1. I was cleaning cleaning cleaning today. We are going out of town this weekend, and I have discovered that the post-vacation bummer is slightly lessened by returning to a spotless house. A clean house makes your return to the mundane a little harder to hate.

Franny whooshed around after me, and offered to help me clean.

“Okay,” I said. “But I need really good listening ears. You have not been the greatest listener this week.”

“I promise I will listen, Mom.”

“Well, I think I will teach you how to scrub the toilet first,” I said.

“YAY! I get to scrub the TOILET!” Franny said.

Later, I was getting ready to sweep the dust bunnies out of the bedrooms, so I asked her to move stuff off the floor, like the laundry hamper and a couple of Strudel’s toys.

“But don’t move the little rugs,” I finished, “because I’ll vacuum them.”

“Okay, Mom.”

As she went in to the room I could see her pause. The look on her face said What did that lady say?

“What did you say to move, Mom?”

“Everything BUT the rugs.”

A couple of minutes later I peeked in and saw her moving the rugs around.

“What are you doing?” I asked uselessly. I could see what she was doing.

“Moving the rugs,” Franny replied, with a hint of, “Duh, Mom.”

“You know what? I think I will clean by myself today.”

If I said to her, “Don’t go near the edge of that cliff over there,” she’d run towards it going, “What cliff? I don’t see a…AAAAAAAAAHHH!” What a space monkey. It’s like living with her dad all over again, only she has a prayer of growing out of it. It’s probably a good thing we are not visiting the Swiss Alps or a place with shark-infested waters this weekend. “What sharks? AAAAAH!!!”

2. This neighborhood is overrun during the day by people who want to score free parking while visiting the Zoo. It’s just something you accept if you live this close, and the Zoo tries to make nice by giving us free tickets to their summer concert series.

Yesterday, a couple of moms parked in front of our house and unloaded their many spawns, most of which were boys. Poor Nietzsche was lying in the grass in the front yard and three boys, who looked like they ranged in age from three to six, surrounded her.

“WILDCAT!” screeched the youngest one. “LOOOKIT THE WOOOOOOILDCAAAT!”

Nietzsche just laid there like the inert, old-lady slugbeast that she is, idly flicking her tail, while the children screamed at her. I peeped out of my bedroom window upstairs in case I had to open a can of crazy screaming cat lady on them.

The mothers finished getting their youngest spawn strapped into strollers and came over to monitor the situation with the wiiiiildcaaat. “Dylan, you should leave that cat alone, we don’t know him.”

“Is that a wild cat, Mom?” said the oldest one.

“I don’t know. There isn’t a collar,” she replied. “Looks pretty rough around the edges,” she remarked to the other mother.

“Yeeesh, I know, he’s pretty scary-looking. He’s a tough alley cat.”

I think they were serious, which almost killed me. If you knew Nietzsche in real life, you would know she has such tiny legs and such a funny old-lady hobble she looks like a gimpy millipede. She has no front claws and is going blind. Lately I think she’s hard of hearing, too. If by “rough around the edges” that woman meant “can’t reach her butt to clean it” and “runs away from two-pound Captain Vimes,” then, well, alright.