National Cat Day

National cat day! We love our cat.

We mostly love our cat.       

You know what I’d love even more? For someone to invent a cat-remote.

This is not a remote for cats to use, it’d be a remote to use on cats. I’d like a button for “no paw prints on the car,” “hairballs excreted outside or in litterbox only,” “you have four scratching posts, nothing else is acceptable,” “don’t climb/jump on ____” (this would need to be customized, but I’d like this available as several different buttons please), and “don’t fight with ____” (again, needs customization and needs to be available on multiple buttons for some households). Maybe a “don’t eat ___” for homes with prey-type pets or delicious plants. Jingles is self-trained, but I bet a lot of cat owners would love a button for “don’t bring kills home,” “don’t hunt birds,” or some other options. “Rodents only” maybe. Remember, “hunting” does not equate to “eating” for many cats. Since most cans have pull-tabs now, cats aren’t trained to come when they hear an electric can-opener anymore. It doesn’t matter because I don’t know anyone who has one. A “search” or “find” feature might be useful here, or some other way to program your cat to come when called. Heavens knows mine never have. It’s a new use for a “home” button.

Oh, volume buttons would be lovely but we can skip “mute” because we love our feline friends and don’t want to be cruel.

Very important would be a timer feature for “lovies.” You know that super cute snuggle time when a cat purrs almost non-stop and seems to be dead set on pressing her face through yours? Yeah, I’d like to restrict that to waking hours. Human waking hours. Along those lines, can we have a simple “claws retracted” button for when they do that kneading thing? It’s super cute on a blanket, but considerably less so on a sweater that you’re currently wearing. It’s more than a convenience, it’s a safety issue.

I’d also like the option, even for an upgraded price, to map out where on a human a cat is permitted to walk when climbing over us. Jingles brought this feline tendency to my attention again this morning, somewhere around 630 am. Normally I don’t sleep on my back. There are reasons, not the least of these is my loving cat’s uncanny ability to walk up me and put her paws in all the wrong places. I’m sure men are crossing legs in a fit of subconscious discomfort. It’s no less an issue for women, The Girl has the exact same complaint. Jingles (and Nimoy too while she was still with us) consistently sits on the rib cage and places at least one paw directly on a nipple. I’m not sure how a two to four pound cat can place twenty pounds of pressure on one square inch, but she manages. I’m also not sure how she never misses. My daughter is petite, and not to be crude, but Jingles has about a one in nine chance of hitting the nipple there. I’m guessing. I’m somewhat more endowed. A greater breast surface area should mean the odds are more in my favor. The Girl and I agree the laws of physics and statistics are broken when considering this problem. If an option to map out “no walk” areas on a body isn’t going to happen, can I at least request some sort of malicious sitting weight limit? This is another safety issue, for both me and the cat. One of these days she may go flying.

A choice of modes would be convenient also. Jingles comes with two main modes: housecat, and feral. If she’s inside or on the porch and it’s nasty weather, cold, or late, then she’s in housecat mode and you can pick her up and treat her accordingly. Feral mode means you can’t touch her and she will ruthlessly torment or hunt anything she sees. Feral Jingles teases us by calmly wandering toward us while we’re outside, then turning and running like hell at the last minute before she’s in reach. Or go racing by as if to say “you’re a pathetic human and can’t match my swiftness and agility” when we appear outside of our own yard. Not that I mind feral mode, it’s fine and keeps Jingles from getting extremely antsy in the middle of the night, but I’d like some input. Like when we’re leaving the house and won’t be home until late, or know it’s likely to start raining while we’re gone. I’d like to be able to override the feral setting and return her to housecat mode. I promise not to abuse the privilege.

I won’t ask for on/off, that’s taking it too far. We’re talking about cats; 90% of the time they’re off anyway and if you can’t take it that the remaining 10% of the time without fail is inconvenient to your schedule, you need to cowboy up. Having parameters for “play time with humans” hours might be acceptable. Incorporate a customizable night mode maybe. Something that let’s us (between 10 pm and 6 am) uncheck “play with children,” “sing,” and “race helter-skelter through the house.”

Remembering Princess, our fat Siamese of seemingly long ago, The Girl suggested some sort of food amount or type limit. Considering the same cat, then Nimoy, I’d like some sort of “Alpha-cat” designator so we don’t have to deal with them fighting about it. It’s not about who’s most loved, just better suited to the role. Some cats are good rulers – patient and forgiving to their subjects regardless of species, age, gender, or size; others are brats.

Naturally it’s important to have a “restore original settings” option, but I suggest a two-step confirmation process. Something that requires thumbs.

My Missing Cat Says Your Vote Counts

The hunt for Nimoy is over. Not because we found her, but because the hunt largely consisted of The Girl going out running/Pokemon Go-ing in the area Nimoy ran off and periodically calling for her. Our local pet shelter puts pictures of their new additions online as well as recovered bodies. Checking that is my job. No sign of Nimoy yet, so I’m taking the upbeat position of she’s found a house of suckers to take her in and baby her like we did. If it was Jingles that went missing, I’d at least consider the position of her going feral, but Nimoy isn’t that kind of cat. She’s an example of humanity interfering in the whole Darwinian Evolution theory by thwarting “natural selection/survival of the species” as a mere inconvenience to be overcome by looking pathetic and meowing.

