#A-TO-Z-CHALLENGE – LETTER “G” - GLENN WALLACE, THE CAT

Glenn Wallace, the cat is a pretty amazing cat, although it must be said, he's actually pretty ridiculous most of the time. He's scary-smart. My better half named him after my late father, who was himself a pretty amazing, and scary-smart man, and also had his ridiculous moments. Glenn came to us in a rather startling way; we live out in the country on a corner parcel. There's just a lonely water tower and not much else around. Part of the land is abutted by forest and that's where Ripley the yodeling dog's imaginary pals live.

I spend most of the day ensconced in a house that is very secure and because of the day and the age, I am very aware of what's going on around me. It's quiet and Ripley will bark if people show up, so we're pretty safe. However, someone managed to sneak a black-and-white tuxedo kitten into our front door, between the screen door and the front door and there he stayed for a full ten hours, while James was at work. Now, the kitten may have wandered in there and gotten caught, I don't know. All that I do know, is when James came home, he said “Mary, how did the cat get out?”, when he opened the door. He was holding a black-and-white tuxedo kitten. I had not been out all day; hadn't opened the door. Our two chuckleheads were inside, busily dismantling the bedroom.

This is what Glenn looked like his first night with us. James was calling him "Kitler" from an old website from the 00s, that featured kittens with Hitler mustaches, that I had remembered. I was like, "Erm, no."

I pointed behind me to the two hoodlums and said, “I haven't opened the door all day; haven't been out! Look, here are our two goons!” I thought to myself “That trickster. James; he's just looking for a way to sneak another kitten into this household. Ha ha!” And he was looking at me like, “Mary, she's such a card! Looking for a way to get another new kitten in this house!”

Glenn, as he looks now. Don't let the beauty fool you; he's thinking of either his next meal, or what kinda shenanigans he can get into next. His favorite thing is to run rampant under my kitchen cabinets. I've told him that's Chthulu's timeshare, but Glenn doesn't care, much as my father wouldn't have cared.

James came all the way into the house with the new kitten. We could see that he (we checked that out right away, and he was an un-neutered male) was distressed; hot, dehydrated, hungry and rather skinny. He was about the same size as our two kittens. This was in October, so he was about six months old. Our kittens were both inoculated and up-to-date on their vaccinations, so he couldn't make them sick. The first thing we did was call the shelter for the county we now live in. They had no room for a kitten and the earliest they could neuter the kitten was in December. I didn't like that they had no room, and this wasn't a “no kill” shelter, so we decided to keep him.

James bathed him. This wasn't like the epic baths that my father used to give our cat, Oliver, when Oliver rolled in motor oil. My dad would lock them both in the bathroom and the yowling, screeching, and tearing of shower curtains and crashing around would commence. They'd both exit the bathroom, licking their wounds and treated bath time as some type of blood sport. The pair had an on-going feud? game? for ages, which my mom and I both enjoyed.

Eddifer and Glenn draped over, sleeping on the corner of my bed. Glenn looks like Superman or something here. I gave up trying to make the bed, because they all run around under the sheets, like a bunch of worms. Honestly.

Anyway, after Glenn's bath, we introduced Allie and Eddie to Glenn. We still hadn't picked out a name for him. We didn't have a feel for his personality. He was fine with the other cats, but was really, really hungry, so we fed him.

And, continued to feed him. About this time, I noticed that my hamburger buns on top of the microwave had a gnawed corner, in the bag and one of the buns had had some tiny bites taken out of it. I thought we had mice and since none of the kittens had really had mothers to teach them to hunt, I assumed that a tiny intruder was in my kitchen.

That week, when we went to the grocery store and I brought home a fresh loaf of bread, Glenn – who'd earned his name by doing something asinine that amused James, who while laughing, said “I'm gonna name this kitten after your Dad!”, and I, of course, being in on the entire ridiculousness of the situation, said, “Please do!” – saw this fresh loaf of bread and took a tiny, kitten-sized chomp squarely out of the middle of it as I watched, and I realized who the “mouse” in the house really was. I took the old loaf's sleeve and the piece Glenn had tried to eat, gave Glenn the chomped piece of bread, put the old sleeve on the new bread, took the new sleeve with the chomp in it, tossed it in the garbage and put all of the bread either in the microwave or the fridge, for safe-keeping. I give him the heels and now, Eddifer's in on this game of playing with/eating pieces of stale bread, when I make sandwiches. I don't give them much; just a bit to play with, and then eat. They're supposed to be carnivores, after all.

