This episode of Simon’s Cat makes me laugh out loud.

The Sisters all belong to the national Romance Writers of America and the local chapter, Saguaro Romance Writers.  SRW is a fabulous group of women (and a few men) who love to write – romance, but not that genre exclusively.  I look forward to the monthly meetings with anticipation.  I’ve never belonged to a professional group more supportive than this one. 

Every meeting we have a raffle.  We all supply little things: First Editions of new releases, autographed ARCs (Advance Readers Copies) and the like.  Ava makes jewelery sometimes and takes it. 

In October, we have what’s called the Big Raffle.  It’s huge and the items donated are awesome.  Some of the published authors will provide critique time, amazing handmade items, and well, just fabulous stuff.  It all makes a ton of money for the organization that we use to bring in outstanding speakers each month.

For this upcoming Big Raffle, I decided the Quill Sisters needed to make Regency baskets for the raffle.  And like everything else, I’ve gone completely nuts.  It started out small, as these things always do, as one basket, but quickly grew into two.

Basket #1 is a Lady’s basket.  I knew what I wanted in it and became obsessed with finding the items.  I’ve drug Sassy and my mother all over this town looking for stuff.  We hit it big at an antique store where we found tatted lined hankies, an absolutely gorgeous pink teacup, and white gloves with embroidered roses.  I’ve also included my favorite Jane Austen, Sense & Sensibility (movie & book), various kinds of tea, some English Rose soap, and a cut-work wooden fan.  I even supplied an autographed book by one of my favorite NYT best selling Regency romance writers.  The basket is totally charming.

But then my downfall.  I thought how much fun it would be to do a gentleman’s basket, too.  Right?  Deep sigh.  The real problem is that I won’t admit defeat.  I know what I want and, come hell or high water, I’m gonna find it.  The idea of this basket was I wanted it to seem as if a Regency gentleman emptied his great-coat pockets and this was the stuff inside.  So, what would that be?  So far I’ve collected: various English toffees, a linen handkerchief with appropriately subdued embroidery, a silver flask, two tiny leather bound copies of Tennyson poems and English poems.  I’ve included a different book, autographed as well, by that certain author and a BBC version of Persuasion by Miss Austen.

It seems like I’m doing well, right?  Sounds done to you, does it?  NO!  I’m determined to find an old fashioned deck of cards, a brandy snifter and a small bottle of brandy, a snuff box, and several writing quills with ink. 

I’m totally insane.

Let’s start with the brandy snifter.  Don’t you think I could find like a million of those things in antique stores or the like?  I don’t want to go to Target and buy one because you can’t buy just one.  You must buy at least four.  I don’t need three extra damn glasses and four is totally overkill in the basket.  I can’t even find any open stock in the stemware departments of the department stores.

And the cards are giving me chest pains.  I want old fashioned playing cards – you’ve seen them in western movies – they don’t have numbers on them, just the symbols.  I live in the heart of the old west and one would think I could find them any ole place.  No.  I have toured every game store, antique store and mall in a 20 mile radius.  They are not here.  The people at the antique stores think I’m nuts because every time I think I’ve hit pay dirt and have them open a locked display cabinet, it turns out the cards have a World’s Fair logo or a damn airline or truck tire or something and I start whimpering.  One nice man suggested I go to Tombstone.  Dude! I do not have time to drive an hour there and an hour back just to get freakin’ cards. 

Of course, I’ve found all of these things on line, but I can’t justify paying $5.00 for something and then $12.00 more for shipping.  So I keep looking locally and keep those sites bookmarked for when I get desperate.

That means I’m still stalking antique stores and the like.  My Honey suggested I try the smoke shops for the snuff box.  On Saturday, I drug my children into a smoke shop.  Not my proudest mothering moment.  Go ahead and judge.  I’m certain I’m going to screw them up in ways that one visit to a smoke shop will totally eclipse so I’m not too worried about it.  In fact, I totally ignored the sign that stated, “You must be 18 to enter here”.  I figured they were with a parent so they were exempt.  After all, it’s not like I was taking them into a bar or something (ahem, Ed!).

The smell of patchouli oil and incense enveloped us as soon as we opened the door.  Of course, Sassy looked about her with utter disdain, while The Bandit was instantly fascinated.  He cruised around in front of the glass cabinets, peering inside and stared with fascination at the posters under the black light.  I talked to the guy behind the counter and he had a couple of ideas for me because, of course, he didn’t have any snuff boxes.

We walked back outside to get in the car with me grumbling about my obsessive compulsive drive.

“Mom, it smelled really good in there,” The Bandit noted.

Sassy wrinkled up her nose.  “I thought it stunk.”

“Nuh uh,” The Bandit argued.  “I really liked it.  The whole place was so totally cool.” 

So now I have to one to blame but myself for the little pot head he’s sure to become.

