Metric Fried Rice and Cooler Repair.
A friend of mine who just went through surgery won’t ask for help, won’t ask anyone to take out her trash or play with her dog, or bring her food, so her friends just do it. I called her and she said she was fine, the day after the operation, so I knew to go over and play with the dog and bring food.
The dog is a massive lab with muscles, and he likes to fetch and pull the rope toy until I make him sit to give it back. He’s used to playing with a woman that barely pushes one hundred pounds. I’m used to playing with big dogs. It doesn’t take me long to wear him out and wear him down.
But I got ahead of myself here. First, there was food. Let me say right off the bat, I despise living in a country that still uses gallons, quarts, and pints. I drop in on a Chinese restaurant and order a quart of shrimp fried rice and two egg rolls. The young woman behind the counter reaches over to a shelf then hands me a bag with food in it and smiles.
I do not smile back. I do not understand what just happened.
I look into the bag, and there are two egg rolls, but the container of fried rice is small. I explain to her this is not my order. She doesn’t understand. I explain I want a larger container of fried rice. She looks at the paperwork on the order and says something that isn’t English and I don’t understand it.
Meanwhile, because this isn’t nearly weird enough, there is a guy wearing a toolbelt trying to repair the cooler they keep drinks in. By the way, it is warm in this restaurant, and while not uncomfortable, it’s easing into that territory. The guy with the toolbelt is melting down. He can’t fix the cooler. How do I know this? Because he’s on his cell phone and has it on speaker.
“I can’t fix this, I don’t know how,” he says loudly.
“Replace the module going to the condenser,” the voice on the other end of the line says.
“I don’t know what that is,” the repairman laments. And he takes pictures of the guts of the cooler and sends them. They are basically walking him through the whole thing at a volume. But he sounds more than a little freaked out. I’m not sure why. This thing isn’t going to explode if he cuts the blue wire instead of the red wire, is it?
Is it?
Meanwhile, the young woman is floundering. I ordered what’s in the bag, so the bag is mine. She rings it up. No, it isn’t mine. Finally, she asks if I called in and I tell her no. She asks me if I ordered the same thing. I explained, yes, I did order shrimp fried rice, but a bigger container. Quart, not pint. And why, why on earth would anyone who is running a restaurant use these units of measure? But here we are.
Now. We have established what is in the bag is not mine. It is not mine because it is not what I ordered. The container, no matter what units are being used, is too small.
“Yes, too small,” the young woman smiles at me, and quite frankly, I never want a young woman to smile at me while using those three words.
And go.
A woman comes in, and it is her order. The young woman and I exchange a glance of relief. More customers come in, and another order isn’t right. The cooler repairman wails to his phone like a blues singer on a Saturday night. It’s getting warmer.
My order is placed on the counter. I look inside. It is exactly the same as the previous mistake.
It’s a pint, not a quart.
I could just cut and paste the previous section and save some trouble, but the manager wades in. Suddenly, she’s using the words “large” and “small.” Okay, large. Let’s ignore the menu and go from there, shall we? Meanwhile, this is going to add to the bill, which I have already paid with a card. I have enough cash to pull it off but have to wait. It’s getting warmer. The cooler repairman is getting excited because whatever it was they had him do isn’t working.
“The machine is unplugged,” I tell him. And by the way, he moved the cooler to work in it, and underneath that thing is a mat of black and ugly gunk that I would set on fire before I touched it.
My order is ready. It’s right. I’m gone.
But the whole ordeal cost me thirty minutes. What it did was negate what I was trying to avoid, and that’s the lunch hour rush traffic. I get stuck for ten more minutes trying to get out of it.
Let me be clear here. This isn’t an issue of having a woman from another country not being able to function at her job because of language. Yeah, that was a problem, but quarts and pints are stupid. Why use such things? Why do we live in a nation where two people cannot communicate the size or volume of anything because we’re still using units invented when a King was telling us we had to do it?
Take Care,
Mike
Aqaba Thomas: The Cat in the Pack
The last time I tried to Cat, both Sam, Sam, the Happy Hound, and Bertrand the Muttibeasti were living with me. Wakita, the cat in question, tried to jump from one counter to another in the kitchen and Sam came within an inch of catching the cat in midair. Sam was waiting, watching, and meant to kill the cat, even though we had discussed this sort of thing.
Furious, I grabbed Sam by the collar, but Bert body blocked me off him. I put the cat out. I gathered the dogs and we had a long and intense discussion about cats, hierarchy, the source of food in the house, and even if there was no violence, I did mention it a few times.
That was back in 2006 or 2007. Wakita was killed in the woods by an unknown assailant, and I gave up ever having a cat live with me.
Couple of days ago, Aqaba jumped up on the bed, started head- butting Budlore under his chin. Aqaba doesn’t trust Bud one on one, but with me there, Aqaba thinks this is the time to make friends with the only dog in the house I do not trust with That Cat.
Bud growls. It’s a soft, low, nervous type growl, but I grab his right ear and hold it. Not tight, not squeezing the ear, but just to let you know Bud, I have your ear. The meanings are a duality of sorts, because Bud knows what I am saying, which would be: Threaten the cat, and this ear is going to hurt.
