I’ll bet you didn’t know Dean and I can communicate without uttering a word. We can. That’s what happens after you’ve been married longer than you’ve been alive ... or maybe it just feels that way. Anyway, one of the things that happens when you've been married as long as we have is that you know what the other one is thinking without them saying a word. That’s why when Dean says “Ah!” I know he’s spilled a hunk of meat or some other chunky type of easily removed food on his shirt. (I'm not sure how to write the Ah! other than to say you should be pronouncing the A the same as in cat but also down in your throat; say it out loud now … Ah! Got it?) When Dean says “AAAAhhhhhh!” I know he’s spilled some tomato sauce or salsa, or something that will require soaking, on his shirt. When he says “AAhhh! … come here Shadow,” I know he’s spilled something on the kitchen floor while he’s cooking. When he says “AAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!” I know what he’s spilled is even too much for Shadow to handle and I’ll be wiping down cupboards and mopping the kitchen floor.
So today, while I was cleaning the house, vacuuming up the cat fur, dog fur, flakes of dry skin (which increase exponentially when winter strikes) and other miscellaneous chunks of dirt, and I yelled, “AhhhhhOhhhhhhhhh!!!!” really loud (pronounced just like it’s written) our nonverbal communicative skills told him exactly what I was saying. “Suck up your earring?” Well, nonverbal communicative skills and the fact that earlier I had said to him “I really hope I find my earring today.”
I’d been searching for my earring since we’d gotten home from Edinburgh. It was one of my favorite pairs of earrings and I’d worn them every day we were there. When I got home, after 11 hours of flying and a four hour drive home, as I walked through the kitchen on my way to the bedroom, I took off the earrings and laid them on the kitchen counter. Why? Who knows. I blame jetlag. I could have easily worn them 15 seconds longer and taken them off in the bedroom and put them away but I didn’t.
The next morning, when I got up, only one earring remained on the counter. Apparently the kitties thought I’d brought them a shiny new toy. They probably felt they deserved it because they didn't have as many toys as they used to. I'd been noticing some of their toys had gone missing but I figured they’d just gotten thrown into the bins of toys we keep for the grandkids. If I’d been a little less lazy and looked for those toys earlier, there might have been other things on the counter more tempting to them than my earring. Come on, don’t wrinkle your nose. You know your cats are also walking around on the kitchen counter, sleeping on the kitchen table, and licking the butter. Maybe your cats are sneaky and don’t do it when you’re around, but you know that cat fur in the butter had to get there somehow.
I looked everywhere I could think of for that earring ― under the rugs, under the bed, under the couch. I even pulled out the refrigerator. I half expected to see it fall out of the sheets when I did the laundry last weekend because we regularly wake up with kitty toys under the blanket ― but no earring.
So, I decided while I was cleaning the house today I would also inspect and vacuum all the hot air registers in the floor just in case while they were playing floor hockey with my earring, it slipped down the grate. I stuck my nose down 11 holes in the floor searching for a silver earring and then listened carefully for a rattle in case I sucked it up with over a year’s worth of dead spiders, fur balls and grit. No earring. I knew it had to be somewhere because it had not appeared in the kitty litter ― not yet anyway.
As I was cleaning our bedroom floor I decided to move the dresser away from the wall, just in case my earring was hiding there. I didn't find my earring, but I did find the mother-load of kitty toys.
Turns out searching the toy bins for kitty toys wouldn’t have made a difference anyway, and if it wasn’t for my missing earring we wouldn’t have clean hot air registers which I’m sure will keep us much healthier this winter because we won’t be breathing in all the small particles of fur and skin that would have been blowing out of the vents, so we’ll be able to do more skiing, which will make us even more healthy and fit, which will give me more energy, so I might feel like cleaning the vents more often, and cleaning under the dresser more often, and hey … do you think the kitties hid my earring on purpose so I’d do a better job of cleaning and find their toys?
Anyway, I pulled out the toys and swept the pile of dirt over into another growing pile of dust and dirt so I could vacuum it up. Somehow during all this sweeping I unknowingly swept up my earring. I think it must have been so covered in fur balls that I didn’t see it until just before I moved the nozzle of the vacuum in front of it and swwwoooooped it up. The good thing is it was just a little too heavy to make it all the way to the bag but was lying in that place where the bag attaches to the vacuum so I didn’t have to sit outside on a snow-covered deck sorting through all the dead spiders and dead skin and fur and really, really gross stuff I’d been vacuuming up.
And now the kitties think it’s Christmas, I have my earring back and everything is peaceful. At least until the kitties learn to open drawers with their tiny little teeth ...
or I hear “AAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!” from the kitchen and I have to dig out the mop again.
◦
Spock Isn't The Only Melder
