and there would be these beady eyes peering through the screen, poking fingers into the rips. They'd moved a tree stump to the window for just that purpose. I'd usually just sit up and chatter at them for a little while before going back to sleep. They were pretty funny too. When they'd hear/see me, there would be this mad scramble of raccoons trying to get the best view, which meant a tower of raccoons that frequently tumbled.
Okay, this is adorable.
For the last 15 minutes, I've been fantasizing about a hot cup of tea, while sitting on my sofa looking through a Crate & Barrel catalogue.
I should have a catalog to flip through. I have the hot tea already. Today really is of the suck. At least my meds are doing their job if not
leaving me with much in the way of fut. Painfree futless is better than the alternative.
I had tea yesterday, when I went home early because I slipped stepping off the curb and did a complete faceplant before going to work. I just brushed myself off and went to my car, but got stiffer and stiffer throughout the day. So I left after a half-day, picked up some ibuprofen at Walgreen's, brewed up some tea, kicked the cat off the warmed-up heating pad, and took a nap, all before 6:00 pm.
Wish I could do that again today, but I'm not stiff, so can't leave early. Damn.
Lunch is about over and I have to go back to work and I likely won't finish the the work that I absolutely had to have done last week, so I'll need to stay late,
again.
Which is a really long way of saying that either tea and catalogs or A&W and raccoons and bed sound absolutely divine right now.
Ow! That sounds awful, Kathy. I'm glad you're feeling better, even if it means you don't get to go home early.
Well, all that happened to me was a stiff neck and a scraped-up knee, as well as complete embarrassment over the fall (and not one "You okay there, lady?" from the two yard workers who were clipping the hedges). Funniest thing was the cat's new infatuation with the heating pad, and her pissed-off look when I pulled it out from under her.
When I was camping this fall, the campsite across from ours got raided by raccoons who managed to unlock a locked cooler and were attempting to drag it out of the campsite. They made a insane racket.
Question for Allyson--the reality show Get this Party Started--is that the one you were approached about? I saw the first few minutes on tv recently and wondered if that was it.
We were camping once when I was a kid and some people had left their food and stuff around when they went to the lake for a swim. Came back to find all the food gone and the bears, I shit you not, sittting at the picnic table drinking the wine they left to air.
When I was camping thsi fall, the campsite across from ours got raided by raccoons who manage to unlock a locked cooler and were attempting to drag it out of the campsite. They made a insane racket.
This has happened to me, as well. We even weighed down the top of the cooler with a frelling picnic table, one of the big heavy ones that comes with the campsite, and the little bandits still managed to steal our hotdogs.
Eeps, Kathy, ouch! Though a half-day with a nap and a heating pad does sound decently consolatory.
Department of Random:
This morning after dropping Emmett off at school, I listened to a report on NPR about changing traditions in a number of small Spanish villages that every year around this time hold huge fiestas commemorating the Christian conquest of Spain away from the Moors. Parades, pageants, marching bands, masses of food and alcohol, lots of dressing up, etc., etc. And, until this year, most of them have ended with something on the order of a wicker Moor or a wicker Mohammed being stuffed with gundpowder and blown up (in one town, Mohammed's head was traditionally lit with a cigar). This year, many of them are changing the end ritual, with either effigy-free bonfires or fireworks or whatnot.
The reporter interviewed some Spanish officials, a Muslim immigrant from Morocco, and the requisite Old Man With Lots Of Opinions Just Sitting In The Town Square. It just boggled me how placid and reasonable everyone was. Nobody huffed or snarled about Holy Tradition or tried to handwave it away or sputtered on about thin-skinned immigrants who have to assimilate and learn to love freedom of speech.
Instead, the officials said, "Well, the extremists are always looking for excuses to get violent, so if we can have fiestas without handing them a custom-made excuse, why not?" The immigrant said, "They have to show respect for other faiths. But I understand that they didn't mean any offense." And the OMWLOOJSITTS said, "We didn't mean to offend anyone, but if someone does get offended then of course you stop doing it. It's no big deal."
Where was the outrage? The defensiveness? The outcry against political correctness destroying the very fabric of their lives? What was with all the reasonable and the concilatory and the everyone assuming good intentions on everyone else's part? What kind of a crazy land is Spain, anyway?
