See, for those of you who don't have cats, the critters do this thing I like to call "getting their groove on": Basically, they pick a place they're fond of and start kneading it with both sets of paws. Having trouble with the visual? It looks kind of like marching in one place, with purring and an intense, trance-like stare on their face. Anyway, my little guy, Elliott, has just started grooving on the down comforter in the bedroom in the mornings, while my older one, Ruben, who used to target one of my cashmere sweaters, tends to do it wherever he pleases.

Well, Kaffy's sexy little man, Mickey, likes to do it on his mama, preferably on her side and boob if at all possible. Mama, however, is not fond of Mickey grooving on her side and boob, because in the process he also hits her rib, and that's not very nice.

So, Kaffy, having just endured an intense several weeks between work and school, decided Saturday was going to be her day to wear jammies, stew in her own juices and do NOTHING all day except watch movies. She was lying on her couch doing just that when the Schmick decided he needed the groove -- except she started getting squicked as she was relaying the story.


At least he found a way to finish the job himself, I reckon.
Oh, whatEVER.

Now, my dream: It starts off with me covering an afternoon event at a gi-normous church (not sure the denomination), and there's a small, rectangular hole not unlike a grave filled with water out to the left in front of the church's yard. Not sure what that's about, but there are benches around it, and people are sitting around enjoying the day. So I'm talking to someone, and I notice a guy in a suit and tie is sitting at the edge of the hole and pushing himself in. Once he's submerged, I realize he's trying to drown himself and start running back toward the church, screaming for people to call 911. About 10 minutes later (at least, in dream time), EMS shows up, and he's dead.

So fast forward to that evening -- I've now covered a Gary Airport meeting, and I'm all fucked up because I just watched a guy kill himself that afternoon, but I follow the people at the meeting to a bar. We get there, and I'm talking to the people, hysterical at trying to explain what's been going on, and I find out that the person was a former friend of mine whom I haven't spoken to in several years because of some retarded falling-out. Well, now I'm all kinds of insane, because I didn't recognize that it was my friend. So, his wife is at the bar, and she and I start talking, and we're trying to figure out what made him want to kill himself; she never saw it coming, and I wouldn't have known anything, either, because we hadn't spoken in awhile. As we're leaving, we get caught in a traffic jam trying to get out of the parking lot, but we end up back at his parents' house when they lived in the area, which just so conveniently had the funeral home attatched to it as well as the house he, his wife and son were living in. She shows me stuff he may have left as clues to his imminent demise (like leaving his savings book on a desk) plus these bags of candy that he would cut the bags into strips, but the candy wouldn't fall out for some reason (!). He didn't cut the bag of long, grape Jolly Ranchers, because I supposedly gave them to him and therefore they were not worthy of his cutting them (!). Well, as we go to the end of the candy-bag line, I see that the house is at the foot of an airport landing (!!), and all of a sudden I'm back at the office trying to look for the story I wrote about my friend's death and comparing it to the competition's account. They, of course, had his name spelled wrong, which thrilled me to no end. At that point or shortly after, the alarm went off.

More on Kaffy's cat boner later. Did I mention that when I woke up from having fallen asleep on the couch, the episode of "A Different World" where Tisha Campbell give a speech about her having AIDS was on?
Oh, whatEVER.

We live in a four-plex, with Greta and me in the top two apartments and the landlords, their daughter and the Hooker in the downstairs two. When Greta moved in almost four years ago, one of the conditions she stipulated for moving in was that the landlords fix the subfloor in her kitchen, which is rotten and sad and apparently a pain-in-the-ass to clean. (My subfloor is subpar, too, but I have sexy oatmeal CARPET in my kitchen to hide that. Aw, yeah. But I'm not complaining, because I love my crib.) So, almost four years go by, and no fixing of her subfloor.

Now, from what I can tell, Greta and the landlords have not gotten along well since day 1, probably because Greta can be a bit ... demanding. Not that she isn't justified in the stuff that she wants, because most of the time, she's right. And a lot of the time, our landlords, while wonderful to me, can be cheap, irrational bastards, but what landlord isn't, right? Bottom line is, Greta doesn't always pick her battles wisely, and today, the landlords fought back. See, when Greta wrote the landlords telling them she would be moving out AT LEAST TWO MONTHS BEFORE HER LEASE WAS UP UPON BUYING HER HOUSE, she also told them that because they never took care of her subfloor -- a repair I would pray Man-Landlord could not possibly deign a feasible endeavor since he's not a contractor -- she wouldn't be paying the last few months' rent. And as her proof to back up that she wasn't entitled to pay it, she enclosed an article written in my paper about how to handle crappy landlords (not written by me, thank God).

Well, yeah, that went over like a shitbrick in a punch bowl.

Even more silly? Last night, when Greta was taking some more stuff out to her truck on a dolly (sp?), the woman-landlord came out and was checking behind her to see if she made any scuff marks to our glorious foyer with the green shag carpet and the OLIVE FLOCK WALLPAPER ACCENTS. Words ensued between the two of them -- especially about one scuff that was made by none other than yours truly the other night, oops -- and Greta got her panties in a wad because they're trying to screw her out of her deposit. I mean, she was absolutely apeshit over this. I said, "Well, you can't honestly be surprised by this, can you? I mean, you're screwing them out of money, so did you REALLY think they weren't going to try to screw you back? In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they're completely hunting for bear off this one."

So, you can imagine my total unsurprise when she walked in this afternoon and placed in front of my face a letter from the landlords' attorney telling her that oh yes, she WILL be paying that rent.

