Thank you so much for the wonderful birthday wishes. It was a great day. Jason got me some new Twins gear (an awesome jersey, hooded sweatshirt and t-shirt) and then took me to Dave & Buster’s so he could decimate me in the basketball-shooting game. (I am the WORST at that game.) It was a fun time and it was so great to have the week off.

The weather has been perfect all week, too. It was 66 degrees on Monday, so I tossed my summer gear in the closet and can now wear tennis shoes instead of clompy boots outside. The poop swamp is gone and our yard is now contaminant-free. (For now.) There’s only a few stubborn ice remnants left, and I kindly help them out by stomping on them with my heels so they can disappear faster.

A neighbor cat peed on our patio window last weekend, so I washed it (the window, not the cat, although I would love to get even with that window-peeing menace), and then washed the inside of the window, and you guys, seeing the sun stream in through crystal-clear glass healed my soul. I’m not kidding. We took the plastic off our windows and opened up doors and screens and it was heavenly. Just heavenly. I knew summer this year was really affecting me, but I didn’t realize how close to the end of my unravelled, unknotted rope I was.

Hey, do you want to hear about my stupid dream neurosis? I hate when people in my dreams don’t listen to me. Last night, I was with a group of people fighting off evil attackers in some post-apocalyptic world. We drove off the last of the evil-doers and started congratulating each other, when I turned around and there stood Eric Bogosian. And I was like, “What the hell is HE doing here?” And people were telling me, “It’s cool. He’s with us.” And I said, “NO. That is Eric Bogosian. He’s a bad guy.” And they said, “No, no, he’s a GOOD guy.” And so on. They wouldn’t listen to me, even when I insisted that Eric Bogosian is ALWAYS the bad guy, don’t they know ANYTHING? And sure enough, a hidden group of bad guys ambushed us, Eric Bogosian started laughing evilly and saying, “I double-crossed you,” and as I started fighting back I shrieked, “Why doesn’t anyone LISTEN to me?”

Man, even in my sleep I’m a whiner.

You guys listen to me, right? Right?

Hello?

 

This afternoon, I finished putting a new thingy on the door. (You know, the thingy? The thingy that allows the door to slowly close instead of trapping your ankle in the doorway?)

Anyway, I was all proud of myself because I basically MacGyvered the whole installation in 45 minutes, having bought a thingy that was shorter than the previous one, which meant lots of hammering of the dented old one and drilling for the new one. MacGyver probably could have done it in 3 minutes with a toothpick and a canteloupe, but all I had was myself, a bottle of Mt. Dew and the helpful assistance of two cats intent on eating the drill bit.

I tested the door and while I was busy congratulating myself on my door-fixing achievement, Abby snuck outside and started her months-planned escape. Once I wrangled her back inside, I decided that I would be generous and let both cats out in our fenced-in backyard.

I put Abby’s leash on her because if I don’t, she eats enough grass to barf up later in a giant Mountain of Slime. I didn’t put a leash on Sunny, because she thinks you’re trying to kill her when you do and will ram her head into the wall trying to escape.

Outside, Abby made a beeline for the grass before I tied her to an acceptable surface under the patio: half sun, half shade, full view of birds. I then watched Sunny meander around the yard, her tail twitching in nervousness and her occasional worried “mew?” my cue to reassure her she was OK.

When I saw her heading toward our prickly raspberry bush, I went to retrieve her. I picked her up and right then, a giant grackle flew by. Sunny, frightened to death, screeched and kicked at me viciously with her back paws. I set her down with an unkind word and looked at my shredded arm.

It was a horror map of destruction: two long, angry welted scratches down my bicep, with enough forks in them to warrant their own Robert Frost poem. And right in the crook of my arm: three deep gouges that were, to put it mildly, oozing copiously.

Everything’s going to scar. I already have two smaller ones on my upper arm, courtesy of Sunny and her Claws of Angry. I’m not so worried about the scratches scarring. But I am worried about the three gouges, seeing how they’re located exactly where a drug user would have needle marks.

Edited to Add:

Exhibit A

You can even see the bruising underneath the scratches already. I’ll have to put a moratorium on picking up Sunny about a month before the wedding.