Stockholmy Love!

I frequently tell people that I torture my cat. It's only fair, after all. She's so fluffy that it's physically painful. But I also adore my cat, Nala. Here she is:

Do you see that? Do you see how she taunts me? So my response, of course, is to do what any sane cat owner would do. I flip her upside down and kiss her furiously on the tail! 

I know you won't believe it of someone as sweet and gentle as me, so I totally acquired proof. Nala was not thrilled about this because normally I only hold her for a few seconds and it is surprisingly hard to get an iPhone picture with a fat, fluffy cat upside down in your arms. 

But here it is. 

See? It is proven. It is even more proven than the Loch Ness monster because my blurry photo is in color, so there. 

Just to prove how much like me she is, she followed my releasing her after like three solid minutes of complaints by purring and rubbing against my ankles. 

This cat has some serious stockholme syndrome, guys.

PS: This cat is just daring me to pick her up again.

PPS: I swear she is. I can see it in her little kitty eyes. She desperately needs to be picked up.

PPPS: Ow. 

Alpha Goose

A few years ago, I was dating someone named Michael. I swear I didn't trap him in carbonite. I wouldn't do that. Probably. Except maybe to Andy Warhol. I can't stand that guy. You are not an artist if someone else does the work. You're a concept guy. Jeesh. No, we broke up peacefully after three years together. Anyway. He went to a college in Jacksonville called UNF that has an impressive array of wildlife. It even has a nature walk.

It also sported quite a large herd of geese. 

I'm not sure how much experience you have with geese. You may be under the misapprehension that they waddle around cutely eating bread and wearing bonnets, quaking sweetly at passers-by. Let me assure you that that is not an accurate image of geese. These things are violent. 

You see? These things do not mess around. They have murder eyes. Seriously. Hide your children. 

So from time to time I would come visit him on his campus. Gorgeous scenery, fresh air, the bustle of the big city, not my parents' house, what's not to love? Geese, that's what. They strutted around the campus, knowing that the sight of their lowered heads could make proud D20 wielders and clever artisans alike run for cover. 

Or else, my boyfriend informed me, these things might charge you down and bite your knees. 

Well, this could not stand! I hatched a daring plan. In my head, I envisioned myself standing triumphant in the center of a circle of docile geese, tamed by my fearless wrath. 

So when, walking from lunch to his dorm, we passed a herd of geese, I could not resist. I picked out the nearest one, clearly the dominant goose, the alpha goose, if you please, and eyed him haughtily. With eyes and demeanor, I dared him to challenge me. Turning in his direction, my chin lifted and stance both menacing and masterful, I waited, bravely battling off my boyfriend's attempts to save me from the devil-geese. 

As I stared him down imperiously (the goose, not my boyfriend) he turned. And charged! 

The goose, used to people running away when he lowered his head and ran at them, stopped dead in his tracks as I charged forward, waving my arms and yelling. I was unstoppable! As he scrambled to run away, and the entire herd started edging away nervously, I was the kamikaze! 

Charged with power and energy, I screamed out my battle cry! I am ALPHA GOOSE! 

I ignored the sounds of alarm from the students around us. They were just jealous.

Why Bananas Don't Make Good Hiding Places

I'm starting a blog. I'm not entirely sure why I felt the need to announce this, because I'm pretty sure that you've figured this out by now, but just in case. I don't want to disappoint Whovians who may have thought they were stumbling upon a fansite, when really this is just a slightly neurotic nurse seeking an outlet that won't mind being notified at 3am that she's figured out why herbivore poop smells so much nicer than carnivore or omnivore poop.

So if you're still reading, especially if you're a Whovian, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I don't know whether overactive imaginations are contagious, but I'd better apologize just in case. Please let me know if you wake up in the middle of the night from a dream of being strangled by a pair of lungs in a dog house made of pancakes. The blueberry kind, of course. Then I'll know.

Unless that's normal for you. In which case, I apologize for assuming that we're odd.

So today was a fairly normal day for me. Wake up way later than I had planned to, go in to work, and on my lunch break read "Let's Pretend This Never Happened" by Jenny Lawson, who is amazing and possibly more nervous than I am. 

Today's work consisted of helping a child through a panic attack (and discovering that my blood pressure cuff didn't want to work [it was inflating, but not reading an increase in pressure] but only when I actually needed it so that I had to run to the Patient Care classroom to borrow one only to discover that the patient had left and my blood pressure cuff was being nice now, and wow is this parenthetical insertion rambly) (I don't know if that's a phrase, but it sounds nice, so it is now) cleaning wounds, and dispensing tampons around calling the parents of probably sixty children to pick up meds by the last day of school.

