03/30/2001

Okay, I give up. It’s never NEVER going to get warm, the warm temperatures we had this time last year are but a faint memory, and it’s going to be 38 degrees and drizzling for the REST OF MY FUCKING LIFE.

That’s just FINE, I can deal with it.

But y’know what sucks? Having lost 102 pounds, I’ve also lost that layer of insulating fat that kept me warm last winter. I wander around constantly freezing my ass off, and even though the thermostat upstairs reads 76 degrees, I’m still bundled up in a pair of sweatpants, a sweatshirt over a t-shirt, and my big fluffy yellow slippers, and half the time I need a heavy quilt over me while I’m on the couch reading or watching TV. Even getting up off my ass and doing something like vacuuming or something similarly strenuous only warms me up for about 5 minutes.

When I’m so cold I just can’t stand it, I go downstairs into the little bathroom near the washer and dryer, which is invariably 10 degrees warmer than the rest of the house, and soak up the heat. The only times I’m not cold are during the night, when we turn the heat down to 69 degrees, but I have a heavy comforter and a lotta love to keep me warm, when I’m in the shower, and (I’m sorry) directly after sex. Even in the mornings while I’m out walking my ass off (literally, I hope), I’m a tad chilled from the freakin’ wind and drizzling rain.

I have to wonder, what the hell do all you skinny people do? Why aren’t you all bundled up in heavy fur jackets in the middle of the summer? What the fuck am I going to do when I drop the last 110 pounds?

For now, I’m going to buy my ass an electric blanket and put it on the bed (the blanket, not my ass), so when I just can’t stand the cold any longer, I’ll turn that baby up on high and slide between the sheets to get all toasty warm. At least, I will if I can find a decently priced electric blanket online. The one kind of electric blanket Wal-mart carries is out of stock in all sizes, Sears apparently doesn’t carry electric blankets, JC Penney said Duh? What’s an electric blanket? I don’t understand. Duh. when I did a search on their site, and Target threw everything and the kitchen sink at me. Maybe I’ll check ebay.

Okay, enough about that. Because next week is the first week of April, I have dubbed it Spring Cleaning Week here in BitchyLand, and intend to go through the house room by room and scrub it to within an inch of it’s life (if rooms had lives), and get rid of all the stuff that’s laying around that we don’t use/ don’t need anymore. The bad side to this is that I won’t be updating next week. The good side is that when I’m done with spring cleaning, I’ll have all kinds of stuff to give away! One Bitchypoo’s trash is another’s treasure, I always say.

I will, of course, be checking my email, and I’ll miss you every second of every day, really I will…

Have a good weekend, and don’t be the butt of any jokes on Sunday, April Fool’s Day. Oh, and don’t forget to turn your clocks ahead an hour before you go to bed Saturday night.

Don’t cry, Mommy will be back soon…

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03/29/2001

So, Gwyneth Paltrow is set to star in a movie called Shallow Hal, co-starring Jack Black. It’s a movie about a guy (Hal, I presume), who as a child made a deathbed promise to his father to only date beautiful women. Dear Gwyneth plays a 300 or 400 pound woman, whose inner beauty he falls in love with.

Well, duh. Of COURSE he falls in love with her inner beauty, because EVERYONE knows that fat women don’t have any of that OUTER beauty, for crying out loud.

When I first heard that Gwyneth would be donning a fat suit, I was a tad annoyed, but understood it. I hadn’t heard anything about the movie, but assumed it would be an INSPIRATIONAL STORY ABOUT A FAT WOMAN WHO LOST TEN TONS OF WEIGHT AND FOUND HERSELF AND THE LOVE OF HER LIFE or something of it’s ilk. I mean, it’s a lot easier to slap a fat suit on the stick-like Gwyneth, then rip it off after to show a skinny Gwyneth than to find a talented fat actress, shoot the fat scenes, and then take a year or two off while she lost the weight, right? I mean, Tom Hanks has major box office power, so the gimmick of taking a year off for him to lose weight isn’t something that would backfire. At least this way you know what the skinny Gwyneth looks like, because that’s how she really looks all along. Right?

