Cat for Hire; or Did You Hear the New Guy in Accounting Brought a Disemboweled Mouse for Lunch?

It's a tough economy out there, and nobody knows this more than Liza Bean Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys).

In case you’ve forgotten, Liza Bean Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys) is a small, symmetrically-striped puss, a cat I often find reaching a clever paw toward my dinner plate. At five pounds, Liza Bean is a bird/mouse/bug killer of the first water, the kind of cat that makes you think of cats "They're both attractive and efficient" and "Much bigger than she is and she'd have to be registered as a weapon".

Liza Bean is one of those neat, tidy cats, a cat who remembers when cats were gods and yet has come to terms with her fall in status.

Liza Bean's been on my computer lately. I can always tell when she has by the water bowl near the keyboard, the catnip laid out in neat little lines.

It appears that the cat is looking for a job.

I must say, her resume is impressive.

I've cut-and-pasted it here for your pleasure:

Liza Bean Bitey

PO Box 114

Minneapolis MN 55413

Contact: whyioughta2@gmail.com

Summary of Qualifications:

• Drove a taxi in college -- highly familiar with area roads.
• Worked as an unlicensed plumber from '04 to '05. Have been cleared of all charges related to the Margarita-hot-tub incident.
• Short order cook in the late 90s. Ask me about my Potatoes a la Schultz!
• Walk-on part of Cat #2 in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
• Positively motivated cat with an affinity for playful poses, chasing things straight up a wall, and tugging at your earrings in the middle of the night.
• Experienced in pest removal (up to and including unwanted guests, those of the bug persuasion, and irritating family members).
• Excellent claw-eye coordination.
• Dependable, flexible, and able to maintain a sense of humor under pressure.

I am looking forward to this new phase in her life.  She’s been “sleeping in” for all eight of her years, and she’s yet to offer to vacuum or lift the business end of a snow shovel.

It’s time she contributed.

After all, there's no call in adding things to the grocery list if you're not going to chip in for them. "The good shrimp" my Aunt Fanny!

Not All the Notes in my "Ideas" Notebook are Created Equal...

Knowing that I may lose whatever respect you may have developed for me – that is respect you’re developing for me, right? – it is possible that the time has come to expand on the note I scribbled in my notebook a month ago.

He may have moved out - and years ago - but his ability to influence remains.

The note?

“My son’s got gas.”

So small, isn’t it? A four-word sentence with more gravity, more depth, than one little sentence has a right to.

It’s not like there isn’t a warning beforehand. There’s a look on his face that I’ve come to recognize, immediately followed by a two-word precursor to a potentially life-changing event. Like the imperious command of “Scratch” – my cue to run my nails along his back until I am dismissed – there is also a far more subtle “Hey, Mom” – followed by an almost Mona-Lisa-like smile – that makes me run out of the room.

Why would a loving mother, a woman interested in what comes after “hey…” no matter who says it, go skittering out of a room as fast as possible after such a statement?

Because like I said, my son’s got gas.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not regular gas; not “whoops! sorry about that” gas; but hair-frying, clothes-wrinkling, room-clearing gas.

I hold myself responsible. Was it something I ate during pregnancy? Should I have not eaten only Mexican food, potatoes drenched in Tabasco, those little canned oranges and, so help me God, canned sardines?

Perhaps it has something to do with my weather-predicting hair? Could the ability to stenchify whole rooms be The Boy’s equivalent of my hair's ability to detect humidity?



I’ve lost your respect, haven’t I?

Do You Look Different?

People say to me, Pearl? What are you afraid of?

And I say, you know? One of my current fears is that as an old woman I will have the same hair style that I did in high school.

It’s a silly fear, and one without a foundation. I’ve run the gamut of “natural” hair colors (as opposed to “unnatural”, i.e., blue or green) and hair styles that have included streaks, highlights, lowlights, frostings, layers, braids and a brief foray into the much-maligned mullet.

That’s right. I had a mullet.

I was young. I was crazy. I was reckless in my choice of hairdressers.

Recently, I’ve paid for my hair to be dyed a dark reddish brown; and, for the first time in several hundred years, I’ve got bangs.

My mother cut our hair when we were children. When she could not find the time the morning of the taking of my first-grade picture, five minutes before I left for school, with two other children to feed and see off, I cut my own bangs.

The result was what my mother referred to as “experimental”.

These are the first bangs I’ve had since that fateful day.

You’d be amazed at how many people can look at you and not notice that you now have a fringe of hair curtaining your forehead. Do it sometime – get bangs, if only to have someone look you straight in the eye and say, “What’s different about you? You get new glasses?”

I had this experience at work the other day.

The guy from the mailroom was staring at me.

This is not entirely unusual. This guy gives the Fish Eye to a number of people. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It used to bother me, but now it’s like having a cow look at you: you don't put a lot of stock into what the cow may or may not be thinking.

This time, however, he actually seems to be both looking at me and seeing me.

“Pat?”

He focuses. “Oh,” he says.

“What’s up?” I say.

“Wudja dooter yer hair?” he says.

What’d I do to my hair? What’d I DO to it? What do you mean, what did I do to it?

“I had it done,” I said. “Different color. Bangs. Slight trim.”

“No, I mean,” he said. “I just noticed it looks different.”

Hmm. Yeah. I got that you thought it looked different.

“Hey,” he says. “Have you always had those freckles?”

I fight the urge to tell him they are new. Granted, I think Pat is working with a brain-cell deficit here, possibly from some poor entertainment choices in the 80s, but still, I find this brief exchange unsatisfying. What just went on here?

And that’s another thing I’m afraid of: That someday I will be the one to stare at the face of someone I’ve known for six years and say “Have you always had freckles?”

Bob's Not Supposed to Drink Pop

Mary has a soft spot for people.

The little weirdo really likes them.

Want to laugh until you fall over? She’s your gal. Lonely? Same person. Afraid that weird woman at the bar is going to come after you when you head for your car?

As her ancestors would say, “Is this a private fight, or can anyone join in?”

And I tell you that to tell you this: Mary’s been visiting an ex-coworker’s elderly mother.

Once a week, Mary takes the bus to the nursing home to check on Rose.

It is possible, on some days, that Rose believes Mary is a daughter. And isn’t she? Like a good girl, Mary brings her little treats: flowers, sugar cookies, stories, her full attention.