So Nimoy’s presumed to have a new home and she’s happy and snug somewhere. I’m firm with this position because it relieves The Girl from needing to continue searching for her. Why the change? The Girl got hit by a car a few weeks ago and running is now firmly outside of her skill set.

She’s okay. Sort of. Being 18 and extremely fit meant she mostly bounced so she escaped with no broken bones, only some scrapes, bumps, nasty bruises, and a few torn muscles. Her leg, knee, hip, shoulder, neck, and back hurt and she’s in physical therapy. As a result she lost her job at a local gym, which she loved and is really upset about. That incident has produced a lot of stress and swearing in our household, partially because my little girl is hurting and unhappy in her recovery, and partially because it’s interfering in her freshman year of college.

The Boy is back to regular school from homeschool (yay, that sucked) but now I’m playing fill-in professor and helping The Girl with her “baby” biology assignments and math. Hubby has to help her with her toddler-level psychology because I really hated psychology and it showed. Her professors are pretty understanding of her newfound limitations and missing almost every class because she can’t walk, sit, or carry books. I’m grateful she’s taking classes Hubby and I can help her with. Basic biology? Cake walk. Math has changed, which amazes me considering this stuff has been around, largely unchanged, for thousands of years. They have some seriously weird ways to solve some of these advanced algebraic equations now, and that’s been interesting.

That’s my last month in a nutshell. Now onto more interesting things: arguing about the elections with my 18-year-old. Ah yes, I remember my first time voting, it wasn’t nearly this ugly. My kids have grown up knowing how the government was designed and would work (absent the corrupting influence of politicians), but we’ve debated historical instances and the many ways this election could play out. The end result? I’ve been repeatedly reminded that Hubby and both kids have dual citizenship with Canada and wouldn’t it be awesome to move north and live closer to the bits of family we never see? Um, have you ever visited Calgary or Edmonton, Alberta in the winter? OMG life is not worth living. No. British Columbia I might bite on, but not anywhere you have to plug your engine block in to courtesy outlets in the parking lot to keep it from freezing while you run into the grocery store for a gallon of milk. No.

Okay, so a car’s engine block won’t usually freeze that completely, but that it’s a reality instead of a “hey, that’s weird” concept is enough of a warning sign to me to stay away. I can deal with temperatures dipping below freezing, but not that far and that often. No.

With that, my family is in the same position as most of the country in that we can’t just leave for the next four years. Unable to escape the consequences of the upcoming election, we have to face it.

To be honest, I’m in a state of semi-denial. Looking around, I’m not alone.

There are a couple of things that really bother me about the upcoming election. Only a couple? Okay, a lot of things. I can sum it up as the Democrats and Republicans, that’s a couple of things. No, seriously. Aside from some die hard fans out there that won’t be swayed away from their chosen party/candidate (even if said candidate got up on the dais, slit the throat of a commentator, and started lapping up the blood on national television) a growing number of voters are what I conservatively will call concerned about the outcome this election. Many are concerned that the country may be screwed no matter what the outcome is. Others are disheartened to the point of convincing themselves there’s no point in voting.

Your vote does count. When you slip into that booth on Election Day, I trust you will do more than vote for a presidential candidate. Senators and representatives, on a state and federal level, will also have elections to be determined. Governors, mayors, sheriffs, judges, and more – there is always more than just a single issue on the ballot. Your vote most definitely counts in all of those instances! In fact, some candidates are counting on poor turnout from a disheartened population to keep their opponent’s supporters from casting votes. Don’t play into their scheme.

In a Presidential election, your vote is … complicated. The Electoral College elects the President, not popular vote. A lot of people who realize this thinks it makes their vote worthless. Not exactly. In 2000, President George W. Bush won the electoral vote but not the popular vote. It happens. If a candidate wins 11/12 specific states, they have the required number of electoral votes to win the country. Easy. Well, no. Neither major party candidate has a lock right now and the third party candidates aren’t even close.

When you vote, you’re not technically voting for the presidential nominee of your choice, you’re voting for the elector for your district that represents the presidential nominee of your choice. Popular vote for your district determines the elector, then the elector casts a single vote for the presidential nominee. Whichever candidate gets the majority of the electoral votes for the state gets all the electoral votes for the state (Nebraska & Maine are the exceptions to this rule). It takes 270 electoral votes to win. While federal law doesn’t require the elector to vote according to popular vote of the district, state law sometimes does. You can look here to see if your state requires the elector to vote with the party/popular vote of the district. Third party candidates have electors too, and anyone campaigning to be a write-in candidate (where allowed) should have electors selected.

So your vote for a president does count, it’s just needlessly complicated and indirect. Well, it mostly counts, it depends on the circumstances and your point of view. The value of each vote is diluted, but they add up. But wait, there’s more!

