The moment we walked in the door, Turtle gave me a strange look and I knew we were thinking the same thing: cat pee.

We checked the obvious things first. I scooped the litter box; Turtle tracked down each protesting cat and gave it a thorough sniffing. Finding that neither was the source of the problem, we spent the next half hour moving from room to room, scenting the air like lions on the trail of a pack of wildebeest (or wildebai, of you prefer). Nothing. Through the evening, we’d occasionally catch a whiff but never strongly enough to identify the source.

The next day, Turtle met me at the door when I came home from work.

“I smell it again,” she said. “I think it’s in my office.”

I dragged out the Floor Mate and gave the hardwood floor a thorough cleaning (for which it was overdue, in any case). That ought to do it, I thought, but as I made my way to the closet to put away the vacuum, I smelled it again: cat pee.

So off I went, on my hands and knees, with my nose in the carpet, trying to sniff out where one of the kids had dribbled or expressed his/her displeasure olfactorily. I sniffed my chair. I sniffed the fireplace facing. I sniffed the sofa, above and below, and the pillows. I sniffed the basket of cat toys. Nothing.

Finally, I found myself in the living room and noticed that I only seemed to catch a whiff of the offending odor when standing in the vicinity of the fireplace. My gaze passed over the Fall flower arrangement I’d gotten Turtle for her birthday a couple weeks ago, and I absently wondered how long it would take a pumpkin to go bad when filled with water and used as a vase.

The answer is “a couple weeks”, apparently.

This weekend, I've attempted to make a dent in my home maintenance to-do list, which means I had to make a run to the home improvement emporium. I needed weed and crabgrass killer for the nutgrass and other weeds I discovered while mowing yesterday, and some bags of pre-emergent for the next crop, which typically emerges in January. I needed fluorescent tubes to replace the long-dead ones in my clothes closet. And I needed a tube of Liquid Nails and some grout/adhesive for the soap dish that mysteriously fell off the wall of the guest bathroom a couple weeks ago. You know: the usual stuff.

So off I went to the store, where I wound my way up and down the aisles on my own personal scavenger hunt, checking items off my list as I went. My last stop was Lawn & Garden, where I dumped a few bags of pre-emergent in my cart, did not buy a garden gnome, and took my place in the check-out line. There, I waited while a guy in a bright yellow rain slicker scanned the items in the cart ahead of me. Then I waited while he proceeded to have a rather intense discussion with the customer. Something about grilling. I wasn't really paying attention.

When it was my turn to check out, Slicker Guy set about scanning my items – and then it happened.

“So. Do you have a grill?” he asked me.

“Um… yes?”

I detected a rather disturbing intensity in Slicker Guy's eyes, and I wondered whether 'yes' was the right answer, or the wrong one.

“Charcoal?”

I had my suspicions about where this line of questioning was headed and considered lying. But I'm a terrible liar, so I told the truth. “No, I have gas,” I said. Straight-faced. Somehow.

“Propane?”

I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition! I thought. I turned to the diminutive Asian woman behind me, who silently pleaded with her eyes for me to just leave her out of it.

“No. Natural gas,” I admitted. “We had a drop put in when we built the house.”

Slicker Guy's eyes sparkled with evangelical fervor, and I knew I should have lied.

“Oh, man. You just don't get much heat from natural gas. I've got…” And off he went on a five-minute screed BTUs, the benefits of charcoal, and how if I really wanted to learn to grill – and who wouldn't? – I had to get serious and start watching some guy on the Food Network who only uses a charcoal grill.

That's when I turned to the woman behind me and said, “Didn't you say you needed some information about charcoal grills?”

Yes, I'm probably going to hell for that, but I escaped and lived to burn chicken breasts to cinders another day.

Most of you know, by now, that I've never reproduced. (Some – myself included – would say that this is a good thing, but that's a discussion for another day.) But don't let my lack of biological offspring deceive you into thinking that I spend Father's Day sitting alone and bitter, surrounded by power tools purchased to dull the pain. Oh no.

