Tweet Season on my Mind or "Polly's ghost wants a cracker"

Cricket and I are prone to collecting.  I've mentioned before that I have a love for Royal Doulton character jugs and for Wally birds...  for the most part these are pieces I've picked up here and there and on-line, at one point I pretty much depleted my life-savings on Ebay.  (I assure you that it never was a lot of money)... it's been a fun hobby...

Cricket on the other hand has been collecting bird cages.

Now, for those of you that don't know, there is a substantial difference between the size of a bird cage and that of a character jug.  Most of the cages stand taller than I do and, while they are lovely, take up a fair amount of space.  

"Why is the china cabinet out on the porch?"

"Oh, I got a new bird cage."

"Umm, the fridge is on the front lawn..."

"Oh, I got a new bird cage."

"Where's the piano?"

"Oh, I got a new bird cage."

It works like this because we keep our addictions private... When a small box shows up, I check that it's mine and off I go to a private place where I can open it and check the item.  Once I've determined that it's what I ordered, I find a place for it in "the cabinets".  (The cabinets are two 9', floor to ceiling, shelving units that house my collection)...  I've been unemployed so the collection has been relatively stagnant these past few months...

Of course, when a bird cage shows up it is a different story altogether.  These things have stands and bases and are simply enormous...  Several have shown up and had to be lowered into the house by crane.

But a week or so ago a small box showed up... just the right size for a toby.  It wasn't addressed to me; I didn't open it.  (I hoped that it was a present for my birthday or something)

Two days later, as I'm pouring a cup of coffee, I see it; a cookie jar shaped like a simple bird cage with parakeets...  it's pretty...

"Oh, this is what was in that box that came..."

"Yeah, it's a cookie jar."

"I see that.  Does this mean I have to make some cookies?"

"If you want to," lifting the cookie jar.

twist

twist

twist

"It's also a music box."

...the music plays...

...and the music is, well... it's creepy.

I agree that a good many music boxes are creepy.  As they age it only gets worse; the music plays slower and slower.  I had one that my grandparents gave me that played the "Little Drummer Boy"; in reality it played the first phrase of "Little Drummer Boy".  You know:

"Come, they told me, Pah Rum Pah Pum Pum" over and over...and over.  

When you're a child you don't long for the resolution of the whole song, so, the one phrase doesn't drive you up the wall.  I would wind it up and let it play and play and play and play.  I enjoyed it so much that Mom decided that it should be put away with all the other "Christmas stuff"...  years later I found it buried in the linen cabinet...

Bean once bought my little sis a Christmas nutcracker that played (of all things) "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes".  Like I say, "There are some things that should never be made; there some things that are made that should never be bought; those things that should never have been made and never have been bought should never, ever, be given to your wife for Christmas."

Enough deeply nested tangent...

I expected the bird cage cookie jar to play any of various tunes that music boxes play such as "The Happy Wanderer", "Over the Rainbow", "Feed the Birds" even...  but not a funeral march...  the slow plinking music in a minor key is haunting and disturbing.  

If Uncle Fester from the Addams Family had an ice cream truck... 

If all the children in "Oliver Twist" went back to the work house at the end of the movie...

If Tim Burton were to recreate the Sound of Music in claymation...

...this is what the music would sound like...

...and so, there it sits on the counter; the haunted cookie jar.  It is old, old, old and remembers all the times it's been wound in the past and plays a stray note just when you've recovered from the last time it played.

My guess is that when the cookie jar is filled the weight of the cookies keeps the music from playing.  As each cookie is taken from the jar the weight decreases until it is light enough for the funeral march to start playing...  

The more I thought about this, the more it made sense to me.

I'm having a music box installed on the fridge door later in the week...  I should be ready for my swimsuit in no time...

-silly

It's The Little Things or "the fly is down on the zipper of my brain and no one told me..."

It's the little things that make me laugh.  I seldom laugh at jokes, but let me catch someone in the corner of my eye doing something that hits my funny bone and I can't control myself.  An old friend used to avoid my right elbow because she had seen me squish a fly with it; I guess she wasn't sure how one could adequately wash their elbows...  She even asked me once, "Is that the FLY elbow?"  So, I caught her looking at my elbow a few times and would slowly move it toward her - when she would move away from it I would howl with laughter...  I keep odd friends in my life for just this reason.

It's the little things that offend me.  I'm not easily offended, but there just isn't a better word...  you know those times when someone says something that is clearly a window into how they truly feel...  I tried on a double-breasted suit once and asked the associate (who was paid to make me feel good about myself ) if she thought the suit made me look "boxy".  She replied, "You are boxy."  (NOTE: Husbands, this is not an exemplary response to the wife who asks if something makes her look fat.)

