What the - was that?

Cooperstown NY draws some pretty interesting characters, and you’re likely to find them doing just about anything.  For example, you could have someone who might test out at a genius level IQ, might qualify for Mensa membership if he were interested, but might be  the sort of person who maybe didn’t mainstream in the classroom all that well. Or maybe he did. Who knows. He might have had a fancy degree in some esoteric liberal subject, I don’t know. He never mentioned it if he did. This was a quirky and very entertaining night maintenance man at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum we'll call Jim (changing names to protect the innocent). Night maintenance doesn’t pay as well as, say, Senior Vice President, but it’s a lower profile position, so you can get away with more stuff, so it’s got its plusses.

Maintenance had these nice blue sweepers, and Jim named his Monica, after Monica Lewinski, and her infamous blue dress. (If you remember your fairly recent history, you should be able to make the inference.) Jim also had a blue macaw at home, which, it seems, was nearly as quirky, entertaining, and smart as Jim. I wish to goodness I could remember that bird’s name. 

Jim told a story about one Saturday afternoon that he leaned back for a nap. Apparently while he was asleep, the kids came in, put a pizza in the oven, and turned on the oven timer, because the next thing Jim knew, he awoke to this odd droning sound and someone saying, “What’s that? What is that? What the hell is that?” He arose, still half asleep, and followed the sound into the kitchen, where he found the blue macaw on the stove, examining the timer, asking what the hell it was, as it buzzed.

I remembered that story at 5:45 this morning.

Last night my phone battery was low and I plugged it into the kitchen island while I was downstairs. That phone happens to have a very handy alarm that wakes me in the morning (which I must remember to turn off on mornings that I don’t wish to be awakened at that hour).  According to the order of things, it went off at 5:30 exactly as it had been set to do. It was plenty loud enough; I certainly heard it all the way upstairs, but I wasn’t quite ready to get up just yet. Apparently Cookie the cat was, though, because the next thing I heard was the unmistakable, hearty sound of a substantial piece of glass breaking on the tile floor. This time I was the one saying “What the hell was that?”

It seems Cookie went downstairs to see “what the hell was that” about my 5:30 AM alarm and when she jumped up on the island, or tried to, it was higher than she anticipated. She caught the placemat I had set there with coffee cups on it, and pulled the whole thing forward in a precarious manner.  It wasn’t any coffee cup that had broken, though, but the glass sugar bowl. 

I came downstairs to find glass and sugar splayed out all over the place, as you can imagine. I located the broom and swept it up - thought I got it all swept up this morning, but I am still finding bits of glass here and there.

Cookie is fourteen years old in chronological years. I don't know how old that is in cat years, but I know she is young for her years. I am impressed that she is so conscientious, to attend to an unruly alarm downstairs on the kitchen island the way she did. I guess I'll be getting a new sugar bowl - and I will certainly make sure not to leave my alarmed phone downstairs again!