Another recurring theme

I feed Gracie twice a day, every twelve hours or so. She knows when it's breakfast time and she knows when it's dinner time, and she meows relentlessly. The meowing doesn't make the feeding process go any faster; if anything, I purposely stretch out whatever I'm doing so that she understands that I'll feed her when I'm ready.

She hasn't quite caught on to the system. In fact, the closer I am to actually feeding her, the more vocal she gets. Opening the can, scooping the dry food, putting the food in the bowl-- I mean, I'm feeding her! Why, why, why does she feel the need to keep reminding me to feed her?

Cats have small brains. I guess she can't really process the logic behind my last paragraph.

My mother, on the other hand, is very intelligent... but apparently some things are animal instincts, to which logic doesn't apply.

I had just knocked over some DVDs (my parents have a lot of clutter) when I hear her screaming my name from the other room.

"A!!!!"

"A!!!!"

"A!!!!"

"I'm coming!"

"A!!!!!"

"I said I was coming!"

"A!!!!"

"WHAT? WHAT???"

"You closed my window the wrong way!"

"I didn't close your window at all."

"It gave you the option to only close your tab, but you closed all of my tabs, too."

"None of your tabs were open. When I got to the computer, there were no windows open."

"Well, you closed it the wrong way because none of my tabs are up!"

"None of your tabs were up."

Realizing this conversation could go on endlessly and not caring to explain to my mother that I use the basic IE window rather than her preset ones, I leave the room.

***

I had knocked over some DVDs in search of the TV schedule. My dad had asked me what he was watching, so I went in search of the schedule that comes with the Sunday paper. I saw one on top of the TV and went for it, disturbing a delicate ecosystem and causing a small DVD landslide. I was cleaning it up when I started hearing the "A!!!!!"s.

Of course, as I reached for the TV schedule, my dad said, "all of those are old... we haven't gotten the paper in a couple of weeks."

"Then WHY don't you throw out the old TV schedules?"

For those of you who think I have too much clutter, too many papers, etc., please appreciate that this is the environment that I was raised in. You have no idea how far I've come.

***

I'd taken my suitcase upstairs (before all of the above occurred) and came back downstairs. My mother was watching something for which the accompanying sound was unintelligible and very loud and noisy. I asked her to turn it down. She didn't. I left the room. I came back a few minutes later, asked her again to please turn the sound down. She muted it. I told her she didn't have to turn the sound off, just down. I then turned my head toward the TV, which was showing an add for a micro hair trimmer. Just as I'd turned my attention to the TV to better assess what on earth was worth the terrible sound, I got an eyeful of a man sticking the micro hair trimmer up his nose.

Not near his nose; up his nose.

We all reacted with a mix of disgust and laughter. Micro hair trimmer ads: fun for the whole family.