Collecting Cat Poop For My Mother

OK so this one time… at my mom’s house… my crazy mother was in the back yard doing some watering when she saw this big clump of mud stuck to the side of the house, on the underside of the eaves. “Flying Grasshoppers” were flying in and out of it she said. So she grabbed a shovel and knocked it off the side of the house. Bad move.

If you know my mother at all you know that it takes more than being attacked by a hive of wasps to frighten her. Instead she got mad, went and grabbed a rake and a can of Formula 409 and went to town on them… She waged war on an entire hive of wasps, in flight, with a rake and an AEROSOL can of Formula 409 with a Gemco price tag on it’s rusty bottom. (meaning this can was over 15 years old at the time)

She called me 3 days later, saying that the “stupid flyer grasshoppers” bit her and she was swollen up in bed for the last 3 days. My mother achieved celebrity status among my friends for this one. My friend Joe still has the can of 409 that i confiscated from her on a shelf in his garage.

So now she has a gopher problem. I have never dealt with a gopher problem before and I’ve never seen them at that house… i pulled up the other day and the front lawn looked like scattered shit. I’m guessing the construction a block away flushed them out and they migrated over to her street.

Anyway it looks like she has developed another famous home-brewed-remedy for pest-removal… She’s been digging the dirt out to expose the holes and then pours bleach down the holes. I can totally see her funny logic here. She has always poured bleach down clogged drains and so here, to her, is another problem in the form of a hole in the ground. Of course the bleach is just going to soak into the dirt right under the hole… unless gophers make their tunnels out of pipes or something… or they tunnel up from the center of the earth in a straight line so the bleach just falls until it pegs the gopher right in the mouth or something. At the very least, we know that no grass is going to grow wherever she pours that shit… not for a long time.

So after bagging on her for a bit, she asks me to build a better gopher trap. I go online and look up gopher removal and I find this: www.american-lawns.com/proble…ut.html Apparantly you can pour used cat litter down gopher holes to get rid of them. Cats are one of the gopher’s natural predators and they freak out when they catch the scent of cat droppings. They think they’re in cat territory and they bail.

If that turns out to be a load of shit (no pun intended) then I’m going to buy her a big wooden mallet so she can sit there and wait for their little heads to pop up and then try to smash them.

Tags: cats, parents, sacramento

The Plot Thickens… (Like Yo Mama)

Tags: adoption, novelty, parents, swami, your mom

An Educational Afternoon

Visted my mother for an hour that turned into three… heard a lot of interesting stories for the first time… the most interesting of which is that she almost adopted a korean girl before I came into the picture… she said that she was 4 months pregnant with me when the agency came to her asking if she was interested in this girl. But, according to my mother’s angry phone call to me in 1993, I was adoped too.so i think what she’s saying is that she had a choice and she chose me over her… then she capped the story by telling me how she always wishes that she had adopted the girl too.

My mom has been avidly denying the fact that i am adopted ever since she broke the news to me herself 13 years ago. i verified it with my dad who sighed and lit up a cigarette and proceeded to tell me the whole story. Apparantly I was the product of an affair had by a lady and her tae-kwon-do instructor… she had a husband and 3 children at home already. This took place in the faraway land of Rancho Cordova. My dad said he was shocked that she told me because she has always been so strongly against me knowing.

So anyway she’s in denial and makes up stories about being pregnant with me and there’s no pictures in the house of me younger than 4 months old or of her pregnant in any way. But this was the closest she’s ever come to talking about it. She went into detail about how the agency came to check out the house and checked their credit and histories… and all supposedly because she was considering adopting this girl…  So I asked “What was the name of the agency?” and she replied “Holt.”

So finally i have a lead. I just sent an information request to Holt International Children’s Services and we’ll see what pops up.

Tags: adoption, novelty, parents, sacramento

Scenes From a Weird Evening

During Dinner At My Mother’s Place:

Me: I gotta go Ma… I’m meeting a friend.
Mom: Boy or Girl?
Me: Girl.
Mom: Where?
Me: Downtown.
Mom: She is hooker?!

At The Gas Station By My House:

Man Talking to Himself (but for other people’s benefit) While Pumping Gas Into a Beat Up Convertible 90s Oldsmobile and Obviously High on Some Manner of Meth: All right man….. heh…. yeah….. got a full tank of gas…. a pocket full of cash….. fuckin twelve pack…. ha…. (replaces pump handle and gets in his car while watching me out of the corner of his eye) ready to party man…. let’s go to the strip club! AWRIGHT!!! (starts the engine and peels out with one wheel… out of the gas station parking lot… all the way up the street with the rear shocks dippin’)

Some Corner Facing West In Midtown:

Bicycling Asian Girl I Almost Ran Over: …..  (sees life flash before eyes)
Me: …..  (whispering: “Sorry…”)

Tags: haw, parents, sacramento, swami, your mom