Bring me your furry, your potentially rabid...

The kitten... the feral one? That hung onto my hand with its teeth after I picked it up, because it was so terrified? The one I had to have "just in case" rabies shots for? It's back... And David says I'm not allowed to touch it. Not even a little bit.

Now in cat adolescence, it was following its siblings across the bottom of the yard. I must have drawn in my breath in that kitten-there-is-a-kitten!! sound and s/he spooked and instead of running after its siblings through the east side of the fence, it turned tail and ran a good 20 feet to the west fence and disappeared. A couple of minutes later it tried to cross again, and even though I was NOT making the kitten-there-is-a-kitten!! sound, (because I was purposely holding my breath) it looked at me, spooked again, and ran back under the west fence. 

And really, of course it would, because I was the crazy human who picked it up and refused to throw it down when it bit me. In the feral cat world, I am now an urban legend. "Don't go in THAT yard. The crazy lady lives there. She mauls and traps kittens and then makes coats out of them."

Then the other morning? The kittens - ALL THREE OF THEM - were playing ON OUR DECK in the sunshine!! I held my breath at the back door, trying to look inconspicuous so that I wouldn't spook them, while calculating whether I could open the door without it making its tell-tale creaky noise. Not that I was going to go pick up the kittens or anything, I just wanted to door to be open. You know, just in case they decided that they wanted to come in the house and spontaneously... cuddle. As feral cats often choose to do.

Sadly, I have not seen the kittens in a couple of days. What I did see yesterday evening after dinner, while my friends were over, was a young RACCOON!!! The neighbour's dogs had chased it from their yard to ours. It climbed up our play structure and hung out in the tree.

Sadly, this did NOT happen last night. But I wish it had. 
Picture from http://anothernortongirl.blogspot.ca/

We weren't sure, but we think that that raccoon might have had... issues. Intellectual issues. Perhaps rabies issues. It was severely uncoordinated for a raccoon, had a rough time navigating the tree and looked like nobody had taught it how to climb down the tree headfirst, which raccoons can totally do.

Example of the headfirst descent

The other thing that made us feel like maybe the raccoon wasn't altogether there, was that after it left the play structure tree, it then came over to the deck, not 8 feet away from us, and nonchalantly climbed one tree, then shinnied down, then climbed the next tree, then walked on the deck railing, then climbed the next tree and shinnied down then climbed the NEXT tree to that had small branches touching the roof and then tried to make its way onto the roof where it looked VERY confused and gave us the "Can you give me some help here?" look. 

Either the animal had major depth perception issues and couldn't tell that the first trees were nowhere close to the house, or its brain was already completely scrambled from the rabies. As it was trying to get onto the roof and looking like it might fall, I may have stood under it with my maxi skirt held in front of me like a rescue net they use for potential suicide jumpers. David told me that if I got bitten he was not going to take me to the hospital for my second series of rabies shots, I would have to drive myself. 

We are used to raccoons being on our roof. Last spring we had a mother and her 5 kits living in our eaves. We enjoyed an elaborate game of Watch-the-raccoons-leave-put-up-the-extension-ladder-screw-in-boards-to-cover-the-raccoon-holes for several nights, thinking we had finally purged our freeloading tenants, when in fact there was still that raccoon scrabbling sound (okay now I'm imagining a family of raccoons playing Scrabble, perhaps enjoying pink lemonade with cocktail umbrellas) in the eaves, and then we'd have to climb up the ladder and unscrew the boards and then slide them out of the way, because I couldn't bear the thought of potentially murdering a family of raccoons in our eaves.

One night, we thought we had done it. THEY WERE OUT!! We did our happy, raccoon-free dance. Then, the next day, the mother raccoon was back. In the day time. Climbing the ladder to the roof and walking around. Not that weird in itself, except for the fact that we were having our chimney re-built at the time and there we two dudes with mortar and bricks and a very loud radio on the roof. She was walking around and going up and down the extension ladder - and let me tell you, watching a raccoon descend headfirst down a 32-foot ladder freaks me out. 