But that’s not what they’re doing at all. No, this movie will actually be about Jack Black – who’s no skinny minnie himself, and usually looks like he could use a hot shower – only dating thin, gorgeous women. This movie is about how he has himself hypnotized so that he can only see the inner beauty of others, and this movie is about how lucky Gwyneth is because once he sees her inner Gwyneth, Jack Black falls in love with her.

And what movie will be, really, while it may or may not try to masquerade as AN INSPIRING MOVIE ABOUT ONE MAN LOOKED PAST ONE WOMAN’S FACADE AND FELL IN LOVE WITH HER INNER BEAUTY, is a movie about how fucking funny fat people are. Gwyneth will waddle across the screen. Gwyneth will probably break a chair. Gwyneth will eat a lot of food, and she’ll eat it in front of other people, and she’ll eat constantly.

Hey! Wouldn’t it be REALLY FUNNY if Gwyneth and Jack were to have sex and she, like, SQUISHED him? Wouldn’t it be a gas if Gwyneth’s thighs rubbed together and started a little fire? Oh! Oh! Oh my god, and it would be SO HILARIOUS if she and Jack were on the bed and IT BROKE. God yes, better make sure that’s in the script!

And jeez, I hope Gwyneth’s got her dress picked out for next year’s Oscars, ’cause I’m sure this one will be a winner.

 

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03/28/2001

I’ve been waking earlier and earlier the last few weeks, because it’s getting light earlier, and I sleep about three feet from a window, and the brightness wakes me up. (For some reason, I’m recalling Christmas at Fred’s mom’s house, when Fred’s nephew said "The days have been gettin’ short or somethin’. I don’t know why…" in all seriousness, and it was all I could do not to laugh in his face)

Anyway, I woke around 5:30 this morning, and dozed on and off with the help of a cuddlesome Miz Poo until Fred left for work a little after 6:00. I decided to get up and get my exercising for the day done and over with, so went into the bathroom to pop in my contacts. As usual, I rinsed the lens for my right eye with saline solution, and popped it in.

It felt like there was battery acid in my eye.

"OWWWW!" I howled and reeled blindly around the bathroom, trying to steady my hand long enough to get the lens off my eyeball. I finally managed to get it off and stood there, blinking and swearing. Loudly. Loudly swearing, that is, since I’ve not mastered the art of blinking loudly.

I looked at my right eye up close and personal in my handheld mirror and saw that it was bright red. I washed my hands again, this time rinsing them extra well, and flushed the contact with saline, peering closely to make sure there were no cat hairs on it’s surface. There were none, and so I tried the contact again.

Pain.

"What the FUCK?!" I yelled, reeling blindly again. "What the fucking FUCK? Fuckin’ A, Jesus Christ, WHAT THE FUCK?!" Skilled with the words, I am.

"This saline solution has GONE BAD!" I informed myself, picked up the bottle of saline, and tossed it in the trash. I got out a fresh bottle of saline, flushed the contact, and tried it again.

"FUUUUUUUUUCK!" I bellowed. "FUCKETY FUCK!" I literally ran around in a tight circle, clutching my eyeball and swearing like a pissed-off, drunk sailor.

I decided to give up on the right contact for the moment and took the left out of the case. Flushed it with saline and popped it in my left eye.

Pain.

I stomped my feet and took the contact out, feeling my blood pressure rise. Tossing the two contacts in the toilet, I got my last pair of contacts out from under the sink and opened the left one. Flushed it with saline. Put it in my left eye.

"Owowowowowow," I whined, hand over my eye, and then stomped my foot in frustration.

