Now listen here, pilgrim...

This morning, as we were passing a snooty organic grocery store, SockMama and I were conversing about our recent purchase of a (gigantic) bean bag chair. Before I go on, let me just say that this chair is a God send to anyone who has ever enjoyed the pixelated goodness that is video games, but were forced to do so on a hard floor (carpeted or otherwise). Anyhow, SockMama had actually purchased the chair as a Christmas present and, because of the new transmission currently residing in our Taurus, forgot about it. (Such is the life of high rollers such as ourselves; you should see as at restaurants - we order Diet Cokes even if refills aren't explicitly stated in the menu as free.)

Anyhow, for some reason, we were talking about how the chair is now the "poplular" seat in the house: I love it, SockMama likes it, and the animals adore it. We were discussing how cute the cats looked as they snuggled together on the chair. But the SockMama breaks out this gem: "I bet Scout (our beagle) and Dolby (our mentally challenged mutt cat) would sleep on it, but if Kitty (our insane, overly verbose orange menace cat) were on it and Scout came around, she'd be like, 'Get your varmint fur away from me.'"

Seriously. "Varmint." I promptly made fun of her and giggled on the inside. (Actually, I still am. Hence this blog entry.)

I don't recall her ever using the word and, honestly, I can't recall if I've ever said it before. It's one of those words that John Wayne uttered time and time agian in his Westerns, but it just can't cross into the casual vernacular; it's just too Western movie sounding.

For the hell of it, I looked it up:

"var·mint ( P ) n. Informal. One that is considered undesirable, obnoxious, or troublesome."
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language

I was kind of hoping for a small prairie-dwelling rat or locust or something. But it turns out that "varmint" really is no different than your're everyday "jerk" or "asshole."

It's still funny, though.