A Second Invasion

Dear Mr. OR,

I write to you now with a distinct feeling of déjà vu. My darling bride has once again informed me of a forthcoming invasion. It is apparent that my darling bride is quite concerned as she has taken to eating copious amounts of food and is beginning to show the bloating around the midsection that usually follows long bouts of compulsive eating. Her moods are often unpredictable which I believe to be a sign of depression. Indeed even her characteristic gait has changed from a strong self confident stride to a side to side shuffle giving her the appearance of a person carrying a large exceptionally heavy burden.

Needless to say I'm terribly concerned for her health and safety. To this end we have begun regular doctor visits to insure that my darling brides current despondency does not turn into something far more dangerous. I am; however, considering having her get a second opinion as no matter how many times I query her doctor about her alarming weight gain and new eating habits her doctor always insists that this is normal and healthy. Should her second opinion agree I will be going back to my diet of fried foods and pizza which was my regular fair before my darling bride decided that we needed to have a more balanced diet.

All of that aside my struggles with the Beast continue. I am happy to report that we have done a good job of teaching the Beast how to speak English although, as is true with most triumphs in this area, the Beast has turned this too its advantage. The Beast has learned to speak rather proficiently and now does so with such enthusiasm and efficiency of thought that it is impossible for anyone else in the house to carry on a conversation. Indeed it seams that as soon as a conversation is begun the Beast instantly appears and begins to yell at the top of its lungs the play by play of which ever event recently happened to it. Should the other participants of the conversation be particularly stubborn in the pursuing of their communicative goals the Beast will repeat itself, raising the decibel level each time, until all hope of getting a coherent idea from one individual to another is completely lost and all civilized individuals quit talking and are reduced to single syllable responses in the hopes that this will pacify the Beast. Indeed there is only one way for civilized individuals to find relief from the Beasts continual torrent of words and that falls to a single member of the Lumpy household. The family cat.

The appearance of the family cat is always met with mixed emotions. The first is relief as for a moment it may actually be possible for someone other than the Beast to carry on a conversation. The second is pity as we know the terror that the cat is about to face until it is able to find a place of relative safety and solitude.

There is much for me to relate to catch you up to where I am now; however, I am woefully low on paper and ink at the minute and in desperate need of household supplies from the local market. I will write more as soon as my meager reserves have been replenished.
I remain always;

Respectfully Yours,

The Lumpy

On Terrorism and Being Held Hostage

Dear Mr. OR,

I have not written in nearly a month. This has primarily been due to the involvement of the Beast in very specific ways. It would seam that the Beast has been biding its time trying to lull me into a false sense of security and, by and large, it worked. On the evening of May 8th I was on my way home from a particularly draining day of box staring. I staggered into my house mumbling the usual hello to my darling bride and made my way to my writing table. Once properly seated I stared long and hard at my writing desk and the paper and pencil I've used to write to you on so many occasions but I could not for the life of me come up with anything to say.

You see the night before while I lie sleeping the Beast had wandered in and stolen my muse from my bedside table where I leave it at night while I'm sleeping. The next morning I woke up later than usual and in the ensuing rush simply did not notice that my muse was missing. Now that I was sitting at my desk I realized it was not there and so I went to look for it. I spent hours searching every nook and cranny and finally in desperation I headed for the basement thinking that perhaps it had been dragged down to the wash inside the pocket of my previously worn slacks. And that is precisely where I found it.

My muse sat cowering in the middle of the dirty laundry with The Beast standing over it. The Beast looking very smug held in its hand what appeared to be a very large handgun. As I watched The Beasts tiny little hands wobbled and it appeared as thought it might drop the weapon; however, upon my advance it quickly regained its control and held me at bay by threat of force. My advance halted it turned the weapon back towards my muse and began making what I can only assume was a very long list of demands. Unfortunately much of this was in Beastish and I was only able to pick out the few words here and there where the Beast would use a broken form of English.

The stand off went for days, both day and night, as the Beast spoke in firm sounding tones about something which required the frequent use of the letter L and included the word Milk. After which the Beast questioned me at length about Cheese and Ball. Finally nearly in tears from the stress of the situation the Beast broke down and spoke quiet sadly about its Mother whose name is apparently Lie-Lou. Finally after nearly a week with none of us having any sleep the Beast gave up and I regained my muse. However, In exchange for its peaceful return my muse required two weeks vacation to recover from its harrowing and traumatic experience.

And so for that time I have on a regular basis been going to my writing desk and staring longingly at my paper and pencil and writing nothing. And now with a great sense of relief I send you this communication. I remain always;

Respectfully Yours,

The Lumpy

On Flooding the Desert

Dear Mr. OR,

It would appear that the Beast has picked up a rather unusual gift. Where the Beast managed to learn this gift I do not know. I can only speculate that it must have been on one of its late night cannibalistic outings with my wife. Perhaps it captured a small Beast which had infiltrated a Native American household and given the unfortunate victim its freedom in exchange for this gift. However the Beast came across it, I am now the proud owner of one Beast who is capable of doing a rain dance.

It usually begins with a slight bending of the knees followed by several deep bending motions while the legs piston up and down in unison, then a pause while the hands flail vigorously followed by more deep bends and leg pistoning. This goes on for several minutes until Presto! Rain!

The Beast apparently thinks this is a very neat trick indeed as it has been doing its new rain dance for several days now causing it to rain directly above my house with out seising for several days. Every time it starts to let up the Beast begins its dance again and down comes the rain harder than before.

