Month: July 2004

This is the sort of shit that just pisses me off to no end and want to move to a CIVILIZED country. You can bet your Aunt Fucking Fannie that the first time my pharmacist refused to fill my birth control prescription would be the last time I ever shopped at that store. There needs to be a central web page that women can consult so that they know what pharmacies and doctors to avoid. In fact, there needs to be a list of pharmacies and doctors so that women know who to BOYCOTT. Have I mentioned that this shit just pisses me off?

* * * The spud’s flight landed exactly on time and there were no problems at all. I do think she’s grown about six inches in the past five weeks, though. Right now she’s upstairs watching TV and doing her laundry and all is well in the world. * * * From my comments: There was a big article today on MSN about how Carmen Diaz (sp?) used compressed air to make her nipples hard during a porn type modeling shoot. Hmmm? Just wondering. SNORT. I had no idea what this was about, NANCE, until I realized I’d mentioned there’s a can of compressed air next to the bed. I would use it to make my nipples hard, except I have no nipples. No sexual organs, either. I am smooth like a Barbie doll, and as far as I’m concerned, everyone else in the world is lacking nipples and sexual organs. Yep. Speaking of people taking down websites without consulting other people. Where’d the tater go? Oh, that. Well, I tried to log into WordPress to put up an entry one day, and no matter what I tried I couldn’t log in. So I got pissed off and deleted the whole fucking site. Once I get back from Hawaii, I’ll put something else up – I signed up for couchtater at blogspot, but I’m not sure if I want to use that, or something on my own domain. We’ll see. Tiger has the same raspy cough. He gets it when he wakes up from a deep sleep, and then hunches over like he’s going to puke. He won’t quit until he clears (?) whatever it is an swallows, then he’s fine. We took him to the vet 3 different times for it, and they’ve tried all the same stuff, still with no results. They’re clueless as well, and since it didn’t seem to be life threatening, we’ve decided it’s just a part of him. It does sound scary though, first few times you hear it. I’d never known anyone else to have a cat that does that. Maybe we’ve stumbled upon a new cat ailment. Should we call it the Poo Cough? Or the Tiger Hack? I think the Tiger Poo Hacking Cough sounds much more formal. Heh. Of course, they’ll shorten it to TPHC. “Your cat appears to be suffering from TPHC.” “Oh my god, is it serious?!” “No, just annoying.” If you like Sedaris, you might like Augusten Burroughs. “Running with Scissors” was insanely good. I have that book! I haven’t read it yet, but I have it. Robyn – is there a good web site that lists all the books in a series? I always have a hard time finding this out. I don’t know if there’s a web site like that – and if anyone knows that there is, leave a comment, wouldya? – but if I’m trying to figure out all the books in a series, I go to Amazon, and do a search on the name of the series. Ie, “Left Behind Series” will bring up all the Left Behind books in the series, though not necessarily in order. “Andrew Vachss Burke Series” brings up all the books in the Burke series, and so on. Robyn – Have you seen Felicity Huffman’s newer show, “Out of Order”? I caught a few episodes one weekend a couple weeks ago and loved it. It’s a totally different role for her and I really got into it. Yeah, we watched the series when it was first on Showtime and liked it a lot. I had hoped that they’d do another season of it, but so far there’s been nothing. Never say never though, right? Have you ever gotten into Strangers with Candy (Amy Sedaris stars). Funniest show EVER! A SWC movie is due out sometime this year. I’ve never seen a single episode – HOWEVER, the show’s out on DVD, so I’ve added the first disk of season one to my Netflix queue so I can check it out. Good god, don’t they include the tiny tube of hootchie-numbing cream they used to with Monistat? From what I remember, that was the main selling point of it for me when I had delicate issues. This is regarding my issues with the Monistat last week. Yeah, they had the hootchie-numbing (hee!) cream, but it didn’t so much as “numb” the hootchie (I mean, if I HAD one and wasn’t smooth like a Barbie) as “cause even more itching.” Maybe my hootchie (if I had one) is numbing-resistant. Robyn, I bet you could get your hair to do that, but I don’t think you’ll want to. It will require PRODUCTS. I actually tried styling my hair like Dana from Sports Night (season 1) last week, and it took a ton of products, too much time with the blow dryer, and still didn’t look like anything to write home about. I think I’ll stick with my wash, comb, ignore method. Life’s too short to spend 20 minutes with the blow dryer. Bitch! I wanted Cold Mountain for this weekend, but Netflix says ‘Short Wait’ and sent me something else instead. So YOU’RE the one who got my copy! *evil glare* Mwahahah! That’s right, someone mentioned in my comments that she goes to her Netflix queue the day before something is released and makes it #1 in the queue. I gave it a try and it worked so well that I’m probably going to do it from now on. I probably didn’t get your copy, though. My distribution center’s in Birmingham and yours… is not. 🙂 Robyn – I just found this site and immediately thought of you. That site reminds of this picture of Spanky: * * * Cat lovers – help C.C. out, won’t you? * * * We watched The Butterfly Effect last night. Skip to the next section if you haven’t seen it yet, because I’m going to mention how it ends. Not a bad movie, though the acting seemed to be uniformly wooden and Ashton Kutcher will probably never be anyone but Kelso to me, especially when he smiles. I was with the movie right up to the STUPIDEST FUCKING ENDING EVER. I mean, I’m sorry. He goes back in time and KILLS HIMSELF IN THE WOMB? What? Somehow – and this is just my opinion – I SUSPECT BABIES IN THE WOMB DON’T HAVE THE MANUAL DEXTERITY TO DO THAT SORT OF THING. Also, even 20 years ago, if there was a baby in distress like that, the doctors and nurses wouldn’t have been all standing around saying “Hmm. Baby in distress. Whatever shall we do? Sorry, lady. Sucks to be you.” They would have knocked her out and done a c-section immediately. Christ. We ended up seeing the director’s cut because I apparently put the dvd with the director’s cut in my Netflix queue rather than the theatrical version. Probably because it was the director’s cut, it seemed to take a while to really get going – Fred thought there was a little too much backstory. It was worth watching, despite the goofy-ass ending. * * * The Friday Foofah: 1. Are you viewing this on a computer running MacOS or Windows (or something else)? Windows 2000. 2. If money wasn’t an issue, what computer would you have on your desk? I kind of like the computer I have now. I’d like one that’s faster and more powerful (this one is, like, almost three years old!), but I’d probably leave it up to Fred to pick out what kind, since that’s his area. 3. When did you first get on the Internet? Good lord. NINE years ago as of mid-February. 4. What’s the #1 use you put your computer to? Porn. Ha! Just kidding. Slackery: journal reading, surfing, chatting. * * * ]]>

