Day Sixteen

Mutiny

There's a mini mutiny going on here as I type. My boys (cats) are used to eating breakfast, using the litter box (or not - Chance) then going out to the screened pool area to explore and, hopefully for them, catch lizards.  The Big Guy is home and he just shocked the pool. If you are unaware of this term it means dumping super concentrated chlorine into the pool to kill - whatever. Since I cannot break the cats of drinking from the pool - fresh water bowls everywhere are ignored - I'm not letting them go out today.

They are trying everything from yowling at the door, ramming into the locked cat door, staring at me with sad eyes - and Eli's favorite - taking it out on each other. These ploys have worked before because, as with human kids, going outside means peace inside. It's not going to work today. I'm not in the mood to poison anybody - yet.

This got me thinking about products we've used over the years - and that it's a miracle I reached adulthood and didn't die long ago from chemical poisoning. My mother believed every single ad she saw on TV. If there was a product out there claiming to kill germs, mold, rust, bugs, dust -  she bought it. She used so much Clorox, you could smell it when you walked into the house. If you had the misfortune of spending the night, you woke up the next morning smelling like you'd slept in a swimming pool. Once, when my father was in the hospital, he asked me to put socks on his feet. I grabbed a pair out of his bag, with chlorine fumes wafting out, and attempted to put the first sock on his foot. It literally fell apart in my hands. I stupidly mentioned that too much chlorine breaks down cloth fibers. When my mother walked in, he threw me right under the bus by telling her I said she was using too much Clorox. As she slowly turned to me with flames shooting out of her eyes and smoke billowing out of her ears, I knew I was toast. The only thing that kept me from needing hospitalization myself was that we were in one, surrounded by witnesses.

In the spirit of sharing family lore (to be read as if dripping in sarcasm) my parents liked to tell the story of the time my father was refinishing a piece of furniture, and I was "helping" him. My father spent a lot of time in his workshop, puttering around with woodwork and repairs. I now suspect it was his way of getting away from my mother. He was always fixing, painting, refinishing, gluing, etc. Ours was a house of toxic fumes. So, on this particular day, four year old me sat watching him refinishing something, using paint thinner. He said I looked up at him with crossed eyes and said, "Daddy, I feel funny," right before I passed out. Come to think of it, maybe this is why my mother always kept a canary around. It definitely explains why they had a very high mortality rate.

Well, all is quiet now. The boys have decided I'm just mean and they are avoiding me. Finn just tried one more time to go through the locked cat door (ouch) then skulked away. Even my best bud and appendage, aka Fancy, thinks I suck and is hiding somewhere. Hey, being a parent means sometimes you're the bad guy.





If she won't let me go outside, I'm gonna jump...then she'll be sorry!
 



Look at those idiots...

What? We were bored.