Captain Chuckerpants

In the continuing saga of Jack molding our new cat Chuckie into some sort of stuffed animal-baby brother hybrid, I introduce to you... Captain Chukerpants.

"Hey look, Mama -- Chuckie's wearing underpants!" Jackie announced this morning, as if Chuckie had woken from his slumber and decided, on his own volition, that the fur covering for his privates was simply not enough. "Underpants it is!" he must have declared.

I initially was like, "Get those underpants off Chuckie," then quickly added, "Wait... let me get my camera."

Because the funniest part was how chill Chuckie was about the whole thing. I didn't see the putting on of the underpants so I'm not sure how that went down, but look at his face. There's no indignity whatsoever. He's all, "Yeah, I'm hanging out in these oversized sports-themed skivvies. What's it to ya?"

He's the cat of my childhood dreams. Instead, when I was in fourth grade, we got Fritzi. She was a sweet kitty but not so much into being dressed up in clothing. At all. I had a ruffled baby bonnet I thought was particularly fetching on her and I would put her on bonnet lock-down in my room. Also, once she got in a fight with another cat and got a claw through the ear, resulting in a permanent piercing. I would put little hoop earrings in it, thinking she looked adorable, especially when paired with aforementioned bonnet. But the expression on her face was decidedly sour. I have pictures.

But Chuckie pretty much held this pose until I was done. Then he ate some food, in the underpants. And laid back down, apparently to take a nap, in the underpants.


Finally I made Jackie take them off, for real this time.

When it was over, Jackie patted him and said, "Good boy, Chuckie."

He sure is.

Rainbow Swirl

To borrow a photography term, we have hit the "golden hour" of summer in terms of popsicle consumption. School starts in under two weeks, and my normal nutritional restrictions for the boys are going the way of the summer pool pass and the water balloon fights.

Popsicles before breakfast? Why not!

Popsicles immediately before we leave for preschool so that you are covered from chin to knee with streaks of sticky syrup, like a walking human fly trap? Can't see a problem with that!

Popsicles ten minutes before bed? No different than a warm glass of milk, as far as I can see!

They're like 40 calories, they have some semblance of fruit or artificially fruit-flavored goodness, and they make my boys happy. We sit on the front stoop, talk about the world (mostly the worlds created in the mind of George Lucas, but why quibble) and savor those last fading moments of summer.

Nothing can change this love

Everything is still going swimmingly with Chuckie, with the exception of one minor incident today.

I returned from having dinner with a friend tonight to find Jackie sitting sullenly at the dinner table. Erik informed me that he had hit Chuckie and just got off a long time-out. This was totally unlike Jackie, who just this morning professed to "lov(ing) cats more than anyone in the whole wide universe," who LOVES cats in all caps, who literally tried to French kiss cats ON THE LIPS until he was told they lick their butts with those same lips, which only partially deterred him.

I had a feeling I wasn't getting the whole story.

So when the boys went to bed just now I brought it up with Erik. [In the interest of full disclosure, Chuckie has been having some digestive issues since he came home. It all gets in the litter box, but it's pretty... loose. And sometimes he passes gas and it smells just like a dog fart, which if you've ever smelled a dog fart you know is about the worst kind of fart there is. Erik calls it "shit farting," one of the many phrases he coined which initially seems either redundant or nonsensical but when you think about it you say, "No, that's right. That is exactly right. It is like a pile of shit vaporized into fart form." But onward.]

Erik admitted he was in the kitchen making dinner when he heard Jackie exclaim, "Eeew! Something smells like pooooooop!"

And Erik walked into the living room at the exact moment that Jackie was swatting Chuckie in what Erik described as "the butthole region." [God, I hope no one from the Humane Society is reading this right now. Tomorrow Cat Protective Services will be knocking down our door.]

Erik ommitted this part of the story when Jackie was present because he assumed, rightly, that I would laugh. Which I did, because I am an immature jerk.