One might well ask: "Why would a raccoon be out in the daytime, hanging out with the masons??? It seems so odd!" Until I heard her kits crying for her. Because we had boarded them up in the eaves!!! This realization made me nearly puke with anxiety. 

I HAD SEPARATED A MOTHER FROM HER BABIES!!! 

This is one of the several reasons I might wind up in Hell. 

David wasn't home, and we have a rule that you cannot climb the 32-foot extension ladder if you are by yourself (no matter how fast the job is), so I called my friend Nathalie and got her to foot the ladder while I climbed to the roof. I'm not afraid of heights per se, but it's not my favourite thing in the world to be up high without a harness. Less fun when you're climbing with a cordless drill in one hand. I unscrewed the boards and moved them out of the way. Then I watched from the office window as the mother raccoon transported all of her kits, one by one, down the extension ladder. After they were all gone, I went back up and boarded it over again. 

Crisis averted.

Except there's this SMELL this summer, that makes me think that maybe one of those kits DIED in the eaves. I'm hoping it was just a runty kit who wouldn't have made it anyway and not because I had trapped it without its mother and it died of a panic attack.

All this to say, that I was so worried about the ghost of runty raccoons past that I made David put up the extension ladder so that our latest raccoon visitor could use that as a route back down in case the small branches that touch the roof seem too spindly and breaky for the beast when it tried to get down the tree route. I think we'll have to wait and see whether it abandons the roof or takes up some small tools from our garage, opens up the boards on the eaves and announces to all its raccoon buddies, "Penthouse!! Over here!"

I hope the Bloggess didn't notice my extra boobs!

My great friends Amber and Anne-Marie and ME with the Bloggess!

So you know that gal in Total Recall, the one with the three breasts?  Well I must be a sci-fi lover's wet dream, because I have six.  Yep - SIX.  Four in the front, two in the back.  Let's do the math again, just to be safe:
 
4 + 2 = 6!!! 

Now sure, two of the front ones are armpit boobs and the back ones are back boobs and the extra four are really no more than a AAA cup, and really only are noticeable if I have a tight bra on - but still, I kinda feel like I need a 6-cupped brassiere or at least 4 more nipples to make it really interesting.  Scratch that.  Four more nipples would be problematic.  I already have to utilize a small carpenter's level at the front door to ensure that my two nipple are on the same plane before leaving the house.  Nothing worse than one nipple facing due south and one  north-east.  (Well I guess maybe there ARE worse things - Syria's in pretty bad shape right now, from all accounts. )  Instead of the 4 more nipples, maybe I could get an undergarment that smooths the extra 4 boobs into less noticeable mounds than those that seem to magically appear in unflattering photographs.

This is all to say that when I looked at my photos from the The Bloggess's (Jenny Lawson!!) reading at the Bay/Bloor Indigo last night - there's one of me from the back/side that shows an abundance of extra boobage.  I think that she was looking down and signing my book at that time, so she probably DIDN'T see, but it got me thinking... I really wish there was a way to suck in one's back fat and armpit pudge.  Oh, SURE, the easiest way would be to lose the 30 pounds that would put me at my optimum weight, but right now my cheekbones are already REALLY prominent - I know that if I lost that much weight I would look like a freaking cadaver! 

Wait!! TUCKING!!  That's the answer.  Tucking the back boobs and armpit boobs INTO the armpits and then just using your upper arms to hold them in!!  Plus, all the pressure it would take to keep the extra boobs in the armpits would totally work your biceps and triceps.  That's it!  The extra boobs are really exercise tools!!  I'm feeling so much  better now. People pay for this kind of equipment.  And these are all mine!  But fear not!  If a gal were to gain extra weight or stop doing push-ups after she had built up muscle in her back and chest, she could probably get them too!  See?  This is me being helpful!

My daughter is insane.

From MotivatedPhotos.com

No seriously.  She really is.  It hits her at bedtime.  She loses her mind.  But only with me.  Not with David.  She retains sanity for her father, and abandons it ALL for me.  ALL OF IT.

