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I consider myself a logical, rational person most of the time; however, all logic goes out the window when it involves random, inanimate objects on my floor. My first reaction is not, “Oh, that’s a piece of fuzz. Let me pick it up.”

No.

When I discover an inanimate object laying on my floor that was not there before, my initial reaction is almost always one of terror.

I also give the inanimate object a very strange name in the moment. “Oh my goodness! What the hell is that?! It’s a FLIFFERFLOOJAVNAB!” It takes either somebody nearby to bring me back to reality, or a few minutes for my adrenaline to settle down and me to logically work out that a Flifferfloojavnab is both not a word and not a dangerous creature.

This has pretty much been the way I have handled random objects on my floor since I can remember. When I was little, everything was a black widow.

“Mom! Come quick! It’s a black widow!”

“No, honey. That’s your dog’s fur.”

“Mom! This time it’s really a black widow!”

“No. That’s just a piece of fuzz.”

“Mom!!!!! Mom!!! I swear this time it IS A BLACK WIDOW!!!”

“No. That’s just a chip.”

The older I became, the easier it was for me to accept that maybe my mother was right and not every unidentifiable, creepy object was a black widow, but not being able to classify everything as a black widow actually created more fear and anxiety. This opened the door for the possibility that the unidentified object in question might even be scarier than a black widow — perhaps even something yet to be identified by biologists. So I started giving the creepy objects my own names. (I’m actually less cognitively in control of the weird names I now gift these strange objects than I would like to admit. They just pop out of my mouth or pop into my mind during my initial fear-based reaction.)

Sometimes I put a glass over the object if I am home alone and can’t bear to figure out what it really is. Sometimes I will scream, and when I scream, I will scream out the weird name I have given it.

Here are some examples of what I have found on my floor recently:

I am almost 40 years old, so I think this is just how I’m going to live the rest of my life.

I suppose I could also have Edward Sucky (the robot vacuum) deal with it, but Edward is, unfortunately, in the wrong profession. He means well, I think, but he is not very good at vacuuming. I do have a human-operated vacuum and use it frequently as well, in addition to Edward “helping” keep things under control. Since 2015, a third cat came to live with us, Hobbes (who probably also hates inflatable unicorn horns), exponentially increasing the amount of cat hair to deal with, so vacuuming often is a must.

Update: Just as I’m going to bed, after the floors are freshly vacuumed from earlier today, I find this in the kitchen:

I could not bring myself to pick it up, because for all we know it could be a Shivitripit, and that sounds like something super dangerous.

Okay, I said stay tuned, but that was over five years ago. In my defense, I became really busy. The state of the world also made me lose my creativity for a while. I stopped creating anything except pancakes.

This is Brett. Brett is my friend. Brett has stayed tuned since 2015. He is the only human being who probably knows that this website exists, and he has asked me about it off and on since 2015.

Brett probably did not realize that by staying tuned he would suddenly become a cartoon. Once you become a cartoon, the possibilities are endless.

Here is Brett wearing a fish shirt standing in a field of bunnies. Brett likes nature. I do not know if Brett would ever wear a fish shirt, but I think he would like a field of bunnies.

Here is Brett on the moon:

Brett is a good sport and a very patient friend. Thanks to Brett bugging me about the website, I will be posting more on this website. It probably won’t involve cats and school, but it might. I would say “stay tuned,” but that didn’t work out so well last time.