Scary snuggling.

There have been several times now that Doc & I have joked about getting a Snuggie for two.  This is usually done when we’re battling over who has more of the blanket while we’re watching TV & neither of us wants to get up and walk five feet to get another blanket from either lounge chair across the room.  We usually then get sidetracked about discussing how we’d have to fight the dogs over it (they LOVE soft things) if we had one & then we’d end up having to get them their own.  Keep in mind, we joke about this.  Note the word “joke”.

Earlier this week I was developing a nasty sinus infection & commented to CCL that I am sure the dogs love it when I get sick because it then gives them a whole heap of time during which they can cuddle with me and take advantage of any soft blanket I pull out to use myself.  And then she hit me with this whopper: “Oh, my cats do that too with my Snuggie.  Well, it’s not a real Snuggie.  It’s an off brand that is called Snaket or something like that.  It scares the cats every time I pull it out, but then they get used to it.”

Can one blame them for being scared?!  Not only does CCL have a Snuggie, but she was too cheap to even buy the real thing.  So, yes, I’d also be scared if I saw someone pull out a knock-off Snuggie.  I don’t get how they can get past the fear part of it long enough to want to cuddle on it…

Voodoo Dolls & Virtual Viruses

I can only think of two times that I’ve been on CCL’s bad side.  I don’t recall now what action or words led to her giving me the cold shoulder each of those delightful occasions, but I’m sure it was something ridiculously minor that any reasonable soul wouldn’t ever have thought twice about. 

Most days I wish I could remember what it was that caused her to ignore me, as it was quite effective—but with it comes the risk of getting on her REALLY bad side.  And I do mean REALLY bad.  I was reminded of this today—a day during which I’ve not exactly been the most chipper or happy with my boss & her inability to communicate—when CCL suggested I take Rice Krispie treats a co-worker put in the break room & mold them to look like my boss so that I could then attack said treat…and then re-build it and do it all over again.  Shortly thereafter, she said she was thinking about it and realized that everything one would need to pull off the perfect murder exists at the flea market.  Plus, there’s the added bonus of not having security cameras or receipts that will later incriminate you.  (I told her she was scaring me.  And she was.)

But, having said all of that, CCL’s usual proposed form of revenge goes back to voodoo dolls and virtual viruses.  She actually has looked at voodoo dolls online for purchase & wants to get one to use on her boss, Cow.  (Cow has ridiculous looking orange-red hair & so CCL said she’d paint the doll’s hair accordingly.)  Fortunately for all of us, CCL is as cheap as they come, so she won’t be wasting money on a doll.  She’ll instead save that money for a kitty toy she finds at a garage sale, which is her usual weekend activity with her mother.

Beyond the voodoo doll is the threat of a virtual virus.  It is not a typical computer virus that destroys a computer—it’s some email you can send to a person letting them know they’ve been infected with a virus of some kind.  I’ve heard about this for almost five years now and still haven’t bothered to Google it to see what it actually is, but the impression I get each time she brings it up is that it’s some kind of email that says “you have been given the flu” or something.  I don’t know.  I don’t ask & she always says the exact same lines each time she tells me about it, so I never get any additional information.  Which reminds me…  What I love is that every time CCL brings something up she seems to think it’s a revelation—even though she’s talked about it for five years in some cases.  It’s always, “You know, they do have virtual viruses you can send someone!”  (Please note that if I could do half of an exclamation point here I would, as that is more representative of the excitement level she has than what is implied by using a full exclamation point.)  Today I said, “I know.”  I normally act like I’m learning along with her, but I didn’t have any ounce of charity in my bones today.

Speaking of which…

I sent her a picture today of an adorable dog that belongs to a friend of Doc’s.  He sent it in an attempt to cheer me up.  And it did.  Anyway, I passed it on to CCL & said, “Isn’t she adorable?!”  She replied with a picture of her cat and said, “Yes, but not as adorable as this.”  It took her no time at all.  She has pictures of her cat at the ready.  So, I emailed back and said that I was sure her expressed opinion was due to her own bias & that she truly meant the dog was cuter than any cat.  (I told you I wasn’t feeling charitable.)  That resulted in an immediate personal visit from her, telling me about her cat’s eyes that are like Puss in Boots’ from the Shrek movies.  I normally don’t bother emailing her or replying to emails she sends me.  Why I bothered today is beyond me.  I was regretting it the entire ten minutes she stood in my cube & told me about how sweet her cat is & how “kitty just loves mommy”.

However, I can pretty safely say that me putting up with moments like that—even when I bring them on myself—assures that there is not a voodoo doll that looks identical to me sitting in one of her drawers somewhere.  This is more than I can say for some people in CCL’s life...

Vacation.

Whenever CCL goes on vacation, it is truly a vacation for me too.  It feels like my paid time-off is doubled every year, in fact.  Granted, she doesn’t always use up her vacation time in a given year & unfortunately for both of us, it’s use-or-lose with no carryover.  Sometimes she takes a day off because she has a doctor’s appointment at some point in a given day.  (We’re only required to take our time off in two-hour increments, so to take the whole day off for a one-hour appointment is unnecessary, but a dramatic way for her to tell everyone she’s going to the doctor.)  One year, she took off multiple days so she could stay home and read Harry Potter books or go to the Harry Potter movies.  And, yes, sometimes she takes it off just to stay at home with the cats because “they need Mommy time”.  (As much as I love my dogs, please note that I feel my time spent with them in the morning, evening and weekends is sufficient for their needs & I will never take time off just to hang out with them.  For vet appointments, sure—but I’m fortunate in that my vet has early morning drop-off and late evening pick-up available, so even then I don’t take time off.) 

