Thin Mints & Betrayal

This open forum may not be the right venue for sharing my angst at my husband's betrayal of me, but I need to share my pain with the world. Here goes...

It started last month when he walked in the door with a bag of Girl Scout Cookies. There was a box of Thin Mints, the world's greatest Girl Scout cookie ever made.  "Get these out of here," I pleaded with him. "I can't be trusted to ration these."

"Really, you don't want them? I bought them just for you."

"I know you did and it's very sweet," I said. "But I'm telling you I don't want them. Take them to the office, okay? Please?"

So the next morning, he did. Or so I thought...

Yesterday I pulled open the freezer, looking for some form of dinner that would require no more effort than the pushing of microwave buttons on my part. I nudged a Bluebird bag of frozen peas and carrots aside and...

"BLAIR!" I screeched. "WHAT are THESE doing in HERE?!!"

"I guess you found the Thin Mints," he called from the front room.

I didn't say anything, but I was upset. Not mad, really, but frustrated. I had asked him to take the cookies out of the house. I had explained to him why I didn't want the cookies in the house. So why were the damn cookies still here?

A few hours later we were in the kitchen and Blair said, "I'm sorry about the cookies. I thought I'd keep them hidden until you were having a really bad day and then I'd pull them out and surprise you."

Am I married to the sweetest man alive, or what? I'm just a big 'ol meanie, is all. Of course, I'm now doing everything in my power to have a bad day so I may be rewarded with half a sieve of cookies. My only saving grace is for the box to remain unopened. Once the seal is broken, that's it. It's a thin mint free-for-all.

I've been bragging that this is the first year in about 30 years that a Thin Mint has not passed my lips. Oh well. I didn't eat any of the Peanut Butter cookies this year, so at least I've got that going for me. Right?

Trap and Release

I e-mailed my lurking kitty problem to my cat writers list-serv and was informed I need to do a trap and release. This consists of my buying or borrowing a humane trap, baiting it, catching kitty, taking kitty to vet and paying for a spay or neuter (also checking to see if the cat is nursing, indicating kittens are present) and then releasing.  That is my task for the weekend then--finding a trap and instigating Operation Big-Ass Kitty Catch.

I was feeling a little "grrrrr" yesterday about the situation. It's not stressful, but it's just one more thing to add to the list, you know? Then I received an e-mail from a writer colleague I've met at annual Cat Writer's conferences. A somewhat shy woman with a huge heart and passion for saving animals and she-doesn't-even-know-how-good-she-is writing skills.

She's dealing with an incredibly heart-wrenching and painful situation regarding some cats she's trying to convince the city to rescue from a homeless man. He carries them around in locked containers on his bike and while he might feed them, the cats are suffering from being cramped, have urine scalds on their legs and have to rest in their own feces. No one is listening to her and she has been told in annoyance by more than one cop and city official, "Lighten up, lady. They're just cats." You can read the full story here: http://www.petsweekly.com/Stories/Hostages.html.

I admire the work of the woman who wrote this. I won't go into details because they're too horrifying to mention, but she rescues cats that have been abused and tortured. There are some sick f---ing people out there in the world who like to take out their aggression on innocent animals. I don't have the stomach or mental strength to deal with even once what she deals with on a regular basis. Thank God there are people like her in the world, willing to do what the rest of us shield our eyes from.

Everyone please say a prayer for the cats suffering in the above story.

Big Ass Cat

I mentioned earlier the large (17 pounds if it's a day) long-haired black and white cat I'd seen lurking in the crawlspace under our home. Yesterday I hear two cats yowling and step out my front door to see big-ass kitty chasing Spike, our neighbors cat, across our yard.

"She's out! I'll close up the hole!" I think.

Kitty heard my thoughts, stopped in mid-lunge, and sprinted back to the house, pausing to stick her tongue out at me in the universal "nynah-nynah" tradition before diving in the hole leading to the crawlspace like Bugs Bunny diving in his rabbit hole to escape Elmer Fudd.

Crap.

I posed my quandry on my cat writers list-serv. I don't want to close the hole and trap the cat under my house, but if she has kittens, I don't want to separate her from them. Their advice is to set a trap, catch kitty, have her spayed/neutered. That doesn't solve the problems if there are kittens under there, but I really don't know how to address that. Our crawlspace is huge and rambling and in some areas there are only inches of crawlspace that a cat could squeeze through but a human never could.

I'm going to see if there are any trap and release groups in my area and if not, I guess Blair and I will be baiting some cat traps this weekend.

That's a bad kitty. =)

5 Nice Things That Happened to Me Yesterday

It's important to recognize the daily small good things in life. To that end, here's my off-the-top-of-my-head list of nice things that occurred in my life yesterday:

1. My tabby cat Olivia woke me up with a vibrating paw massage on my back.
2. I met my friend Melody at my satellite office (aka "Panera") to hand off some paperwork.  Melody was in a rush but when I asked if she had time to sit, she said, "I will for a minute, just to have that time in your presence." It might sound cheesy or off-the-cuff from someone else but Melody is sincere when she makes comments like that and it's flattering.
3. I took a pair of jeans into an alterations shop to be hemmed (just under 5'5" does that to you). I happened to be wearing a new wrap top that gapped every time I moved my arms. The seamstress added a snap to the front of the blouse on the spot while I waited--and didn't charge me.
4. I was a guest last night at a women's think tank group where I met a small circle of interesting, dynamic women.
5. Someone asked me if I'd lost weight. (No, but God bless you for asking).

Here's hoping nice things happen to you all day today.