Rose is not the only person in the home, of course, and Mary knows most of them, brings them jokes and smiles, teases them.

She left her purse and a bag containing a gift – a two-liter bottle of root beer – in the common room the other day while she went to go get Rose. Rose likes a glass of root beer after lunch and dinner. It aids in her digestion, she says.

When she came back, however, the root beer was out of the bag and in the hands of Bob.

Bob, an 84-year-old man no longer allowed pop due to his diabetes, is almost half-way through the bottle.

“Bob! Drop the pop!”

Bob may be 84, but he’s still taller than Mary; and having found the treat, he is not to be denied. He shakes his head “no” vigorously, droplets of root beer flying, his moustache holding shiny, fragrant beads of the forbidden treat.

“Mph mphh,” he mumbles, his cheeks full to the point of explosion. Bob looks like an elderly, trumpet-free and guilty Dizzy Gillespie.

Luckily, Mary happens to speaks Mumble. “You are too!”

Bob lifts the bottle to his lips, chugs root beer as Mary swats at his arms. “You know you’re not supposed to have pop, Bob!”

Root beer runs down his chin and onto the front of his shirt as he swallows.

“I’m not,” he challenges between swallows. “I’m not having pop.”

“Oh my God, Bob, you liar,” Mary teases him. “You’re not drinking pop? Right now? You’re not drinking pop?”

“Nope,” Bob says around a mouthful. “Not allowed pop.”

The nursing home authorities were called in, of course – “He looked so happy, but I knew he wasn’t supposed to have it” – and the half-finished bottle was wrested from his happy, sticky hands.

Mary reports that Bob harbors no ill will against her.

And he’s the first one at the door when she visits now.

Weird? Me? No. Why Do You Ask?

A re-post, as I work on my next book...

I had occasion to ride the Number 10 the other day.

And right there, I think you can tell where this is heading, can’t you?

My free-range love for human beings is in for some testing.

I ask you: Have you ever seen so many weirdos?

Oh, if only you’d have been with me.

Boarding the bus, in and of itself, was notable. The front of the bus is full, dance-floor full. I suck it in, shift sideways, and “pardon me, excuse me” until I hit a baby stroller, the kind with room at the back for luggage. I gaze overhead at the “You Must Collapse Your Stroller” posting. I glance down at the mother as she offers the baby a bottle of Mountain Dew.

Sigh.

I can stay here, bumper to bumper with the people who can’t get past the baby, or I can try to get to the seat that I see just over there.

I stand on my toes, suck it in with a ferocity normally reserved for a how-long-can-you-hold-your-breath contest, turn sideways again, and maneuver past the stroller.

Ta-dah.

Next up? An older man and his non-collapsed collapsible grocery cart. It is holding a bag of catfood. He is wearing a woman’s pant suit and some interesting white slip-on sandals. I frown slightly, trying to work out where he got this outfit and what he’s done that he must now wear it -- as punishment, I'm sure -- in public.

I lift my right leg as high as possible without a 10-minute warm-up, balance on my left foot and step over his cart.

Yoga is really paying off.

The last available seat is mine.

And the peculiar smells wafting from the backpack of the guy next to me pique my interest.

How to describe this smell to you?

Picture, if you will, a badger and, oh, a skunk, sitting on a second-hand couch in the skunk’s mom’s basement.

“Care for a smoke?” the skunk says.

“Don’t mind if I do,” smiles the badger.

And then the police show up, slap the skunk into cuffs and it’s discovered that the badger has an outstanding warrant for his arrest.

Like all buses, the 10’s population waxes and wanes at every stop. I am riding much further than I usually do, and by the time I am ready to de-bus, half of its riders are gone, ol’ Skunk Weed is but a hastily scrawled memory in my book of blog-post-hopeful memories and the man in the ladies pants suit is home and relating the story about the annoying woman who stepped over his grocery cart and then wrote, laughing to herself, in a small book pulled from a large purse.

Because it’s true.

Everybody is somebody’s weirdo.

Have You Brought Enough for Everyone? Huh?

You know the story.

A man cannot get over how small his apartment is. In the kitchen, he can stir what’s on the stove, wash the dishes, and check the contents of the fridge all while standing in one spot. The hallway is filled with shoes and made narrower by the coats on rows of hooks. And bedrooms? What bedrooms? Bedroom, yes; and then there’s the fold-out couch.

He tries not to be bitter. It’s enough for him, his wife, their son. Still. Why does it have to be so small, and when will he be able to afford a bigger place?

And then his wife’s family loses their home; and in they move, the two adults and their child, their bicycles and bedding and dogs and Tupperware.

You thought it was small before?

They stay for a month; and when they leave, the man is overjoyed. Look at this place, he exclaims to his wife. Can you believe what a big apartment we have?
I told you that to tell you this: the buses that you thought were full? They weren’t. But they are now.

I can’t put my finger on it. Since the temporary move of the bus stops from Nicollet Mall to Hennepin Avenue (where, last Friday – and I kid you not – I witnessed a woman wet herself in broad daylight), the bus/bus stop has become a changed place.

Gone are my plans to contact the Metropolitan Transit Commission with my Don’t Be Afraid, It’s Just People on a Bus program, (free mani/pedis, puppies to hold for the duration of your commute, a walk-in humidor).

What remains is the desire to maintain one’s composure.

There appears to be no limit to the number of people you can cram onto a bus, nor a limit to what comes along with those people. Suitcases, walkers, strollers, pizzas: if it is part of the human experience, if it can in any way be moved, heard, smelled, or yelled at/into, it will be there.

The woman next to me balances a take-out container of barbecued ribs, coleslaw, a corn meal muffin and a large Diet coke on her lap and then proceeds to eat it.

With her fingers.

There are signs prohibiting eating on the bus. Is she unaware of this?

Maybe she’s not from around here.

Maybe she’s never ridden the bus before.

Maybe she's a thoughtless twit sent to test the system.

At any other time, the driver would be able to see this, but the bus is filled past his having a view of the seats. 

There is no one to save me from this lip-smacking eater of barbecue, and so I do what living in the city has shown, in this instance, anyway, to be the most reasonable course of action.

I close my eyes.

And breathe deeply.

Mmm. Barbecue.

There Should be Protocols

A repeat from 2014.  Oh, how I miss Tamra!


“There should be a protocol,” she stresses.  “There are reasonable expectations associated with the bus!”

