The Diamond Island

That’s “lair of the spider” for those of you who don’t know Sindarin.

Michael the cat’s demise has got me thinking about my Battle of the Galaxies with the Gingerbread Witch. Michael’s poor health made him a weak point in my defenses against the all-out attack of my adversary. It makes the conflict serious in a way I’d hoped to avoid.

I’ve been mopping up the traps and minions left behind in the wake of the burning up of the Gingerbread Witch. There’s more work here than any one person can hope to achieve, but I have been making a start so adventurers after me can dig for gold with less jackup.

Just like that, the Nightchild came back to me with reminders. He’s been doing stuff.

I’ve been meditating on the passing of my beloved cat ani-pal. I barely managed to escape being a victim of horror. I barely managed to defeat that horror. The costs to myself I accepted, yet to have a dear companion fall in the struggle hits me hard. Michael didn’t have a conscious say in this as far as I could tell. Did I tell him in my sleep that it would be like this?

Michael the cat was stubborn and strong willed. I don’t know how many hits he took for me, but I know he didn’t think twice. His meow bombing made him a target because even the Gingerbread Witch could not resist a cat giving her a severe penalty to her actions.

Maybe he bought me the time I needed to figure out the Gingerbread Witch’s secrets and dumpster her once and for all. He only knew he loved me and wanted me to reach my goal.

As awesome as I have been, I still needed someone to watch my back.

Michael the cat lasted as long as he could. He got to see me victorious, healing, moving past the horror of my life. I’d learned the lessons he’d been trying to teach me over the years, of patience and kindness to the unlovable. His work was done.

This death of a dear intimate friend affects me all the way to the core. It changes things in me. I haven’t been able to form a coherent thought for a month. He was on borrowed time as it was; yet still I feel a sense of guilt because my adventure put him at greater risk.

Even though I know in my soul he wouldn’t give a damn about no Gingerbread Witch. He wanted what he wanted and he loved me even as he was in the most intense of long-term pain.

All I can do is break open the barrows of Portland Oregon, spill out the treasures into the sunlight and rain so that a fresh rose of human being can grow and blossom without fear of horrific devouring. Scram, evil spirits! You’re done.

I take my share of the treasure, plundering the Mummy’s Tomb for the jewels that are mine to have and use for the work I will do to bring new life to the world. People will live better lives, but it still chokes in my throat. For once I cannot say the mantras, the prayers, the songs that would spring to my lips.

The price feels too high to pay now.

My trusted and adorable ani-pal companion Michael The Cat is dead. This is a blow to me. It’s also a blow to K, and our other kitties Blink and Frankie.

Even though his demise was long anticipated it still hits me right in the vitals.

He was a terrible cat—needy, high maintenance, puked everywhere all the time, and he laid the nastiest poops I have ever had the privilege of smelling. Michael was a difficult cat to love, but I loved him with a fierce devotion despite his mind-numbing flaws.

Michael had cardiomyopathy. He was on drugs for that. He had a tendency to get crystals in his bladder so he was on a special food for that. He survived two operations to clean his bladder like it was nothing. The last six months he was having seizures or mini strokes and was on medicine for that. Fifteen years is not a bad run for a cat with so many health problems.

He never lacked for food and water, affection, pets, and a lap to sit on. Toys galore, high end cat litter—he had it all. He would purr all the time when he wasn’t howling like a banshee for what he wanted. There were many sleepless nights trying to figure out what he needed when he needed it.

The honeycomb hideout is so quiet now it’s uncanny.

The move to Portland must have been the shock that set him on a downward spiral. The move cross country to a cramped apartment with no air conditioning. The coyotes at night howling, the maintenance on the deck, and the stress of his human owners all added up to a push down the drain.

Something gave and he started to fill up with fluid in two sections of his body cavity. Pink fluid in his chest, milky white fluid in his abdomen. It made it hard for him to breathe and lay down. He stood by the food bowl for hours. It was heartbreaking.

Took him to the vet and had him drained, but the vet was like “this is it man, whatever it is none of the causes are good.” Skilled hippie vet with a jazz beard with all the knowledge, telling us the whole picture and what our options were.