One particularly memorable mini-vacation for me was when she took a couple of days off because they were paving the street in front of her house.  She couldn’t handle the stress of it and didn’t want to have to park her car on the street, as she was afraid someone would steal it.  So, she parked it at her parents’ house and had them drive her back home.  Each time she needed to go to the store, she’d call them to take her so that she didn’t have to have her car parked at the end of the street filled with $200K-250K townhouses.

Keep in mind she technically lives in our neighborhood.  Also keep in mind that almost every house in our neighborhood has at least one luxury vehicle in the driveway at any given time—and that often these vehicles are left out of the respective garages overnight.  I would think that if a vehicle were going to be stolen, it would not, in fact, be CCL’s red 2001 Chevy Cavalier, complete with trunk filled to the brim with empty grocery bags (that’s a story for another time), but rather it would be one of the high-end vehicles that would net the would-be thieves more money.  But that’s not how it works in CCL’s world.  She’s been brought up to be paranoid and thoroughly convinced that as a single female, she is the lone target of every unsavory character that lives within a 50-mile radius of her townhouse.  She once almost bought a personalized door hanger that included her name and her cats’ names, but ultimately decided against it because she thought that someone would see that two of the names were clearly for pets & thus, they’d deduce she’s a single female and would then break in to rob her and assault her person.  (Trust me.  I may be creative, but even I can’t make this stuff up.)  Personally, I’d not have bought the sign because it’s tacky.  For CCL, it can’t be that simple.

Today CCL reminded me that she’s on vacation tomorrow and Monday.  I congratulated her and told her to have fun.  I don’t know why I do that.  Every single time I simply open myself up to hear, “Oh, it won’t be fun because I’m [enter boring task here…this can range from ‘going shopping with my parents’ to ‘doing dishes’ ].”  It’s never anything pleasant & always something she’s dreading that I then must hear details about.  Today it was that she needs a four-day weekend in order to clean her house so that the HOA’s bug terminator crew can enter to do their thing.  I can only imagine the extra spray they have to apply to her house, as you know that it has to be bug heaven.

So, while CCL takes time off to try to get her house presentable enough that someone can enter it without suing for on-the-job injuries, I get time off from CCL!  Oh blessed, blessed day!  (And in this case, days!)  I am off to do my happy dance…out of CCL’s line of vision, of course.

There is hope!

Yes, friends I said "hope" in relation to CCL.  This is something I never thought I'd do, as the only hope I ever have with her is that I hope she goes away quickly when she stops by to regale me with the latest cat activity taking place at her home.  But, this--this, friends, is a different kind of hope. 

This is the kind of hope that changes lives and puts warring nations at peace.  Yes, it's just that powerful.  It is the hope that CCL can defy the odds that inherently come with being a CCL and instead she can...fall in love!  Yes, love!  Yes, yes, it's true!  There's hope that there IS someone out there for her.  And I do believe it exists here:

http://www.purrsonals.com/

Think about it:  Cat lovers...  Personals site...  CCL never leaves her house and lives her life out via online sites...  It's a match, so to speak, made in heaven! 

I'm off to make a not-so-gentle suggestion to a certain co-worker...

Segue much?

I know I have previously mentioned CCL’s innate ability to turn any conversation back to her cats. Today’s interaction with her gave me yet another solid example of this.

She was standing in my cube, griping about how she’s walking on the cuffs of her pants that are all-of-a-sudden too long & she can’t figure out why. (I checked to make sure there weren’t any missing safety pins around the bottom edge of the pant legs, but then realized these aren’t her brown polyester pants that she has yet to have hemmed—after almost five years. Those pants have safety pins all the way around the bottom edge of the legs; but these were, in fact, her gray pants.) In practically the same breath, she said that she’s still on her exercise plan (which left her so sore she couldn’t lift a baking dish into the above-range microwave the other night when she wanted to heat dinner) but that she’s gaining weight.

I told her it was most likely muscle weight she’s gaining, particularly if her clothes are fitting her differently. She didn’t like my explanation and instead wondered if she’d simply shrunk. And I quote (literally—I was trying to look distracted & busy while she was talking to me in hopes she’d go away faster, so I was writing everything down that she said as it came out of her mouth & letting her think I was making work-related notes), “It could be possible that I shrunk, because my cats were pure evil yesterday when I was on a conference call while working from home.” She then went straight into what each cat did, who hissed at whom, which cat jumped on the counter, which one she had to continually talk to, etc. But going back to her oh-so-smooth segue…

When studying for the LSAT several years back now, I learned all about the typical types of logical argument, with my favorite being called Red Herring.  (Don’t ask me what it means now; I just remember the name of it and that I liked it for that very reason.)  While I don’t recall all of the specifics now, I can tell you that each argument has a premise & conclusion, and then there’s that whole fallacy thing that shows the conclusion is not supported by the premise.  Even though I’m not an expert, I’m going to go out on a limb here & state that the conclusion of CCL’s argument is not, in fact, supported by the premise. That is, unless she’s leaving something out. Re-stated, her original argument would be, “Because my cats were pure evil, it could be possible that I shrunk.” To me, that screams false. Only if her argument was, “Because my cats were pure evil and used a butcher knife to chop off pieces of my leg, it could be possible that I shrunk.” would it seem like a sound argument to me.

Since that is not the case, my conclusion is going to be that she still just sucks at segues & casual conversation. Fallacy that.