(June blogs = you have something to read = avoid your families)
Last weekend, I was helping Ned change his sheets because I ...sprinted over there. You know I like to do an early-morning long run on weekends. Actually, we live exactly two miles from each other, so, "long run." Yeah.
So I ...ran over there, and before I made an elaborate breakfast for him, involving so many cookings, I helped him make his bed.
Dear Ned: You really scored, getting a chubby girlfriend who sleeps in and doesn't cook. But she puts out!
Gratitude.
Anyway, I tucked the sheets under the mattress, even though I usually don't do so very much at home. Binds m'feet. But I know Ned is tidy, so I helped a sister out.
Gratitude.
"Oh, wait, wait, wait," said Ned, coming over to my side. He removed the sheets from under the mattress...
...and tucked them back in with hospital corners.
Hospital corners.
All Ned's shirts face the same way in his closet, and the pants are grouped together on one side. Every morning he eats a fiber cereal after he cleans the cat litter box. The two are not related. What I'm saying to you is Ned is something of a tidy Tess. He's got a routine. Things are just so with him.
So you can imagine how delighted he was when my kitten somehow got on the roof in the dead of night last night.
Last night after work, I was bemoaning to myself the state of my blinds.
Ohhhhhhhhhh.
Woahhhhhhhhhh!
brrrrlaaaaaagshghrrofohhhhhhhhh!
That last one I blame on Steely Dan. The cat condo is at that window, and my theory is the bird feeder outside drove him berserk, and he climbed the blinds, and boom.
The other two are just because when I left here for my year abroad, I took my curtains, I think, and the tenants put up the world's least-expensive plastic blinds, that in the last two years have snapped and been chawed on by various baby animals.
So first, I killed myself searching for my old curtains. I was never crazy about those curtains, but broke-ish, so I looked. I searched everywhere, even the attic, and found in a closet only one of the curtains--I'm certain it was never hung. I remember getting home from curtain-shopping and realizing I'd bought one too many and I saved it as a spare. So I schlepped back up to the attic to search for a curtain rod, and? Nothing.
What the hell did I do with everything during my year abroad? You should see my attic. It's got about 20 empty boxes, Christmas stuff, and a dog crate. That's it. That thing was packed to the rafters three years ago.
Finally, I went online and see that JC Pennedy (I had a friend who used to say it like that, now I can't not say it like that) was having a huge sale on scalloped blinds, which between you and me is what I wanted all along. So I measured each window, then called my mother.
"How should I measure the window?" I asked her. "From frame to frame, or just measure the metal thingy that's already there for the cheap blinds?"
"Get Ned to do it," she said.
"Pam. I'm 51 years old. I have a house and a job. I think I can measure a window," I said.
"Call Ned," said mom.
Hmph. So I called Ned and told him all about m'blinds and m'rod and m'attic and m'measurements that I'd taken (by my hard numbers, my windows are 34 and 7/8 inches wide) and told him in no way did he need to come over and back me up.
"I'm going to come over and back you up," said Ned, and no one thinks I have one damn brain in my head. "I'll go home first and get my real measuring tape. You have that Barbie one, right?"
"It's a TRACY ANDERSON measuring tape, and it's perfectly fine. Just because it's pink doesn't mean it isn't real." Oh, I was huffy at everyone.
"I could just bring my dick over, use that as measurement. We know it's exactly a foot long."
And see. It was right there. My snotty response was right there. I was gonna say something about 34 7/8 inches and how his "12 inches" was really two or three or some other hilariously small number, but then I was all, okay, 34 7/8 inches is three feet? Two feet? So if his dick were three inches, he'd have to..."
"You're trying to think of a snappy comeback but you can't do the math, can you?" asked Ned.
Goddammit.
Ned eventually got here, measured my window (I WAS RIGHT), and then we heard a meow.
"Mew!" said the meower, and right then I knew, it was Steely Dan, and it was coming from above us.
"Mew!" I mean, unless it was god, and god is a cat, and we just never thought about that possibility before. I mean, the Egyptians did. But.
"Oh my god, is Steely Dan in the attic?" I asked, rushing for the steps.
Every time I go up there, he acts extremely interested, but he acts extremely interested in everything. I dashed up the steps as fast as my arthritis knees would allow, and commenced to calling him shrilly. "KITTY KITTY KITTY?! STEELY DAN! KITTY!?"
"Mew!"
It was still above us. And right then we knew.
"He's on the roof," said Ned.
He must have been in the attic, then found some vent or something that leads to the roof. What the hell with that cat?
I mean, and here's the thing. Not only is Ned methodical and careful and IN A MILLION YEARS would not accidentally let his cat in the attic and then onto the roof, he also PANICS at anything cat-related. He's had one cat his whole life, a cat he'd donate a kidney to, so any cat drama I bring throws him into a tizzy.
"OH MY GOD, THERE HE IS!" Ned bellowed from the cold outdoors. I was still pulling on a jacket. Hey, no need for everyone to freeze to death. One four-month-old kittensicle was going to be tragic enough.
"Yep. There he is. Oh, darn," I said. This is my 417th cat. I knew it would be okay. Ned did not share my emotion. At this point, he was hoisting himself onto a dining room chair, balanced precariously on the dirt, holding his arms out like SD was just gonna leap into them like he was Baby and Ned was Patrick Swayze at the Catskills.
Oh, Ned held sticks with canned food at the end. He rustled leaf-filled branches. He spoke sweetly. And the whole time, SD was all, "I on ruwf! It so fukkin cool up heer, unk Nedz!
"Steely see evryteeng! Steely da Lizard King!"
And that is when I got Peg involved, Peg who has a ladder. I have a ladder, too, and it's...at Ned's.
Goddammit.
The three of us got the damn ladder out of what I assume is Peg's copperhead-infested dark leafy garage, and we propped that thing up and Steely Dan came down without a fuss.
So, Steelee Dan get of roof. hoo care? ...we go back up today?
I guess this year I am grateful for fussbudget-y Ned, his foot-long dick, his math skillz and real measuring tape, and his ability to spend an hour in the cold on a wobbly chair, saving a kitten who gets on his nerves.
Gratitude.