Deflated like a balloon, Michael got to eat whatever he wanted and slept like a baby again for about a week. We petted him, talked with him, let him know we loved him and thanked him for everything. He started to swell up again though.

He had a meal with the other three cats all at once—tender beef feast his favorite. Then we all got to have one last Belonging Time together on the couch, watching the original Star Trek. He closed his eyes and for a moment was at peace. Then when it was over and we were getting ready to go to bed he had a seizure, crying out, relieving himself. Worst one ever. K and I believed he was telling us it was time.

For the last time ever I cleaned up his nasty poops, we put him in the kitty carrier, and the other cats said goodbye to him with a nose kiss. Then off to the vet.

The late night clinic was awesome. They did everything right to get us to where we needed to be. We said goodbye to Michael, but he was having trouble being present. Just before the injections began he rallied a little, to face the East, but we were committed. He grew limp as we spoke to him, petting him.

After a while his body grew cold and we had to say our last goodbyes, walk out of the room and never see him again. That was such a hard thing to do, even though I knew there was nothing else we could have done, that we did the right thing.

Out into the growing daylight of a new morning. I can only hope he has gone to someplace fun, what else have I got? As much as I know what I know while I’m alive, I still don’t really know what awaits us.

Grieving. Got Michael’s ashes a few days later. We’ve put him in a place of honor for the ritual of keeping and releasing. We keep having poltergeist effects and seeing him out of the corner of our eye. We set out a little food and water for him, a catnip leaf for him like he would love.

I dreamt that he visited me as an angelic owl cat much bigger than he used to be. He licked my hand and I knew he didn’t blame us for deciding that was it, that he loved us and he was our kitty.

Blink is happy to have one less competitor, while Frankie is depressed that her playmate is gone. Exact opposite of what K and I expected.

It’s a tremendous blow to my psyche. Michael and I spent many a long moment together on the Marshmellow Couch cuddling and relating to one another. The Marshmellow Couch is gone and now Michael is gone too. He was a good cat.

The vet told us that white and longhaired male cats are known for being stubborn and strong willed. K and I had to laugh. Now you tell us! It explains everything.

Here is the PDX Gingerbread Witch Spider Cookie that I ate.

Sickly sweet with a hint of spice, but definitely not nice. I got a small stomach quese-out after eating her. You’d have to be on serious business to eat a cookie like this.

Looking at one of my old tarot card paintings, I see the word “haiaa” written randomly in the folds of the volcano. Searching for the word on the Internet, the first thing that comes up is that in India it’s a word for “become”.

There’s a great horned owl outside. He’s established a territory in the woods around the secret treehouse I’ve been hiding in. Identified him and what he was doing through the sounds he makes.

Lots of woodpeckers too. Pileated, Northern Flicker, and two others I can’t identify yet. They like the food put out for them, and the plants all around on the porch that make the feeding seem safe.

I obtained a Bee Adventure Kit for the mason bees and put it together. It sits outside amongst the plants waiting for arrivals. A friend of mine also donated a bee hive to a struggling family in my name. More beekeeper experience points.

Lunar full moon in Scorpio releasing so much supportive energy towards me that I felt extra-energzied. Frankie was an absolute terror, escaped the treehouse and had to be recaptured—her favorite game. She needed lots of attention and a walkies to finally settle her down to the OMG level.

Got some horoscope clues about my life destiny. Very strong indicators that what I want match up with the things I’m here for. Getting there is the part that’s unknown to me. Clear goals, not so clear path.

Wore my Shiva message bracelet in the wooded park today, as K and I made our rounds along the crowded trail. I don’t want to be destroyed, but I’m also feeling like the trap I’m still in is greater than my abilities to escape from.

I don’t know what comes next, exactly. Now that I’ve faced my fears and vanquished my dragon, regained myself—deliverance is coming. The form it will take, still unknown. Brontosaur, my trusty UFO, flies on towards home. Soon I’ll know what comes next!

