Apparently.
The cats alerted me to my new charge by meowing frantically out on the screen porch. When I went out, I expected to see a bird, or another cat, or Teeny Bun, who was most recently seen skulking around the pampas grass.
Yes, it was Teeny Bun, and he'd gone in for the latest trend: falling into one of the many deep pits around my house.
So, down to the basement I go to find Teeny Bun hiding out in the same place Baby Boid did last year, when he fell into the window well. Christ on a crutch.
Unlike Baby Boid, I didn't figure that Teeny Bun's Mom was going to come and feed him, and he does look like he's awfully small to be on his own. Either way, he wasn't going to fly out of my window well, sooo...Redzilla to the rescue.
Tragically, there was no one to film the adventure that was me entrapping this impossibly small rabbit in a cardboard box. You'll have to settle for a video of the rabbit-cat interaction.
Because it's been several days that I've seen him on his own, looking lost, and because the window well is deep, I figured I better bring him in and at least make sure that he's hydrated and not injured.
I did not bring him in just so I could look at his teeny-tiny-ness. I did NOT! Okay, fine, I put him in my bathtub with some water and some lettuce out of my garden in hopes that in a little bit I'll be able to go look at his cuteness. Satisfied?
Some days I wish I didn't follow current events. I wish I didn't read the news or listen to the radio. Today is one of those days.
Seymore Hersh reports that the US is currently preparing for military action in Iran. According to Hersh, the build-up of troops and equipment is taking place in Afghanistan. US officials counter by denying that they're launching any attacks from Iraq. Iran, meanwhile, offers that they're already digging graves to properly bury the bodies of invading troops.
It's like both sides have hired Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the former Iraqi Minister of Misinformation. On the one hand, he regrets to inform us that we are "too far from reality." On the other hand, "There are no American infidels in Tehran. Never!"
Could we possibly bump the presidential election up to August?
One quote from Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf cannot be denied, but then even a stopped clock is right twice a day: "I speak better English than this villain Bush."
Woohoo! Mr. Raccoon has been removed from the premises.
Thank you, Vanja, my Bosnian Raccoon Warrior!
Because if today were only, say...Thursday, I don't know what I'd do.
At about 6 am, I woke to a strange thumping sound, which I assumed was a tree limb blown down, as the wind has been blowing all night.
No...not a tree limb. Instead, when I went into the bathroom, I heard an insistent scritcha-thumpa-scritcha. Coming from just outside the bathroom window. From the sump pump well. I went outside, where I found the cap on the sump pump well askew and damaged. From the bottom of the sump pump well, a pair of beady little eyes peered back at me.
Now, I don't know what exactly Mr. Treetop Jones was doing that he ended up in my sump pump well, but Christ on a crutch, I don't need this shit. I considered lowering a piece of lumber down there for him to crawl up, since he's clearly failed to get any purchase on the pipes or the electrical wiring to the pump. Alas, the longest piece of lumber I have is eight feet long and the well is a good eleven feet deep. I tried to lower the board down, but Mr. Jones freaked right the fuck out and I didn't like the idea of him barreling up the board while I was still kneeling there trying to stick it in. So...looks like this raccoon has a date with the Critter Getter.
It blew off my roof in the last windstorm and landed in my driveway. No way to know how long it was up there or how it got dead, but in death it's strangely beautiful.
My parents were freaks. By the time I was eight, I could recite "The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" verbatim. Oddly enough, I was allowed to do this, but I was not allowed to use the seven words in regular conversation. I can still produce whole chunks of the Class Clown album, which creep into my conversations uninvited.
I like swear words. Profanity. Blasphemy. There are few words as satisfying, few words as visceral. I've used a lot of them in the past week as I worked to get through the end of the fiscal year. They're good for moving. Helpful when trying to unstick stuck things and trying stick unstuck things. I learned all the curse words I know from my dad, who once stabbed himself in the hand with a screwdriver while trying to replace the inner tubes on my bicycle. I was not quite seven and since that bloody summer afternoon, I have never heard an English swear word my dad didn't say that day.
That's still my idea of first aid. 1.) Say all the dirty words you know, 2.) staunch the blood flow, and 3.) go to the emergency room.
