A Wealth of Annoyance

The weather has been far too warm this past month--nearly 80 degrees on Christmas Day.  That can only mean tornado weather at this time of year when a cold front decides to force its way across the south.  

Thus I was hardly surprised when the Tornado Warning klaxon on my cell phone blared me out of my sleep at 3:30 AM.  What annoyed me was the light turning on and off on my phone every 30 seconds for the next few hours--it's a quirk my phone has and there is no way of stopping it (I've called Tech Support before; their idea of resolving the difficulty was telling me to live with it).  I got the point the first time, really, but the rotten phone wouldn't let up.  So the klaxon continue to blare every 15 or 20 minutes for the next two hours, and that meant that the light continued to turn on and off every 30 seconds over and over and over again.

I decided to pack it in at 3:45.  If I was gonna have to go shelter in the corner of the closet, I figured I might as well get dressed for the occasion so I put on jeans and a dull lavender t-shirt (I have 4 dull lavender t-shirts to choose from, I don't like them much but, hey, they were free and a sensible person actually uses freebies) .  Then I went to check the weather details on the computer in the office.

My cat Daisy is a stickler when it comes to schedules.  Me getting up so early in the morning was definitely not on her Feline Dayrunner, so she was Not Happy.  Thus she decided to make her feelings evident by battering my sore foot with her tail--she knows where to whack my foot where it will cause the most pain; she practices.  This was Not Pleasant.  I growled at her.....literally.  And she took offense.

The fact that the actual tornado for which I had been warned was more than 75 miles away to the north and moving northward did not gladden my heart.  Still, the klaxon was sounding with regularity so there was no point in doing anything other than sitting up.  So I spent a couple of hours fruitlessly wandering the web and yawning, periodically checking absolutely worthless weather forcasts which never seemed to be updated.  I suppose the lucky weatherguessers were getting some shuteye in their comfy beds during the predawn Monday hours. 

When my cell phone finally gave it a rest at 5:30, I decided to give myself a rest, too, despite the wild weather raging outside.  I took off my jeans and crawled back into bed, pulling the pillows over my head to drown it all out.  But Daisy, still peeved about the scheduling conflicts and the growling affront, wasn't done with me yet.  Not by a long chalk.

For sheer cussed aggravation there is Absolutely Nothing to compare with a 12 pound cat stomping as hard as she can repeatedly across the backs of your knees.  Trust me on this.  

In self-defense, I rolled over and went back to sleep.  So did Daisy.  But since I was still asleep at 8:30, I had committed another feline schedule infraction.  However, she let me off lightly this time and decided to wake me up by sitting on my larynx.

The heck with tea.  Coffee.  I think I need coffee.  
And some Excedrin.  
And maybe a cat transplant.

I'm not giving in.  Life is still good.  Really.