I nod solemnly, pull out the book I keep on hand for such occurrences, and remove the cap from my pen.  “Why don’t you tell me about it?” I say.

“There’s this guy – he’s a big guy.  A really big guy.  And you know the size of those seats, right?”

I do, indeed.  Tamra rides daily on one of the city-to-suburbs buses, buses that look, for the most part, like a city bus, but are run independently.  They have Greyhound-fancy seats and, from what I understand, onboard masseuses. 

“So he sits down.  And he’s allowed that.  I’m not saying he shouldn’t sit with me.  But then he overlaps, and –“

Tamra shudders.  A slender, fashionable woman, one suspects, looking at her, that not only is her home in a visitor-ready state, but that her legs, despite it being January, have been recently shaved.

I like her anyway.

“—and you know how I feel about germs, right?  So there he is, he’s got his leg pressed – and I’m as close to the window as I can get! – against mine, I can feel his belly –“

Tamra is overcome.  I give her a moment.

“And then he pulls a newspaper out of his briefcase!  He pulls the newspaper out, snaps it open – and now I’ve got his arm clearly in my bubble –“

His arm is clearly in her bubble, I write, chuckling.

“ – and then – and then!”

I look up from my notes, reach for my coffee.  “And then?”

She closes her eyes, turns away, as if to push the memory away.  “He sneezes,” she says.  “Into the newspaper.”

I chuckle, despite myself.  I’ve watched Tamra disinfect a hallway after someone with a sniffle walks by.  Raised by a registered nurse, on a first-name basis with a number of exceedingly startling maladies, Tamra does not suffer a germ gladly.

“That’s not the worst of it,” she says, turning back, eyes haunted.  “After he sneezed into the newspaper, he – he –“

My eyes go round.  No.  My mother’s voice rises, somewhere in the back of my head; and suddenly, I know what Tamra will say next.

“No,” I say.

“Yes.”

I stare at her.

She looks away again.  “He picked his nose.  And then – “ 

I make a choking sound, but the worst is yet to come.

She looks up, troubled.  “He flicked it,” she says, wincing.  “He flicked it in the aisle.”

There is a moment’s silence as we consider this.

She turns back to her monitor, types quickly, a brief, staccato burst of sound.

“I see him all the time,” she says.  “But I keep my purse on the seat next to me.  I pretend to be digging in it until he passes.”

She turns back to look at me.  “It’s not right,” she says.  “me leaving my purse on the seat like that.  But really, there ought to be protocols.”  

When You Buys You One, You Gets You Two; or Public Transportation, AKA The Cheap Seats

6:42 a.m.:  the heat wave in our immediate future, the one that will have me standing tomorrow at the bus stop, like a rich person, in 44 glorious degrees of early Spring-time thrall, is no where in sight.

It is a Thursday morning, cold and dark. 

The bus arrives, and I climb its steps.  I wave my MetroPass at the doohickey and walk to my seat of preference, a spot up the steps at the back of the bus, near the camera.  I like to think that should anything untoward happen while engaged in commuting, it will be caught on tape and either a.) result in a conviction, b.) be shown on TV, or c.) lead to my finally being discovered as a runway model.

We are 15 minutes into the trip downtown when the men at the back of the bus get excited.

“Come on, man.  Come On.  Come ON.  COME ON.”

My eyes swing to the right, to the left, spin counterclockwise before returning to their straight-ahead position. 

It’s been a long time since the morning commute was this lively.  I lean back in my seat, reach into my purse, pull out the book I keep for just such occasions.  I switch my low-volume iPod to “off”.

“Aww, COME on, man!”

Another man laughs softly.  “Shush, man.  Call him later.  Anyway, you be shoutin’. These good people goin’ to work, they don’t want to hear you.”

I am dying to turn around.

“Man, I don’t talk like no mouse, man,” says COME ON man.  A combination of urban mush-mouth and side show barker, he’s got a baritone voice.  “People hear me talk, they know they be getting’ the juicy-juice.”

“Well just keep it down, Mr. Juice, that’s all’m sayin’.  Me and Earnest, we got you, right up front.  Know that, man.  Just know that.”

“Oh, we be right upfront, all of us.  We got the earnest, and we got the frank.  Man, we be earnestly frank.”

“Man, I said you gotta be quiet.”

“You know, last week he be talking about gettin’ enough for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday?  It be Monday now.  That’s why that man don’t be answering the phone.  Come on, now!  That man be detoxing.”

Both men laugh, full, open expressions of enjoyment.  Heh, heh, heh. You right, you right.    

The bus goes relatively silent, save for the coughing woman near the driver.  We creep along the Nicollet Avenue mall, all-year cyclists scattering before us like skinny, helmeted cattle.  I look out the windows at the storefronts, windows dressed, mannequins in swimwear and summer dresses.

“MMM,” grunts the COME ON man.  “You know about that Joseph E. Banks?  They be having buy you one, get you two.”

“Man, they got good clothes,” says the other man.  “Good clothes.”

“Mm mm mmm,” the man with the juicy-juice says. “You know what?  Maybe we find us Earnest, we do some shoppin’.” 

Hey - What's with the Holes in Your Ceiling?

I sat at Mary’s house the other night. Bowls of home-made chili and slabs of freshly baked bread comfortably downed, we sat in the living room, her dog T-Bone, Black Lab of Incredible Sincerity, at our feet.

“Did Anna friend you?”

Anna was someone from our past, a woman with an insanely cheerful and ambitious sexual history. She told crazy stories, sometimes backed up with the craziest of photos.

“On FaceBook?” I asked. “Yeah, but we don’t talk.”

“You remember the sex swing?”

Well who could forget something like that?

The sex swing figured prominently in Anna’s stories, and Mary and I found ourselves wondering aloud as to why we didn’t own one, why we hadn’t been telling stories about the sex swing.

I could post a picture, of course, but a wink, as they say, is as good as a nod.

It took several off-color jokes and a colored-pencil-and-glued-macaroni diagram (we couldn’t find the glitter), but we've come up with several ideas as to why we have never owned a screwed-into-the-ceiling sexual-enhancement device.

