#A­TO­Z CHALLENGE ­- LETTER "K" ­- KITTEHS

This is the first of my last batch of posts that will be written and produced on my old, old friend, and IBM Thinkpad, that I salvaged from my landlord, who works best with a hammer and is 80 years old. Out of nostalgia, after I repaired the thing, I offered him 50 bucks. He took 10. Okay, I'm a hell of a negotiator.

courtesy:oldcomputer.net   

My landlord salvaged this out of some junk heap. All I did was load an OS onto it, and tried to give it back to him. He looked around at my "computer lab". I said, I'll give ya 50.00 bucks for it." He said, "10.00. okies?" Okies. You can't kill these things.

Anyway, (like you're in the edge of your seat for this riveting story), I'm trying something with C++ on my souped-up septa-core. Corrupted heap at fal-de-rol blah blah blah. Blargle. I overclocked the CPU, which is no sweat for this puppy, but I have to back up, and go step-by-step to fix. All of this is for a gaming site, which I am apparently going to have a real job doing, so this requires Knowledge (which would actually work for #AtoZ and got a "K" letter out of it, but is dry as sand for no one who gives two farts for heaps, corruption, stack overflows, and sector). Since I'm batting 1.0000 in these types of things, it will be fixed.

courtesy:synapsessynergygroup.com   

I wish Miguel would find these in some junkyard. Introducing the IBM Glue gene Mainframe; puts the Cray to shame. I stood up against the side of one of similar style once, and the power flowing through them is amazing!

The other reason I'm doing this, is I'm going to be splitting Tampa, Nebraska and my environs for a week or so, and want to take this puppy on the road, thus want to make sure it's serviceable and that I'll be able to post something besides colorful crap that I can create and upload all day in PAINT. No one wants to see my horrible drawing; it's worse than my photography, which Lee McAulay over at #ROW80 insisted would get me hired for Paranormal TV. It's THAT bad and apparently genetic. 

I have not clue one as to what I was taking pictures of, why or when, but it was probably at night, because I am up mostly at night. Suffice it to say, they exist, and they were in my camera, so I must have taken them. The fool camera is one of these little cheap knock-offs that says it does everything. It does, but not well and it's a bitch to figure out. I couldn't find the really good one that I took of the stove in the dead of night, with no lights on and no flash. That one there is one hum-dinger of a photo!

I don't believe that I ever saw my dad pick up a camera, but my mother had no qualms about picking up a camera and taking a picutre of any old damn thing. Her favorites were meaningless pictures of the sky, with no landscape, so you didn't know if it was sunrisee or sunset and you were left with that timeless quality of just . . . clouds, in varying shades, close-ups of just. . . rocks because they were "interesting"; they weren't. Pretty much every rock is just like another, and people from the neck down, so she was either finding friends in Witness Protection Programs, or she was just too damn short to realize she was beheading all of her subjects. 

Of course, we all waited with baited breath, everytime she came home with a new batch of abominations, so that we all had something to have a good howl and screech over. She wasn't exactly thrilled when I went to Japan and came home with 11 rolls of film, that were just. . . bridges. I got a few people in shots, by accident, but I told her, "Well, the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree." She thought a moment, when went "True. . ." Just because we knew our limitations was no reason to put down the camera.

courtesly:mymom   

I have seventy-billion pictures of stuff like this in my mom's effects. Cats doing various amounts of nothing. The ginger cat, named "Dwayne" actually looked like a stoner and sat like that all the time. I'm not sure who the other cat is, but he/she looks to be in mid-stroke; I'm guessing it's some form of playing. I am equally bad, if not worse when it comes to taking pictures of felines.

Of course, we always had cats, kittens, or kittehs. I have some of the most random shots ever of cats that she photographed. They always look drunk. I'm not sure how one pulls that off, but she was damn good at it. I can't get my cat, Mama, to do all those cute little things that she does and get any kind of decent picture. I must have 147 pictures of the back of her head. Most of the time she wants to lie on my mouse hand and grab my arm and go to sleep. This is all fine; I put a towel over my arms, because she does grab on.

Alex and I speculated about the kitteh population in and around Nebraska Ave. Before I moved here, I had never seen cats with the types of markings that these cats have. It's like they were all designed by a committee of exterior decorators. They're all part calico-tortoise-shell-tabby, with patches of solid color and/or white thrown in and there are about a zillion of them.

I do think that Mama is the Matriarch, or at least one of them. She has been spayed. We saw to that after we adopted her and her very last kitten was killed by a motorcycle, but she has two sons from previous litters who show up to visit and they have very similar marking akin to hers. 

A picture of Mama when she's actually looking at ME. I've since taken 83,749 pictures of her ass, her feet, the back of her head, but I've yet to get another head shot.

If you go on an evening stroll on some of the more secluded streets in V. M. Ybor, there are entire streets, where mini-Mamas are just lolling about on the streets. If you try to approach them, they run off to their owners' houses. The people have made a very good effort at controlling the cat population and adopting the strays, but the gene pool here is singular.

A bit farther to the east, in Ybor City, there is a lovely breed of cat that originated there, called the Havana Brown. These cats are so, so dark chocolate, that you cannot tell they are brown unless they are in direct sunlight. They are rather small and the few that I have known are feisty little cats, but wonderful to behold.

These are some of my more recent attempts. We're either getting ready to pass into an alternate universe, ala "Fringe", or I was having a really bad day with my essential tremor. In truth, she just KNOWS when that damn camera is coming out!