I'm not worried that swear words will lose their power, because part of their power is in the Teutonic simplicity of them. Fuck is always going to have a special something that having sex and making love don't. Shit is always going to make friends faster than feces or defecation. Tits are always going to be more fun than breasts.
Besides, tits doesn't even belong on the list. It sounds like a snack...new Nabisco Cheese Tits and Onion Tits...
End of the fiscal year, here I come.
If I can just make it through the next 16 inches of paperwork, I will be in the clear. If I can just untangle the last piece of travel paperwork, I'll have the rest of the summer to devote to my higher study of Slack. If I can just...
Bonus randomocity from the end of yesterday:
As I was leaving work, I walked past the new air-handling shaft that runs all the way from the roof to the basement. Inside the shaft, I could hear a bunch of guys working, then suddenly, someone shouted, "OH MY GOD!" This cry of alarm was followed by, "JESUS CHRIST!" "WHAT IS THAT?" and then at last: "Damn it, Bobby, did you shit your pants?" and hysterical man laughter.
Yup, basically, they've got a dozen guys like my dad doing construction on Brain Tumor Hall.
Little mouse that visited my office: you're very cute, but you need to move along. Also, I advise against going down to Slavic. They have snap traps.
Wow. French movies are really different. Nothing like getting what you believe to be a drama and finding out there's a blow job in the first 15 minutes. A real blow job. Not an off-screen simulated one. Now, I'm not a prude. I have nothing against cock-sucking. Some of my best friends are...okay, that's not actually true. My best friends are not cocksuckers, but I do have close friends who are. Still, even for racy French cinema, I wasn't expecting that. Imagine trying to get funding from the National Endowment for the Arts to make an America film that has a blow job in it. I'm not a prude, but I didn't keep watching. I figure, if I'm 15 minutes in and I don't like either of the main characters, I don't really want to watch one of them perform oral sex on the other one. I'm weird that way.
Bacon food-ku
Grease popping on me
Ow! Even when you hurt me,
I will still love you.
Never mind art movies with blow jobs, you know what we need to borrow from the French? A month of summer vacation. Summer is awesome and it would only be better if we all got to take a month off.
So, after months of inconveniences and mysterious dust and bobcats ripping holes in the wall below my window and a hammer drill running all the time that sounds distantly like a giant calico trying to hork up a hairball, I've finally had my first real temper tantrum. I came in this morning to find a professor in a tizzy, because he'd planned to show a movie in the conference room, but there were maintenance guys in there, who told him they'd been sent to remove the digital projector.
Now, I am the only person who would order such a thing. The only person who would initiate the work request paperwork for such a thing, so I knew something was wrong. When I went down to the conference room, I found two maintenance guys walking around in boots on my newly refinished antique conference table. They had just finished removing the projector from the ceiling. When I asked them what the hell they were doing, they said, "We got a work order to remove the projector."
From whom? The maintenance guys clearly recognized the danger I represented, because they were already apologizing as they fished out their work order papers. In full blown menstrual fury mode, with flames licking off the top of my head, I snatched it out of their hands. Scrawled there was the vague notation: "Remove dig. proj. from seminar room. Scribble Scribble Something. 2nd Floor." Signed: the Director of Construction at Design and Construction Management.
You know I got that fucker on conference call fast and proceeded to tear him a new one. His excuse for the vague instructions: he didn't know the room number of the seminar room where the projector needed to be removed, but it was on the 2nd Floor somewhere. The maintenance guys were quick to say: "This is the only seminar room with a projector on the 2nd Floor, so we assumed you meant this one."
The Director of DCM mumbled to himself for a while and said, "Well, that should be right, because it has to be removed prior to the duct work."
"The duct work in JANUARY?" I said. "Are you sure you don't mean the seminar room ON THIRD FLOOR, where they're doing duct work in AUGUST?"
Dead silence, then a tiny little voice said, "Oh, uh, right. I guess that's right."
Then I said a few things that may come back to bite me in the ass, if this guy is brave enough to tell anyone his mistake. Things like: "Dumbass. Moron. How can you be in charge of this project when you don't even know which floor they're working on? I'm just a lowly secretary and I can keep that straight."
So now I'm stewing around waiting for the maintenance guys to replace the projector, speakers and ceiling tiles, while walking around on my conference table in their socks.
Close enough for government work, I guess.
