FUPA!

Last weekend, we had our Fabulous, adorable and dear friends over for dinner.  During the conversation, cat anatomy came up - specifically that little pouch of hanging skin and fat in the lower abdominal area. So we shared that we called it a "wag bag" because it wags back and forth like a demented bag filled with jello when kitty runs toward you.  Our old deceased kitty Doris had an epic wag bag that could have accommodated a regulation size basketball and we'd often regretted not capturing the grandiosity of its undulations on camera.  Mrs. Fabulous said she thought that was better than calling it a foopa.  That's what it sounded like to me anyway.  So I just thought that was their little term of endearment for the wagging bag of fat and left it at that.  Then she explained that it meant Floppy Upper Penis Area (because their foopa'd feline is a boy).  Ah, a new acronym.

After the Fabulous family went home,  the absolutely shagged and slightly tipsy me started repeating "foopa....foooooopaaaaa..." over and over and giggling like an idiot.  So Google whore that I am, I looked up FUPA.  Sure enough, it was there in the Urban Dictionary, my scholarly source for all that is hip and streetwise.

Now I see Arigato trotting across the tile with his furry little man bag wagging and shout "FUPA!" like some crazed cheese igniting waitress at the local Greek Restaurant.  Seriously, I think he just rolled his eyes at me.

The first definition on the Urban Dictionary page when I linked it was MeDD.  I think the internet is trying to tell me something.

ETA:  Here is a painting of the best FUPA ever by my friend Karolina Sussland

Because It's not The Cat Stabber

I could've called this blog by my other, kind of horrifying nickname, The Cat Stabber!  That would be huge with PITA and all my animal loving friends.  I could have also called this blog The Expensive Beer Dropping Lady's Adventures at Whole Foods or Five Stitches in the Foot Bitches!, or The Girl with Half a Thyroid but T-Rex Arms just sums my life up so succinctly.  No, I don't have actual, tiny, stubby T-rex arms so don't ask me to send you photos for your circus freak scrapbook.  It is such a great metaphor for having a weak, ineffectual and humorous body.  My dysfunction chose to really mess me up by targeting my arms and hands and the name T-rex arms sums it up so well.  If I had to name everything I have in my fabulous gift basket of disorders, diseases, jellies, jams and rashes it would get boring and technical.  And like that adorable little puppy who followed you home, if you name it, you own it.  But I guess in my case it's more like a lost cow because sometimes I milk it for all it's worth and then send it on it's way.

All those titles have a traumatic, embarrassing back story that narrate the story of my life with neuromuscular dysfunction.  It's like having my own private three ring circus but since the cat stabbing, my husband has told me I'm fired as the Knife Juggler.  If he had his way, I'd be rolling around the house in a giant clear plastic hamster ball.  But I know I would find a way to mangle myself and bleed all over the place in there just to spite him.  He'd come home and find the ball gently bumping up against the front door leaking blood and a few sunflower seeds out of the little breathing vents.  He'd unscrew the top and there would be a severed limb still twitching a weak cry for help at him.

So, before you go, I need to tell you the backstory on The Cat Stabber so you don't go away thinking I'm some kind of animal torturing psychopath on the way to becoming a full fledged serial killer.

The Story of The Cat Stabber

No, this is not a kissing book. 



I have been living with a couple of neurological illnesses that are progressively stealing my coordination and fine motor control. And sometimes I have a fabulous spastic maneuver where I unintentionally fling whatever is in my hand. Which means I am a disaster in the kitchen with my brain surgery sharp set of Wusthof knives I made my hubby buy me because I still insist I can cook like Eric Ripert when in all reality I am Dan Aykroyd's version of Julia Child on SNL spurting bright red arterial blood all over the kitchen screaming "SAVE THE LIVER!!" Usually I only damage myself and thus the 9 finger jokes.

One fine day, I was chopping something and my spazz hand manifested itself and the chef's knife I was using flew in a perfect arc up into the air and back down right next to the sleeping cat at my feet. Said sleeping cat, sleepy no more fled the room with nary a peep. No blood or gore was apparent and I thought to myself "That was TOO CLOSE!! WHEW!!" So back to cooking dinner. 45 minutes later, my hubby yelled at me from the bedroom "ARIGATO (sleeping cat) HAS A BIG HOLE IN HIS LEG!! Uh, oh. I ran into the bedroom and saw my poor boy lying there with a hole in his leg the size of a quarter. Strangely, there was no blood but I could see tendon and muscle and my heart stopped. I had stabbed my poor cat! He never even made a peep this whole time. What kind of fiend would do that to their poor defenseless kitty? So we raced him to the vet and it took 3 staples to close the wound.

I called one of my best friends the next day and was telling her the story and weeping and feeling like some kind of monster and through the phone I hear (sung to the tune of "The Back Stabbers" by the O'Jays):

The Cat Stabbers
(What they do)
(They smile in your face)
All the time they want to take your place
The cat stabbers (cat stabbers)
(They smile in your face)
All the time they want to take your place
The cat stabbers (cat stabbers)

It is now my theme song. 

And in the dark of night in the Saker kitchen you can still hear Arigato whispering the dread legend of THE CAT STABBER. 

This tale was typed using all nine of my currently functioning fingers. #10 should be back on line any day now when it is finished growing back.