For instance, this year the cats gave me a humorous greeting card “signed” in their own precious pawwriting, and they talked Turtle into picking up a cold six pack of the Shiner 100-year Commemorative brew that I've been wanting to try.

But that's not all. I have two godchildren who also send me Father's Day cards and sign them in their own precious handwriting. They also call me on the phone, to wish me a good day. First up was 5-year-old Ignatz:*

Foo: Thank you for the nice card, Ignatz.
Iggy: You're welcome.
Foo: Did you know my cats gave me a card too?
Iggy: Uhh…
Foo: Well, they did. They signed it and everything, but they only made paw prints because they don't have opposable thumbs.
Iggy: [giggling] I have supposable thumbs!
Foo: Of course you do! And that's why your handwriting will always be better than my cats'.

From there, the phone moved on to my 8-year-old goddaughter, Schnickelfritz.* We didn't have the sort of philosophical discussion that I'd just shared with Iggy, but only because Schnicky was preoccupied with finishing up her bath. She did, however, take time out from her ablutions to challenge me to an armpit-fart-making contest. I conceded without a fight, knowing that I'm way out of practice.

I hope all you dads out there had as good a day as I did!


* Names have been changed to protect the innocents.

[5:20am, scant seconds after silencing the clock radio with a slap across the top of its head]

Turtle: I'm sorry.
Foo: What?
Turtle: The cupcakes.

[dramatic pause. freshly-wakened neurons stretch, sputter half-heartedly, and ultimately shrug non-existent shoulders]

Foo: What the hell?
Turtle: 'Cause my leg kicked out.
Foo: Honey, what are you talking about?
Turtle: I don't know.

Most anyone who has read this blog for any period of time knows that I had a smallish run-in with thyroid cancer, back in 2001. Most cautiously agree that I'm cured – except the life insurance providers, of course – but ensuring that I stay that way demands a certain level of vigilance. What that means is that I must periodically submit myself to a week-long protocol of injections, followed by the ceremonial swallowing of a radioactive iodine capsule, culminating in an hour-long full-body scan.

It's all fairly routine by this point, but the week was not without its notable moments.

First off…

Since you've stayed with me this far, it's only fair to come right out with the good news (there is no bad news in this posting, so please… relax). After yesterday's scan, I received a phone call from the radiologist informing me that my scan was clear of any glowy bits. Glowy bits would have been bad, indicating thyroid cells that had absorbed the radioactive iodine. Since I no longer have a thyroid, thyroid cells could only mean cancer. So no glowy bits is a Good Thing™.

I thank God for granting me a continuation of my nearly eight years cancer free.

But there was a moment

The full body scan is actually done in stages, kind of like a series of x-rays. While the technician was repositioning equipment between scans, I happened to look over at the monitor where an image of the just-completed scan was displayed. It showed a bright blob of light (the aforementioned “glowy bit”), and I was filled with unease while lying there through the rest of the series.

As I gathered my things to leave, I commented on this to the technician.

“Oh, that's just a marker,” she said. “Remember when I was touching your neck? We place a radioactive marker on the [somethingorother] notch – where your collarbones meet – because it's right below where your thyroid used to be. It gives the doctor a reference point for that big dark area right above the notch.”

Big dark areas = Good Thing™, but I'd spooked myself. That's what I get for knowing just enough to be dangerous.

There Will Be Blood

After the scan in Dallas, I had to drive up to Baylor, in Plano, to have my blood drawn. I usually do this sort of thing at first light, at an hour that most people don't have the stomach for, but not this time. The waiting room at the lab was packed, and I carefully picked a chair that would observe the social nicety of preserving an empty chair between mine and that of any other occupied chair.

This honoring of personal space was especially important, because the occupant of one of those chairs was actually overflowing into the empty chair buffer zone. A short woman, her feet barely reaching the floor, she was very… colorful in her attire, hair color, and makeup selections. As I sat down, she lay slumped in her chair with the topmost of her three chins nestled in the others, snoring.