I want to thank Birdman for taking over hosting duties for a while. As it turns out, I’ve been consciously occupied with outside events of personal importance that have allowed for very little in the way of inward journeys. So, thank you Birdman, you have been a true friend in keeping this haven for me while I was away.

What happened?

K and I moved to the Pacific Northwest. This is something we have been wanting to do for a long time.

I quit my job, we donated or recycled a bunch of our belongings, and declined to renew our lease. We packed up Gamera with some luggage and a pair of cat carriers (one medium and one small), and then anything that didn’t fit in Gamera went inside a huge POD.

Loading the POD and emptying out ten years of stuff from a three story townhouse was a supreme ordeal. You need mad Tetris skills and nerves of steel from having studied several episodes of the TV show “Hoarders.” It took 38 hours, 27 of which was straight-on-till-morning, without sleep.

After making sure the PODzilla transport arrived (they had tried to call us to confirm, but our phone was already disconnected), we loaded the three cats Michael, Frankie, and Blink into their carriers. K and I made sure they had plenty of water, litter, food, and comfy blankees to sleep or throw up on.

With star charts in the crevices of the seats and jammed to the gills with food, bedding, clothes and computers we left Reston Virginia behind and embarked on our galactic voyage across the country. We still hadn’t had any sleep, but we were determined to reach our first stop in Toledo, Ohio.

Sometimes a heroic effort is necessary to break free of the octopus of the past.

We got stuck in traffic. The DC Foundry has a strong gravity well that can be formidable—in this case we spent an hour going 2 miles before we managed to escape. The temperature was brutally hot, but the AC held and the cats managed not to freak out until we were actually out of the jam.

Blink needed some calming medicine and the others a little petting. This was an adventure they had never encountered before! Then we were off again.

I don’t know where I got the strength and the will to go on, but I drove through the night until we reached our goal.  Despite the hotel directions being incomprehensible we found the place.

The hotel staff allowed us to check in late and stay in past check out (bless their hearts) so we could get a few hours extra sleep. 44 hours is a long time to go without sleep, let alone move like a beast and then drive ten hours.

The cats rolled with it.

Then, every day the same: Get up, pack the stuff and then load the cats, check out, get breakfast, gas up, drive to the next stop. Des Moines (Iowa), Cheyenne (Wyoming), Ogden (Utah), Boise (Idaho), and then Portland (Oregon). Six days of travel and full of danger and hilarity.

I didn’t know if I could drive for such long periods of time. That was always something my father did, and did with great skill and stamina. So in a way I have made my contribution to the Drive Yourself Crazy Club of which Ferguses are said to be members.

There is something of a meditation in having to be alert and discerning for endless hours of monotony. The body adapts to the external demands that the mind serves to navigate.

If there is one insight I come away from, having been 2800 miles of distance through the United States, it is that the country is a huge resource extraction wealth grab for the rich.

Corn fields in Nebraska as far as the eye can see, making corn syrup. Beef fields in Wyoming making ground beef for the franchise wars. Refineries processing coal for energy. All connected by roads and truckstops, with a slight nod to tourism (if you can afford it). All fenced in and owned or dominated by big business, with no signs of civilization or individuality anywhere.

When the cheap oil runs out and the diesel begins to strangle the truck lines all of this will die, blow away, leaving ghost towns and blighted landscapes full of nitrates.

It’s already happening—I could hardly believe how much construction was going on with the roads. A third of the roads I drove were in a state of repair, traffic redirected to a single lane for 25 miles at a time, again and again. And the roads that were new were composites—where is the asphalt? The quality of the roads is going to cheap materials as it breaks down faster, talk about surreal.

We passed a lot of wind farms, and that’s great, but you aren’t going to be running trucks or building roads or making fertilizer out of wind power. To see this country propped up like a house of cards with all wealth going to rich institutions with no thought of what comes after is to witness the triumph of mindless evil over decent human life.

As K and I drove through this desolation of self-destruction we encountered the elements. A thundering torrential rainstorm in Iowa that would become a roaring hurricane a few days later sweeping the east coast in a fury, destroying phone and power for millions.