So I gave up on the contacts, put them in fresh cleaning solution, put my glasses on, resisted the urge to go back to bed, and went into the kitchen to begin filling the 5 liters of water that would get me through the day (I pee roughly 65,936 times a day). As I stood there, I decided what I’d make for dinner tonight (baked chicken) and tried to remember what we’d had last night.

Oh yeah. Chili. With jalapenos. Jalapenos I’d chopped myself. Jalapenos which contain capsaicin, which – I think – is the main ingredient in pepper spray. Capsaicin, which – according to Karawynn – you can cut by using a salt and water paste on your hands when the choppin’ is done. Which I did. Which didn’t work.

Which I guess explains it.

Damn that Karawynn and her delicious chili recipe. It’s all her fault!

Ow.

 

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03/27/2001

Damn, is it only Tuesday? It feels like this week has been 15 days long already, and it’s still fairly new. The last week before Weigh Day always drags, and every day is harder and harder to stay off the scale. I’m remaining strong, though, and haven’t stepped on it yet.

The hamsters are gone, taken back to the store from whence they came, lickety-split. The spud has been having an awful time dealing with all the noise they make during the night (being nocturnal creatures and all), and had taken to putting them in the bathroom before she went to bed. Only, she then started putting them in the bathroom hours before bedtime, because all their running on the wheel and fighting while chattering in a pissed-off manner at each other was really bothering her. Fred pointed out that living in a cage in the bathtub in the dark was no kind of fun for a hamster, and that she needed to keep them in her room until bedtime. She did so for a few nights and then asked if we could take the hamsters back to the store. Fred and I discussed it, Fred called the pet store to talk to them about it, and then we packed ’em up and took ’em back. The entire way there, the mother hamster ranranran on her wheel, and the babies stood in various spots in the cage and looked around in confusion.

Once at the pet store, Fred took the cage in and spoke to the manager, who was impressed that so many of the babies had survived – according to him, a rate of 50% or higher is just incredible, and our rate was 100% – and he was also impressed at how docile the hamsters were when he started picking them up and checking them out, especially the mother. Mothers tend to be a lot less docile than this one.

And then, guess what?

The mother is fucking PREGNANT again. When Fred told me, I did a godthat’snasty shiver, but – again, according to the store manager – they can get pregnant again the very day they give birth. I don’t know whether I believe that or not, but I do feel like we dodged a bullet. Another few weeks, and we would have had a nasty surprise.

The spud slept like a baby (though she told me this morning that a few times she thought she heard the sound of the hamsters running on the wheel. Perhaps we’re haunted?), and there are no longer shavings littering the floor between her bedroom and the bathroom – they stuck to her feet and then got dragged out into the hallway, and sometimes made it across the living room. But I miss those damn hamsters, ’cause they were a riot to watch.

While we were on the way to the movie store this afternoon, she turned to me and said "For my birthday" which is in October, by the way, "Can I get another kind of pet?"

Um. NO.

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03/26/2001

Since the spud has spring break this week, and I don’t have to wait for her to get on the bus before I go outside to walk, I got up a few minutes after 6 this morning and did all my exercising, and was done well before 9, although to my disappointment none of the doggies I usually stop to pet were out that early. Then I spent three, yes THREE hours responding to the emails I’ve been letting pile up for the last several days, and now I’m all caught up on emails. If you’ve sent one and I didn’t respond to it today, you may want to write to me again, ’cause I either didn’t get it or accidentally deleted it.

Did everyone watch the Oscars last night? I was under the mistaken impression that they started at 7 Central Time, not realizing that it was necessary to sit through half an hour of red carpet action before they started, which I thought was rather odd. As you can probably tell, I’m not too terribly into the Oscars – in fact, I usually can’t remember from one year to the next who’s won and who hasn’t. We watched until 9, when we had to go to bed or Fred would melt or something, so I taped the rest. I don’t know why I bothered taping it; god knows I probably won’t watch it. I watched the Barbara Walters special beforehand, too, because I like Ben Stiller, Faith Hill, and John Travolta and Kelly Preston.

