The Giant Rat of Sumatra Coffee Co-op

I know I was going to stop naming my posts but this one just had to start somewhere. In the late 1970s I was convinced to start a coffee co-op for Starbucks coffee. It ran from 1978 to 1983. I bring this up because I am just a little nostalgic for the time when I was still an air-headed himbo; since the ex-Mrs.Grumpy left, the house was kind of stark - then she took V.I. (our kitty) and now the house is empty and kind of echo-y. No one stayed in my life longer than a year or two and when they left, I forgot them - adult attention deficit disorder can wreak havoc with friendships. When I ran the co-op people called me, wanted to get together, invited me to visit - all those social things. When people don't touch me, I forget them; you would not believe the number of partners who went away because I forgot them. I would take off to Montana for a couple weeks and when I came back, I would have forgotten them or I could not think of a reason to call, or it had been so long that I was too embarrassed to call.

Letting(?) her take the kitty without a fight seemed best for Kitty; cats are very conservative and do not like to do things for the first time. Once they have done something, then it is probably okay and they will do it again; so I did not want to let the ex take the cat until I could find a place to live that accepted cats then try and get Kitty to adjust to another new situation (I drove the ex to her home the other night and Kitty already forgot who I am and ran and hid in a box). VeeVee was a rescue kitty that we found in a PAWS cat outlet; she was almost completely shutdown, she did not even respond when we picked her up; she had been un-adopted for about 6 months from what they told us. Then things got weird for her when the ex told me she was leaving; got worse when she was gone. I just found where she was pooping; I was suspicious that in cleaning the litter box, it was all urine and only a little poop. I guess I should have looked more, she found a nice spot on a rug in a nice deep hidey-hole. It is petrified so god know how long it was there (Kitty has been gone for a week or 2 now so there may be more surprises in store for me). Kitty seemed to pee and poop in odd places at odd times. Sometimes she even peed behind the TV while we were watching. I think the ex had been building up to leaving and the cat picked up on the bad vibes - I didn't pick up on it, or actually I think I just glossed over all the signs that the ex was ready to leave.

I am listening to some Pink Floyd right now and that takes me back to my blissful himbo-hood. I saw my first concert in 1969 in San Diego CA; I was in the Marine Corps. Well, actually I was on my way out of the Corps. A Corps buddy and I rented a Carmen Ghia and drove route 66 from CA to Chicago in 1969 (I will tell that story sometime later). While we were on the way back, we were pulled over by the IHP - one thing lead to another and we were arrested escorted to the Great Lakes Brig then flown back to MCRD San Diego. We got separated, Mike (my buddy) was taken back to his/our company and he continued his career in the MC while I got side-tracked to Casual Company (yes, there is/was an Headquarters company named Casual Company where people whose MC career was on hold or ending) and eventually I was mustered out with an Honorable Discharge for medical reasons (another story for another day). While I was in C.C., I started doing acid and smoking pot; CC was for people getting in-service and pre-service use of drug discharges; at the time, you could almost get a discharge just by asking for one but it would have been either a General or an 'Other than hororable'(aka Undesirable). My first concert was Janis Joplin; I think I also saw Frank Zappa, and others that I no longer remember.

Well, more later