In no particular order:

• After finding a stud in the general populous, we’d have to find a stud in the ceiling. Have you seen me hang a picture? A nail pounded into a wall with the heel-end of a dress boot is my specialty.
• Speaking of which, I’m going to need a full-color, instructional brochure on how to use such a swing. Perhaps something frame-worthy.
• What about the amount of exercise that would have to take place prior to getting into the swing? I mean, who knows where those straps will cut? Control of the jiggle factor, to my mind, is crucial.
• The drawing up and signing of the legal documents, holding me blameless and giving me rights to the story should anything untoward/amusing happen whilst strapped into the swing, would be prudent.
• I would need to give ol’ Ron at Nationwide a call. Will my homeowner’s insurance cover enthusiastically-incurred injuries?
• And speaking of insurance, do I have the money set aside to cover my medical deductible – and what are the odds of ending up in a Horrors of the Emergency Room video?

As you can see, Mary and I have put a lot of thought into this.

What can I say? That was some really good chili.

Pierce Would Like You to Move Along? He Has, Like, Things to Do?

A re-post, as I'm a bit busy.  Please enjoy this moment with Mary and Pearl...


I go through a pair of black flats every year. Humble, dedicated shoes, they are my "go-to" footwear, my Run!-The-bus-is-coming! shoe. Like the other functional items in my life -- my car (may it rest in peace), my yoga mat, several ex-boyfriends -- they ask little of me and I, in turn, run them into the ground.

Saturday was the day my latest pair of black shoes left this mortal coil.

Leftie and Stompie, as I liked to think of them, will be missed.

That's why Mary and I found ourselves at the mall Saturday evening. And one new pair of black flats and a meander or two through another shop later, we had stopped at the Panera for a bite.

Semi-interesting side note here, the mall closes at 10:00. The Panera closes at 9:00.

We didn't know this when the woman behind the cash register took our orders at 8:58. We didn't realize it when my sandwich became available at 9:07.

We take you now to nine minutes after I received my sandwich and just moments before Mary and I suffer joint incredulity. I have the last bite of my sandwich in my hand, a handful of potato chips on my plate. Mary is waxing rhapsodic about her mother's shortbread and comparing it to the cookie she has just bought.

"It's not bad, but it's not my mom's. I mean, what is this? Butter, flour, sugar? Ooh and I can feel the seams of my pants straining. You hear that? You hear that, Pearl? The threads are going to let go any --"

A uniformed weasel slips into view, his hair in his eyes. In a rather theatrical move he slides up to our booth and manages to somehow click his heels and slouch at the same time. In a cutesy voice he may have picked up from the Disney Channel, he interrupts.

"Excuse me, ladies."

I look up at him. What shockingly appears to be truly fantastic nose hair is quickly realized to be some sort of septum piercing, an upside-down horseshoe, its ends emerging from each nostril and hanging almost to his upper lip. His hair is in his eyes, and he is brushing it across his forehead, as I'm sure he must do several hundred times an hour.

He gives us a condescending smile. I am thinking that he believes himself to be quite attractive. I am thinking that he believes that we believe the same. Mary and I are awash in youthful, hipster smugness.

"I'm sorry, ladies," he simpers, "but as I'm sure you know we close at 9:00? So if you could just finish up? If you would finish your sandwich, you know, we close at 9:00?"

Poor guy. Completely devoid of a declarative sentence.

Mary and I look at each other, communicate telepathically: They close at 9:00? Is this little !@#$ kicking us out?

We turn back to him, eyebrows raised. He brushes his bangs out of his eyes and continues. "I have to vacuum this area? So if you could finish, that would be great? We close at 9:00?"

Again with the closing-at-9:00 bit. I look at my phone: 9:16.

Mary jerks her head towards our little weasel. "What do you think of this one, huh?" she says to me. "He says they close at 9:00."

I nod and turn to look up at him. "So you're saying you close at 9:00?"

He nods enthusiastically. "Yes."

"And I should finish eating and leave?"

He looks relieved. The middle-aged women in front of him are getting the picture. "Yes."

"Just so we're clear," Mary muses, "do you think we should finish first and then leave? Or should we leave now and then finish?"

Pierce, as I like to think of him, is magnanimous. "Oh, you can finish first."

"So I should finish my sandwich and leave, is that right?" I say.

He is still grinning. "Yes, if you could finish up..."

"Perfect," I say. "I will finish up, and then I will leave. And when I do leave? You, my friend, will be the first one I notify." I turn away from him.

Mary looks up. "We'll call you," she says, smiling.

Pierce backs away, grinning, his face becoming more confused with each backward step.



We left not long after that, after briefly discussing and discarding the option of taking the next 45 minutes to eat the last five chips on my plate. Frankly, hanging out at the Panera to make a point seemed silly.

He was, after all, just a kid.

And of course neither Mary nor I were ever as eager as ol' Pierce to leave work on a Saturday night.

Sometimes I Sits and Thinks, and Sometimes I Just Sits

A re-post from the winter of 2011.  

Very little has changed since then...


So I’ve been listening in on the bus again.

It’s an art. Don’t let the iPod fool you. Sure it looks like I’m listening to music; but if it looks like you’re having an interesting time of it, I just may turn it off and eavesdrop…

Hey! It’s a public space, for cryin’ out loud! If you don’t want everyone to hear about how that stain got on your living room couch, I suggest you lower your voice.

Which brings me to yesterday morning. Come sit by me on the bus, where we keep our eyes ahead and our ears on scan…

It’s 6:24 a.m. Still dark. The bus is occupied by heavy-lidded, blanket-coated folk who want nothing more than to be back in their beds.

That’s how it normally is. Except for when it’s summer, of course, when the bus is occupied by heavy-lidded, cotton-clad folk who want nothing more than to be at the beach.

But back to our bus. And it is our bus, iddin it; and look how cozy we are! So cozy, in fact, that some of us have forgotten that we’re not alone…

The man directly in front of me, a young, skinny man in a heavy jacket and a Minnesota Viking hat is speaking loudly enough that I can hear him over my Earbuds.

You’re gonna be that loud? It’s on, fella!

I reach into my bag and turn my iPod off.

“Dryer sheets? Yeah – what? No, dryer sheets!”

Brief pause.

“What? You know they are! What are you doing? What do you mean, where do you put them? You put them in the dryer!”

Brief pause whilst the Vikings fan briefly loses it.

“Because they’re dryer sheets! They go in the dryer! That’s why they call them “dryer sheets”! Where do you think you’d put them, woman?!”

That was enough for me, and I went back to listening to The Black Keys.

Me, I’m torn between concern for someone who has called someone during their commute to ask about the dryer sheets, and pity for someone who has been called, during their commute, to explain where the dryer sheet goes.

