Flossie meets the challenge

Hi neighbors. A couple of weeks ago I sent out a challenge for readers to keep track of a single day and expand it to make it interesting reading for their descendants.

Flossie announced that she had met and even exceeded the challenge when she came over for coffee the other morning.

"You know, you put 'ancestors' instead of 'descendants' in your column?" she asked.

She poured some cream into her coffee, stirred it enthusiastically and asked, "Got cake? Cookies? Omelet? I thought you asked me over for brunch? If I had known you were going to eat everything early today, I would have come over for breakfast."

I pointed to the cake platter and while she grabbed a knife, I got out the plates and forks.

It wasn't long before we were munching carrot cake and drinking fresh coffee. It doesn't get any better than that.

Flossie was ready to tell me her story. She poured another cup of coffee, filled it with cream and sugar and sat down to stir. "I have it here," she said, and she pulled a single typed page from her sweater pocket.

"My alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m., every day. As a matter of fact, I set two clocks to go off at 5:30 a.m., every day and set one to be one minute faster than the other. That way, I have twice the reason to complain and half the reason to be late getting out of bed.

At 3:30 a.m., my legs get cramps. I sit on the side of the bed half asleep and move my feet around, trying to stay the leg cramps. When the cramps move down into my feet, I give it up and walk to the bathroom.

As I pass the couch in the front room, I hear the "guard dog" snoring and I try to tip-toe so I don't wake him. I am doing a ball-of-the-feet high-step due to the cramps. This walk is oddly quiet, and the dog would have slept right through it if I had not stepped on the cat sleeping in front of the bathroom door. The cat is huge and there is no way to step over or around her when dealing with leg and foot cramps. The kitten hears the cat meowing and hissing and comes running, makes a leap, and grabs the tail of my housecoat with all four legs.

I twirl, stepping off of the cat -- which is using all four paws to shred my legwarmers and her perfect set of healthy teeth to bite my toes -- and finally make it to the bathroom.

The kitten seems excited by the smell of blood from my bleeding toe and climbs up my back, jumps off my shoulder and lands in the toilet bowl.

Limping on both feet, I belatedly pull on my mules, which I had forgotten and left in the bathroom earlier. I go into the hall to get a dry towel to rescue the screaming and swimming kitten still in the toilet bowl and almost step on the big cat again.

She hisses, arches her back and attacks the towel I just pulled from the linen closet. It is now 3:38 a.m. (just to keep the schedule in mind.)

Trying to keep the part of the towel with the dry, angry, big cat away from me, I rescue the kitten from the toilet. I throw both in the shower, shut the door and turn on the water. That keeps them busy for a few minutes and I use the facility.

I turn off the water, throw a couple of towels on the floor and open the shower door. Two wet, angry felines fly from the shower to the hallway, dripping all the way.

They head toward the back door, I open it and they escape to the screened-in porch. I shut the door and leave them to dry in the heat of the night.

I realized by 4:15 a.m. that my legs and feet were no longer cramping. I get a drink of water, tiptoe past the still sleeping guard dog and turn out the light, slip off my mules and adjust the pillow, the covers and my shredded leg warmers and start to drift off. I was almost snoring when the familiar barking started at the bedroom door. It was 5:15 a.m. I hope you descendants enjoy hearing about dogs and cats which most likely will be extinct species by the time you read this, and that you appreciate all I have to go through on a typical morning.

Flossie.