Calico crisis

My mom is one of those people that others turn to when something horrible happens. My whole life, I've watched people come running when the car catches fire, when the dog's been quilled by a porcupine, when someone has been shot in the leg or has suffered a head wound, or when there's a rattlesnake outside the 4th grade classroom. After one of her students got sick at school, she painstakingly cleaned the shit out of his boots because she knew they were his only pair of shoes.

So this weekend I wasn't entirely surprised to see that it had happened again. A good-intentioned co-worker adopted two newborn kittens, nursed them through infancy, and fell in love with them - despite the fact that her large dog had killed the last kitten she tried to adopt. Last week the kittens started walking, one toddled too near the dog's dinner bowl, and my mom unexpectedly found herself running from the school (where her co-worker rushed to hand it off) to the vet with a dying kitten. Her friend cried as she handed over the second kitten, and now my mom has a new kitty in the house. Xebo and Hurcules, tottering into their 15th year, are pretty pissed about it, and Gavin can't stop talking about the tiny calico, so it looks like we'll be bringing the kitten home when the boys go to Oahu to pick up our quarantined cats. Three young cats and a baby. We are in the heyday of our young adult lives, framing the childhood memories of our sons. The days you look back on later with nostalgia - and hey, here we are, and we get to be here all day.

The only event of the week

ring ring
"Hello, tiny rural Hawaiian library, this is Harpy speaking."
"Hi, do you have a laminator I can use?"
"Sorry, we don't have one for public use."
"Would it help if I said I was a cop?"
"Are you a cop?"
"Yeah."
"Well then, yeah."

And so I spent a nice half an hour in the dank production room getting to know Officer Skippy*. We poked at the ancient behemoth of a laminator, rattled the knobs, jabbed the buttons, managed not to catch it on fire, and got the guy's permit thing plasticized all nice and pretty. While waiting for the machine to heat up, I learned: we have 8 cops, and no dogs. The police firing range is up the road from my house (suspicious that this is just a pasture with paper targets tacked to hay bales - hopefully not cows). And the firemen use the jet skis to go fishing and drinking. (Which is to say, my guess that the firemen use the jet skis to go fishing and drinking was not denied.)

After shutting down Bessie the Laminator and waving goodbye to Skippy, my co-worker came back from break, listened to my retelling, smiled, and pulled out a tiny, cute little card laminator from our supply shelf. "Next time you can just use this one." Damn it.


In other news, I finally finished my dummy book. Scribbled the last thumbnail this morning.


In other other news, I finally read the credits on Bones, figured out that the show is based on a book series by Kathy Reichs, discovered that we had 13 of them at work, and yanked them all off the shelf like Christmas presents. This will keep me busy until I figure out how to pirate episodes of Trueblood.

Am currently reading: Grave Secrets, by Kathy Reichs, and Fray, by Joss Whedon.

*name changed to protect dignity