It’s been a sucky week. I’m changing health insurance companies, but it took the new one over a month to give me the go-ahead. So last month I had to pay two health insurance premiums, which really hurt on top of some other stuff that was going on. Finally, late last Friday afternoon I got the letter from the new company saying everything is cool, so Monday I called the old company to cancel my policy. Except I couldn’t get through on the phone lines. I called again first thing Tuesday morning and did manage to get it canceled, but they said the new automatic debit had already gone out and they would have to send a refund check (and I’m sure they are in a big hurry to do that). I tried to cancel through my bank, but no luck. So there’s an extra $300 I really didn’t want to spend.

Then my refrigerator died. A Frigidaire and only a few years old, but it turns out it was eight months out of the warranty period on the compressor. So I had to buy a new refrigerator.

I also had two clients who so seriously irritated me that I was ready to tell them to fuck off and go find another chimp to work for them. This is uncharacteristic for me. But there I was, the angry emails written, explaining exactly how they were taking advantage of me and why I saw no reason I should put up with that—and I left them unsent. Next morning, it didn’t seem quite so urgent that I straighten them out, especially when considering the sorry state of my bank account. I suppose it’s more important to be paid than to be right. Let’s just hope I get one of the two.

So, anyway, a sucky week. With one bright spot: when trying to troubleshoot the problem with the refrigerator, I cleaned underneath for the first time since we bought it. Consider the La Brea tar pits for a moment. Then consider the life of a cat in this house: you eat; you sleep (a lot); every once in a while you frantically chase your favorite toy around the kitchen until it mysteriously disappears….

Okay, now replace the La Brea tar with cat fur and dust bunnies (a lot—we’re talking a serious fraction of a cubic foot here). Then replace the Pleistocene skeletons with a sampling of cat toys, and you get this:

Hair bands, refrigerator magnets, bottle caps, bread ties, the colored rings that Target puts around prescription bottles, milk bottle rings. I think we’ve established an entire ecology of cat toys here, and I await the efforts of future archaeologists as they unravel the mysteries contained within.

I don’t know, it struck me as funny enough to make the rest of the week a little easier to take.