My parents stopped by to visit this weekend at the start of their two-month cross-country trip to visit all of the kids in our various locations of Tucson, Santa Fe, Los Angeles, and Seattle, rounded out with a trip to visit our hometown in Iowa. In the spirit of giving, and I suspect with a bit of thought that 'oooh, she's single now - she can take care of plants', they left me a boston fern, and ivy, some amaryllis bulbs, a cactus, a donkey's tail (it's a plant!), and.... a live catnip plant.

Chet is in heaven. I put it on the porch last night, figuring it wasn't safe in the house, but not really sure Chet wouldn't grow opposable thumbs just to get at it. And when I walked out this morning, it had been lugged across the porch and several leaves were gone.

Why do I get this feeling I'm going to have alot of neighborhood cats hanging out at their version of the local crack house?

The Continuing Saga of Why Susan Shouldn't Mow Her Lawn (Part 4 in a series):

1. Missouri - very large snake met mower blades.
2. Texas - first mowing of the year, dead squirrel in yard.
3. Texas - second mowing of the year, mowed top off sewer system.
4. Texas - third mowing of the year, mowed top off medium size snake.

I'm taking bets on what happens in two weeks when I mow again...

Generation Scapegoat Strikes Again

Ooooh, this just makes me furious.

You know what? Maybe... just maybe.. and bear with me here... but maybe it isn't Doom or John Carmack or video games that made the kids go on a rampage. Maybe... and I'm thinking far-fetched here... but maybe it has the slightest, tiny little bit to do with, oh... paying some fucking attention to your children's lives. Maybe if parents paid a little more attention to what their children are doing. Maybe all the parents of all the kids that have gone ballistic in the last few years might... oh, I don't know... notice that their kids are perhaps a little emotionally bent? Maybe if little Johnny couldn't so easily spend his allowance on a .357 Magnum? Maybe, just maybe, there are a few other places we could look for reasons besides 'Oh, Johnny saw Doom and it gave him ideas!'

But no. We live in a world now where no one takes responsibility. Everyone looks for someone else to blame. And no one seems capable of looking in a fucking mirror.

Sigh.

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On a completely unrelated note, I was watching VH1 earlier and they were interviewing a member of the old hair band Ratt. His name was Jizzy Pearl. 20 years after the group had any sort of hit, and the man still goes by Jizzy Pearl. There's just something so wrong about that.

Well silly me - and here I thought I already had it.

From an early morning conversation in a plumbing store:

"Good morning! How can I help you?"

"I need a cap-thingy for a PVC pipe sewage access pipe...uh..."

"A what?"

"There's this PVC pipe that connects to my sewer line and I..."

"You need PVC pipe? What size?"

"Well, I was mowing and..."

"Ahhh! Yeah. I've got that. Hang on. I know exactly what you're talking about. I sell 3, 400 of these every summer."

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At least I'm not the only dork in town...

Today's Lesson: I should not be allowed to mow.

I already had a sneaking suspicion of this fact two years ago when I mowed a snake to death in my yard in Missouri. Then, the last time I mowed my front lawn, I had to figure out how to extract the dead squirrel corpse that was resting right in the middle of the yard. (Girly screams of 'Ewww! Ewww!' didn't do anything. I was forced to find an empty cardboard box and then sort of shuffle-kick the corpse into it. After which I ran for the garbage, carrying the box with fingertips at arms length, and crying, "Ewww! Ewww!" as a warning lest the squirrel consider springing back to life and jumping in my face.)

So tonight, I came home from work in a rather grumpy mood, and decided to mow my lawn. Everything was going well. I was working my frustrations out with the spin of the motor blades, working up a nice sweat, grumbling to myself... and then I heard it. WRRRRRRGRKACHUNK! I quickly yanked the mower back, wondering if I'd taken on a stump, or some piece of wood that I hadn't noticed. But no.

I'd managed to mow to death the plastic PVC cover on my exterior sewage line access pipe, leaving a clear view and smell down to the main sewage line below.

It goes without saying that I did this at 8:00 PM. Long after any plumbing supply stores were closed.

So now, there's a heavy copy of Prima's Sim City 2000 guide sitting atop a sewage access pipe in my yard, I have to make a trip to a plumbing store in the morning, and I'm afraid to flush the toilet lest a fountain of sewage spurt out into my yard.