Bud’s body language, which is everything in canine speak, relaxes, just a bit. Bud doesn’t like the cat, but he isn’t willing to start a fight. I’m mildly surprised, but I also know something about this ear. With a thumb and two fingers, I can pet both ears at the same time, behind Bud’s head, and he likes this a lot. Aqaba is still headbutting Bud’s chin, but the ears.
Bud starts going limp, puts his chin on his paws, and Aqaba moves on.
There is peace, perhaps an enforced peace, but it is what it is. Bud is alone in his dislike for That Cat, and he is fully aware of this. He will get no backup from Jech. Wrex won’t help him on the best days. Bud doesn’t like the math of going against all I want all alone. He does like both ears petted.
I do not think I have ever worked this hard, this long, to convince a Hickory Head Pack things have to be a certain way. Of course, Bertrand was the original heart dog, the best dog of all best dogs, and Lucas came along towards the end of Bert’s reign. After they were gone, only Wrex really reached deep inside, and now he’s aging, too.
I do not think I have ever an a dog work as hard to fit into the pack the way Aqaba Thomas Firesmith has. It’s stunning the amount of effort he’s put into making friends with the dogs, and doing the things I’ve tried to get him to do. Like every dog I’ve pulled out of the woods or out of a ditch, or taken out of a bad home, Aqaba has an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Mauled and starving, I was his last best chance of merely staying alive for a few more days. Aqaba has made the most of the time he’s been given. More people should think about this.
I have a lot of respect for the way this cat has taken to his new home. He seems focused, driven almost, to make this his place in the world. I’ve done everything I can think of to help him. Lilith and Wrex joined in instantly, and even Jessica Elizabeth (Come here!) has joined the new pack.
Oh Dear Dog, the help I have been given by so many Cat People, and Dog knows I’ve needed it, too.
And thus, a new Hickory Head Pack is forged. That Cat in the Pack.
And thus, it continues.
Take Care,
Mike
I was having one hell of a party one night, and this was over thirty years ago, when someone told me there was a woman in distress in the sunroom. My apartment at that time was in a house built in the 1800s, it was huge, impossible to heat or cool properly, but it had a sunroom. I had a bed in the room, a sofa, bean bags, and it was a great place to just chill.
The woman in question was not chilling.
She had taken too much of something, or more than enough or too many things, and was in the first stages of having a bad trip of some sort. I grabbed a large book of artwork and started showing her photos of famous art, and she began to relax, but she seemed to be itching.
“I can feel things crawling one me, but no one can see them,” she told me.
“So what’s more likely, there are things there you can feel and not see, or that you feel things that aren’t there?” I asked.
“It’s more like they are invisible than nonexistent, because invisibly would be an attribute of a creature while nonexistence wouldn’t be,” she said instantly. “They might be there all the time, and we can only feel them when we’re high.”
I’ve never been the same after that conversation.
It’s some sort of gathering, young people, teenagers, twenty-somethings, and no one there knows me. I’m not supposed to be there. I don’t even know where I am, or what I am doing, but I walked into the house, and everyone looks at me and they start trying to figure out who I am, and some of them leave.
No one says anything to me, I don’t talk to anyone, and as more people leave, I go outside, walk across a field, and find myself on a playing course of some sort, with lines and markers, but I have no idea what any of it means. Some of the young people are there, and now they’re fearful, and leave quicker.
I wonder if we dream sometimes, and it takes us to other places, where people see us, and think we’re ghosts.
Aqaba! Aqaba! Kitty! Kitty! Kitty!
It doesn’t appear to be much in the way of life changing, this photo of a small cat running into the woods in fear. But this was the first photo of Aqaba back on 25 July, 2023.
I wasn’t sure if he was feral or dumped, but I know the dangers here are legion; hawks, owls, venomous snakes, alligators, dogs, bobcats, raccoons, and coyotes, all of these are real and present dangers for a small cat.
One day this creature trotted up my mama’s wheelchair ramp like he was going to come in if I opened the door. I did open the door but he fled. I named him Aqaba. It’s a port city in Jordon on the Red Sea. Long story on why this name came to me, but it did.
Aqaba would eat dog food off the porch, and would let me watch him, but he wasn’t trustful at all. If I opened the door he would run, but he began to undertand me calling out, “Aqaba! Aqaba! Kitty, kitty, kitty!” meant the bowl was full.
I thought we had lost him during hurricane Idalia, but much to my surprise, Aqaba returned right after the storm. Attempts to trap him were futile. I would set a trap and he would disappear for a couple of days. But it was clear after the hurricane, Aqaba wasn’t doing as well. I was afraid something would happen, and sure enough, it did.
At five in the morning, on September the 18th, 2023, I heard Wrex, my resident hound and hunter, barking in the woods. I went to investigate and my heart sunk. Wrex Wyatt was standing at the base of a small tree, and Aqaba was about halfway up, hanging on for dear life. I called Wrex and he broke off, and followed me inside, instantly.