I know this is blurry; a testament to my fine picture-taking and my essential tremor, but this is the saddest pair of eyes I've ever seen. Poor Glenn! He only had to wear the cone for about 48 hours, but it was an eternity in terms of the Drama that unfolded in his mind, I'm sure!

Glenn is also the longest cat I've ever seen; long legs, tail and whiskers. He's almost four feet long when he stretches out on the floor and he's not fully grown yet. Like he's part Cheetah, and he gallops around the house like a little horsey. I think he revels in the sound his feet make on the hardwood floor. All he needs are little horsey shoesies.

He's also the one who goes in for all the weird, odd, and animated toys that James brings home. Glenn will be right on those crazy things and play with them for hours. He knows his name and will heel to hand commands, too. I've only had to tell him once and it's embedded in his little cat brain. Of all the cats, he's most bonded with me, with Misty being a close second. They are the two smartest, but I worry about Eddifer. Sometimes he gets lost in the scrum of life and will go off by himself. I make sure Eddie gets plenty of love. Allie is James' cat and she loves him to death. I'm an okay substitute, but there's no doubting who she loves best.

See what I mean about Drama? Allie is asleep all calm and Glenn is like, "I'M READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP, MR. DEMILLE!"

Ripley just kind of watches it all, bemused and the birds just add to the general life and noise around here. It's a happy house, with the animals, people and the music. We feel blessed. I hope everyone is having a great #atozchallenge!

I hope you stop by on April 19^th, 2020 to meet Andy Toppin, Jr., and learn about his book “Rowan's Chronicle, Volume 1”. He's an awesome person, and a terrific writer!

#A-TO-Z-CHALLENGE – LETTER “F” - Eddi-Fur; OUR FOSTER KITTEN

When we decided to throw caution to the winds and get hitched; without having even been in one another's presence physically, although, to be fair, we had done plenty of talking during viola lessons for a few years, we knew we were going to buy a house and fill it full of critters and music. We both play instruments and my fiancé has a fine singing voice – along with perfect pitch. I do too; I may have mentioned that I inherited it from my father, who had me singing harmony as a wee child, before I even knew what the word meant. But, I digress.

My father; a pilot in the Air Force during Korea. He flew B-29s and commanded a wing briefly. He was hilarious.

We got the house, and Ripley, the yodeling dog in the same week, and as we were moving in, we decided it was time to add in some kittens for more chaos. We had to start out with one, since you can only have one kitten that doesn't have siblings at a time from this shelter (you have to wait a week to adopt from another "family", so to speak), and the one kitten they did have was so tiny and cute; I about broke my neck running to the room to pick it up, before anyone else could see it. I'm ruthless when it comes to kittens and I wasn't going to let any little boys or girls deprive me. We found this tiny, tiny kitten, who wasn't available for adoption yet, but was available for foster. His little “biography” sheet said his name was “Tad” and that his birth date was April 20^th, 2019. We were seeing him in early June, so he was less than two months old, and no bigger than a mouse, it seemed. I didn't see the “Tad” part, or the D.O.B. part until later. My fiancé had already run off with the paper to start the fostering proceedings.

Allie is in the background, chillin'. Eddie is photo-bombing the daylights out of this pic. He just popped up when I snapped the phone. Understand, that I take horrible pictures and that this is usually the norm for me. Confusion and body parts that all seem so random.

I didn't know what this kitten's name was, just that like with any kitten, I was in love, but there was something about this little guy – honestly, they're all like that; distinct personalities from the start. This little black-and-white tuxedo kitten blinked at me and I blinked back. Pretty soon, James came back with a cardboard carrier and a soft blanket and said brightly, “Okay, Eddie Scissorshands and I are ready to go! Let's pack him up!” I said, “Wat?” -- I say that a lot now --  “I'll tell ya in the car,” James says. So, we bundle up the kitten and off we go. In the car, James tells me, that he decided on the spot that this was “Edward Scissorshands” because “Tad” was just about the lamest thing he'd ever heard for a name for a kitten, even one as small and practically formless, as our new “Eddie”. So, “Eddie” it was. All of our animals got new names; the shelter is the only place that comes up with worse names for animals than I do. “Ripples” became “Ripley”; “Mittens” became “Misty”. Only Glenn came to us nameless, and James has heard all of these fabulous stories about my father, so now, we have “Glenn Wallace, Jr.”. There are days I swear that cat channels my late father.

