Speaking of Maxipads . . .

I’m sitting in my car Tuesday, waiting for the library to open. As usual, they’re late. For the umpteenth time, I wonder when people just stopped caring about doing things the right way, like showing up on time.

Lying on the sidewalk, about halfway between me and the door, is what appears to be a white piece of paper of some sort.

Finally, one of the librarians arrives.

I get out of my car and start toward the library.

When I get to the object on the sidewalk, I realize it is not a piece of paper, but a lightweight feminine hygiene product. Gross. At least it doesn’t appear to be used.

I go on about my business and enter the library for my blogging fix.

About ninety minutes later, I come back out.

And notice two more of the things between the original and my car, over by the edge of the grass.

I get a mental picture of some woman having a VERY bad day, trying to chase down her panty shields in a windstorm.

For a moment, it’s an amusing image.

But then I wonder why she had an open box of panty shields OUTSIDE.

Now I’m gonna get her finger germs on my butt.

In my quest to reduce my consumption of oil-based products, I buy loose rolls of toilet paper for a quarter apiece at a local grocery salvage store rather than buy them shrinkwrapped in plastic in bundles of multiples of four or six at the grocery store.

I just have to be careful not to buy rolls that are half-gone or have water damage.

At least, I HOPE it’s water damage.

Yeah, yeah; I know that at some point in their past they were almost certainly shrinkwrapped just like that. But somewhere along the line, someone decided that rather than throw out the toilet paper just because the package was damaged, they’d make the responsible decision to recover the toilet paper.

And if I DID buy the Toilet Paper Of The Masses, it would be TWO plastic shrinkwraps bought and thrown away (the one thrown away due to damage, plus the one I would be buying) instead of just one.

I tell you all this to set up the following.

So I’m standing in line at the register at Ken’s Salvage Grocery. I’ve filled my cart with ten Cups Of Noodles ($.10 each), ten of those little plastic bottles of Kool(ish)-Aid that kids drink ($.10 each), a package of very slightly out-of-date Cherry Cordial Hershey’s Kisses ($1), a used paperback for my mom ($1), a couple of 16-oz. packages of turkey coldcuts to make sammiches with ($1.99 each), a box of individual packets of True Lemon ($2), a slightly dented tube of Pringles ($.75), and four rolls of the aforementioned toilet paper, which are resting on top.

One of the rolls has a festive, simple little floral design on it.

The woman in line in front of me turns around, focuses on this roll of toilet paper, and . . . get this . . . CARESSES IT WITH HER FINGER!!!

“Oooh, I haven’t seen that kind in a long, long time!” she remarks, “I used to buy it ALL THE TIME, and I really LOVED it!”

Is it too much to ask for a man and his asswipe to remain unmolested in the checkout aisle?

I GET that other people have rubbed their grubby little hands on it while it sat in the bin on the shelf, but there’s something about it being in my cart, being fingered right in front of me, that rubs me the wrong way.

Everyone uses toilet paper; we all know that. But when you see toilet paper in someone’s grocery cart, you’re supposed to pretend like you don’t see it. You’re not supposed to comment on it, and you’re SURE AS HELL not supposed to caress it with your finger!

It’s one of those Unspoken Rules That Holds Society Together, just like not buying your condoms at a store where the people know you, or if you’re a cashier, not broadcasting a request for a price-check on aisle three for the Super-Absorbent Maxipads over the store’s loudspeaker. It just ain’t right.

So if I run into her in the regular grocery store and see that she has some of those Super-Absorbent Maxipads in her cart, I’m gonna make sure everyone in the store knows about it.

“Are those the SUPER ABSORBENT MAXIPADS, ma’am? My washing machine overflowed and flooded the laundry room, and maybe if I got some of the SUPER ABSORBENT MAXIPADS like yours, I could use them to soak up the water!”

Chirp . . . Chirp . . . Chirp . . . Chirp *SQUIRT* . . . Chirp . . . Chirp . . . Chirp.

Made a trip to the farmer’s market this morning. Bought three big ‘maters for $3.00. Not too economical, but at least they were tax-free, and with the salmonella problems lately, I didn’t mind paying a little more so I could have ‘maters on my evening turkey sammich.