My worst fears were realized. Aqaba had two wounds, one other either side of his neck, and was bleeding. He was eating, drinking and still running from me, but the clock began to tick. A small mammal with a neck wound was going to die quickly in the woods. I had to get Aqaba into a trap, and inside a vet’s office, and quickly. I bought another trap that day and set it the next morning. I had to go to work, but was willing to wait until I could catch him. An hour after I set the trap, I went outside to check it. The gate was closed. What was inside? It might be a raccoon, or an Opossum, or maybe a stray dog.
Or Aqaba. A wounded, and unhappy, and pissed off cat.
I bundled the trap up, not knowing if this cat had rabies or some other disease. This is where it began to get hard. He had been through so much, and now, finally, I could get him to a vet. I took Aqaba to Valdosta Animal Hospital in Valdosta. They would run tests on him to see if he had Feline Leukemia, Rabies, or something else that would doom him. If they could save him, I wanted him fixed, vaccinated, wormed, and basically anything that they could so, they would do, to save Aqaba.
I went to work and waited. A stray would likely have half a dozen diseases. I thought Aqaba was female at first so I worried about pregnacy. But at the end of the day, I just wanted Aqaba to be alive, and we would work on getting him healthy. Two hours later, a call from Valdosta Animal Hospital came in. It seemed too quickly for it to be good news, and my heart sank. But all the news was good. The neck wounds would not kill him or impair him. No diseases lurked inside this cat. Aqaba was clipped and ready to be shipped. I could take Aqaba home, and hopefully, find someone to adopt him soon.
I set him up a tiny box in the bathroom, and introduced him to mama. Aqaba had been a pet at some stage of his life, and mama is good with cats. Clearly.
This was a cat in search of a family. Aqaba Thomas, as he was named, was looking for love.
The injuries looked bad, but were healing.
Whatever happened to Aqaba, it had been a close call.
The search was on for a new home. Aqaba clearly could not stay here. Wrex Wyatt, resident hunter, had nearly killed Aqaba once. I could not allow it to happen again.
So Aqaba hired a defense attorney to defend Wrex. Okay, what actually happened was a friend of mine of social media, who actually was a defense attorney, was carefully watching the story of Aqaba and what happened to him. She asked me a simple question, “Did you see Wrex attack Aqaba?” and the answer was no. We talked about the evidence. Wrex didn’t have a scratch on him, and Aqaba had cleary fought his way out of the jaws of death. Wrex had left the scene of the crime easily, not like a dog with treed prey. And finally, I measured the canine teeth marks. The scars on Aqaba’s neck were just shy of an inch and a quarter apart. Wrex’s canine were over an inch and a half.
Wrex Wyatt was innocent.
Moreover, Aqaba was throwing a full court press into diplomacy.
Aqaba made friends with The Queen, Lilith Anne. This wasn’t amazing because Lilith loves everyone.
And finally, we achieved integration.
Honestly, it’s hard not to love this cat. Aqaba Thomas is fearless and daring, and wants to be part of this pack, to be a member of the family. After all, I rescued him. Why shouldn’t he be?
Mom bought Aqaba a tree. He approves.
A couple of days after we got Aqaba inside, this random raccoon walked around the backyard. Was this what nearly killed Aqaba?
We may never know where Aqaba Thomas came from, what happened on that early morning in September, or anything more than we know right now. There’s still no photos of Budlore Amadeus with Aqaba, snuggling and being pals. There may never be.
We also know something else. It’s been over twenty years since I adopted a cat. The time, effort, and energy to make this work since September has been significant. However, Aqaba Thomas is happy. He loves me. I love him. Those things we do know.
Aqaba Thomas Firesmith is home. This is where he is, this is where he will stay, the Hickory Head Pack now includes a cat.
Before I close this out, this happy ending to an odd journey, I would like to mention all four of my dogs were adopted from USA Rescue Team, based in Valdosta Georgia. Aqaba Thomas didn’t go through them like everyone else, but at the same time, that group of hardworking people have contributed so much happiness to my life, at this point time, I would like to ask you to donate to the rescue. Any amount will do. Tell them Aqaba sent you.
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/usarescueteam
https://www.facebook.com/people/United-Saving-Animals-Rescue-Team/61550620899547
Thank you,
Mike
Getting something for lunch is a problem where I work so I usually skip out on it. Contractors eat on the run, and only bad food comes at you fast. But a break in the action leads me to Publix, where I can get a salad to go in a few minutes.
But the woman in front of me is chatty with the cashier, and this might take a while. I stop and notice what the customer is saying. The cashier is wearing tiny diamonds as earrings, and the customer is fascinated. The cashier is glowing under the light that a customer is treating her well, and the two point five minutes this costs me will not go to waste, I think.
“She’s right. Those earrings are perfect. They look like stars,” I tell her.
The cashier is amazed. Two nice people in a row. She beams. This is the best day ever.
Now imagine what the world would be like if we only took the time to do this in every interaction with those people behind the counters.
The Hickory Head Hermit 