National "Don't Get Killed At Work Day" is fast approaching.

Let's be careful out there. If you can't be careful, at least make your fatality a spectacular one.

Crimes.

My great and beloved pal, my cat Tommy (no relation) has recently racked up a pretty big damages bill, and without any job to pay it all back, he'll be washing dishes for some time to come. In the last few weeks:

An entire shelf of houseplants brought down onto the carpet through Tomfoolery. Try as I have to clean it all up, there is still a little bruised looking area there where the damp earth lay on the homely beige carpet for hours before I came home. Some of these plants were sent straight to the other side, most survived.

An animation book I really liked was wrecked through the introduction of water to paper. It was out of print, but I did find one at Barnes & Noble for another 30 bucks. Whew.

Several paint brushes and some sea sponges I bought for watercoloring were destroyed in an unprovoked attack while I slept. Also, a poop was tossed out of the box and onto the carpet, where it dried in place by morning.

Two of these beautiful deep red drinking glasses I had had for five or more years were busted, and another cobalt blue tumbler tumbled as well. Then I walked on a tiny shard of red glass I'd missed cleaning up. All of this was the result of Tommy crossing the only line of death boundary in the apartment. I ask for so little; please stay off of the kitchen counter. In this, my only request I am routinely ignored out of paw.

A shirt I liked well enough was found murdered today. Its only crime was that it was hanging out of the hamper a bit. It was too much temptation for his tiny capacity for resistance.

The many actual murders of spiders, moths and mosquitos are annoying to me too, since I have long ago learned to live and let live with my venomous, blood sucking and fluttery brothers and sisters. Tommy is a born fighter, and is at war with everything.

A Forgotten Dream.

No amateur psychiatry, please. This is from my dream file. I read nothing into this. To me, dreams are free TV, and nothing more. Again, this was a real dream- no fakery here- and I'd forgotten about it until running across it today.

4/25/05
A man (me, but in another life) becomes convinced that his best friend is God. He reaches this conclusion after pondering two tragic turns of events in his life, and the remarkable coincidence that connects them.

Years earlier, he was living by himself, and he had a pet Golden Retriever. One day while the two of them are out, the dog, without warning, snatches his car and house keys from a table and swallows them. The dog chokes to death on the keys before anything can be done to help it. He’s stranded without the keys- house and car keys among others. A vet has to remove the keys and return them.

One morning years later this man is in the shower, his wife making breakfast. Their 3 year old son heads directly into the parents’ bedroom. He reaches into the pocket of the man’s jacket, hanging on a doorknob. The boy removes a set of keys- car and house- and swallows them. He chokes to death while the wife calls 911 and the husband tries to dislodge the keys. Hours later, the keys are returned to them by the ER doctor that attended their son.

This somehow convinces him that his friend Sharon is, in fact, God. He confronts her about it, and she chooses not to lie to him or mislead him. “It’s so hard to watch you suffer like you’ve been suffering. I can only tell you that there is a reason that even the worst things happen. I know how hollow that must sound, but believe me, I don’t take anything like this lightly.”

You know who's great?

Bill Elder.