Got home and sat in the kitchen, figuring out my electricity and water usage for yesterday and trying to extrapolate it out to see how much I’d use for the month. An annoying little bird perched on top of my garage chirped every 2.25 seconds for more than ten minutes straight.

I grabbed the squirty little water bottle that I use to piss off Patches when she makes annoying meow sounds too much, and pointed it at the feathered offender. It chirped again. I squirted.

The mesh from the window screen dispersed the stream into an ineffectual mess.

Two and a quarter seconds later, the bird chirped again.

“Go be annoying somewhere else,” I commanded it.

It did not comply. Two and a quarter seconds later, it chirped yet again.

I gave up and closed the window.

This is the part where Tippi Hedren’s fan club come after me with pitchforks and torches.

But first, the backstory.

One of these days I’ll learn how to write one of these posts without a long, drawn-out explanation of the background and a bunch of tangents, but apparently today is not that day.

Where to start? I suppose the best place to begin is with the people in the rental next door.

A few months ago, the woman brought home a cat with four kittens that had been dumped at one of the local grocery stores. Two of the kittens disappeared almost immediately; I don’t know if she gave them away or what.

Then a few weeks later, one of the other two got run over.

And that left Mama Kitty and Spot. The neighbors said Spot’s name was Patches, but I had an indoor cat named Patches, so her name was Spot whenever she came over to my house.

I felt bad for Mama Kitty and Spot. Their owners seemed to feed all their animals out of one bowl, so Mama Kitty and Spot had to compete with a Basset Hound, a big black mixed-breed, and two or three Chihuahuas if they wanted anything to eat.

So I began feeding them table scraps in a pan on my front porch. I don’t feed my minpin table scraps because it makes messy things happen on the carpet, so rather than put it in the trash (where the cats would no doubt tear into it when I put the trash out by the road Tuesday mornings), I gave it to them.

Mama Kitty and Spot were very friendly to me, but Spot, even when she was only a few weeks old, absolutely LOATHED Tiny. She’d lay her ears back and growl and spit and hiss every time he came near her.

But that’s one of those irrelevant tangents.

I noticed in early spring that Mama Kitty began gaining weight and got all lemon-shaped. I knew that meant she was getting ready to extrude another batch of kittens, so I began feeding her even more.

I never got to see the kittens; when the time came, the neighbors took her in the house. The woman told me she had seven. After a week or so, they began letting Mama Kitty out for a little while each day, but the kittens never came with her.

But Spot stopped by every afternoon like clockwork.

I’d sit on a chair on the porch and she’d jump up in my lap and demand to be petted.

I noticed around the first of the month the neighbors began moving stuff out of the house. Through the grapevine I heard they were moving because their three kids had outgrown the house.

They hadn’t paid much attention to Spot since the kittens had been born, so I thought maybe they’d leave her behind when they moved, since they knew I’d take care of her.

But they didn’t.

About a week ago, they loaded her up in the van, and I don’t think they’ve been back since.

So that left me with a problem -- what to do with the table scraps.

I didn’t want to put them in the trash, because after a couple of days it would stink up the house and attract bugs. I knew there were a few tomcats that stopped by every few nights to steal Mama Kitty and Spot’s food, so I kept putting it out on the porch in the evenings, more out of habit than anything else.

And every morning, it would be gone.

The tomcats were sneaking in at night and eating it, I surmised.

But I surmised wrong.

This afternoon, I put out some sauerkraut and Crockpot baby-back ribs and a piece of grocery-store fried chicken from a few days ago that was probably still edible, but wasn’t all that appetizing when it was new.

I looked out a few minutes later to see a Blue Jay eating the sauerkraut.

And a little later still, I found a swarm of starlings and grackles (unpleasant, oily little birds, those) eating the ribs and fighting over the piece of chicken.

Because of me, the birds have acquired a taste for meat, including bird meat.

Can human meat be far behind?

And that is how I came to realize that I am in a prologue to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, and that I am the cause of it all.

Tippi Hedren’s fans and relatives are gonna be pissed.