My whole thing is, I don't understand why the big rush to get into a place that you're likely going to be living in the rest of your life when, after closing, you have two, three months to get everything just the way you want it -- ESPECIALLY if you don't have to pay your first mortgage payment until July, as I believe it is for Greta. Sure, I know she's excited to have her own crib, and I'm ecstatic for her, but jeez, man! she's giving herself, like, two weeks to have the rooms she wants painted and everything in and ready to go, and I'm just like, whoa, why are you putting this kind of pressure on yourself!?!?

I told her that when the landlords ask her if she got the attorney's letter, she should say, "No, I haven't gotten anything. Why?" just so she could see them squirm while telling her she has to pay. No, it doesn't change anything, but it might be funny.
Oh, whatEVER.

So it all started with the first accident, which I caught on the morning news as I was waking up after sleeping on the couch. (Sometimes I do that to save myself from the aggravation of jarring myself out a deep sleep by moving on over to the bed. It's a habit I picked up from the one guy.) A big scary accident with jackknifed semis and all sorts of pandemonium -- would hate to be the poor staffer that's going to follow that one all day, I thought to myself. Oh, and the poor deputy editor who was filling in for the regular editor who does her Saturday turn tomorrow? She's not going home tonight.

So Deputy calls me and says, "Hey, I'll need you to go down to the site and see what's going on. You'll do the main story, and a staffer will follow up with the hospitals and stuff." I picked up Mother, because a) she had a hair appointment today at 3:30 that I wanted to make sure I got her to in time, and b) I take her on stuff when I think it'll keep her interest, and we started heading out.

From where I live, the first site is about 20 miles, and by the time we got there, it was pretty well cleaned up, save for a couple County Mounties and State Troopers. But I couldn't turn around, so we continued south when I noticed that oddly, there weren't any cars heading north. A few more miles later, we discovered why: The State Troopers were diverting traffic on to Rte. 2, because there was a second accident, this time involving another semi and a late model Camaro. (Can't say I was too sad about the Camaro, as long as the driver was all right). I called Deputy to let her know, and she was like, all right, while you're down there, stop by the ISP (Indiana State Police) and see if you can get the press release from the first accident this morning. I said, "Sure, but I'm going to have to go further south to turn around."

Now, going further south you start hitting those places where everyone has the same last name and it's not a coincidence (wink wink nudge nudge), but traffic was moving ... until right before the next exit. That's when I saw more flashing lights.

And then? The flipped-over teal SUV.

So back on the cell phone to Deputy, who's losing her mind at this point: "Welp, did you know there's a third accident!?!?"
"You're kidding me," she says wearily.
"No, no I'm not. It's down here by DeMotte/Roselawn (of Naked City fame). Looks pretty heinous -- I'll be surprised if anyone makes it out of this one."
"Well, go ahead and find out what's going on there, too, I guess."
"I will, but I have to get back to Lowell without getting on I-65, because then I'll never get back."
"Do you know the backroads down there well?"
"Well, go north, I reckon. I'm bound to hit it sooner or later."

So, after a harrowing trip over the Kankakee River on a one-lane wooden bridge, we got back to Lowell, stopped at the ISP and found out ... nothing, because they were still cleaning up the fatality I just saw.

Anyway, long story short, got the press release, and I'll be front page, all editions tomorrow. Go me.
Oh, whatEVER.

So I covered this event tonight where a bunch of people had bestowed upon them lifetime achievement awards for working toward a better NWI, and I ran into a former professor of mine. A lovely woman -- certainly one of the sharpest dressed I've ever encountered in academia -- and a tough, but fair, professor. And tough, but I mentioned that already. When I first noticed her, I tried to get her attention, but she didn't see me. So then later, I was holding court with one of our photographers and this dude I know, laughing about how I just called Dude by the wrong name, she walks up and was all happy to see me, as I was her. I introduced her by telling my cohorts that I was one of her worst students, which truth be told, I absolutely was. I mean, my college career? Pretty much a waste of the money my parents didn't have, except for the newspaper experience, which took place out of the classroom. Attention deficit sucks sometimes, but I digress. Anyway, she says, "Oh no, you were one of my best students. I mean, look at what you've made of yourself!"

My first thought to that was, "Sure, if you call a free-lancer who doesn't have her own health insurance and has to scrape up rent each month most of the time and who's packed on an extra 50 pounds in the past 2-1/2 years making something of yourself. I don't know that I necessarily would, but ..."

But then as I was thinking about it as I came home, I kinda thought yeah, I what I do does look kinda cool. And I reveled in that. But not after turning in a disjointed piece-of-shit story.
Oh, whatEVER.

After Dad died, Mother went and sold the house, and moved into an apartment. Since she still owed money on the mortgage, she didn't get the whole selling price, but it was a goodly sum, and one that would do even better if we we took it out of a .02 percent regular savings account and put it in an investment with some teeth. Well, now that we're finally about to do that, we're having issues. See, I'd always heard that if a senior has to go into a nursing home or other residential care facility, any assets the person has in their name belongs to that facility once the insurance runs out. So, my suggestion was to put the money in my name, so that no one could touch it, with the specific understanding that I would not touch it unless she needed it or she died. I mean, of course the money would be nice, but it's not mine, and I wouldn't be helping myself to it or anything. She could have all the documentation with it; I wouldn't even want the damn investments in my house, that's how much I could care less about it.

Well, after I try to explain this to her, she goes to one of the relatives I can't mention and tells them this. Since there are more children involved, this relative has assets put in a trust, and based on their experience, they told Mother that there's no reason for her to not have my name on the assests except as a beneficiary. Now, Mother worships the ground on which this relative walks, so I'm of course in the wrong.

Who's right? Has anyone had experience with this sort of thing?
Oh, whatEVER.