A cat person in a dog people family
“How did you turn out to be a cat person, anyhow?” my dad asked last week.
A good question, in a way. The whole famn damily is dog people. My siblings, my cousins, my natural mother, my unnatural stepmother, my vile Texas grandma and my sweet little bluehaired down Eastern grandm’ma. We found a jaunty poem about a dead cat in Grandmother’s personal papers. Shit you not.
On another level, it was an incredibly fucking stupid question to ask someone bleeding from a fresh dog bite.
Yeah. Stoathund here had a few practice snaps before moving in for some delicious stoatburger.
“See, if she decides something is hers, you’d better not mess with it,” my father explained patiently, like it was real stupid of me not to know that. Problem is, she decides something is hers VERY FAST. Like, in the blink of an eye. Like, the entire contents of the dishwasher. Which is a bitch if you’re loading it and aren’t really paying attention. Yeah, you load the dishwasher then, you smart-alecky old coot.
I should have been on guard. I’d seen her pull silverware out of the dishwasher and parade around waving it in the air like, “g’wan, weaselbreath — dare you to touch my spoon!” Ugh. I probably ate grapefruit with it next morning.
Do you know what they do when she gets hold of something like that? To get the whatever-it-is away from her? They give her a treat.
That’s right. When the dog acts like a shitbag, they reward her. Now, I am but an humble cat person, but even I know when you reward a dog for being a shitbag, you might as well rename her Ol’ Shitbag, because you’re going to get a LOT of shitbaggery out of that animal.
Whereas cats are shitbags out of sheer joy and professionalism.
December 4, 2007 — 6:28 pm
Comments: 57
Oh. Right. Thanksgiving.
My assorted brothers had spousal families to eat with in the afternoon, so we had a Thanksgiving brunchy thing.
Have you ever had riced eggs? My stepmother is generally a very good cook, but I don’t know about this one. You boil eggs and then “rice” them with a cheese shredder, make a roux and pour it over the top. “The boys fight over this,” she said. And I saw them do it, too, but damned if I can work out why.
Anyhow, she makes the only edible grits in the world. She makes them the regular bland way, then mixes in raw egg and cheese and bakes it. Nice. Basically, you melt cheese on something, I’m going to eat it. I’m an au gratin kind of a gal.
I got three jackets, two pairs of slacks (slacks! That I should wear slacks!), several tops, a skirt and five pairs of shoes out of the deal. I like two of the jackets and one of the pairs of shoes, so I’m going to call this a success.
Now I’ve essentially got two weeks to de-junkify this place. And a headcold, which I presumably picked up in the airport in Cincinnati. Yeah, I knew that germy infant in the seat in front of me was going to give me a disease.
November 28, 2007 — 4:49 pm
Comments: 37
Nashville: blame it on the weasels
Nashville! It’s not a bad city, really. If you stay away from the touristy bits and avoid Summers, it’s a nice enough town.
My great great great great great grandparents led the first wave of white families to settle along the Cumberland River around the stockade fort pictured above (the original, not that replica) in 1779. Fort Nashborough was named after Francis Nash, a brigadier general killed in the Revolutionary War two years earlier. He and my grandfather were both North Carolinians and veterans of the War of the Regulators. Otherwise, the place would probably be called Weaselville, and that would have made it really hard to market as a vacation spot.
The next few decades, the story is all about clashes between the settlers and the Chickamauga band of Cherokees, so we’re hopelessly unable to talk sense about it. But, hey, Thanksgiving is the time for injun stories.
So here’s my great great great great grandmother. One day, a Cherokee band fired a single musket volley at the fort and fled, luring the men out into an ambush. Two hundred Indians got between twenty settlers and the fort. The settlers dismounted, and the Indians chased after their horses. Grandma saw an opportunity, opened the gates and set the dogs on them, buying enough time for the men to get back inside.
As someone remarked later, “thank God indians love horses and hate dogs” or no-one would have come home that day. My great great great great grandfather was born in that fort some time later. So, on the whole, hooray.
November 21, 2007 — 7:30 am
Comments: 11
If she offers me an apple, I’m outta there…
Today’s the day I’m a-sposed to be out…<koff>…clothes shopping with my stepmother.
What? You can’t see Stoaty as Snow White? Pff! You can smooch weasel butt!
November 20, 2007 — 8:31 am
Comments: 10
There I go again
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It’s about two things I’m especially good at: gluttony and gratitude. And four days off!
