Gary has this uncanny talent for channeling Harry (the 18 pound silver tabby) and letting me know what is really going on inside the cat’s furry head. Apparently the cat has a Brooklyn accent.
“Got a sandwich? Can I have a sandwich?”
“What the fuck is that smell?!?” (This, on the BQE headed over the Triboro into Queens. You know that smell.)
“The fucking Guatemalans stole the lawn!!1!”
This last bit had me in literal tears on the way home from dinner this evening. I do this high pitched squeaking, heaving noise that sounds like a sick dog. My nose runs, my eyes leak, I’m a danger to myself and everything on the road. To back up a bit: last week we hired landscapers (okay, two boys, Anthony and Larry, maybe they’re in their 20’s, who work at the local nursery) to scrape the top 2″ from our entire back yard, getting rid of all the weeds, all the grass (such as it was), construction debris, everything. They also broke up three pieces of cement sidewalk that were laid like a path leading from a nice stone path to the deck. May I remind you that no one lived in our house legally for at least seven years before we bought it; hence, the soil quality is poorer than white trash. This project left the back yard a literal dust bowl, but weed-free. Harry has been begging to go outside, escaping twice in the past two days, so I rigged him up in his harness and leash, and let him out. He bolts for the now-vanished grass and stops dead in his tracks. He sniffs, loudly, and looks up indignantly as if to say, “Where’s my fucking salad? I left it right here.” We tour the back yard, then venture out to the front, chewing the crewcut of a lawn there is now (the boys weed-whacked the rest of the grass to within an inch of its life). We stayed out there for about a half hour, him rolling in the dirt, trying to get under the latticework of the porch where the boys had ripped up a stump, sniffing everything. Fast forward to this evening after dinner: I’m checking out digital voice recorders on Amazon. Gary holds up his microscopic new iAudio device, and says, “This is a digital voice recorder.” “Really? Wow! It’s so tiny!” He fiddles with it a bit, and then…click here (turn on your speakers). I love my husband.