I’m not an overwhelming fan of sports, but I want to make a point so we’ll look at a baseball game. Let’s say the home team scores 3 runs in the first inning and the visitors score 5. Okay, good. There’s time, no big deal. Come the 8^th inning, the home team has 14 runs and the visitors have 15. Every run is now of critical importance. There are 9 innings in a baseball game, FYI. So the spectators are all on the edge of their seats and the players are putting in extra effort. Or maybe it’s the 8^th inning and the score is 5 to 15. The spectators all start filing out and the players are just going through the motions.

In an election, this is the importance of the media. If the media reports a landslide, a lot of registered voters who are planning to vote after work won’t bother. It takes time and they’re tired, and what’s the point? But if they report it’s close, people who shrugged it off earlier in the day pull on their shoes and wander down to a voting site. Die hard fans (of the candidate or process) still tend to go vote, it’s the average person who may shrug it off – but there are a lot of average people. It’s an ongoing argument for why the media shouldn’t release the results for the east coast until the polls close in Hawaii and Alaska. At least California since it’s one of the critical states in terms of electoral votes.

Media interference in the process aside, let’s return to the baseball game. Okay, game over, the home team lost 15 to 16. Damn. You’re playing for the home team (don’t read anything into it), and you contributed one of those 15 runs. Did it count? Well your team lost so you could argue your contribution was wasted. But if you didn’t play and didn’t achieve that run, it definitely would have been worse and you would have forever wondered if your participation would have made a difference. Maybe if you played you would have achieved two runs and tied, or three and won the game, or stopped the other team from completing a run. You don’t know if you don’t play.

So sometimes your vote, well, it isn’t so much as it doesn’t count as it isn’t part of the winning team. As long as you played, that’s nothing to be ashamed of.

The other situation where your vote is lost is if you’re a Democrat in Utah. Or Idaho, Wyoming, or Kansas. None of these four states have granted their electoral votes to a Democrat since 1964. The point is, if you’re a Democrat in one of these states, I’m sorry but your vote for a Democratic Presidential Candidate isn’t going anywhere. Probably. Utahns aren’t enamored with Trump, to the point that when Sanders was an option he could have wrested the state from the Republicans. That’s saying something. Republicans don’t campaign in these states and neither do the Democrats, it’s that much of a lock so why spend the time or money? Although Independent Candidate Evan McMullin is leading the polls in Utah. I’m not kidding. I would love it if an Independent would take a state and it blows my mind that it’s possible. Think of the message that would send to our leaders in D.C..

I don’t mean to leave the Democrats out, but when I went looking for the most Democratic-leaning states, I couldn’t find one with a long standing history like these four because of Reagan’s monumental landslide in 1984. These four all were subject to Johnson’s landslide in 1964 or the red streak would have gone back further.

I digress. Let’s wander back to that popular vs electoral vote issue. President George W. Bush won the electoral vote but not the popular. I suspect we’re going to see some funny numbers in this election also. Not necessarily with the President-Elect, but with the third-party candidates. Here’s where I’m waffling, along with a lot of other people:

Can a third party candidate become president?

Lincoln did.

The election of 1860 was the first victory of the Republican Party, formed to primarily address the controversial issue of slavery. Lincoln only received 40% of the popular vote and won because he was popular in the densely populated northern states with a lot of electoral votes. Plus California. There were four candidates and dividing the vote almost certainly helped.

The Republican Party was formed by ex-Whig Party members, much like the Green & Libertarian & Constitutional parties draw some members from the major parties now. It was founded for the previous election, but without much success. If you look to history as an indicator of what’s possible for the future, it means that fledgling third parties need only keep trying. That’s an important concept. Don’t give up on the smaller parties just because it doesn’t work out this election. The Republicans took a couple tries to get their candidate in the White House.

As Election Day grows closer, I’ll be watching the predictions to see how things are leaning in my state. I’d like to vote third party and right now see no reason why I can’t. If it looked borderline where my vote could be necessary to – I’m not even sure, then I’d lower myself to choosing the lesser of evils. I’m not even sure who that is. But I understand my area and how the process works. My vote is my own and I’ll use it to send a message.

The media is largely ignoring the third party candidates, so they may throw a curve in the election numbers when they tally finally comes in. With multiple third party candidates, I have no hope one of them will gather enough disenfranchised people to win. But the numbers they do gather gives power to those fledgling parties and sends a message to the mainstream parties.

I understand every vote for an independent is robbing one of the main candidates, but I don’t see that being a big issue. Like the 1992 Bush-Clinton-Perot election, one candidate could lose so many votes to a third party (Bush lost supporters to Perot) that the other candidate (Clinton) gains an accidental advantage. Perot had no chance of winning the election, but his participation ensured Bush’s loss. How can I say that? The breakdown of votes show Perot drew more of the Republican votes than the Democrat votes.

The independents will have a similar effect, but members of both parties are disenfranchised this time. The Democrats would have been in serious trouble if Sanders gave his support, and voters, to an independent candidate. That might have guaranteed a Republican victory, which is why he didn’t do it. Trump is unpopular enough that the Republicans are having essentially the same problem the Democrats have with independents withdrawing support for other options, so I doubt there will be a huge impact like Perot had on Bush and Clinton.