Tonight, as I was lying beside her with my book at 9:45 p.m., she would NOT stop talking. She rolled next to me so that we were shoulder to shoulder and looked over at me with her hazel eyes.

"Which movie is Death in?"

Yes folks - this is what goes on when she should already be asleep!   I am merely a passenger on the Rissa Ride of Insanity.  What's scary though, is that I know EXACTLY what she's talking about.  I immediately thought of the Seventh Seal, but Rissa doesn't know about the Seventh Seal, but she does know about...

"The second movie.  Bill and Ted's..."

"Bogus Journey!!! You see?  You see Mummy?  We are like..." she make a motion between her forehead and mine with her fingers...  "It's like we read each other's minds!!!"

"Go to sleep."

***

"Guess what I'm doing right now!"

 I look over at her, she's moving up and down a bit.  "Are you clenching your butt?"

"I AM!"   She moves up and down and is moving her arms in a half curl.  "What am I doing now?"

"Going to sleep?"

"Yes, but I am ALSO clenching my butt and lifting weights!"  She accompanies this with grimaces as if she might possibly be in contention for an Olympic medal in weight-lifting.

***

"Aren't you going to snuggle with me?"

"I am snuggling."

"No, you're not, you're reading."

She moves my left arm so that she can plop her head down on my chest.  Her nose is close to my armpit.

"Your armpits smell SO good!  How can they smell this good?"

"You need to stop talking and go to sleep."

"I am sleeping."

"So this is just talking in your sleep?"

"Exactly."

"Go to sleep."

"I am asleep."

"Stop talking."

"I have stopped."

"Rissa, do I need to smother you with a pillow?"

"Don't smother me with a pillow!"

"I will if you don't stop talking."

***

I look over at Rissa.  She is stuck to me like glue - all I see are her eyes above my bicep.

"Your boobs look really big in this dress!"

"Do you need attention?"

"YES.  PLEASE!!! PLEASE GIVE ME ATTENTION!!!"  She waggles her eyebrows at me in supplication.

"You are a goof."

***

"Can I just say one last thing?"

I give her a look of disbelief.

"Okay, it might not be last thing, but I'll really try."

"Okay.  One last thing then you must GO. TO. SLEEP."

"So you remember how Julia was in my room for acro at the dance camp?"

"Yes."

"So Julia didn't want to do log rolls down the cheese."

"O...kay."

"So we made a deal and I said to Julia, 'Julia if I go down the cheese then you can go down the cheese too, okay?'  And she said, 'Okay.'   So then I went down the cheese and when I finished I said, 'Okay Julia, it's now your turn.'  'I don't want to go down the cheese.'  'But Julia, you said that you would do it.'

At this point Rissa touches her forehead to mine and gives me a meaningful just-wait for it look.
"And then Mummy, Julia said,  'I LIED.'  Isn't that awesome??"

Ladies and Germs, a Gymnastics Cheese Mat - clear now?

***

"You're kissing me right?"

"Only if you're going to sleep."

She purses her lips into an ape-like kissy face that touches her top lip to her nose.  I kiss her on her lips, give her butterfly kisses with my eyes to hers and the we touch noses.

"Night-Night.  Sleep Tight.  Good-Night."

"Night-Night.  Sleep Tight.  Good-Night."

Then Rissa makes a pig snorting sound, accompanied by the raising of a fist in an 'up yours' gesture.  I return it.

"Mummy I love you."

"I love you too."

Picasso... Schmicasso

So... Picasso...  I've now been up close and personal to some of his greatest works at the AGO exhibit.   I can now say with some knowledge - "His Rose Period is my favourite period." 

Boy With a Pipe 1905

Picasso's rose period was 1904-1906 (ish),  in case you too, wanted to pretend you have knowledge of Picasso's periods.  Okay, that just made me smirk.  I am an infant.  The painting above is Boy With a Pipe which wasn't in the exhibit (posters were in the gift shop though) and THIS painting, I adore. At this exhibit, I also discovered that Picasso was this amazing sculptor.  WHO KNEW?!?  Well, I'm sure lots of people knew, but I didn't until I saw his Jester,

The Jester, 1905 (note that it's also in the Rose Period)

and there was this INCREDIBLE Woman's Head.  Not that she was a super-hero called the INCREDIBLE WOMAN or anything, but this sculpture was amazing in person!

