lunch lady

Since my cat was a tiny kitten, she has had an obsession with playing with my hair while I try to sleep at night.  Dinks tends to get carried away playing in my hair and gets so excited that she usually ends up trying to pull out strand by strand with her razor sharp kitten teeth.  This hurts me so.  I wake up in the middle of the night to the feeling of having my hair ripped from its follicle almost nightly.

I've considered wearing a shower cap to bed.

new

Sara made me change my blog background and layout.  She said the previous green background looked like vomit and made her not want to look at it.  So I changed it.  Eh.

THE ROBE

Two Christmases ago I had a phone conversation with my mom who is the head of the gift-giving and buying committee.  I go straight to her and she tells me every Christmas or birthday what to get for each person since she usually has the inside deets into what they want.  This particular Christmas, my mom specifically told me to buy my little brother, 13 at the time, a new robe.  

Since he was a little lad, my brother could be seen lounging in a robe.  We called him a young Hugh Hefner but that's not really funny since, you know, he doesn't live around any Play Bunnies but instead just lives at home with my mom and stepdad.  In most of the pictures I have of my bro that are taken from home  he's usually in a robe.  He started to outgrow the one he had had since he was like, 5.  The sleeves were no longer full and instead only covered three fourths of his arm.  The length of his old robe no longer came down to cover his legs but instead barely covered his thighs.  So my mom decided it was time he got a new house coat even though I'm pretty sure my brother could have gone on wearing it without noticing it had gotten smaller.

I shopped around and decided it was time for my brother to have something fancy.  Something plush and warm.  A little sophisticated.  Something Italian.  

If it was Italian it had to be good.

I paid an arm and a leg for the upgraded robe.  I wrapped it lovingly and put a sweet card on it.

It was a dark blue Alfani robe with deep pockets that made me want to crawl inside and live and eat cookies and drink milk.  I almost wanted one for myself.

My brother ripped open the package I gave him on Christmas morning and grinned from ear to ear while putting it on over his pj's.  He wore it all day while he played video games and while we ate Christmas dinner together.  Week after week, my mom gave me updates and told me I had made an excellent choice, as my brother hadn't really changed out of his robe except to wear school clothes.  

I was proud.  

Then the molting happened.

My mom called me about a month later.  "Where in the hell did you get that robe from?"  

"It came from Macy's.  Why?"

My mom said, "It's starting to shed.  Your brother wore it so much that it started to smell so I had to wash it.  Now it's shedding."

"What do you mean it's shedding?  I paid good money for that thing.  It's Italian!"

She told me the robe was a piece of crap and that the shedding was getting all over her stuff.  Apparently, the robe had begun to "pill" and tiny balls were beginning to form on the robe and then the tiny balls were coming off on the sofa, rug, bedding, carpet, faces, etc..

The molting, pilling, shedding, and general decompensation grew worse and worse as my brother continued to wear the robe like a daily uniform at home.  The more he wore it, the more it needed washing.  The more my mom washed it, the more the robe willed tiny balls on my family's belongings.  

My mom called me, alarmed.  "That robe you bought for your brother is shit!  Tiny balls are getting in my carpet and we've started threatening to spank your brother if he doesn't clean them up!"

That's what my brother fondly refers to as "The Harvest."  Annoyed with my parents' screams and slightly scared of their threats of beatings, he spent the majority of his free time picking up the robe's insensitive fabric balls all over the house.  He tried vacuuming the balls.  He tried a lint roller.  He tried a fabric shaver.  He tried getting the balls one by one out of the carpet with tweezers.  He refused to give up wearing the robe so the shedding never ceased.

My stepdad intervened.  Enough was enough.  He went to the mall and bought a new robe.  A cheap robe.  My parents called me on speakerphone to tell me that my robe had been replaced.

My robe was tossed outside.  My parents fondly refer to this as "The Banishing."  No more robey balls.  My brother happily wore his new robe and never even missed mine.  My parents warned me never to buy another robe for my brother again.  I pouted and acted offended that my Italian designer robe had been treated so poorly.  It wasn't the robe's fault.  Surely it must have been a user error.  Had my mom not washed it so insanely, maybe it wouldn't have pilled up like that.  My skin would start to molt and shed, too, if it was repeatedly washed on the Heavily Soiled cycle.  Maybe, if the robe had been cleansed using the GENTLE cycle with a little TLC it wouldn't have retaliated like it did.  

So another Christmas went by and there was no robe-giving on my end.  I think I ended up sticking to gift cards.  Safe choice.  Whoever heard of a gift card trashing a house?  Nobody could complain this way.  Use gift cards to buy your own damn lounge wear is what I say from now on.  Well, I don't say it out loud but I certainly think it!

It was cold outside.  Slightly raining.  My mom walked me and Gizzie to my car parked outside her garage to say goodbye before I left to head home.  Gizzie sniffed the air and wandered over to a wooden bench next to my mom's rose bush I gave her for Mother's Day a few years ago.  The bench was covered with a frozen blanket that had been tossed outside haphazardly and gotten wet.  We turned to see Gizzie instantly hike his little leg, peeing on the frozen blanket that was halfway covering the bench and almost touching the ground.

"What's that?"  I asked my mom, drawing my nose up in disgust.  The blanket looked tattered and torn and abused.

She laughed and clapped in delight at Gizzie's choice to hike and pee where he did.  I couldn't figure out what was funny.  

"That's THE ROBE!!"