Suicidal Frat Boy Frogs

I currently have about 15 cats, give or take a few depending on how many were killed by coons or birthed during the night. Our cat population can change for better or for worse by as many as 5 furry little faces in one day (city readers, please remember I live in the sticks. Rules out here are different). Rest assured, however, that my cats are well cared for. They spend their days chasing birds, lizards, elves, smurfs, frogs, and other small woodland creatures.

That brings me to recent discovery. Apparently we have a cult of suicidal frogs that I can only assume live in a tiny compound somewhere on our property. I say they are suicidal because I keep finding them hopping steadily toward the space under the back porch, which is inhabited on a continual nonstop basis by our white trash cats. They (the cats) sit on, around, and under the porch, smoking kitty sized cigarettes as they deep fry smurfs. Needless to say, any frog that ventures near this area definitely has a massive death wish.

I'm fairly certain that this particular cult isn't affiliated with the Heaven's Gate crowd because so far none of the frogs have been wearing tiny black Nikes. I'm not sure if they are polygamists though...however, the babies all look the same so it's safe to say something smells like Warren Jeffs (was that his name? I wanted to write Warren Beatty but I know it's not him...). The only other explanation I can think of is that there is a little frog fraternity down by the pond and the porch death march is some kind of sick initiation rite that they are forced to perform in order to prove their manly frogness.

I staged an intervention tonight and prevented a young frog from reaching eternity for at least one more day. It was probably his first time away from home. Anyway, when I picked him up, he let out a high pitched little frog shriek. I'm sure all of his beer drinking frat frog buddies were watching from the pond and they'll probably call him Nancy or Barbara for the rest of his life. Better to be a safe Nancy than a dead Bob, I always say.

On a closing note, a few weeks ago I managed to drive through a concrete slushee on the highway as I headed into town. Now this is classic...it had been raining, and a concrete bag fell off of someone's truck. Anyway, I proceeded to town, went to class, came out, and had a nice new thin protective layer on the lower part of my truck. And think, some retards out there actually pay for rhino bed liners. Why don't they just break open a bag of quick-crete in the bed and turn on the garden hose for a minute?

I was seriously thinking about just coating my truck in concrete and maybe adding a nice reflecting pool or sculpture, but then I decided that bringing concrete on to our property would have bad results. I don't want to drain the pond in October and find dozens of little frogs wearing concrete overshoes...the frogs that failed to survive the new initiation swim.

Dedicated to Dustin and Jenny

For those unaware, I have an older brother named Dustin, who has a wife named Jenny, who wears adorable green rainboots.

Dustin and Jenny live in SoCal in a little apartment by the sea. There are palm trees and flowers, and gulls wheeling overhead. They have 500,000 close neighbors who also live in little apartments by the sea. They have an awesome sushi restaurant nearby, organic grocery stores, and are a stones throw from Santa Barbara. But the coolest part of Dustin and Jenny's SoCal lives are their friends Doug and Myra

Actually, from this point on they will be known as Myra and Doug, because I think it's Myra's turn to be listed first. I haven't met them yet but Dustin has talked about them so much that I feel like they are my friends now too. Well, my imaginary friends because I think Dustin made them up one day while he was sitting in his apartment by the sea.

Dustin has a lot of time to think about guns and new ways to make money and to invent imaginary friends because he only works one day a month. He spends the rest of his time driving to the Valley to install one door knob or paint a heater vent plate but inevitabley when he gets there he either forgot a tool or his customer decided to leave without telling him. He then drives home and sits in his apartment talking to Myra and Doug.

From what we can understand, they are pretty much a super hero couple living incognito like the Incredibles, and they drive off to random locations at the spur of the moment. This is where it gets weird for me, because I find it hard to believe that Dustin's imaginary friends like to drive because as we all know, Dustin hates road trips. I can tell you why too....it stems from the time that the cat decided to have diarrhea on him while he was sleeping in the van on our trip across the AZ desert. This is also why he hates cats.

Anyway, maybe the road trip part is Jenny's imaginary contribution. I think it must be, because Jenny drinks coffee and all coffee drinkers are sane, balanced, highway loving people. We like to be on the road watching the sunrise while we sip our lattes/mochas/cuppajoe. Dustin could not have invented the road trip part of Myra and Doug. This is not just me talking...this is science. I conducted a scientific study (meaning I thought it over while writing the above sentence and decided to report my thoughts as hard facts) that proved my point.