Head of a Woman (1909 early cubism)

PLUS, later in his career he did weird-ass shit!  This might possibly have been my favourite! 

Man with Sheep, 1943

Although this one would come a really close second.  The hip bones, the udders... so much to love there!

Goat, 1950

I also saw the below piece, The Acrobat, which made my ovaries hurt.  It made me wiggy.  If it had any colour I could admire, I might have been able to stand it, but because there's no torso and the joints don't make sense...  I mean look at it - there's an ass made out of an arm and a leg.  It creeped me out.  I actually felt nauseated in front of it.  My friend Jon took glee in keeping me in front of it as long as possible.

The Acrobat, 1930

There were really only a couple of his cubist paintings that I liked.  These were the ones where the women actually had some expression to them.  These were the ones that weren't all boobs and crazy eyes and half-severed women bent in half.  Generally, he painted his lovers/wives - of which he had MANY.  Wait, that sounds a bit harsh.  Let me temper that.  To my knowledge, he wasn't a bigamist - I mean the guy wasn't living in Utah or anything.  He just slept with a LOT of women.  There are 8 major relationships, with possibly dozens or hundreds more.  The dude dug the ladies.

While with Eva Gouel (who was succumbing to either cancer or TB), Picasso had an affair with Gaby Lespinasse.  While married to Olga Khoklova he had an affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter.  He had an affair with famed photographer Dora Maar (see below), while involved with Marie-Thérèse Walter.

Dora Maar, 1937

While with Dora Maar - he stepped out with Francoise Gilot - who left him, frustrated by his inability to keep it in his pants - you'd figure by this time, his penchant for the female form would have been well-known.  He'd been sleeping with Genevieve Laporte at the same time he was with Gilot.   Laporte  left him shortly after Gilot did.

The painting below was of his second wife, Jacqueline whom he met in 1953 after having been abandoned by the only women (apparently) who were smart enough to move on with their own lives.

Jacqueline with Crossed Hands, 1954

(Perhaps I'm editorializing, but come on ladies!  Really?  You think he's ever going to change?  REALLY? I  mean REALLY!?! ) He was with Jacqueline for 20 years and painted her more than any other woman.  The representations of Jacqueline have personality and depth that other later paintings don't seem to have. It became clear that, in general, I ain't a big fan of his later stuff.  Hence my attachment to the Rose Period.  The other cubist stuff was mostly in uniform shadow-box frames with glass over top of them and they had no depth - you couldn't see the brush strokes.

Which is probably why I dug the sculptures, because you could see the depth and dimension to them.  Very, very cool to discover that I'm a big fan of Picasso - the sculptor.  PLUS -  I can now speak with intelligence about The Rose Period.  BOO YEAH!

Olympic Porn

When planning your viewing of the 2012 Olympics - you have to be wily.  You want to be able to speak with authority about the big picture.  "Did you catch Branagh at the Opening Ceremonies??  Nice Caliban cover, huh?  How about that Mike Oldfield?"

I will freely admit that my favourite part of the Opening Ceremonies had to be the video segment when Daniel Craig went to Buckingham Palace and they made it look as if the Queen was actually parachuting into the stadium.  Let it not be said that Liz doesn't have a sense of humour.

The Olympics offers you a veritable feast of weird and wonderful sports that no-one would ever watch apart from once every 4 years.  (Well, really, once every 2 years, now that they've staggered the winter and summer Olympics.)  There are so many events out there, that you don't want to laden yourself with those that are too time-consuming with little punch or pizazz.  You've got 36 large events (according to the official site) - with some of those larger categories sub-divided into as many as 48 other events, in say Athletics.  And what do people usually talk about, when it's all said and done?  The Men's 100 metre.

