiss and both cats sitting at the top of the steps looking at me as if to say, "What? We're just sitting here. Totally not staging a peasant uprising. My what a pretty neck you have..."
Ten o'clock will not come soon enough for any of us.

Morning Reporters

Maybe it's because I'm tired and more easily annoyed, but every time I watch ABC's morning news, I find myself pondering if Mike Von Fremd is a real reporter or if ABC is having a laugh. The man looks like Charles Grodin and the "r"s at the end of his words go on forever. I often wonder if he's fallen asleep at the end of words ending in "r." And every one of his sentences has the exact same cadence. I just cannot even fathom a real person sounding like he does. It has to be a character he's doing. Or maybe he is Charles Grodin doing a character...