Saturday, May 15, 2010

A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever

Or should that be "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words"? I happened to glance in the mirror this morning - something I generally avoid until about 11 AM - and got a nice glimpse of TweedleDum & TweedleDee. And there was no turning back. These babies have to preserved for all time. And then I tried to actually get a picture of the damn things. After three angles and 10 pictures - and, let's face it, my sense of modesty kicked in - I decided not to tempt you with a shot of the outside of my thigh. I'm going to just save TweedleDum for the grandkids to marvel over in 20 years or so (Did you hear that Dearly Beloved Stepson? TWENTY YEARS.)
TweedleDum
So there you go. No need to rent your horror movie tonight, just picture my (incredibly toned) bruise chasing you around the house. The damn thing is growing by leaps and bounds and may need to be fed on a regular basis.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

The cats are going to either get me killed or The Professor arrested

Sunday, in the early evening, all was quiet. The kitchen was (mostly) cleaned up from a big Family Lunch and I had spent a lovely hour communing with my laptop at the dining room table. The Professor went out for his evening stroll around the neighborhood (I think he’s part of a secret neighborhood surveillance, but then he thinks I secretly work for the FBI, so maybe we should both tone down the conspiracy voices in our respective heads?), and I decided it was the perfect time for a glass of wine. Granted, there aren’t many times that aren’t the perfect time for a glass of wine, and those are mostly restricted to the hours immediately after you wake up in the morning*, which is why God made Mimosas. *If you wake up after noon, you can skip those mimosa drinking hours, because it’s lunch time, and wine is perfectly acceptable at lunch. I should really write a rule book or something. I also decided it was the perfect time to sit outside, which necessitated moving the laptop. Which is when my cat made his move. It was the only move he made that hour, and I guess he decided to make it worth his while. I removed the power cord from the back of the laptop, stood up with my Precious Darling (the laptop, not the cat) in my hands and turned around to head towards the back door, only to discover that in the 5 seconds I had not been moving, my dear cat had chosen to move from his perch to sprawl on the floor behind my feet. Unfortunately, I only noticed after my foot was coming down on top of him, and then I tried to move my foot, but it was too late, and I ended up falling – with the laptop still in my arms, mind you – towards one of the chairs. I did not manage to stop my fall, but I did manage to slam my arm into the back of the chair, and somehow twisted enough that my thigh smacked into the side, all while clinging on to my laptop for dear life with my other hand. We had just bought the Stepson a new laptop the day before. A new one for me is NOT in the budget. This dance was short and it was not graceful, but it probably would have made a hell of a YouTube video. Aside: MS Word recognizes “YouTube” as a word. The laptop made it through our Dance of Life just fine. I, however, am sporting a bruise 2 inches long by 1.5 inches wide on my arm (yes, I measured just for you so that you could have an accurate description). There’s a similar one on my thigh, but it’s covered by clothing. And they’re getting prettier by the day. I didn’t know some of these shades of blue existed, and I can hardly wait to discover the new yellows that will surely appear. I actually thought about documenting them in pictures, day by day, but that would be like a job or something, and I can barely remember that I have a blog as it is. Maybe I’ll just name them. TweedleDum and TweedleDee sound like good candidates. Another Aside: Please note that TweedleDum and TweedleDee are NOT recognized by Word, even though they’ve been around for more than 100 years longer. Anyway, this is not – by a long shot – the first time I’ve come to work with bruises. I am one of the clumsiest people I know, and I bruise very easily. If you stare at me hard enough, my blood vessels burst. And apparently Some People are starting to notice. Today, when I gave my “I’m-the-clumsiest-person-in-the-world-and-bruise-easily” excuse to someone who asked, I got a new response. A pause, a deep look and “Are you sure?”. So now I have to somehow become more graceful, because I do not want people thinking vile things of The Professor, who would no more harm me than he would voluntarily eat a vegetable that is not deep fried. Am I too old for finishing school? I hope so, because I have a feeling that they would try to take away my rum.