I’ve been chewing a lot of gum.  I do it when I’m stressed.  Or hungry.  That explains why I’m chewing a lot of it.  Anyway, I was driving along on the way to pick my kids up from school when it occurred to me the current wad of gum in my mouth was pretty used up.  I was going to toss it out my window, but there was a car right next to me in that lane.  So I unrolled the passenger window, cocked back my arm and threw it out the window. 

Only I didn’t.  It bounced off the door frame and landed on the carpet.

I played 4 or 5 years of softball as a kid and had a 200+ paper route and now I can’t even throw a piece of gum out a window less than two feet away.

It’s really appalling.

My Brother-the-plumber came by this morning.  He looked up at my ceiling and nodded.  “Yup,” he said.  Then he battled his way into the closet-of-doom and I heard, “Yep” again, only muffled this time.

“It’ll be about $300.00.  But you never know what I’ll find up there.  The rest could be just a mess, too.”

He was quoting the family price, remember.

He’s returning in the morning or Wednesday to tackle the job.  Until then, I’m going to be in the fetal position drinking wine directly out of the bottle.

My uncle, Snolepard, posted one of these cartoons on Facebook the other day.  I hadn’t seen them in a long time and forgot about them.  They are just delightful.  The artist REALLY knows cats.

This is one of my favorites.  I’ll post the others periodically.  Simon’s Cat

I thought I was getting hydrophobia until I looked it up.  Turns out hydrophobia is fear of rabies, and I don’t have that.  What I’m in danger of contracting is aquaphobia. 

Let me explain.

Late this morning, I went into the front bathroom and found a lake of water all over the vanity.  I started to hollar at the kids because everytime I go in there I have to clean up some mess or another. 

So I’m wiping down the pond of water and giving Sassy the run down on how to wash one’s hands without flooding the bathroom, when I feel a big drop of water on my arm.  Then one hits the marble and makes a pretty little “plink” sound.  My brow furrows.  I look up.

“HONEY!” I yell, and then to Sassy,  “Go get your father!”

There is a steady stream of water coming from my bathroom ceiling.  It’s dripping directly on to the sink but also onto the medicine cabinet that sits out from the wall.  From there, the water is running down all over the piles of tchotchkes (Michelle – here is the link) that litter the decorative shelves.

I begged My Honey to let me sell the house without even going up into the crawl space.  But no, he had to look.

First, that involved taking a sword and battling Sassy’s closet where the hatch to the crawl space is located.  I didn’t assist.  Every time I go into Sassy’s closet, my head explodes.  I heard noises coming out of her room that sounded like Fibber Mcgee and Molly’s old radio show.  They would open the closet and a loud cacophony of crap would come crashing out.  Remember it was radio, but you could totally picture it in your head.  Anyway, from her closet came crashing and yelling culminating with, “Clean this sh!t up!”

To top matters off, our cooler was blowing hot air.  And I had a migraine I received on Friday evening from the flashing lights of *&%^#! red light cameras our city is installing in a misguided attempt to “protect the citizens” from red light runners and speeders.  Things were not rosy at the Bright Compound.  I begged My Honey again to let me sell the house.

I checked on airline fares to Greece.

The verdict – so far – is that the galvanized pipe in the crawl space is rusted and leaking.  Also, the crawl space is too small for My Honey to crawl into.  Really “crawl space” is much too liberal a term.  “Slither space” is really more apt.  I briefly considered shoving The Bandit up there.  I even went so far as to explain that he had to stay on the joists so as not to fall through the ceiling.  He and his sister thought I was kidding, but if he’s not going to take the job seriously, then I’m not sending him up there just to screw around and get out of cleaning his room.

My Brother The Plumber is coming by in the morning.  I’ll leave him a key and a blank check – stained with my tears.  I’ll also keep you posted.  I suspect this job will get bigger based on how smoothly the army man incident went.

I  wonder, is there an official word for fear of plumbing? 

The Bandit informed me of a couple of things today.

1. Apparently I am fooling no one, least of all my kids, when I tell people that I’m late getting up in the morning because my alarm didn’t go off.

“No, Mom,” he informed me this morning when I trotted out that tired excuse, “You just keep turning it off.”  The part that bothered me the most was his completely condescending tone.  And it’s not like I have a leg to stand on in the argument.

2.  The kids go to parochial school (something that never ceases to amaze me considering my position on religion) and thus they wear uniforms.  Tomorrow they have a “free dress day”.  The Bandit is very excited about it.  There is a theme for this freebie day – tonight is an ice cream social with a 50’s theme so the powers-that-be are carrying that over into the whole day.  Bandit wanted to wear his swimming suit.  His argument makes sense – it’s free dress and “when you wear a swimming suit you’re dressed.  Aren’t you, Mom?”  Even under the best of circumstances, I can’t imagine him getting away with wearing his Spiderman swimming suit to school.

