Animal Magnetism

Several months ago, I related the tale of rescuing a cat from the center median of an interstate highway. In that post, I mentioned The Queen's gift/curse relating to animals in distress. I am convinced that The Queen puts off a pheromone or the psychic equivalent of the bat signal for animals in distress. It doesn't matter what part of the animal kingdom is involved, they seem to have a knack for finding The Queen. So far, the list of animals she has assisted includes multiple varieties of birds, cats and dogs, snakes, bunnies, turtles and more.

Well, Friday night it happened again. 

The Queen, M&M and I went out for dinner and dessert in Fort Worth. Dessert was at the Food Hall at Crockett Row in the West 7TH area of  Fort Worth. This is one of those multiple use shopping/dining/residential/entertainment developments with mid-rise apartments built above the commercial lease spaces on the ground floors. There is both garage parking and street level parking available. This particular evening, we chose the street level parking. 

We had a lovely dessert of cupcakes from Gigi's Cupcakes in the Food Hall, and we had just gotten back to our car when The Queen heard the faintest of "mews". We all turned around to see this tiny little half starved kitten running up to us with that "Hey buddy, could you spare food?" look. 

You see where this is going I'm sure. 

We spent about an hour out there on the street taking turns petting him, looking for possible places he could have come from (none were apparent - apartments above, parking garage below and across the street), finding him some food to eat (he tore up a small bowl of chicken shawarma and some cream), discussing the insanity of bringing little fuzzball to the menagerie, etc. 

We eventually decided that there was no momma kitty or siblings nearby nor any likely place where he could call home. So, we picked him up and headed to the car. He road home like he was a pro at riding in cars. No freaking out. No crying. Just curled up and purred contentedly. 

He bears a striking resemblance to my beloved and dearly departed cat Sneaker. He talks a lot and purrs almost non-stop. He's been attacking my hands and feet while I've been writing this. We haven't decided on a name yet, but we have several contenders. 

M&M wanted to name him Kung Pao. That was a hard no for The Queen and I. Snickerdoodle was an early suggestion/rejection. Earl Grey was given the boot. Friday was discussed, but died for lack of  enthusiasm. Iggy, Igor and Ozzy (Clawsborne) are the current leading candidates. We shall see what sticks as his personality comes out.  

Some Thoughts for M&M's Future Suitors

Though I am loathe to admit it, one day, in the not too distant future (the further the better), my little M&M will look upon a boy with a gleam in her eye and captivate the poor, unsuspecting youth thereby earning a level of scrutiny usually only reserved for sub atomic particles and IRS audits. Dear lad, here are some things for you to think about as you enjoy the relaxing sounds of latex gloves being pulled on and shotgun shells being chambered.

1) Don't run...you'll only die tired.

While this has been the motto of the United States Marine Corps Snipers, there is much truth here for you to consider. Note, the slowest bullet I shoot flys at a leisurely (and subsonic) 850ish feet per second.

You don't.

2) No smoking...unless you enjoy being on fire.

3) Old age and treachery trumps youth and ability.

I was your age once. I know what you're thinking. I know what you're going to do before you do it. You, however, lack the breadth of my experience. You have no idea what I am capable of. By the way...your shoe laces are untied.

4) Life isn't fair...neither am I.

You are assumed to be on notice of the rules and expectations. If you are unclear on what those rules or expectations are, you'd best ask questions ahead of time.

5) Freedom of choice exists...freedom from consequences does not.

Go ahead...try and violate the law of gravity. See how that works out for you. Same concept applies with me and my daughter.

Have a nice day.

Well...Poop

Somewhere in the Dallas area, right now, a home inspector is yelling "I told you so."

When the buyer's inspection took place last week, the inspector noted a laundry list of things to take care of most of which was minor stuff like adding a rubber bushing to the holes in the circuit breaker box in the garage. One of the items he noted was to trim the trees back from the electric service drop line from the  pole to the house.

Here's the page out of his report I'm talking about.

Right under the service line next to the driveway is a line of crepe myrtle trees that I have let go unpruned because I like crepe myrtles and feel that God didn't intend for them to be hacked within an inch of their lives once a year. Also, near the pole in the side yard is an ugly tree that is tall, gnarly and in the middle of trying to die. It had a limb growing over the service drop line as well.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

Dead tree limb + service drop line = this:

+ this:

Daddy Hawk is not happy. An electrician is coming by today to let us know how bad the repair cost is going to be. I get to spend my second Father's Day working my butt off cleaning, clearing tree branches, etc. The thing that really chaps my hide the most is that the option period ended Sunday, and the buyer's realtor had said to hold off doing anything until after the option period was over. Naturally, the tree limb falls while I am at work the day after the option period ends.

