Usually I write about the walk or gaming. If I do not the topic rarely strays from something at least vaguely related. Today however, for Christmas, I present for your consideration a short essay on Ford “Chubbyfats” Prefect.

Webster’s defines the word stupid as “slow of mind : obtuse. Given to unintelligent decisions or acts.” Ford fits these parameters. One might also use the word idiot. Some good synonyms of idiot are Airhead, half-wit, prat, nimrod, ninny, fathead (very applicable), and my personal favorite… nincompoop. Ford is all these things. Let us break it down.

I cannot imagine the dichotomy of mind my poor cat must suffer when going to take a drink. He needs water to live, yet the water dish is a dark, evil place that must be avoided lest Ford perish. On a daily basis the routine goes like this… Ford sits in the middle of the kitchen and glares at the water bowl. This will last approximately five minutes. Ford will take a few careful steps towards the bowl, stop, and glare some more. Ford makes it to the water bowl and sniffs carefully. Ford gingerly begins to drink. Something on Ford’s face gets wet, most likely his mouth. Ford strikes the water dish, splashing water up getting him wetter. Ford hisses and strikes harder. Ford gets splashed by copious amounts of water. Ford goes for the kill, ears back, hissing and unleashing a flurry of attacks. Ford runs away wet where he cleans himself thus getting the water he set out to get in the first place.

Ford’s Driving Motivation: Food.

On a base level food is the driving motivation for all life on this planet. Ford takes this very seriously, to the detriment of all other motivations. There is only the next meal and when food is not present he often will sit and lick his empty food dish which I can only extrapolate as his “pretending to eat.” When it is actually time to eat his fragile little brain snaps with excitement and he waddles around wailing at the top of his lungs. He must then be guarded by either myself or my wife for Ford views all food as his and once he has scarfed down his portion he will torpedo his poor brother with his massive girth, head down like a battering ram and begin to greedily devour his brother’s meal.

When Ford is not pretending to eat or fighting his water dish he is on the his bed. I will admit that possession is 9/10ths of the law. I am in the bed 1/3rd, roughly, of my time. Ford is in the bed 9.85/10ths of his time. This would be fine if it did not render the cat completely anti-social. To break him of this we have taken to locking him out of the room during the day which destroys his concept of reality. He wanders, lost until he collapses exhausted on a chair or perhaps the couch. If you go and open the bedroom door he will run down the hallway yelling and attempt to gain entry. He is not trying to hide… he just wants on his bed.

We end with a few of Ford’s stranger more idiotic tendencies. He will often sit with his nose to the wall staring at it. After a minute or two he will paw at the wall. This is usually at 3am. Ford will play when engaged for about thirty seconds until he realizes he has been tricked into moving at a rate which approaches “exercise,” then he will stop. Ford has fallen out of windows… twice. One the first occasion he fell out of one window then tried to jump back into the other window which was closed. As an aside, cats bounce off closed windows. Ford tries to clean his brother always to the result of getting his butt kicked. His brother will tolerate the licking for a few minutes and then beat Ford.

Ford is without a doubt the dumbest animal I have ever had the pleasure of sharing my life with, and I have had many. He may be a remarkably stupid cat, but he is my cat, and his buffoonery adds to his charm. He is also a snuggler and after a long day when I climb into my…err..his bed and he flubs down under my arm and nuzzles and purrs I think to myself, “Oh alright… I suppose you are not that bad after all.”

This past week has been an adventure of the nefarious variety. My wife with her shattered ankle and emergency surgery suddenly turned into two surgeries. A simple check up to remove her stitches brought to light that one of the screws put into her bones “missed the mark.” So she had a screw loose! Ha! Haha!… /facepalm. So she had surgery again yesterday and we are once again back to step one.

Now that is the worst of it of course, but here is a short list of everything that broke this week.

My wife’s laptop, the printer, my Xbox controller, the Soda Stream, The Microwave and my sanity.

I am very thankful that even with the unexpected second surgery that Elika is going to be Ok. And everything on that list is only a thing and can be replaced… even sanity. I think they sell sanity near the sewing supplies at Wal-Mart.

So that whole back to basics speech I gave fell apart. So I shall pick myself up, dust myself off and go for a walk…to Wal-Mart…to buy some sanity… and a nice crocheting kit.

So what to do now that my wife is couch bound for six weeks? What now that I have been let go from my seasonal work obligations? Back to basics! Walking, letter writing, social networking and getting my Indegogo campaign ready to launch by February. The only issue is motivation. This past week broke up the routine so much that getting it back together seems difficult. It is cold outside. If I am away from Elika for too long my imagination goes nuts and I start to worry. Vaas is still wreaking all sorts of havoc in Far Cry 3 so I should probably hunt him down. Sometimes the hardest part of doing something is just making yourself do it. Let’s test this theory. I am going to hit return and when I start the next paragraph four miles will have gone by for me, yet a mere second will have passed for you. Literary time travel! What a crazy concept.

And I am back, and feel better for it. It is getting out the door that is the hurdle. It is picking up the shattered remains of my routine and building a new one. It is moving forwards towards March 10th while assimilating these new challenges into our lives and I feel I have just made the first step.

I am not even sure where to begin. This past week has been both a blur and a painfully slow crawl. It marked a few notable dates and events, the first of which was my four-month “Walkiversary.” It is hard to believe that I have been planning this for four months. The second event was my birthday! I turned thirty-six. I have been asked if walking across the country is a mid-life crisis. I suppose that is a fair question. If it is, at least it is cheaper than a sports car.

Oh! Elika shattered her ankle. She was playing catch with my niece and nephew. What should follow that sentence is an epic story about how she did a fool hearted leaping dive to catch the pigskin. Sadly that is not true. She was almost standing still. She stepped to the side a bit to make a catch, twisted her ankle, she went one way and her ankle went the other. What resulted was three different broken bones and a dislocation.

We had a lovely ride to Christiansburg, Va. hospital curtiousy of 911. She had to have emergency surgery to put her ankle back together. I turned into a stressed insomniac worry beast. I did manage to sleep a bit though…

And here she is looking all happy on her super narcotic pain medication. I am going to start calling her “Franken-ankle.”

I found this sign in the ER very amusing.

So Elika is now bionic! She has a metal plate and two screws in her leg which gives her the power to get searched thoroughly by airport security. She is also pretty much immobile. She cannot put any weight on that foot at all for six weeks. Let’s see… oh!… I got let go from my seasonal work obligations. I saw this coming. It would not have lasted past the second week in January and seeing as I am now a full, live-in, health care provider I could not have gone back until around that time.

We had to stay with my sister for a week, which was nice. I do not get to see my family often enough and I wish it were under different circumstances. I was able to drive the four hours back with Elika yesterday after making a huge pillow nest for her in the back seat. So we are home now… and I slept. Today I am going to rent a wheelchair. Elika wants to go see The Hobbit. We will see if I can get her “There and Back Again.”

Oh! One more thing! Best birthday present ever? The Hero of Canton! The man that they call Jaaaaaaaaaayne!