So, I've not been writing, here at least, for quite some time. I'd like to change that. I miss writing about bizarre and fun things like George Romero, zombies, 80's porn, punk rock, and my fear and loathing of everything Oprah: things I can't necessarily cover on my family blog because my grandmother reads it.
So, keep checking back, commenting and such, and I will keep coming back and gracing you with my blinding mediocrity.
In the meantime, enjoy one of the best Christmas songs EVER:
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
The Ongoing Saga of Frankie, the Anarchist, Punk-Rock Cat
We moved back to the Green Trails subdivision of Lisle last August. We had previously lived in a newer, larger house in south Naperville, but we quickly grew homesick for the wooded, small neighborhood charm of the area where we used to live.
The new house is smaller and older, but it is located on a cul-de-sac, so the street gets virtually no traffic. We thought of it as a perfect location because the back yard is large enough and set far enough off the main street that the children can play safely around the house without us having to worry much.
The family across the street has 3 boys ranging from the ages of 7 to 12. There are toddler girls on the block who, we are sure, will be playing with our daughters this summer, and there are high-school students up and down the block who will possibly make good babysitters over the next few years. This is the perfect area for us.
Our next-door neighbors, we'll call them the Rationále's, greeted us warmly the first few times we met them. They told us about the wonderful relationship they had with the family who lived in the house before us, an elderly Chinese couple named John & Cora.
Mother Rationále, we’ll call her Screechy Hag for reasons to be explained later, believes the world revolves around her 16-year-old daughter, who we’ll call Daughter of Screechy Hag. Karen and I sense that there were health difficulties during the pregnancy or during Daughter of Screechy Hag’s infant years that created this obsession in her mother, but a relationship that can be endearing becomes odd and annoying with this family.
Example from a conversation from last August:
Dan: Ah, yes. The weather is gorgeous, isn’t it?
Screechy Hag: Yes. We love to be outside. DoSH (Daughter of Screechy Hag’s nickname) would live outside if we let her.
Dan: Yeah. I notice she’s really into basketball.
Screechy Hag: Oh, yes. She is going to try out for the Naperville North girls team. I think she’ll make it. She can do anything she wants, when she sets her mind to it. She runs five miles a day.
Dan: Reeeaaaallly? Hmmmmm.
(Editor’s note: In the hundreds of times Dan has seen DoSH playing basketball in their driveway, he can count on one hand the number of baskets he has witnessed her actually make. Furthermore, he has never seen her run.)
Screechy Hag: How old are your twins?
Dan: They’re one. They just started to walk.
Screechy Hag: DoSH started walking at 2 months.
Dan: Really! That’s great.
Screechy Hag: I noticed your son plays soccer.
Dan: Oh, yes. We love it. It’s our obsession.
Screechy Hag: DoSH plays lacrosse. It’s a better sport. And she’s the best lacrosse player who has ever lived.
Dan: Wow!
Screechy Hag: Yeah. She’s great at everything she does. If you ever need a babysitter, DoSH would love to do it.
(At this point in the conversation, Dan looks up over Screechy Hag’s shoulder to see DoSH on top of a nine-year-old neighbor pummeling him about the face and shoulders.)
Dan: Wow! Yeah. Thanks for the offer. We’re good for now. Linsay is great with the kids. We’ll keep DoSH in mind, though.
Screechy Hag: Your loss!
Dan: I guess it is.
The Rationále family are dog people. I don’t mean that in a Tank Girl kind of way; however, the way Screechy Hag’s whole world is DoSH, both women’s world is their dog, Franklin. Screechy Hag can often be found having long conversations with Franklin in the front yard. In these conversations, she pauses and nods as if she is listening (during these pauses, Franklin sniffs a flower or licks his privates), and then responds, usually quite loudly, and shrilly, sometimes accompanied by a minor flailing of the limbs. When DoSH and her mother may be arguing about something in the front yard (again, with the loud, and the shrill, and the sometimes flailing of limbs… Times two), DoSH will plead with Franklin to be on her side for just this once.
We have a mangy, ill-tempered cat named Frankie who, since his kitten years has systematically gotten his ass kicked by whichever neighborhood wildlife he has chosen to tangle: other cats, squirrels, rabbits, voles, groundhogs, opossums, toddlers, and the occasional grasshopper. We’ve lived in three houses since he was a kitten, and he has never won a fight. He does, however, possess one talent of which he is immeasurably proud: the ability to drive any dog into a frothing, apoplectic frenzy simply by sitting just out of reach and completely ignoring the writhing beast.