I blame The Queen. She was just commenting about how smoothly the sale was going.

The Purge Has Begun

Let me preface this post by stating, for the record, I love my inlaws. I really do. I could have done a LOT worse in the inlaw department. They are very kind, faithful people who are easy to get along with.

They are also hoarders.

Now, let me back up the story a bit to give you the full effect.

Around about the end of 2003 when I was preparing to propose to The Queen, The Queen Mum's Mum (who was in her 80s at the time) was living by herself in a modest apartment in California. She was also beginning to have some health problems which was impacting her ability to care for herself. We received calls from the people in her church who were concerned and weren't sure the family was aware.

We weren't.

Discussions were had, and a plot was hatched to kidnap Grandma. She had already been planning to come to Texas to visit the family for Thanksgiving. Little did she know, she would not be going back to California. I proposed to The Queen (making her The Queen To Be at the time) shortly after Thanksgiving, and The Queen To Be made it clear she wanted her Grandma at the wedding.

Okay. Can do.

A wedding was planned in under 4 weeks. I use the term "planned" in loosest sense of the word. Most of our planning consisted of telling our friends "Handle it."

They did. Did I mention we have awesome friends?

Meanwhile, back in California, the church folks were coordinating with my inlaws the packing and loading of Grandma's worldly possessions (all of them) for moving to Texas. Grandma had been "convinced" to stay with us in Texas after the wedding. And by "convinced", I mean my inlaws told her she was in no shape to go home and was staying and that was that. Other people in the family have other ideas about what happened. They would be misinformed. So, shhhh...no talking.

As you might expect, things that should have been disposed of in California were instead boxed up and loaded along with everything else. The vast majority of those items are still in the same boxes they were packed in to this day.

Now, at the time of the Royal Wedding, the then proto Daddy Hawk was living in a modest 1200 square foot house with a two car garage. One side of the garage held a 1973 Datsun 240Z project that never got off the ground. The other side held a motorcycle and other stuff bachelors accumulate. To this disorganized mess was added a significant portion of Grandma's possessions the remainder of which were stored elsewhere. These possessions made the move with The Queen and I when we purchased the Castle in July 2004.

This state of affairs continued until October 2004. That was when the inlaws including Grandma moved in with us. This was necessitated by the sale of The Queen's pre-marital bacherlotte pad (a nice one bedroom condo) which was taken over by the inlaws after the ink was dry on the marriage certificate.

Now, picture for a moment, the Castle in all its glory. 2230 square feet of living space and the EPIC 1600 square foot man cave/workshop not including the "chicken coop" which is another 300 to 400 square feet of storage (in the "there's a roof...sort of" kind of way). It was a spacious palace to The Queen and I with more room than our respective pre-marriage abodes combined.

Now, picture for a moment, not one, not two, not even three, but four (FOUR!!!...mine, The Queen's, The Inlaws' and Grandma's) households worth of stuff being crammed into every nook and cranny available.

My shop, where I had great plans of building things (especially an airplane), was full. Not just full mind you but "stuffed to the gills with somewhat passable paths through the stacks" full. To make matters worse (from my perspective at least), no thought was given by those responsible nor input sought from me as to how things should be stored.

As you might imagine, this has been a sore spot for me for a long time now.

As a result, I have largely stayed out of the shop since. The rats; however, have made themselves right at home. Which, inevitably, led to the vast majority of the items in the shops being destroyed in one manner or another.

So, the sale of the house has finally led to necessity becoming the mother of disposal. Acquiescence was obtained, and this was the initial result:

That's roughly 20 to 25 feet in length, 4 to 5 feet high at the tallest and 5 to 6 feet wide at the widest. Most of it is covered in rat excretions.

Apparently, that was NOT acceptable to the trash service. They allowed as how all debris has to be in bags not to exceed 50 pounds and all boxes have to be broken down for recycling. So, guess what I did last night for three hours. That became this:

The cardboard boxes are being held down by boxes full of recyclables lest we pollinate the neighborhood with cardboard descecrated by rodents. It was interesting, however, to see some of the things that were boxed up. The empty glass juice jars were a little odd. The potato peeler in the middle of a box of sweaters (that were long out of style when they were boxed) was definitely note worthy. Phone books. Old junk mail. Electronics that were obsolete when they were boxed up. Broken glass. The meat clever in the box with the spices was a nice touch.

We did find a box full of old baseball cards. Maybe there's a Mickey Mantle or Babe Ruth rookie card in there, and I won't have to work anymore.