I may have to give up listening in for a bit. It’s gonna give me wrinkles.

Part V and Finale: To Err is Human, to Forgive, Feline

I push my fork into an asparagus spear and turn my somewhat blurry attention to Liza Bean. 

Liza Bean Bitey, of the Minneapolis Biteys, co-owner of the last two winners of the Kentucky Derby and volunteer fireman, contemplates the extended claw upon which rests the last deep-fried cheese curd.

“Thanksgiving was a full house.  And the turrabster,” she intones, “was, of course, wonderful.  The hamsters, especially, were a juicy and, if you don’t mind my saying, unpretentious bit of genius on my part.”

“Turr—“

She smiles.  “A little invention of mine, with a nod to the turducken.  Hamsters stuffed into a rabbit stuffed into a turkey.”

I am lukewarm on the subject of rodents, roasted or otherwise, and carefully arrange my face to convey this sentiment.  “Yum.”

Liza Bean laughs.  “It was off-putting, you know, seeing Fuzzy.  The cat is incorrigible, of course.  One so often finds musicians – and drummers in particular! – difficult, but in the end, so clever, so handsome.”  She shrugs. 

I stare at her.  “Please tell me you made him beg.”

She holds her drink up, moves the glass so that the ice cubes swirl, clock-wise.  “When Fuzzwald and I broke up, I blamed him.  I ranted. I carried on.  How dare he be attracted to someone else?  Who did he think he was, anyway?”

I lean forward, peer at her intently.  “He stole $400 from you!”

The cat shrugs.  “I once lit his tail on fire.”

“He got drunk at the Christmas party and did the most inappropriate impression of Helen Keller I’ve ever seen.”

“I put a deceased goldfish in the hem of his good jacket.”

“He taped,” I counter, “your paws to the bar.”

The cat is dismissive.  “And I dropped his cell phone into a beer stein and then put it in the freezer.”

I bark gleefully.  “Ha!”  I sip at my gin and tonic and shake my head. 

She gazes past the bartender, through the expanse of glass doors that leads out to the tiki deck and from there to the Mississippi River.  The tip of her tail whips from side to side.

“He told me he’d made a mistake.”

She turns to me, emerald eyes sparkling.  “From the look on his face, one would think he’d never used the word before.”

Nikki appears at the booth with another round.  Liza Bean slips her a five every third round, and the server takes the bill with a big smile. 

I beam at the cat from across the table.  “Specifics, please.”

“Wellll,” she says, squeezing one lime after another into her fresh drink, “For starters, he said the beginning of the end came when he found out she didn’t know who was in The Beatles.”

I smile.  “Horrors.”

“He said she considers Red Bull a mixer.”

“A complete lack of couth.”

“The kicker, he told me, was the night that she told him that she hadn’t heard hide nor hair from someone.”

I laugh into my drink.  “So that’s it?  You feed Fuzzy turrabster, he tells you what a child What’s-Her-Lips was, that he made a mistake and all is forgiven?”

Liza Bean Bitey, of the Minneapolis Biteys, sets her drink on the table.  She reaches into her backpack and pulls out a black leather wallet from which she pulls several one-hundred bills. 

“Let’s just say,” she says, “that Fuzzy put his coat on my bed with all the other coats on Thanksgiving Day and I took it upon myself to emancipate a bit of his property.” 

She smiles at me from across the table.  “Dessert?”





In answer to a question yesterday:  A Brown Sugar Baby is a bacon-wrapped smoky (little smoky wiener) in a bourbon brown-sugar glaze.  :-)

Part Three: Fuzzwald Rears His Striped Head; or Hey! It's Hard to Tell a Story in 400 Words!

I sip carefully at my gin and tonic. 

Drinking with a cat is no small matter.  The last time I failed to take this into consideration I found myself singing karaoke at the Vegas in a pair of yoga pants and a bikini top.

I don’t own a bikini.

Liza Bean Bitey, of the Minneapolis Biteys, a small tiger-ish puddy with a conceal-and-carry license, holds up a paw.  “What do you think?  I’m ready for another one if you are.”

Surprisingly, my drink appears to be gone.

Now how did that happen?

Nikki returns with the drinks and a bowl of peanuts from the bar.  “On the house,” she says.

Liza Bean presses a five into her hand.  "A server among servers,” the cat says.  She turns back to me, a lime already in paw.  “Now where was I?”

“You’ere unna – “ I start again.  “You were gunna …” I frown in concentration.

“Tsk, tsk,” the cat laughs.  “That low-carb diet leaves precious room for error, doesn’t it?”  She deftly squeezes two limes at once into her drink.  “One goes out, one partakes, of course.  No worries, old bean.”

Liza has been reading P.G. Wodehouse lately.

I blink, smiling, carefully envision the words before I say them.  “You were going to tell me about Fuzzy.”

Liza Bean licks a spot on her back as if to discover, suddenly, that it is dirty.  “Ahh.”  The subject of Fuzzwald T. Stripersson is a sore one with her.  Many inebriated nights were spent discussing him and his sudden defection from her to a much younger cat.  Their last night as a couple included a fight in which the tensile strength of a bottle of gin was tested against Fuzzy’s head and her drunken discovery, upon awakening, that her paws had been duct-taped to the bar at Jimmy’s – ostensibly to keep her from hurting herself should she fall off her stool.

The last time they saw each other – the night Squeak Toy played at the Casket Arts Building? – he bilked her out of a substantial amount of money.

Fuzzy:  He’s handsome, he’s charming, and he’s utterly unreliable.

“So what was the business opportunity?”

“What?”  The cat looks up as if from out of a dream. 

“You said there was mention of a business opportunity.”

“Oh, there’s nothing like that. That’s just something I like to say.”

I sigh.  “Just as well,” I say.  “That SOB owes you $400.”

The cat bends toward her drink.  Her tiny black lips curl around the straw.  “Hmmm,” she murmurs. 

Is there more?  Of course there is!  Tomorrow, baby!  Tomorrow!

Part Two: What the Woman and The Cat at the Next Table are Talking About: or I Hope They've Laid in Enough Limes...

By the time I get to Psycho Suzi’s, the cat is half-way through her second drink.

“Pearl!” she bawls. 

I smile.  Pink-faced and sweating under the hooded sleeping bag I appear to be wearing, I slide into the booth next to her.

