News of the Random
For some reason, this story just made me shake my head. This jerk showed up at a British Remembrance Day parade with a huge and impossible chest full of medals. Experts have looked at the medals, but it doesn't take anything more than eyes to tell this guy is a fake.

I just don't get people who pretend to be military heroes, and there are a lot of such folks out there. But this guy takes the cake. I mean if you wanted to march in the parade and make people thing you were an actual veteran, wouldn't it have made more sense to try and actually carry it off? Pick one or two medals that make sense and blend in. Don't put on so many medals that everyone who sees you is bound to think "this lunatic is an impostor." Did he actually think nobody would question him?

Meanwhile, Back at Target
With me being an unproductive member of society, we're trying to do Christmas on the cheap this year. (By "we" I mean me because I do all the shopping for my family and Husband's family and he just shops for me). I finished up today at that bastion of good taste, Target.

I started Christmas shopping last summer. I always try to be done by Thanksgiving, but this year I started earlier to spread out the Visa bill in less terrifying chunks. We have 12 people to get gifts for, not counting each other, so it can add up unless you shop carefully.

At Target today I bought the last of the gifts (two sweaters and a purse) and then when to the Christmas aisle for gift wrap. They had some quite nice paper, actually, but one weird display of paper obviously meant for children. It had cartoon and movie characters on it. Most of it was typical, but cute. Piglet hanging a wreath on Pooh's door. Santa Mickey giving a bone to a grateful Pluto. And, of course, that most Christmas of all movies -- Star Wars. Yeah, they had paper with Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker (complete with light saber) and the gang pictured as animated characters on red and green squares. Because, you know, nothing says Christmas quite like an intergalactic war.

Also seen and/or overheard at Target:

- A woman with three kids under the age of 5 who is pregnant again. Have these people never heard of birth control?
- A woman telling her boyfriend, "Target is fine for your mom but I expect something from Nordstrom."
- A man with a shopping cart with 3 24-packs of toilet paper and a 25-pound tub of cat litter. Apparently no live thing in his house does anything other than go to the bathroom.
- Two hip-hop wannabes with pants around their thighs buying the Josh Groban Christmas CD
- A Target employee in the bedding section asked what the difference was between "King" and "California King". Her reply: "They're the same, it's just these sheets are only available in California."
- A man who must have weighed 300 pounds wearing a pink sweatshirt with a pony on it in glitter and a 49er cap.
- The woman who ate an entire bag of chips in the store. And not one of those lunch-sized bags. A full-sized bag of Ruffles. I saw when she opened them and began munching and when I saw her in line the bag was empty. She paid for it and asked the clerk to throw the empty bag away.
- A man talking on his cell phone in the menswear section "Is Bob a large or an extra large? He's an extra-extra large? Got I can't believe my sister found someone fatter than she is!"

Ah....life on the A-list.

Anticipating Trauma
Sigh....it's time for Annual Trauma Day. Cipher (The World's Most Amazing Cat, Screw You if You Don't Agree tm) has an appointment on Monday for her annual physical and shots.

And I'm already a nervous wreck because the event will involve Cipher's nemesis The Carrier. Cipher is deadly afraid of the carrier. She knows when she sees it that bad is about to happen. She is about to be snatched from her happy home, put into a cage, thrust into a huge car and then taken to a cold steel table where a strange man will put a thermometer up her butt.

Can't say I blame her for being terrified of the whole process.

She'll handle it fairly well -- better than I, in fact. And once she gets home and has her favorite tuna for dinner she'll settle down and be fine. For but the hour and a half the whole thing takes she's a very uncertain and unhappy kitty and I feel like I'm sending my baby off to war.

Yeah, I'm a crazy cat lady.

The Look
One of the reasons why I think I have the best-paying "job" in the world is "the look."

There is a look that you get from animals (if you're very lucky) of absolute trust. It's this look in their eyes that says "I know you will never hurt me." I get it from Cipher (The World's Most Amazing Cat, Screw You if You Don't Agree tm) right before she falls asleep with her nose touching mine. It says to me that she's willing to completely unguarded around me because she knows that she's safe.

I get it from certain cats at the shelter when they curl into my lap and settle in for a good snuggle. These cats barely know me and yet they are trusting enough to believe that they are in no danger from me. The big high is when you eventually get it from a cat that you've had troubles with. The shy cats or the aggressive ones. The ones that for the first 10 visits hid under the chair or hissed whenever you approached. But with the love and patience of the volunteers, they slowly begin to relax and get used to the attention. They don't hide in the corner. They don't try to use your hand as a chew toy. They come closer, give out with a rusty purr, and rub their cheeks against your hand.

And then, if you're very, very lucky, you one day get "the look." And that makes all the scratches and all the hard work worth it.

I love "the look."