The moment Screechy Hag saw our cat she cautioned me that we should really keep our cat inside because if Franklin got a hold of him, he’d be torn apart, and we just couldn’t hold them responsible for that. I looked at Franklin, a Dauschound about a foot-and-a-half long and not even a foot off the ground, and thanked her for her warning (it was polite enough, I thought. She was concerned about our cat being mauled by her Oscar Meyer wiener, and she didn’t want us to hold it against their family.). I assured her that Frankie is a professional; he’s been an outdoor cat since he was a kitten, and while he has made a habit of losing fights, he’s relatively harmless, and he does come inside most nights. She then told me that Lisle has leash laws and, while she doesn’t care, some people have been known to call Animal Control on roaming animals. I thanked her again for the warning, and assured her that Frankie could take care of himself, to which she replied, “DoSH has been taking care of herself since she was 6 months old.”
OK, then.
I should have known…
Actually, I thought I did know. We decided that, in order to hold the stuff that accumulates with having four children, we would need to purchase a shed to put in our back yard. I paid a visit to the Rationále’s, who have a storage shed in their backyard, hidden behind a fence. I asked them if they would have a problem if we put a shed in our back yard. Father Rationále, we’ll call him PEM for reasons that will become evident later, assured me that, as long as we were not setting it up too close to the path behind the house, they (speaking for the household Rationále) would not have a problem. Screechy Hag cited (wrongly) specific building codes of Lisle and stated that some people in the neighborhood are real sticklers about sheds and stuff, but as long as the shed is on our property, there should be no problem. I remarked that the only way there would be any kind of problem is if someone specifically called the village and asked them to come out measure the placement of the shed, right? They both agreed. Right.
A month after we put up the shed, a village representative showed up on our doorstep responding to a complaint made by “someone in the area”. Our shed is over the line by four feet, not onto our next-door neighbor’s property, but onto the easement area needed for servicing the power box. Our bad. Now, we need to find someone who will help us move this building back onto our property.
I can handle that. We were wrong in our estimation, just like many other residents who could not wade through the legalese in the Lisle Building Codes to determine exactly where to place a shed. The contractors set the foundation down measured it from the path and from the neighbor’s property line. It appeared a safe distance away from annoying anyone: us (by being too close to the house), the neighbors, city workers coming to work on the power box, so we gave them the OK to continue building it. It was out of their hands then.
One day around this same time, Aidan came running into the house in hysterics. He told us that Screechy Hag & Daughter of Screechy Hag told him and Jacob that if they didn’t keep our cat off of their property, they would call the police to come and take the cat away and kill it.
I shot out the door to Karen’s imploring, “Dan! It’s not worth…” PEM answered the door (that Poor Emasculated Man!). He looked tired; he always looks tired. He informed me that Screechy Hag could not come to the door. DoSH, who always seems to be skulking somewhere on the perimeter of whatever drama is taking place, was also nowhere to be found. I asked him if the cat was destroying the plants around his house. No, he wasn’t. I asked him if the cat was trying to get into their house. No. Was the cat attacking them? No. So, the biggest offense was that Frankie occasionally walked on their lawn, and maybe sat on their porch or in their back yard, or maybe taunted Franklin. PEM sighed, ran his fingers through his hair, and said, “My wife is the one who has the problem with the cat, not me. What do you want me to do? I have to live with them.” Dejected, I said I understood. I asked him to ask Screechy Hag if, before calling the police, she could come and talk to me directly and not threaten my children.
Two weeks later, Lisle’s finest showed up at our door. “Someone in the area” called to complain about our cat roaming loose around the neighborhood. The officer said that, yes, there is a leash law, but someone has to call and complain for them to actually do anything about it, and even then, unless they come over to the house and actually find the cat on the Rationále’s property, the only thing they can do is issue a statement and report that a complaint has been made.
Fine. OK. Point taken.
We tried the best we could from then on to keep Frankie in the house as much as possible, but the idea of chasing a cat who clearly does not want to be caught through yards and over fences while trying to get two toddlers who clearly do not want to be caught into car seats is beyond absurd. Try doing it once. The absurdity will become abundantly clear. In these situations, the twins’ needs always win, and Frankie is allowed his freedom for a few more hours.
