Adventures in Skyping With the Good For Nothing Cat

The cat pictured above has Post-Attic/Eave-Stress-Disorder (hereafter referred to as "PAESD") and I think I might have it too. Because a gal can only roll around in wasps nests and shingle nails and that horrible pink insulation stuff for so long without having nightmares about humongous lonely prehistoric fish with a seahorse head.

Perhaps you've never heard of PAESD. It's like this - we come home to the sound of obvious distress. After opening every last door and cabinet and hidey hole, we finally decide that the loud, piteous meowing was coming from inside the wall somehow.

I tried removing the air conditioner vent plate in the mistaken hope that I'd be able to see into the ceiling from there. I used a pickax to remove one of the attic floorboards.

I made my way as far back toward the eaves as I could. I was awash in fiberglass. I could feel the shingle nails poking into my head. I was inches away from wasps nests bigger than a coffee mug. I could hear at least one wasp buzzing an unhappy warning.

I later had this conversation with younger gal:
Younger Gal - I was SO SCARED!
Me - Yeah, I was really scared too. But I was trying not to let you know.
Younger Gal - I knew.
Me - How did you know?!?!
Younger Gal - (no answer)
Me - Was it when I said, "I'm scared!"?
Younger Gal - Yeah.

I really was terrified, mostly because things have been SO HARD on my gal lately. I was afraid the death of her favorite cat would send her straight over the edge. And I was also afraid of being stung by a wasp. Or getting multiple tetanus inducing holes in my head from all the shingle nails. Or falling through the ceiling into the dining room because I had removed the floorboard.

I got the idea to skype with the stupid cat, because my computer camera is one of those that clips on and has a cord. So I lowered the camera part and a flashlight between the attic floor and the eave, but I couldn't see squat. Luckily he was not as deep into the walls as I had feared and he somehow got himself out a couple of hours later.

I did NOT get pictures of the escapade even though I had potential photographers at hand, because of the whole potential cat's death thing hovering in the air. But I did get the above picture of Nimue having a distinct PAESD experience.

Here's a picture of my other cat snarling. It has nothing to do with anything, but I thought I would provide comic relief just in case you now have Post-Listening-to-A-Story-About-A-Cat-With-Post-Attic/Eave-Stress-Disorder-Disorder:

My Left Hand...

looks like this as of yesterday afternoon:

I Think Maybe Benjamin Franklin Was Jewish...but it was probably a secret. And then he observed Yom Kippur all year long. Or something.

For anyone not familiar with Yom Kippur, it involves hours in services atoning for sin. And you're supposed to fast and then being hungry makes you think about your sins and how you're going to do better next year.

Except, fasting mostly makes me wonder how people who are don't have enough to eat function day in and day out. And it makes me ponder whether the tingly feeling in my fingers and toes is hunger or just like some leftover frostbite from living in Vermont all those years.

Luckily just in case I can't really think up all my sins for the year right on the spot like that, some of the sins are listed out in the prayerbook so I can remember what to ask forgiveness for. I follow along and think about my sins.

The list sort of follows a formula: "We have sinned against you by this and we have sinned against you by that..." And there are a LOT of sins. And during services I say the words while thinking things like, "Yep. I did that this year." and "Yeah, I probably did that sin too." and sometimes even, "I don't strictly remember sinning that way this year, but y'know...it's been a long year. Maybe I just don't remember."

So this year I'm following along and then I read out, "We have sinned against you by irreverence..." and I was like, "Uh oh! I think I'm the QUEEN of that sin." And so that's why I didn't use the word "Antichrist" in the title of this post. Because the point is to try and do better this year.

No seriously folks, I have really have one additional true resolution for this year (besides being less irreverent) and that is to argue less with my gal. Surviving the gal's teenagerhood isn't enough for me. I want to survive AND still be speaking to each other by the time she reaches that magical age called "the end of teenagerhood". I think that's around age 40. Maybe 37 for a lucky few.

Look! How can I be SO proud and yet so exasperated by one little gal all at the same time?!?!?!In other news, I've been skyping with my gal's good for nothing cat. But that's probably a post all unto itself.

Death by Teenager, Part 4,752

I'm interested in any ideas on how to survive the whole parenting a teenager thing. I'm sure it must somehow involve having seriously awesome health insurance, so I hope the government gets all that business hammered out soon.

If you've noticed that I haven't been around the Kingdom of Blogdom lately, I'll bet you've been thinking, "Surely she's died from that mysterious and seemingly fatal disease called 'parenting a teenager.'"

Or maybe you thought, "I'll bet she's all kinds of swamped at work and comes home totally stressed out and barely able to keep her eyes open through the whole homework and dinner and after school activities part of the day."

Or "She doesn't have any time because it's the Jewish High Holidays" or maybe even "God probably struck her down dead for living in sin and joking about it over the internet."

Yeah. So anyway you know how sometimes on a weekend you're trying to make heads or tails of your checkbook and your man's out in the yard and you figure he's all happy because he likes being in the dirt and commanding the plants and stuff and then all of a sudden you can't finish doing your checkbook because you have no internet because the cable runs through the flower garden?

And it turns out the cable to the phone and internet is now severed because who the heck knew the cable for the phone and the internet ran through the garden anyway?

It turns out that all of the above are pretty much true and valid reasons why I've been missing from the Kingdom of Blogdom this week. Most of those are true and valid reasons. Except for the God striking me down dead part.

Maybe God was trying to let my teenage gal do the dirty work on that one. But as it turns out my sweetheart, my angel, sweet pea did not totally do me in this week. I have the feeling she's probably up to the task though, so I'm glad I have halfway decent insurance.