It's the little things that worry me.  ...and so it is that I found myself terrified today...  because I put the starch away or hadn't.  I had an interview yesterday and ironed my shirt (I know, momentous occasion "the ironing of the shirt"...  oh and excited about the interview too)...  I managed to put away the ironing board and empty the water from the iron before I put it back in the cabinet, but the starch never made it home...  so, this morning, after my second cup of coffee, I walked into the dining room and found that the starch was still sitting on the table.  I looked around for the cap - that yellow cap that could only go on the starch - but the cap was nowhere to be found.  Lest I miss more of "Ellen", I decided to put the starch away without the cap and, if I found the cap, I could put it on later.  I grabbed the can...  headed to the laundry room...  opened the cabinet and there it was...

the cap

...that yellow cap that could only go on the starch...

TERRIFYING

There were no hard plastic eyes to stare at me, no face to taunt me, no sneer to defy, but scariest of all... no legs to help it get back to the cabinet...

I had put it there.  In the midst of cleaning up the ironing chore, I had put away the cap.  While today, I had thought to find the cap before I put away the starch, yesterday, it had not even crossed my mind to find the starch when I grabbed the cap and stuck it in the cabinet.

I recognize that I don't hear as well as I used to hear and the mere fact that I have eight pair of very expensive frames (since getting glasses for the first time 4 years ago) says much about my eyesight...  ...but will I know when my brain goes?  

...or has it gone already and no one mentioned it...

-silly

Grey Squirrel, Grey Squirrel Swish Your Bushy BANG!!! or "finding something in the family tree for dinner"

Far be it from me to tout myself as an example of sophistication and gentility, afterall, I'm the guy who was asked to wear "big boy" shoes (instead of sneakers) for a date in the City, but when my sister brought home Bean (the man of her dreams who turned out to be a guy that, by comparison, makes Jeff Foxworthy's definition of a red neck seem like an urban metro-sexual) I should have said "something".  I didn't... not really.  ...not enough, anyway...

Sadly (and thankfully) he has moved on to wife number two.  She is credited (thanks to Bluetooth enabled pick-up trucks and nieces that don't miss a trick) with such great lines as "Darlin', pick up a couple six packs for me so that I can stand you this weekend" and "I got dinner for us at Taco Bell this afternoon, be a Darlin' and run by Walmart for some fresh cheese..."  I've not met Numero Dos (thank heavens) but I just can't get the image of  a shabby cotton house-dress and "Baby, grab the big spatula;  come help momma off the couch" out of my mind.

Must kill mental picture...

Must kill mental picture...

Alas, Bean moved my sis far and away from the real world (or at least my world) and there she lives with her three kids; all of whom I adore.

..and their world is very different from mine...

...so much so that when Mom read to me a letter from Sparrow (the youngest) that she had received in the mail it caused my brain to short-circuit.  It was as foreign to me as though she had moved her children to a distant country, one south of Bukina Faso, and raised them on the bugs that live under the lava rocks.

His letter read something like this:

Grandma,

Thanks for the birthday card and the check.  (How sweet! and how very gracious...)

I shot a raccoon.  (GASP!)

Mr. [the neighbor] helped me skin it.  (Bag please)

Mommy helped me nail the skin to a board and put salt on it so I can tan it.  (This Mommy person is clearly not the little girl who used to puke at the site of a frog and hang Andy Gibb posters on her bedroom walls)

But we didn't make stew with it like we did with the squirrel.  (BLANK)  

There was more, but nothing that my brain could take in; it was enough.

How did this happen?  Afterall, this is not about them... this is about me...  (rule number 1: it's always about me) ...these children will take care of me in my old age.

What will become of me?  

Sitting in a rocker just too close to the out-house on a warm summer day...

Staying warm under the skin of an animal killed in the backyard...

Listening to my sister telling stories of how she nailed that hairy thing to the wall... (the raccoon, not Andy Gibb)

Eating squirrel stew...

...and then I think...

...at least I'll finally be thin.

-silly

Plenty of room in the sunbeam or "Litterbox for one, please!"

It was a dark and stormy night... well, not really... it was one of those Friday nights when I stopped at the apartment to grab my stuff before heading out for the rest of the weekend.  This was the very reason I had a cat.  Actually, guilt was the reason I had a cat (thanks to Mr Kins), but that's a whole other story.  This was the very reason I had a cat and not a dog.  A cat will eat when they are hungry, need little companionship and can be left on their own to sleep and prowl for most of a weekend - dogs need constant attention and food and require too much care.

Fernando was black from head to toe, still had all his claws and, while some thought the gouge in his ear meant that he'd had a run-in with another cat during a street fight, I thought it probably meant he'd had a run-in with a vet who'd had a swipe at his privates.  Privates or not, he was all boy!  ...and he was a talker.  Every one of the neighbors in the apartment complex knew him.   He'd talk all night.  I slept with the bedroom door closed and a fan on so I didn't have to listen to him singing to the moon (or whoever it was).

And Crazilynn talked back to him.  One day we were reading the latest Terry Pratchett novel in a sun beam on the couch and she came calling,

"Fernando!  Fernando!"

