He’s A Pirate

February 2, 2014.Reading time 2 minutes.

I’m not very successful at Twitter. I tweet under my character, Virgil Creech and mostly get ignored. But recently, one of Virgil’s best tweets was, “Boys will be boys, unless they can be pirates. Then, they’re always pirates.” It got a lot of likes and some retweets. It is fun to assume the personality of a raucous twelve year-old boy who doesn’t quite understand stuff going on around him. I might be 46, but I often don’t get stuff, either. Like on on this foggy morning.

I struggled on my run this morning. If you run, you understand that there are times when your body and mind don’t work together and it is tough to get going. Usually, it works itself out after a few miles. Not always. Today, I was struggling. Until my song came on. I have a song that pushes me to a sprint when it comes on the iPod. (It makes for a good Fartlek – which IS actually a word. Look it up, it is Swedish for speed play and always fun to add into conversations.) Ironically, my power song is, “He’s a Pirate!”

It is one minute and thirty three seconds of fast-paced music. Better yet, the boy in me can pretend I am a pirate fighting alongside Jack Sparrow and Will Turner. I don’t always brandish my sword and scream as a run along the beaches with my mates. Not always. But, like I said, today was a tough run.

So to the two women who came around the blind corner today when I was racing to battle, I am deeply sorry I scared you. I was not after your booty as you might have feared, I was only charging to fight Davy Jones.

After all, I’m a pirate.

The broken cat

January 28, 2014.Reading time 3 minutes.

We forgot the cat again. We didn’t forget to feed her or change her litterbox. No, we forgot to take her to the vet to get her fixed, again. The phone call from my lovely wife went something like this:

LW: Did you make an appointment for the cat?

Me: I knew I forgot something! Did you make one?

LW: No, and she’s doing it again.

Me: What? That’s impossible! She just went through this.

LW holds the phone out so I can listen to the cat moaning her bewitching taunt to any would-be boy cats in a ten mile radius. We talked about it and agreed that it had to happen. With the busyness of life, we just never got around to it. To quote a favorite phrase in our home, we got stuck in the “tyranny of the urgent.” So she hit a cycle for the second time, reminding us of her needs. Often…and loudly.

We have two old labs, one we call Toby Flenderson. If you watched The Office, you know Toby is short on personality and so is our dog. She never does much – just lays around and looks at you. She will momentarily spring to life to smell the butt or crotch of a visitor just to embarrass us. But it isn’t long before she lays back down, and looks at you. Well, the cat in heat has decided that Toby must be the one who can satisfy her urges. I don’t know why, perhaps it is because the dog is more dormant than the other one. Regardless of the fact that the dog is spade…and female, the cat has perfected a dance of love designed to woo her. She flops around in front of the poor pooch all day long trying to seduce her. Worse yet, at night, she calls out to her, waking us up with her songs of love.

She got so desperate yesterday, I think she downloaded some Barry White on iTunes and bought Toby a shot of tequila.

While most in the house laugh about this, the entire thing has been fermenting in my youngest daughter’s mind. She hasn’t had “the talk” yet. So she doesn’t know why Kitty is doing a low crawl of love across the floor. Oh, the questions! What does ‘in heat’ mean? What is fixed? Is she broken? Why is her bottom in the air? Why does she keep nuzzling Toby?

Since we’re cat newbies, the oldest has been doing research on the topic. Turns out, this might last a while as they can go into heat over and over and over until…well, you get the picture even if our youngest doesn’t.

Guess who’s going to the vet soon?