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Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Some mornings start better than others.
This one could have been improved on. I should have been sweetly dreaming of the review in this
Sunday’s Times
of Absent a Miracle. Am I really a “talented humorist”? I hope so. But I must quibble: I do indeed have literary pretensions. Boatloads.
Instead, I answered the telephone.
“Put my husband on the phone you pornographic piece of trash.”
This was of course the unfortunate x-wife of CSB. A few things need to be pointed out:
The Caller ID on our phone system is not working, and the above is a powerful example of why Caller ID is a good idea.
CSB has not been her husband for over a decade.
And now I will spend the day wondering why she has added “pornographic” to her nasty epithets for me? Could she have read the book? Even my most carefully crafted sex scenes could hardly be called pornographic (my father is now reading the book for the second time, having forgotten the first, and he is not bothered). But reality is not a big factor here. If she did read the book, I certainly hope she paid for it. Royalties are royalties.

Meanwhile CSB – who was already out in the garden at 6 AM when the call came – returns with some good news. He caught a raccoon in the Havaheart™ trap. A large raccoon. A raccoon that was in our garden eating our precious corn and broccoli - but not the cucumbers - vegetables we did not grow for the benefit of the scavenging raccoon population (or the woodchucks). That’s the good news.
Then the hard part: what to do with a pissed-off raccoon?
You don’t want to know.

But many thanks to our dear friend Ned who borrowed said Havaheart™ and returned it last night, having caught himself a couple of raccoons, presumably relatives, and effected a couple of very clever adjustments that facilitate trapping and dispatching.

There needs to be a patron saint of Caller ID.

3 comments:

Rebecca Rice said...

This post just cracked me up. It just goes to show that a sense of humor really is an essential survival trait for midlife and beyond! And you've got it, girl, in spades!

My advice is to wallpaper your bathroom with gazillions of copies of the NYTimes Book Review! And to invest in a new caller ID system.

Unknown said...

Alas, truth IS stranger than fiction, even yours! (Fiction that is.)

Kael said...

Well, it is obvious to me that the ex is defending the fruit, the cucumber, from being labeled as a sex ed aid, or provider. Perhaps she is just a dedicated gardener who is upset that, come harvest time, the ER's of the country are filled with people who have tried to find other uses for produce.