Sunday, November 21, 2010

Insanity Runs In The Blood

Husband is the first to admit that I am insane.  He deals with the paranoia, depression, anxiety, and general craziness with the fortitude of a man who has faced the fires of Hell and its minions and has never batted an eye.  There is nothing he can't handle, from my crying jags to my insane insistance that the people across the street have used cake in order lure in people who they then kill in bathtubs of coleslaw.  But last night, even he was unable to deal with this new form of insanity.

For it was not I that was mad.

Oh no. 

The culprit this time is our new kitten.  For a week she had been a sweet, rational thing made of gray fluff and four paws. 

Last night changed all that. 

I went to bed, as usual, with the laptop so I could finish up what I was working on in the comfort of my bed.  Instead of crawling up next to me and passing out as she's done for the past week, Cinder decided that there was something WRONG

I was approached by a ball of fur and fury unlike anything I had ever witness.  She had her back arched and her tail poofed like a bottle brush, and every movement was a threat.  Every sidestepping turn and she was staring at me like I was the shower monster, about to come spray her down with water and kitty shame.  I was going to eat her, and she was going to take my ass down.

Sitting in bed, I watched as she leapt over throw pillows and curled in boxes, all in order to plan her attacks.  And what exactly did these attacks amount to?  Slightly more vicious versions of "OMG, you have TOES!".  I was unimpressed.

So she decided to start threatening me by staring at the walls for inordinate amounts of time, and then turning and sprinting out of the room at the highest possible speed, making a noise similar to that of a rhinocerous with a broken leg falling down the steps while running down into the first floor of the house.  She then returned, making this a lap of sorts.  I swear, she lapped the house a total of 1, 433 times before returning to my room and arching her back again.

Now it was time to avoid the air vent.  The air vent is apparently more evil than I am, because she would smoosh into the corner between the bed and the wall where I was and stare at the air vent in the floor, skittering around it like she would drop into New Jersey or the seventh level of Dante's Hell if she stepped on the metal grating.  I finally just shook my head and turned off the light to go to sleep.

Reluctant, and obviously exhausted from two hours of kitten rampage, she decided to begrudgingly settle down on the bed with me.  Not near my hands nor my vicious maw, mind you, but on the bed.  In the morning, she was gone, like an assassin in the night.  Or that guy I picked up at a Seven 11 the other week.

Anyway, I have come up with a theory as to why the kitten decided to go absolutely batshit nuts.  It's actually quite simple.  She's just as crazy as me.  I adopted a cat just like me, just as they say people marry people who remind them of themselves.  The one I picked waited for me to fall in love with her, and then showed her true colors.  Insanity.  Kitten insanity.

I wonder if they make kitty Thorazine.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Kittens And Unethical Questioning Tactics

This weekend, we were blessed enough to bring a fluffy little ball of pain into our home.

I speak of the evil that dare not speaketh in polite company.

Yes.  We got a kitten.

Cinder is a roly-poly ball of gray and white fluff, with huge hazel eyes and a penchant for playing with "the other kitty" she sees in the mirror behind our entertainment center.  But it has been a long time since I had a new kitten in my home.  I had forgotten the truth about kitten ownership. 

The truth about owning a kitten is that the first night is worse torture than water boarding an asthematic with the sweat wrung out of Michael Moore's windbreaker after a week in Brazil. 

You bring the kitten home, it is sweet as can be, and then it's time to go to bed.  And kitten does not want to go to bed.  So the battle begins.  First you believe the kitten is going to climb into bed with you.  Then you realize she has climbed into the bed so that she might rain terror and endless pain onto your bare arms and legs, because let's face it, you're getting into bed and not nearly as dressed as when you were wearing your jeans earlier that day.

The battle continues because you are tired of being clawed, and thus you put her down on the floor.  And she simply jumps up on the bed yet again.  You will repeat this seventeen times before you realize that you are much bigger than the kitten and can just use your foot to nudge her off the bed.  This is a huge mistake.

This would be the point in time when the kitten realizes that she has you right where she wants you.  Next is a pain so terrible that I would compare it to the time when I had surgery without anesthetic.  The kitten, that fiesty criminal mind that surpasses the sheer nefarious devilry of villains such as Mussolini, Hitler, and Pinochet now curls around your foot in a fluffy bear trap of claws and sharp teeth.  You have lost the war my friend, and your only choice is to sit with the covers over your head and hope to God that she doesn't find a way in until the Husband wakes up in the morning and gets her attention.

I believe that the government is going about interrogation in the wrong way.  Because the obvious way to get criminals to talk is not to tear out fingernails, or perform unspeakable acts upon their bodies that would make masochists cringe, but to put terrorists into rooms with kittens. 

