2002-08-09

(note my gorgeous petunias growing in the background) The other plant looks different. The leaves are thinner and a bright green, and there’s not anything actually growing around the stick, everything that’s growing is nowhere near the stick. This is that one: Now, here’s my question: is the second one a butterfly bush, or have I been carefully tending to a growing weed? It’s time to plant the butterfly bush in the ground, since it’s gotten too big for the pot, and if this one’s a weed, I don’t want to be planting it nowhere – I want to torture and kill it. Help? But that’s not all the gardening-type advice I need! My mother had a pot of gorgeous flowers hanging from below her deck. When I asked her what they were, she shrugged and said she hadn’t a clue. This is where y’all come in and tell me what the hell they are, because I really like them and want to grow some of my own next year. Here’s a pic: I’ve discovered since writing this entry, that this is a million bells petunia plant, which you’d think I’d know, seeing as how I have ten zillion regular petunia plants in the front garden. Nothin’ gets by me, nosir. I’m working on an entry about the trip to Maine, it should be up over the weekend. Actually, that’s a lie. I’m not really working on it, I haven’t worked on it at all, but it should still be up over the weekend. And the vacation pics will be up at some point in the next week. Don’t pressure me, damnit! There are, however, a few pictures I took that don’t really fit in the vacation pics category. Monday night – the night before we flew home – we all went out to dinner at Ricetta’s in Falmouth. As we were sitting there talking, I looked up and saw the most adorable waiter talking to someone at another table. Since I had the camera with me, I snuck a few pictures of him. They didn’t come out great – I didn’t use the flash, because I didn’t want to make a complete fool of myself, so I used PSP to lighten the pictures a little – but you get the idea. The more I look at the pictures, the more I think he looks like Ed. The spud was all freaked out that I thought someone was cute, because I guess she thinks I should be blind to the presence of cuteness in anyone other than Himself, small animals, and children. Finally, I said “Would you CALM DOWN? I’m not going to divorce Fred and marry the cute waiter. Jesus!” I was struck anew by how many personalized license plates there are in the Brunswick/ Topsham area. Here in Madison, you see a personalized license plate every once in awhile. They’re not rare, but most people have the regular issued license plates. In Brunswick and Topsham, I would guess that 30% or more of the license plates are personalized. I went to the grocery store in Topsham with my mother one day, and there were maybe 40 cars in the parking lot. Everywhere I looked, there was a personalized license plate. Did I take pictures, you ask? Well, of course. My favorites are “Buteful”, because when I first saw it, I misread it as “Buttful” (hee!), and “Titifly”, because I think someone was asleep at the switch at the DMV that day. I mean, if they wouldn’t let Liz get “LizBtch” on her license plate, why would someone be allowed to get “Titty Fly” on theirs? Ah well. Think they’d let me get “Bitchypoo” on my license plate? And lastly, you can read in Fred’s entry about the t-shirts I bought him in Maine, but here are pictures of the ones I didn’t buy him: I didn’t buy the first one, because black shirts in our house don’t stay black for long, what with all the white cat hair flying around, so I try not to buy black t-shirts for Fred. I didn’t buy the second one because it didn’t come in XL, and Fred likes his t-shirts with a little extra room. They both cracked me up, though, especially the first one, because I’m the caller id queen. If the phone rings, I check the caller id, and if it’s not for me, I don’t answer it. Reader Dez pointed out to me that apparently Fancypants has been reading the funnies, evidence presented here. This one cracked me up, too. I love that comic strip. So, the spud started 8th grade yesterday. Hey, she started 8th grade on 8/8! I just now noticed that. Freaky. Anyway, one of the things that pisses me off about Madison is that once the kids are past elementary school, they don’t get a supply list of the stuff they’ll need. So they don’t know what they’ll need until the first day of school, when each teacher gives them a list. And I understand that there’s not a standard supply list due to the fact that the kids have different classes in middle school, but there are these THINGS called COMPUTERS, and 99% of the people in Madison have them, and since we pick up the kids’ schedules two weeks before school starts, we know which classes they’re taking, and therefore, if each teacher had a LIST of the supplies their classes needed somewhere online, then people could BUY their freakin’ supplies BEFORE the first day of school, and Staples would not be crowded with frantic adults and children, running around in circles and trying to find the fucking dividers. If you are the parent of a spazzy child like the spud, you MUST go out the evening of the first day of school to buy the supplies instead of waiting for the weekend, because if you do not, the spud will worry herself sick thinking about how her Algebra teacher will tell his students to pull out their scientific calculators and she will be the only one in the class without one, and everyone in the class will laugh and point. So we went to Staples. Where everyone else in Madison was running around bellowing “WHAT KIND OF DIVIDERS DO YOU NEED, THE ONES WITH POCKETS OR WITHOUT?!” across the store. We still managed to run wildly through the store, throwing supplies into the cart, grabbed up the very last scientific calculator in the entire store, and were out of there in less than half an hour. I consider that pretty damn good.]]>