I like to plan my viewing based on a very specific athletic criteria: which events show well-toned men in next to no clothing.  My go-to events are swimming and diving.   One might think that men's beach volleyball would be up there as well, but as I realized yesterday morning, when I tried to watch a game - they make the men wear shirts!  Sure, the women are in what amounts to a sports bra and panties, but the men are in modest shorts and loose tank tops.  Here I was hoping for a flashback to the volleyball scene from Top Gun.  Ladies and gay men, if I can get you to reminisce with me for a moment.  Two words: Rick Rossovich.  I was 18, he was pretty much male perfection.

Rick Rossovich as "Slider" in Top Gun 1986

Plus there's that double high-five slap thingie that Maverick and Goose share.  THAT is men's beach volleyball in all its homoerotic glory.  But nope - not at these Olympics! 

"I am totally being gypped!" I complain to David.
"How so?"
"They are wearing shirts!!  What's the fun in that?  Men can ogle any number of the female beach volleyball players!  And I'm stuck with over-sized tank tops!!"  I snort.
"Do you want me to find you some swimming?" David asks helpfully.
"Yes please."
My husband is a god among men.

 And then I discover...  Ryan Lochte...   To quote Farmer Hoggett: "That'll do Pig.   That'll do."

See?  Swimmers have muscle but not too MUCH muscle.

The guy looks like a model... wait a second - he actually IS a model.  Fair enough.  I mean, sure, why not share that physique with the world and make money off it?  Plus, I heard him in an interview and he used an adverb!  Correctly.  (sigh)

Okay, I'll be honest ...  That's not really my criteria for which sports I watch - it's just that peri-menopause brings out the hormones in a gal and when fast forwarding through the day's events, I might get sidetracked by the men who look like they have a lot of sperm.

My sports are gymnastics and diving.  I used to do both.  Not particularly well, but I did them.  I could do a back walkover on the beam, handsprings on floor - could do reverse and inward dives.  Today, I had a major "Mother Bear" moment while I was watching an Egyptian gymnast - Sherine El-Zein.  This girl had braces on both wrists, both ankles, one knee bandaged and one thigh bandaged - which begs the question - what the hell was she doing competing at all??  I watched as she stumbled at the end of her first tumbling pass and then as she fell on her second one, probably having torn something underneath one of those many braces or bandages.  She saluted the judges and bowed out of the event.  This poor girl, devastated and in pain, was unable to get off the floor on her own steam and there I am, yelling at the TV:

"Where is her coach?!?  Where the HELL is her coach??" 

If I could have teleported to London and run to her myself - gathering her in my arms, I would have.  This poor kid.  Her Olympic dreams shattered and it was a good 45 seconds before her coach just sort of saunters over to her.  If I ever see this man, I mean EVER - I'm going to punch him in the face and say, "That's for Sherine you lazy coaching bastard!!"   Sure I might not be as proactive for myself, but put a young woman in harm's way - WATCH OUT!!

They killed Cameron!

This week I had a disproportionate emotional response to televised stimuli.  I watched Bunheads.  First off, I had been under the impression that the show was reality tv aimed at the ballerina set. Rissa is a bit of a dance fiend herself, so we PVR'd it and sat down to watch it together. Imagine my unexpected thrill when I discovered that it was not reality tv, but that Broadway star Sutton Foster (be still my theatre geek heart!) was the lead, and it was created by Amy Sherman-Palladino with her delicious brand of sarcastic banter - making me laugh out loud. What happened after the first episode was unforeseen.  (If you don't have a lot of time to read, skip down to the Spoiler Alert part.)

I'll catch you up.  Sutton Foster's character, Michelle, is a discouraged Vegas showgirl who has been wooed for the past year by Alan Ruck's geekily-adorable shoe salesman character, Hubbell.  