3.  “Is tomorrow the morning?”  He asks me weird questions like this all the time. 

“I don’t know what you mean?” I tell him.

“Is tomorrow the morning?” he says again like repetition will make the question clearer. 

“There is a morning every day,” I explain.

“Yeah,” he rolls his eyes, “that’s literally how it goes, Mom.  Morning night morning night morning.”  He actually says “literally’.

“Uh huh,” I agree.  I’m still not following this conversation at all.  It seems that he gets the concept, so I don’t understand what the actual question is.

“So is tomorrow the morning?”

“Yes,” I tell him with great emphasis.  That seems to satisfy him and he walks away.  I still don’t get it, and I have a lingering fear that I agreed to something I’m not going to like later.

I just love Shoebox.com.  It has the other brand of snark than I practice, but I appreciate it just the same.

One writer says you shouldn’t smirk at Amish love stories.  They are inspirational and even at times racy, with titles like, “The Fifteen Layers of my Skirt” and “Is That A Lock of Hair I See?”   Also, “I Bet You Have Ankles” and “There’s a Clavicle In There Somewhere.”

Kelli had such a good time at The Bandit’s fifth birthday party at the bowling alley, she decided to have her 40th there also.  A ton of friends showed up and we all had a great time.  Some of us got drunker than others.  I won’t point any fingers but I’ll tell you I was stone cold sober.

Unfortunately, my being sober doesn’t explain my bowling scores AT ALL.

We were all shocked to see that Ava brought her own ball, with her name on it, and her own shoes.  Kelli pointed out, however, that we shouldn’t be surprised to find that Ava would flat out refuse to wear stranger’s shoes.  A very good point, that. 

Just prior to the party, Ava texted me to confirm the location of the bowling alley.  When I told her, she texted back, “You’re joking right?”

“No,” I replied.  “If the party gets crazy we can go outside and get a hooker!”

Ava said that when she and her husband arrived, she thought she’d traveled through a worm hole or something and wound up in Perth Amboy, NJ.

I assured her there would be cake.  I knew for a fact because I had texted Kelli earlier to verify.

In fact, here is the cake.

It’s kind of hard to tell, but her husband went over board with the Over The Hill theme.

The first game Kelli scored a not totally humiliating 135.  Ava had 73 and I limped in with 62. 

We did a little investigating on those damn pins and found they only weight about 3.5 lbs.  They must have magnets in them or Velcro or something.

One of the things that delighted our crowd the most was that after every turn, the score board would tell you how many miles per hour your ball was going.  We all averaged about 11 – 12 mph.  At one point, one of mine scored a whopping 4.9 mph.  I seriously thought we were going to have to send someone down there to fetch it when it didn’t make it the whole way but I managed to get one pin on that one.

The next round of scores had Kelli at 135, Ava at 99, and me at 60!  I really think my apathy had a lot to do with my score.

The games went very slowly as I’m sure you can imagine – what with all the screwing around and all.  At one point, we came to a grinding halt when we lost Kelli to the bar altogether.

Ava wants me to make it very clear that she beat Mr. Ava at least once.

I don’t know how humiliated we should be that Ava and I are both sore from bowling two days ago.  It’s not like we were even trying.  I don’t know if Kelli’s sore or not.  I was too embarrassed to ask her.

This morning we got up late for school/work.  I know.  Shocking!  Sassy tried to get me up at 6:40 but I shushed her and we went back to sleep.  I’m a terrible influence.  So, when I did fly out of bed at 7:20 we were all in a hurry.   First I lied to her about what flavors of danish we had so she was looking at me all askance.  It was purely accidental, but I’m not sure she believed me.

While The Bandit was eating I shoved his shoes on his feet.  When he stood up he complained that there was a rock in his shoe.

“It’s alright,” I told him as I shoved them both out the door and onto the front porch, “we’ll fix it on the way to school.”

Then when we got to school, I made them run down the hall to get to class on time.  I noticed that The Bandit was limping. 

“Mom,” he hollered from way behind me, “you forgot about my shoe!”

“Keep up, honey,” I called back to him while I kissed Sassy goodbye and shoved her toward her class room.  “The lions always get the stragglers.”

We made it to the class room just as the bell rang.  I went to kiss him after I shoved his backpack and lunch box into his cubby.

“You forgot about my shoe!”

I knelt down and yanked off his shoe.  I could hear something in there so I knew right away he wasn’t making it up.  I don’t know what I thought – like he was limping for the pure joy of it or something.  I dumped the contents of the shoe onto the carpet and this fell out.

It’s a Lego Man helmet.  I took the picture next to a small paper clip so you could have perspective.

I’m sorry, Bandit.  Sometimes your mother just sucks.