Her purse, which appeared to have been fashioned from the remainders of her dress, suddenly slid off her lap on to the floor. I spent a few moments in internal debate before deciding that, while the gentlemanly thing would be to pick it up and hand it back to her, it might be best to let sleeping potential litigants lie. Shortly, the question was made moot when one of the technicians came in to the waiting room, calling the name of someone who didn't answer. Several of us tentatively pointed to the sleeping woman.

Waking her was no simple matter, and getting her up and moving toward the lab was less so; but the technician managed, carefully leading her still-groggy, muttering patient by the elbow. As they left the waiting room, those of us who remained shot each other looks that said, Whoa, dude. That was, like, kinda weird.

I, of course, couldn't just return to examining the multimedia prints from Target that filled the empty space on the walls and leave well enough alone.

“I saw her purse fall and felt like I should pick it up,” I said, speaking more or less directly to a fellow patient who had smiled at me. “But then I sort of had this premonition of myself in handcuffs, trying to call my wife from a pay phone.”

For a moment, the waiting room was filled with tension-dispelling laughter before we all returned to the serious business of disacknowledging one another's existence.

Luck of the draw

After a while, I was called to have my blood drawn. My previous experience at this lab had been less than satisfactory, with the technician clumsily tapping two different veins before getting his sample. I drew a young woman, this time, and crossed my fingers as I sat down in the bloodletting chair.

“This is usually a good producer,” I said, indicating a favorite vein in my left arm. “But the last guy I had here didn't have much luck.”

“Oh, I'm sorry. You must have had Peter,” she said, glancing at the technician working at another station.

“Um… that's him. I'm sure he was just having an off day.”

“Oh no,” she said. “Peter sucks. He knows he sucks. Just this morning, one of the patients accused him of being the janitor, he made such a bloody mess of the guy's draw.”

Just an unfortunate choice of words, I hope.

For the record, my technician was so smooth, I barely felt the needle and today show only the very smallest of bruises.

Act I

[6:30am CST]

Co-worker: [from a cubicle in the next row] Who's that I hear rustling around? Who's crazy enough to be here at this time of the morning?
Foo: It's just me.
Co-worker: What are you doing here so early?
Foo: I've been here this early for about 14 years.
Co-worker: That's just crazy.
Foo: Think about that, the next time you consider dragging me into a meeting at 4:00. It could be just the thing to push me over the edge. You've seen CSI. You know how unstable we crazy people can be.

Act II

Co-worker (a different one): There's no toilet paper in the men's room! And the soap dispensers are all empty! What the hell?
Foo: Please stop touching my cubicle.

Every workday for the past seven years, I've gotten out of bed, showered (and sometimes shaved), and then packed myself a lunch. If I'm reasonably awake, I make a sandwich, select some sort of fruit cup and maybe a pudding, bag up some manner of Frito-Lay product, and pack it all neatly inside a purpose-made Cordura® nylon lunch bag. If I'm not so awake, I may grab a hot pocket or a Lean Cuisine dinner instead of making the sandwich.

I then gather up my lunch bag, my travel mug filled with black coffee, and my sausage-egg-and-cheese biscuit and carry them out to the car. I open Dorian's rear hatch, set my lunch next to the old ball and chain my laptop, and close the hatch. I climb behind the wheel, set my coffee in the cup holder and my sausage bicuit bowl in the passenger's seat next to me.

It's all quite routine.

This morning, I seem to have missed a step, but I wasn't sure which one – until that “Oh crap. Was that a curb or a small child I just backed over??” moment. Fortunately, it was neither. It was my lunch, which I'd set down behind the car to open the hatch but then, instead of opening the hatch, had proceeded directly to the climbing behind the wheel step.

The lunch bag suffered minimal damage (being, as it is, Cordura®). The potato chips, slice of pasteurized cheese product, hamburger bun, and one of the two cutey oranges were totaled. The frozen pre-grilled hamburger patty was cracked but otherwise unmarred. The cup of pineapple chunks was, miraculously, unexploded.

I have far too much on my mind.