Wait…what??? (Obligatory post-Freshly Pressed blog entry)

Bambi (character) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There I was, peacefully putting away my groceries (all healthy, worse luck.  I think my doctor reads my blog) and chatting with my mother, who was in town for a visit.  She went off to do something else, and I sat down to check in on my blog.  I pressed the stats button…

I recently got a new pair of glasses.  I thought maybe they had malfunctioned.  I’d had how many page views?  Suspicious, I took off my glasses, rubbed them, put them back on…yep, same number.  I checked out the Freshly Pressed section of WordPress and, sure enough, there I was!  With a blog post that I’d put about five minutes worth of thought into and basically consisted of me blowing off steam about my new diet and exercise plan!

Though, come to think of it, that’s probably a pretty universally interesting topic–not diet and exercise, which are just universally torturous, but being annoyed and frustrated by them.  Yes, I cunningly picked this topic of common interest, came up with a nifty list, inserted a colorful visual, all with an eye toward getting Freshly Pressed…no, I didn’t.  But it’s still fun that it happened!  I had the following conversation with myself after seeing my tiny little blog up there with the big boys:

Little Blind Girl:  Oh, wow, this is so cool!  Look at all these page views!  Look at all these comments and all the new followers!  Thanks, WordPress!

Voice in Head:  Wait, they picked this post?  I have, like, fifty other posts that are way better.

Little Blind Girl:  Oh, don’t be a buzzkill.  This is awesome!  I want to do a backflip, except that I’m pretty sure my body doesn’t bend that way anymore.

Voice in Head:  I’m just saying.  You wrote a sonnet to Johnny Depp, actually in iambic pentameter, and they go for this one?

Little Blind Girl:  This was a good post!  It may never get included in an anthology of insightful, provocative essays, but it’s not bad for an evening’s work.

Voice in Head:  You mean twenty minutes’ work.  Thank goodness I proofread.

Little Blind Girl:  Yeah, I kind of feel like a mother who tells her kid to wear clean underwear in case he gets in an accident and has to go to the emergency room.  ”Now, blog, I’m going to make sure you don’t have any typos, just in case you get Freshly Pressed.”  ”Aww, come on, Little Blind Girl, that never happens!”

Voice in Head:  Until it does.

Little Blind Girl:  Exactly.

Voice in Head:  So we’re just ignoring the fact that you’re having a conversation with yourself?

Little Blind Girl:  Just like always.

Voice in Head:  Right, then.  Hey, don’t you have a policy about responding to every comment on the blog?

Little Blind Girl:  Yes.  (Pause)  Why?  How many comments are there?

Voice in Head:  Fifty eight and counting.

Little Blind Girl:  ….

Totally worth it.  Thanks to all the people who read, liked, commented on, and followed my blog, new and old readers alike!  And a special shoutout to my favorite comment, which was by laurenwhitney91:  ”you are insanely hilarious. thank you for being you!”  Seriously, that’s the comment!  Best comment ever.  I love being Freshly Pressed!

Also, for those of you who read the hilarious blog The Waiting:  welcome to the world, Miss C.  You’ve got a really cool mom.

Satan butter

As a result of my eye problems, I have to be very careful to get certain things in my diet, and it’s pretty closely monitored.  The latest admonition is that I’m not getting enough fat in my diet.  I have to include more sources of fat, but I should stay away from saturated fats, watch my cholesterol, and on no account touch transfats….also I have to maintain a certain caloric intake and not mess with any of the rest of my diet….I’ve been doing hours of research and calculations.  I got my taxes prepped in less than an hour, but I’ve been at this task all evening (fun Saturday night activity, huh?  That’s how I roll) and I still don’t have an answer.  I think it may boil down to this:

Don’t you wish it could be that easy?  Satan butter:  if you touch it, you’ll go blind!

Oh my God, I ate a sock!

This post is dedicated to Jane, who wanted a post about cats and socks:

Once upon a time, I had a cat named Beatrice.  Beatrice, from the time she was a tiny kitten who could climb up the legs of my pants, liked to chew on clothing.  It was mildly exasperating, but nothing more than that until I came home to find her sitting on the floor with a peculiarly unsettled expression on her face.  It was a mix of extreme discomfort, desire for relief, and unwillingness to admit what she’d done.  I came to know this expression as “Oh my God, I just ate a sock.”

I took her to the vet who found that, yes, Beatrice had eaten an entire sock and it had gotten lodged in her digestive tract.  In order to avoid a lingering and painful death, she had to have small animal surgery that cost more than six months’ rent at the time.  As it happened, I’d panicked a few months earlier over what turned out to be nothing and had gotten pet insurance that covered most of the surgery.  Still, when Beatrice came home, I sat her down to have a Talk with her while she was too dopey from the painkillers to run away.  It went a little something like this:

Little Blind Girl:  Beatrice, you know I love you.  You know I’d give you anything to make you happy.  But you can’t go around eating socks.  They’re not good for you.  Why did you want to eat a sock, anyway?

Beatrice P. Cat:

LBG:  Well, if you say so.   I can’t say I’ve ever found them very appetizing, myself.  But the point is that they’re off limits.  How did you even get to the socks?  I put them away in a drawer specifically so that you couldn’t reach them.

BPC:

LBG:  Not buying it.  Try again.

BPC:

LBG:  Nope.  One more time?

BPC:

LBG:  All right, clearly you’re not giving up the trick.  Level with me, kittenface, what’s it gonna take to keep your mouth out of the sock drawer?

BPC:

LBG:  Too late, I pretty much exchanged all my cash to get the half-digested sock out of your intestines.  And no, before you ask, you can’t have it back.  I don’t know, Beatrice.  Are you mad at me?  Were you trying to get back at me for something?

BPC:

LBG:  Geez, kitten, that was a joke!  I didn’t actually suck out your brain, I just told you I did.  I’m pretty sure, anyway.  You’re such a talented cat.  Can’t you find a hobby other than snarfing my hosiery?

BPC:

LBG:  Perfect!  I’ll sign you up for some lessons, maybe you can get an agent, show some paintings in a gallery…this has to qualify for a talk show or two.  All right, promise me no more socks, and I’ll give you a free pass on the next three non-litterbox urinations.  Deal?

BPC:

Should have seen that one coming.  You can’t tell a cat anything.  That was the last time Beatrice ate a sock, thank goodness.  The ‘P’ in Beatrice P. Cat stands for ‘Pest’, by the way, something dreamed up by my Sainted Mother.  All cats share this middle name.  So, Jane, I hope you enjoyed the post.  I’m trying not to turn this into a cat blog, of which there are many many excellent examples already, as you can tell from the pictures, but this post was fun.  Let it impart the lesson:  Be careful what your cat eats!  You never know what it’s going to end up costing you.