DECAPITATION OF THE PENGUIN

Groundhog Day was sad realizing that we’ve got 6 more weeks of this awful winter weather. Chicago winter brings the dryest air into my apartment. Furthermore, the dry air makes my cats’ fur all staticy and shocking. There are times, with the lights off, my sheets will literally give off enough electrical static I can see sparks in my sheets...and that happens to be the most action those sheets have seen all season. I've gotten used to the fact that a lot of vintage apartments still use steam heat. That's fine, because steam heat is the warmest heat I've ever felt. But it is no help for the air.

The past few weeks I debated whether or not to just buy a humidifier for my living room to help put some moisture back into the air. Each time I passed the shopping aisles, I saw a gazillion humidifiers all promising to cure me of the horrible static cling that causes me to check my behind every time I wear a skirt and tights. StaticGuard has one loyal customer in me. For the past 2 months, I bet I've probably kept them in business. Still, I kept putting a humidifier on the back of the "needed purchases list"…that is until I went to the store and saw the PERFECT one to fit my personality. Case in point:

This cute little humidifier was small enough not to take up too much space in my living room and has been the static-be-gone promise of any working humidifier. Plus, I don't want to grow out of my college attitude and still have a ridiculously childish piece of machinery in my apartment. The one problem of this miraculous machine? My cat keeps decapitating it. No joke. The first three mornings of using the penguin, I woke up to find my penguin decapitated by my cat, Will’s, own doing. He attacked the helpless machine in the middle of the night when he knew I couldn't save my beloved machine from it's brutal death. Sunday morning, he even took off the body of it. Will is a bit of a bully and quite strong. So, the poor plastic penguin had no steaming chance.

But two can play that game. I decided to put Will in his place by taping the head to the body to the base with black electrical tape. This morning I awoke to a fully intact penguin humidifier. This seemed to piss off Will, as he preceded to stand in front of the penguin staring at it. I truly believe he was waiting for his evil stare to scare the penguin to tipping off his own head. Then, he moved to the other side of the ottoman, where he stalked the machine.







That’s when Grace, his twin sister, got into the action. She laid on the window sill staring at the steam making it’s beautiful cloud-like billow out of its whale-esque blowhole at the top of its plastic head.



Sometimes I truly wished they would chill out and let me breath my newly humidified air in peace.