“One of these nine lives it’s gonna be me putting you in a plastic satchel and taking you to the vet.”
Miss Mia Sopaipilla is resting comfortably in her custom BedCave® after having a cyst removed from just above her right eye.
One day the thing was just sort of … there, like bad news from DeeCee. So I took her to the vet to get it checked out. Vet drains it and says: “Full disclosure: These things can come back, sometimes almost immediately, and occasionally even bigger.”
The only real fix is to take it off, she added.
Well, it did come back, almost immediately. And it looked bigger, but pretty much everything does when it’s front and (off) center on your furry friend’s face.
Thus, we scheduled the surgery, which took place yesterday. And now we can’t call her “Knothead” anymore.
We all have our little routines. Spontaneity, first thing in the morning? No, thank you, please. Predictability is what’s wanted before coffee.
So I arise at stupid-thirty, since that’s how we roll around here. Dress in the dark, because one day this will not be optional. Visit the bathroom. Greet Herself and Miss Mia Sopaipilla. Tidy up Miss Mia’s bathroom and give her a vigorous massage on The Chair of Love.
“Take me out to the ball game.”
And finally, make coffee.
Thus fortified, I usually scan the headlines to inspect humanity’s latest self-inflicted wounds. But lately that feels like rubbernecking at an inner-city ER. Let’s start with something light, shall we?
Jaysis. Even the weather report is all like, “We have good news and bad news.” The good news is that yesterday Herself and I took an afternoon stroll in shorts and T-shirts. The bad news is that high-temperature records are dropping like staffing levels at USAID and if the current precip trend continues we’re likely to be drinking our own wee-wee by March instead of August.
At this point a second cup of coffee is indicated. Black, hold the wee-wee.
Check the email? No joy there. Evil tidings, in fact. Avert the eyes.
Toast, then. With butter and jam. Also, and too, oatmeal, with banana, pecans, cinnamon, brown sugar, maple syrup. Black tea to give the coffee some backup. Play ball with Miss Mia.
Time for The Times? Y’think? And a-one, and a-two, annnnnd. …
We have this little cold snap parked overhead, which certainly beats being on fire. Nevertheless, it leads to dreams of visiting deserts where the temperatures are a little more in line with what leaps to mind when one hears the word “desert.”
“Why, yes, I could eat. …”
Alas, it is Herself’s January to be elsewhere, and someone has to mind the store. Miss Mia Sopaipilla needs assistance with this and that, refusing to learn how to open the cat-food bin, refill her water fountain, or use a toilet.
At the moment Miss Mia and I are enjoying a light snowfall. Well, I am, anyway. Miss Mia just roused herself from a nap to have a bite to eat and a sip of water, after which she will be headed straight back to the sack.
And to think some people call them “dumb animals.” They may not possess the power of human speech, but they certainly manage to get their point across.
Clouds we got, sometimes. Rain, snow? Not so much.
The mornings are chilly in these early days of the Year of Our Lard 2025, but once the sun finally creeps over the Sandias, shortly before 9, things warm up considerably. The weather wizards predict a high of 60° today.
Yes, I said 60°. Six-oh degrees Fahrenheit. In January.
Miss Mia would like to invite the birds to dinner.
Good for the healthful outdoor exercise, for those of us who take it. Unless we’re talking skiing. Also, not so much for the plants and wildlife and drinking water come summer. See John Fleck for more.
In the meantime, we need not bundle up like the Michelin Man for running and riding so far this winter. It’s been so unseasonably warm that my brother geezers, who ordinarily are traveling to ski or working out in the gym, have called a ride for today.
In the early afternoon, of course. No need to wear the hair shirt. We are not children, with their barely tested HVAC systems fresh from the factory.
Meanwhile, Miss Mia Sopaipilla gets to bird-watch at the patio door, where I scatter a little seed for the house finches and dark-eyed juncos who don’t feel like battling the bigger birds at our feeders.
There’s a little bit of Sylvester and Tweety Bird going on there in her little mind. Bad ol’ puddy tat. …
In other news, the cuckoos in the House of Reprehensibles nearly give their Squeaker the bird. Says NYT’s Carl Hulse: “House Republicans certainly relish their internal drama.” Dinner theater for the insane.
December is National Fruitcake Month, which should surprise exactly no one paying attention to the shenanigans in the nation’s capital.
But let’s not go there, hey? Whaddaya say? Tom Nichols at The Atlantic has posited that our latest Long National Nightmare will not be at an end for the better part of quite some time. It is a marathon, not a sprint, says Tom.
So let’s just jog gently along for a bit, as though we were trying to sweat out the whiskey from a long night of debauchery and hoping to forget (or perhaps remember) all the stupid shit we did while in our cups.
December always feels like an ending to me. Or perhaps the beginning of the end. Rarely am I in a celebratory state of mind.
For instance, this December I will enjoy not one, but two visits to the dentist. The first, yesterday, was for a routine cleaning; the other will be for replacement of a couple fillings that date back to my tenure as a union copy editor at The Pueblo Chieftain, 40 years ago.
“I don’t have the truck I was driving then, so I guess it’s time to get rid of these old fillings,” I quipped as the dentist Indiana Jones’d his way around the archaeology of my piehole.
“Mmm hmm,” he replied, no doubt thinking of his RV payment. “Keep up that home care.”
I was already the Mad Dog in 1984, but it would be seven years, a couple extended stretches of unemployment, and two more newspapers before I finally hopped the rickety fence of unsteady employment and went kyoodling after the bicycles, full speed ahead, damn the health insurance, sick leave, and dentistry.
Fortunate I am to have escaped the dental fate that befell Shane MacGowan. ’Tis a wonder that I have teefers to fill at all so.
Mad Blog Media 