Crazy Cat Lady Chronicles, Vol. XIV

My friend called in a panic because she had an early morning doctor appointment and needed someone to take her 3- and 1-year-old littles to preschool. I brushed my teeth, threw on a hat and some comfy sweats and went over.

Since their school is only four blocks away downtown (and car seats are a level of engineering I have never needed to master), I put them in the stroller and walked them there. No problem.

But as I was pushing the empty stroller back down Blount Street at morning rush hour, I was actually HOPING someone I knew would see me, figure I'd finally lost my mind and ask what I was doing, because I had the PERFECT response:

"Eudora jumped out and I can't find her."



(photo Geoff Wood)

Of all the worst literary stereotypes of women

Well, there weren't all that many in the centuries before I was born.* The ones that spring immediately to mind include:

** The hooker with a heart of gold.

**  The innocent coquette from the gutter rescued by a prince pretending not to be one, just as she's at her wits'  end.

** The unattractive antagonist prone to malapropisms.

But the worst one, the ugliest stereotype of women, is the crazy cat lady. The spinster. The one who calls her cats her children and leaves them in her will if she doesn't get a visit from social services who find all 106 of them first.

Hey, check out this video of 7-week-old Eudora Steve just found!

Miss Eudora Thunderkiss

* Strange girls with strange names like Eudora and Flannery bucked the Southern system and blew those stereotypes out of the water for girls like me.