Eddie and Allie; the forelegs may be Glenn's. It's just hard to tell. Allie has more white on her face, and Eddie has like this checkerboard pattern going on on one side of his nose. Their differences physically are subtle, and when they're up to mischief, a stream of pet names, some long-deceased issues forth... smh.

Eddie squeaked a lot on the ride home, and we had a fair piece to ride; close to 45 minutes as I recall. The ASPCA had given us kitten food and some instructions and some de-worming medicine for him. When we got him in the house, we gave him a while to decompress from the car ride, before we brought out Ripley. James had already thoughtfully gotten a kitty tree for little ones, but Eddie mostly ignored that, at first. He was too busy trying to be a kitten; prancing sideways, climbing jeans and playing with his imaginary friends – all of our pets seem to have LOTS of imaginary play mates!

When Ripley was introduced, we got the famous puff-up, dance sideways, hiss and growl – which sounds like a lion that has inhaled nitrous oxide – and then, he spent a good 15 or 20 minutes trying to figure out how to un-do all that shit, all the while going in circles backwards. The best entertainment ever. Later that night, after James fell asleep, Eddie cavorted up and down on top of him, doing somersaults and handsprings; kip-ups and lay-ups, with his tiny, tiny claws getting caught in the blankets for about 45 minutes. I didn't dare try to take a video, the light would have woken James up, but, damn! That was a riot. That kitten had the best time!

This little mite of a kitten was (and still is) just a hilarious little thing. Now that he's growing up, he's more "serious", "supervising" in the kitchen with this same look on his face. The look that really means, "Just what in the HELL am I seeing here?"

When we got his sister Allie Cat or KittenMcGrabbyPaws, the following week, we outright adopted her. We still had Eddie listed as a foster. He apparently, had not been raised by his mom. I've always worried about him; he's a week older than she is, yet she is sturdier and seems to have hit certain benchmarks earlier than he did. He did manage to catch up as they've reached the one year mark, though, and he's quite a good-looking cat.

We finally were able to adopt him at the end of July and he had to be neutered, and of course, we were both so nervous about that. We were afraid something would happen, but he came home and was fine.

Eddifer considers himself the Supervisor of the Kitchen. He must come and inspect anything we do. He's not a pain about it and doesn't get in the way and doesn't try to eat the food; he just likes to watch. I had to laugh about the people on Twitter who have several names for their animals. I have several names for all of mine; Eddie's are Ed, Edward, Eddifer, Son, Asshat (generally, when he, Glenn, Allie and Misty are playing “Viet Nam” or “The Floor Is Lava”). When they crank those games up, they A) either start knocking over the kitchen chairs and vacuum cleaner or B) it's 3 a. m. in the damn morning and they use the corners of the bed as launch pads. I must admit, as they've gotten a bit older, the 3 a. m. rampages are slowing down and they're more apt to sleep through the night.

Allie (foreground) and Eddie behind, horsing around on Ripley's blanket, while he's out going for walkies. They're very close and like any two siblings, have their spats. When I hear the tiny roars, I make them stop and fight nice.

The only other thing that makes Eddie stand out from the other cats is that he is not fond of loud noises or weird toys, or anything he doesn't understand. He heads right to the underside of the bed and stays there until the strangeness goes away, or he can figure it out. It's just one more thing that sets him apart from the others. I hope you're all having a great #atozchallenge!

April 19, 2020 is the date for Andy Toppin's blog tour on this website for the 1st installment of his book, "Rowan's Chronicle, Volume 1". I hope you'll join me for his interview! He's a good friend of mine and a wonderful writer!

