Journal of a Sabbatical

May 12, 1999

treat puke & music on hold

Reading: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West, The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders by Clair Hayes

The job-shadowing kid who followed Bonnie around in January is here today. She's going to be working a couple of days a week. She has a job coach from the school, but he doesn't stay the whole shift with her like Chris's job coach used to (hmm, can't immediately find an entry about Chris to link to), or like the other special needs kid who folds laundry in the afternoons. She remembered me from the January visit and greeted me by name. She was disappointed I wasn't wearing my official bleach shirt, which really is getting to be quite a work of art. I should scan it in sometime. I promised her I'd wear it next week.

I checked the adoptions board and cheered when I saw Pookie & Rex listed. I am so glad they got a home together. Pookie's great fun to do dishes with. I hope his new person lets him near the dish drainer.

The litter boxes are pretty bad today. I thought of asking if they'd had treats last night. I got side tracked with washing one of the big ones that Bob needed right away and forgot about asking about the treats. Kendra came out of the other room holding Petra's pillow, which was covered with puke. Treat puke. Most of it was so undigested that you could tell exactly which brand of treat it was. Judging by Petra's pillow, she'd eaten an entire package of them. Tuesday is treat night and that is supposed to mean each cat gets one or at most two treats to give them the pleasure but minimize the side effects. From the looks of it, many cats had way more treats than their bodies could handle. Yuck. Needless to say, the Wednesday morning crew are not happy with the Tuesday night crew.

Despite the treat puke everybody, human and feline, is in good spirits. Kendra answered the phone and it was for Bonnie, so she told the caller she'd have to put her on hold. She set the phone down next to the radio, which was playing We're Off to See the Wizard , turned to me, and said "So she'll think we have a big sophisticated phone system." I laughed. The job-shadow burst into hysterics. She laughed and laughed and giggled and giggled and giggled and couldn't stop. Susan came out of the sick room to find out what the laughter was about. Giggle Girl couldn't stop long enough to tell the story so I told it. Susan laughed. This set off Giggle Girl again.

After Giggle Girl had calmed down, and was, I thought, in the other room, I told Bob Roberta's story of being attacked by wild turkeys (which she'd told me on Monday). Roberta had promised to e-mail me the story for this journal, but I haven't gotten it yet. Basically, she was dropping her son off at his girlfriend's house when she noticed her son acting strangely ... like he was being really careful of something. He ran for the girlfriend's door just as Roberta saw the head of the giant tom turkey peering in the car window. The tom began to peck at the car. The whole flock swarmed out of the woods and surrounded the car. Roberta was terrified. For those readers not from around these parts, wild turkeys are really big - the males get to be 4 feet tall and they weigh a bit more than your average Thanksgiving dinner turkey. She managed to back the car up without running over any turkeys and escape down the driveway. No word on whether her son is still seeing that particular girlfriend.

Giggle Girl heard us laughing and caught part of the story so she came over to the sink and demanded that I tell the story again. Which I did. She giggled and giggled and giggled and giggled.... you get the idea.

As the morning went on, all she had to was look at me and she'd burst into giggles. I know I'm pretty funny, but I'm not that funny.