Mama kind of rules the places around here, and she can be a little con artist. For several weeks, she was letting me know that she didn't care for her dry food and that she really wasn't all that crazy about the wet food I was feeding her. I was pulling my hair out, trying to find something this elderly, cranky cat would eat. I would give her some bits of rotisserie turkey that I got from the deli; bits of cheese from my sandwich. I made some home-made meatballs; she liked those. Then, last Sunday, I walked into the kitchen, and caught her chowing down on her dry food. She looked up at me, with a look that said "I am sooooo busted!" As my friend Jeremy says, "That's cats for ya!" Indeed.

ROW80 DAY 9 WEDNESDAY CHECK IN

THIS IS NOT ABOUT ROCKY THE FLYING SQUIRREL**

I've been hearing for a few weeks now about how our lives are NOT sculpted over the course of our existence. I've felt for a long time, as my views have become clarified, that my parents are not responsible for the predicaments I've found myself in over the years. They are not responsible for the bad choices I made or for the depression and anxiety I was encumbered with, in some cases for years. No, all of that lies squarely on my head. The acknowledgement and acceptance of this is immensely freeing and it is also (to use a word that normally makes me gag) "empowering." 


The freeing part I feel because, I don't have to walk around with all that nasty old guilt, and bitterness and toxic goo anymore. I'm free to love and honor my parents for the people that they were. And fine people they were. They were just fucked up, like the rest of us. They were also fucked up in some very entertaining ways.


So, since we're all adults here (or presumably. If not, warning. Racy story ahead) I may as well trot out this little family gem. Disclaimer: I do not remember this. I slept through the whole thing, in my bed, snug as a bug in a rug. 


At the time this occurred, it was high summer in Muskegon, Michigan, in 1960. I was 4 years old. We lived at 1692 Peck Street. I remember this because my mother drummed this into my head in case I ever wandered off and some kindly stranger found me and asked where I lived (in 1960!) I guess if Jack the Ripper found me, I would rattle this off parrot-like before he slit my throat. Anyway, the house we lived in was an old, big Victorian built in 1892. We lived on the entire 2nd floor and the whole front of the house had dormered window seats in a sort of half circle on one corner and you could see directly across the street, where what was considered in the day, an "old folks' home" was located. 


The "old folks' home" was very genteel, and I suspect now was where very wealthy elderly people stayed. There were ice cream socials in the summer and Christmas parties in the winter for the entire neighborhood. This was, for all intents and purposes, still the fifties. Men and women still observed the proprieties. My mother wore stunning hats and gloves to church every Sunday. She had one hat that was a cloche-type hat made of feathers that were the approximate color of her hair. The priest greeting the celebrants one Sunday was not going to let her in until, without a word, she lifted her hat. Formalities were strictly observed everywhere in those days.


Anyway, we had a few cats. We always had a few somethings around. Cats were always in the mix. We had dogs. Had a couple of turtles. Horses. Daddy brought home a tarantula once. Ma wasn't too crazy about him, but he got to stay as long as he stayed in his cage. I guess she didn't want me cuddling up with him for a snooze. Mice, the usual stuff. Oh, we had an accidental bobcat once; I'll save him for another time. Anyway, these cats we had in Muskegon had a penchant for bringing presents in the house. I know all cats do this, but these two brothers, by the names of "Hermit" and "Wad" (I don't know why, my Daddy named them cryptically; and wouldn't explain) brought stuff in that wasn't dead. Hell, they brought stuff in that was still kicking and fighting about half the time. They also used to bring their movable cat fights right into the kitchen through their kitty door at 3 am. Who doesn't want to hear all that screeching and howling at close quarters, especially early in the day? Talk about a wake up call!


Well, apparently this time, Dumb and Stupider found themselves a flying squirrel and it was injured, but not so injured as to not be afraid for it's life.
So, this damned thing is hopping and skipping from the back of the couch, to a lamp, to a fireplace mantel, to a chair, to a table and making a god-awful racket! My heroic father leaps out of bed, charges into the living room, turns on every light and starts chasing the squirrel around. All he needs is a red "S" on his chest. And some pants. Any pants. The cats are trying to catch the squirrel. My father is tripping over the cats. He's yelling, "Sheila, get me my Air Force gloves!" My mother comes out with the gloves. She's running around, chasing him. He's still after the squirrel. Chaos. All the lights are on, all the curtains are open. It's 8:30 at night. At this point, my mom notices they're both naked and she's turning off all the lights behind my father, who keeps turning them on. After a few minutes of all this to-ing and fro-ing and chasing, I think the squirrel and my dad just ran into each other. My father caught the little squirrel with while wearing his gloves.  Now, to put him somewhere safe, where Cheech and Chong can't get him.


Oh yeah. We had a parakeet at the time who wouldn't live in his cage. He lived on top of his cage. That was the meanest little bastard that ever lived. His name was Pongo or something like that. He could mimic the cats, my mom and he hated my dad. The rule was, Pongo had to go in his cage at supper time because he would "bathe" in your food. Seriously. We discovered that little charming trait, when he proceeded to "swim" through everybody's homemade pea soup one night. Boy, was my mom pissed! Where he ever came from I have no idea. Probably one of my parents' enemies gave him to us. Anyway, one night it was time to eat and Pongo knew he had to go in his cage, so the fight begins. I have this memory of my father, chasing this little flying rat down this long hallway, until it looks like they're going to disappear over the horizon, and then, what seems like hours later, they grow ever larger. It was like a Road Runner cartoon. At times, My dad would "trick" Pongo and put ice cream in his cage. You couldn't fall back on that very often.


So, not-Rocky the flying squirrel recovered in Pongo's cage, and slept in one of my father's fur-lined Air Force gloves until he recovered from the trauma of being chased by cats and crazy naked people. The genteel old folks didn't speak to us for awhile until they forgot who were, I guess. The cats continued to bring us "gifts." 

**With thanks to Dr. Fab for this idea. I was commenting on her post about the bats. Check out her website. She is very cool and writes sci fi as well!