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November 7, 2004

CWaP

Lani, writing on her lazy laptop lying on the lazy couch...

Hey, dig me! I haven't blogged in over a week! La-hooo-ser!

Thanks so much to the super-cool Lit Chicks who picked up the slack for me. Love ya, girls!

Anyway, I've been back for a week now and moved straight into monster revisions on MAYBE BABY, my June release from Warner Forever, so that's part of why I've been so absent. The other reason?

I'm just plain lazy. Not a huge secret, this, but for those of you not in the know, I thought I'd get it out on the table early on.

It's not as easy as you'd think, you know, being lazy. It's a special art. For instance, when you're married with young children, it's hard to be really lazy. There are no entire days spent on the couch surrounded by various foodstuffs and watching a week's worth of TiVo'd Oprah episodes.

(Am I the only one feeling a little gypped that TiVo didn't exist when I was childless? Anyway...)

No, no. Being lazy with children requires much planning and thought, because in order to be truly lazy with children, you have to find a way to manipulate your partner (if you're single with children, lazy will just never happen, you might as well give up now) into doing the work. My husband and I, both being inherently lazy people, are experts at this. Whenever one of us manages to manipulate the other into doing the work, we usually respond (from the couch) to the manipulatee's grumbles with some variation on, "Ah, yes, Grashoppah. Watch. Learn."

For instance, my husband is the expert in Feigning Sleep. This is what happens, pretty much almost every morning. The girls wake up, and come gunning for me. I don't know why it's always me. It just is. They say, "Mommy, Mommy, we need food/clothing/shelter/etc." And I say, "Go ask your father." And they walk over to Adam, stare at him for a moment, and then they return to me.

"He's sleeping," they say.

"So was I," I say. "Wake him up."

"Mother, dear," they say, "although we're young, we recognize instinctively that we wish not to waste our whining on fruitless pursuits. Now, get up lady, we want orange juice."

"Ask Daddy to get you orange juice," I say, hiding my head under the pillow.

"Did you not hear us the first time, woman?" they say. "He's sleeping."

Ah. Sure. Sleeping. Riiiigggghhhhht. But there's not much I can do. The girls can scream and cry right under his nose, and until they're dressed and fed, he won't stir. I could pour buckets of ice water down his pants and tweeze his nose hairs, and still - nada until breakfast has been served.

Score one: Adam. The man is a master.

Me, on the other hand, I'm a little more direct. Once the morning has been taken care of and Adam has finally "woken up" I then start in on the list of things "we" need to do.

"We need to do laundry," I say. "Dishes. The cat box. Vacuuming. And there's something living under the sink."

"By 'we' you mean 'me,' right?" Adam will say.

"Of course not," I respond. "I'll do the cat box."

Eventually, I think silently. But see, he can't fight, because he hates the cat box and he knows that if he pushes me, he might get stuck with it. Because in the end, I am woman, and I get my way. He knows it. I know it. Who ever says men have all the power has not been living in my house or the house of any woman I know.

Score one: Lani. Yesssss, Grasshoppah.

Currently, we're engaged in the ultimate battle of laziness, as the task doesn't even require physical effort - naming the cat.

A few weeks ago, we got a kitten named Lilly. She was cute, but skittish. She hid in the tiny crevices of the apartment and would only come out at night, after all of us had gone to bed. Which was okay, because... lazy. If she was out all day, we'd have to pet her and stuff.

In the past week, however, she decided she liked us, and has been joining us during the waking hours. Which is how I made it three weeks with this cat without realizing something very important.

"Lilly" has a penis.

We found out yesterday. Celia was scratching her - I mean, his - back and he arched his butt up and I happened to see a bulge in the back area and thought, "Hmmm, methinks something's very wrong with our girl cat." So I picked him up and turned him over and...

Well. Hey. Dig that. Lilly has a Willy.

So, since then, Adam and I have been hot-potatoing the task of re-naming Lilly with something a little more masculine.

"Willy," I said. "Because, you know, he has one."

"No," Adam said, "Frank."

I tilted my head and looked at the tiny, skinny little thing. Eh. Couldn't do it. Tiny cat. Big name. Didn't work.

"No," I said. "I don't think so."

"Hm," Adam said, flipping the channel on the remote.

"Hm," I said, sitting down with my laptop.

So, as it stands, Cat With a Penis still doesn't have a final name. I've taken to calling him CWaP, for short. And it's a sophomoric humor play on "crap" which he likes to do. A lot.

Speaking of which, "we" need to clean out the CWaP box. I'm gonna go tell Adam...

... in a minute.

Posted by Lani at 2:55 PM | Comments (3)

Comments

Posted by: Nicole Maki at November 8, 2004 3:40 PM

Posted by: Eileen at November 9, 2004 1:01 PM

Posted by: Lani at November 9, 2004 4:24 PM