Cootie Shot Guide

Are you suffering from the social upset of having the dreaded 'cootie' disease? While this terrible affliction generally strikes young girls, it is important for everyone to fully arm himself or herself with a proper antidote for cooties -- you never know when or who it may strike!

If you do have cooties and are suffering from the loss of all your friends, never fear! There is the cootie shot!





Have your friend perform the following quick and easy steps to get rid of your cooties and ensure that you're vaccinated for next cootie season.















Enjoy your cootie-free life full of friendship and happiness!

Serving Tasks the Cats Have

The cats are great for a lot of household tasks that I don't really feel domestic enough or I'm simply too lazy to undertake.

For example, I see no reason to sully my dainty hands doing things like "pressing on a handle" or "pushing on a piece of wood hinged to the wall". So I make Dmitri do it for me.



There are a few kinks to this -- it takes him a few tries to open the door and it's ridiculously loud and sometimes he breaks in when I really don't want a cat in my room -- but on the whole, it's a lot of effort saved for me.

While D assists getting me through portals, Lothar has been assigned a more sentient duty. One of his favorite things to do is open the cabinets and drawers and then sit in side of them; it was only natural that this should progress to guarding the pots and pans.



Lothar is also in charge of decorating; whenever I have a vase of flowers, he always knows just how to rearrange the table for maximum flower petal pizzazz.

For example.

While I may idiotically believe that the flowers look pretty inside the vase, arranged and, say, whole, Lothar will fabulously challenge my weak viewpoints by deconstructing ...everything. He makes sure the house doesn't lapse into an old, stale style -- he keeps it hip!



I also put them on laundry duty. Whenever I have clean clothes ready to be worn again, it's nice to know that the cats are there to make sure nothing gets too "pressed" or "furless". Pepin also likes participating in this particular job.



And then there's baking! I love baking. I hate cleaning. Fortunately, I simply employ a cat as a mop and the mess just takes care of itself!!




At last, there is everyone's favorite task. Alarm clocks! No one ever oversleeps here!

My Mom Forgets Me

I love my mom. She’s great! Some quick facts about my mom that will absolutely come up in this story: I AM THE ONLY DAUGHTER, she usually never forgets to pick me up at the airport, and she’s really a very awesome lady.

My mom forgot to pick me up at the airport once. I was flying home from college for some break or other and had an active, involved conversation with her about my flight, the time I was coming in, WHERE I was coming in, and I think I even e-mailed her the information.



It was a little bit on the late side, so I was extra careful to make sure she knew I was coming in at night. I got on my plane, flew back home, and arrived at BWI with airplane hair. I wanted to go home. I hate flying.




But I do like my mom so I was excited to see her! I waited.



And waited.



And waited.



As the airport CLOSED, the airport policemen were going HOME FOR THE NIGHT. One of the police officers had been watching me stand and wait for quite some time so before he headed off into the night, he swung by and asked me if I needed a ride home. At the time, I was still just-so-sure that my mother could not possibly have forgotten me at the airport so I politely declined his offer and continued to wait.



This was idiotic.



I finally, frantically, called home to figure out what in the world was going on...





My mind immediately raced to this image:



Wrong:



At around this point, I realized that there really was no one coming to pick me up from the airport, which was closing, and that my mother had COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN ME enough to ask, twice, who and where I was. She told me to just get a cab and she’d pay for it when I got home.

Everything was fine, I got my family visit, but now this is my absolute favorite story to tell EVERYONE I MEET.

My mom is less enthusiastic about it.

Gingercat

I am a ginger kid. My hair is red. One day, when I was out for a walk I found a little kitten (two, in fact). That little kitten also had ginger hair. Imagine my excitement! The gingers would live in a happy, peaceful coexistence of sunshine and rainbows and happy faces!



We named my gingercat Pepin and he was ADORABLE. He had these big blue eyes and this ridiculously bushy tail and he was just happiness and cuteness itself and he fit in your HANDS and I LOVED HIM.



And for a while, life was hilarious. He tried to show us his true personality, but we were blind to his ginger ways; I was too fully enamored with his fuzzy orange face and his big blue eyes. And as long as he never tore up any of my books, what did I care how ludicrous he was!? Dmitri, our other cat, was not fooled. He was wiser than the both of us.



But how could I resist this?



Then, suddenly, Pepin got sick. Pepin got really, really sick. After a lot of crying and a lot of spazzing out, we were told that Pepin had eaten something and it was blocking his stomach; we had to take him to the vet in order to open his belly to remove a massive knot of elastic HAIR TIES or else my face would have been stuck like this for all time:



The vet did a wonderful (expensive) job and my fuzzy gingercat was back! He was fixed! He had a shaved belly and was exceedingly high! Oh, but I was happy -- I love Pepin, I was so excited to have him home and not dead that I barely even cared that he was so stupid he ate a pile of hair ties (which I had to go out and buy again). I also barely cared that for some reason the vet gave the hair ties back. Whatever. My cat was alive!!



And then he promptly tried to eat my brand new couch. I don't know why. I think my head exploded a little bit while I screamed at him.



Slowly, after dumping him in a tub of water and watching the little guy run away from me for a week, I forgave him. He's a ginger, I'm a ginger. It's a match made in heaven, right? I can't stay mad.
Then he got sick. Again.

Whatever, we were old hats at this -- we had the vet trips down pat. Off he went for another surgery.



This is what I saw when he left:



And this is what every single person at the vet's office claims he looked like:



I see some remarkable differences. Clearly the ginger is manipulating ...someone. Maybe he's the vet's secret agent?





In any case, we got the gingercat home and he had to wear a cone of shame for a while but before long, he and I were best of buds and doing gingerstuff again.

But I wish I could find Huck Finn...