Thursday, February 24, 2005

summertime... with my kitty.



well, ginmar may be fainting for her sun porch and enjoying attempting to dress with three kittens pouncing, but i have no porch. i do, however, have a crappy old couch that i have placed asswards in my 8x10 bedroom - that is, facing the window with its ass towards the rest of the room. it looks like a infinite number of monkeys sitting at an infinite number of drawing boards almost came up with a decent layout for my room, but faced the couch the wrong way.

but this allows me to sweat profusely in the increasingly powerful sunlight every morning, an experience that does leave me feeling recharged and happy. we like sunlight on our pineal gland. however, it does attract cats like, erh, a sunny spot attracts cats, so i am also draped with 1d3 cats each round i spend here. i can usually herd them so that i can both type and drink my lattè, but usually this entails spanky the wondermuffin sleeping on my left arm, thereby limiting any other movement on that side of my body. please recall that her nicknames are "the grenade", "the landmine" and, more recently, "bouncing betty" for her particular skills:

photo of an authentic "bouncing betty" (SMi-35) with a few of its people-shredding ball bearing innards from the US airborne museum at ste.-mère église

Schrapnellmine 35 (SMi-35): The SMi 35 was buried with just its igniters protruding above ground or connected to trip wires. When tripped, the SMi 35 ejected a small cylinder that scattered some 350 small steel balls over an area of 164 yards. The Allies dubbed these the "Bouncing Betty". (weapons of the italian campaign (WWII)
a fairly accurate description of spanky's response to any attempts to move while she is lying on you comes from the battlefield: vietnam website:
trigger a Bouncing Betty and you've got nowhere to hide. the mine springs up to roughly torso level and then detonates, usually killing the target immediately.
this is a relatively accurate description.

but i digress. i was discussing my asswards couch, which no two-leg but i will sit in becauses it requires the hand-foot coördination of an evolutionary throwback such as myself: i be clumsy with the fingers and nimble with the toes, which is why they passed a law disallowing me from attempting to ever touch a basket-, soft- or baseball ever again, but i started varsity soccer despite being the shortest fullback anyone ever done seen. i can nimbly raise my leg over the couch-back and accurately place my foot on the spots where the couch will not disintegrate, stab me with springs or flip over (it weighs all of eight pounds) and just step on over and fold down like a flower at night into a cross-legged position. wearing an ankle-length silk skirt.

perhaps more crucially, once in this seat, i can then leave the couch in mirror-reverse, levering my leg over the couch-back and into a flat-foot stance on the open spaces on my book- and paper-smeared floor without tossing myself, the cats or the couch into a death-lurch, and then just lift the other leg delicately over and into a standing position, two feets on the floor. i can do it without moving anything above the waist, so i often do this with a laptop in one hand and the remains of my cup of coffee in the other, which admittedly causes mighty consternation among my two-legged roommates. (i've already dealt with the four-legged roomie who dislikes all movement of her living furniture above.) still, it's bin months without a single incident, so at least i know i'll do well if ever i need to climb over waist-high obstacles quickly with my arms bound behind my back.

well, it's good to know i've got marketable skills. maybe they need a new actor for alias? i dunno, i can hope.

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