The smoke clouds from the south as we drove through Wyoming were the beginnings of the massive brush fires that would destroy countless homes in Colorado, of a size to stagger the imagination in its scope. We drove through areas where the fire had burned everything to one side of the highway and then gone out when it met the road.

Some fires still blazed in their enclosed firetraps. I thought we were passing through a strip mine, when I realized the black earth was cinders covering the landscape of boulders that remained after everything else had perished. This is the future—nature crushing us back into the savage garden from whence we sprang.

Just remember, global warming is only a liberal hoax!

The vision is a horrific one, and beyond my small power to affect—yet I still ask what it is for and I will to will Thy will in my transformation. I shall remember this and express my own personal potion when the time is right, for do I not also contain a small spark of fire inside me, a thunder being holding a candle alight?

Then we reached our destination. It was as if we had stepped through the protective mists of Lothlorien, where some small craft, healing, and knowledge is preserved.

We stayed at a Buddhist retreat run by one of my oldest and dearest of friends, allowing the cats to stretch their legs and us to remember a little of what it means to be human beings. Eat, drink, walk, recover—our journey done and the real work of building a new home begins.

Our apartment is small, but perfectly placed for us to begin again. Everywhere are trees, ferns, lichens, mosses, and birds. There are secret and hidden places for me to discover new ideas and form new substance in the world.

As I attended college here, I went to the reunion to witness and regard the connections to the past that still shape my life today. There are ceremonies of the soul that cannot be shared, but of which there is great sensation and emotion pouring out into one’s life.

My old life is gone, destroyed by a thunder-fire storm of psychic change. I am nothingness, out of which may come the dawn.

The Celtic new year has just gotten underway, and here I am a little dazed at the last year of activity. Never mind all the nuclear meltdowns spewing radiation from afar, east coast earthquakes that feel like a jackhammer wedging of earth, hurricanes of doom missing by a few hundred feet, and rainfall soaking the loch above levels I’ve not seen since I can remember. The external world has been an expression of an inner volcano clearing its throat for an eruption.

Building a UFO can seem a little like a Noah’s Ark project at times like these.

Internally, all my life energies have gone into deep, sweeping currents rushing through the earth. I’ve had to get by on emergency life support and reserve warp only. Right at a time when I’ve been fighting a lot of battles on the home front. Lucerna’s kung fu lessons have basically kept me alive long enough to adapt to the transformational energies going on. The last year has essentially been panic and fear, dialed way up for sustained periods of time. The blinking and beeping lights on the emergency panel have been loud and overwhelming.

Thank goodness for the life support music from UFO girl!

In other news, it ain’t just me. Hek-sistah X is off on a retreat to re-visit places of great meaning to her, Hexe the Incorrigible is recovering from illness, and Alexi is busy fighting for his dream in a new land. The Quest Station is full of notes and doodles galore, all around adventure is ON THE GHOD-DAM AIR.

The garden is in shut down procedure, cats are in snuggle mode, and the honeycomb hideout and killer bees are settling in for the long winter. And it’s going to be a doozy—ran into a wooly bear and it had no orange stripes, which means you better be stocked in the larder and armed with plenty of anti-ice-weasel traps. Ol’ winter wolf has reared up dramatically and her howl is driving away the last of the summer lifeforce. Batten down the hatches and brace for impact at your stations of the cross, icy depth charges ahoy.

I made sure to give out lots of candy to the monsters dressed as humans and the kids dressed as monsters, while I still have candy to sacrifice.

So, what’s going on in doomsville? Been a while since I took a seat and rapped on the corner side here. The menagerie is alive and well, if at times it seems to have sprouted wheels and is sighted all about town.

I’m working on book two.  Book one is in a final stage of transformative elation text-wise; I promise to have the Gimmie Stuff page updated as soon as that is complete. Also working on a cover for the souvenir physical version.  Once that’s done I’ll look into converting for e-book files. My brain stem is acquiring all manner of new knowledge during this feisty process of refinement!

