The One About Squirrels and Thanksgiving
er, what i mean is, it's not about Squirrels and Thanksgiving so much as the first part is about a Squirrel and the second part is about Thanksgiving, i mean come on, how much of a redneck do you think i am anyway?
November 26, 2003

hi kids,

it's all true doncha know.

remember how i told you about my cat waking me up at all hours of the morning and that the Dark Side is stealing my sleep to use it as fuel for hell? remember?

well the cat has been good lately. she's been quiet. and she hasn't jumped on me head in 9 days. a new record. so i guess my sleep is back to normal, eh?

no. no it isn't.
when i'm not waking up once an hour with my breath stolen and my body covered in sweat, then something really rare and stupid is happening to wake me up. and it's usually at the window. and it usually scares the bleeding hell out of me, 'cos i have an irrational fear of aliens/monsters/pack of wild dogs coming through my window, BUSTING through my window and onto my bed and then killing me in a horrible way. the aliens torture me, the monster disembowels me and leaves the room to go kill the other people in the house while i die slowly and painfully, and the pack of wild dogs eats me alive.
that's why it's called an irrational fear. but the fear is there nonetheless, and don't you dare tell me that those horrible things will never happen because i know that. that still doesn't stop me from ending my evening prayers with, "and God, i know i deserve to be killed in all sorts of horrible, nasty ways, like alien torture, disemboweling by monster, and perhaps even being eaten alive say...by a pack of wild dogs, but please don't let anything come through the window. amen."

and now when i wake up i don't get my hopes up because i'm waking up at least three times a night/morning and when my eyes open i'm never sure if i should just roll over or if it's time to get up. that's why they invented giant digital clocks. and everytime i look at the clock and it's not time to get up or it's still dark outside i think, "oh shit. the window. it will come through the window. maybe NOW! AHHH!" and i panic until i fall asleep again.

which means that on friday, just as day was breaking and i was still sleeping all tucked in and safe and happy, there was a giant crash-boom-bang-scrape against my window and i jerked awake and had a mild heart attack/stroke/kidney failure/bowel movement/amputation due to frostbite/liver transplant/frontal lobotomy and i gave birth to an 8 pound wolfboy named Rosco. "ooosums a wittle wolfboy? yoosums!"
mama and puppy are doing fine by the way.

so i jerk awake and twist all about in my 2.5 blankets and look at the banging, scratching window and i peer through the blinds, and i can barely see this grey colored F5 whatsit going apeshit from the small tree to the window and back again and back AGAIN. and there's ALL THIS NOISE. AND THE WINDOW IS BANGING. AND THE SCREEN IS SCREAMING AND SCRATCHING LIKE NAILS ON A CHALKBOARD, OK?! AND THIS CREATURE, WHOM I AM ASSUMING IS THE BLOODY BOLLICKY CAT, IS ABSOLUTELY GOING BATSHIT INSANE. AND ALL THIS, OUTSIDE. OF. MY. WINDOW. DAMMIT.

by the time i twist my way out ot the blanket, and of course my earring gets caught and it starts bleeding because holy hell i can't simply arise from the bed without chaos all around, i run out to the front door (by the way, my bedroom window is two feet away from the door, which is to let you know that i am face to face with the beast) to yell at the assjacking cat.

and it's not a cat which i'm sure you've already guessed by the title to this thing and yes, you got it, it's a bollicking squirrel which has now stopped all movement from small tree to window and has now planted itself flat to the bricks of the house and is looking at me and flicking and swishing its tail all about and is chattering, barking and spitting at me.
yes, spitting.

i am so angry.
i have just been scared out of two years of my life and my ear is bleeding.

so of course i resorted to pointing and cussing.

i pointed at the demon-possessed squirrel and said, "what the HELL ARE YOU DOING OUTSIDE OF MY WINDOW YOU GODLESS CRETIN?! DAMN YOU BACK TO YOUR WORLD! THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU! GET AWAY FROM MY WINDOW, YOU GODDAMN BEAST OF HELL!"

it chitted and barked and spat at me some more.

and quite frankly, after my initial reaction of yelling and cursing i became afraid, because obviously a rabid squirrel is not something that i want to tangle with first thing in the morning...or ever really. it was a very sick squirrel. and it was at my window. and it was three feet away from my person.

so i looked around the yard to see if the cat had been trying to catch it 'cos maybe that's why the squirrel was going crazy. but no, that cat was nowhere to be seen.

the squirrel continued to foam and spit and bark and click and make those other wild noises but it had stopped jumping and banging and scraping the window so i thought what the hell, i'll go lay back down.

so back to bed and i can hear the squirrel continue it's horrible foamy, barky, chit rap. it goes on and on. and it gently lulls me back to sleep...gently...ever so lulling...so tired...eyes closed...nearly back...to sleepy sleep....there...just...