I hate to admit it, but John Travolta and Kelly Preston make a pretty cute couple. While we were watching it, Fred wondered if Kelly is ever wandering around the house, bored, and makes John Travolta sing something from Grease. I know I would.

Was it just me, or did Faith Hill come across as a total ditz in her interview? Maybe she was just nervous, but I dunno. I like most everything she sings, and I would probably have been happier without seeing that interview.

I also spent a good part of the morning, while I was returning myriad emails, downloading stuff from Napster and rebuilding my collection. I was thrilled to discover Cartman singing Sailing since I hadn’t heard it before, and Faith No More singing Easy.

Napster rocks. The only thing that drives me nuts is when someone gives a song the wrong title and other people download it, and then you do a search and there are 45,000 copies of the song with the wrong fucking title. For instance, the title of the song is Loving This Way, but ten tons of dumbasses had it as I’m Tired of Loving This Way. That sort of thing really drives me nuts.

It’s just the little things that get to me, y’know?

 

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03/23/2001

I was informed this morning by my unhappy knee that trying to beat my best walking time yesterday was perhaps not the smartest move. Luckily, my knee wasn’t hurting badly, but I could tell that if I tried to exercise, it would rapidly get worse, so I didn’t today. I’m going to have to do some extra walking next week to get over the 100 mile mark for outside walking in March, so I hope the damn knee is better tomorrow. What’s odd is that this isn’t the same knee that hurt last time, so they’re taking turns, lucky me.

Hm. I think that paragraph belongs in the diet journal.

One of Fred’s employees’ wife had a baby last week or the week before, a boy, and they named it Coye. And I was passing a church this morning and the sign in front said "Welcome to the world, Lakely!" Coye and Lakely. Doesn’t anyone ever name their kids anything normal these days, like Bobby or Susan? I mean, Coye? What kinda name is that? (The way my luck runs, I have a reader named Coye being incredibly offended right now)

Fred and I chose the names of our future child/ren way before we ever met – Seth Forrest and Samantha Jayne. I still like Seth Forrest (yes, that Forrest), but I’m leaning toward Molly Jayne for a girl these days, because it’s such a lovely, old-fashioned name. I don’t know, though, because I ended up changing my mind on the spud’s name less than a week before she was born. The ex and I had decided on Jessica Leigh months before, but another name popped into my head, and I knew that that was her name. It’s as if she told me, that’s how certain I was.

For years and years, I swore that if I ever had a son, I would name him Ren. I wonder where I picked that one up.

Actually, I’d really like to name a boy Jack, but since that’s Fred’s stepfather’s name, I don’t want to piss off his dad (not that his dad would necessarily get pissed, but you never know).

Oh shit, y’all probably think I’m pregnant or something, don’t you? Nope, sorry to disappoint. Amy is, though. Congrats to Amy and Andy!

I used to just loathe my name when I was a young and stupid child, because I wanted to be Jaime Sommers, the Bionic Woman. For a while I told everyone that was my name and was the only name I’d respond to. They indulged me for a while but then got annoyed and refused to play any more. I also hated my name because every else’s name in the family ended with a "y" sound. Tracy, Randy, Debbie… and Robyn. And everyone always misspelled my name. People still misspell my name, even people who read my journal and send me email. They send email to robyn@hiwaay.net and start with "Hi Robin!", and it cracks me up. Plus, god knows it’s impossible to find anything personalized with the correct spelling of my name.

As a result, the spelling of others’ names is of particular interest to me. I’d be no good on Survivor, because we’d be trekking to Tribal Council, and I’d be saying "So, you spell it J-E-R-I or J-E-R-R-Y, or what? Oh, no reason!" And everyone would be misspelling my name when they voted me off, and I’d be in front of the camera bitching and whining about that at the end of the show. "I didn’t want to be on the show with a bunch of dumbasses who can’t even spell my name anyway! Fuckers!"

Alright, the rambling’s over. Let the weekend begin!

