Milkshakes

We got Jack and Casey as puppies when they were seven weeks old.

They spent a lot of time in the kitchen because it was the only room we could completely make safe and secure. Plus it had a tile floor for easy cleanup, if you know what I mean. We gradually enlarged their inside world by blocking off larger sections of the house for them to explore while we were with them.

One night I was home with the kids and we had movie night. I made popcorn and milkshakes. I don’t remember what we were watching. The puppies were sniffing around the living room. At that time, they still fit under most of the furniture so there was a lot for them to check out. We had a green trunk that we used as a coffee table. Some of us set our milkshakes upon it.

The thing about puppies, unlike kittens, is that they’re not normally quiet. Stealth is a quality dogs generally lack. I rely on my hearing more than anything to make sure my dogs aren’t getting into something they’re not supposed to. It’s not rocket science; even small dogs lumber.

But this night? My puppies were ninjas.

I got up to go back into the kitchen and turned around. There, on the trunk directly behind me, was a heavy glass that had formerly contained a milkshake, lying on its side. The contents spilled across the trunk and two puppies were silently slurping up the dregs. Chocolate, of course.

This was the first of many times to come where we were hipped to the teamwork that is possible between a couple of puggles that bonded in the womb.

twins — The only two in the litter. Can you tell?

In my mind, I picture Casey getting Jack to crouch down while she tipped the glass over onto him so that it didn’t crash. Then licking up any milkshake that spilled on his back. It sounds like something she’d do.

I can only imagine what it must be like to have twin humans.

One & Done Sunday #23

Hey.

It’s One & Done Sunday.

One picture, and five links that are worth your time.

My last remaining active addiction is sweets. Considering how many bakeries and ice cream shops and donut ice cream shops and crap there are within a three-block radius of my work, I do pretty well. I hold out most of the time. A significant improvement from ten years ago, when I used to have dessert with every meal including breakfast.

But every so often I break.

I snuck out to Donna Bell’s Bake Shop yesterday. This was after my husband and I had dinner between shows, after he had dropped me back off at my stage door and I was saying how I was going to go write or nap or some other bullshit. I knew exactly where I was going.

Donna Bell’s is cool because it’s unpredictable. It’s tiny, they have different selections every day, and sometimes they open late and close early. Sometimes you go and the cases are full and there are no customers. But it’s partly owned by some famous and unusual looking actress with whom I am unfamiliar, so sometimes you go and there are three tour busses full of folks buying them out of cupcakes.

I was hot for a peanut butter cookie-wich. I figured if I went and there was a giant line, or else if they didn’t have the cookie-wiches, then it would be a sign to me and I would leave, empty-handed.

There was no line.

I scanned the case and determined there were, in fact, no cookie-wiches. My eyes laid upon the Pumpkin Pie Bar (with cheesecake strudel). Intriguing, but not what I was after.

I turned to go.

But then The Oak Ridge Boys’ Elvira came on the music system. It’s a song that has been inexplicably stuck in my head this week and I knew it could only mean one thing: God wanted me to have that Pumpkin Pie Bar. He was speaking to me through the Oak Ridge Boys.

God has good taste.

I have the picture to prove it:

Here are your links:

Please don’t tell #5, but there’s a bacon shortage. Here are 25 things that helped cause it.

On the Importance of Saying “Thank You”- Broadside Blog.

In the 1860’s, Timothy O’Sullivan took some amazing frickin’ pictures of the American West, documenting as American government workers explored the western state. Holy crap these are cool! Check out this article in the Daily Mail.

And because it made me happy, another Daily Mail article: Cat Pirates.

This is an excellently written controversial article that came out in The Atlantic in June titled Why Women Still Can’t Have it All. It’s long. Read it. There will be a follow up post on it later.

Happy Sunday.

You Can’t Swing a Dead Cat in Here. . .

I used to date this guy back in the last year of high school and the first year of college.

I’ll refrain from commenting on the quality of the relationship.

{insert mature restraint of tongue & ~~pen~~ keyboard here}

{insert immature smug self-righteousness here}

His mom lived in an apartment complex that offered external storage spaces for rent to its tenants. His mom had one. We went into the storage space one day and. . . stored some stuff.

No really, that’s what we did. What were you thinking?

We stored stuff and then we left. We shut the door on the way out and went on about our business– whatever kind of business it is that one has at that age. Terribly important things, I’m sure, like buying Noble Roman’s breadsticks, playing the new Guns & Roses album and finding someone to cop beer.

A couple months later we went back into the storage unit. Whether to store or unstore, I can’t quite recall. What I do recall is that there, on the concrete floor, near the back and behind an old armchair was a cat.

Or, more correctly, what was left of a cat.

Which was a perfect, black and empty fur shell.

It appeared that the cat had gotten in without us noticing when we were storing stuff previously; unable to get out, it starved to death (then decomposed, as is the nature of things).

At this point I’m sure you’re thinking this is a hell of a way to start your morning, reading about dead cat shells. I would like to point out that I did give you fair warning with the title.

At the time, the dead cat shell was the creepiest and weirdest thing I had ever seen and while I did feel a twinge of guilt myself, I secretly blamed my boyfriend.

Even today, more than twenty years later, I have a sense of trepidation every time I open a storage door. Any door to a dusty, seldom-trafficked space where people store things that are– or at least once were– meaningful enough to them that they pay extra money to keep them safe. I open those doors and I wonder what I’m going to find. I wonder what got in and died while I was away.

Which is exactly how I felt last night logging in to my blog for the first time in about two months .

If you can gingerly log in, peek at your notifications through your fingers, glance at the new comments only briefly so as to not have a horrifying image (like a dead cat fur shell) burned into your retinas, well. . . I did that. It’s gonna take me a little while to get through the debris. I have a lot on my mind that would be positively destroyed by the discovery of ex-household pets. I must proceed slowly.

As for where I’ve been?

I haven’t been in my garden. Nor my yard.

Nor at the mall, thank God.

I haven’t been on Facebook in part because I’m weary of people at opposite ends of the political spectrum exhibiting how exactly alike they are in their closed-mindedness.

I’ve been at work and at home. Grocery stores and Costco. The airport, too many times. My kitchen, eternally. And the laundry room.

I’ve been in biographies of Nureyev, Hedy Lamarr, Valerie Bertinelli, and Judas; I’ve been in the music of Johnny Cash, Sixx A.M., a bunch of stuff Brian Paulson produced and that Live album that I always go back to, every time.

I’ve been in my ’66 Mustang Miss Lucy.

I’ve been in a meditative mood. I’ve been in a state of high agitation. I’ve been to hell & back, and also Owensboro, KY (which was a whole separate trip, and much more pleasant).

But whatever. I’ve missed this place and you folks and I’m here now.

Lovely to see you again, my friends. Make sure nothing snuck in behind you before you shut the door.