BANG CLANG SCHREEEEEEE BANG BANG!

me. straight up in bed.
"buh! aieeeee! oh. yeah." the squirrel is once again doing it's gymnastic routine on my window.

so i debate whether or not to go back outside and chase the demonized squirrel or just let it kill itself in due time against my window. and then i think that what if the cat is out there and is about to kill the squirrel? and what if me going out there ruins Toonces's concentration and then the squirrel gets away, or worse, sees Toonces's distraction and then makes its move and attacks Toonces? and there's my cat. all rabid. and then i gotta go bury it and all of a sudden i'm starring in Jaimie Pickle's Stephen King's Pet Semetary III: Nightmare Morning.

so i wait it out. more chitting and barking and spitting. and eventually i hear a thud and all is quiet.

i'd like to think that the squirrel ran off into the woods, laid down and had a quiet death. but it probably ran off into the woods and then proceeded to run in a tight circle, round and round and round until it got so crazy it broke out and ran dizzily up a tree and upon reaching the top it did not slow down just kept on dizzily running until it ran out of tree and just fell down to it's fatal wounding with a mighty thud and then slowly dragged itself coughing and spitting to a nearby stream and then it died. but where did the demon go?

well, if i wake up sometime this week with a crazed owl at my window, i guess we'll know.

and now onto the part about Thanksgiving.

ah, Thanksgiving...the day we get off from work only to work harder on that day than we do any day at work, huh ladies? i mean, if it's not cooking and baking all day and setting the table(s) then it's cleaning up and doing dishes and cleaning up the table(s). and oh sure we have dishwasher machines, sure, but the thing is, Thanksgiving is the time of year you have to break out those giant weird cooking pots and iron skillet things and other weird cooking things you only use twice a year and it doesn't fit in the dishwasher and there's four parts to it and it's really complicated and maybe you'd rather be at work than wrestling with that weird oven-turkey-cooking-thing.

this year's Thanksgiving is going to be odd. because it's just mom and me. 'cos dad left us to go to florida with some hootchie his brother to have thanksgiving with my grandfather and that lady he married after my real grandma died.
what do you call that? a step-grandmother? that's messed up.

and my brother is not coming home for the holiday either. he will instead be spending time with his girlfriend's family and don't we all feel sorry for him? not because her family is terrible or anything, i mean, i have no idea what her family is like, but we all know how it feels to have to go to "that other family's house" for thanksgiving. and here's a perfect essay on just that very thing. it's always odd in that everyone stares at you because you're not one of "them" although they try to be extra polite to you, and you know that they don't mean it but that they think they have you fooled. and don't even try to help out in the kitchen because the moment you enter they smell you and turn around and say, "oh jaimie, we have it all taken care of, dear." (and by dear they mean 'slut who is dating that nice boy we all love so') and they do that every year so finally after 5 years you stop offering to help and you know, know, know that they're going to talk about you later and say something awful like, "ugh, and that jaimie...every year she never helps or does anything. i don't see what jimmy sees in her." and when you do bring a dessert to the meal nobody eats it because the "uitlander" brought it, but they all tell you it was great and that they were glad to see you again and they hope to see you next year too. but they don't mean it. and there's the one ass-hat uncle who every bleeding year asks jimmy, "hey jimmy? are you sure this is the same girl you brought last year? HAHAHAHAHAHA!" and the only good part about the meal was that you voluteered to sit at the kid's table with all the nieces and nephews, and sure they're scared of you at first but then they slowly get over the fact that you have pink hair and then they're your new best friend because you've heard of N'SYNC and 50 Cent. and when it's time for you to finally, finally, finally leave the random-in-law's house the kids cry because they don't want you to leave, and the in-law is giving you the two-thirds of your pie that's left over saying, "oh, here, take your pie, there's no way we could ever eat it all."
oh, like it's just me?

so this year it's just mom and me, and honestly we couldn't be happier. we have been invited to many a friend's house for Turkey day. we've been invited all across the south actually...florida, north carolina, louisianna, glencoe and even ohio, which isn't so much in the south as it is midwest.

we politely declined all invitations.

then mom tried to find us a soup kitchen to work for 'cos hey, might as well be useful, right? might as well feed hungry people one day out of the year, right? wrong. they said they didn't need anymore volunteers. how messed up is that?

"so james, what are we gonna do for thanksgiving now?"
"i dunno mom. let's have...chili?"
"ok."

so we're having chili. now wait, don't feel bad. it's not nearly as sad as all that. it's not like i'm 7 years old and justin is 3 and our dad ran off with some crackho and mom's in the living room eating cigarettes and suckin' a bottle of gin and yelling, "you kids better eat all yer turkey roll! i wanna see clean plates, dammit!"

see? that's sad.
chili supper? not sad.

also, everyone is invited for the chili as we'll be eating it late and also drinking much booze. liz is bringing dessert. and i say we eat out of paper bowls so there's no dishes to do...well except for that giant pot that doesn't fit in the dishwasher, dammit.

asinine things i am thankful for:
clean sheets
tylenol pm™
everytime my jeep starts
beer

so happy Thanksgiving, you guys.

this link was on pamie.com, you cleek the helmet of your favorite foosball team and then someone gets some soup. look, i know you don't give a rat's bean in hell about football or helmets, but for the love, it's soup for the poor. i guess. i mean, i dunno. i clicked pittsburgh. it was the only one i really recognized. and i think you can cleek it once a day.

dante sent a Dante's Inferno Test. i was sent to the 5th level of hell (wrathful and gloomy) because i hate people.

next week's epitomb: you guys, my window was attacked by a rabid squirrel. what can possibly top that? nothing. i figure it's all downhill from here.

jaimie "that squirrel spit at me" pickle