Seems like the planetary forces have been all stirred up.  Meteor showers, solar flares, floods and earthquakes.  Hek even on the metaphysical plane we got Cardinal Climaxes lined up, not to mention a heavy dose of psychic interference from all manner of weirdzo dimensions and denizens.  I’m having to expend a lot of mental energy keeping my health and my attention up to snuff.

The summer is a scorcher over here in the central wastes of indecision land. The garden is taking a lot of supply runs to keep going. Those bio-nutrient counteractants come at a high price in mosquito bites, sunburn and poison ivy, let me tell you! Onions, potatoes, basil, and tomatoes are bringing in the reinforcements in small amounts; hey whatever margin of survival we can manage we will. Corn, sunflowers, and peppers bringing up the rear.

The cats are in hyper reorganization mode, which is good. No news is good news as they say. As long as they are able to keep the hydroid bombers at bay with lazors, hey that’s good pattern.  Michael has a new nickname though: Tarball.  He’s big, he’s fat, and he needs to protect you from yourself by laying on you until you get the picture. Is this what Mad Max survival has been reduced to? No cool car chases here, just scavenging eroded out gas tanks on hulking wrecks, hoping to score some ten year expired dog food.

The crummy spaghetti and stir fry recipes we’ve been working on have been refined to our tastes. It’s helpful to have new fall backs we can hit the automatic switch with and get something to eat without panic. Have to say its a success. Though we still need more do-fers in our bag of tricks to make it more complete a meal plan. Still, anything that is cheap and easy and healthy is good. Keeps us out of the McFood troughs.

Long drawn out patrol while repair and reprogram procedures are refined and worked on. Lots going on in the furnace, just no heat yet in the hallways. The trans warp warm up takes a while.

Michael the cat surprised K and I by having a repeat episode of his bladder stones. The first time was two weeks after we had moved into the haunted house and were reeling from the major blow of circumstance that caused it.

This time the physical emergency was an upping of the ante. Kidney stones now in the mix (which might be solved by diet—the vet said they can’t remove them because it shocks the organ into permanent shutdown), and a stone in the pipe keeping him from venting the warp core plasma.  Not good!

Poor guy; Not only vacuuming our wallet but several days of poking, prodding, and other indignities from strangers. Away from his comforts. Plus he has a heart condition and is thirteen years old now, not good for his prognosis.

Right as we’re about to make a trip to spend time with K’s relatives, of course.  Now we have to do a day trip of four hours round total, so we can be back to check Michael’s status.  According to the weather fortune-teller, roads on the way back are going to be icy.

Michael is a pigpen, dirtbag jerk of a cat with a lot of bad cards in the health department.  But he’s tough and it’s K and I’s karma to be at his mercy, so I knew he’d pull through. He gave the vet a nasty bite for trying to give him a bath (K and I don’t call him towel-ripper for nothing, he will not be bathed, thank you). Go Michael, go!

Gamera is such an awesome monster car; He pulled us through the drive fine. The midnight Christmas threshold passed with us on the road through the cold and dark night taking the easy-does-it route home. Still, harrowing such that bed never felt so good with a face full of pillow.

I wake up Christmas morning to find a fog has descended on the neighborhood. It’s likely the warmer air mixing in with the cooler air of the blizzard snow pack.  The activity of the automatons is subdued, as if this holiday season pushed people to the brink of exhaustion. The kids shriek as they rip and tear, but the snow surrounds their enthusiasm, keeping it secret and safe. Michael rests on his favorite towel, content to have comfort restored.

Time for coffee. Frankie guard-cat and I sit upstairs in the crow’s nest and gaze at the fog together.  My friend Alexi should be in Orlando by now, jumping into the fray with his hair shaved off and starting a new life adventure like a Juke Box Hero.

Another random encounter Xmas survived; Can’t complain.

The new honeycomb hideout has an interesting feature in the backyard.  Our neighbor has placed a statue of Mother Mary on a pedestal, flanked on either side by golden angels blaring trumpets.  So every time I look outside, her head pokes above the fence to keep an eye on me, angels blaring away on their trumpets.  Talk about having a sacred and watchful eye on one’s self.

