Dear Mrsatroxi,

Those of you out there who know me personally know that I worked in television news for five years. Tech side, it was an interesting and sometimes rewarding job that ate my heart out.

One side-effect of those years is now I cannot watch any newscast without criticizing it.

I have rather old-fashioned ideas about news, too. I don’t like swoopy swishy zappy graphics, I want my anchors dressed plainly and elegantly, I only want to see a live shot if you have something interesting to show me, and oh, yeah, I want to hear some well-written, perfectly read news.

So, (with the exception of CBS Sunday Morning) as you can tell, I’m out of luck.

I watch CNN in the morning. I have TiVo, so I put one receiver on regular CNN, one on Headline News, and that way I can pop back and forth between commercial breaks.

Did any of you folks out there watch regular old CNN this morning?

Did any of you notice the female anchor? More importantly, did you notice what she was wearing?

I know the glory days of only doing your face and top and getting to wear pajamas bottoms and bunny slippers to the set are over, since we now get to see more of the anchors (joy, joy) what with all the standing and walking and jumping up and down they do.

Chickie-baby, you went too far. You were reading some sobering stuff this morning, stuff I could not pay attention to because you looked like a stripper. All you needed was a boob-popping halter top. Black nail polish? A red leather micro-mini-skirt? Thigh-high boots? Please. It might have been ok, still unprofessional but passable (except for those dead nails), but even you looked uncomfortable, like you’d lost a bet.

Maybe you had. That’s what I’m going to tell myself. Otherwise I’m going to spend my mornings worrying that television salaries are still so low you have have to supplement your income by being a lady of the night.

Here follows an actual e-mail conversation between the husband and I (me?):

(Copied and pasted wif my own widdle hands!)

atroxi: I just got my RDA of “perky”. I’m actually tired now.

mrsatroxi: Me confused. Were they perky, or were you perky? Or are we discussing breasts?

atroxi: Not breasts. She was perky, as in “Ooo…roses and lollipops and sunshine and I’m so happy and AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

mrsatroxi: Oh. Well, her breasts were probably perky too.

atroxi: I’ll ask Michael.

mrsatroxi: Such a good answer! (pats you on the head)

atroxi: Woof!

mrsatroxi: Goo’ boy, sit! Have a biscuit. Say something funny, I’m posting this conversation to my site later.

atroxi: Werzt finkle-snort!

mrsatroxi: Always with the showing off.

atroxi: Of my pants!! Hoo-hah!

mrsatroxi: Ok, that I’m not posting.

Well, it’s late October, folks. I know! You’d never have known that if not for me. Glad to be of service.

Sigh.

Let’s roll out a little family ghost story, shall we?

The time, late fall in the year of 1954. The place, West Post Office, Maryland. Not even a speck on a map, it represents several hundred acres of mostly untouched, evil Forest. Evil because you can feel the pain as soon as you step in the place, like the breath of a demon, evil because of all the horrors that have happened there. (But that’s another story.) Mostly untouched because there is at least one house there. One old farmhouse without running water or heat.

Inside that farmhouse lives my mother. She is alone. Very alone, with the closest occupied home several miles away. She is eighteen years old, and pregnant. Heavily pregnant. Uncomfortable, cold, with an aching back, she decides to go for a walk to warm up and possibly ease her spine. It’s late afternoon, with plenty of light left, but not quite broad daylight. My Mother is a tough lady, even at only eighteen, and decides she should take one of her guns with her, just in case. Choosing the smallest one she owns, as it’s easier for walking, she leaves the house and starts to walk down the mile long lane with the plan of cutting over into the woods for a bit, then double back to the house that way.

As she walks, she starts to get an odd feeling. Rather as though someone is watching her. My Mother is a very beautiful woman, and even very pregnant, has had to ward off the unwanted advances of men. She knows the feeling of being followed. She thinks about starting back the house, but, no, she wants her walk. “No-one would hurt a woman with child,” she tells herself, and decides to go a bit further, then cut across a field to get home. That way she can see if there is anyone following her. “I HAVE A GUN,” she announces to the trees. She continues on her way, coming to the field, and the feeling of being followed and watched is becoming stronger. She crosses the field, probably a little faster than she should, and decides to just wait a bit, watch the woods. She waits, even sits down on a fallen tree. Nothing. She starts to feel a little foolish, and is gathering herself to get up, when she sees something. Something moved. Across the field, over there in the woods, close to the ground, what is that?

She watches in fascination as something slinks out from the woods she left a few minutes before. “It’s a cat,” she whispers to herself, but, oh! What a cat! Large as a tiger, white as snow, it is stalking her. It’s in the very same pose as a house cat slinking up to a bird, and she realizes that she is the bird. What to do? The gun she has is quite small, and she doesn’t think it will have much, if any effect, on this monster. Holding her swollen belly in one hand, she struggles to her feet and fumbles her gun out of her pocket. “I see you!” she screams and curses and fires her gun in the air. The creature slowly rises…and disappears.

We never have decided if she saw an old, old last Mountain Lion, or…something else. She never saw anything like it again.

Boo!