I mean it.  Put a terrorist into a room with a few springy door stops, a bed, and make it rather warm, and then set a kitten on them when it's time to sleep.  They will slowly slip away from sanity and their convictions as they realize that the kitten, the small and fluffy infidel of the decadent lifestyle of the Western Hemisphere, has a will of pig iron and adorable whiskery vengeance.  From the jingly collar of doom to the sharp little dew claws of torment, these creatures are not to be moved.

Faith is pointless.

War is useless.

For they are kittens.  And they will devour your soul.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Remembrance Day = A Knee in the Gonads

So how does today equal a kick in the jewels?

Well, it began as I expected.  Husband got up a half hour before me, not so he could prepare himself for the day, but to play fucking Fallout.  So when I finally ambled downstairs in a grumpy ball of grump, he was sitting there, pretending like he didn't have boots to polish or brass to shine and a tie to find.  Thus, I got into the shower, already tense, knowing we were going to be late.

I should be used to being late, right?  Because my husband dawdles.  He's a DAWDLER.  For a man who has to be on time or get into trouble, he sure as shit doesn't seem to have any sense of urgency when we're going to be late for something.  I personally would rather be on fire than be late for something, but he doesn't seem to have that freaking problem.  Oh no, not my dawdler.

Anyway, we get into the car, me in a suede skirt and kimono top, him looking dashing in his uniform, and all of a sudden he changes his mind over what ceremony we're going to.  Now anyone who knows me knows how OCD I am, and how changing plans at the very last minute drives me nuts.  So this is pretty much how the conversation went:

Husband:  Let's go to the ceremony at Kingsway.

Me:  No.

Husband:  But that other ceremony in St. Albert isn't really a parade or anything.

Me:  You made your choice, we're going to fucking St. Albert.

Husband:  But that's not a ceremony!

Me:  (this is the point where my head explodes into a mess on the windshield)  And if we go to Kingsway we'll be fucking late and miss everything and have to walk three fucking blocks to get to this fucking ceremony that is outside.  OUTSIDE.  IN CANADA.  IN NOVEMBER.

And yet, we fucking went to Kingsway.  We then got lost, asked some guy who didn't speak English where to go, got lost again, and finally got there just as the parade ended.  Mike wanted to hold my hand.  I staunchly refused, standing in the parking lot about half a mile away from any of the parade stuff. 

And guess what.

We were late.

We missed everything.

We had to walk three fucking blocks.

Anyway, after all that, we went to Smitty's and got some breakfast and I decided when we got home it was time to bury the hatchet, and not in Husband's skull.  So we went upstairs to have "Super fun grown up time" together, and just as we lied down on the bed, apparently I kneed him right in the junk.

Of all the times I have wanted to knee him in the junk, and yet I never got the chance, and I would do it when we were trying to get along.  I tried really really hard not to laugh too.  Like, really hard.  Like I smothered it beneath the choking noises he was making as he rolled over in agony.

I guess we're all going to associate Remembrance Day with a kick in the family jewels now.

This was funnier in my head.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Paranoia, Everybody's Coming To Get Me

I am the first to admit I have a paranoia problem. 

If in public, I think everyone is looking at me, judging me on how my hair is curled or how pretty my make up is, and that they all magically know that my thoughts are perpetually filled with unicorns, sex, and Tim Horton's.  I also assume that I'm just so bursting with excellence that anyone cares what the fuck I'm doing in the midst of trying to survive their own lives.

At home, my paranoia is even worse.

I have an entire list of problems that have to do with my paranoia at home, even though we live in the safest place possible.  We live on a frickin' army base, and yet I still have things to worry about.  Here is a run-down of the things that bother me in my own home:

1.  The creepy little door in the guest room - Yes, it's just a door, albeit a creepy little door, and it's blocked off from the inside so that nobody can get into the crawlspace and hide bodies there.  The army frowns upon that.  But I swear to God, it's going to open some day and something is going to come out and try to get me.  Thus, I always have the guest room door closed.  Because anything ready to eat my soul obviously won't be able to turn a doorknob.

2.  The neighbors across the street - Have I met these people?  ...No.  Which only suffices to ensure that my theory is right.  They're serial killers.  I watch Criminal Minds, I know it's not always the creepy motherfucker who talks to a rotten peanut on the street corner that is apt to kill an innocent housewife.  And the fact that they have never said hello, and that they are active only at night is proof that they are either plotting to kill me, or they are too busy strangling innocent co-eds in bathtubs full of cole slaw to be bothered with me.  Case closed.

3.  The creaks and shit - This house settles more on its own than any house ought to.  I can be woken up at four in the morning because I'm absolutely certain that someone has broken in, stabbed my husband in his sleep when I can't even walk past him without waking him up, and is now coming for me.  And the creaking and shit is LOUD.  It sounds like someone is falling through the goddamn floor!  What the fuck is up with that?

