I’m amazed that I made it this long without seeing it. It’s been more than a year now since he lost the leg, 13 months to be exact, and just this week I saw him miss it. Try to use it. Realize it isn’t there.

Just as he has since he moved in, he waited for me outside the shower. Like any other day. His right ear tilted to the side, as if he had heard something. The beagle downstairs, perhaps. Or maybe the ear itched, was a nuisance, was getting in the way. And so he did what they do when their ears tickle: he went to scratch it. Only his leg was unavailable, wasn’t responding despite his repeated demands. His striped face contorted, tilting the way it does when he seems to wonder the “why” about most anything. Why you’re sitting there with a perfectly full tin of tuna and you haven’t dished out any to the family. Why you’re making that wet whistling noise that drives them crazy. Why that ear itches and no matter the honest to goodness intent, it just won’t stop. At the very same moment that he turned his head, what little leg muscle was left on his right side began twitching, a rhythmic and valiant effort to no avail.

He looked at me like he knew. I’m scratching the itch, mama, but for some reason, it just won’t stop. I thought my heart would burst out of my chest. Right out of my chest onto the floor, where the paramedics would find me comatose in a pool of my own tears and cheap conditioner.

They’re more resilient than we are, of course. Not finding the leg, he used his front paw to relieve the itch instead. It was a less effective remedy, to be sure, with its reduced power and lack of marsupial design. But it worked just the same. And he left me standing there with my heart in my hand, dripping wet and catching my breath like a fool. Because there were clearly more important things for that cat to ponder, like why Cricket likes to smack him in the head while he’s trying to sleep, and why their lunatic of a human still hasn’t shared that precious tuna.

Some of you may have noticed that I have yet to fill my links page. I can’t bring myself to do it, to be honest. I can’t bring myself to pick and choose, to decide who is worthy and who isn’t. It smacks of high school, frankly, like most things do in the blogosphere as of late. It’s frustrating. Maddening. Suffocating. It’s no longer about who you think writes well, whose turn of phrase leaves you swirling your bra over your head and raising your glass of Pinot. It’s about popularity, who knows whom, who spent a weekend devoted to another blogger at her apartment in Anytown, leaving with one of her Etsy bags and getting a link via her latest post. It’s Facebook extended. And there doesn’t seem to be room enough for all of us.

Plenty of folks will have no idea what I’m talking about, and I hope they enjoy that status. It’s the place to be, as far as I’m concerned. Because somehow, somewhere, our URLs became a little high schoolish, perhaps elementary, dear Watson, harkening back to an era when our training bras made us fold in half in the locker room, when we despised our reflections in the mirror. It’s small in the greatest sense of the word, and it’s more than what I wrote about in 2005. That was about divisions within a stable community, about folks who revered others and sought their own growth. This new reality is about Tweets that sabotage and Facebook comments that judge and more shit than I ever thought we’d engage in. I care not about that preposition.

There is so much junk floating around the community, so much crap, that at times I no longer want to be a part of it. There are women, now well known, who have handled themselves with great aplomb, great grace and unnecessary apologies, and there are others that need a reality check. You do know what it is that we do, don’t you? We write for the nameless, faceless masses, who perhaps offer up an avatar for our consumption? If we’re honest, we were all fucking nerds at the outset. Some of us more successful than others, some demonstrating more cheerleader pyramid than flute prowess. But really, do any of us have room to play social chair? To determine who lives and dies in the world of online writing? You know we don’t. You know you don’t. And if you’ve felt like you did in the past six months, chances are you’re one of the offenders.

I can’t help but enlist the assistance of a local boy, of course without the approval of his trademark/copyright/flagrant sponsorship attorneys, but I’ll risk it. Did you see what Michael Phelps did when he won that last gold? The one that established his place not in a world of 7 million blogs – half of them anime and Cialis ads, to boot? He didn’t pull the equivalent of what’s been happening lately in these parts. He didn’t throw his relay squad in the water, didn’t accuse them of not wanting the best. He thanked them for lifting him up, for doing their part. He embraced them and their 4 am practice support. Which is what every fucking one of us should be doing for the other. We are all the reason the others exist. We are all the reason we make gas money – Diet Coke money? – off of these sites. We are a blip, regardless of whether we live off our ad money or not, and it’s high time everyone realized it.

In my humble, nerdy opinion, the blogging Interwebs needs one huge shot of tequila, a group hug, and a reminder to read the memo that it needs to get over its damn self. Keep writing, keep humoring yourself, keep doing what you did in high school that made the kids close to you know they’d know you for a lifetime. Chances are this isn’t going to be your ticket to the big time, and even if it is, it certainly isn’t going to put you atop that cheerleading pyramid. So be fucking nice. Get back to why you did this in the first place. Besides, they put the smart, carpal tunnel girls at the bottom of the pyramid, anyway.

By now you’ve all heard at least 1,000 times that there are record high temps here in Texas, so I won’t tell you again. (Except yes, it’s really, really hot. Like warm blanket hot. And this blanket is made of lava.) I’m tired and a little cranky tonight and don’t feel like doing much. Also, at lunch I ate my weight in rice and beans and tacos so it’s likely I’d need a Segway to make the block or two to dinner. So yes, I don’t feel like going out because I am lazy, but also because I don’t want to drink this evening. Going to the hotel’s adjacent restaurant would expose me to the allure of clinking bulbous glassware and regrettable kissing decisions. It’s too much to handle in my compromised state.

So I went to the hotel vending machine. A disappointing find, to say the least, with Funyuns and lots of pretzels and dry flaky things. And nuts and also some chips that, while not Fritos, surely look like they’d smell like them. About once a month I eat something with base ingredients other than dough and spaghetti sauce, something sweet like candy, and figured this might as well be my night. I’m in a new city! Watch as I go and eat me some Starburst instead of vegematables! I carefully fed the machine my crispest dollar. It pushed the lean yellow wrapper of Starburst goodness to the very edge, and then it stopped, still gripping what I can only imagine was the very sweetest light pink Starburst on God’s green earth. The machine made its electronic swallowing noise and then had the nerve to write out THANK YOU in its digital window. I threw my body up against the glass. Nothing. I paused. I am a working woman with a rental car and a new skirt from the Jones New York outlet. I can afford another 75 cents. I offered up another fresh dollar. The metal coil repeatedly rolled. And this time it stopped with the hook hanging onto not one, but two lean yellow wrappers, containing what I can now only imagine were the two very sweetest pink Starburst in the entire Milky Way. There is no way this is happening, I thought. No way is this happening.

And how is it that the saying goes? Shame on you if you fool me once? Well, when I got the third dollar out, I knew it was a risk. Someone could walk by and see my sweaty reflection in the glass. That, or someone might see my green skin and my tee shirt shredding as my bulging muscles multiplied in sync with my hate. But I was going to show that machine who was boss. Things were going to change. I mean, it couldn’t not drop the candy after I’d invested my 401K, could it? Apparently – and you knew this was coming but it seems I did not – it could.

Walk away, Kris. It’s what I say to those senile old bats on Deal or No Deal when they get greedy and decide they’ll show a silhouette who it’s dealing with. It’s what my mother says to me when I repeatedly choose mac and cheese from the dating buffet. Move along now. That’s just the same old platter you keep going back to. And whatever you do, don’t settle for the nuts.

I went with the nuts. I’m thinking I should have opted for the Funyuns. Highly unlikely there’s any metaphor in Funyuns.