Looking down from the second story window (knowing she couldn't see I read in the same clothes I slept in) I answered,

"Hey there!"

"Oh.  Hi.  I was calling Fernando..."

"Well, Don't let me interrupt," and went back to Diskworld.

Crazilynn never actually met Fernando.  Theirs was a relationship separated by the distance between my second floor apartment and the sidewalk.  I've always been one who thought that "love your neighbor" was one thing, but having them in for a drink was another.  Many a night I came home to find her standing below the window talking up to him.  He had this look set aside just for her that was somewhere between fascination and "lady they have medication for people like you".

So, that Friday night I got home, grabbed some clothes for the weekend, fed Fernando and headed out.  I wasn't so irresponsible as to leave him if I were gone for more than a day and a half.  HotDiana had a key to my place and I had keys to hers.  We watched each others' apartments when the other one traveled... we had an understanding and bedrooms were off limits (not that she could find a path through the clutter to snoop around mine even if she had wanted to).

Crazilynn passed me as I went to my car, grabbed her mail and headed to her own apartment.  Out of the corner of her eye she saw the movement under the shrubs.  Fernando.  She dropped her mail and bags and tried to grab him, chased him for a while and finally cornered him, but by the time she scooped him up I was long gone.

With a black cat tucked under one arm she started throwing rocks up at HotDiana's windows.  

PLINK

PLINK

PLINK

PLINK

"WHAT?"

"Fernando got out..."

"What?"

"I got home and Fernando was out...  ...must have snuck out when he left for the weekend."

"WHAT?"

"Yeah, we have to put him back in the apartment.  You have a key.  I just need you to open the door and I'll drop him inside."

"What?"

"I have Fernando under my arm.  Come down here and open the apartment and I will put him back."

Sure enough she came downstairs...

"That's not Fernando."

   "Yes it is, he got out."

"No, it's not."

   "He's black."

"Yeah, but..."

   "He got out.  We need to put him back."

"Are you sure?"

   "What do mean am I sure?"

"How did he get out?"

   "He snuck out...  come on, I can't stand here all night with this cat under my arm."

And so HotDiana got the spare keys, opened both sets of locked doors and went up into my apartment.  

"You wait here."

We were clear on two things:  Bedrooms were off limits....and Crazilynn had earned her nickname.

She called him, but no one came.

   "I have him here..." coming up the steps.

"Wait down there..."

She called him, but no one came.

   "He got out.  I had to catch him..." coming up the stairs.

"I'm calling him in case that ain't him.  ...but he's not coming."

And so Crazilynn deposited the little black cat on the bottom step and HotDiana locked both sets of doors closing her in.

Saying that Sunday night came quickly is like saying that a week's vacation flew by or that summer arrived and departed on a single breeze.  Sunday nights were my time to chat with Nancyboo and this was no exception.  If you don't have a friend to regularly gab with about the week and review all those things in life that you always talk about, then, well, you're probably married.

"Blah, blah...", driving home.

"Blah, blah...", getting out of my car.

"Blah, blah...", grabbing my mail.

"Blah, blah...", letting myself in.

"Blah, blah... Hey, there's a cat in my apartment!"

   "Yes, you have a cat."

"No, a little black cat."

   "umm, Fernando is black..."

"NO!  LISTEN to me.  There is a different black cat in my apartment.  This is not my cat."

   "What do you mean?"

"Who would do this?"

   "What's wrong?

"I gotta go.  I'll call you when I figure out what's going on."

I stood there terrified.  Frozen.  She looked up at me and meowed.

And then he came around the corner... talking to me...  and if it wasn't meows and growls it would have been something like, "I don't know who she is, but she's been here all weekend."

There was catnip everywhere...  the catnip hidden in the bottom of my linen closet that had been closed.

There was no catfood out, but every lower cabinet door was open.

"Meow."

...and the pillows were off the couch...

First things first, I thought as I picked her up and dropped her outside thinking that someone would be very glad to have her come home after being gone for a few days...

Then I put some food out for Fernando.

Then I checked my messages.

BEEP

"Hi.  Crazilynn was throwing rocks at my windows to get my attention.  She says that Fernando got out and she wants to put him back in your apartment.  She has a black cat under her arm.  How could he have gotten out?  This is so weird.  Call me."

BEEP

"Hi, it's me again.   Crazilynn and I put Fernando back.  I was sure that it wasn't him, but I went up in your apartment and called for him and he never came.  Please call me."

BEEP

"Hi...  When you left tonite you let Fernando out by accident.  I caught him and put him back for you so he'll be there when you get home Sunday night.  You need to be more careful.  Good thing I'm watching out for you."

If I were hanging by my fingernails from the Empire State Building no one would hear me screaming, but let one off-kilter neighbor see a cat that she thinks might possibly be mine and suddenly a colony of felines know just how cozy my bed is when the sun comes through the window in the afternoon.

-silly