The wife burns everything she cooks, even the cat.

My beautiful wife has many skills and talents. Cooking, however, has never been one of them. Don't get me wrong -- she makes a mean buffalo chicken dip and some tasty, tasty chocolate covered peanut butter balls. But dinner? Still a work in progress.  And I tease her relentlessly about it.  And she beats me for it. Lather, rinse, repeat.  I never really know when to keep my mouth shut. 

 

So...it's a Wednesday night and I'm going to be home at a reasonable hour (by "reasonable" I mean before the little hand makes it to the double digits). Traci offers to cook dinner for us, which I happily accept and deem to be part of my birthday present. She decides to make rigatoni with chicken in a tomato based sauce. Sounds good. I settle in at the computer to generate some profits for the QE partnership until dinner is ready. 

 

The next thing I know, Traci comes into the office and she starts explaining that Ivy has proved herself dumber than Lucas. (As you may read in later posts, Lucas has traditionally been known as the 'dumb' cat in the family.) Something's wrong though....Traci is clearly in "spin mode" here.  According to the wife's version of events, Ivy (of her own volition) stood on the gas stove near the pot of boiling water and singed her fur on the burner.  The apartment has the strong odor of burned hair, so there's no question that there was cat-to-fire contact. But how? 

 

Now ask yourself which of the following two scenarios is more likely to have occurred: 1) that an animal with highly developed senses and survival instincts would get so close to an open flame that it would burn itself? Or 2) that my wife (who once managed to burn chocolate in the microwave -- I mean smoking-hissing-and-need-to-run-water-over-it-to-avoid-setting-off-the-smoke-detectors-burning) somehow managed to burn the cat in the course of cooking dinner? 

 

Be careful, my mind locked up on that one, too.  Lather, rinse, repeat.   

Can't know the players without a scorecard....

So. You're new to this blog. (Well, given that this is the first post I'm writing, I'd be very worried if you had been here before.) What's it going to be about? Nothing. It's going to be the Seinfeld of blogs. Except not as funny.  Just another mindless drone putting his thoughts onto the interweb. Then again, perhaps it will be funny -- I have a sense of humor. "Of course you have a sense of humor. Everyone thinks they do, even people who don't." -- Barney Coopersmith.

Anyway, on with the show.  In case the title of the blog wasn't enough to give you a sense of those living in the apartment...let me give you a quick cast of some of the characters that will run through future postings.  I will go in reverse order of the blog's name, because if I put the wife after the animals, I am quite sure that it will have an adverse effect on my quality of life.   

Traci - The wife.  We just got married in September (2008), so I'm once again adjusting to the change in nomenclature.  The good news is that wife sounds much cooler than "fiance" -- which makes me feel like I'm going to puke in my mouth.  

Toby - The fat dog. Seriously. He's 80 pounds of dog, capable of eat a hamburger in one a single bite.  He thinks he's the alpha dog. He and I have fights about this.  Then again, Traci thinks she's the alpha dog. She and I have fights about this. I don't win a lot of fights.

Bo - The alpha cat.  The black and white cat. Brother of Luke. 

Luke - The beta cat.  (I've never actually heard the term "beta" anything used this way -- but it sounds right.)  The grey and white cat. Brother of Bo. 

Mona - The third cat.  My buddy Summa (he and the other humans that we're friends with will likely be introduced in a subsequent post) says that she kinda looks like Jimmy Durante because she has this brown spot on her nose that makes her look kinda like she climbed the ugly tree one too many times as a kitten.

Ivy - The fourth cat.  Her real name is IV, as in the fourth roman number.  Because she's the fourth cat.   Traci wanted to name her El Quatro, so that we could call her Ellie.  I told her that she'd have to wait until we could do Dodgeball true justice and legitimately name a cat El Ocho.  Traci made clear that we'll never have a cat named Ellie.