Drama Storms

It was a dark and stormy night. I felt like Snoopy sitting precariously perched on top of the doghouse. Actually, more to the point, I was in the doghouse. My girlfriend had sent me to the couch because I was more attached to the laptop than her. At least it wasn't a noisy typewriter, or she would even less sleep than it already was. Maybe the occasional love making hasn't been enough; not my fault she is dating an artist. Ideas that need to be written down come to me at the oddest.... I heard a crash.1

Shattered glass tinkled heavily in the eerie glow as I peered into the darkness outside my bubble of laptop LCD illumination. I clambered in the dark in search of a sizeable smiting object for the invader of my castle. Armed with the cheap lightweight TV remote, I stealthily slid into the kitchen and stepped in something sticky and wet. Blood it was not, blood it might become; my girlfriend's cat sat licking her paw and looking mighty pleased with herself.2

I threw the remote at the cat for sacrilegiously spilling my abandoned beer pint and breaking my favorite stein tankard. Like my girlfriend, that cat was not in my good books. Suddenly, I realized why the remote was cheap, the relationship was cheap, the laptop was cheap, even that runt of the litter that pushed my two liter large pewter mug off the ledge of the countertop was cheap.... artists don't get paid.3

The fact that I actually owned a laptop was buying it at a shady corner. Don't get me wrong, the advent of the moveable printing press may have been all well and good -- but Gutenberg would so a double take to get his hands on a moveable laptop. I had to have one so I could get out of the house to the cafe.4

As I contemplated how long it would take Gutenberg to type up the Bible, I duct aped a piece of cardboard over the broken window pane where I had regretfully missed my feline tormenter. The sadistic slaying flayer of my soul, legs, arms, anything it could claw up mewed innocently. I would declaw it out of kindness, but Mommy's precious couldn't lose her edge. Mommy's precious sharpened her edges on my back on occasion.5

I love cats usually, but if I could find an off-switch for the yowling menace to stop at three in the morning, the on-switch would become broken. I suppose I shouldn't take it out on the cat. I actually like the fur-ball once in a while. It's just been a while since a manuscript has come back stamped with something besides rejected. Even a cursory red-marked massacre of editing to tell me I was on the right track would be a courtesy.6

Only the cat listens to my complaining and rough drafts now. My girlfriend is busy as a branding iron in cattle country after calving in the springtime. She probably only stayed around because I can cook like a four star short-order chef and clean house when she's out working. It's not a bad trade off for a gorgeous muse. To her bonus, I'll write steamy poetry and recite it randomly -- to the girl, not the cat -- over a back massage when she's completely stressed over her new research projects. If only clients knew what they were paying for in the relaxation part of her funding.7

The journalism program might have been a wash, but at least I had some grammar skills out of the deal. I never could put two thoughts together to even dream of winning a Pulitzer, but my photography covered up for that. If only all my stories didn't start out with "A dark stormy night...." It's only that I've had so many of them; too many dramas of woman and feline emotions.8

The cat came up and licked my bleeding hand as apology. Maybe I should make some Kalilua hot cocoa, and try to do the same.9

10:52 AM 9/25/200610