#A-TO-Z-CHALLENGE – LETTER “E” - EPHEMERA

I know this isn't about my new life in the carolinas, or anything about my animals, but it's a word that's been popping up in my head a lot lately. This probably has to do with the world's situation, and my internal dialogue is always “on”. My brain seems to have a running conversation with my moods, my reactions, how I interpret and analyze things and it never shuts off. So, just lately, “ephemera” has been coming to mind. I like the sound of the word; it's a beautiful word, much like “tintinnabulation” or “harmony”. We write and read for the beauty of the language, as much as we do for the import of the words.

I realize I am applying the definition to people, when it was originally meant to be used in the context of written or paper items, but our existence, on this earth, in context to the entire span of the universe's length of time is rather short, so I chose to use the term to describe our time here on earth.

By our very nature, we are ephemera, when compared to the rest of the universe, in terms of the length of time we exist, the amount of space we occupy and the things that preoccupy us. We have a tendency to focus on things that are less than monumental as a species and we haven't even figured out how to feed and house the entire planet peacefully. Rather, it's easier to make war over perceived slights and wrongs, than it is to work towards a peaceful resolution, that might garner less than the aggrieved party had hoped for. But, I digress.

Although, our corporeal beings are ephemeral, our ideals, passions and values are not. These things, abstractions really and any physical things we've created, as artists and people will exist after we leave this place. We'll be remembered; at least we hope so, and in a good light. So, in some manner, I guess, we do continue existence; my father and mother return every time I tell a story about them. There are their pictures and things they held that have been left behind; burnished by their touch.

In the time of the existence of the universe, it is less than we can even imagine – I'm being poetic, because although I know there's a hard number, it's still hard to grasp, because it's so minuscule in proportion to the age of the universe itself. In the time span of an epoch, it's a bit easier to grasp; however-many-score-years man is allotted to tread upon this mortal coil. It comes down to, “hey, we only get so much time. Make the most of it!” I'm really bad at this kind of sky-larking, but I couldn't get “ephemera” out of my head! Have a great #a-to-z-challenge!

Please, please, mark your calendar for Sunday, April 19^th. I will be doing a blog tour for Mr. Andy Toppin, Jr., author of “Rowan's Chronicle, Volume 1”. Andy is a good friend of mine and a wonderful person. He is finishing the edits for Volume 2 now!

#A-TO-Z-CHALLENGE – LETTER “C” AND “D” - CATS!!!! AND A DOG

I'm cheating here. I should have posted letter “C” on Friday, but I had a little run-in with the SSA and then the IRS over this whole “incentive check” nonsense, and after sitting on hold, listening to horrible hold music and being hung up on by two different alphabet agencies in these here Untied (sic) States, I was in no mood to write or think about #a-to-z-challenge. Quarantining is bad enough and then, trying to deal with our Federal Gubmint for ANYTHING, just raises my blood pressure. But, I REALLY want to finish this challenge this year AND I digress.

At last count, in my household, we have four cats, one dog and three birds. The cats don't really seem to know what the birds are, as the cats weren't raised by their mothers and never learned to hunt. They do like to watch them fly around in their cages. We have two finches and a cockatiel. The finches finch around, making that little beeping noise, and the cockatiel has a variety of sounds that she lets loose on the regular. It sounds like a zoo in here. The cats are more likely to eat the birdseed that I scatter on the floor, when I'm feeding the birds, for some reason.

Ripley, wallowing on my bed, after I spent twenty minutes making it. 

When we first brought the two kittens in the house, we already had Ripley, our husky-hound mix. Two things about Ripley, besides the fact that he's an absolute sweetheart of a dog and is really easy with the kittens. First, being part husky, he loves to run, and if there's an open door anywhere in the house, he will run. RUN and will not come back until he's good and ready. This wouldn't be a problem, except someone put some buckshot in him once. He came limping home. We got him healed up, and we thought that would cure him, but nope. He still loves to run. Luckily, we're good at keeping him fenced up. The other thing is, he yodels.

I believe I read somewhere that dogs are only capable of ten types of sounds. Well, you sure wouldn't know it by Ripley. He'll be outside on his lead, yodeling, in just about every key. He's doing dog karaoke and hollering to his imaginary friends out there in the forest that abuts our land. It's hilarious.

