Thursday Thirteen #99 -- Wheels turning, gears meshing ...

THIRTEEN THINGS THAT
ARE ON MY MIND TODAY

1) When I consider all the homeless pets in overcrowded/underfunded shelters, I fight the urge to adopt another cat. I realize that my first responsibility is to the three cats I currently have. I couldn't provide the necessary attention, affection and vet care if I had four cats. If this concept makes sense to me as a cat mom, why didn't similar thoughts occur to the Octo Mom?

2) I thought my niece was really into her German class, so what's up with that F? She's been on honor roll every year since junior high, and now she flunks a course? At least it was her quarter, and not her semester, grade.

3) What happened to those football players in the Gulf of Mexico?

4) What if I made some HORRIBLE financial/investment mistake or I lose my job and I end up bankrupt?

5) The air at home is so dry that I get nosebleeds. So why can I never remember to fill the humidifiers?

6) I worry about my mother's short-term memory loss.

7) I'm no prude, but the sex scenes in The Reader made me very uncomfortable. That boy looked soooo young!

8) I can't decide if I want hardwood or tile flooring in my kitchen and dining area. But that's OK, because I can't afford either one right now.

9) I also can't decide which athlete I dislike more -- Kobe Bryant or Alex Rodriguez.

10) My boy cats, Joey and Rey, seem to view me as their mother, while my female feline, Charlotte, interacts with me on a more co-equal basis, as if we were buds.

11) If I had it to do all over again, I think I would have attempted a career as an historian.

12) I live for April 6: Cubs vs. Houston. This is the year.

13) I suspect that Nancy Grace not only wants "The Tot Mom" Casey Anthony to get the death penalty, she wants to give the lethal injection herself.


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Break my heart

This is terrible, but true.

He was "Bat Man'' or "Bat Guy'' or "Bat Boy,'' the minor league baseball player traded for 10 maple bats. It became a big joke last May when word of the unusual swap jumped off the sports pages, and the former San Francisco Giants prospect went from pitcher to punch line. "People are like, 'I'd kill myself' and stuff,'' Odom said at the time, dismissing any such notion. Three weeks after the trade, he abruptly left the team. Six months after the trade, he was dead. The medical examiner said Odom's death in Georgia on Nov. 5 at age 26 was an accidental overdose from heroin, methamphetamine, the stimulant benzylpiperazine and alcohol.

Odom's death had drawn little notice by the start of spring training this year. Now, former teammates, managers and club officials keep asking a question for which there is no satisfying answer. "I guarantee this trade thing really bothered him. That really worried me,'' said Dan Shwam, who managed Odom last year on the Laredo Broncos of the United League. "I really believe, knowing his background, that this drove him back to the bottle, that it put him on the road to drugs again.'' Shwam added: "There were some demons chasing him, they'd been after him for a long time. But there's no way to really know whether the trade did it, is there?''