After finally accepting a night out with Hubbell,  Michelle gets more than a little tipsy and decides to accept Hubbell's impromptu marriage proposal and heads back to his sleepy California coastal town.  There she finds out that he still lives with his mother, Fanny, who also happens to be a dance teacher - with a studio in the back yard, and that the entire town is shocked that Hubbell has married a showgirl/stripper/pole dancer.  With me so far?  Naturally, there's conflict  between Michelle and her mother-in-law and throw in, just for kicks, Hubbell's ditzy and sweet ex-girlfriend - but Hubbell is determined to let Michelle know his feelings and says to her in a moment of privacy:

“I know you don’t love me. I’m not an idiot. But I don’t believe you’re not made that way … you wanna love, you just haven’t found the right person yet. Maybe you don’t trust that anybody’s gonna understand you. But I do. I know exactly what you want. You want to laugh, and you want to travel, and you want to be surprised, and challenged. You want to live an unexpected life. And I intend you give you exactly that.” 

After this speech, of course they have great marital consummation sex and the future seems filled with hope and possibility for our wayward heroine.  Then there's a bit of showdown between Michelle and Fanny, where there's a lot of yelling and storming out of the premises.  (Hubbell tells his mother and the whole town that Michelle is his wife and that they'd better do right by her because he loves her.)  Michelle finds her way to Fanny's dance studio, and choreographs Fanny's students in a "Let's get you prepared for an audition" spontaneous dance routine, which of course Fanny witnesses from a doorway, and then Fanny whisks our heroine away to a bar and an uneasy friendship begins between Michelle and her mother-in-law where they have their own spontaneous dance number together.  Just as everything seems to be wrapping up all tickety-boo, they find out that Hubbell has been in a car accident looking for them.  Episode 1 ends.

....SPOILER ALERT!!!!...

They fucking killed off Alan Ruck's character, Hubbell!  The killed him. He is DEAD.  Charming, sweet - and apparently good in the sack, no less - Hubbell is now DEAD.  Alan Ruck is DEAD.  They killed off Cameron!!!   (Please view above video to remind yourself of Alan Ruck as Cameron in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  Really look.  LOOK at him.)

I was okay at the beginning of the episode.  It was well-written and quirky, as Fanny tries to subvert her grief through memorial service planning, but as the episode progressed, I began to LOSE it.  

Really a lot.   

Especially around the actual memorial service part.  I started crying and couldn't stop.  Gut-wrenching sobs.  Multiple Kleenexes.  Rissa looking at me like I'd lost my mind.  It wrecked me - absolutely WRECKED me that Michelle wasn't going to have the possibility of happiness with Hubbell - this charming, lovely man.  No she didn't love him, not right then, but she COULD.   Except she couldn't, because he was now DEAD.

Hiccuping sobs.  I felt nauseated. My angina kicked in.

"Mummy, it's okay.  It's not real," said Rissa patting me gently.

"They killed Cameron!" I wailed.

"Mummy it's just a show," she said.

"But, they KILLED Cameron!!"

"He's not Cameron Mummy, he was Hubbell."

"But they still killed him!"

More wailing, and I think maybe even some gnashing of teeth.  My chest was killing me.  I ran to the alcohol cupboard in our butler's pantry.  I grabbed the rye.

"Don't do this," I said to Rissa as I poured myself a shot, still sobbing madly.  "You should not relieve your stress by (I take my shot) taking a shot of rye."  (A shot of alcohol usually helps the angina.  I could take my nitro spray, but although that takes the pain away, my heart then races madly and the sensation is more than a little disquieting in itself.  I am NOT recommending a shot of rye for everyone with angina - this was a unique situation and it works for me in a pinch.)

"Okay Mummy."  Rissa tried her very best not to laugh at me.  "Come on.  Let's go upstairs and snuggle."

"Okay," I said, still sniffling.  But the emotional pain is still whacking me over the head.  Really hard.  What the hell was going on here?

Rissa lead me upstairs and we settled into the big bed - my bed.  She handed me Kleenexes.

"You know, we never really saw the body of Hubbell, Mummy.  Maybe his ex-girlfriend just kidnapped him and is holding him someplace," Rissa said.

This is how messed up I am.  I actually perked up at the notion.  Maybe Cameron WASN'T dead.  Maybe he was just being held by some psychopath in an undisclosed location, a la Stephen King's Misery.   But then I started crying again.  

"No, they killed him.  They killed him to give her EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE!!!"

