My Brain is Full

And not even with really cool stuff like “how much of that lovely cream alpaca do I have?”, either. No, it’s stuff like this: “We begin this section by first defining exploratory data analysis, then we introduce outliers, 5-number summaries, and boxplots.” Boxplots? I thought this was when someone else got up earlier than I did and got all the good boxes from behind Safeway on my moving day. Apparently not….at least, not according to my Statistics teacher. Anyway, the point is that with my brain so full you’d think I’d have tons of wonderful, witty stuff to pull right out of it for you. However, it seems to be rather like taking one ping-pong ball out of a closet full of them: everything bounces all over everywhere (I was going to say “you get balls everywhere”…but that really didn’t sound right at all.) and you can't find a single thing. With that caveat, I offer you a series of somewhat disconnected thoughts (strange indeed, since I usually am just so incredibly together)

So I stopped at the grocery store on the way home and the first thing that jumped into my mind (thanks to the gaggle of teenage girls who passed me on their way out) was that, if a person has to wax a rather….er….shall we say intimate part of their body in order to wear a pair of jeans, wouldn’t you think that might suggest that said jeans are just tad….oh, I don’t know…LOW? . I swear, one sneeze in those pants and the world’s your gynecologist. What’s up with that? (And I’m not just saying that because my own booty would have to be stuffed into such pants with a shoehorn and a brief prayer…).

The second thing that popped into my mind (I know, you’re worried now, aren’t you?) had to do with cat food. The obvious question is how in the world do 5 little fur people who don’t together weigh as much as a 12-year-old manage to eat a truckload of food per week, particularly when the outdoor cats are supplementing with assorted rodents? Of course, I may owe them an apology on that part….it’s possible that mice just aren’t that filling. Maybe it’s like Chinese food and you’re hungry again an hour later. But the second question I had was this: why do they make cat food in little shapes like fish and chicken legs? They bathe with their tongues, for heaven’s sake—is presentation really a big issue for cats? I can just see my own furfolk: “Hey look, Ed—the food smells like chicken lips and cow snot, just the same as always, but it’s shaped like little drumsticks. Must be legs off of the littlest chickens EVER!”

For that matter, who picks the flavors for cat food? If they asked my cats, they’d be making Moth Medley, Yarn Platter, and Dining Room Plant Buffet. The indoor cats, anyway. The outdoor ones would have to have Rodent Loaf and Snake Supreme. (Yep, one of ‘em likes to play with snakes. Gets really ticked off when they stop playing with her, too. Charming animal.)

If my husband keeps sucking spiders up in the shop vac, will the big ones eat the little ones until I have hooved spiders the size of Volkswagons hunting me down in the middle of the night? (Told you—brain is full. Absolutely no room in there for segues, apparently.)

I think the morning news anchors should look like I feel: squinty, cranky, hair all tangled—then I could go shower and make myself look presentable, look at the TV again, and think “Hey, could be worse. I could still look like THAT.” I think that would get my day started on the right foot.

If an afghan can be both a dog and a knitted or crocheted throw, I think we should have a new breed of critter called a “blanket cat”. I know way more knitters with cats than dogs.

A friend of mine once read that it burns more calories to digest celery than are actually in the celery. She then worked out exactly how much celery she would have to eat in order to get a hot fudge sundae for free. I think my friend needed a hobby (God knows she doesn’t need any more celery).

And lastly, what happened to my lovely, crisp autumn? I was promised a reprieve from thin shirts that require particular bras to go underneath them (we’ve discussed my bra drawer—SO not pretty) and having to bare my toes in sandals (hobbit toes--I swear, People, I have hobbit toes). What happened?


See, bright sunny backyard:


And bright sunny frontyard:


It just ain't right.