One unseasonably warm day over winter break, it was twilight, the doorbell rang, and rang again. I opened the door at the third ring to Screechy Hag in full glory, all flailing and loud and shrill, going on about what I can only guess was the cat. I caught “can’t get a moment’s peace”, “leash law”, “Franklin is up barking at all hours of the night!”, and that’s about it, the whole time, DoSH peeping over Mom’s shoulder with a look of dumb, defiant pride plastered across her mug.
I replied that, first, Frankie does not go out at night anymore. Ever. So, the problem must be with her wiener. Second, is he on her property right now at this moment? No. He was in the little assembly of trees down the street, and when Screechy Hag took Franklin down there for their nightly talk and poop, the dog freaked out trying to tear Frankie apart and still appears to be in a very delicate state. I informed her that I was home by myself with the kids at that moment, and asked her if she agreed that packing all four kids up to tromp through the brush at the end of the street in search of a wayward cat is a wildly stupid idea. She disagreed vehemently. I closed the door and continued the bedtime routine.
This year, Spring Break fell during the last week of March. I had to work at the school, and I usually bring Aidan with me, but I thought I’d let him have the first day off at home to hang out with Linsay, Jacob, and the twins. He and Jacob were outside playing, and Linsay was inside the front room with the twins, watching them out the window. DoSH came out to shoot baskets and hurl a few insults at Jacob, things got a little out of hand, and Aidan ended up mooning her just as Linsay was racing out the door to pull Aidan and his pants back into the house. She went inside the house, called her mother at work, who then called the police to come to our house to investigate a report of indecent exposure and unsupervised children. More on this story when I get some more time...
I received a call at work from Linsay, who was understandably very upset.
So, nothing really since then, except for minor things. Soccer balls disappear from our yard every so often. Jacob has informed us that DoSH has used the “F” word in his general direction a few times. Both Mom and Daughter have screamed and hollered and indirectly threatened our cat’s health and safety to our children, but when Karen, Linsay, or I are out there, they are silent, smirking stupidly to themselves or to each other. Our mantra is Ignore ‘Em. In our children’s absence, I add, Fuck ‘Em to the mantra. I think it’s the extra two syllables, the hard consonant sound of tongue striking the roof of the mouth, that helps me feel better. I usually repeat that mantra while having a Black & Tan or two, and the repetition of Ignore ‘em, Fuck ‘em eventually softens, blending into a soothing Ignorrem... Fuggem.
The new house is smaller and older, but it is located on a cul-de-sac, so the street gets virtually no traffic. We thought of it as a perfect location because the back yard is large enough and set far enough off the main street that the children can play safely around the house without us having to worry much.
The family across the street has 3 boys ranging from the ages of 7 to 12. There are toddler girls on the block who, we are sure, will be playing with our daughters this summer, and there are high-school students up and down the block who will possibly make good babysitters over the next few years. This is the perfect area for us.
Our next-door neighbors, we'll call them the Rationále's, greeted us warmly the first few times we met them. They told us about the wonderful relationship they had with the family who lived in the house before us, an elderly Chinese couple named John & Cora.
Mother Rationále, we’ll call her Screechy Hag for reasons to be explained later, believes the world revolves around her 16-year-old daughter, who we’ll call Daughter of Screechy Hag. Karen and I sense that there were health difficulties during the pregnancy or during Daughter of Screechy Hag’s infant years that created this obsession in her mother, but a relationship that can be endearing becomes odd and annoying with this family.
Example from a conversation from last August:
Dan: Ah, yes. The weather is gorgeous, isn’t it?
Screechy Hag: Yes. We love to be outside. DoSH (Daughter of Screechy Hag’s nickname) would live outside if we let her.
Dan: Yeah. I notice she’s really into basketball.
Screechy Hag: Oh, yes. She is going to try out for the Naperville North girls team. I think she’ll make it. She can do anything she wants, when she sets her mind to it. She runs five miles a day.
Dan: Reeeaaaallly? Hmmmmm.
(Editor’s note: In the hundreds of times Dan has seen DoSH playing basketball in their driveway, he can count on one hand the number of baskets he has witnessed her actually make. Furthermore, he has never seen her run.)
Screechy Hag: How old are your twins?
Dan: They’re one. They just started to walk.
