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Selected random thoughts
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Selected random thoughts
  I just Googled “random thoughts” and got 8,070,000 hits. I didn’t check more than the top three, but I’m willing to bet 8,069,000 of them are columns by people who have to write a column and can’t think of a theme or title. Welcome to No. 8,070,001. They’re not really random—if I actually took thoughts out of my head at random and wrote them down, they might look like this:  What the hell was that? Where did I put … Is that our cat? Why won’t this work? Woohoo—glad I didn’t step in that … Really ought to fix that … Damn … Damn … Damn … I don’t think that’s our cat. What was I doing before … what the hell was that? It’s time to … oh, look: shiny. That way lies madness, so I’m engaging my internal filter, and presenting some selected thoughts. Here, for instance, are some selected thoughts on Laundry: Put it in, take it out, put it in, take it out, put it away, get it out, put it on, take it off. Repeat. Endlessly.  Wouldn’t it be easier if we all had just one set of clothes, that we would wear into the shower and let dry on our bodies? Too humid, they’d never dry properly and we’d all get rot. More clothes are not the answer. Disposable clothes would eat up all the landfill space. I see no resolution to this dilemma.  Things could be worse: My uncle Sonny was the only boy among seven children, and used to tell how, on washing day, he had to wear a dress while his clothes got cleaned. All the younger girls complained about having to wear hand-me-downs, but he would have welcomed them. Grandma only had to do laundry once a week, but it was back-breaking work. I do laundry every day, and complain bitterly, but if Grandma could see how it’s done now, she’d wonder why I even mention it. All things are relative. On the relativity of in and out The rule here seems to be, if an animal is in, it wants out, and if it’s out, it wants in.If we had a pet door they could come and go unassisted. But then how would I know who was coming in? What if they all brought home friends?  Horrible thought: A pet door that would fit Katy Big Dog would fit most people. And what if they all brought pets? I stop whatever I’m doing 20 times or so a day, in answer to an array of signals: Katy barks or scratches the door; Gladys Little Dog comes and tap dances all around me, and pokes me with her nose; Spider the Playful Cat rattles the blinds in the window; Lucky the Gorgeous Cat comes into whatever room I’m in, stares at me malignantly until he has my attention, then spins and races to the door; Mario the Elderly Cat stalks purposefully to the place where he’s been told a million times he’s not supposed to do that, and gives me the look that says, “You have 10 seconds to let me out, or I’m doing it here.”  Sadly, I’m not always looking when Mario does this. It occurs to me that I am a fairly well-trained human. I envision our cats chatting with their friends, saying, “I know! It took me forever to teach my person the most basic things, but what can you do? At least she has thumbs.” When I open the door to let one animal out, three others always seem to come in. At that rate, the house will fill completely in a couple of days. There will be no room for those of us with only two legs, we’ll have to stay in the yard. The animals won’t feed us—no thumbs. I could bark for hours, they wouldn’t let me in.  On the circle of life There are so many things to feed in this house: Dogs, cats, birds, lizard, mouse, boys. The humans always come last. The price we pay for our thumbs, I suppose. Ways to simplify: Feed the mouse and birds to the cats; feed the cats to the dogs; eat the dogs.  Obvious flaws in this plan are: 1) The cats won’t eat anything that doesn’t come from a bag, a can, or our plates; 2) Ditto for the dogs; and 3) Yuck. It’s possible I started at the wrong end of the food chain: Miss Mousie will eat anything. If all of us were rendered into small enough pieces … Oh look—what’s that shiny thing?  |
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