I was twice foiled at my attempts to get to work today, but finally arrived after the third departure from my house. The first time I made it to Airport Drive. "Crap, I forgot my cell phone." The second time, I almost made it to the Carver Library. The phone I had previously left at home rang. "This is Brinks Home Security calling because your alarm is sounding." Of course it is. In my haste to depart the second time, I had failed to turn the motion detector off. "It's just my cats, I'll go home and handle it... No, please don't send the police."

Turns out I didn't even need to leave that early because after two calls to Janet, the pastor's assistant, explaining each time the new deterrent, I was forty-five minutes late to staff meeting which didn't start until half an hour after I arrived anyway. Geez. I could have just slept in and started my routine later. I didn't sleep well last night.

Because the cats are causing problems, and by cats (for once), I mean Potter. He's just like his older brother Radley was. Like clockwork, at 4a.m. He awakens me to pet him, which I do, night after night, naively believing he will then lay down with me. Not the case, ever. From my sleepy palm, he moves to my vanity and proceeds to knock my make-up off of it. Awakening my vocal chords, I holler at him to stop. He knocks the hair-dryer off. I angrily jump out of bed, scoop him up and throw him out of my room.

2 more hours of sleep. The door to my bedroom begins banging as if someone were incessantly knocking on it. Unable to sleep with that heinous noise, I open the door and Potter returns to repeat aforementioned procedure. Damn cat. By this time, I'm easily awakened and lucid enough to grab the water bottle and turn on the bedside lamp. We have a stare-down: me in my bed with finger poised on water bottle, he on the vanity with paw poised on jewelry container. "Potter, no!" I say very sternly. He looks at me, looks at the water bottle, and before I can even send the signal from my brain to my trigger finger to point and pull, he has knocked my jewelry container onto the floor, and shot under the bed from where I now have to fish him out.

After that cunning move last night, he got locked in the bathroom. The litter's in there, it's two shut doors away from my sleeping ears, and the cat likes to sleep in the tub anyway. It's a win/win situation.

...By the time 7a.m. arrives, that is.

Tomorrow I have to teach at church. Let's hope that I get more sleep tonight so that I may leave on time, finish my reading, prepare my presentation and have time to enjoy dinner with all the elderly folks who always arrive early.

But every night it's the same pattern, even with my high hopes for change as I groggily pet and coo at him.

And you know what the definition of insanity is, right? The repetition of a certain activity with the expectation of different results.

Maybe Potter will figure that one out after he gets locked in the bathroom again tonight.

And maybe I'll figure out how to keep the cats out of my bedroom in the first place...and to always put my phone in my purse.