There is a slight possibility, however, and it sort of makes me giggle so I’ll mention it. Evan McMullin could take Utah. It’s not a lock, but it could happen. You need 270 electoral votes to win. What if McMullin takes Utah and its votes? Probably nothing. To take the scenario further, what if Clinton and Trump are neck and neck, to the point neither gets 270 votes once Utah’s paltry 6 are off the table? Then the House of Representative decides. Oddly, popular vote will once again be important, although they’re not required to follow it. Suddenly it’s a matter of who has sway in the House. It’s unlikely, but sort of amusing to consider.

Here’s the other way your vote counts. Regardless of who wins the electoral vote, popular vote sends a message. Having a mismatch between the popular and electoral vote gives support to the idea that we don’t need the Electoral College anymore. When the country was huge, communication was slow, and technology didn’t exist to count millions of votes in a night, it was needed. Now, communication is instant, the size of the country is irrelevant aside from the media swaying attendance on the west coast by prematurely calling the election in the east, and we can count the entire population’s vote in a timely matter. The Electoral College means some votes mean more than others, and aren’t we trying to do away with that concept as a country? If the Electoral College was gone, candidates would have to cater to the population as a whole, not to a dozen specific states. Isn’t that the way it was supposed to be anyway?

The other way popular vote matters is that the more people who vote for a third party candidate – any third party candidate – the more power it gives to the people. It tells the parties and the media that the people are tired of the big parties’ extreme behavior. Most people in the U.S. aren’t as extreme as both major parties cater to. They need to understand that. Unfortunately for us, the donations come to these parties from some very extreme special interest groups. Money doesn’t buy votes so much as PR and marketing firms. If we ignore what the candidates want us to believe and make our own decisions, the parties would be in trouble. Politicians don’t need the votes from their PR and marketing companies, or even the media; they need the votes of the people, the average people. That’s the majority of the population in the U.S. and that’s where the power is. But only if we think for ourselves.

Chocolate Mint vs Jingles

Jingles is part of that 20-30% of cats that are immune to catnip. We didn’t think to test Nimoy before she took off, so when/if we can get her furry little butt back, I’ll toss her in a bush of catnip. She's already borderline insane, I can't wait to see what she'd be like high. Anyway, while Jingles doesn't care for catnip, and The Girl has grown chocolate mint and spearmint in the garden for years, this last week Darth Jingles suddenly noticed the mint. Sort of.

The Girl has sprigs of mint growing in pretty little bottles to pass on to friends. These are chocolate mint, if you care at all. Also, catnip is in the mint family. I imagine you see what's coming. 

She had them in her bathroom window, up out of the way where no cat ventures so they weren’t an issue. But one rainy night when Jingles was in her room comforting her with cat-like reassurances that she doesn’t need another cat and we should just stop looking for the one we lost, The Girl had her mint in her window for some undisclosed reason. It probably had something to do with her brother.

Anyway, this cat walks by and through the chocolate mint in my front flower beds nearly every day without paying attention. Celery (our adopted stray) does too - no notice of it, other than a passing appreciation perhaps that it’s a decent place to hide. By the way, mint is advertised as a great ground cover. Why yes, it is! It also covers the lawn and the chocolate mint has launched an attack on the juniper that used to be nearly two feet away.

Back to the other night. Jingles wanted to look out the window and brushed against the mint. I should mention the mint barely has any smell until you touch it. Touching it is what releases the scent, and wow!. This plant engages in chemical warfare. So when Jingles brushed up against a tender sprouted leaf - the young plant released a puff of a sort of mint smell. (Other people say it smells like mint, I personally think chocolate mint smells a bit like a nice strain of marijuana, but that’s me. Wishful thinking perhaps.)

Back to Jingles. She brushed against the mint, stopped, sniffed, squinted, sniffed more, brushed against it again, sniffed again, and settled down to make herself comfortable by her new best friend. The Girl was in giggles when evil kitty wrapped a protective paw around the bottle and nuzzled the plant. The giggles ceased with the experimental nip. Not that it mattered, Jingles isn’t a vegetarian and this didn’t change her opinion on the subject. One nip was enough to satisfy her curiosity and she resumed the occasional whisker-brush to keep the scent coming.

I don’t know how much scent one small cutting can produce, but The Girl rotated through her cuttings so each had a chance to be fondled by her cat. It wasn’t so they’d keep producing the aroma for Jingles, she just wanted to be able to tell her friends when she presented them with their new little plants that each had been personally approved by pure feline evil. Now we have to hold each up to the idiot cat for some attention and hope they survive. I can totally see Nimoy eating them. I suspect The Girl had the same thought because the mint bottles are back in her bathroom window - with the bromeliad - out of sight/reach while we wait for the return of the little idiot who took off a few weeks ago. The Girl is content to keep Pokemon-ing and looking for the missing feline. Maybe she should take a sprig of mint with her.

