Ain't no body die, y'all. We got her done. Yeah we did. Ain't no body die.

There were questions that I wanted to ask, but I did not ask them. Sometmes the words a person does not say are as much of a gift as the ones they do.

Did I make the right decision? (Audience response encouraged)
Today was a first for me, about 20 minutes ago I turned down a story after an editor offered it to me. My name had been suggested by the contributing writing coach. I have never turned down a story that was offered to me before, so I'm kind of questioning my choice.

The story was a Scene and Heard - a short slice of life piece in the front of the book. It's one of my favorite sections. The assignment was to go to the Cat Fanciers
Association show next weekend and find a kitty-cat tale for the magazine. I would love to do this story, but as I've mentioned before on this blog - I'm allergic to cats. So the idea of going into an show room full of cat dander and fur just didn't seem like a good idea. Particularly when I can't even spend more than 10 minutes in Patrick's apartment (his roommates have cats) without sneezing. Right. Putting myself in the middle of the flying fur would have been a bad idea. I would have been sneezing all over cats and their owners and that's no story.

Some of my most miserable childhood memories involve cats - my eyes swollen shut, incessant sneezing. As a child, I blamed the cats - I didn't do anything to them, I just wanted to pet them. Originally I liked cats. But I couldn't be around them.

To this day, I am uncomfortable around cats. I don't even like them to touch me. My favorite thing to say to a cat is "Go'on. Git."

Still there's a part of me that would really love to do the story. I mean a cat show - what even happens at a cat show? And the Maine Coon cat breed will be there - those things get to be 20 pounds.

Alas. Did I make the right decision?