I searched for Tuxie the Half Blind Biting Machine for over an hour last night, crawling on my hands and knees to look under every piece of furniture, shaking dishes of food and tossing out every cat toy until it looks like a feline daycare exploded in my living room, and searching every closet in the basement thinking I’d possibly locked her in one of the bedrooms that are verboten to the Furbeestes. I gave up around midnight, thinking that she’d somehow gotten her Mr. Magoo tuchus outside even though she doesn’t go near the doors, and I’d find her in the morning out in the tractor shed where she used to live with the Shop Cats, only to discover that the little turd burglar had been watching me search for her from a cubbyhole on my desk the entire time while the rest of the four legged residents of The Island of Misfit Toys giggled amongst themselves like Japanese schoolgirls and refused to tell me where she was hiding.

Get a cat, they said. It will be fun, they said. Hell, go full Crazy Cat Lady after you quit dancing and move to Gopher Crotch, Nebraska and get a dozen of the furry little assholes. Why not?

I just saw a tweet that said, “Imagine if one day we unlock the other 98% of milk,” and it reminded me of some of the ridiculous conspiracy theories that Fred’s parents (are spousal alternative in-laws a thing? Should that be all one word, maybe? Spousalalternativeinlaws? We’ll just call them the in-laws, I guess. It’s confusing enough around this place without inventing new words) have dreamed up over the years.

I swear to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that I am not making any of this shit up. I don’t have that great of an imagination.

Anyway, back to the milk. They only buy whole milk at the store, because 2% is just that, 2% milk and 98% water. Their justification is that it says so, right there on the jug, and they want to get their money’s worth.

One time, they read from their authority on health, “Miracle Foods From the Bible” that peppermint is good for you. So, Mother-in-Law rushed to the grocery store, and came home with a case of candy canes. “It’s got peppermint in it, right there in the ingredients. That makes them healthy like the book says.” This is the same treasure trove of wisdom that I’m pretty sure told them that they’d live to be 900 years old if they stuffed a garlic clove where the sun doesn’t shine every morning (I never asked if they took this advice and I really don’t want the answer,) so I don’t know if you’ll see it on an Amazon Best Seller list any time soon.

Then there was the Greenway, which is an interconnected series of very nice concrete walking paths that have been built in the city where they live. Father-in-law decided that these were a conspiracy by the local independent bicycle shop to sell more bicycles. Because Sonny’s bicycle repair business that’s been in the same crumbling building since they stopping putting giant front tires on the stupid things obviously has the money to pour 20 miles of concrete around the city on the off chance that it might pay off and they’ll sell more than three bikes this year. Okeley dokeley, dude.

There’s so much more nonsense that they’ve spouted over the years, from swaddling their grade school age child and rocking him to sleep at night in a bizarre attempt to make him revert into an infant (it didn’t work, he now weighs about 200 lbs) to spitting in glasses of water to look for parasites and believing that there are angels inside their pillows who whisper to them at night. Trust me, I’m just as confused as you are right now.

Mother-in-law also read in her magic book that apple cider vinegar is a cure-all for everything from backaches to Ebola. Fred tried to tell her that she needed to mix a spoonful of the stuff in a glass of water before drinking it, and she argued with him, telling him that’s not what the book said to do. You can see where this is going, right? All we could do was watch in horror as she tipped up a quart glass bottle of the stuff and took a big swig. Did you know that it takes about 6 seconds for water to reach your stomach after swallowing? This is how long time stood still for before Suzie the Human Vinegar Bomb exploded. Luckily for both us and the kitchen cabinets, she was standing right next to the kitchen sink when she made her sacrifice to the vomit gods.

The newest one, though, might just take the cake. Father-in-law is utterly convinced that the television show Yellowstone (if you don’t know what this horse opera is, go Google it, I’ll wait here) is real and is located in Livingston, Montana.

I’m not sure if he thinks it’s a reality show or a documentary, but he actually got into an argument with Fred about it yesterday. I told Fred to ask him next time if he thinks that Kevin Costner is the governor of Montana.

There are advantages to this insanity, though. It used to give me infinite material to try out my stand up routine on bar patrons back when I was a naked dancing chick, and it also serves as a warning that the drugs you did 20 or 30 years ago have done way more brain damage than you might realize. If you find yourself believing that North Korean submarines are blowing up oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, that’s there’s nothing wrong with feeding your dogs fudgesicles, or making mix-tapes that include Alvin & the Chipmunks singing Christmas carols, Bon Jovi living on a prayer, and AC/DC shaking it all night long, all on one CD, please see your doctor. Dementia is a real thing, folks.

What technology would I be better off without, WordPress? Well, considering that I practically live in a damned soddy on the prairie anyway, I can’t think of much. I don’t even have a microwave or a dishwasher (yes, I’m a modern day Luddite, I know) in The World’s Butt Ugliest Kitchen, let alone a thermostat in my living room that I can control from my mother’s house 1000 miles away from my 100 year old humble abode in Gopher Crotch, Nebraska. Not that I plan to visit her any time soon (there’s a can of worms that we’re going to keep tightly sealed for now, thanks.) There’s knob and tube wiring in my basement, but not an inch of fiber optic cable or however the hell you get internet that’s not slower than the speed of smell. I only have a television because it was given to us by Fred’s now dead grandma, and if I could figure out how to kill it and make it look like an accident, my life would be considerably more peaceful. This was probably the wrong question to ask someone whose house looks like a Carnegie library that no one visits.

I can certainly live without ridiculous inventions like refrigerators with television screens in them or washing machines with WiFi. Can you picture where all this technology is going? “Sorry, Timmy, no breakfast today. The toaster’s doing a firmware update.” Yikes.

I think I’ll just stick to knowing how to do things for myself, like opening the refrigerator door or mowing my lawn. At the rate we’re going, I’m going to be the leader of this idiocracy when the lights finally go out, because I can read a book, cook a meal, and brew a pot of coffee all without using an app on my phone. I’ll also be the only writer left on Earth with my super secret knowledge of how a typewriter works.

So, to answer your question, WordPress, I’m just going to say, “all of them.”

It’s two days before Thanksgiving, and I should be writing something so that I can get paid, since I haven’t written a single word since catching the plague almost a month ago at the last Dutch Hop, aka “The Local Super Spreader Event Where Unmasked Old People Breathe On Your Food and Filthy Toddlers Wipe Their Noses On The Tablecloths And The Polka Music Is Loud Enough To Hear Back In The Old Country” but instead I’m making chili and Fred is drinking Jack Daniels in orange juice and watching Supernatural reruns on Netflix, because our brains have been parboiled by this virus from the third circle of Hell. I simply do not have the energy to write about plants that only grow on south southwest facing dunes in one corner of the Nebraska Sandhills or a hotel haunted by a murdered midget or endangered rodents or any other nonsense that I cannot muster the motivation to give a flying pug about right now. If someone could get me an IV drip of espresso, I might be able to tackle Mount Washmore over there on the loveseat before Christmas.

I’d better get something turned into my editor soon, though, because the cats have seen both my bank balance and the level of food left in their bucket, and I caught them googling recipes for Cat Lady Surprise this morning.

You can come join this shit show, but wear a mask and wash your damned hands, unless you want to spend the next three weeks puking until your head spins around when you’re not sleeping 14 hours a day.