“That,” she says emphatically, “is simply a tragic coat.  Why don’t you have a fur?  They’re fabulous.”

“I would,” I say, trying to catch the eye of the waitress and unzip my coat at the same time, “but the money’s all gone to the Sheikh Zayed International Camel Endurance Race.”

Liza Bean perks up.  “Really?”

“No,” I say.

Liza Bean, of the Minneapolis Biteys, four-legged symmetrically-striped animal of the cat persuasion and serial lime abuser, fishes one of four limes out of her gin and tonic.  “Droll,” she murmurs, a slight smile on her face, “very droll, Pearl.”

She winks at me, holds up a paw – the one with the mostly-squeezed lime in it – and a waitress appears.  “Nikki, honey,” Liza Bean drawls.  “Would you get Pearl here a gin and tonic?  Heavy on the limes, please.”

Nikki, bless her little tattooed legs, beats a mini-skirted dash to the bar.  Cats, while they can be demanding patrons, are substantial tippers, and the servers in the know are extravagant in their desire to please.

“So what’s this all about,” I say.  “You pop in in the middle of the night, and – hey!  I want my key back!”

“Look at you,” she chortles, “all indignant.  I rather like that look on you.  It says, I’m irate, I’m righteous, and I’m ready for my gin and tonic.  And here – thank you, honey – it is!  Bottoms up, old girl!”

I quickly squeeze all four limes into my drink, give it a try.

“I do love a gin and tonic,” I say.

“As well you should,” she croons. 

There is a momentary silence as we consider the beauty of a well-made drink. 

“Bottoms up,” she purrs.  “You’re going to want another.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“Yessssss,” she says.  “And raise them you might.  I ran into Fuzzwald last night.”

I slam the rest of my drink.  Fuzzwald Tiberius Stripersson, one-time heir to the Stripersson foundation garment dynasty and recently released of the Hennepin-County jailed, is Liza Bean Bitey’s ex. 

“Nikki!” I holler.  “Two more gin and tonics, please!”

Part One: It's Not Commonly Known, But Cats Are Excellent Cooks

Oh, you're in for it now.  A multi-parter from 2012, when I lived on my own and drinking/socializing with the cat was a thing...  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I awaken to the sound of the deadbolt being moved.

I am processing this thought when two, and then four paws, land on my pillow. 

“Pearl.  Pearl.”

I should’ve never given that cat a key. 

Liza Bean Bitey, of the Minneapolis Biteys, a small-pawed purveyor of bootleg DVDs and one-time Olympic hopeful in the Feline Shot Put, stares down at me, green eyes shining. 

“I’m a-sleep,” I say.  It occurs to me that I should emphasize this.  “Asleep,” I insist.

“How novel,” she purrs.  She sits down, contemplates the claws of her right front paw.  “In bed at – what is this? 2:00 a.m.?”  She looks up, laughs, a disturbing show of gleaming teeth.   “How does one find oneself in bed at such an hour? Did you lose a bet?”

I sit up, rub my eyes.  “Why are you here?”

She glances toward the kitchen.  “Do you have any gin?”

I sigh.  “I do not.”  I put an index finger on her tiny pink nose and she pushes against it, drives my finger along her whiskered cheek.

There is momentary silence.

“Well,” she says, standing.  “I suppose I should run.”

I smile.  “You woke me up to ask me if I had any gin?”

“No,” she says, grinning.  “I woke you up simply to wake you up.”

I blink heavily.  “How cat-like of you.”

She waves a dismissive paw in my direction.  “Oh, you,” she says mildly.

I remember something.  “Hey,” I say, “how did Thanksgiving go?  Weren’t you having some cats over?”

She stops at the door.  “As a matter of fact I did,” she muses.  “We should get together and talk about it.  Some interesting business opportunities arose.”

“Hmmm,” I say, frowning. 

“And of course the dinner was delicious.”

“Turkey?”

“Turrabbster.”

“Tur –“

“Like turducken,” she says, opening the front door.  A cold blast of air screams in from the third-floor porch and swirls above my head.  “You know – a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey?”

I blink.  I am not at my cleverest at 2:05 a.m.  “So turrabbster is…”

“A hamster stuffed inside a rabbit inside a turkey.”

“Mmmm,” I say.

“I’ll give you a call,” she says.  “We’ll go out.”

I lie down, pull the covers up to my nose as the front door closes, locks.

It’s been a long time since I had a drink with the cat.

The Girl's a Super Freak

I am beyond busy.  Please enjoy a repost from 2012.  :-)


I’ve only been fired once.

It was actually quite unfair, coming as it did during my performance review.

I had been unaware, until it was presented to me, that the one woman in a company of 48 who did not care for me was my boss’s best friend.

And she had made it a point to express her displeasure.

I listened in stunned disbelief as, one week before Christmas, I was let go.

“We could put you on a performance plan,” Nancy said, smiling, “but you’d just burn anyway.”

And that, my friends, was a direct quote.

They had security walk me out, a hiccuping woman clutching both her dignity and a cardboard box stuffed with a year’s worth of work-related detritus.

Karen was already home when I got there. Two single women with their two boys. I sat at the kitchen table with my head in my hands.

Karen poured.

“Here,” she said, handing me a shot of vodka. I held the shot dully, staring inwardly. She fished a pickle out of the jar, handed it to me.

“Nostrovya,” she said.

We downed our vodka, ate our pickles.

And in the morning, my pillow was wet with tears.

A couple months later, Karen moved out, moved in with the man who would become her husband, moved out to the country where she gained acres of land, a four-bedroom house, Rottweilers and chickens and mosquitoes and a commute that made your eyes cross.

I worked odd jobs until the next full-time opportunity came along; and Karen remained at the place from which I had just been fired.

She would call me, from time to time, to share the gossip. So and so had a baby. So and so got a divorce.  And someone had been tampering with Nancy’s office.

Karen laughed gleefully. “Someone’s been doing things to her phone,” she whispers.

I switch ears. “Yeah? What things?”

“Yikes!” she hisses. “I gotta go.”

She called back a day later. “Did I tell you what happened to Nancy?”

Nancy. I may never like another person named “Nancy”.

“What?”

“Someone came in and smeared dog poop all over her phone!”

“What?!”

Karen’s laughing, and from experience I know she’s going to have to wipe her eyes soon. “Her phone! Hee hee hee! Someone smeared what appears to be DOG poop on her phone and now they’re talking about setting up surveillance video! Oops. Shoot. I gotta go.”