How catnip gets cats high:

http://www.seeker.com/how-catnip-gets-cats-high-1792496502.html

Nimoy is MIA

A little over a week ago we had a mishap. It started innocently enough, The Girl went Pokemon Go -ing (I assume I’m allowed to make that a verb by now) and took a gym. I know, who cares? Well, she took the gym from a pair of 13-year-old boys, who turned around and took it back - killing her Pokemon in the process. This shouldn’t matter. She’s five years older, and more mature anyway. But it’s apparently a Pokemon thing, so it mattered. She went back out right after coming home and retook the gym again, killing the offending Pokemon in return. Whatever. The same scenario repeated with another trainer The Girl didn’t have anything strong enough to take on the next day and she lost. So the following day, last Tuesday, when she went out Pokemon-ing, she put a harness on Nimoy (who is getting a little chubby and could use the exercise the game is designed for) and took her kitten for a walk. I gather she decided she needed moral support for her venture this time.

Nimoy is not nearly as enamored with Pokemon Go as The Girl is, let’s just get that little factoid out in the open right up front. Neither is Jingles, but Jingles is an active cat, so The Girl doesn’t feel the need to take her for walks to enforce an exercise regime on her. Also, Jingles dislikes her harness and leash, but long ago learned there was little point to fighting it. Nimoy isn’t that smart.

I’m going to take a moment to enlighten non-cat owners on the subject of cats and leashes. Yes, you can walk a cat on a leash. Unless you train them to accept this form of torture from kittenhood - early kittenhood - it’s more trouble than it’s worth. You also can’t just clip a leash on a collar, they’ll squirm right out of it and take off like a bat out of hell. No, you have to get a harness, like for ferrets. And it may seem cruel, but cinch that harness down pretty snug because cats are slightly more slippery than most people give them credit for. Even the extra furry ones.

The first time you put a harness on a cat/kitten, they tend to fall over as if you’ve just broken their back. Honestly, a harness doesn’t weigh eight hundred pounds, but you’d never know by watching a cat. Don’t cave in. If you take the harness off, they win. If you  walk away and leave them lying there, (view it as a sort of work-in-progress of “Beaten Cat Performance Art”) eventually they get tired of not having an audience and low crawl away. Also, cats have fairly short attention spans and - hey, there was that speck of dust that floated by….

The point is that they’ll get used to the harness. Then you’ll repeat the process when you add the leash. Then start over again when you’re holding one end of the leash. The look of indignation on Jingle’s face when she realized we expected to lead was priceless. We’ve since learned our lesson. She leads and we just sort of stop following if we disagree with her chosen direction. We stand there while she tugs on the leash and allow her to change her mind then resume following her in our acceptably submissive manner.

Nimoy was a whole other matter. The Girl was still doing the “gently tugging her along” thing. Most of Nimoy’s experience with her harness and leash wasn’t for going for walks, it was to allow The Girl (occasionally me or Hubby) to hold her with confidence she wouldn’t run off. I suspect, since Nimoy doesn’t actually care for being outside, that it was more of a comfort for her than us - you know, that we wouldn’t run off because she was attached to us. At least I always suspected that was how Nimoy saw it. It was her security blanket. Leave it to The Girl to prove me wrong.

So The Girl and idiot cat went for a walk. We got a frantic call that the cat slipped her harness and disappeared. Why? Was she scared off by a virtual Pokemon? It wouldn't have surprised me, but no. It was the garbage truck. Something any of us should have been able to predict. Great. The cat wasn't the idiot this time around, it was us.

The scene of the crime was only a couple of streets over, so Hubby made The Boy put actual clothes back on. (The Boy comes home from school and get straight into an old t-shirt and threadbare sweats from maybe five years ago because they’re comfy. They’re also rags and he’s not allowed to leave the house in them.) Hubby drove around, The Boy and Girl walked opposite directions, and I circled our cul-de-sac, all calling for Nimoy. I caught every neighbor. The Girl caught Jingles. The Boy caught a bad attitude, which caught Hubby’s attention. No one caught Nimoy.

Side note: since she was wearing a harness, she wasn’t wearing her collar. I assumed she was chipped, but after checking two days later at the animal shelter, they looked up her file and told me she wasn’t. How they managed to charge me for every other imaginable thing on a two-page long checklist and miss that is beyond me, but there you have it. The Girl began to panic in earnest at that point and printed out pictures of her generic tabby. Now her walks are to make sure signs are still up. I can see this going well.

Here’s a picture of a cat with no distinctive markings. She’s a really fluffy tabby that doesn’t answer to anything in particular, although we like to call her Nimoy. Hobbies include eating, sleeping all day, unrolling balls of yarn, and walking across your face at 3 am. Also, she’s paranoid about bath tubs but jumps in the toilet, and doesn’t get along with other cats or kids. Don't try to adopt her because she's litter-box trained in theory, but occasionally misses. She’s not graceful, so if a cat meeting this rough description falls off your car, fence, or roof, it’s probably ours and most of the house would like her back.

Midnight Madness

    Let me tell you about Friday morning. Hubby wakes at midnight after hearing a crash. I sleep with earplugs, and a face-mask softly blowing air at me, so I don’t hear anything, including him jumping out of bed like I did something obscene to him.

He quietly listens to the house for signs of trouble or an intruder. Nothing.

Nimoy is immediately suspect, but she’s groggily looking at him from her place between our knees. For the moment, the kitten is off the hook.