Screechy Hag: DoSH started walking at 2 months.
Dan: Really! That’s great.
Screechy Hag: I noticed your son plays soccer.
Dan: Oh, yes. We love it. It’s our obsession.
Screechy Hag: DoSH plays lacrosse. It’s a better sport. And she’s the best lacrosse player who has ever lived.
Dan: Wow!
Screechy Hag: Yeah. She’s great at everything she does. If you ever need a babysitter, DoSH would love to do it.
(At this point in the conversation, Dan looks up over Screechy Hag’s shoulder to see DoSH on top of a nine-year-old neighbor pummeling him about the face and shoulders.)
Dan: Wow! Yeah. Thanks for the offer. We’re good for now. Linsay is great with the kids. We’ll keep DoSH in mind, though.
Screechy Hag: Your loss!
Dan: I guess it is.
The Rationále family are dog people. I don’t mean that in a Tank Girl kind of way; however, the way Screechy Hag’s whole world is DoSH, both women’s world is their dog, Franklin. Screechy Hag can often be found having long conversations with Franklin in the front yard. In these conversations, she pauses and nods as if she is listening (during these pauses, Franklin sniffs a flower or licks his privates), and then responds, usually quite loudly, and shrilly, sometimes accompanied by a minor flailing of the limbs. When DoSH and her mother may be arguing about something in the front yard (again, with the loud, and the shrill, and the sometimes flailing of limbs… Times two), DoSH will plead with Franklin to be on her side for just this once.
We have a mangy, ill-tempered cat named Frankie who, since his kitten years has systematically gotten his ass kicked by whichever neighborhood wildlife he has chosen to tangle: other cats, squirrels, rabbits, voles, groundhogs, opossums, toddlers, and the occasional grasshopper. We’ve lived in three houses since he was a kitten, and he has never won a fight. He does, however, possess one talent of which he is immeasurably proud: the ability to drive any dog into a frothing, apoplectic frenzy simply by sitting just out of reach and completely ignoring the writhing beast.
The moment Screechy Hag saw our cat she cautioned me that we should really keep our cat inside because if Franklin got a hold of him, he’d be torn apart, and we just couldn’t hold them responsible for that. I looked at Franklin, a Dauschound about a foot-and-a-half long and not even a foot off the ground, and thanked her for her warning (it was polite enough, I thought. She was concerned about our cat being mauled by her Oscar Meyer wiener, and she didn’t want us to hold it against their family.). I assured her that Frankie is a professional; he’s been an outdoor cat since he was a kitten, and while he has made a habit of losing fights, he’s relatively harmless, and he does come inside most nights. She then told me that Lisle has leash laws and, while she doesn’t care, some people have been known to call Animal Control on roaming animals. I thanked her again for the warning, and assured her that Frankie could take care of himself, to which she replied, “DoSH has been taking care of herself since she was 6 months old.”
OK, then.
I should have known…
Actually, I thought I did know. We decided that, in order to hold the stuff that accumulates with having four children, we would need to purchase a shed to put in our back yard. I paid a visit to the Rationále’s, who have a storage shed in their backyard, hidden behind a fence. I asked them if they would have a problem if we put a shed in our back yard. Father Rationále, we’ll call him PEM for reasons that will become evident later, assured me that, as long as we were not setting it up too close to the path behind the house, they (speaking for the household Rationále) would not have a problem. Screechy Hag cited (wrongly) specific building codes of Lisle and stated that some people in the neighborhood are real sticklers about sheds and stuff, but as long as the shed is on our property, there should be no problem. I remarked that the only way there would be any kind of problem is if someone specifically called the village and asked them to come out measure the placement of the shed, right? They both agreed. Right.
A month after we put up the shed, a village representative showed up on our doorstep responding to a complaint made by “someone in the area”. Our shed is over the line by four feet, not onto our next-door neighbor’s property, but onto the easement area needed for servicing the power box. Our bad. Now, we need to find someone who will help us move this building back onto our property.
I can handle that. We were wrong in our estimation, just like many other residents who could not wade through the legalese in the Lisle Building Codes to determine exactly where to place a shed. The contractors set the foundation down measured it from the path and from the neighbor’s property line. It appeared a safe distance away from annoying anyone: us (by being too close to the house), the neighbors, city workers coming to work on the power box, so we gave them the OK to continue building it. It was out of their hands then.
