mimi smartypants
Seriously, though: what's with the penguins?

oh no I spilled the milk on the table

PEANUTS, CRACKERJACK, AND A SLAP UPSIDE THE HEAD

You people are very patient as I have been ranting about stupid baseball fans for years, but it is a constant summer annoyance and yesterday was particularly bad. All I ask is that Cubs management avoid scheduling home games during my hormonally-induced Very Cranky Moods, is that so hard? It seems so. I especially despise the kind of Cubs fans who come in from the suburbs and mill around all clueless right where I need to walk. Good afternoon, everyone, please listen to some announcements: it is a WEEKDAY, this is my LUNCH HOUR, I need to get to GODDAMN WALGREEN’S, so please quit acting like the city street is your own little vacation spot.

SPEAKING OF DOUCHEBAGS

Already late that morning, I was made later by the skinny emo-jean’d dude who blocked my way up the Loyola-stop escalator. The train was there on the platform and I would have made it in about six running steps if this guy had shown any sense of urgency. He sensed my impatience and lowered his sunglasses to smile and say, “Good thing we can always take another train.” Yeah, good thing you made that choice for me, asshole. Oh how I wanted to set fire to his hair.

Also, last week I went to the Deerhunter show but had to leave before Deerhunter even played, due to the scheduling ineptitude of someone who probably looked and dressed very much like Mr. Hipster Commute-Wrecker. Scheduling six bands to start at around 11 pm on a Sunday night is just not on, people. While I am really into the “Microcastle” album, from all reports and from the general tenor of the openers it seems that Deerhunter live may have been a level of on-stage wankery that I just cannot support. But I got a good dinner at Lula and a kick-ass parking space out of the evening, so no harm.

TRAUMA PART ONE

This week I got to star in my very own Brinks commercial. Well, it was a little less dramatic than my very favorite example thereof, but still not so good.

I was coming home on the train and receiving a lot of garbled cell-phone calls from LT and my mom about an alarm going off at our house. In the case of an alarm, Brinks first calls your house and then goes down the list of contacts—if no one has a plausible explanation for the alarm, the police are notified. I call the babysitter who said that they were not even at home, so now it’s getting weird.

Mysteriously, when I finally arrived home both doors were locked, the alarm was no longer alarm-ing but was making a weird noise, and some blank “Chicago Police Incident Reports” had been tossed on my kitchen counter. I was ready to call it a false alarm that had unnecessarily brought Chicago’s finest to my door, until I walked into Nora’s room and noticed the bent window screen. Near as we can figure out, some criminal got into our fenced and locked backyard, stood on patio furniture and scrabbled his way up to the window ledge, then lifted the screen and crawled in (closing it behind him). Because there is nothing to steal in Nora’s room unless you are really into Harry Potter books, Pokémon cards, or bits of twisted metal, the thief probably walked out into the kitchen, causing the motion detectors to detect him and start raising holy hell. At which point he fled out the back door and the marathon of WTF? I Don’t Know! phone calls began.

I later talked to a neighbor who said he did indeed let the police in, and that when they discovered the back door wide open they were all like “STAND BACK SIR” with hands on gun butts and walked around our house for a while, finding nothing amiss except for two freaked-out cats. I assume that they left the “Incident Reports” on the counter in case we found anything missing later, which we haven’t.

Shit can happen anywhere, but I must admit to a certain amount of shock at the break-in attempt (mixed in with the pure yuck of having had a stranger walk around in my kid’s room). When we lived in Hyde Park there were crimes against our property about once a month (no exaggeration)—bikes stolen, car broken into multiple times, an attempted pry-off of our front-door deadbolt. I’ve lived in this neighborhood for almost ten years now and there has been literally nothing.

Traumatic. But yay for Brinks Home Security, I suppose. I couldn’t help yelling that out the window as I was fixing the bent screen: YOU HEAR THAT, NEIGHBORHOOD? THIS CRIB IS ALARMED! FO SHIZZLE!

TRAUMA PART TWO

Long before last week’s excitement, the normally crazy Rocko started going even crazier. The new thing is that he is licking all the fur off the tip of his tail, leaving a gross little bare and ratty possum-style tail in its place. The obsessive overgrooming has now spread to a patch on the belly and between the toes. I phoned the vet and asked if there could be a medical reason or if Rocko just has gone completely off the rails, and of course he said to bring him in (sigh), so we will crate up the maniac and do that this afternoon. From Google I have learned that cats are sometimes given Prozac for this condition. Fabulous!

TRAUMA NOT SHARED

I worked from home one day this week and got to witness a girl-child throwing a major fit in Target. It was EPIC. And the mom was CHILLLLLL. Seriously, I didn’t even need to feel sympathy because she was just totally going about her Target business, with her other kid (a toddler) in the cart’s basket, while the shrieking kid shrieked so loud you could hear her all over the store, and then (later) in the parking garage, and I could even hear her as they drove out behind me, with my car windows rolled up and my music on. Awesome Target Mom, you are a Zen master, or you have the good meds, or maybe this happens a lot and you are just used to it. Regardless, I salute you.

—mimi smartypants danced the manta ray.