She hangs up.

That afternoon, I flip through my mail: bills, circulars – and a newsletter from my old place of employment: Sales are up, costs are down, a recipe from someone in Marketing.

And a short article, written by Karen, about her Rottweilers.

Karen’s dogs.

Ding!

I run to the phone.

“Good afternoon, Free Market Slave Trade.”

“May I speak with Karen, please?”

“Hold, please.”

Tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking, and when she passes – 
“Good afternoon. This is Karen.”

I utter a string of excitable curse words, and Karen starts laughing. “What’s going on with you?”

“I know who smeared the dog poop on Nancy’s phone!”

The line goes absolutely silent.

“Karen, did you just write an article for your company’s newsletter?”

Continued silence.

“More to the point, did you write about your dogs?”

The silence, if possible, becomes even more silent.

“!@#$!@*!! They’re going to fire me,” she says, finally.

“Nah,” I said. “They got nothin'. You look like an angel, and everyone loves you.”

She sighs. “I gotta go,” she says.

“Hey, Karen?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“She just made me so damn mad,” she says.

“I love you,” I say.

“I love you, too.”

And we laugh.


The surveillance camera never went up, Nancy was fired less than a year later, and the mystery of who smeared the dog poop on her phone remained, officially, unsolved.

Hold On. I'll Just Need to Take my Shoes Off for a Moment...

The last year or so has been a challenge at work that I have not only sullenly risen to meet but one in whose eye I have regularly spit.

How’s that for awkward?

It is, of course, no more awkward than the many reports I’ve been asked to pull and manipulate. Ask anyone at work and they’ll tell you: Pearl enjoys a good swift numerical beating. I am continually surrounded by aggressive, uncooperative numbers. Some of them black and haughty, others red and thumbing their negative noses in my direction, they swirl around my head, tangle in my earrings and cause me to say things like “Have you checked the date parameters?” and “Q2 is dead! Long live Q3!”

Don’t get the wrong idea. Some of my best friends are numbers. I once dated a number! But I’m a verbal kinda gal. I’m comfortable with the printed word, with speech. For example, when people start talking in circles? I’m quite good at getting to the heart of something, verbally. I’m not one for the ol’ “for the purposes of this argument, we’ll use this word to mean this.” No, sorry. We won’t. Any time someone wants to amend the meaning of a word, it’s because they want that word’s dignity to be associated with what they’re about to sell you.

Pay no attention to the poop on the sidewalk! We prefer to call it “urban mousse”.
Hmmm. I don’t know where that came from.

Ah, yes. Numbers.

While I may have a good solid grasp on the English language and can understand other languages what are close to it, I’m afraid I might be one of those people who can be duped out of money through numerical chicanery.

“Do you have change for a twenty?”

No. No, I don’t; and even if I did, I would tell you that I didn’t, because within a couple exchanges, I will have given you a twenty, there would be some fast-talking, perhaps some flirtation, and I’d walk away with a ten-dollar bill, red-faced and wondering what the hell just happened.

It hasn’t happened yet, but it could.

I don’t know. I don’t know where I went wrong. One day I knew exactly what I was doing, the next day I was being asked to pull together a monthly forecast by region and would I drill down to the office level and include columns speaking to the percentage of change from one week to the next.

Huh?

I said, “Of course,” but I didn’t know what I was getting into.

Claudia tells me I’m just that much more a valued employee, that I’m “knowledge-based”, which I think is sneaky-number-talk for “fast 10-keyer”. I’m on to her.

So I take copious notes and ask a lot of questions, because when times are hard and you’re given the opportunity to add on to your skill set, you do it. I’m no dummy.

Now if I could just get the ringing, elfin laughter of the numbers out of my head...

The Squeakers Will Cripple You Now

From 2009, whilst I prepare for a public reading tonight.  The venue holds five, I believe, and so I shall be forced to read while sitting sitting on someone's lap.  Cheers!


Dolly “Gee” Squeakers, formerly of the Humane Society Squeakers, embraces the changing of the seasons.

Have you met? Dolly Gee, aka Dali G, aka Kitty! Get Down! is a long-haired Siamese mix of some sort, a cross-eyed, blue-eyed cat with gum disease.

She came that way. “She appears to have a bit of gingivitis,” I believe the Humane Society’s statement was.

Ah, well, so she’s had some troubles. Could happen to anyone.

Of course, it’s not until Dolly fixes her crossed, bright-blue eyes on your face – one on your eye, one on your nose – and begins her monologue that you realize she’s got, like, a total of four teeth.

Apparently, gingivitis is not to be trifled with.

Dolly’s been through a lot in her short little life and telling you about it is one of her pleasures. Her shiny black lips part, join, and part again over tiny, sharp teeth. Dolly no doubt thinks her stories are fabulous; and when she’s going on and on about whatever it is she’s saying, I can’t look away.

The fact that she has only four teeth and still manages to be quite attractive? Not everyone can pull that look off.

You’d think there’d be more to say about Dolly Gee, but you’d be wrong. Aside from her penchant for laying flat on her back, staring at you whilst upside down, and her belief that one should snack, all day, every day, there’s not much else to her, unlike Liza Bean, who, last I heard, is working with David Gilmour on some experimental music due to be released around the holidays.

No. Dolly Gee’s a good cat, a neat cat, a cat with all four paws on the ground – and a cat now taking up a quarter of my half of the bed.

There’s been an invasion of sorts.

Liza “Bean” Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys), being the clever, tiny being that she is, is on the bed year-round, snugged into the space behind Willie’s knees.

But Dolly? Dolly Gee’s long-haired cat-ness does not allow for year-round coddling. She’ll keep her distance, thank you, and lays during the spring and summer months with her belly exposed to the electric fan. 

But ladies and gentlemen, the seasons done changed; and with that change has come the crowding of the bed.

Let’s put it this way: If the bed were a clock, I’d be sleeping between 9:00 and 12:00.

I have it coming, though, don’t I? This is what happens when you let cats into your house.

Rats. I’m going to need to have my legs removed below the knee. There simply isn’t room for them.

Wherein My Father Relates the Tale of the Hand

Because it is snowing (11 inches expected), and because I drove to Lutsen and back (500 miles) this weekend. 

Enjoy!

My father drove the 600 mile round-trip every weekend.