I personally know 4 pilots/student pilots. None of them drink coffee (now we know why planes crash), they are all serious by nature, and they don't like to drive long distances (well the other three might...I'm not really sure. I'm adapting their lives to fit my purpose and since no one else knows who they are I have full creative license to do so). Add into that mix the fact that my brother is one of the four and we have scientifically and logically established that it is impossible for Myra and Doug to take road trips in his imagination.

I don't understand why it takes researchers sssoooo many years in their laboratories to prove whatever their point is...I can do it in five minutes.

Bouquets of freshly sharpened pencils

People all have addictions, vices, obsessions. Alcohol, pills, video games, internet poker, stamp collecting, star trek, car racing...obviously, the list is endless. If you know me, you know I have a coffee cup surgically attached to my right hand. However, today I realized I've never talked about my other obsession in life. I'm talking about mechanical pencils. (This is what happens when you are old and single). Yesterday afternoon I drove to Office Max and I kid you not, I spent about 40 minutes scrutinizing mechanical pencils and lead before I realized how OCD I am about having the perfect writing implement.

Today I found one buried in my truck while I was looking for my fingernail clippers. The following was me, gradually becoming more and more excited the longer I looked at it..."hhmm...hey this is a 5.0 lead! sweet! Hey, it has the clicker on the side so you can push lead out without having to change hand position while taking notes! Hey it has a white eraser that won't leave marks and...oh my...oh my it's a twist out eraser, so it'll never get worn down to the point where you can't pull it out to replace it! And....and it has grippy things on the side! THIS IS A PERFECT PENCIL!"
Then I realized I had been driving for at least 30 seconds using my magic extrasensory perception because I was so focused on this stupid pencil that I had stopped looking out my windshield at the road in front of me. God must have invisible bowling bumpers for people like me so we don't crash into the side of a hill when we don't see the curve ahead of us. Otherwise the police and fire departments would arrive at the scene of my one car piled up and they'd find me with my perfect pencil clutched in my cold stiff hand and there would be a look of awe and amazement fixed on my face, like the expression of mindless wonder that Gollum wore at the end of the Lord of the Rings when he fell into the flaming pit with the Precious in his hand.
If that does ever happen, the dang undertaker better leave my pencil in my hand and let me be buried with it. Otherwis, so help me, I'll come back and steal all of the pens from his desk and stick them in all the other dead people's hands at night. Ha, that would creep him out pretty decently when he came in to work on their bodies in the morning. My guess is that he'd dig me back up and put the pencil back in my hand.
Now back to what I was talking about before I interupted myself with morbid imaginary death stories. I decided long ago that the typical first date routine of dinner and a movie was about as exciting and interesting as cold oatmeal. Last time I found myself in that situation, I wanted to stab my eyes out with a fork or call in a bomb threat on my cell phone from the bathroom. It's the whole lack of creativity thing that induces a gag reflex on my part. But it came to me while writing this that if some guy was to give me a coffee mug filled with coffee beans and pencils, I'd pretty much marry him on the spot. Sigh...does such a man exist? Only in fairy tales, I'm sure.

The last week here has been, in one word, insane. My family is going through a lot right now as three of our members suffer from some intense medical problems and have all been in and out of the hospital. The only thing I know to say is that I know our Savior is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Meaning, my Jesus is the same right now as He was 20 minutes ago. He is the same right now as He was before my mom, grandma, and uncle all developed the medical conditions they now suffer from. He was the same while they were/are in the hospital as He was when they were totally healthy, and He will be the same tomorrow, whatever their condition is at that time. I know that He holds each of them in His hands.

This has been a hard time for our family. Today started with one of those phone calls that we all dread receiving regarding a loved one and is ending at 2 AM with my mom being in the ER because her intestines shut down. Doctors are saying that my uncle has only a matter of hours remaining. I don't know what tomorrow holds, what next week will bring. Someday I know this will all make sense and we will see why it was that they had to suffer as they have.

I talked to my cousin on the phone yesterday and through tears he shared with me the last things that he and his dad said to each other. Nothing fancy or legendary...just "I love you." Is there anything more you can say though? Not that I can think of. I know my uncle is going home to our Savior when he dies, which may be tonight or in 40 years. It's just hard if not impossible, to keep from crying for the ones he leaves behind.

I can't help but think of my own mama when I think of my uncle. How do I put into words everything that my mama is to me? I can't. She loves to draw maps for people to follow. She buys tons of books and never finishes any of them. She is beautiful. I think of her and my uncle when I hear James Taylor songs.

