there is hope. and my mad letter writing skillz just might be it.

they published my letter!!!!!

i know, huh?!?

okay, i'll start from the start...this morning i went down to the mailbox and got the local paper and tore it open and NOTHING!

fuckers!...how could they NOT publish my letter?!?...good lord i really am surrounded by idiots!

so later i hit the road to do errands...

i go to the library and when i walked in one of the librarians said

"hey!...GREAT letter to the editor!"

"what?...how did you know?...they didn't even publish it!"

"sure they did...here, i'll get the paper"

so he gets the paper and it's the local paper for the other part of the county...kinda the same, but different in content...and sure enough, there it was!!!

then all the other librarians gather around me and it's like i'm britney spears in a wig shop!!...they're all. over. me.!!

i tell ya...

okay, so librarians know me by name...what about it?...sure, it's not cheers, but you know, sometimes take what you can get...

and, the best part is the letter was in the "sound off" section...the special section where they highlight just one letter to the editor...obviously, the best letter to the editor...

indeed.

in other more sobering AND exciting news there has been a LOT of doing with chico and the man...

okay, so about 5 days before chico gave birth she had been in a cat fight...some tom from a few acres away...

or so we thought...she seemed fine after a day and we attributed the tiredness and soreness to early labor...she gave birth last thursday and that was that...except she seemed to have some sort of infected lump on sunday...she had cleaned it by monday, but the lord of the ring took her in just to be sure...

poor mama...she was attacked by raccoons!!!...who knew!!!...the bites and placement, etc. suggested she was bitten by at least two if not three!!...her wounds were incredibly deep and were beginning to abscess after all this time...

so she was in surgery forever! where they found another bite under her tail!...meanwhile we spent a futile afternoon trying to bottle feed the babies...no luck...

boy but that just figures in this family...the duke *barely* took a bottle of breast milk as a baby...and wingman never even let it far enough in to see what it was all about...buncha nipple snobs in this family...and that was just the beginning...try giving the two of them anything but real maple syrup for their pancakes and good luck!!...course who could blame them...hmm, do i want colored corn syrup or nature's sweet goodness fresh from the tap...wait...what are we talking about again???

apparently, i digress...

so, she finally came home before evening, with a shaved back and tail, five plastic drain tubes, and a BUNCH of stitches...totally sad and yet totally punk rock...poor mama kitty...

chico has been in pain and out of sorts today and we've just been trying to get her calm and resting...she seems to be *okay* for now, but we're keeping our eye on her...

that was monday...tuesday morning about 5am wingman climbed into our bed and nonchalantly said

"papa?"

"urnnhh?"

small sigh.

"i went to pet the man because she was meowing under the duke's bed and she was eating something with for' legs and a tail...pwobably a wat (rat) from the duke's closet"

GOOD MORNING! now i'm up!...the lord of the ring and i look at each other...

"are you sure it's not a baby kitty she's cleaning?"

we head in there, the duke still asleep on top of his bed, and sure enough the man is giving birth underneath his bed!!

she ended up with three kitties total and they all look exactly like her!!!...so far so good with them...

did i mention that this was *supposed* to be the day for the makeup trip to the city to celebrate the duke's birthday that was first foiled by the birth of chico's kitties?...canceled. again...he's been fairly gracious about the whole thing, though by default we have been calling him catboy...you know, just 'cuz...

so there you have it...i could go into further detail about the suffering i've been doing at physical therapy but that would just get boring and you know, terribly self involved compared to what my poor mama kitty is suffering through...

i will say, though, that the evil minion has me doing a sort of core strengthening exercise that involves pelvic thrusts on the ball WITH WEIGHTS ON MY HIPS!

i'm not sure how this relates to rehabilitating my neck injury other than it sure takes my mind off of it.

x.