I do it up big every year, with turkey and dressing and potatoes and peas and candied yams and those peculiar gluey white supermarket bake ‘n’ serve rolls I love so dearly but only buy for special occasions because they’re pharmaceutical-grade empty stodge. Then the cats and I sit down and eat ourselves spherical, pass out in an unseemly tryptophan coma, and wake up to three more days of vile, uncontrollable gas and glorious leftovers.
Friends and coworkers — and family especially — have always considered my attitude toward holidays unseemly and inappropriate. As an old maid, I guess I am expected to spend national holidays drinking weak tea, nibbling a dry biscuit and thinking how different things would be if only I had a family. At least two relatives phone each Thanksgiving (and, for that matter, Christmas) and ask wistfully if I am celebrating again. “What, with the turkey? And everything?” They sound exasperated.
My stepmother is especially resentful. She likes nothing better than getting us all together for T’day — but not for warm, happy, a very special episode of the Waltons reasons. See, she can use the big diningroom when there are people over. And the good silver. And we can all sit up straight in our Sunday best and pick at tiny servings of exotic food.
I did it, like, once. I was terrified the whole time I’d have a sudden, mysterious outbreak of adult-onset Tourette’s. I did say something especially stupid to my little brother. I forget what it was. (I’m lying. Of course I remember what it was). The experience was everything Thanksgiving isn’t.
Well, this year, she wins. This is likely to be my last Thanksgiving in the US, and she’s going to buy me a…a…oh, sweet Jesus…a dress. So, see, I have to go. I’m leaving this afternoon.
Back on Saturday. I don’t know how often I’ll have net access, so I’ll auto-post some shit while I’m gone.
What’s the opposite of thankful? Oh, yeah…dead drunk.
Ohmigosh! I almost forgot! It’s the anniversary of my favorite own post ever. Last year, I spent some time over the Thanksgiving holiday creating this moving tribute to Damien’s jaunty balls, snipped off in a tragic veterinary incident the week previous. The procedure did not, contrary to expectations, mellow him in the slightest.
I’m especially proud of the soundtrack. Do you know how hard it is to compose appropriate theme music for excised testicles?
November 19, 2007 — 6:25 am
Comments: 43
Really, REALLY unfortunate wedding announcements
Or, When NOT to Hyphenate Your Name. What’s my favorite? Best Lay? Wang Holder? Weener Whipple? Peters Rising? No, I can’t choose. Go see them all for yourself.
Speaking of names, I am inevitably going to have to become Mrs Uncle Badger or they won’t let me stay across the pond or get access to the wonderful National Health Service. I am, of course, proud and delighted to wear a family name associated with thousands of years of smelly, lice-ridden, bad tempered mustelids who live down holes and eat worms, but this does present me with a problem.
See, in the UK, a woman typically exchanges her husband’s last name for her own, keeping her same old given first and middle name. In the US, she takes his last name, drops her middle name and her own last name shifts over and becomes her new middle name. So I have a choice here.
To complicate matters, I have TWO middle names, and they’re corkers. My mama approached baby names and dog names in a similar spirit of mad hijinks and good clean fun. If I’d been born ten years later, in her commune days, I’m convinced I would have ended up Lemondrop Polythene Snickerdoodle Weasel. As it is, I got a melange of cornpone polysyllabic family names, something very like Stoaty Terwilliger Rothschild Weasel.
So do I follow the Brit tradition — Stoaty Terwilliger Rothschild Badger — and continue to sound like something that wandered boozily out of a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon to piss down your leg? Or do I go with the alternate, Stoaty Weasel Badger, and sound all classy and shit, like some kind of a fucking duchess already? (Don’t even suggest hyphenating the two. Stoaty don’t play that. I think that’s getting married with your fingers crossed behind your back).
I know y’all are going to be disappointed in me, but I’m leaning toward “duchess.” I’ve enjoyed my stupid name very much, but enough’s enough. I think I’ll play grownup for a while. I’m sick of being unable to fill out forms (try fitting “Terwilliger Rothschild” in the little space they leave for middle names) and having to spell it out for people.
But, man, would I ever love to be Crystal Butts McCracken.
September 20, 2007 — 8:20 am
Comments: 26
I found it!
Remember that coonskin cap I told y’all my oldest brother knitted me? I found it in the basement this weekend when I was throwing away my old college clothes. Here it is, charmingly modeled by Chastity.