“It was 1960,” he says, fiddling with the woodstove.  “Mumma and I had been married a couple of months, and 600 miles a weekend is small potatoes when you’re 21 and in love.”

He pokes at an unruly log, steps back to consider the flames.  The darkness presses against the windows of their garage/extended living room, a clean, comfy space with carpet-remnant flooring and hand-made, wood-scrap cabinets.  I pull the crocheted afghan closer.

“Chandler, Minnesota, was down in the southwestern corner of the state – over by Pipestone? – an area far too far from my bride, but what could I do?  Uncle Sam needed me.”

He sighs.  “Highway 23.  Every weekend, Highway 23.”

He chuckles.  “Of course, I had to be careful.  We’d go out on the weekends, sometimes I’d even play in that little three-piece I was a part of in them days.  I’d be lucky to get more than five, six hours of sleep the whole weekend.”

“Paul!” my mother shouts from inside the house.  “Are you telling stories again?”

He winks at me.  “No, mumma,” he calls.

My father wanders over to the fridge.  “So anyway,” he says, “come January, I think it was, I get caught in a blizzard.”  He looks over at me, visibly calculating my age.  “You want one?”

I nod, and he grabs two beers.

“This was a real blizzard,” he says, popping the can open and handing me one, “back when snow was snow and the roads weren’t always plowed.”  He takes a deep pull from the can and frowns.  “My 300 miles back to the Air Force base – a trip that should’ve taken maybe four hours in that Rambler I had – was pushing on to seven.”

He takes another drink from his beer.  “Eventually,” he says, “I was forced to stick my head out the window, just to keep myself awake.  Of course, then I was pulling icicles from my eye lashes, but it beat the alternative, if you know what I mean.”

I do know what he means.  I nod and take a drink. 

“Of course, you can only stick your head out the window so many times before even that doesn't do the trick; and I’m realizing that I haven’t seen another car in almost six hours when up ahead of me, way off on the horizon, I see a shape.”

He wanders over to the woodstove, opens its door.  A roaring fire lights the bottom part of the room.  A cat wanders in and flops on to its side, yawns lazily.

He pokes the fire, throws another piece of scrap wood in.

“This shape,” he says, shutting the door, “is getting larger, and I’m thinking ‘what is this’?  I mean, it doesn’t seem like a car or a truck to me.”

He sits down in his chair, a recliner, puts his feet up, retrieves the beer can he left sitting on the end table. 

“And it gets larger and larger, until suddenly I see what it is.”

There is silence.  The fire in the woodstove crackles energetically. 

“Well?”  I say.  “What was it?”

“It was a hand,” he says.  He looks at me, eyes narrowed, nodding.  “A hand.  A hand shot down the center of the road, palm out, and commanded that I stop.”

The cat leaps into my lap.  “A hand,” I say.

He nods.  “A hand.”

I smile.  “So what did you do?”

He slaps his thigh.  “What did I do?!  Well, I did what you do when a hand flies down the center of the road at your car and demands that you stop!  I stopped!”

It is silent again.

“I pulled over,” he says quietly.  “Turned the car off, pulled a blanket over me and slept.”

He takes a pull from his beer. 

“Slept almost an hour,” he says.  “Too cold, of course, with the car off, but you can’t sleep in a driving snow with your car running, it’ll kill you.”  He stops.  “You know that, right?  That you can’t sleep in a car while it’s snowing with the car running?”

I smile.  “Yes, Dad,” I say.

He nods.  It is his duty to remind his middle-aged daughter of the dangers of covered tailpipes, of unrefrigerated potato salad and playing with matches. 

He stares toward the wood stove.  “That hand saved my life.”

I smile toward the wood stove.  “It wasn’t an actual hand, though, surely,” I say.

He turns and smiles at me, taps the side of his nose in acknowledgement of the softball I’d just tossed him.  “It was an actual hand,” he says.  “And don’t call me Shirley.”

Do You Think I Over-Reacted?

From 2008...  Enjoy!


People – no, I can’t say who, just people – think that Minnesotans are passive-aggressive.

I don’t think of us that way. I prefer to think of us as conflict–avoidant.

For instance, if you show up at my house wearing, in all sincerity, say, lederhosen, my response would be, “That’s interesting.”

Because it is. That’s interesting. Eventually, of course, I will have to ask you what moved you to make such a fashion choice, but in that respect I am not a typical Minnesotan. Nor, it seems, am I particularly polite.

Actually, to quote a favorite aunt, I am “Miss Tact”. (Implying, of course, that I have none.)

A number of years ago, before marriage put an end to my wild ways, I lived in another part of town, across the street and two down from a man who worked a terribly early shift.

How did I know he worked a terribly early shift?

Because there came a week where he apparently needed a ride, and a car would pull up at 4:25 in the morning, music bursting from its speakers at decibels normally ascribed to pneumatic riveters…

It was summer, my bedroom windows were open, and my initial encounter with this car caused my heart to leap into my throat as I sat straight up in terror. Tornado! Air raid! Fire!

It was none of those things, of course. I soon recognized the cause of my panic as the dulcet tones of AC/DC.

I didn’t fall back to sleep.

And for the first two days that Mr. Rock and Roll arrived to pick up my neighbor, I bit my tongue. Inside my head, of course, I was feverishly composing outraged letters to him about the loss of civility in the city and how much I hated him. On the outside, however, I remained collected.

I may or may not have muttered colorful threats under my breath. There are, after all, no witnesses to dispute this.

On the third day, however, the moment I heard “Hell’s Bells” being blasted throughout the neighborhood, I lost my cool. Shoving my head violently out of my bedroom window, I screeched at the top of my early-morning lungs, “THIS IS A QUIET NEIGHBORHOOD! SHUT UP!”

He did not hear me, of course, because not only was the music far too loud, but I could now see that the driver was not in the car.

Hmmm.

On the fourth day, when the rock-concert on wheels pulled up, I was fully dressed and ready. I watched from my window as he got out of the car and went inside.

The moment my neighbor’s front door closed, I shot out my own door as fast as my short little legs could carry me. Engine running, music blaring, I hopped into his car and tore away…

And I left it, three blocks away. Turned it off, left the keys in the ignition, and took an alternative way home.

I didn’t fall back to sleep on that day, either, but I smiled for the rest of it.

Two questions still bother me, though:
1. Do you think I over-reacted?
2. How long do you suppose it took him to find his car?