Dad: “You’re, uh…”
Kid: “…THE BEST KID IN THE WHOLE WORLD. THE END!”
— the kid finishes her dad’s sentence for him

Here’s the latest chapter of “Life with the Kid”. In this ongoing series I post a video collage of pics and videos from the past half year.

This latest installment contains approximately 180 photos and 20 video clips and clocks in at 9 minutes and 37 seconds.

Previous installments:

1. 2007: Part 1 (Jan – Jun) | Part 2 (Jul – Dec)
2. 2008: Part 1 | Part 2
3. 2009: Part 1 | Part 2
4. 2010: Part 1 | Part 2
5. 2011: Part 1 | Part 2

All pics and short videos used in this collage were taken from July through December, 2011.

Music used:

• “Feel Good Inc.” from Demon Days by Gorrilaz
• “Coffee & TV” from 13 by Blur
• “Porno Music” from the Freaks & Geeks Soundtrack by Michael Andrews

“It’s slightly dark, but there’s a cheerful light coming from the pumpkin lights.”
— the kid’s answer on Halloween night when asked if it was dark outside.

Here’s a Hi8 video dub of a Christmas Eve spent with Jill’s family back in 1998. Note: A young Wubie makes a brief cameo at the very beginning.

“I’m taking out my reading glasses so I can look at these orthopedic inserts.”
— me, while at a store with the kid and her mom.

This morning the kid grabbed a sheet of paper along with a handful of crayons. After finding an appropriate place to sequester herself, she hunkered down and promptly began scribbling furiously, the crayola a blur in her little paw.

“What’re you doing?” I asked, my curiosity piqued by her sudden industriousness.

“I’m making a to-do list!” she replied in a “don’t bother me, I’m busy” voice.

“That’s cool!” I said in a “swingin’, attentive dad” voice. “What’s on your list so far?”

She scribbled a few seconds more, sighed, looked up at me, then gave her poor crayola a break. Her list:

1. “Ask Carrot how he got such a nice pointy hairdo.”

2. “Play bingo games with Froggy.”

3. “Look at the picture in the hall to bemember (remember) Wubie.”

4. “Help Mommy fix the Christmas ornaments.”

5. “Stay in pajamas all day.”

Sounds like a nice Sunday to me.

“I want you to get that crawling bug. It was crawling around like a loser!”
—The kid asks her mom to banish an insect from the house

We had Wubie for about a dozen years. In that time he became a fixture in our lives. I wanted to jot down a few memories before I forget ‘em, stuff that made our loud and proud friend so special to us.

Floom! (Don’t Mind if I Do)

Whether it be a chair, dinner plate, comfy spot on the bed, whatever—if you left it alone, Wubie saw it as fair game to claim as his own. We jokingly referred to this as “being floomed”:

Mike: “That cat stole my chair!”
Jill: “You’ve been floomed!’
Mike: “And now he’s helping himself to my cheerios!”
Jill (caring as always): “You’ve been floomed squared! Ha Ha!”

We also referred to it as Wubie’s “Don’t Mind if I Do” philosophy:

“You left your glass of milk all by its lonesome for just a sec? DON’T MIND IF I DO!” (LAP, LAP, SLURP!)

“You had to get up off the couch? That’s a mighty warm cushion you just left. DON’T MIND IF I DO!” (CAT BUTT PLANT!)

Cross-Pawed Critter

I never had a cat that crossed his front paws as much as Wubie. This was a very common, natural sitting position for him. When witnessing this I always thought of a spoiled little king. And I was right.

Recently Opened Can Detector

No matter how quiet you were, or how deeply ensconced in the deepest of slumbers Wubie was, if you made a grab for a can opener he’d be jogging down the hallway in an instant.

He’d waddle on up to you (whining all the way, of course) demanding a canned food update along with a sample taste. We called it the cat tax.

“Not Getting My Way” Ears

When Wubie wasn’t getting his way he’d express his dissatisfaction by turning his ears back (I called them his skateboard ramp ears) and emitting a low, guttural whine. Basically, he was trying to act tough.

Jill was pretty good at repeating the sound back to him, very much approximating his tone, timbre and demeanor. I’m unsure if he truly appreciated her talent.

Getting Diagonal

For a little guy he sure could take up space. When he was a youngin’ he loved to get in the center of the bed and “get diagonal” for his naps, pointing his front paws (sometimes called his ‘feeters’) to the top left corner of the bed and his rear paws to the lower right corner.