Then I looked him up on the web. My brother, I mean. He uses a singular online username and he sometimes mentions his real name (he’s got a highly cornpone Southern moniker, too. Thanks, Mom), so I easily tracked him down first time I tried. Every once in a while, I look him up to see how things are going. We were eight years apart and not even a little bit close. Getting in touch directly might result in…more of a relationship than I’m looking for. Still…you know. Fambly.
Turns out he still knits. He has gout. And three grandchildren, one of whom likes astronomy. And his favorite band is Tool.
Isn’t the internet neat?
August 29, 2007 — 11:44 pm
Comments: 22
I’m Dyin’ Over Here
And a third one pipes up and says, “you’re only supposed to feed birds puffins!”
And a fourth one says, “what’s a puffin?”
And #3 says, “I don’t know…isn’t that what Mary Poppins said? ‘Feed the birds, puffins a day’?”
I almost swallowed my tongue. I was a huge Mary Poppins fan, incidentally. Here’s a little something you can do that will affect your maternal relationship for life. Ask your mom, in a wistful tone, “Mother, if you died, what are the chances Dad would marry Julie Andrews?” Works a treat!
Oh, hey, and if you don’t read The Corner, you probably missed this:
“That morose day of Napoleon’s surrender…witnessed one of history’s grandest homophonic sentences, a homophone being, we might say, a verbal coincidence….Napoleon stood silent on the deck for a painful while and then muttered with resignation: ‘Cast off, it is time to go.’ Only the Corsican said it in his accented French which he had learned at the age of ten: ‘A l’eau, c’est l’heure’ [literally: ‘at the water, it’s the hour’ — stoaty]. A young British sailor standing on deck knew not the gilded tongue of mankind’s golden race. Under the impression that the fallen emperor was speaking English, the sailor was flattered by what he mistook for familiarity and later reported that Napoleon had the courtesy to address him, ‘Hello, sailor.’”
From a new book out called Coincidentally: Unserious Reflections on Trivial Connections. Looks like fun.
All of which puts me in mind of the Archive of Misheard Lyrics.
Yeah, I know you’ve been there before…but how long ago?
August 27, 2007 — 5:58 pm
Comments: 28
It isn’t what you know, it’s who you know
It’s all about the connections, baby.
July 17, 2007 — 4:21 am
Comments: 17
What I Did on My Summer Vacation, by S. Weasel
I’m back. And I don’t have anything in particular to say for myself, so let’s get right to it.
The journey happened more or less as predicted, with the interesting bits under the heading “or less.” Like the prop plane that flew the last leg across Tennessee. We were directed out on the tarmac, where half a dozen small twin engine planes were buzzing lazily in the sun. Ours was gray and grubby, without livery. I’m sure it carried ordinance in Dubya Dubya Eye Eye.
We had to walk up to it and climb steps, just like the old days. Huh. I just thought. The last time I flew into Tri Cities airport it was in a plane exactly like this one. I had an explosive nosebleed, which I usually did at altitude. It produced gratifying response in stewardesses, as they were called in another era. I was going to see my grandmother. I was seven.
Anyhow, after that — hey, did anybody spot the flaw in my master plan? We showed up boozeless and planned to buy liquor on the way up. On a Sunday. In rural Tennessee. The horrible realization that this was EXTREMELY unlikely didn’t dissuade us from driving to several liquor stores in panic and leaving greasy noseprints on the front door. The rest of the party weren’t expected up until the next morning, so there was nothing for it but…beer. You can buy beer in the grocery stores any time.
Now, I like the occasional beer, but as an inebriation vehicle, it sucks. The ratio of booze molecules to pee molecules is severely whack. I bought two six packs and only managed to down four beers. I was horribly sober after, but Jesus — that’s more liquid than it generally takes to bathe my person. I fell asleep at last and all night long I dreamed of urination. Everywhere I went in the dreamscape, I had a delightful, satisfying whizz. I didn’t pee the bed, but I gave the idea serious consideration.
So anyway, there wasn’t really time to go stand on my own grave. My cousin was like, “do you want to drive over and…you know. The usual?” And I’m like, “nah. We can just wave as we go by.”
The rest was fine. I guess. The liquor stores opened next morning and I don’t remember much after that.
July 12, 2007 — 5:56 pm
Comments: 10