Run. Dog. Cat. Cat. Me.

Wakey wakey, use your brake-y.

Just before hubs’ alarm went off this morning Cat’s internal alarm went off.  *sigh*  I carried her downstairs.  A few days ago I was carrying her downstairs and she saw my backlit reflection in the patio door. Apparently my appearance was terrifying and she kicked off in a leap that spanned five stairs, landing with a thud in the den and hauling cat a$$ into the bathroom, her tail the size of a baseball bat.  Now she’s started doing  that as habit.  Or, I’m terrifying every morning.  Perhaps she should allow me to wake naturally, eh?

I’m working on being a better morning person.  I haven’t actually managed a smile yet (that would just be frightening for all involved) but I’ve gotten in some conversation that has consisted of more than hmmmm and ummmm and grrrrr.

This morning I managed an actual, real conversation.  Like, entire sentences strung together in a paragraph of verbal communication.  Really, what is there to talk about at 5am?  We have weather, yes.  It’s hot or cold, it’s wet or dry.  Unless you’re making coffee in a hurricane (which my sis-in-law did do in the past month, I don’t think she enjoyed it) you can’t squeeze much more out of weather.  There’s the obligatory ‘love you, have a good day’ which is nice but it’s rather a platitude.  It would have greater meaning in its absence; that would not be a good thing.

This morning I returned to bed in the (vain) hopes of falling back asleep.  Then I started thinking about Saturday’s race and the policeman getting hit by that truck, as I’d mentioned earlier. He’s OK, but it scared the stew out of all of us.  I think perhaps the MPD should consider issuing Depends in the line of duty.  I was wide awake mentally writing a letter of commendation to his superior.

Finally I gave up and went to make coffee. Hubs was up looking at the paper, getting ready to go swim about 10 million laps before work.  He’d been out of town and hadn’t heard the entire story, plus I’d gotten more information, so I started telling him about Saturday.

Shortly after I’d put out the flames of The Safety Pin Incident I was in the parking lot checking that everything was going well when I heard a commotion in the street.   There was a man in a very large pickup truck, all duded out with extra-large parts as though the driver has issues for which he’s compensating.  He didn’t seem inclined to want to wait for the ladies to cross the street, even though the officer was standing there with his hands up, stopping traffic all around.  The driver pulled forward toward the officer, who indicated loudly that the driver needed to stop, NOW.  Fortunately at this point everyone was standing at the side of the street, frozen; there were no pedestrians in the road.  We were probably all thinking about the same thing:  you have to be some kind of special stupid to encourage a cop to yell at you.

The driver pulled forward again; the officer, in front of the truck, yelled to stop.  Suddenly the driver slammed the accelerator.  The officer slid off the front of the truck and onto the street.  I stared, horrified – if his feet got twisted up he would have been run over.  It took like two hours, or maybe 20 seconds, for two motorcycle cops to take after the truck.  Seconds or an hour later a cruiser took off behind them.  One of our coaches had the license plate info and they were already radioing everything in by the time I got to the street.  The officer was obviously a bit shaky but completely in charge and control.  While working the radio and relaying information he kept the traffic flowing and continued to direct the women across the street.

After the race our course director returned from collecting cones and reported that Mr. Stupid Sir lived down the street and around the corner near the course.  There were seven cruisers and a flat-bed tow truck in front of his house, taking Sir Stupid and his compensating truck downtown.  Apparently he was completely drunk and had taken off running from his driveway.  Hopefully his visit downtown will give him time to reflect on life and make some new commitments, one of which might be coffee first thing in the morning instead of anything stronger.

It makes me think, Cat needs to be grateful that I don’t drive a truck down the stairs.