Irritating Morning

I seem to have lost the ability to sleep in, even on the weekends. This is unfortunate, because I could really use the sleep as only rarely in my life have I had the ability to fall asleep at an appropriate time.

So from the time I woke up at 6:30 this morning, I was already irritated because I could have used more sleep than I got. But the critters need to be fed, so I figured I’d do that and see how things went from there.

We moved the kennels last night to what used to be my office. The Wife wanted to rearrange things yesterday so her computer was out in the living room and her back room was just for her crafts. She also wanted the kennels to be out of sight for guests who drop in from time to time. (Like we have a lot of guests who drop in.) So we did that, and put the kennels up in the bedroom that we had set aside for my use. I now have no office.

So I set up all the food for the critters and went into their room to let them out of their kennels. There, on Jordan’s bed, was a large pile of “kitty pebbles.” For whatever reason, the cat had decided to shit all over her pillow. Dogs will not defecate where they sleep. Cats — or at least this particular cat — apparently lacks any such inhibition.

The dogs were very confused and didn’t know why they were being let out of their cages, and got so excited at being free and having a people around that they forgot how to get to their feeding station. I had to guide them there.

So after getting the dogs fed and put outside, I decided to teach my online class rather than confront the pile of cat shit in Jordan’s kennel. As I observed last week, my crop of students this cycle is particularly dim and that was frustrating, too.

Eventually, The Wife pointed out that someone would have to clean up the cat shit, so I did that, and put the cat pillow back in the washing machine (we had washed it the previous day to eliminate the smell of cat urine) and the rinse cycle didn’t work.

Then, over breakfast, we played trivia and scrabble. I forgot that the Dodger pitcher whose bobblehead included a bouncing arm was Tommy John (for whom the surgery is named) and then in scrabble, The Wife cleaned my clock. She got two 50-point bonuses in a row, which was quite discouraging. Normally I try and be a good sport but after the first one (which was on a triple word score) it was apparent that I had no realistic hope of winning, and the game was only half done.

My reward for getting my ass waxed in scrabble was an hour of poop patrol out in the back yard. The Wife was nice and kept me company, serving as my spotter. It went faster with her assistance, but picking up dog shit is never a pleasant proposition under the best of circumstances, and while having my wife with me usually makes most circumstances better, this chore is only ever going to become so pleasant.

After that, I discovered that my cell phone had run out of battery and that I had left a smear of dog mess on my shoes.

Then, I sat down to try and read the news and blogs. Someone, somewhere, had posed an interesting question about distributive justice and political theory, and I wanted to respond to it. But The Wife wanted to discuss what to do about our friends’ wedding. To answer her questions required using Google Maps, and that led me to discover that the internet connection had failed. So that meant fixing the connection, which involved taking apart all of the modem and router assemblies which are in The Wife’s office and located in an “out-of-sight” area so she doesn’t have to look at a bunch of cords and peripherals.

In the middle of all this, Jordan sat down in another cat bed and pissed in it. Is this cat house-trained at all? Shortly after that, Jordan initiated a vicious fight with Ginger, producing hissing and spitting and emerging with a big hunk of Ginger’s fur in her mouth. Makes me wonder if she’s turning feral.

After fixing the internet problem, we and wound up quarreling over what to do about the trip to Denver. We were both looking at a variety of travel options at the same time and there were too many different options pending at any one time for either of us to keep things straight. Since we were considering going to Lake Tahoe that same week, we tried to put together a three-leg trip, which is far too complex for any of the travel planning sites we were using. It looks like we’ll have to forego our planned trip to Lake Tahoe altogether in order to go to the wedding. Eventually, we agreed for the sake of marital harmony to hire a travel agent tomorrow rather than try and plan things ourselves. The good news is that it looks like we’ll be able to fly directly out of Palmdale rather than going to Burbank or Los Angeles.

But, it’s now nearly 1:30 and I think maybe my best course of conduct is to just resign myself to today not being a particularly good one and look forward to a better tomorrow.