One day around this same time, Aidan came running into the house in hysterics. He told us that Screechy Hag & Daughter of Screechy Hag told him and Jacob that if they didn’t keep our cat off of their property, they would call the police to come and take the cat away and kill it.
I shot out the door to Karen’s imploring, “Dan! It’s not worth…” PEM answered the door (that Poor Emasculated Man!). He looked tired; he always looks tired. He informed me that Screechy Hag could not come to the door. DoSH, who always seems to be skulking somewhere on the perimeter of whatever drama is taking place, was also nowhere to be found. I asked him if the cat was destroying the plants around his house. No, he wasn’t. I asked him if the cat was trying to get into their house. No. Was the cat attacking them? No. So, the biggest offense was that Frankie occasionally walked on their lawn, and maybe sat on their porch or in their back yard, or maybe taunted Franklin. PEM sighed, ran his fingers through his hair, and said, “My wife is the one who has the problem with the cat, not me. What do you want me to do? I have to live with them.” Dejected, I said I understood. I asked him to ask Screechy Hag if, before calling the police, she could come and talk to me directly and not threaten my children.
Two weeks later, Lisle’s finest showed up at our door. “Someone in the area” called to complain about our cat roaming loose around the neighborhood. The officer said that, yes, there is a leash law, but someone has to call and complain for them to actually do anything about it, and even then, unless they come over to the house and actually find the cat on the Rationále’s property, the only thing they can do is issue a statement and report that a complaint has been made.
Fine. OK. Point taken.
We tried the best we could from then on to keep Frankie in the house as much as possible, but the idea of chasing a cat who clearly does not want to be caught through yards and over fences while trying to get two toddlers who clearly do not want to be caught into car seats is beyond absurd. Try doing it once. The absurdity will become abundantly clear. In these situations, the twins’ needs always win, and Frankie is allowed his freedom for a few more hours.
One unseasonably warm day over winter break, it was twilight, the doorbell rang, and rang again. I opened the door at the third ring to Screechy Hag in full glory, all flailing and loud and shrill, going on about what I can only guess was the cat. I caught “can’t get a moment’s peace”, “leash law”, “Franklin is up barking at all hours of the night!”, and that’s about it, the whole time, DoSH peeping over Mom’s shoulder with a look of dumb, defiant pride plastered across her mug.
I replied that, first, Frankie does not go out at night anymore. Ever. So, the problem must be with her wiener. Second, is he on her property right now at this moment? No. He was in the little assembly of trees down the street, and when Screechy Hag took Franklin down there for their nightly talk and poop, the dog freaked out trying to tear Frankie apart and still appears to be in a very delicate state. I informed her that I was home by myself with the kids at that moment, and asked her if she agreed that packing all four kids up to tromp through the brush at the end of the street in search of a wayward cat is a wildly stupid idea. She disagreed vehemently. I closed the door and continued the bedtime routine.
This year, Spring Break fell during the last week of March. I had to work at the school, and I usually bring Aidan with me, but I thought I’d let him have the first day off at home to hang out with Linsay, Jacob, and the twins. He and Jacob were outside playing, and Linsay was inside the front room with the twins, watching them out the window. DoSH came out to shoot baskets and hurl a few insults at Jacob, things got a little out of hand, and Aidan ended up mooning her just as Linsay was racing out the door to pull Aidan and his pants back into the house. She went inside the house, called her mother at work, who then called the police to come to our house to investigate a report of indecent exposure and unsupervised children. More on this story when I get some more time...
I received a call at work from Linsay, who was understandably very upset.
So, nothing really since then, except for minor things. Soccer balls disappear from our yard every so often. Jacob has informed us that DoSH has used the “F” word in his general direction a few times. Both Mom and Daughter have screamed and hollered and indirectly threatened our cat’s health and safety to our children, but when Karen, Linsay, or I are out there, they are silent, smirking stupidly to themselves or to each other. Our mantra is Ignore ‘Em. In our children’s absence, I add, Fuck ‘Em to the mantra. I think it’s the extra two syllables, the hard consonant sound of tongue striking the roof of the mouth, that helps me feel better. I usually repeat that mantra while having a Black & Tan or two, and the repetition of Ignore ‘em, Fuck ‘em eventually softens, blending into a soothing Ignorrem... Fuggem.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
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