* * * Robyn’s book report: The Da Vinci Code: Liked it, though the last several pages kind of dragged. I can see why it made it onto the best seller list, though I’m not sure why it’s STILL on the best seller list. Click here for spoilers. Flirting with Pete: Good so far, though I’ve been finding myself a little impatient since Barbara Delinsky does like to go on and I want her to just get to the POINT already. A good, quick read – I’ll easily finish this book sometime today.

* * * The spud is going to be home later today; I’m picking her up at the (stalker alert!) airport this afternoon. These last five weeks just flew by. It’ll be good to have her home, since I always worry a little when she’s so far away. And this time next week? We’ll be stumbling around Hawaii in the throes of jet lag. Whee! We’re landing in Hawaii at 10:19 pm next Wednesday night, which will feel like 3:19 am to us. We’re going to be some tired motherfuckers, that’s for sure. I can never really sleep on planes, so I guess I’d better be sure I bring along a ton of books to read. Hey, maybe I’ll register them all with BookCrossing and leave them wherever I happen to be when I’m done reading them! Reminder to self: “Where’s George” vacation money before leaving. Response to self: What vacation money? We’re going to throw ourselves on the kindness of strangers. Response to self’s response to self: Oh. Right. * * * Speaking of Hawaii, I ordered a couple of very cheap red t-shirts to wear with my hid-e-ass board shorts to go into the water, and I’m pleased to announce that they’ll do nicely. I also ordered a ($5! Whoo! Love the clearance!) polo shirt that should fit me, but seems to be about three sizes too big. Seriously, it hangs all the way down to my knees, and while I know I should return it because oversized shirts on fat chicks are not so flattering, it’s the most comfortable shirt I’ve ever worn, and so I’m going to keep it and wear it. Although since it was $5, no doubt the first time I wash it, it’ll fall to pieces. * * * Still liking Firefox – especially the “open in tab” option, whoo! – but I went into Nance‘s chat room yesterday and every time someone said (typed) something, instead of showing up at the bottom of the screen, it would show up at the top of the screen. It freaked me out (yeah, obviously it doesn’t take a great deal to freak me out). It’s definitely a Firefox thing, though – I went back in in IE, and the chat room looked like it was supposed to. Also, I’m making it so that all my notify emails are going to my gmail account, but man! I sure belong to A FUCKING LOT of notify lists! Every time I think I’m all set, another notify shows up at the old address. Lordy. * * * The fucking cats have been stomping all the fuck over my nerves lately. I was up ’til almost midnight last night, and when I turned the light off and settled in to go to sleep, Miz Poo jumped up and settled in on the pillow next to me. Which is not a problem, because I love the Poo-pie! Yes I do! Except. Grrr. When she was operated on a few years ago (don’t even ask me what the operation was for, there’ve been so fucking many of them!), once she came home she developed some… something. I don’t know what the hell it is, but sometimes she starts breathing raspily, and it’s not that she can’t breathe, it’s that something seems to be stuck in her throat, and instead of just coughing it the fuck up like a normal person (yes, I know she’s not a person. Shut UP.) would, she just sits there and makes that noise for hours and hours and then suddenly she’ll cough and swallow, and all is fine. Yes, we took her to the vet. No, they don’t know what it is. Yes, we took her to more than one vet. No, none of them had anything helpful to say. Yes, we tried antibiotics. No, it’s not asthma. No, there’s no rhyme nor reason to when it happens. No, it’s not allergies. Sometimes Fred will kind of perform the Heimlich on her and it helps. Sometimes it doesn’t. Anyway, last night on the pillow with her raspy-breathing self three inches from my face, even though I was wearing earplugs, it was loud and after two minutes it got really, really annoying. Now, perhaps I’ve mentioned, I LOVE the Poo-pie! Yes, I dooooooo! However, I love my sleep MORE, and if it comes down to a choice between the Poo and my sleep, there’s really no competition. So I pushed her off the pillow toward the edge of the bed. “Goodnight, Poo,” I said. She walked off the edge of the bed… onto the bedside table, where she turned around and sat down and stared at me. The raspy breathing was as clear through my earplugs as it had been when she was laying ten inches closer to me. And then suddenly Spanky began his infernal nightly howling. Spot began his infernal nightly ass-licking. Stumpy began his infernal night running around and “Brrr? Brrr! Brrr!” “Oh, come ON!!!” I bellowed, throwing myself across the bed. “Give me a fucking BREAK!” ::rasp::rasp::rasp:: ::mrowrrrrrrrr! mrowwwwwr! mrowrrrrrrrr!:: ::slurp::slurp::slurp:: ::bangbangbang::brrr! brrr? brrr!:: “Agh!” I yelled. “I hate you kitties! I hate you all!” And then brilliance struck. I sat up, grabbed the can of compressed air off the bedside table (not the table Miz Poo was on – the table on my side of the bed)(also, what? Where do you keep YOUR compressed air?) and sprayed it in the air in an arc. There was a mass stampede of cats hauling ass out of the room, Meester Boogers ::Brr!Brr?Brr!::ing all the way. They may have started it up again once they realized the can of air was no longer spraying, but by then I was thankfully sound asleep. Fucking cats. * * * For all you Spanky lovahs out there.]]>