Now hitting animals is wrong and bad and I condemn it. Thankfully Chuckie didn't seem to be injured in said region. Furthermore, do you remember the story about the caterpillar? Because the moral of the story is, when one animal gets thrown out a window by my son for pooping and the next animal gets off with a swat on the butthole region for a shit fart, that is what I as a parent call progress.

He's a floater

These are a little late, but after working four weddings in three weeks and going through thousands of my "professional" photos I was a bit tired of, well, uploading.

Anyway, the boys took swimming lessons this summer and Eli especially loved it. He learned how to swim almost immediately and I've never seen him so conscientious and driven about a sport. Normally he's the kid who kind of stops paying attention during first-grade football and gets a wavering spiral to the forehead. Or gets bored during soccer and just stands at one end of the field waiting for the ball to come to him. Or gets put in the t-ball outfield again and again by an overly competitive coach of 7- and 8-year-olds to the point where when the ball finally does come to him he just watches it roll by. All of these I witnessed in the last year.

But swimming is different -- it's an individual sport, and Eli is an independent kid. He's studious by nature, and he gets to study the strokes, perfect them, on his own. The pride I felt seeing him float on his back with ease, his eyes closed in concentration, finally in his own little world of athletic achievement, made my throat clamp up.

Jackie, on the other hand, is a natural athlete -- coordinated, strong, fearless. His favorite part of swimming lessons was leaping off the diving board and landing on the heads of the instructors trying to catch him. They eventually moved out of the way:

World, meet Chuck

I hadn't planned on getting another cat so soon. But I was browsing the local Humane Society website yesterday and saw a picture of a gentleman named "Chuckie." Here's what the description said:

"I'm Chuckie, a good looking, classic type of guy. I'm young, and I have a lovely tabby striped coat with warm brown tones to it. My eyes are large and a cool amber-green color. I've already been neutered, and I would just love a new home with YOU!"

Meh.

But it was his face that drew me in. It had so much character, and eyes that looked sad and mellow and bemused all at once. The boy had soul.

I took the boys to see him yesterday, and though he'll never be a replacement for Mini, he's everything we could hope for in a cat and, at the same time, I can feel that he will be more than just a cat for our family. He's going to fill a gaping hole we didn't even know we had.

Everyone at the shelter loved this boy. When we visited yesterday I didn't want to say I was there to see a specific cat, so I told the gal at the front desk that we had just lost a cat we'd had for 10 years, we were thinking about maybe adopting a new one, did she have a cat that was good with people, good with other cats... before I could even finish she said, "Chuckie. You need to meet Chuckie."

When we took him into the secluded "patting room," he alternated between playing with the boys and nuzzling them while rumbling like a distant freight train.


And then another staffer told me that they have 160 cats at the shelter, but when they needed to choose one to take to visit lonely people at the nursing home, they picked Chuckie.

That's all I needed to hear.

So welcome to the family, Chuck. Make yourself at home.

My car goes/Chicago

Okay, so my mom's rental car does. These are from my trip last week to Chi-town with my mom and sister. It was back-to-school shopping the summer before ninth grade all over again. Fun times and girl fights, baby. Nothing like it.

These descriptions will be brief because I'm still in a sad mood about the cat.

I cheated and took this one in the reflection of the sculpture at Millinium Park. Pretty rad, no?

I liked the three yellow lights here. The green building on the left is the Carbide and Carbon Building on Michigan Ave, an art deco stunner that's now the Hard Rock Hotel, though we won't hold that against it. My new business website and logo are going to be slightly art deco themed so I was jazzed about this building.

This is a bus:

This is my mom shopping at Eileen Fisher on Michigan Avenue wearing some sort of shower cap mask that's a prerequisite for entering the dressing room, and in the foreground, a woman who was put on God's green earth for the sole purpose of working at Eileen Fisher and convincing my mother to buy a full-length khaki linen dress. I mean, look at the woman. She emits Eileen Fisher from her pores. What, your mom never shopped at Eileen Fisher? Nevermind.

