Feeling Feline Love

My cat loves me, let me count the ways.


1. He gently taps my face or goes on ahead and sits on my face to wake me up.

2. He makes super pokey biscuits on my tummy if I try to take a nap on the couch.

3. He head buts me as I fill his food dish.

4. He hangs out on the bathmat every night when I take a bath and he LOVES when I splash water on him.

5. He kills a lot of rats and leaves their carcasses right by my car so I can't miss them.

6. He curls up at the foot of my side of the bed every night when he's ready for bedtime.

7. He's always snuggling up to me somewhere if I wake at any time of the night.

8. When I get up he follows me around until I guess correctly what he wants.

9. He hangs out with me when I'm painting, plays with my paintbrushes, and drinks out of my brush water cup.

10.  He runs from wherever he's been hanging out outside to meet me whenever he hears my car or bike pull into the driveway.


Yup, I feel the love, Pug.  Back at ya little buddy!

Jealous much?

Dave's one of those husbands who is still totally a kid frequently, in a rockin' kind of way.  I hate to say it, but usually when he's pretending he's a six year old boy, I'm pretending I don't have any idea who he is.  Today we were leaving Costco and he was pushing the cart.  He pushed it faster and faster and then he jumped on the little ledge below the actual cart.  He drove that cart all the way down the parking lot aisle, never letting his feet touch the ground, swerving to and fro with a big goofy grin on his face.  Me?  I lagged behind, just a bit, so as not to necessarily be connected with him.  I mean, gosh, anyway I'd have to actually run if I wanted to keep up with the guy.  When I got to the car he beamed at me.


Dave:  "Jealous much?"

Me:  "No, and neither were any of the women who saw me with you." 

Uh, yeah, SNAP!


But, really, I am a pretty lucky lady to have a guy with such mad grocery cart skills.

Hand Signals

Headed out to a school event tonight and came upon the most adorable guy in a jeep waiting to enter traffic.  I wave him in and he and he gives me the biggest smile and the "thumbs up" sign rather than the traditional wave.  Love that!  As he moves through traffic he points to the left so a truck knows he wants to change lanes.  The truck drive slows and lets him move over.  Again, the awesome big smile and the "thumbs up" sign.

Me:  "I love that guy!"

Little guy:  Ignoring me.

We keep going just a bit until we're sitting at the light on South Lamar near Ben White, and there's a fella with a cardboard sign with a big heart on it.  He's making that heart sign with his hands that is all the rage these days and he's all smiles.  And, pretty darn good looking, I must say.  He gives up on the first car as his show is clearly doing nothing for them and moves toward us.  He abruptly turns around and grabs a sign pole that's on the median leans out and starts going around and around the pole, hanging way out into the street.

Me:  "Please no oncoming traffic hit him, please no oncoming traffic hit him...."

He stops and starts approaching us again.  He points directly at my little guy, backs up, and rubs his hind quarters up and down, up and down on the pole.

Little guy:  "Ew!  Why's he doing that?!?!"

Me:  Laughing hysterically.

He then wrapped his leg around the pole and starts spinning again.  Not exactly mad skills, but better than I can do (I know, I've tried!).  He approaches my car just as the light turns green and we move on.  Sorry dude, no five spot in your waistband today, but thanks for the great show!  I gave him the "thumbs up" sign and flashed him my biggest smile.

Mind Spam

The mornings are endlessly entertaining 'round these parts.  With track season earlier wake-ups, it's increased.  I think I'm seriously messing with his dream schedule.


Me:  "Get up." (After much very nice huggy/kissy prompting first, of course.)

Little guy:  "I'm downloading!"  (Yeah, and SNORING!)

Me:  "Come on, get up."

Little guy:  Much moaning and groaning as I get him to a standing/stumbling position and his brain is beginning to engage.

Me:  "Do you remember what you said to me a few minutes ago?"

Little guy:  "I don't know what you're talking about."

Me:  "You said, 'I'm downloading.'"

Little guy:  "I think my mind was getting spammed."


Er...can you say "way too much computer time"?!?!

Confidentially...I AM A WABBIT!!!

