Crunchy Thoughts

Renton has excellent timing, as we all know. Thursday morning he waddles up to where Steven I are getting ready for work and sighs out a low, mournful meow.

Uh oh.

After checking him out — hot to the touch, generally pissed off — we surmise he is yet again overly constipated and sporting a urinary tract infection. Quick plans are made for Steven to take off work that afternoon to make a vet visit. I make the call to the vet and stress multiple times that this is the BAD CAT that wants to eat your soul.

Sure enough, constipation is the nature of the beast, so to speak, and the vet is both impressed and worried about Renton’s bowels (of Hell?) and keeps him overnight.

Mom calls me the next morning at work to see how poor Renton fared. No word yet so I assured her I’d call once I spoke with the vet, whose number I was looking up right that minute. I spoke with the vet — “Bowels clear; what a lot of poop!” — called Steven while Mom tried to call me back, tried to call Mom back without success, received text message from Dad, tried Mom again and finally got her.

“Well, Cathy’s in labor.”

Ahh. Here’s where we realize Renton’s excellent choice in timing. After much deliberation, plans were made to have a slightly early weekend, pick up child and cat and converge upon the house. First things first — Renton had to be thoroughly bathed. When I first saw him he was as happy as could be to see me but LORD HAVE MERCY did he stink! His typical treatment for the constipation issue is sedation and an enema or three. Bathtime for Bonzo.

Then we packed up and down to Auburn we headed — everyone was expecting Miss Elizabeth to be around early evening, going by my now seemingly easy experience.

It turned out Cathy had been in labor since early Thursday evening and after 30 hours and slow progression a Cesarean was performed. My strong sister went through way more than I ever have, yet there she was the next day looking over the legalese-type birth certificate paperwork. I didn’t mess with that until a couple of weeks later and it was because I happened to run into it when I was tidying up the office.

So, after this long, overly drawn-out post, I do present to you my niece, my sister’s firstborn, Miss Elizabeth Rebon Summers, arriving at 10:53 p.m. on the 26th of September, 2008, weighing in at 7 pounds and 7 ounces and measuring at 21 inches long. Her and Lydia shall dance together.

A 4-way stop sign is supposed to be a simple concept.

However, when half of the people around here are Southern Gentlemen and the other half are Yankee Imbeciles the concept is just lost.

It’s Gameday! No baseball jokes, please.

And this week, Gameday — the show — is at Auburn for the LSU game.

Lydia and I are watching it, the Yakkers right there with Jordan-Hare Stadium behind them. Every once in a while they flash a lovely shot of something like Samford Hall behind them.

It makes me so homesick. I want to go home.

Never never never never NEVER get your rings re-sized when you’re pregnant.

Never.

While heading to work yesterday I got stopped at the railroad crossing — a train approacheth. I was pleased because I had been able to turn left onto the main road before the traffic backed up. In fact, I was first in line. A rarity, indeed.

As the train began to get nearer, I marveled at its speed. As it passed, I noticed the train engineer: an amiable-looking main wearing a blue and white plaid shirt and donning a white mustache, leaning back out of the open window, arm extended in an open-handed wave and a smile on his face. It was like a scene from a Warner Brothers cartoon.

He was going so fast I was barely able to react fast enough and wave back.

Stuff like that just completely makes my day.

NOT a phrase to be used during foreplay.

One could get the giggles.