Analyzing his memory of the sound, he thinks it sounds like glass breaking plus something else. Some sort of impact. And he can’t tell if it came from inside or outside. It’s a beautiful and cool night so our bedroom windows are open. He looks and doesn’t see anything.

Getting what passes for dressed at midnight, Hubby checks on both kids, they’re asleep. Jingles is awake but on the foot of The Girl’s bed where she frequently is when home at night. She always wakes when we check on the kids.

He wanders the house: checking all windows, doors, and closets - just because. Nothing.

Hubby goes outside and walks around the house. Nothing. He looks over neighbor’s fences - nothing.

Giving it up as a hallucination, Hubby comes back to bed.

Fast forward to four in the morning. The Boy tiptoes into our room, wakes Hubby, and informs him of some problem. He sits up.

Now I didn’t wake before with all Hubby’s activity, but the Motherhood-sense that something is amiss jars me fully awake. We follow The Boy back to his room. He woke to play an early round of video gaming with friends and discovered the splintered shards of a Corelle plate scattered about his room. They’re tough table settings, but when they do break, it’s like a war zone.

Hubby recognized the incident immediately. When he checked on The Boy, he left the bedroom and hall light off, and had to walk in to the darkened room to make sure the lanky teen was in fact in his bed. He’s so skinny he kind of blends into the sheets and pillows. It’s a miracle Hubby didn’t step on any of the microscopic (or larger) glass shards between the door and the bed.

So we figured Jingles, who likes to sleep on The Boy’s top bunk - in fact it’s hers, must have either used the freestanding shelves that are part of The Boy’s desk to jump to or from her top bunk perch and knocked the plate off that The Boy shouldn’t have had in there in the first place and it broke upon hitting the main desk surface in almost the exact center of the room. Thankfully the plate was empty. Unfortunately he had a box fan on in his corner so the smaller particles got widely distributed. I found tiny bits of Corelle from the wall behind his door to his closet doors, bed to the bookshelves under his window - in short, everywhere.

Yes, I vacuumed my son’s room at four am. Then he got out an edge vacuum and crawled around on his knees to cover the perimeter of the room. Hubby collected the big pieces, then had a handheld vacuum and sucked sparkling Corelle confetti from The Boy’s keyboard and behind his monitors. Thanks to the fan for that one we think.

The Boy really likes darkness when he sleeps, so he has a blanket hung from the top bunk to seal in his bottom bunk. We had to vacuum that then pull it down, but it meant his bed was protected. Like it matters, I need to change his sheets anyway.

Meanwhile The Girl gets up to see what all the activity is about. She insists it couldn’t have been Jingles (still snuggled at the foot of her bed) because she’d been in her room all night. Ah hem, not all night. No, Jingles started with The Boy. We guessed the broken plate startled the cat and she took off for safer sleeping places.

The really interesting part is the breaking plate woke Hubby, two rooms away with a gentle breeze upsetting our blinds and faint noises of the neighborhood outside to provide ambient cover, but failed to wake The Boy sleeping four feet away. It’s not surprising, the kid can sleep through anything (fire alarm going off two feet from his head when he was little and had the top bunk - not kidding; plus his alarm clock every single school day) but it is interesting. It means I’m going to have to continue getting him up for school this year. Oh, goodie.

Halp! I Can’t Sleep!

Let us skip back in time a bit, to when I made the mistake of mentioning to my Neurologist Physician’s Assistant on a routine checkup that I’d been feeling fatigued for some time. I wasn’t worried about it, between my Multiple Sclerosis and all the drugs I’m taking for one thing or another because of my Multiple Sclerosis, the cause of the fatigue didn’t seem like a big mystery. It was just annoying and I would prefer it gone. Walk up the stairs, have to rest for an hour, down the stairs, rest for an hour, do the dishes - that wiped me out for a couple hours. A doctor’s appointment? Crap, Hubby has to help me up the stairs and I’m useless the rest of the day. Just fix it!

Sleep study.

What? No! I sleep.

Yeah. Apparently I don’t do it right. I’ve been doing it all my life - almost every night in fact. But I don’t do it right. Really? I used to be able to sleep off anything. It amazed Hubby when we got married. We both get a cold. I sleep for twelve hours straight - cured. He suffered for two more days. Life turns to crap - I sleep for extra few hours for a few days, shrug it off. He takes anti depressants. Of course now we know I have an immune system that can kick anything’s butt and I’m not prone to chronic or serious depression, but it seemed like sleep was my cure-all at the time. Shows you the power of circumstantial evidence.

Anyway, so they decide on the fall-back diagnosis of sleep apnea. Really? I sort of suspect they decide that when they can’t figure out what else it is. Hubby has sleep apnea. I hear him stop breathing and kick him. He listened to me when we were trying to figure out if I simply wasn’t getting a restful night’s sleep and didn’t notice anything. He’s an insomniac so staying up to listen to be breathe wasn’t much of a hardship. I also don’t snore often, so it wasn’t that. The diagnosis took both of us by surprise.

Fine. So I got a stupid little machine that everyone promised would fix everything. This is the part where my life went to hell.

