11 Days until Christmas. Are you ready? I do not think I am.
I always get a little antsy around Christmas, most of it coming from the whole present-buying factor. I get nervous that I might not have gotten a family member something good enough, so I have to go out and buy more. Then I run myself broke, like I am at the moment. I am actually pretty bad with money. I would like to say I am one of those financially responsible people who has everything in order and carefully stows away part of my paycheck for rainy days. Yeah, right. If I have a twenty-dollar bill in my pocket all it takes is some shiny object to catch my eye at big lots and that twenty sprouts wings and flaps away.
On the note bill paying, I once again forgot to pay my water bill. Well, that is not entirely true, I knew I had to pay it but I was waiting for Friday to pay it because that is, uh, payday. However, the city was not playing any games with me and I received an e-mail from Alan the hole dweller letting me know my water had been shut off. Oops. Alan decided to just go down and pay it instead of waiting for me to pay it the next morning, when I could get to the offices. When I got home I cut Alan a check to pay him back. For whatever reason the city has deemed to had a special 'after dark' connection fee. I suppose they have to fly in a specialist from Tampa and instead of a 2 dollar flashlight he instead has to use a pair of two thousand dollar night vision goggles and a gold and jewel encrusted pipe wrench to turn my water back on. He then flies back to Tampa where he sleeps on a bed of caviar with a Siamese-twins hooker.
(Why Siamese-twins hooker? I don't know. Seems to me a Siamese hooker would be rare and thus expensive)
So around eight or so my water blipped back on. I thought to myself, yay! Now I can wash dishes! And them promptly went and plopped in front of the television.
I had a rather disturbing dream last night, probably stemming from my holiday anxiety. I dreamed there was something wrong with my gray cat DustBuster, and my dad had to cut his head off. I am not sure why, the cat seemed fine. My father was cutting the cats head off and was doing an awful job of it because he was using a butter knife. The cat was yowling in misery. Finally he found a sharper knife and cut the cat's head off. I then had to carry the head around with a pair of salad tongs.
No idea where this dream came from, probably from the painting S made for me. I know where the tongs in the dream came from; from the time I had to pull out a bunch of dead baby possums form a hole in my wall with a pair of tongs. Either way I found it mildly disturbing. I woke up and went out and sat in my front sunroom, smoking a cigarette and looking out into the night until my uneasiness went away.
So this morning I woke up bleary eyed and wanting to stay snug under my covers. I wandered out to my shower and was greeted with a turd. A turd in my outdoor shower pan. I guess it had to be a cat turd, but to be honest it looked a little too, uh, 'meaty' to be a cat turd. If someone had brought me that turd on a platter and asked me to pick what animal it came form, I would have said a small to medium sized dog. However, there are no dogs in my yard so I guess it was a cat turd. I picked it out with a wad of toilet paper and tossed it into the toilet and flushed it down. Tonight I will have to scrub the pan out with some bleach so some critter does not get a whiff and think that it is an official turd laying spot. I needed to give it another good bleach scrubbing anyways because some moss was starting to grow on the stones. Perhaps DustBuster knew what I was dreaming about and decided to shit his displeasure over being dream-murdered. More likely it was my odd-eyed cat, which I sometimes think, is mildly retarded, wandered in there and shit for no good reason.
The holidays need to be over with.
2026 Update
Tonight's entertainment: 2006 Ed, flat broke, waterless, and finding a meaty turd in his shower.
Ah, 2006: a time when the water company could actually switch you off because you forgot to pay, and you had to cut Alan a paper check, then pay some 'after-dark specialist' who apparently commutes from Tampa with jewel-encrusted plumbing instruments. Now we have autopay, smart meters, and apps that text you encouraging words when your bill is due, yet they still find a way to charge you a 'convenience fee' that probably funds the same golden pipe wrench. The outdoor shower is a specimen, too—these days it would be rebranded as an 'al fresco rinsing pavilion' at an absurd monthly rent. And the cat dreaming of decapitation with a butter knife? In 2026 we'd have a 4K litter cam and a DNA kit to identify the turd, and we'd still have no idea why cats are like that. You smoked in your sunroom to calm down; now you'd be vaping into a ring light for a livestream. At least some things never change: Ed is still bad with money, and cats are still mysterious bastards.
“2006 Ed, after that dream, did you actually check on DustBuster before blaming the odd-eyed cat for revenge-pooping? And why flush the turd when you had perfectly good salad tongs at hand?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, you got me there. First thing I did after that dream was stumble out to the sunroom for a smoke, and by the time I found that turd I was still half-asleep and not exactly doing a cat census. But yeah, I gave DustBuster a look when I came back in—he was fine, snoozing on the dryer like he hadn't a care in the world. The odd-eyed cat was lurking nearby looking guilty, which is pretty much his default expression, so I figured he was the culprit. And the tongs? Hell, I use those things for possum removal and cat-head dreams, not for fresh turd retrieval. That seemed like a job for toilet paper and a flush, thank you very much. Besides, the tongs have enough history. I don't need them in the bathroom too.