I will say this though...it was very cathartic to dispose of all this despite the risk of vermin borne disease (yes, mask and gloves were used; and, yes, I took a long, hot shower after I was done). The scary part is that there is still stuff in the shop and the house to be dealt with.

That Smarts

Well, I had hoped that my 200TH post would be a little more profound than this is likely to be; but, I figure if I don't start cranking out the free ice cream again soon, y'all just might go get your fix elsewhere. So, where has Waldo been lately? When we last checked in on our hero, he was overcome by the emotion of having been accepted to law school. Much, as they say, has transpired since last we spoke.

I spent the remainder of the week following receipt of my acceptance to law school in a giddy daze. I did go see my youngest niece's orchestra concert that evening which was enjoyable even though it resulted in one of those "When I was your age"/"Your tax dollars at work" moments. The concert was held in the cafeteria/auditorium of my niece's middle school. As I perused my surroundings while waiting for my niece's orchestra to get to the stage (her's was the last of four different groups), I noticed that the cafeteria was not the style of school cafeteria to which I was accustomed when I was in school. In fact, it looked more like the food court at the mall. You had separate counters for burgers, pizza, fried chicken, and plate lunches in addition to the candy/snacks/bakery counter. When did this start happening??? When I was in middle school, what they were serving in the SINGLE lunch line was IT. If you didn't like it, you were out of luck. Kids have it so easy today. No adversity to face. They don't have to learn how to suck it up and take it...whatever it is.

Moving on, two days later, my great uncle (mom's dad's younger brother) passed away at the age of 82. His health had been in decline for the last 10 years or so following a motorcycle accident. His memorial service took place over Memorial Day weekend in the central Texas town where he had lived most of his life. I went with mom and my sister...the devil to go to the service which was held at the church where my great uncle had attended since he was a boy with my great grandparents. Funerals and memorial services are generally not fun events, and this was no exception. I do have to say this was probably the least coherent funeral service to which I've been. I'm not sure what a normal Church of Christ funeral service is supposed to be like, but I'm pretty sure this wasn't even close.

The memorial service also happened to coincide with my grandfather's (mom's dad) 90TH birthday which is somehow appropriate. According to mom, he's extremely proud of the fact that I've been accepted to law school even though he made no mention of such feelings to my face while we were there. I think he's just waiting until the ink is dry on my bar card so that he can ask me to sue someone for him. Personally, his pride and approval mean less to me than a warm bucket of spit; however, I can't completely turn my back on him. I have learned things from him, both good and bad, that make me who I am today, and I must grudgingly admit that he is a necessary component of my existence whether I like it or not. One of these days, I will have to explain my feelings about him in more detail to give you, my faithful readers, some idea of why I want to be standing behind him when he stands before God. If I could sell tickets to that event, I would.

That brings us to the next reason why I've been AWOL the last week or two. A week ago Friday, I was snuggling up next to The Queen in bed pulling the covers up when the covers stopped and my left hand didn't. My hand flew straight back into my face and impacted my left eyeball. I clearly remember my eyeball compressing, and I saw a ring of pretty blue and yellow stars in a pitch black room. I yelled but, in a shining moment in the ongoing development of my Christian character, didn't cuss. The Queen asked what happened; and, after being told, she started laughing at me. I eventually had to laugh to and said "It's all fun and games until someone punches their own eye out."

Now, a normal person would expect to wake up the next day to a black eye in the eye that was hit. Nope. Not me. I woke up the next day, and both eyes were perfectly normal. The day after that...not so much. That day, I woke up to discover that my RIGHT eye was completely red, painful to the touch, photo sensitive and would hurt when looking in certain directions. And, when I say hurt, I mean "feels like being stuck in the eye with an ice pick" hurt. Before you ask, yes, I am quite certain that it was my LEFT eye that was hit.

After things didn't get better after a couple of days, I made an appointment with the eye doctor. He pronounced the problem to be "iritis" which is inflammation of the iris. Basically, I sprained the muscles that control my iris. I was relieved that I had not detached the retina of something catastrophic. The doctor said that it's possible that the shock wave from the hit to the left eye went through the tissue and inflamed the right eye. Apparently, this is not unheard of in sports injuries.

The almost constant headache that went with this was the easiest part to deal with. Never knowing when the phantom ice pick would strike...that really kinda sucked. I did figure out that the change between near vision and far vision was especially painful and have worked to avoid that as much as possible. You really have no idea how much you move your eyes, how much focusing you do until you do something stupid like this. It completely wears you out mentally and physically. I've spent the last week or so being almost constantly exhausted because of my eye.