4.  Husband's former roommate - At one time, my husband allowed a fellow soldier to board with him for some extra cash each month to pay for our wedding.  Said roommate turned out to be a seriously messed up fucker.  He got married, brought the girl all the way to Canada from Germany, then left her alone and cheated on her and swore he was doing the right thing the whole time.  He then moves in with my husband, buys a dog and...well, I don't even want to think about it.  Anyway, Husband kicked him out.  Now I'm afraid some dark night this former roommate will return, key in hand, sneak in, and stab/rape us in our sleep.  And not necessarily in that order.

5.  The MPs - No, I've never met the military police.  Nor would there be any reason for them to be coming to our door.  But I am always paranoid that the cops are comin' to get me.  I'm just that awesome that I'd be arrested for being awesome.  And I have images of women's prison in Canada being similar to the hole of a Siberian gulag.  Cold and full of prisoner rape and ugly tattoos.

6.  Strangers who knock on our door - Every once and a while, a stranger will knock on our door.  I do the only logical thing, and hide where I can't be seen.  This is usually in the space between the wall in the kitchen and the fridge.  Because that's how the serial killing rapists who want to nail my dead body get inside.  They come to the door like service professionals.  I'm on to you, serial killing necrophiliac rapists.

7.  Children - The local children freak me the fuck out.  Because kids freak me the fuck out.  And I'm always worried they're going to come to the door with their little Canadian accents and I won't be able to understand what they're saying and they'll run off and cry to their fathers/mothers/crazy uncles who will come and punch me in the face.  Very real fear here.

I'm sure I have more problems with the house, but that's because when I lived alone, I lived in apartments about the size of a shoebox.  I could see everything and I never left so I knew nobody could have gotten in.

Oh, sleepless paranoid nights, I'm on to you. 

Monday, November 8, 2010

Green Shorts and Pinata Boobs

I picked up Husband from work today, only to have him launch into his Blance Dubois rant.

Not that he can only depend upon the kindness of strangers, but that he has the worst problems in the world, and swears as God as his witness, he will never run a 10K again.

This is then followed by inceasant bitching about how he's sore and chafed.

Don't get me wrong, I bitch all the time.  I complain about how cold I am, how my tits hurt,  how the neighbors are probably serial killers so I can't go outside when I'm at home alone and they're outside with that creepy blue truck, and of course, how I wish I could work instead of waiting on my citizenship papers.  But this is all crap that I want to bitch about to bitch.  He moans and whines because I'm here and he now has someone to whine to. 

So I made the attempt to make things better.  I tried to soothe him with promises of a good dinner and time on the couch, the beloved perch of our living room for the enviable position it bears to the television and how it's not the chair in front of the freezing cold picture window.  I offered to go get him Gold Bond and Ben Gay.

My results?

Husband: "Oh no, let's just go inside."

Me: "Why?"

Husband: "Oh, I can just use one of our many sexual lubricants and a rabid porcupine so that I can bitch mightily at you about it later."

Okay, so he didn't say that last part, it was for dramatic effect, but I have a habit of putting words into his mouth anyway.  So we get home and I dick around in the living room, trying not to look callous over his suffering though I couldn't care less.  I really couldn't.  Because he's in the army and he knows that means he has to run.  And I feel neglected for Fallout: New Vegas.

So I pick up the laptop and go into the Dining Room of Solitude and shut the door.  After about an hour of being in the Dining Room of Solitude, I decided I wanted a snack of Pepsi Max (aka black tar heroin in liquid form) and crackers.  I sashayed into the kitchen, procured said liquid drugs and crackers, and decided I wanted some left over Halloween candy as well. 

After an irrational moment of anger over the fact that Husband has eaten all of the Coffee Crisp, I pick out a few pieces and realize I cannot hold my glass of liquid heroin, my crackers, and my candy all at once.  So I do the only sensible thing.  I put the candy in my cleavage and head back to the Dining Room of Solitude.  As I walk past the couch that he has commandeered in nothing but his green army shorts, he puts out a hand to fondle some part of my body as Husband is apt to do as a show of affection.

I stop, and one by one, my pieces of candy come dropping out of the bottom of my peasant blouse onto his head.  He glanced up, looked at the candy, then at me, and of course, this ensues:

Husband: Mina, what the fuck was that?

Me: Well, I didn't have any more hands to carry the candy.  If you'd let me graft on a third hand, this wouldn't happen.

Husband: If I have a hard time with pinata boobs, you'd think you wouldn't ask about a third hand.

Me:  ....I want the third hand and I'll take it from the neighbors if I have to.

Then I skittered back to the dining room to leave that stewing in his brain.  Something tells me the neighbors are all going to get calls tomorrow warning them to keep an eye on their limbs.

Now every time he gets close, he shakes my rack to see if candy comes out.