With this strategy he was able to take up as much space as possible. Interestingly enough, the older Wubie eschewed this approach and ultimately favored the lower left corner of the bed. During this latter phase, I thought of him as a little brown postage stamp on a letter sent to a dreamland for those with whiskers and tails.

As the years went on, whenever we discovered anyone stretched out somewhere we’d say they were “getting diagonal”.

Middle of the Action

This is one Wubie trait that caused the kid much aggravation—and Wubie knew it.

Wubie: “Hey kid, what’s that—you’re in the middle of a board game? (plops himself down on board) SO AM I—DON’T MIND IF I DO!”

Kid: “WAAAAAUUUGH!”

Mommy: “We don’t want any trouble. Sometimes I think we need a sign that says ‘No Trouble’.”
The Kid: “Do you think trouble can read?”
— A conversation between the two girls

While cleaning up the house today, we rounded up all Wubie’s stuff and boxed it up to donate to a friend with a few cats. I felt more than a bit of melancholy doing this. Everything we gathered held a fond memory associated with our fuzzy friend. Boxing it all up and sending it off just made his absence that much more evident.

To help buoy my spirits, I tried to think of the cats who’d be getting enjoyment from Wubie’s old things. That’s much more preferable than having it all gather dust in the garage, right? The practical part of me says ‘Right’.

What we’re doing is a good thing. It may not feel that way right now, but it will.

Some Past Wubert Posts:

• The Day We Met Wubert
• Wubert Web Site Archive: Pictures
• Wubert Web Site Archive: Videos, Writings, Etc.
• Wubert: A Very Patient Cat
• A Wubert Story

Lucy (sniffing air): “PYEWWWWW!”
Mommy: “What? I don’t smell anything.”
Lucy: “Maybe you turned your nose off for the night!”
— Another heart to heart between mother and daughter

Life with Lucy: Year 5, Part 1 from Mike C on Vimeo.

We’ve still got a couple of weeks of June to slog through. However, I needed a weekend project so here’s the latest chapter of “Life with Lucy”. In this ongoing series I post a video collage of pics and videos from the past half year.

This latest installment contains approximately 191 photos and 18 video clips and clocks in at 9 minutes and 46 seconds. Hmmm, not a bad use of time for a lazy Sunday!

Previous “Life with Lucy” installments can be found here:

1. Year One: 2007 Part 1 (Jan – Jun) | Part 2 (Jul – Dec)
2. Year Two: 2008 Part 1 (Jan – Jun) | Part 2 (Jul – Dec)
3. Year Three: 2009 Part 1 (Jan – Jun) | Part 2 (Jul – Dec)
4. Year Four: 2010 Part 1 (Jan – Jun) | Part 2 (Jul – Dec)

All pics and short videos used in this collage were taken from January through June, 2011.

Music used:

• “Live Forever” from Definitely Maybe by Oasis
• “Boy About Town” from Sound Affects by The Jam
• “Evergreen” from Methodrone by The Brian Jonestown Massacre

Daddy: “What’d you think of that house we looked at?”
Lucy: “I loved it! It had so many weird rooms!”
— Looking at houses w/ Lucy

Friday Morning (Again) from Mike C on Vimeo.

Late last year I made a post about shooting video of a typical morning. From the post:

I thought it’d be interesting to shoot a video of a regular day, so I placed my little pocket handheld on my nightstand when I went to bed and started shooting video as soon as I woke up on Friday morning.

By the end of the day I’d decided against posting the video for all to see because of an assortment of reasons. However, I re-watched the video recently and thought it’d be OK to post an abridged version. I basically chopped out everything that followed my drive to work.

Music Used:

• “Sidewalk Flight”, “Drive In”, “Main Title” from the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack by Jon Brion
• “Rusty Cage” from The Legend of Johnny Cash by Johnny Cash

“There are millions and millions of candles sparkling with jewels!”
— Lucy describing the two candles on Jim and Tisa’s dinner table in Kauai

We just got back from Hawaii on Monday night. I’m sure we’ll be posting a video and more pics shortly. In the meantime I wanted to write a quick post featuring Wubie-related messages from a good friend of mine, Chuck, who I’ve known since I was about 14 years old.

In addition to being an all around swell guy, Chuck has helped us out on a number of occasions by agreeing to watch our cat Wubie while we were out on holiday. So, when we went to Hawaii, Chuck kept tabs on Wubie to make sure he was OK.