First, let me say I went through this vicariously with Hubby. He confirmed that he did get more restful sleep with his little machine. He also warned it would take getting used to. A week or maybe two. Second, insurance wants to make sure I give the devil’s own instrument of torture a fair shake because they made me sign a contract in blood. Okay ink. I have to sleep at least four hours every night, at least 80% of the days each month for three months, plus I have to have follow-up doctor appoint regarding the machine from hell, plus I have to follow the doctor’s and manufacturer’s directions on device. Failure to comply means I will be billed for the entire setup.

Okay then. I should mention this thing has a cellular connection, and I have a good signal in my bedroom from Verizon Wireless, so I assume they’re getting feedback on everything I do with this stupid thing. I don’t know what network it’s connected to, but if Verizon has a signal here, I’m confident AT&T does as well. Damn it. I should also mention this thing has sensors so just wearing it doesn’t count. It knows when I’m asleep and adjusts the airflow accordingly. Nice and soft when I’m awake and trying to fall asleep, then it ramps up to a ‘smack me in the face’ level where I wake up with the immediate impression I’ve stumbled into a tornado.

Sometimes I do the insomnia thing and I stay up most of the night writing or whatever. When I’m tired, however, I can normally lie down, close my eyes, and be asleep in twenty minutes. Hubby is irritated and jealous. I can sleep for eight hours. Longer if I’m not feeling well. If I’m hurting, my body recognizes I’d rather not be awake just now and so I’m not.

Fine, so I have an evil machine by my bed. Hubby too, but he doesn’t count. Let me explain.

Nimoy sleeps with Hubby and I more often than her girl, which is annoying because we got Nimoy for The Girl! Jingles tends to favor The Boy, and The Girl really wanted a cat of her own. So I got a cat. The Girl is seriously doubting her future as a crazy cat lady.

When sleeping with me, Nimoy tended to prefer my pillow. She’d stretch out above my head and proceed to radiate heat so I woke up with my head sweating and itchy. Isn’t that sweet? Add face mask attached to by nightstand by a big tube and a steady stream of air blowing out the little holes toward wherever I faced. Nimoy wasn’t happy about the change, but she shifted her spot and dealt with it. Now she sleeps on a pillow between Hubby and I, stretches out sideways and tries to push us both off the bed.

Jingles is another matter. When she’s in, she likes to come up and sleep on “her” pillow, positioned between mine and the edge of the bed, held in place by the nightstand, and have a short cat nap/mom time before waking me and asking to be let out. The anti-apnea contraption does not please her.

I made sure the tube ran under her pillow, acknowledging in advance my little black cat wouldn’t care to sleep with it. That wasn’t enough. She doesn’t like face-huggers on my face in the night.

I should point out that the cats have seen Alien. The entire series. I know this because The Boy has a video game based on it and watched the whole series with Hubby and I not long ago. He’s also watched the first two on his own a few times. Jingles knows what an alien face-hugger is, and was deeply disturbed to find me with one.

Her answer to the alien menace? Get it off mom!

Yes, I woke at an unpleasant hour one morning to find Jingles stretched out on my pillow above me in Nimoy’s place. She had her back feet planted against my annoying mask and was pushing it off my face!

On one hand, smart cat. On the other hand, it was really annoying.

I reached over and turned the little machine off, and removed the mask. Mission accomplished, Jingles requested I let her outside. I was up anyway, so I complied.

She didn’t come in the next night, but the night after she was back (rain does that) and I woke again to the same mask-attack from my cat. Reluctant to ‘reward’ her behavior this time, I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.

I should mention since wearing the stupid little mask that is supposed to help me sleep better, it now takes upwards of an hour for me to fall asleep, I don’t stay asleep, and I feel less rested when I get up. This is contrary to what everyone assured me. So when Jingles started waking me early, I was understandably annoyed. I couldn’t always just remove the mask because that would provide the wrong feedback for the cat. It’s a “who’s training who?” situation. Also, I have to get four hours of sleep registered on the little machine, and that’s hard sometimes. It’s never in a solid block so I’m grateful that wasn’t a requirement. I can’t just get up, I have to go back to sleep and try to get another hour of actual sleep per my insurance company.

Rolling over didn’t phase Jingles. Now I was in reach of her front paws. After being whapped in the face a few times as she explored the gadget, she sunk her claws into the straps and pulled.

Are you kidding me?

Get up, turn the machine off, take the mask off, let the cat out.

We used to sleep with our door closed to keep Jingles from beating up Nimoy in the middle of the night. As it turns out, a cat fight on your bed at 3am is also disruptive to a decent night’s sleep. Huh. But Nimoy and Jingles have been doing much better and we’re able to leave our door open to let them roam. This is partially in the hope Nimoy will return to The Girl’s room. (She used to start there - with the door closed to keep her in - then around 1am she’d wake up The Girl, drive her batty, and my darling daughter would take her in and dump her cat with us and close her in.) Nimoy hadn’t been sleeping with her girl, but there’s always hope.

Hope is dashed. Nimoy will have to just sleep with us because I’m not leaving the door open for Jingles. Not if she’s going to attack my sleeping accessories in the wee morning hours.