I was not concerned about this at first as I don't much care to be outdoors due to some severe allergies to everything that is green. But I failed to see the real genius of the plan until I wandered into our basement to find someone had replaced it with a large dirty swimming pool. I quickly realized that the Beast was trying to drown me out. Alas the poor Beast underestimated the Lumpy’s resourcefulness. After a deep sea diving expedition conducted by canoe in my basement I was able to find our pump and get it working. The basement is no longer underwater and everything is beginning to dry out which is a relief to me as I'm not fond of death by drowning.

As I wait for things to finish drying out I have begun talks with several counties in Arizona who are very interested in purchasing some time with our talented Beast. They think with some help our Beast could be a great boon to their agricultural business. A price has not been set yet but I will let you know as soon as negotiations have been completed. I remain always;

Respectfully Yours,

The Lumpy

On Bowling for Books

Dear Mr. OR,

The other night my darling bride and I made a trip to the mall. Now I'm not particularly fond of Malls as they are usually quite loud and full of busy, unhappy, pushy people and so I try to avoid them where possible. However, the Lumpy's darling bride had not been out of the house in quite some time and was expressing a strong desire to be amongst throngs of people so we bundled up the Beast and off we went. While at the Mall we ran into a small pet store. It is well known that the Lumpy's darling bride cannot see cute animals and simply pass by. This probably was as much to blame for the ease with which the Lumpy household was invaded by the Beast as was anything else. And so it wasn't long after we spotted the pet store that we were inside with my darling bride petting, and ogling every furry animal in sight. It is noteworthy that the Beast appeared to show the same weakness although it did look a bit ravenous while viewing the dachshunds. As this was going on I wandered aimlessly until I came across a very cleaver contraption. It was a large plastic ball that the attendant explained was used to give small animals exercise, not unlike one of those running wheels. You simply put the small animal into the ball and let the animal go where ever it would like. Well I must admit that my first thought was to buy a mouse and one of these balls as a make shift toy for the Lumpy's two cats. But then I mentally calculated the price of keeping the mouse fed and clean up of the inside of the ball on a regular basis and decided it was too much maintenance for a cat toy. It was not long before my synapses were firing again; however, and I realized that a larger ball would be an excellent way to keep the Beast from destroying everything in its path. To date the Beast typically makes our house a disaster by pulling down anything it can get its grubby little paws on. This ball would certainly prevent the Beast from reaching anything of importance. A brief inquiry quickly dashed all hopes of finding an adequately sized ball especially after pointing to the Beast when asked what size I was looking for. At this point the attendant became far less cooperative and I felt it would be best if my darling bride quit ogling the local wild life and departed for a more hospitable environment with me post haste. Although I had met this momentary setback I was not as of yet feeling like giving up. When Corporate America fails to provide; it is time for the industrious individual to engineer his own solution. And so I called my Brother who works in HVAC. He is well versed in all things metallic and a bit of a wizard with building things. A date was set and he arrived with all sorts of metal pipe, welders, soldering equipment etc. etc. First we would need to build a frame. This was precisely why I had called him and like any noble brother he came with just the thing. Flexible copper pipe. It took very little time to bend the pipe into several three foot diameter rings and weld the ends into a single piece. Next we wrapped both sides of our construct with heavy duty screen keeping it as spherical as we could manage and covered over all of the sharp edges with duct tape. We moved the cage ball into the house and my brother who was now late for a prior engagement took his leave while I wandered around the house looking for the Beast.

It was not long before I found her as she had left an extensive trail of debris for me to follow. And so I quickly took the Beast and placed it into the ball and closed the ball door. The Beast took to it immediately and it wasn't long before she had the whole thing rolling around the house at top speed. As I watched I noticed that the wake of destruction which the Beast usually leaves behind it was no longer present. I was so happy to see that another one of my plans had worked that I went to the kitchen to brew myself a victory coffee to celebrate. That was when I heard the crash.

Racing around the corner I saw the Beast happily sitting in its ball happy as could be. Covering the ball was a not so small mound of books. The Beast had run head long into my largest bookshelf and managed to collapse the entire structure. And so I leave you while I clean up the hundreds of books which still lay strewn around my floor. I remain always;

Respectfully Yours,

The Lumpy

On Beastish and Bears in My Bushes

Dear Mr. OR,

It would seam that the Beast has under estimated the power of its own attacks. For the last week now my darling bride, myself, and the Beast have all been suffering the effects of the Beasts latest biological attack. In fact we are still under the influence of it even now. And so my days have consisted mostly of cleaning up the usual debris that tends to get strewn everywhere when a household is sick.

Meanwhile the Beast, although it is ill, has been wandering around the house in very high spirits. It slowly drags its rubber soles from semi clean area of the house to another leaving it standard wake of debris where ever it goes and all the while rambling to itself in its own beastish language. My wife and I have termed this B-speak and the Beast appears to be doing it far more often.

In fact the Beast speaks so much more freely lately that I was afraid it might be communicating to other Beasts just outside our windows. Ever since this though came to me I have been nervously checking the bushes outside of our house every chance I get but I have yet to see one of the Beasts little comrades ease dropping out there.

I have a particularly noisy door and these ease dropping Beasts must be running away as soon as they hear the door begin to open. Indeed I think once or twice now I have seen the hind side of Beast disappear around the corner of the house just as I managed to make my way out the door. Well this will never do. I can not have my Beast coordinating attacks right in front of me. Goodness knows if it is aloud to have such open and constant communication why... our whole neighborhood could be over run by this time next year!

And so this morning I rose up early and spread several bear traps just under the mulch behind the bushes. I'm sure to catch one now. And so I leave you while I check my traps and see if I have had any luck. I remain always;

Respectfully Yours,

The Lumpy