So, there you have it. More or less. Free ice cream to continue as my eye improves.

Wanted - Dead or Alive...Preferably Dead

To the insensitive, inconsiderate, degenerate walking turd that boarded Southwest Airlines flight 15 out of Dallas Love Field for Houston Hobby Airport this morning and cracked off not one but three extremely noxious farts in the presence of a captive audience of over 90 fellow travelers, I wish to warn you that you have been marked for death for your crimes against humanity and my nasal passages since you are clearly an Al-Qaeda operative engaged in terrorist activities on American soil.

I mean, seriously, do you not understand the physics and chemistry of life aboard a pressurized aluminum can traveling at an altitude of over 30,000 feet above sea level moving at a speed of approximately 75% of the speed of sound. Under those conditions, it is not possible to escape your foul stench. There is no place for it to go but into the nostrils of your cabin mates.

Could you not wait 50 short minutes to unleash your gas attack in the terminal building where the air is not trapped and recirculated? Are you so out of shape that you can’t clench your anal muscles enough to pinch off that air biscuit before it makes a break for it? Was it too much trouble to stop off at the restrooms before the flight to drop the load that was so desperately trying to escape your body? Or were you self conscious about making use of the two conveniently located aircraft lavatories? I can certainly understand bashful bowels; butt, please, have some common courtesy. If you don’t want to hover over the flying port-a-potty for fear of contracting some unknown microbes with a serious stash of frequent flier miles, at least have the human decency to step in, close the door and allow your aroma the freedom it so richly deserves in a place where it’s expected to smell foul.

Be it known, that you will be tortured extensively before being summarily executed. We will find the most lactose intolerant, bean burrito freaks there are and lock you in a small room whose only air source is  a room full of those freaks eating from an extensive Mexican food buffet. There will only be milk to drink in that room.

You will tell us who the other members of your cell are and what plans you have made for gassing unsuspecting travelers. You will tell us who is financing your organization, and who is supplying you with the ingredients for your weapons of mass nausea. Then you will be slathered in barbeque sauce and staked in a pen of hungry pigs to be eaten alive in a fit of irony that would surely be struck down by the Supreme Court as cruel and unusual punishment if anyone where to consult them before carrying out your sentence. Which we won’t. ‘Cause your appeal has been summarily denied…dirt bag. Go bust a fluffy somewhere else.

A Moving Curse

I had dinner with mom recently. I think. It may have been a week or two ago now. Time no longer has any meaning to me. Warning to those who are offered the chance to work from home: make it a point to get out in public once in a while to avoid becoming a workaholic hermit.

It was a lovely dinner after a long day of driving from Dallas to Aggie Land (Bryan, TX - that’s a 3 hour trip one way for those of you who are cursed with the misfortunate to be from somewhere other than Texas) and back; however, mom made it a point to take issue with the way in which she has been portrayed in this blog so far. Specifically, she indicated perhaps, just perhaps, I might have been using my bully pulpit to make her the butt of my slightly skewed worldview a little more frequently than a good son should.

I love my mother. I really do. I wouldn’t have a world view, much less a slightly skewed one, without her. So, in an effort to show her how much I appreciate her and respect her wishes not to be the whipping girl yet again, it’s dad’s turn to be thrown under the bus. I’ll get around to rehabilitating mom’s image in another post. I promise. Oh, and if my sister is reading this by some miracle, I will gladly entertain requests to be left out of this exercise in character assassination. I’ll even seriously consider such a request if accompanied by appropriate compensation.

Now that the solicitation of bribery as a means of avoiding familial libel and slander is over with, we can continue with our story.

I’m not too worried about dad getting offended by my humorous references to his character flaws, real or imagined, as I’m pretty sure he’s still not reading the blog. When I last spoke to him a few weeks ago and inquired as to his opinions about whether he liked the blog, the quality of the writing (he was an English major in college after all), etc., he said, and I quote, “He-eh”. At least, that’s the only way I know to spell the sound that comes out of his mouth when he has no clue what someone is talking about. It sounds like a cross between “hay” and “eh” with a slight hint of a nasal “nuh” in the middle. Or maybe the nasal sound is tacked onto the end somehow. It’s hard to tell.

I’m sure there are lots of stories to tell about dad. The problem is I only know a few of them that don’t involve carefully repressed memories. I think it’s one of the side effects arising from him not being the custodial parent in a “joint custody” situation. One of these days I’m going to ask a family law judge how they figure “every other weekend and two weeks in the summer” constitutes “joint custody”. Seems to me like someone was smoking a joint when they came up with that euphemism, but I digress as usual. Instead, I will focus on how I take after dad.