Eddie was barely two months old when we brought him home, as a foster. We ended up keeping him. We're kinda like the "Hotel California". You can come here, but you never leave. 

Anyway, when we first introduced each kitten to Ripley, they all had pretty much the same reaction. Puff up, dance sideways, and hiss. I don't know about you all, but tiny kittens getting all fierce is the funniest thing ever. Poor Eddie, or Eddifer, as I call him, when I'm not calling him “son”; he was so brand-new when we brought him home – he was a foster – that he couldn't figure out how to un-puff himself. He danced backward into his little kitty house and circled around about three times, before he got it all figured out. For about two weeks, he was scared of Ripley. Of all my cats, he is the least adventurous and the one most likely to be found under the bed at the introduction of ANYTHING new, including toys.

Glenn Wallace – named by my husband, after my late father – is the smartest and most adventurous, and he loves any new-fangled thing that comes his way. We got this ridiculous toy that is battery-operated, and it writhes around on the floor and sparkles and snaps, and Glenn loves it! He also loves the Chitter toy, that makes a chittering sound when played with, unlike Eddie, who just ran under the bed when these toys were first introduced. Eddie doesn't hide so much any more from them, but he just sort of tolerates them.

Glenn, sleeping. He always looks like he's come in after a really rough night at the bar. He's also the longest cat I've ever seen. He has long legs and whiskers. I'm devoting the letter "G" to him and will have a lot more to say later. Just revel in the length of this animal!

Allie, or KittenMcGrabbyPaws is probably the funniest with her balls and tiny painting spool. She has these little wool balls, and she will fling them around, or bring them to me and have me throw them for her. It's so funny when she brings it back. I don't know if it's possible, but she always carries the ball on the right side of her mouth, so if that's a thing with cats – left-mouthed, or right-mouthed – it's the first time I've ever observed it. My old Russian Blue, Trotsky would play fetch, but as I recall he was ambidextrous, when it came to carrying shit around in his mouth; tin foil, wool balls, whatever we were playing.

The other thing with Allie, or any of the kittens and Misty is when they play with the spool, they make one HELL of a racket! It sounds like they're playing hockey; the wool in the spool gets caught in their claws, and they fling the spool around. It hits the wall, cabinets, and floor and it sounds just like a hockey game. All we lack is a fight.

My doofy husband, whom I adore completely, took this Alexa picture of Allie when we were out to dinner one night. "I wonder what the kids are doing?", he asked. Apparently, they were re-enacting "The Lion King".

The dog and the cats all get along; Ripley has discovered that he cannot go leaping about on the furniture, and he can't play “The Floor Is Lava”, but he's good for a cuddle! Letter “E” coming up; no more calls to the IRS or the SSA. It is what it is.

One last thing, I'm going to be posting a special post for a self-published author, a friend of mine, Andy Toppin, Jr., whose book “Rowan's Chronicle, Volume 1” is on Amazon. He's really a good friend and a special person. I love this book, and hope you all will enjoy reading about him! I'm enjoying this #a-to-z-challenge. I hope you all are too!

#A-TO-Z-CHALLENGE – LETTER “B” AS IN “BUG” OR “BEETLE”

Letter “B” as in “Bug” or “Beetle”; more precisely, “Ladybug”, or “Ladybeetle” as, my oldest and dearest friend, Pamela calls them. I'm writing about them, because, like the kittens, and the dog and birds, they have become part of my landscape and in a big way.

courtesy: familyman.com   

My hubby also had a bunch of the little devils visit him in his woodworking shed as well.

One day, last October, here in the foothills of the uplands in the Carolinas, in the countryside where we live, ladybugs took to swarming; something I'd never experienced before. I'd seen scads of lightning bugs as a kid in Michigan and later on, when I lived near Gastonia, NC and, had heard tell of swarms of crickets from my aunt when they first moved to Las Vegas some fifty-plus years ago, when her husband, my uncle Stan, worked at the nuclear test site out near there. I'd also experienced swarms of Mayflies from Lake St. Clair, in Michigan, in June.

courtesy: mdc.mo.gov  

Lightning bug swarms are prettier than Mayfly swarms; here's a batch of lightning bugs in Missouri.

