must… kill…

It is about 9:30. I’m brewing the first pot of coffee, which means I haven’t had any. In less than 24 hours, and with them having seen no revisions, I am just getting the 5th email with changes for a particular section of a customer’s site. It is the 5th different revision to the same area. We want agent photos to rotate. We want agent photos with testimonials. We want smaller agent photos, so they show at the same time, with testimonials. We want photos to fade in and out. And now, instead of agent photos, we want pictures of typical houses for the area.

As I said, I haven’t started on their first suggestion. They have seen nothing from me. They are revising all this in their head, and I wish they’d just pin it down and let me get started. Frustrating.

What’s more frustrating? Another local team guy is leaving us. David R. is resigning, hopefully for a better job someplace. Friday is supposed to be his last day. Who will be taking over his accounts?….. ugh. Guess I’ll deal.

Addendum: David’s resigning was a misunderstanding… seems he’s on the list to be layed off end of the month, though. Grrrrrrreat. Grrrrrrrr.

Meanwhile… brewing coffee, reading yet another left-field revision idea, when the reassuring hum of old Star Trek coming from the Sci-Fi channel turns into static. I flip channels. Snow. I go downstairs. We have guide, sound, but snow for picture. Upstairs, same thing. Even though it’s not a total outage, with our history of outages due to retarded cable guys fucking up our connection as they turn off other people… I think, if this JUST happened, maybe he’s still out there and I can yell at him instead of waiting for 3 days for somebody to come back. Thus, still wearing the big, ugly, coral housecoat that is scary but warm, I run out onto the back patio to see if I can see anybody fucking with the cable box. Can’t see. I run out the front door to see if I can see a Comcast van anywhere. Nothing in sight.

About that moment, I grow very self conscious of standing out front in my housecoat and turn to go back inside, just in time to see kitty’s paw tugging the front door open enough to slip out… and run run away away, she merrily ran away. I curse. Actually, I curse a lot, because it keeps me from slamming the door as I go back inside and possibly waking up Brad. I am cursing out loud the things I will do to the cat once I catch her.

I get dressed. I grab the bag of cat treats, and go back outside. She is under the bushes. Slowly she approaches my outstretched hand, as I kneel with a treat. I make no sudden movements. I’m no longer cussing. My “here kitty kitty” is as non-threatening as I can muster, yet… she snubs the treat and flees for the neighbor’s bushes. I leave a couple treats on the front walk, go back inside leaving the door cracked, and fetch the big guns…. that is, the canned cat food.

As I open the front door again, she is at the walk, sniffing the treats. She spies me, and takes off, of course. I lay down the bowl of cat food and kneel beside it. Again, she inches toward me, eyeing me warily, and again, without any provocation, she turns and runs, this time the other direction, toward our neighbor’s jeep and open garage door.

I have shit to do. Errands to run. I hear the lawn maintenance guys approaching with their leaf blowers, and know once they get to our building, that cat will be up a tree or in another zip code about as fast as she can run with the drag from a fully puffed-out tail. To my right, a neighbor girl is walking her dog on a leash… another immanent threat to send kitty running. She runs from everything, including me, and thus, my plan is hatched.

A convenient plastic shopping bag, placed on the front porch, with the bowl of cat food to hold it in place, creates just enough noise in the wind to draw Kitty back from the side of the building. I have left the front door open, and lie in wait, sitting in my car. The leaf blower approaches from one side… the dog from the other… kitty is at the food dish right in front of our front door. At this point, I slam my car door and start toward the house, and she sees me, turns and flees into the safety of the apartment.

Stupid cat. She’s getting a bath tonight.