A Wubie update from Chuck:

Hey y’all,

Just a quick note to let you know that Mr. Stinkybreath Poopsalot is doing quite well. He is as regular as the sun shinin’ in the mornin’. Or something.

Just a few things in case I forget:
He’s missed the box a few times. He’s about a 50/50 shot – which is Shaq-fully dreadful as a free throw shooter.

He also seems to like pushing half the cat litter out of the box and onto the floor. Goof.
I found some disinfectant in the hall closet to clean up the mark of Zorro he created on the bathroom floor.

There was a smallish barf spot last night on the floor kind of between the table and the hallway. Maybe he was partying too hard after the super bowl. Anyhoo, I cleaned that as best as I could, but if you have some better stain remover you might want to go over the area again.

And a non-Wubie note – The TV situation kicked my butt. I tried it to see if I could catch part of the Warriors game, but I couldn’t get it to do anything but NBC and no audio. Minimizing the eye TV stuff, you had some software update boxes up, so I figured I’d leave well enough alone. I had everything shut off on Friday, or so I thought, but when I went over on Saturday the sound only was on. I refuse to believe that Wubie was just messing with me… But, um, you might want to go over all the settings when you return.

Hope y’all are having a great time!

See ya.

From Jill:

Hi Chuck,

you are hilarious. Mike wants to do a post called ‘confessions of a catsitter’ on our blog (permission granted?)

Yep, Wubie has some box issues. Glad he is making 50/50, that is better than average for him! Yep, we noticed the ‘digging to China’ too…I think it might just be that kind of litter that he does that with. Mike just changed the litter the day we left.

There are some cleaning wipes in the bathroom strategically located on the toilet for easy access when there are “misses”. No worries about carpet stains, we’ve pretty much given up. It was cheap carpet anyway!

The barf is probably a hairball, he does those maybe once a month, so hopefully you will be clear for a while.

Mike says for the TV, you can close or cancel the random update things. I find the TV does those ghost noises to me too. I dunno, too many things to control! don’t worry about it.

Now you see why we wanted to pay you!

We are having a lovely time, just switched islands to the Big Island today….and guess what, there is a Wubie here! He is a stray, and has a gray friend, but it was so nice to see that little siamese face when we got here. We have been feeding him and his friend cheese. I suspect other condo dwellers feed them too, he seemed to regard this place as his home.

Mike may have more to add, we’ll see when he gets on his computer (we have cheesy corded internet here, so have to switch off using the cable.)

thanks again for taking care of our cranky old man,

Jill, Mike and Lucy

Jill

From a later email:

In fact, the Wu-Bot has been much neater the last couple of days! However, he seems to have offset the messy behaviors with a rather talkative-roaming-around penchant. Sadly, the volume and the vocabulary is about as inspiring (and mellifluous) as the most cantankerous old school dalek. A dalek in bad need of a breath mint.

Have fun.

Chuck

And there you have it. See, even when he’s out of sight and thousands of miles away, Wubie is always on our minds. Thanks again, Chuck!

Lucy: “Daddy, lie down and pretend you’re at French Fry town.”
Daddy: “OK.”
Lucy: “Welcome to French Fry town. Can I take your order?”
Daddy: “I’d like some…french fries!”
Lucy: “We’re all out of any of the good stuff.”
Daddy: “Oh…well, what do you have?”
Lucy: “Ummm….mushrooms.”
— Playing with Lucy

Lucy is always asking us to tell her “make up stories”, tales where she comes up with a scenario and we provide a fitting story. The stories always seem to feature our cat, Wubie.

So yesterday when the kid asked for a story I decided to grab my microphone and hit ‘record’.

“Okay, what do you want to hear?” I asked.
“Wubie gets in a carrying case that floats into the sky and Bundle chases it in her rocketship” she answered.

Instead of asking her what a carrying case was, I just thought “brown paper grocery bag” and told her a story. Afterwards, I dumped the recording into GarageBand and added a few foley-ish sound effects to the beginning. (I originally planned to add sound effects to the whole story, but decided it would take too long.) I had so much fun making it that I now have plans for a more polished recording, with an actual fleshed out story to start with and better overall sound quality. I think that’d be kinda neat. Anyway, here’s Lucy’s story:

• Listen to: Wubie Gets in a Carrying Case