M. Giant's
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Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks


Friday, June 13, 2003  

Welcome Home

A few days ago, one of the cats had an accident in our bedroom.

I say one of the cats, but I suspect it was Strat. So, yeah. A Strat accident. A Straccident, if you will. But we can’t figure out where. All we know is that a faint cloud of urine smell is lingering in the room, and its source is resisting all efforts to find it.

Theoretically, Trash and I shouldn’t have any trouble with this. She has a very sensitive nose, and should be able to track down an odor’s source with no problem. While I am willing to sniff right up to something to determine whether it’s clean or not. But it doesn’t work that way because Trash doesn’t want any part of it. So rather than it being a situation where she can and I will, we end up deadlocked in a situation where she won’t and I can’t. If we had some CSI-like device that would allow us to visually identify cat pee spatter using special goggles and a UV light, it would be fine. But we don’t. So it’s down to my inadequate nose and Trash’s unwilling one.

Which leaves us cleaning one surface or item at a time, and for a while we think we got it, but then the cleaning-supply odor fades away and the telltale ammoniac signature is back. Last night I went through the sock hamper (we have too many socks to fit in a drawer, so we use a laundry basket instead), sniffing each one and hoping I wouldn’t end up having to wash the lot of them. As it was, I only found one pair of peed-on socks in the entire 15-gallon bin, and how the cat managed that I’ll never know.

But while I was at it, I spent some time matching up the singles that have accumulated over the past several weeks. Trash was at her computer, listening to some MP3s and singing along. Even while yawning.

At that point, reader, I did something I’m not proud of. I opened my mouth wide, emitted a series of undifferentiated vowels in an uncertain melody, and went back to what I was doing.

“What was that?” Trash demanded mock-angrily.

“I was singing along with you,” I explained mock-innocently.

“There’s no need for mocking,” she pointed out.

I disagreed, both in general and in specific.

At that point, things got a little ugly. Trash resorted to an immature display of temper in a form that she only employs when she really wants to get my Irish up. To wit, she fired up her MP3 of Nelly’s “Hot in Herrrre,” my least favorite song of the millennium to date. There are two problems with this strategy. Firstly, it's like attacking somebody with a can of tear gas when you're sharing a phone booth with him, because she doesn't like the song any more than I do. Secondly—and she doesn’t yet realize this—is that I’m starting to get inured to it. I even shook my white booty for a few minutes just to show her how much she wasn’t getting to me, but she never even bothered to look around and I think I dislocated my kidney.

“You know,” I commented, “this is going a lot faster now that I’m only matching my socks.”

I was promptly rewarded with something by Pink.

I don’t remember what specific event triggered the escalation to physical violence, but I can say that the conflict was brief but decisive. I bounced a pair of socks off the back of her neck. She didn’t much care for that. I gave her accusations that I’d dislocated her kidney the credence they deserved.

But at that point, I decided it would be best to make peace before she broke out the stuff she used to listen to in the eighties. I got all apologetic and conciliatory and kissy-face and our little pretend war was over. You know, the one I’d started.

It was just a fun little pissing match, our twisted way of each letting the other know how much they’d been missed. No feelings hurt, no harm done, just a low-key battle of minor irritations, one of the many ways we show our love.

Also, if things got really nasty, she knows I could threaten to tell you all exactly what she listened to in the eighties, and that leads nowhere but to scorched earth.

* * *

Hey, fans of Angel, Monk, and Television Without Pity! Go to these threads on the TWoP forums if you’re interested in putting together a banner ad for your favorite shows while financially supporting your favorite TV site in the process. Trash hardly ever hangs out in the forums, and now she’s trying to start these discussions and nobody’s joining in. You’re going to give her a complex or something. And that’s my job.

posted by M. Giant 3:30 PM 0 comments

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