It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

Seriously?  WTF?  It’s October and all of a sudden it’s high tide to up the creep out factor?

Multiple nights this week I’ve gotten late-night calls.  Normally, this isn’t a big deal as my number is a digit or two off of a local pharmacy.  An increase in calls generally starts in with cold and flu season.  But what doesn’t usually happen is odd scratching noises and heavy breathy (it’s usually a congested and embarrassed “Sorry”, or “This isn’t the pharmacy?” or just a hang-up).

So these calls?  Little creepy.

I’m not ready to call the cops or anything, but it’s making me pretty pissy.  I need my zzzzz’s, if not for beauty then for my sanity, and the scratching weezer is chipping away at my daytime bullshit tolerance.  Caffeine can only compensate for so much, and a tired Cammy is a cranky Cammy, and a cranky Cammy, well, that’s the Cammy that’s likely to skewer people (verbally….although the potential of a paper-clip is tempting).

And yes, it’s creepy.  If this isn’t a high school bastard, or a repeat butt-dialer, but someone who has an interest in messing with me?  No, it’s not probable, but everything is possible.  And sometimes that probability, combined with an over-active imagination results in me creeping myself out.  Which is also not conducive to sleep.

And I think we’ve been over the cranky Cammy problem.

So, creepy caller, ass-dialer, whoever you are?  Think twice before you call again:  I’ve had one too many days to think about how to make good use of a paper-clip.  Very, very good use.

Just after I’d posted Sunday night about the giant penguins, I realized I really should have hit two other big anniversaries for this early October.  Running on the theory of “better late than never” augmented by “better a little late than 6 months from now”:

-October 2 marked the 175 Anniversary of The Battle of Gonzales, the first battle of the Texas Revolution.  Short version:  The Anglo-Texian settlement at Gonzales, in the Green DeWitt colony, had a cannon.  The Mexican government, fearing revolt (from Texas and multiple other Mexican states) came to take said cannon back.  The Texians weren’t having any of that (because, Comanche = bad news and cannon = answer).  First the settlers buried it to hide it, and then they dug it up and used it against the Mexican troops sent to retrieve it, while flying a flag with a picture of the cannon and the words “Come And Take It.”  So just in case you think that the near-fanaticism over the right to bear arms is a new thing to the fabric of Texas, it’s not.  And neither is being a little bit of a smart ass to one’s enemies.  The Texans won, the battle, and eventually, the revolution that followed from it.

-October 3, 20th Anniversary of German Unification:  A scant 4 years before Oct. 3, 1990, my Dad had been going through a map of the two Germany’s with me and trying to help my 6 year old brain understand the whole Iron Curtain thing, and painting a bleak picture of life on the other side, with particular focus on Germany.  I asked Dad if maybe there was a chance that one of these days they might put Germany back together.  His answer was, “No, I don’t think so.  Not in my lifetime and probably not in yours.”   It’s still one of the clearest memories I have before age 10.  Just as clear was my memory of standing in front of the TV watching people rip up the wall about 3 years later and Dad simply looking at me and saying, “Cammy, I can’t believe it, but I was wrong”–both of us knowing exactly what moment he was talking about.  But even the wall tumbling wasn’t the complete repair.  That didn’t happen until 3 October of 1990 when, at the stroke of midnight, East Germany didn’t so much turn into a pumpkin as cease to exist.

With two events like this?  I’m beginning to think early October is apparently a ripe time if you want massive political upheaval of one sort or another.

(It’s also a good time to drink beer).