Minneapolis Adventures

Sorry for my lack of posting. TheDesigner has decreed that I should post something, regardless of whether I deem it sufficiently funny. And lately, I am not sufficiently funny; usually there are at least some good IrishTenor quotes, but I'm coming up emptyhanded.

So my blog is being overrun by my cat. Unfortunately for me - and perhaps for all of you - her stock is much higher these days, at least when it comes to funny...

...and anger issues...

...but I digress. The point is, she has the advantage when it comes to humor.

Exhibit A:
DrGamer went to great lengths trying to get Maya to play with him. He'd be down on his hands and knees on the floor coaxing the cat to let him pet her, much to the amusement of TheDesigner and me.

One night, he was standing in the living room and spotted the cat, who had just come out of my bedroom and was poking her head around the corner.

DrGamer: "Maya! Maya! Come here, kitty kitty."

Maya gave him a look that said in no uncertain terms, "Not on your life," turned, and walked back into my bedroom.

Exhibit B:
I am obscenely busy these days and am rarely home. It has become my belief that by the end of our lease, Maya is going to think she belongs to TheDesigner and not to me.

Me (jokingly, after Maya refused to come when called): "Would you like a cat in June?"

TheDesigner (to Maya, who was facing her): "You better be nice to your momma. She's threatening to give you away if you're not careful."

At that moment, without missing a beat, Maya turned a death glare in my direction.


Clearly my cat has a superior sense of comedic timing.

I think Thundercat and Edison are really long-lost relatives.

Last night, IrishTenor and I were cuddled up on the couch watching Tivo-ed episodes of The Office when our baby, with no warning whatsoever, scaled the curtains and came damn near to hanging from the curtain rod like it was a trapeze and she was a daring young man (as opposed to a brainless cat-baby).

She looked so much like a miniature, tan Edison that I burst out laughing and was promptly scolded by IrishTenor, who thought we should be presenting a united front when disciplining her. He subscribes to the idea that with discipline, she can be taught to curb curtain-scaling impulses.

I'm a skeptic.

So Mona, how would you like a kitten? I bet you would really like a kitten. Because I would sure love to ship you a kitten. She's...exuberant and spontaneous. Yeah. We'll phrase it like that.

The worst kid I knew at Cobb-Cook Elementary was a boy named "C.P." In first grade, he was already misbehaving in class and beating up on other kids and - most scandalous of all - trying to look up girls' skirts. We would walk down the hall, single file, on the way to lunch, and C.P. would be craning his neck trying to walk and look up a girl's skirt at the same time. At six years old, C.P. was already strong and mean and scary. It was well known that he was the worst kid in the class, and he was widely feared. Without having a true grasp of the concept of evil, we had him pegged as the original source.

My best friend and I, along with two boys in our class, formed an alliance of sorts for safety. The goal was to stick together and become strong enough (either individually or as a group; it didn't much matter to us) to beat up C.P. If we could beat him up and give him a "snow job" (Urban Dictionary's definition #10), then we could consider ourselves safe from harm at his hands. Pushing C.P. down in the snow and rubbing his face in it would be a convincing show of our collective strength. After that, we were positive, he would be terrified into leaving us alone.

We "trained" every day at recess and were convinced we were making progress. Even the weakest boy in our alliance seemed to be getting stronger. The time finally came for us to test our strength against C.P. and defeat him once and for all. Suffice to say we failed miserably. C.P. was still stronger and meaner than the four of us together. Not only did we not give him a snow job, but we also all ended up being shoved into undignified positions in the snow.

Surely, we decided, C.P. really was the source of all evil.

By second grade, most of us had given up on getting physical revenge on C.P. and moved toward more passive-aggressive coping mechanisms. One girl in my class, "Red," made up what she called "The C.P. Game." She folded a square piece of paper into something like this:



On the outside flaps, she wrote numbers 1-8. On the inside panels, she wrote the names of eight different colors. Red would have any player of the C.P. Game give her a number between 1 and 8. Carefully, Red would open and shut the folded piece of paper and count to the number she had been given. Out of the four visible panels named for colors, she would have the player pick a color. Again, Red would open and shut the folded piece of paper, this time spelling the chosen color. Finally, the player would pick another visible panel with a color. Red opened up the paper and looked under the selected panel...and read off some terrible demise that was certain to befall C.P. These were generally along the lines of, "C.P. will die" or "C.P. won't get any Christmas presents."

I don't know what happened to C.P. after elementary school. I don't think "C.P. will fade into obscurity and perhaps not graduate from high school" was among the potential calamities in the C.P. Game. But I do hope he didn't die and that he has gone on to receive many Christmas presents.

While watching the NFL intro featuring Pink:

Arbusto: "Pink needs to go the fuck away. Oh God, I've been swearing a lot - Damn it!"

That's two swears, 'Busto. You owe me two quarters.