Today is Lin’s birthday. I have to go grocery shopping. The cats will have to continue eating the Purina kibble and being flatulent, because I do not have the time or energy to put together a birthday celebration (and buy groceries) and go to the feed store all in the same day.

I don’t have a present for Lin. I simply don’t know what to get him, even though I have been asking what he’d like, sneakily, for months now. I was going to buy him a new Playstation game, which is why I was trying to get him to leave Best Buy without using the rewards certificates to buy one. My thought was I’d go back after seeing which one he wanted, and then he could use the certificates for something else. Yeah, well, he did what he always does right around gift giving occasions. He bought everything he wanted as gifts. I hate that! He’s just impossible to give a gift to, because unlike me, he buys something as soon as he wants it without ever once mentioning that he wants it. So I have no idea.

Actually, I do have an idea, but I don’t want to mention it here, and I don’t know if I can find what I want anyway. I guess I’ll do what I always do and get a cake, some beer, a few party decorations, a card, and make a totally fabulous meal for dinner. Yes, I am thinking of splurging in the meat department today.

And I am going to have to squeeze in a nap somewhere. I slept like crap last night. Why? There was something alive in the den, and it wasn’t cat or human. It wasn’t so much that I was worried about what it was, but the cats would not leave the den and come to bed, and since the living-thing-noise was coming from the top of the highest shelving unit, I was concerned the monsters would try to get to it and wreck holy havoc doing so. So I kept getting up every time the sound levels from the den indicated there was a bit too much cat activity for my comfort.

Have I since discovered what it was that was making a strange scratching, crawling, ocassionally loud noise on the top of the highest shelving unit in the den? Why yes, and I wish I would have investigated further last night. I might have gotten some sleep. But you see … it was dark, and I am a weenie, so I left the investigating until Lin was awake and in the room too.

It was a damn “click beetle” or whatever their real name is. You know the ones that pop their heads up and down when they get agitated making a loud snick sound? Yeah. The cats had been chasing one around the house last night (which was hilarious), and I saw Ronin catch it and carry it off. I guess it got away from him once he reached the den and ended up in the box my cell phone came in where it merrily kept trying to get out and kept getting agitated … thus the occasional loud noise. A bug, amplified by a thin cardboard and plastic box. Argh!

After using a mirror and standing on a chair to determine that whatever it was wasn’t large enough to kill me, I pulled the box down, and there was the scary living thing that tormented me (and the cats) all night. I set the box on the kitchen floor where the cats were having a grand time alternately trying to get it out of the box and freaking out when it popped and jumped. Lin granted the poor bug a pardon though and made me take it outside to dump in the garden. It was disturbing his birthday morning to watch me sitting on the kitchen stool watching the cats trying to kill a bug, I guess.

Funny thing is I put the now empty box back on the kitchen floor, and some thirty minutes later, the bratty cats are still trying to find the bug in it. Geniuses they are not.

Ugh. I better get started on my day or go back to bed first and then rush around this afternoon. What to do, what to do?! It’s still two or so hours before the traffic simmers down to reasonable, so I think I’ll go ahead and take my nap now … now that they big bad scary “click beetle” isn’t terrorizing me anymore.