There’s a catnip plant for the kitties in the front yard.  Since we moved in it’s been taking off like gangbusters.  We give the kitties a leaf each now and then, but only as a special treat.  I swear, right off the plant the cats go right to their happy place and purr contentedly.  I mean, when you have Cat Town, after two years of haunted house duty, I’d be a honey tiger too.

I’m guessing that in a while the kitties will be adapted to the new wonder and begin bugging us with new ideas.  But for now I’m so happy to have them on a peaceful recovery.  Who knows how many zomboids and ghostaloos they lazored for us when the hell house was in full effect.

Mother Mary’s short duration personal assistant came by the other day.  She had with her a bottle of RC cola and a pack of ice.  Whoa, our haunted freezer refused to accept ice bags, as it was dimensionally not set up for anything beyond TV dinner sized.  She pours me a tall glass of RC on ice and pushes the sudsy spray right up to my nose.

“Close your eyes and sniff,” she says.

Oh man, I forgot how much fun it is to bring the suds of an icy poured drink up to your nose and let the bubbles tickle your spine.  It’s like a fizzy lifting alchemy, making your nose sticky and damp at the same time as the noise crackles in your ears.

“Have you been doing your exercises?”

Uh, like no.  Kind of been in emergency evacuate mode.  Still recovering.  She rolls with it, tells me I’ll be get back to my body awareness exercises once I’m ready.  In the meantime, she prescribes a musical training to supplement my psychic kung fu.  Says I have to complete the gaps in my wholeness.  This I won’t be able to get away from, she says.  I’m like, yeah cool, I’m committed.

She laughs.  All I had to do was say yes.  The rest will handle itself.

I guess so!  She’s got things to do, people to see, so we cut it short.  Outside, cicadas are chirring like nobody’s business.  I spot a discarded cicada exoskeleton on the exploding-with-growth tomato plant in the front yard as I wave to her.

Which is funny, because a friend of mine was just complaining about how cicadas keep showing up in the literature he’s been reading, as symbols of remembrance–days when one was young.  I do admit there’s something primal about cicadas.  But my youthful nostalgia evocative sound is trucks on a highway.  Sends me back to when I lived in a car.

And fizzy cola on the nose is also an evocative sensation for me.  As a kid I would run right up to glasses and yell, “suds!”  So maybe that’s the lesson.  Getting back in touch, after being in the hopper for two years.

The new living quarters are situated in a nice forgotten world, suitable for K, the kitties and I to recover safely from our ordeal in the crum-bum haunted house.  We’re puttering around the house, K and I, trying to figure out what to allocate our slowly increasing warp power to today.

I get a transmission from my way-out, surprisingly random Aquarius friend Mar-Jam, also known as “Goddess”, solver of prickly practical problems, and strangely clever girl.  She knows I’m a big-big monster, so I like a big-big bite.  Thus the three-megabyte image attached to the transmission of a tri-force shelf unit of impeccable usefulness in just the right dramatic moment.

Move heavy objects and do some more work on the new place’s layout, when we’re still recovering from the month long moving nightmare?  You bet.  We need more shelves and they need to fit this one area near the kitchen in just the dramatically appropriate way.  We’d be fools to turn down this mission, and all it’s attendant experience points (only true adventurers need apply).

We get to see Mar-Jam’s nifty living quarters (and we take notes on the controlled randomness obscurity circuitry we see), and her adorable little ones absorbing nutrients from the tidepool they are living in.  With the help of her handy other half we transport the goods to the Honeycomb Hideout .  They get rid of junk, and we make use of junk!

Everybody wins, ice cream on the house.

There’s some damage—cuts, aches and pains—all that good stuff from taking on such a mammoth task.  But the three shelving units plug into the hyper-altimeter retro space byway like they were meant to be there all along.  It’s then that we realize what has come to our humble abode:  Cat Town.

By some strange arrangement of the furniture, the tops of the tall shelves are a perfect place for the cats to hang out and survey the downstairs situation.  Frankee finds the secret route over the mountains first.  Then Michael, fat and ungainly monticore that he is, manages to attain heights I haven’t seen since he was a young monticore.  It’s unreal!