And what has Nimoy been doing while I fend off her dark companion? She snuggles closer to Hubby and doesn’t even wake up. The whole mess is beneath her notice.

Bratty cats.

Reading, Writing, Lack Of Editing

    Amazon Prime Day. Wow. Great way to separate me from my money guys, thanks. I think. Among the things I purchased that I didn’t need was something that I probably should have done a long time ago: Kindle Unlimited.

Yeah. Let me tell you how it’s gone so far. On Saturday, I read four books. I didn’t do anything else, and my family didn’t seem to miss me. That should be a concern, but hey, the kids are teenagers and live in their own worlds and Hubby knows I check out from time to time and allows it to a certain extent.

On Sunday, I read two books, felt guilty for ignoring my family, and Netflixed an entire season of The Last Kingdom with The Girl as penance. That was not exactly quality time, but I listened to her chatter, responded when appropriate, and didn’t pull my hair out. I also felt jittery, like I’d had too much coffee. In retrospect, it might have been the Swedish Fish & Monster Java combo I used to get me through the last couple of episodes.

Somewhere around 2 am, while watching Richard Hammond’s Crash Course on Amazon Prime Video with Hubby (my long-time insomniac), I realized why I was bothered by reading so many books lately.

First, I’ve always said writer’s block isn’t a problem for me, and that’s true. If I sit down to write, I can. Not always on what I want to write, what I might need to make progress on or finish, but I can write something. It’s why I frequently have multiple works in progress at a time, and why any given book is almost always written out of order. In other words, I don’t write chapter 1,2,3,4, etc. It goes more along the lines of chapter 12,1,4,6,9,3,2, etc. I think I sat down and wrote two books beginning to end in order. Neither are published yet. (A’gust and it’s sequel if you’re wondering. Both are sequels, more or less, to Chrysanthemum.)

Anyway, while writer’s block may not be a problem, progress is. And I wanted to have Desperate Wishes finished and published by now. I should have. At the rate I usually write and where I was in the manuscript, there wasn’t any reason for that not to have happened. I forgot to factor in teenagers, and then the lasting impact of dealing with them. Or the spectacular crash of my computer and loss of quite a bit of material on two of three projects - didn’t count on that either. So taking time out to read, or work on the two other projects on my desktop, makes me feel a little guilty. Guilt isn’t exactly productive.

The other thing about reading those book was that, while the authors wrote good stories, one of them clearly didn’t hire a good editor. Another didn’t hire an editor at all and I suspect didn’t do well in high school English. I will give her the benefit of the doubt that she graduated, but my good will only goes that far.

Nimoy was snuggled up with me all day on Saturday and she noticed my displeasure at the editing dramas unfolding before me in digital black and white (stretch, yawn, baleful glare, shift away so her back was to me, then fall back asleep in clear disdain). See? Failing to have even a half-decent editor glance at your book affects a lot of people and felines. It’s hellish.

Second, while I appreciated the good books I came across, I’m going to ignore them. Sorry, they’re just not important for rant purposes, although I will review all of the books on Amazon and maybe Goodreads later. (I don’t use my name, you don’t get to see the trash I read.)

Where was I? Oh, the good story but bad writing - sigh. It wasn’t even bad writing. I’ll let style issues go nine times out of ten because style is a matter of personal preference and I realize - as an adult and a writer - that people prefer certain things. I can’t read Charlaine Harris’ books. I loved the True Blood series on HBO and people kept telling me to read the books, but I can’t. Her style makes me want to slit my wrists. Obviously she’s a successful writer and her style appeals to, or at least doesn’t bother, most people. My problem is just that - my problem.

If it’s not a matter of style, but poor grammar, editing, writing, and execution, where does that leave me? Leaving a bad review. Or a mediocre one, the story underneath was good.

Again with something that is clearly my problem, I don’t like leaving bad reviews on good stories. Particularly when the review ends up being actually more of a critique. The author can read the review, fix it, upload a new version of the book, and eventually my review will be buried and fall off per Amazon’s new policies. Assuming the author is willing to do that, and take my advice in the future.

It does remind me of where I came from, however, and that is Book Country. Once upon a time, a literary agent named Collen Lindsay went to work for Penguin (Random House) Books, and they launched an online service for potential authors. Writers could upload their manuscripts for other writers to read and critique, allowing them to improve and get useful feedback about plot, structure, grammar, style, voice, etc before submitting it to a literary agent or publishing it themselves. This isn’t a new idea, and it wasn’t new then either. There were, and are, several sites like this out there. I happened to be part of this one since the beta stage, along with a few other people who have also since published.

For me, it came to a point where I wasn’t getting anything new and useful in feedback. Also, I was stuck in a series where if you hadn’t read the previous books, the character development was missing. So I stopped posting, but I still continued to go back and critique, and I followed the discussion boards, and then...I faded away and got lost in my own things.

Apparently my account is still active. Hmm. So I’m thinking, there are authors out there publishing without editing and they need to be slapped. Amazon reviews will do that to a point, Goodreads too. But I can at least drop in on bookcountry.com and maybe give a nudge to the writers who are just starting out.

Apparently Nimoy approves, she just bit me softly then started purring.