The Mayflies came up out of the bottom and swarm all over the towns of Grosse Pointe and East Pointe. People were sweeping them up with their push brooms and they would crunch when you run over them with your car. Kind of icky, but they disappeared fast, as the birds and I think squirrels would get some new snacks.

We also had the love-bugs in Florida. Boy, did we have love-bugs. Something out of a laboratory that got loose. Two bugs hooked together that flew around for a few weeks. They just got mooshed under your windshield wipers and were a mess to clean up. I was never really sure where they came from, or what ecological niche they were supposed to fill, but they were annoying.

courtesy: tcpalm.com  

Love bugs are supposedly a science experiment that got loose and have no known predator, so they just show up and annoy Floridians twice a year. The story may be apocryphal, but I was too busy cleaning dead love bugs off my car to care.

But, the ladybugs I found rather charming. They apparently live for between 2 and 3 years and they swarm in late October in the upper-third of the United States, looking for places to hibernate. They found refuge outside in my eaves, but several hundred, or thousand – I wasn't taking names at the door – found respite in my ceiling and my kitchen and bedroom and music room. They tucked themselves in and went to sleep. They will live off their body fat for the winter. The amusing thing is that it doesn't get really, really cold here, so we'd have a warm day, and a few hardy souls would come buzzing out and I'd find them creeping around in the kitchen.

I'm sure a few have fallen victim to the kittens and one did fall into one of my frying pans when I was cooking. I was unhappy about that. I've talked to people who work in construction and they're used to coming up on packs of them in walls and things like that, so it's not unusual, but I like having them here. At least they beat the wasp infestation I had last summer. That was just annoying. At any rate, I had to remember that terrible children's rhyme, “ladybug, ladybug, fly away home! Your house is on fire, and your children are all gone!” If I'm remembering that correctly, that's just the stuff of nightmares. No wonder we're all in therapy!

I hope you all are having a wonderful #a-to-z-challenge! Next up, letter “C”!

#A-TO-Z-CHALLENGE 2020 – LETTER “A” ALLIE

Letter “A” is for “Allie”. Short for Allie Cat; a tuxedo rescue, we acquired at two months. My kitten Allie, aka “Kitten McGrabbyPaws” is something else. She's going to be one year old on the 29^th of this month, and she's not the tiny kitten she was when we first brought her home, but she's the squirmiest, grabbiest kitten I've ever had. She's really the sweetest thing on earth, but not the brightest cat around. But that's okay. She knows what she needs to know to be a cat. She does try to be a person, on occasion however and this is when she's at her funniest.

Here is Allie being a ham, telling me I'm doing it wrong. Check out the fur on her hind feet. All the kittens have this fur, which we have dubbed the "tragedy of cat wool" for some idiotic reason.

It's generally when I'm trying to fold clothes, or walking across the floor. When I'm folding clothes, she'll stand up on her hind legs and try to grab at the clothes. She mirrors my actions and it looks hysterical. I really need to get my fiancé to film this, because it does look so ridiculous. She waves those little paws around like they're little hands. She also tries to “hold” my hand when we're walking side-by-side and she'll try to get up on her hind legs. With very little success, I might add.

I fail to see how anyone could be comfortable sleeping in this position, but she does this on the regular. Help. My cat is broken.

All in all, she's a happy creature and she's not that demanding for a cat. We have a hard time finding treats that she'll like. The others will pile into whatever fishy, stinky thing we find for them, but not Allie. She does try to bury her food, though. I thought this was odd, until I looked it up and some cats do have this atavistic trait of trying to bury their food; it's left over from before their domestication, when they had to kill to eat and they would cover the part of the kill they didn't eat for a snack later. Our cats all have their quirks and I'll be telling you about some of the secret things I've found out about cats as we go through our #a-to-z-challenge! I hope everyone is having fun and staying safe!

She has the most bewitching eyes and she looks right at you! <3

#IWSG APRIL 2020 CHECK IN – LOST IN TRANSLATION

Several years ago, when I was homeless in Tampa, I mentioned in a post that things got lost in translation. Sadly, I cannot find that post and it was probably horrible. My brain has not unscrambled itself one whit and I still occasionally get things wrong. Hell, more than occasionally; more like three or four times a day. It's been this way since I was young, from an ER nurse asking me if I had a “religious preference” and me hearing, did I have a “relative present” and pointing to my then-husband. They both looked confused.

