Rambling Rhodes

Getting Twiggy With It

Within the next few weeks, my girlfriend will have officially moved in with me. I have mixed feelings on this, by which I mean I'm not looking forward to it much at all. But, like a car stalled on train tracks, with a train just a block away and closing fast, there's not much I can do about it.

Much of her stuff has already been moved in. Many of her pictures and paintings now adorn the walls, lamps chosen for aesthetics rather than pragmatism have replaced the $10 K-Mart floor lamps I bought last year. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

It's just that I'm not much on cozy decorations and things. I'm indifferent to bare walls, and I certainly see no reason in the world to hang plants indoors. I mean, all I have to do is look out the window, where there are hundreds, if not thousands of plants that are doing just fine, and I don't even have to water them or anything.

But, it seems to make her happy to decorate my house, and I guees so long as she's happy, she won't bother me while I play my video games. It seems like a pretty fair trade, I guess.

Still, there are indications that having her under the same roof will bring with it a certain amount of domestic tension.

For example, last weekend, Saturday morning, we were awoken by the sounds of my two cats making unusual noises in the living room. One thing about owning cats is that you become attuned to common cats noises and uncommon ones. These were uncommon noises, so my girlfriend got up to investigate. For my part, since it was 8 a.m., I was under my strict personal policy of not getting out of bed on a weekend until at least 11 a.m., unless there's a fire or tornado, and even then there's a good chance I won't get out of bed.

"AHHHH!" screamed Mel from the living room.

"What?!" I yelled back, concerned, but not concerned enough to get of bed.

"Bad kitties!" she screamed.

"What?!" came my response.

"I can't believe you bad kitties!"

"What?!"

"I hate you kitties!"

"What?!"

"Stop saying what!"

"What?!"

"Come out here, if you want to know what!"

"It's 8 a.m., so no way! What?!"

"The kitties knocked over my twig!"

Now, there are times when you can't possibly imagine you heard someone correctly. Sometimes, a person may mumble something that has to be repeated, or maybe an accent is thick enough to make for problematic conversation. But, I was almost 100 percent certain she had said "the kitties knocked over my twig." But, that couldn't be right. That just makes no sense.

"They ruined my twig! All the berries fell off!" came a mournful wail from the living room. "Ooh, I just want to kill those kitties!"

After a brief cooling down period, my girlfriend returned to the bedroom, and told me all about her beloved twig with the dried berries that she's been carefully keeping for over five years. It was a twig she put high up atop a coatrack, presumably out of reach of the cats. She presumed wrong.

As a guy, the concept of falling in love with a branch just never had really occurred to me. But, she was obviously distraught, so I could only presume she paid a significant amount of money for her twig. She informed me that she acquired the branch as part of a package of goods, goods that cost her a grand total of $20, including the branch.

It was at that point that I started laughing uncontrollably, which didn't go over too well with my girlfriend.

So, yeah, this moving in thing. . . it should be interesting.

Posted by Ryan at May 5, 2005 05:01 PM