Pickles & Dimes

Things that have amused me recently:

• The fact that my email server cuts senders’ names off, so I receive a daily status report from Jesus.
• That after playing a thousand snippets of possible wedding ceremony songs to Jason, he said this after I presented my favorite: “Yeah, that one’s great – if I’m being knighted.”
• That the IT tech support person I had a live chat with was named “Stoney,” which conjured up all kinds of amusing visuals, complete with a smoke-filled room and Jerry Garcia glasses.
• The white pigeon that has adopted us and hangs out all alone in our driveway, not moving for anything, not even my vehicle as I try to drive past it.
• The fact that I “taught” Sunny to sit before I give her a treat (Full disclosure: OK, she already sat down before getting her treat, but now I tell her to sit before she does it on her own, so it totally looks like she is obeying my command. As for Abby, she would rather cut you than listen to anything you say.)

Speaking of the cats, I had the following exchange with them last night. After getting a Pudding Pop (YES! They are back!) from the freezer, I sat on the couch and immediately had to deal with this: (artist re-enactment)

After Abby got so close I could actually feel her tuna-scented breath on my face, I told her, “Later, I promise.” She then sat four inches away, her wide, pupil-dilated eagle eyes watching my every move.

Then this happened:

I tried pushing Sunny away, but when 12 1/2 pounds of lactose-insatiable feline wants frozen pudding, well, good luck. Pretty soon I was wearing a furry, tiger-striped necklace with claws.

“Wait!” I said, as I frantically shoved the rest of the Pudding Pop into my mouth.

I then offered the mostly clean popsicle stick to Abby:

And then Sunny:

And then Jason rolled his eyes, because he just witnessed me feeding our cats a Pudding Pop.

Mmm…Pudding Pops.

Make your own personalized keyboard here.

We spent the weekend camping with Jason’s parents, who hold an annual family campout in their yard. On Friday night, the group spent a pleasant evening under star-filled, non-city-light-polluting sky and around 12:30 a.m., we clambered into our tent and sleeping bags.

Around 2:30 a.m. or so, the sky turned into a proverbial disco, with constant horror movie, creepy-people-revealing lightning and rolling thunder. I wasn’t too nervous, although I was mentally picturing the thousands of ways we’d made ourselves into a giant bullseye. (Outside during an electrical storm: check. Right underneath large trees: check. In a flimsy tent: check.)

As it started to rain, I comforted myself that the thunder was of the rolling kind, not the “Just struck the giant elm tree four feet to your left” variety. I then remembered that as a kid, my mom used to tell me rolling thunder was just the sound of God bowling, and I entertained myself with the thought of God wearing bowling shoes while kicking back with a few cold ones.

When the 65 mph wind kicked in, I pretended not to be a wuss and diverted my attention from the possibility of dying by brainstorming names for God’s bowling team. After dismissing “The Almighty Strikes,” I told Jason my idea, while he enthusiastically described the ideal bowling shirt:

God apparently didn’t like the name “Holy Split!”, because our tent suddenly caved in at 4:00 a.m., leaving us to flee like rain-soaked ninnies to the house, but not before I had to spend an agonizing minute and a half in the downpour fighting with the tent zipper, which was hellbent on eating the tent flap.

We then had the fun of trying to dry out our blankets and other gear the next day after retrieving them from our upside down tent while the humidity was 94 percent. Humidity that equated to melting skin and air that could physically be wrung out.

But I already can’t wait until next year’s campout.

Hey, how are you? That’s good. Can I tell you something? Come closer, I don’t want everyone to hear.

Guess what? I just realized I am A LOUD TALKER. I know; I can’t believe it either.

Jason’s been hinting at this for ages, as evidenced by his tendency to interrupt my fabulously interesting conversations (“…and then this guy wearing a professor’s blazer tripped right as I drove by…ooh! Let’s have bacon for dinner!”) by using a “lowering gesture” while saying, “Inside voice,” as though I were two and shrieking in the toy aisle of Target.

Usually when he does this, I am lying two inches from his eardrum in bed, so I can understand his requests. But lately, he’s been saying this to me during regular daylight hours, hours I am conversing with him an appropriate distance away while using a normal (to me) tone of voice.

However, while at work, I was on the phone and afterwards, realized I had been speaking IN ALL CAPS. Gah.

I don’t know the reason. Both Jason and my Mom are hard of hearing, but my Mom now has hearing aids and Jason’s actually complaining about the volume, so I don’t know why I do this.

I know my hearing is good, because I’m the one who instantly recognizes the familiar nighttime sounds of a cat horking. So why would I be talking like a used car salesman all the time – any ideas?

HELP ME!!! I DEMAND OF YOU!!!