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03/22/2001

I checked out weather.com last night before we took the spud to her flute lessons, and then threw a bit of a hissy fit. "Fucking motherfucking asswipes!" I snarled, stomping around and waving my arms.

"What?" Fred asked, turning around to stare at me.

"Earlier today, weather.com said it was going to be SUNNY tomorrow, and now they’re saying we’re going to have MOTHERFUCKING SCATTERED SHOWERS!" I yelled, stomping and waving some more.

"Well, it’s not like they control the weather," Fred pointed out reasonably.

Don’t you hate it when someone tries to be reasonable in the midst of your tightly choreographed hissy fit?

"Shut up!" I hissed and went stomping off upstairs to set the vcr to tape Survivor.

Luckily, Mother Nature heard my tantrum and was sore afraid, ’cause it turned out to be pretty damn nice.

And I cut 4 minutes off my walk this morning. Well, I usually do it in 98 – 103 minutes (depending on how long I have to wait to cross the street, and how many doggies there are to stop and pet), and I did stop and pet two dogs, PLUS there’s that 3-minute cool-down walk at the end, so really I’m doing a 4 mph pace, wouldn’t you say?

I wish.

So was last night’s Survivor lame, or what? The only thing I found interesting (and funny as hell) was Ogakor’s first night, when Colby’s snoring kept everyone up all night. Oh, and Kimmi and Alicia’s argument over the chickens, when Alicia did the head-bob-and-finger-wave. I love that Alicia!

I’m glad it’s going back to Thursday nights next week, because the spud has flute lessons on Wednesday evenings, and we don’t get home until after Survivor has started, so we have to set up the vcr to tape, and THEN we have to wait until the show’s over to watch it.

Y’all know that the only reason they even bothered to put that stupid filler show on is so that the last show will be on during May sweeps, right? I’d suspected as much and had my suspicions confirmed on the TWA Survivor thread this morning.

That’s just damn lame. Not lame enough to get me to stop watching, you understand, but lame nonetheless.

 

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03/20/2001

Did everyone go right out and buy the new Stephen King book, Dreamcatcher? They happened to have it at Sam’s, so I picked it up, but make no mistake – I would have made a special stop at the bookstore if need be. It was a lot cheaper at Sam’s, though – less than $16. I’m currently trying to finish up my monthly pile of magazines so I can get started on Dreamcatcher, and Fred’s racing through the books he’s reading now, trying to beat me to it.

Fortunately, I have many more lazing-around-the-house-reading hours in the day than he does.

I’m so damn ready for the weather to start warming up. Parts of Alabama had a thick layer of snow this morning, and although we didn’t have snow, we had FUCKING cold driving rain – in fact, it was so cold and nasty out that I didn’t walk outside this morning, and that certainly doesn’t please me.

I’m walking outside tomorrow though, come hell or high water. And judging by the bridge I drove over on my way to Sam’s this morning, there’s plenty of high water to go around.

So, since we reformatted my hard drive (NOT the computer, I am told, we didn’t reformat the computer, we reformatted the HARD DRIVE, so says Mr. Stickler for Unimportant Details. Whatever.), I was able to reinstall Napster. I couldn’t get on anymore because when I tried I was informed that I was a Very Bad Person and had been reported as having renegade songs on my computer, and they’d only reinstate my Napster rights if I filled out this form detailing my name, address, phone number, email address, bra size, blood type, and sent it to them along with my firstborn child. Being the wily criminal type, I refused to do any such thing because I KNOW that what would happen is that one day while I was sitting slack-jawed in front of the computer, they’d bust into the house with a battering ram and seize my computer, Fred’s computer, the spud’s computer, our stereos, our Jeeps, and – for good measure – Miz Poo, so they could sell everything and send the proceeds to Lars Ulrich.

I’m on to their game. Not much gets by me, nosirree.

