I solemnly swear, when my man comes home and brings all of his stuff with him, I am going to abscond with his really nice digital SLR camera, with lenses that can show great detail in dim light, and I'm going to document the evil goings-on around this place. Cell phone cameras just can't capture it. Nearly every where I look in this house, off to one side, hiding, waiting to attack, is the face of pure evil. Delicate features, thin rings of yellow around wide, round pupils, radiating three levels of crazy. If I'm sitting down, let's say, "doing what all animals do," and my favorite white cat comes up to greet me, as she often does, chances are, looming over her shoulder, peering from the shadows of the bathtub, waiting to attack, is what is shaped like a tiny, vicious, black cookie monster head, jealousy shining out of her eyes like little lighthouse beacons. How is it my favorite cats are always the mean ones? When the white cat was younger, every night at bedtime without fail, she would dash under my bed while I was getting undressed, so she could attack my feet before I climbed into bed. I fell for it every single time, and every time my man would point out that I know it's coming and never prepare myself. With Athena, I think I actually like it when she bites me, which she does nine out of every ten times I pick her up. I praise her for being vicious and mean, and mean and vicious. This is all well and good while I'm living alone, but it might prove to be a strategic error once I am no longer the only human here.
I often do Google searches of the inspirational songs, to verify that I have the artist's names spelled right, or that the lyrics say what I think they do. Tonight I actually watched the video that came up, of Cliff Richard on some show like the Midnight Special or Top of the Pops, or maybe German television. I think about this song periodically. It brings back such a terrific memory. I was probably eight years old, and it was Halloween. My mother probably thought she had come up with one of the easiest costumes, and she didn't have to do a lot to make it for me. She took a pair of cranberry red jeans that my brother had outgrown (this was the 1970s, so hell, yeah, he wore that stuff), and she slit open the inseams. She inserted a calico print fabric, that was all tiny pinks and reds and blacks, probably floral, in triangles front and back, to make a maxi skirt. Then I assume I wore a red shirt, and plastic devil horns. I absolutely loved that costume. Devil Woman had come out that year, and was getting heavy airplay on the radio. She told me it was my song, and I took it to heart and owned the song and the costume. In the decades that followed, every time I heard that song, I remembered that Halloween, and I missed that kid who thought she was the whole package for the night. That year my dad had turned our garage into a haunted house for the neighborhood kids, with strobe lights and a record of scary sounds playing over and over, and it was a hugely successful year for us kids. But my favorite part was that off-hand comment, that gave me a signature song. Wouldn't it be fun to re-create that costume for this year?
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