Of course, the shelves make perfect storage units for the china, extra dishes, and various assorted things we’ve been dying to unpack but couldn’t find the right disembarkment combination for.

So, welcome to Cat Town, highest point in the downstairs living energy flow, with lots of space to plop down comfortably.  Plenty of great angles to rub one’s fur against, and also enough of a sunk-in effect to peer down if necessary or hang one’s paws over lazily.  I am sure it will only be a matter of time before cat beds, soft towels and other assorted comfy surfaces begin to accumulate.  Along with favored toys carried up to be ripped lovingly to shreds in the safety of alpine security.

But wait, there’s more!  It even comes with a bonus for humans too.  Within moments of plugging in Cat Town, K and I find ourselves inspired to do more work on the house.  The downstairs and upstairs bathrooms are cleaned, cleansed, and made fully pleasing to our mind’s eyes.  Unpacking galore!  At last we can open up both rooms to the cats, having arranged all things to our liking.

It’s like in a video game when you open up a whole new area of the adventure board.  Hey, I’ll take the bonus.  The cats are the happiest I’ve seen them since we smuggled them free of the haunted house under a blood red sky, and landed them in the new place with their eyes bugging out, hardly daring to believe it was true.

There is no place I know to compare with pure imagination.

No sooner have I got the Goob-a-loo settled in, when the next monster jumpdoggy surprise arrives. Causing no small amount of trouble is an infestation of anxiety-causing mineraloid entities from the depths of inner space and they want major amounts of psychic juice! And they’re willing to put down roots in your brainpan to get it.

For a while I have to fend these micronic high-density critters off with a couple of whacks from the slapstick. The next thing I know my car is about to blow a tire and I’m getting fleeced by the most charming mechanic this side of rip-offs town. Yeah, in this dire economy boo-hoo down in whosville it’s a laugh riot getting money vacuumed out of the ducat interface, but may as well laugh at my own lack of sleight of hand self-defense.

Speaking of which, I show up for my first kung fu lesson with Mother Mary and I get one of her short duration personal assistants. Said assistant proceeds to show me how sadly out of shape I’m in and how not in tune with fundamentals I am. No special maneuvers, awesome skillz, or fabulous finishing moves for me. Going to be all blue Mondays for a while.

Not that I’ve forgotten the music quest, but man does that new U2 song suck eggs. Depression +1 as the critters cackle at me on the other side of the barricaded door. Oh, what am I cryin’ about? Sooner or later that UFO Girl soundtrack clue will pay off. In the meantime, I have to deal with these critters or I’m going to find all sorts of lack in the mental cupboards.

Speaking of which, where did all my bath bombs, bath salts and luxury soaps go? Oh crumbs, everything’s turned upside down at the haunted house in real time. All that reorganization and now I’ve misplaced the usual bath meditation tools. Just when I need to escape the crazy doom knocking at my closet door while I hide. No worries – break out the hard-core incense that got dug out of the back rows and estate sale cheapo cool dude 50’s candles and I’m in my own little steam bath retreat. Maybe now I can think.

Frankie Day is today, Friday the 13th. That means trouble galore from the depths of mischievousness. I’m going to have to make sure Frankie gets a long walkies and tour of the folks house (she loves that), to celebrate her discovery and rescue from the dumpster by K and I. The next day is VD day, so K and I are going to have to do the Devil’s Children thing and be anti-romantic. Browsing for good manga at the comic store, followed by a hot date at Burger King. Maybe we’ll have an angry whopper and get down with our saucy selves.

What strikes me is that there’s physical stuff going on all over the place. Time to get grounded and find out what’s amping up the psychic electric juice to jittery whackaloon levels. I’m going to have to find a place to plant these droll dumplings, before they get to the meltdown level. The carpet’s got enough issues as it is. The next step must be to go through the haunted house and find a suitable place, lure the dang varmints over, and take care of business.

If only it were as easy as it sounds.