If you were to ask number one follower, best man and all around good guy, Ken, what is my most notorious curse, he will likely, without hesitation, tell you it is my perverse luck with moving. As in “it’s time to pack all my crap and change addresses” moving. I’ve lost count over the years, but I’m pretty sure Ken and I have helped each other move at least a dozen times. We’ve got it down to a science. However, every time, without fail, on any moving day I happen to be involved with, disaster strikes. I’ve pretty much seen it all: a completely insane soon to be ex-wife (not mine, Ken’s, The Queen is a dream to work with on moving day), dozens of fearless cockroaches chasing Ken and I down to reclaim their sofa that had just been moved in the middle of the night so that Ken’s now ex-wife could avoid leaving a forwarding address (that move was also the scene of the laundry closet wall caked with dryer lint because someone didn’t connect the vent hose…for a few years), heatstroke caused by choosing the hottest freaking day of the summer to move (there is not enough water or Gatorade on the planet to keep someone properly hydrated in 100+ degree Texas heat when the inside of the moving van feels like the surface of the sun), moving furniture up three flights of stairs while coming down with pneumonia (The Queen had to do most of the work that day as I was passing out from fever), thunder storms, furniture that had to go in through a second story window because it won’t fit through the front door and many other fond moving memories.

I come by my curse honestly though. It’s genetic from dad’s side of the family. Mom’s side of the family doesn’t move unless forced to by a tornado. I can prove it, too, with two fond memories from the Annals of Disastrous Moving Adventures.

The first fond memory I will relate is actually the second memory chronologically speaking, but it’s bad form to give your best evidence first. As moving weekends go, it was what has become typical for me: the weather sucked (thunderstorms all weekend) and one of my uncles (mom’s brother) went into the hospital for the final time due to a terminal illness. The bad karma of that weekend could have all been avoided though had my father made a simple, life altering phone call. You see, my dad and my uncle (his brother, not mom’s brother) had season tickets to the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys made it to the Super Bowl that year which gives season ticket holders first dibs on Super Bowl tickets. My uncle generously asked dad if I would want the other ticket. Dad, without asking me, told my uncle that I wouldn’t want it because…wait for it…I was going to be moving that weekend. He and my uncle went and had a great time in Pasadena, California while I was stuck back here in Texas to get run over by the bad karma bus. No, I’m not bitter at all.

The curse actually got started earlier than that though. This particular story will prove, without a shadow of doubt, my curse is genetically inherited from dad. Dad and my uncle owned and ran their own company. Sometime in mid to late 1988, they decided to buy a competitor’s operation down in Houston. Dad drew the short straw and prepared for the move to Houston to become the fearless leader of the office there.

By the time dad was ready to move, it was late December or early January. The week he was going to move, he was out of town for the first part of the week when the weather was perfect: sunshiny and relatively warm for winter in Texas. Dad came back into town Wednesday night, and we started loading the truck on an overcast and chilly Thursday so we could leave first thing Friday morning. Thursday night brought a Dallas, TX version of a blizzard: snow and ice covering everything, dropping power lines, and turning roads and bridges into skating rinks.

Now, I can hear some of you from places that actually have four seasons and see snow outside of a glass globe snickering into your coffee mugs; but, down here in Texas, most drivers think ice goes in your tea and were never given practical tips like cruise control don’t work on ice. Dad and I woke up Friday morning to a winter wonder land and embarked on what should have been a four hour drive to Houston. I know this is beginning to sound like the opening to Gilligan’s Island, but it’s really not that bad.

The snow and ice storm followed dad and I from Dallas to Houston. Ten hours later, dad and I rolled into Houston with a moving van full of dad’s worldly possessions still shiny side up by doing what most other Texans haven't figure out yet, driving incredibly slow. It was well after dark, and a lovely freezing rain gave Houston that cheerful, death on a slab in the morgue look. I don’t remember what floor dad’s apartment was on. What I do remember is being stiff from sitting in the cab of a moving van for 10 hours and then having to unload enough of the furniture to have something to sleep on that night. One elevator load at a time.

Saturday morning, after we unloaded and hooked up the TV, dad and I discovered that Houston had its worst ice storm in decades. Forty plus unlucky drivers managed to have a massive accident on an ice encrusted I-45.

Remember what I said? To people in Texas, ice goes in your tea.

As you can see, my moving curse is most definitely a genetic gift from my father. What I’m still trying to figure out is, given the fact he is well aware of my curse, why does Ken keep asking for my help when he moves?