The other person that is sick right now is my grandma. I've always called her Rackaw for some reason that I don't even know. This is breaking our hearts. Her and my mom and my uncle...I mean, they're so close to each other. He's been in the family since 1966 when he married my aunt. They were 18 years old. How do you live your life with someone for over 40 years then have to go on without them? I can't really imagine. But even more than that, how could you make it without Jesus holding you? I know people often wonder how a loving God could let us suffer. I just wonder...how much harder would the suffering be if He wasn't there with us? I trust my Savior. I know He is in control. How much worse would our suffering be if we didn't have a Savior bearing it for us?

The ER and doctors

Well, as some of you may know, my Grandma (for whom I am named) recently had to spend a few days in the hospital. Apparently she had a pleural effusion (latin for "many fuses") in her thoracic cavity (greek for "cave that the god of thunder lives in"). By the way, my medical terminology class really paid off this summer.
Anyway, after we had been in the examination room for approximately 357 hours, the nurse came in to tell us that the cardiologist would be with us soon. By "soon", she meant "at least probably before the rapture happens." During the subsequent wait, I wondered if it would be faster to take her to the DMV for treatment. I did come to understand why there are no windows in the ER. It's not so people on the outside can't see in...it's so the people inside waiting can't see out. The staff doesn't want you to see the leaves change color, then the first snowfall, then the budding out of trees as you wait to be resucitated from your heart attack. It's like a black hole where time ceases to exist for the occupants. Seriously, a lady was sitting there reading an issue of Time magazine that was hot off the press when she arrived. Reagan and Gorbechav were on the cover as "Men of the Year".
Finally, Mr Cardiologist arrived (i.e. someone apparently died and made him queen), fully self-aware of his own greatness, holding his Clipboard Of Power and Majesty. I know...I know... before anyone tells me, I know that doctors worked for years blah blah blah expensive education blah blah long residency blah blah save lives blah blah etc. And someday, said doctors will be my bosses. If this particular doctor is one of them and I have to work with him, I'll wear a specially embroidered scrub top that says on the back "I'm with stupid." Another might say "Don't blame him...his mama smoked weed while she was pregnant." Then I'll get fired and will launch an business selling similar scrub tops online to other disgruntled nurses.
I just don't get why some MD's become so convinced of their own awesomeness and then treat everyone around them like the parasites in the vomit of the maggot on the...nevermind. Is that what they learn in Med School? Furthermore, didn't their mamas teach them any better? I'm gonna need to come to terms with this sometime in the next year before I start doing clinicals at the hospital or there are gonna be some physicians walking around unaware of the long streamers of TP taped to their shoes, and all the while they'll be thinking how important they look holding their Clipboards of Power and Majesty and wearing their Stethoscopes of Glory and Might. You can guess who my first target is. All I can say is, he started it.

I know they are out there watching me.

I have three loyal followers now and I'm beginning to understand how the glamorous and fabulous must feel...or as I like to call them (borrowing from Dave Barry), Rich Twits On Parade. Except I'm not rich. I'm a poor twit on parade in my living room with a towel on my head at one something in the morning. But the blinds are closed because I kept seeing the camera flashes from the paparazzi who were staked out by my fence earlier. Or maybe it was lightning flashes from the thunderstorm that was going on.
While we're on the subject, I want to know why the heck they are called paparrazi. Is that Italian for "Idiots with cameras who never figured out how to live their own lives and instead spend their time chasing rich twits so the rest of us can stare mindlessly at their pictures while we stand in line at wal-mart waiting for the idiot in front of us to get over the fact that they were charged $2.oo instead of $1.99 for a box of ho-ho's"? I mean, when they were kids was it their dream to grow up and photograph Kirsty Alley sans makeup in a bikini? Maybe it's mall-cop syndrome...they were tortured by five of their peers in high school so they've dedicated the rest of their lives to getting revenge on the entire world.
Moving on...well, for once, I'm sick of talking about school so I won't write about that. In three weeks you'll get an update about how interesting my life is at college but for now, it's summer time. However, I am going to do some sidework during this break and brush up on one academic area that needs improvement. I am speaking, of course, of the fine art of drawing stick figure comic strips. Stick figures are great and I already have some ideas in place (yea, I think about stick figures.Try not to be to impressed). I'm gonna scan some of them on to here to sort of liven the place up and give it some culture and refinement.