For years now I've been telling my family, "Yeah, I'm little, but I'm mean."  I've used it throughout my children's childhoods and I really thought they bought it, hook, line and sinker.  I even quoted Bruce Banner, "You won't like me when I'm angry," and my children knew they didn't want to turn mommy into a big green guy with anger management issues.  As my children have grown, now taller than I, I admit that I've used my claim of "meanness" to bolster my spine when I'm dealing with behavior issues (don't worry too much...they're relatively minor and most definitely typical at their age).

Well, I was hanging out with my little guy and he was doing his try-to-pick-his-mommy-up-and-carry-her-around thing.


Me:  "You need to stop it!"

Little guy:  "You're tiny.  It's fun."

Me:  "I might be little, but I'm mean!"

He looked at me and laughed.  HE LAUGHED!

Little guy:  "You're less mean than a rabbit, mom."


Oh...dangit!

Butt Crack

My kid played in the band AND played on the football team last semester, so I had a lot of opportunities to go to football games.  Being me, I sorta paid attention to the band when they played, I barely paid attention to the football game, but I did a heck of a lotta people watching.  Something happened to me last week that reminded me of that people watching.

So, a few months ago Dave and I were at a football game.  There was a group of super cute, giggling girls hanging out near us.  They all had cell phones in their back pockets.  All of them.  And, their pants were unbelievably tight.  Not judging, just telling the story of what I saw.  I get it.  I wore the same super tight pants at their age...and mine had accent holes/tears.  The thing is, I was in awe of those phones' ability to stay in the pockets.  I thought sure they'd shatter at the least and, perhaps, even shoot up out of their pockets at high speed.  Well, their phones all survived just fine, at least for the hour I was around them.

My phone did not have the same luck last week.  Were my pants super tight?  No.  Did I move in some way that caused my phone to shoot up, up, up and away?  No, I wish.  Ya know what I did do?  I went up to the top of the school playscape, got in line with my students, and took my turn and sat at the top of the slide.  About half way down...CRACK...something went terribly wrong.  I was scared to look but got my courage up to feel around the perimeter of the phone through the denim.  It was piggly wiggly.  Really, I was quite surprised as I do manage to provide ample padding in that area...yeesh, better than bubble wrap.  Too bad it was only on one side.  So, it turned out that my phone was actually just fine, but my lovely little phone cover was damaged.

It's all good now.  I'm thankful for Dave and his superglue skills.  Also thankful that he didn't give me a hard time about it and has cracked no butt padding jokes about the whole thing...although now I suspect they may be forthcoming.

Stranger Danger?

My kids constantly get on my case for "talking to anyone".  Generally, whenever I go out, with them or alone, I'm either decidedly open to conversational encounters with strangers or I'm decidedly not.  Started out a trip to HEB in the "decidedly not" way this morning.  I had meandered through the produce section, the cheese section, up the snack aisle, when I realized how much energy I was putting into NOT making eye contact with people.  It actually takes effort for me as my M.O. is to briefly gaze into anyone's eyes who happen to catch mine.  I sort of thought I might get an eye cramp if I kept it up, so I altered my mindset to "decidedly open".  And what happened right away?  A lady came right up to me and asked me where the Gatorade was.  Yeah, I had no idea as they keep messing with the floor plan of my HEB, and I don't drink the stuff, so I made a guess (incorrect), and someone else stopped by and made a stab at it (incorrect as well), and then an actual HEB employee interjected into our conversation the correct place.  The first lady took off in the direction of the Gatorade.  The second lady and I had a conversation about where things were that we did know for sure.  She knew where the beer was, I knew where the gluten free section was (I'm doing a little dietary experiment right now).  Anyway, it was a lovely bit of brief human contact I got to make with a pretty fun and hip chick, the second lady.  All because I raised my eyes and locked in on that first lady.

I remember when my kids were little I was all about the "stranger danger" thing.  And, golly, explaining what a "stranger" is and why there was "danger" related to that "stranger-ness" was so darn complicated.

1. If you've never met them before, they're a stranger.

2. If you've met them, but just barely, they could still be a danger.

3. Oh, and if you've known them for years, they could be the worst danger yet.

4. I give up, let's just talk about good and bad touches/feelings and blow off this whole "stranger danger" thing!


And, icing on my love of strangers cake, today as I waited in a public bathroom to wash my hands, I made eye contact with a woman in the mirror.  We smiled at each other and when she turned around she told me I had amazing hair.  Now, see?  Strangers rock!