We had to take at least one photo to show my dad what a good time she had in the big city:

Isn't she adorable? From what I gather, she has permanently "borrowed" that sweater from my sister, pictured here:

She's thinking, "Damn, I wish I had that polka dot sweater right about now."

Here's a picture from the same locale, but from a slightly different angle so as to crop out the sister:

We noticed there's a certain type of boy who lives in Chicago. And this is it:

Window shopping at a wig store in the neighborhood where my sister's friend, who's working on his doctorate in philosophy, lives. I let you in on that fact to add clarification and depth to the photo:

My mom was a very nervous city driver. Unreasonably nervous. There were many quick inhalations of breath through clenched teeth and utterances of "Jeeezzz!..." Note the furrowed brow:

This one's from the car driving at night. Not entirely in focus but I like it.



This is my favorite from the trip -- my mom reading in bed in the hotel, as seen in the reflection in the window:

Can you tell I like skyscrapers and skylines? The North Dakota girl in me still finds them exotic and romantic.

That's all she wrote.

p.s. The title is from a song my sister clued me in to by The Felice Brothers:
"My car goes/
Chicago/
Every weekend to pick up some cargo/
I think I know the bloody way by now, Frankie/
And turn the god damn radio down, thank you."

R.I.P., Awesome Cat

This weekend we experienced the sudden passing off our belovedly enormous cat, Mini.

We adopted Mini while we were still in college. He was the runt of his litter, sickly and small, but I fell for his long white fur and dairy-cow big black spots.

As we nursed him to health that summer we discovered that, after being neglected as a young kitten, Mini had developed some sort of feline eating disorder where he devoured anything in sight.

Coincidentally, Erik also found that Mini liked Cheetos and chocolate pudding and a number of his own favorite treats.

I went back to school on the east coast that fall and left Mini in Erik’s care. Whenever I called I could hear a faint crunching sound in the background.

“Are you feeding the cat Cheetos again?” I’d ask.

“Um… no?” was his weak reply.

But I had my answer soon enough. I returned home for winter break to find Mini the size of a smallish Buick. Not fat, exactly, just really… solid.

When we moved to our first apartment as a married couple my grandma baked us several dozen of her famous sugar cookies. Mini chewed through the plastic bag to get to them, though I couldn’t blame him. They were delicious. He also found his way into a bag of hamburger buns and a box of dry rice.

Over the years his name took on a sort of gangster quality, like “Tiny,” the mob enforcer who weighs 425 lbs.

But he was beautiful, and he knew it. Despite his size, he had feminine little paws and a slight prance to his step. With his long, well-groomed white fur, decorative spots, and a sprinkling of sassitude, it was clear that if Mini were a person he definitely would have been metrosexual.

And he liked being the center of attention. Each year at our Christmas party he waited until the Beam Punch had been flowing for an hour or so before sashaying into the living room and plopping belly-up and spread-eagle on the floor.

“Take it all in,” he seemed to say to our surprised guests. “It comes but once a year.”

And each night Mini waited until we were almost asleep before kneading our unsuspecting stomachs with the full force of his weight on his tiny paws. Erik coined it “stab poking,” which seemed redundant until you experienced it.

Mini formed a special bond with Jack. He tolerated any pat Jack was able to give, and a few tail pulls and failed attempts to carry or “ride” him.

Every time Jack cried, Mini came to check in on him, bouncing into the room with a sweet little “mew.”

Jack took Mini’s passing the hardest, and asked me if cats get to go to heaven. “What kind of place would it be if they didn’t?” I said.

The only other person he knows who went to heaven was my grandma, who loved cats as much as he does.

“I bet Nana is patting Mini in heaven right now,” Jack said.

I bet she is. Maybe she even made some sugar cookies, this time just for him.

You rocked, Mini. Thanks for the good times.