vituperation

April 17, 2003

I was lying in bed last night shortly before bedtime when I was struck with the urge to stretch. I’ve just switched up my weight training routine this week and am a bit sore, so I figured some good stretch time while Robyn brushed her teeth would be a good thing. I twisted, and I turned, and I rolled around under the bedcovers, working each major muscle group.

I was deep into a lower back stretch - still under the covers, mind you - when there came a soft knocking on the bedroom door. Rather than quickly drop my legs and try to act like I’d not been contorting myself in the bed, I lifted my head up between my knees and grinned somewhat sheepishly at the spud.

“Yes?” I asked.

She struggled to keep from laughing as she stared at the top of my head, which poked up from behind twin peaks of comforter.

“What is the big container downstairs on the counter?” she asked. I’d received five pounds of whey protein earlier in the day, and left it sitting on the counter.

“That’s protein,” I said, “for when I lift weights.”

“Oh. Why didn’t you get the packets this time?”

“Because sixty packets are $90, and five pounds of pure protein is $30 and has eighty servings,” I said. My neck was starting to hurt from stretching to see over my knees.

“Oh. Did you save any money?”

I had plenty of answers for that, most of them rude and sarcastic, but I opted for a simple, “Yes, I did.”

The spud stared at my face for a moment, then at my humped up legs under the sheets. She grinned again.

“Is that mom?” she asked.

The child thought she’d caught Robyn and I in some sort of uncompromising position, as though we’d be in one with the door open and every light in the room on. Fourteen and she’s already a Pervy McPervert.

I don’t know where she gets it.

I was lying on the couch Tuesday morning after my run, cooling down, when I heard the distinctive thumpetythump of a cat chasing something. I sat up and looked.

Tubby sat in the middle of the floor, hunkered over something, with his back to me. As I watched, he stood and headed for the kitchen. Something small and furry hung from his mouth.

“Tubby,” I said in the no-nonsense voice I use with the cats when they know they’re doing something they shouldn’t be. He dropped what he was carrying and meowed once, bitchily.

It was something I’d never seen before: a mole.

I didn’t know this at first; I’m not that smart. I had to rule other things - mouse, baby possum, shrew, rat, baby squirrel - out before settling somewhat uncertainly on “mole.” I put it on a paper towel on the counter (don’t tell Robyn!) and took some pictures of it, then Googled until I found pictures of a live mole and validated my guess.

Here’s what the dead one looked like:

Warning: if the thought of seeing a picture of a dead animal
offends you, or you think it might bother you,
DO NOT LOOK AT THE PICTURE ABOVE.

Moles sure are funny-looking.

I had to go to the courthouse yesterday to buy a business license so my new publishing company can sell books and be legal. I was putting merrily along through downtown Huntsville, having snuck out of the office for a while, when it happened.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of motion, and I looked left to see two pigeons flying toward me. The were like bats out of hell as they pinwheeled and rocketed wildly through the air, one chasing the other. I don’t know if it was a game, or a sex thing, or if one was running the other one out of his territory, but they were moving like nobody’s business.

There was a huge THUD into the window behind me and I looked into the rearview mirror to see the still form of one pigeon sailing through the air. It hit the asphalt and rolled limply into the turn lane, where it didn’t move.

The saddest part is that the other bird landed next to it, and that was the last thing I saw as I rounded a curve: one pigeon standing watch over his fallen comrade in the middle of the road.

On a happier note, when I came back through after getting the business license, both birds were gone. I choose to believe hitting the side of my Jeep just stunned the bird, that he shook it off after a couple of minutes and resumed flying with his friend.

On a cooler note, my Jeep is so pollen-covered that when the pigeon hit the window he made a perfect outline of his head, much like the face of Henry Wells in the courthouse window down in Carrollton. Of course I took a picture.

The spud has lost her science book. When she told me this last night I suggested she ask her teacher what to do. She rolled her eyes.

“She won’t know,” she said, because she’s at that age where she knows everything.

“So your plan is to just not mention it to anyone and fail because you don’t have a book?”

“No!”

“Then what do you propose to do about it?”

“I don’t know!” She rolled her eyes again, because thinking is anathema to the animal we call a “teenager.”

“Wouldn’t it make sense to ask the teacher - since she’s the one who deals with giving out the books - what you should do about replacing the book or paying for it?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “it just sounds like a dumb question to ask.”

“There’s no such thing as a dumb question,” I said.

And then, people, then I flashed back on six years of conversations with the spud.

“About things like that,” I added.