Then David came home.  I tried to recount the story to him - he did his best to follow, but I could see him exchanging  She's-having-a-moment looks with Rissa.  I imagined he must be trying to picture the kitchen calendar in his head to see if my PMS should be kicking in yet.  (It shouldn't - I just HAD my freaking period!!)

"I don't know why this is affecting me so much," I sobbed.  "It's just that he was so sweet.  So nice to her.  They had the possibility of a wonderful future and now... (sob, sob) it's GONE!!!"

"Hey," he said.  "Hey.  It's okay.  It's okay."  He leaned over me in bed, kissed me.

I continued to cry. Really hard.

"Heather!"  He held my face.  "Look at me!  Look... at... me..."

I looked up at him.

"It's okay," he said.  "I'm here."

"Yes, but Cameron's NOT!!!!!"  There was no reasoning with me.

David got his fierce, in-charge look.  "No.  LISTEN to me Heather.  I'M still here.  I'm not dead."  He looked at me meaningfully.

My head cleared.  I got it.  I grabbed onto David like he was a freaking life preserver and I was in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912.  My pre-David life associated with Ferris Bueller's Day Off - the death of Alan Ruck's character, a sweet and selfless man who does everything for the woman he loves... BINGO.   

This? This is what happens to me on an average Tuesday night. Just imagine when there's something to cry about.

Naked Wombats

Naked wombats.  Without any pre-written content, it simply struck me as an interesting title for a post, but then, when I went looking for pictures, I actually found a mostly naked wombat baby, which has now become my animal of choice.  JUST LOOK AT IT!!!

Yes, this is a naked wombat!

Did you know that wombats are marsupials like kangaroos, koalas, opossums, possums and the Tasmanian Devil - who carry their young in pouches until they are able to fend for themselves?  Imagine if you will, Bugs Bunny's Tasmanian Devil having a fit inside someone's pouch?  What sort of elasticity would that pouch have to have?

Having seen the naked baby wombat, I went looking for other pics and saw that the full grown wombat is THIS big!!!

Much bigger than a naked baby wombat

This makes me want it even more!!! I can just imagine curling up next to it in bed.  I'm sure that I can make David see that this is a good thing - at least in the winter - the wombat would be warm and would cut our electric mattress heating pad costs by half, I'm dead certain.  Plus (but wait there's MORE!) I could put my hands in its pouch and they would then be very warm too!  Way better than putting them in David's armpits when I'm cold!  Really, this is a win-win for David.

And then I discovered that WAY, WAY back before it went extinct 46,000 years ago, there was a GIANT WOMBAT!!!   Like the size of a freaking RHINOCEROS kind of giant.  It was called a Diprotodon and it was part of a group of unusual species dubbed "Australian Megafauna."  How cool is that?  It's like a freaking Prog Rock band! 

Ladies and Gentlemen!  We bring you now....
AUSTRALIAN MEGAFAUNA!!

Giant Wombat!!  Also with a pouch!!!

Scale to human

Other Australian Megafauna include the Zygomaturus - another giant marsupial similar to the modern pygmy hippopatamus - but still a marsupial which means it has a POUCH!!!

Zygomaturus

Then there is the Palorshestes - yet ANOTHER marsupial with a POUCH!!!

Looks like a giant Tapir, but is NOT because it too has a POUCH!!

And LOOK!!!  This is a Procoptodon!  Which was a GIANT KANGAROO - with its own POUCH!!!

I wanted this one to look really big, but in actuality it was only about 10 feet tall

David just looked at me like I was fucking nuts when I showed him what I've done this morning in between answering emails.  Maybe what this all comes down to is that I want my very own pouch.   You know, like to keep my wallet and hair clips in and possibly my emergency Gravol and maybe some hand lotion.  He just asked me "Do you want your own pouch?"  See, we're totally simpatico!  Plus, now with the pictorial evidence for other pouch options, I'm pretty sure that he'll let me have a regular-sized wombat, you know, on account of the fact that he doesn't want me to use prehistoric mammal DNA and wind up going all Jurassic Park.