QWERTY & Cats: The Bane of My Existence

By notion of some freak flag, I have been blessed with both a love of words and the ability to type fairly fast and relatively accurately.

This leads to today's 3 AM rant: QWERTY.

I was typing up something that was nine pages, and while I type boring things, I think about trivial things. Like the arrangement of the keyboard, and how I really don't type according to the Almeda standards that were ingrained into our heads at a tender young age. In fact, I rarely rest on the home keys. I never use my pinky fingers for the letters Q,A,Z, or P, opting to use my ring fingers instead. Of course, any self respecting typing teacher will tell you that I am evil for my many substitutions. But it works for me, damnit, and typing nazis be damned!

Someone asked me the other day how I learned to type so fast. I didn't tell them the truth - too many games of Tangleword between the ages of 12 through 15 really did scar me for life. They taught me a lot of words that nobody uses and how to type too fast. I may not type correctly, but I can kick your ass at Tangleword.

Legend has it that QWERTY was originally developed to, in fact, slow typists down because of problems with old typewriters jamming. So why are we still using it?

We're owned by it. Duh.

I tried to learn to type on the Dvorak keyboard once and my brain just about leapt out of my head. No. I don't understand QWERTY, but when I'm 64, I will still be using QWERTY. You can pry it from my cold, dead, arthritic hands. It probably won't be too hard, because my wrists will have carpal tunnel and therefore no feeling (aside from the fact that I'll be cold and dead, you know.)

And that is why QWERTY is my first love and also the bane of my existence.

In other news points of obviousness, the cat is also the bane of my existence.
The cat is a very furry animal. The cat has a lot of fur. The cat sleeps on my pillow. I sleep on my pillow. Even if I turn the pillow over, cat hair still gets all up in my nose and makes me sneezy and itchy and generally full of hatred for the cat. I know I complain about this cat every single day of my life. It is the most inconsiderate roommate I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.

I have sleeping problems. The cat is nocturnal. I get up at 4:30 a.m. to pee. The cat wants to play. Aww, isn't that cute...the geriatric cat wants to play. Must play with geriatric cat - who knows how many days geriatric cat has left in her? What if I don't play with her and something happens to her? Won't I feel guilty then? So Geriatric cat and I play a rousing game of "catch the crumpled paper" until Geriatric cat tires of it and I am wide awake.

I am laying in an uncomfortable position. The cat climbs up on me and falls asleep. And damnit, if I move, the cat is going to wake up. And the cat is cute. And old. So I sleep with a freaking charlie horse so as not to disturb the cat.

The cat enjoys weak tea with lots of milk. I enjoy strong tea with very little milk. I fix the cat its own saucer of tea, which it daintily drinks by dipping its paws in the saucer and licking them. And then it climbs back into my bed, and gets little tea dribbles all over my pillow. Aww, isn't geriatric cat cute? Geriatric cat is slightly sticky.

And then I think to myself: this is a cat. For a living, it meows and eats and produces twice its weight in excrement, and then sleeps on my pillow. Why, oh why, do I cater to its every whim?

Geriatric cat is bitchy. I have had ex-boyfriends that were very afraid of this cat, and with good reason. It is a great judge of character.

Geriatric cat is my bodyguard, my confidant, and my most trusted counselor.

She is only slightly the bane of my existence.