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.

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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.

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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?

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We totally thought the raccoons were bears, Brenda, they made so much noise.

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.

Apparently their little legs are stronger than they look.

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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.

Puppycat's OTP is Puppycat/Heating pad. She sneaks onto it whenever I get up. She will also sleep on it when it is off, just hoping that the magic heat will come back. She's a heat ho.

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is that the one you were approached about?

No idea. There wasn't a name for it when they spoke to me, but thanks for jogging my memory, because that call was hilarious.

"My boss could totally introduce you to JJ Abrams."

Okey dokey.

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What kind of a crazy land is Spain, anyway?

One o' them furrin' places, with the craxy idealologists, and what not.

Beware the what not.

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Before yesterday encounter with the heating pad, Amarna's OTP was with the microfiber blanket on my bed--she loves to stand on it and just knead it for what seems like hours before curling up and sleeping on it.

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When my folks' cat, Chaika, got to be 16 or 17, my dad started leaving a heating pad on in the garage to sleep on. Needless to say, she loved it. She would sleep on it so much, her sweat would felt her fur into one great mass on her side that would have to be shorn off.

So beware, kitty cats! The seductive heating pad will lead you down a rocky road to lopsided furriness.

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The raccoons were always trying to break into the house. I'd wake up with a freaked out cat trying to hide in my head 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. They were quite used to people up there.

Oh good lord. I freaked out in the best possible way the day I ran across a pair of them when on my way to work. I fear that, were this to have happened, I may have had to open the window for them and just invited them to take whatever they felt like. And then Bec would have been angry at me. (Actually, she likes raccoons more than I do. She might have got to the window first.)

What kind of a crazy land is Spain, anyway?

One word: siesta.

Ooh! And lemon gelato drumsticks! And fanta limon!

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