This current story isn't really about that, but more about how we can just turn a sentence into a form of Mad Libs when one person, probably out of frustration, or just to add to the pile of nonsense comes up with something truly silly. This happened recently in an MMORPG that I've been playing for the last fourteen years. This in and of itself is a tale, since most MMORPGs don't last this long, with the exception of Maple Story, WOW and a few others. We also have a clan that is fifteen years old, with the SAME people in it that founded the thing, for the most part. That in itself is a tale. At fourteen years in, I'm a johnny-come-lately. But, I digress.

These are one of the Elite Dungeons where I practice my craft. I earn lots of money doing this. Like most MMORPGs, Runescape3 is grindy, but the community is awesome. My co-Leader, SpZ Wolf, started in the Clan, the same day I did and we're partners in crime. 

For those readers who haven't put up with my ravings, I should explain that at best, I feel like I have a tenuous grasp of reality at the best of times. I'm perpetually in a state of out-of-itness and even when I think I just get a hold of whatever the current train of the state of affairs may be, it slips away from me. It's been like this all of my life and I'm not sure if it's due to what they used to call Asperger and now call something else, but was called “doesn't play well with others” when I was growing up and is truly apt in my case, or if I'm just dim. That being said, I've soldiered on, having some fairly successful careers in both music and in computers, so there's that. I still can't tell with all the lying going on in the media and up and down the political spectrum these days. Again, I digress, and I want to keep this light.

This is another dungeon, of Ascension Members. They are taken down with crossbows, which I double-wield. Every foe has a different strength and handicap. The depth and breadth of the game has grown over the years. We just added a new skill, Archaeology, so we're all starting from scratch on that and it's fun. 

At any rate, the MMORPG that I have played for what seems like eons is called “Runescape” and many of my clan mates have played as long as I have or longer. We've all been together for the fourteen to fifteen year range and have a solid cadre of about fifty people, although our site lists us with 163 members. The game itself lists over 250,000,000 accounts and I am ranked in the top 100,000, with my Slaying skill being at number 8,281 out of that 250,000,000, as I'm trying to get 200 million xp total. The skill is fun. The game itself is about 80% combat, with about 20% for skilling and questing. The skills are also tied into combat; you need to be able to mine and smith the best of ores to make combat armor that is durable enough for you to fight high-level bosses.

It's pretty much like any other grind-and-reward game. What makes it are the people and the community involvement and they're a hoot. People from around the world play the game, and we have them in my clan. We also have perma-guests in our clan chat.

One of them is a published author, from Barbados, unlike me, who just seems to dabble in writing and never finishes editing anything, although I have scads of ideas that sound great and then I see a shiny, or a symphony starts a season and I MUST go play. LintsJenesis is his game name and we were in our usual pattern of throwing badinage, banter and jesting back and forth, while skilling after a ddos had hit our login servers last week, and had kept us off of the game. For those who haven't experienced a “ddos” or a dedicated-denial-of-service attack on a login server, it's basically two asshats on two PCs who use scripted commands or macros to continually request logins directed at certain targets. Jagex and their servers have been targeted for ages and they are usually the precursor to attacks that then cascade west-ward, as the traffic backs up (Jagex servers are in the U.K. For the most part). The most spectacular of these brought down a good portion of the eastern U. S. banking; ATM's and gas stations were particularly hard-hit back in 2016 or so.

The rise of the pandemic has also seen the rise of the ddos-bots, and the bad old days are here once again. As usual, I digress.

As Lints and I were bantering about this, I mentioned that I got some laundry done and mopped some floors, because, “the floors wouldn't mop themselves” and the “clothes wouldn't launder themselves”. I must've been babbling, as per usual, and after several iterations of different ways the floors and clothing would get clean, Lints comes back with this gem:

I'm sure Lints had heard enough of my yammering when he came up with this gem.

I died laughing. Said I was going to use this and would give him credit. I also plan on featuring his books on my blog and doing a tour for him. He's an outstanding person and a good friend. I meet some of the best people online! Hope your #IWSG is fantastic! I also hope you all are enjoying #a-to-z-challenge! See you there soon!