Cat and Mouse

My migraine brain has been trying to kill me. It misunderstands me, and thinks I’m happy living with it, but I’m not. Today it’s playing mouse, so I’m playing cat as I lay in wait for this brief, pain-free interval to stop sticking like a perfect Olympic landing.

As I wait, I’ve been entertaining myself by sorting through my blockbuster laundry list of movies-in-the-making events. My first feature, Oh My God, Our Passports Have Been Stolen, stars me as a frantic, drawer-ripping-apart lunatic and my husband as a calm, naysayer who exclaims, over and over, “You always do this. You swear something’s been stolen and it never is. Remember your “stolen” earrings? Hidden in your sock drawer. Remember your “stolen” heart necklace? Hidden in a different sock drawer.”

This drama-packed film is full of insane dialogue (“Of course I didn’t move the damn passports. Don’t you know I never move things from their spots – especially this spot, which is 26 years old? Trust me. I know they were stolen.”), live action strewing of desk drawer contents, kangaroo-like jumps up and down stairs, and madcap rifling through random rooms and sock drawers.

The final scene slowly lingers on me, exhausted from searching for and shrieking about “stolen” passports, not listening to my husband first threatening to call the police to report our cleaning people and ruin their lives, and then repeating over and over, “I told you so.” Spoiler Alert: The passports were not stolen. I can’t be trusted. I move things, and forget I moved them. Yes, I moved the freaking passports inside a fireproof safe given to me by my pseudo-daughters, which they no longer needed after they emptied out their mom’s estate. Satisfied?

My second feature, Let’s Itch Again, Like We Did Last Summer, stars me (yes, again!) and my husband. The camera lovingly lingers on a silver BMW sports car, its top down. and on two grumpy middle-aged people (yeah – us again) squeezed into a pint-sized death trap, getting ready to zoom (“Too fast,” the wife screams, “You’re driving way too fast.”) to Tulmeadow Farms in West Simsbury, CT to treat themselves to their first favorite ice cream of the newly sprung spring season.

As they drive along in the husband’s midlife crisis convertible (or as the wife calls it, the penis), it’s clear that it’s a warm spring afternoon, because the car’s outdoor thermometer says 83 degrees. The wife has forgotten that the air is full of pollen and allergens. She has also forgotten to bring her antihistamines. (Yes – I admit it! I forget things. So sue me and get it over with, already!) The wife does remember to wear her (stupid) UConn basketball-insignia-ed baseball cap to ward off scalp cancer, though, so all is not lost.

When they arrive, there is a long line of people dying to eat delicious, creamy, Voted Connecticut’s Number One ice cream. Husband and wife stand behind some young, vital, sports-loving dads and their daughters, whom the wife takes an instant dislike to because she’ll never be young like them again. She tries not to drool as she waits for her small (2 scoops) red raspberry, chocolate chip regular not sugar cone. As she sucks saliva back into her mouth, she spies gorilla-sized bees flying above her head, foreshadowing something ominous. (You’ll have to keep reading to find out what, though.) They dive-bomb, so she keeps cringing and pointing at them, as if that’s going to stop them from scaring the living beejesus out of her or those damned adorable young dads.

Finally, the exhausted kid behind the window hands the couple their ice cream in both cone and cup (the husband always orders his ice cream in a cup, because he believes doing so will cut down his caloric intake, even though this ice cream is so chock full of fat and calories that one tiny cone is a drop in the proverbial bucket). Pan in on the wife grabbing a too-big pile of paper napkins, which she starts pointing at the damn bees, because they’re getting a little too close for comfort, for goodness sake.

The camera pans away as the two grumpuses slowly march away from the killer bees, into the woods, where they walk, slurp, and wipe. Suddenly, the wife’s left eye becomes wildly inflamed. She experiences an itching so strong that she screams, “I’m going to scratch this eye out, and I don’t care if it makes me go blind.” Zoom in on the swelling, red, allergic, pollen-filled left eye, which instantly swells up into a carbon copy of those damn killer bees’ bodies. Aah. Foreshadowing explained at last. Happy?

I’m sorry, but there’s not going to be a third feature, because I’m too old to sit through three movies in one day, let alone write about them. I’ll leave you with a brief synopsis-like trailer of the third (and last) movie, though, because I’m a nice person and I don’t want to leave anyone hanging. (Get it? Trailer? Hanging? Foreshadowing? Knick knack paddywack, give the dog a bone?) 


With a roar sounding nowhere near as scary as the opening-credits MGM lion, this fake filmmaker (Yes, me again! It’s my blog and I’ll appear if I want to) must now slowly lower the curtain on yet another beautiful day in the neighborhood, because it’s time for her to work on keeping that mouse at bay, so that please, oh please, she will not have to experience another migraine before the day is done.