Blog - Tortured Soul

Dinah told me about her crazy dream!

She said we left her for two weeks with Tib and Jen so we could go to Cape Cod, and she had a fever and hair-balls. She said it was actually more like a nightmare — poor thing!

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her nightmare was real… that we did leave her for two weeks with Tib and Jen.

But she isn’t alone. When she reads the blog, she’ll find out about our scary flight home. The airline warned us, but people just do whatever they want.The other passengers made calls on their flip-phones, watched who-knows-what on portable televisions, drove their remote-controlled cars up and down the aisle, talked to each other on walkie-talkies, and blasted music on transistor radios! Meanwhile we, The Law-Abiding, were stuck in the teeny-tiny bathroom, forced to take hysterical selfies.BUT, we managed to land safely, no thanks to all of that recklessness. I will NOT be giving them my latest Thank You Card.

This isn’t the first time I blamed The Cats for a crime they didn’t commit.

Nor will it be the last. The odor of rotten animal is unforgettable and like the odor of rotting potato, it is embedded in the brain. But sometimes the brain jumbles the smell of decomposing rodent with the smell of a blanket of maggots coating the bottom of the garbage can.

And that is where my story begins…

The Summer Breeze gently wafted through the upstairs windows. It was pleasant, until an occasional repulsive odor stung my nostrils. I blamed The Cats for hunting, killing, and hiding their prey somewhere on my second floor.

But a search for a body was in vain and a garbage can investigation led me to the real suspect: that damn blanket of maggots coating the bottom of the garbage can!

Mea culpa, Tib!  When will I ever trust you again??

Speaking of breezes (and puns??)… Here’s a new thank you/congratulations card.

Jen’s in Austria because she loves gazebos.The Intern (Madge) is in Italy because she loves dreamy landscapes.And I am here because I love the smell of flooded basements. Is that asbestos tile??

Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. See how we just throw caution to the wind over here?? I almost forgot what the floor looked like under 1,000 lbs of soaked carpet! And that was my lesson about not taking things for granted.

Between all that lesson-learnin’, I made a new card.Don’t hurry home guys!

Tib knows it’s summer because the screens are on.

And *I* know it’s summer for other, more important, reasons.But I’m trying to be a better person/less into body-sculpting, so I decided to read a book. It was written by The Intern’s daughter, Nora McInerny Purmot.Chapter 25 was especially fun to read because Madge is so near and dear to my heart and I could relate to the notion of elder-abuse.Except my mom has made it very clear that she wants to be euthanized via pillow-suffocation, pre-elder-abuse.

Oh, mom!

RSVP wanted MORE greeting card submissions. And having a wet towel for a brain makes it so much easier to wring.

Remember last year when my lung collapsed and my mom had to sleep on a cot in my dingy bedroom so she could walk me to the bathroom in the middle of the night?And EMTs had to come to that same dingy bedroom, on that very same night, because we thought my chest-tube had fallen out?

No?

I know you’re wondering if the EMTs were cute and why my bedroom was so dingy. Um, my mom volunteered to be their Resusci Annie doll and I’ve been a little too busy building the Zeichen Press Empire to focus on home-making frivolity.

But, between choosing paper/envelopes for the Spring Release and conquering territories, I did refresh my bedroom. And now I see no reason to ever leave it.Choosing paint color is just like choosing ink color. But with less Jen and more anxiety.

Speaking of self-medicating (was I?) here’s a Spring Release teaser (see/buy ALL 12 from the shop!):

After coughing the web of mucus from my throat, it was time to choose paper and envelope colors for the Spring Release.Dinah told me later that she was plotting my murder while I took this photo.

Oh, Dinah! What will make you snap?!

Wait, tell us more about the web of mucus!

No! No more. Onto more important things.

Like frogs im Deutschland.Who needs pants when you have legs like that? Amiright??

Miss Sherman was our 5th grade music teacher and aside from corporeal punishment and unruly hair, she was perfect. Every week, students were encouraged to bring in their favorite record album. And because lessons are best learned through repeated humiliation (read about First Picture Day at my new school), I brought in my favorite album.

…I wonder what the other kids brought! This is SO much fun!

…Wait…

Michael Jackson, Off The Wall…

The Cars, Panorama??…

Oh, Kermit! Nobody understands us/Miss Sherman forgot to call on me/oh look, this record barely sticks out between my stack of books/these darn Fall allergies make my eyes water!

I wouldn’t tell my mom about this while I stood by the piano as she played folk songs and I sang my little heart out. I WOULDN’T.

What I’m trying to say is that Jen and I picked cards for our Spring Release.

Here’s a teaser:

One of our many cats had chronic diarrhea. We kept her around because she produced litter after litter of adorable white kittens.

And because coming home was always a surprise — where would we find her poop today?? In the mitten-bin… in the laundry basket… under my daughter’s pillow??

Life is so full of surprises!

Like, when the vet called to say she died after he removed her ovaries. SURPRISE! Oh, but now she doesn’t send us on poop-hunts, because she’s buried in a shallow grave in the backyard.

First life zigs, and then it zags!

Chickenpox?Broken femur?SERIOUSLY???