So I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Napster, hoping that they wouldn’t realize I was the same old me, but they did. The program left something sneaky behind so that when I tried to sign on as Bessie May, a little flag popped up somewhere that told them I was still me. The reformatting worked, though, and I’m back in the saddle again.

The bitch of it is that I can’t think of a damn thing to download. I’ve been carrying around a mental list for two months now, and as soon as I got back into Napster, the list disappeared. I did happen to think of downloading Tiny Dancer, since we watched Almost Famous this past weekend, and I just adore the singalong on the bus. In fact, I may have to buy the damn movie just for that scene. I downloaded the Elton John version, and then I downloaded the version Dave Grohl did on – what’s that show with Craig Kilbourne? Late Night or something? – well, that’s where Dave Grohl sang it, anyway, and it’s pretty damn good. You should go download it, too.

Ever since I downloaded it, the song – the chorus, really – is looping through my mind, and it’s driving me NUTS. Could be worse, I guess.

Hold me closer, tiny dancer…

That was a good closing line, but I need to add here that I got an email update from the people who are running the 3-Day in Atlanta, and I have $750 accumulated so far! I’ll have a page listing all my sponsors (first name, last initial, city) in the next few days (weeks)(months), so keep an eye out for it. Thank you so much, everyone!!!

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03/19/2001

We tried tofu again last night. Fred made tofu parmagiana, and it was alright, if a tad bland. We’re not giving up though, not us! Later this week, I’ll be making curry-cajun tofu, and hopefully the tofu will soak up the curry-cajun spices. Maybe next week Fred will let me try a stir-fry. Probably not, though, because he’s not much of a stir-fry fan, since he’s WEIRD and all.

So, we reformatted my computer Saturday morning, just wiped it clean. I said to Fred, as the reformatting was going on, "I’m so excited! It’s like having a whole new computer!" And it really is. The only pain in the ass part is that I have to reinstall things like DreamWeaver (the software I use to make this site), Quicken, Office, etc. But everything’s working fine so far, knock on wood, so I think we finally beat the problem, thanks to Fred who is the MOST patient, MOST wonderful, MOST awesome geek of a husband a gal could ever hope to have.

Speaking of software and stuff, I discovered something this week that is just making my life SO much easier. Post-its software! I know the rest of the world has known about these for years and years – in fact, I recall reading about them on Willa‘s page ages ago – but I never got around to checking them out until recently. Little post-its that sit on your desktop until you trash them! Total genius!

Yes, the little things excite me.

< Yesterday, out of the blue, the spud decided that she was going to get rid of her Barbies. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, the spud has about every Barbie and every Barbie accoutrement in existence, and it takes up a large part of her room. She wanted me to give it all away to "kids who don't have any toys" (all together now, "awww!"), but I think I'm going to go through the box and keep some of it, 'cause if she has her own daughter someday, that'd be a pretty cool thing to pass on.

Sniff. My baby’s growing up!

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03/16/2001

Keds to wear when I’m out running errands (it’s a bad bad thing to wear your exercise shoes when you’re doing something other than exercising, I’m told), and the black leather version on the Keds site are going for $35 a pair. Since that seemed somewhat pricey to me, I did a Google search to see if I could find them cheaper elsewhere. I didn’t manage to find cheaper Keds, but I did find the Keds Masturbation Manual page. Some people, it appears, have a Keds fetish. Takes all kinds, I guess. Fred has decided we’re going to start incorporating tofu into our diet on a semi-regular basis, and he bought some last night to try out. He read tons of recipes online, and decided to make "egg" salad with it – all you do is cut some of the tofu, mash the rest, and add whatever you’d put in egg salad – mayo, onion, whatever else you want. Fred did so and then decided it looked a little too white – needed some color, he said. So what did he add in the way of spices? Cumin and curry powder. You know, the stuff that smells like b.o. Since tofu takes on the taste of the foods around it, Fred had a big ol’ b.o. sandwich for dinner tonight. Myself, I had a Veggie Delight from Subway.
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