Its Just Not A Hurricane Without A Jackass In A Bear Suit

Its about 11 p.m. and the husband and I have bunkered down in our Master-Bedroom-in-Exile. We're reluctant to go to bed just yet. It's kind of hard to sleep when you know that your home is serious danger. I don't mean to sound dramatic. There are many, many people with homes in much worse positions than ours. But it's still hard to push those "worst case" scenarios out of your mind all together.

So the Aggie and I are holed up in his bedroom at his parent's home with three dogs and a cat. Gert – who honesty has been the BEST behaved of all our pets – has chosen to show her disdain for the situation in more passive aggressive ways. For example, she likes to wait until we are all piled into the room together to take a massive shit in her litter box. As she is pooping – and I'm not even kidding a little bit – she grips the edges of the litter box and balances so doesn't have to actually come in contact crap receptacle. As if this isn't bad enough, she then refuses to cover her turds up. Apparently she is the Monk of cats and can't bear the thought of getting her feet dirty.

I know, a lot of you out there are going NO WAY, THE CAT DOES NOT DO THAT. You'll just have to trust me. It one of the many weird and obsessive compulsive things she does. (Others include collecting water bottle tops and milk jub rings. Then sorting them – in a very Silences With Lambs kind of way -- into piles with equal numbers in each.) Her OCD behavior has been an ongoing issue for the seven years she and I have been together. And though she has gotten better about her idiosyncrasies, there are times when she just can't help herself and she starts going all Rain Man on us.

Bless her heart. I don't blame her one bit. If I lived with us I'd be batshit crazy too. The pug hates her and barks at her constantly (until we distract him with his stinky pillow or a treat) and she hasn't been anywhere but our house for the last three years. So this is like baptism by fire for her. Right now she is curled up towards the bottom of the mattress and resisting the urge to attack my feet when they move under the covers. The pug is snoring so loudly I can barely hear the music playing on my laptop (The Eagles, its mellow.) Deuce is lying with the husband and Ripken is stretched out by the door. The scent of cat shit is finally drifting away and we are dangerously close to having a peaceful moment.

The calm is here. Now we wait for the storm to pass.

Oh! And so this entry matches the title, I give you Jackass In A Bear Suit Dancing On The Galveston Sea Wall:

I like to think that the dude in the bear suit is a University of Houston student majoring in interpretive dance and that THIS is his way of fulfilling the requirements for his thesis. His real name is Bill, but he goes by Pierre and speaks with a fake French accent. He calls this peice, "Water Rape: The Accidental Crest," and it is his big F-you to oil industry. There is a particularly stirring part where he imitates a baby seal being clubbed. Pierre is also a vegan and doesn't believe in owning worldly possessions. He had to trade his last little bit of hash for a two-hour rental of the bear suit. After he finishes his masters degree, he plans on teaching dance to children in Darfur.