That probably wouldn't actually be worth mentioning, except that I was going in to an allergy clinic to fill out an application in a suit jacket, no less later that afternoon, and so I was having occasional mini panic attacks myself. For me, that mostly consists of the world kind of getting distant and overwhelmingly noise-blendy-together-ish while my head turns in circles. Oh my god, I'm not going to get this job, I'm not going to get any job ever and then I'll be homeless or a bum living off the government, and with every ridiculously repetitive and melodramatic word my self-worth spiraled a little further down the drains until I wound up hiding in the closet pretending to fish tampons out a cardboard box. Since the only time someone came looking for me I was able to emerge more or less composed with an arm full of tampons, I'm pretty sure I got away with it.

I'm also pretty sure that doesn't count as a panic attack, but that's okay, no one's going to read this anyway.

Surprisingly, despite the fact that I'd managed to work myself up into a true freak-out by the time I got to my parents' house after work (because they live mid-way between my apartment in Titusville and the allergy clinic in Daytona Beach, and also because my mother owns suit-jackets) I feel like I did pretty well. At least, the receptionist who I chatted with for a few minutes after handing her my application was smiling. Unless it was sort of a pitying sort of smile, but I'm going to pretend I didn't think of that.

So we had Curry Chicken after, and now I'm significantly less nervous.

Afterwards, I brought my plate to the sink, and that's when I saw it. An entire bag of lifesaver mints (which is at least partially composed of crack cocaine, I firmly believe) hidden, of all places, in the fruit bowl beneath a bunch of partly-browning bananas.

I absolutely love those mints. On the other hand, I'd just stolen like four of them from the candy jar, so I probably would have left an unopened bag alone, except the sheer strangeness of putting candy in a fruit bowl underneath bananas made me gape in awe for a few seconds. My parents are really not strange people. So this was kind of beautiful. Like finding a flowering thistle on a barren rocky mountainside. A single beacon of weird to signal that maybe I do come by it honestly. (I'm convinced that thistles flower. Please don't tell me if I'm wrong. I would be very sad.)

So of course, my immediate thought was, I wonder how long it would take my parents to notice that these bananas are no longer a bizarre hat for a bag of mints.  So I snagged them and put the bananas back and tried not to snicker as I said my goodbyes and it totally had nothing to do with how delicious those mints are.

I think that probably my parents were just trying to hide the mints from me. Unless it was just my Mom trying to hide them from Dad, who has a bit of a sweet tooth. She would do that, but it would surprise me, because she's normally not that creative  more subtle about her hiding places. Which just goes to show, Mom, bananas don't make good hiding places. Unless you're trying to hide a Brazilian Wandering Spider, apparently.

PS: So apparently it didn't take Mom very long to notice. I'm kind of impressed, actually. When I got home from their house, I found a text from her. It read, "Sarah, did you take the bag of mints?" You have to admit, that was pretty fast. Well, you don't have to. But you totally should.

To which I responded, "...No. >.>"

It was very convincing, apparently, or else my mother is much more passive-aggressive than I thought, because her reply was, "I'm hoping you get the job with Dr. DiNicolo, but I know u will get a great job. Anyone would be blessed to have you."

Now I felt guilty, even though I was pretty sure she didn't believe me, so I had to say, "Thanks. <3" And then I had to sit there for a couple of seconds and come up with a good, non-impulsive reason for me to have stolen a bag of banana mints. Eventually I came up with the fairly weak, "And I did totally take the mints. They were shoved under bananas. I was curious to see how long it would take someone to notice." Then I added hopefully, just in case flattery would make an impression, "I'm kind of impressed."

Her response was not encouraging. "Where is our bag of mints?" "You mint thief. We want them back."

I tried distraction. "I am legitimately laughing so hard I'm crying at that. This is so going in my theoretical blog." Which is totally no longer theoretical, by the way. Awesome. It was almost true, too. I was giggling rather maniacally at the way she'd phrased that accusation.

"When do we get them back? Karen and I love them!!!!!!" Karen is my parents' tenant who moved into my bedroom when I moved out. Sort of. She's epic. You know, just clarifying in case you thought I had two moms. Not that there would be anything wrong with that. Karen would make an epic second mom. I just prefer having my Dad because he is also epic. I'm totally not homophobic. That would be weird.

So I told her she'd have to wait until this weekend, and that that was what she got for putting mints under bananas, because that was just plain weird and sounded more like something I would do. She was not entertained, and replied in what I imagined to be a tart tone, "We didn't put the mints under the bananas, we put the bananas over the mints so you wouldn't steal them!" I would like to point out that there's not a great deal of difference there. Then she added for good measure, "You mint thrift."

That was uncalled for. Still, I figured someone had to be rational and so I reminded her that I wouldn't have stolen them if they hadn't been in a fruit bowl. They were practically calling out to me, begging to be adopted. At which point she commented that she hated auto-correct, which was a relief, because I don't know if I could have handled a reputation as being thifty with mints. Just to drive the meaning home, she reminded me once again that I was a mint thief.

There's really only one response when someone becomes that degree of unreasonable.

"Yes, Mama."

PPS. I've just reread this rambly abomination of a blog, and I'm seriously considering hiding my name until I get hired. Would that be paranoid?