* * * The web page for the school the spud will be attending this year is the singularly least helpful web page I’ve ever come across in my life. If I were in charge of that web page, I would put up information such as when the schedule pickup for the various grades is, and what the bus routes are for Madison. I have no clue where around here the spud can catch the bus, and it’s information I’d like to be able to look up on the web page. Yes, I KNOW that school doesn’t start for a month, but I’m a worrier. What can I say?

* * * I went and had my stitches removed today. It didn’t hurt until she started removing the scabs, but even that kind of felt good, since it’s been itching an awful lot back there. She told me that to lessen the scarring, I needed to be careful to use sunscreen when exposing that spot to the sun over the next year or so. I didn’t tell her that I think scars are badass and it can scar up all it wants. I also didn’t tell her that chances are really good that my back probably hasn’t seen the sun since I was running around in a pink bikini, and I don’t expect it to see the sun ever again in this lifetime. * * * Our cable internet service sucks so incredibly badly lately – every five minutes it goes down for a minute or longer – that if it doesn’t improve in the next few days (and this has been going on for a goddamn week if not longer) I’m probably going to sign up for fucking dial-up service. That is, if I don’t have a MOTHERFUCKING STROKE first. Knology. Don’t bother. * * * In our library/ dining room/ whatever you want to call it sits a secretary (a piece of furniture, that is, not a person. Though I sure could use a secretary to answer the email sitting in my inbox.). Over the weekend, one of the cats (Meester Boogers, I think) was laying on the floor looking under the secretary. I assumed he’d knocked something under there, so I got down on the floor to look. There were a ton of toy mice under there – which I guess answers the question “Where did all their toy mice go?!” I got a broom and pulled all the mice out from under the secretary, then counted them. Sixteen. There were SIXTEEN toy mice under the secretary. Is it possible our cats have too many toys? Nah. * * * They always look slightly guilty, as if they’d been doing something they shouldn’t. I suspect that when I’m not around, they snuggle up to each other.]]>

book the other day. There were a couple of parts that had me laughing so hard I could barely breathe – especially the line “I see you have a little swimming mouse”. My favorite stories are the ones that he writes about his family. After I finished the David Sedaris book, I started The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and as much as I wanted to like it – Fred enjoyed it a great deal when he read it – I realized around page 150 that I just didn’t care what happened to the characters and, y’know, life’s just too damn short. Yesterday morning I started The Da Vinci Code. I’m about 250 pages into it (I read in bed after Fred went to his room, and couldn’t put it down – thus the reason I was up past midnight last night), and enjoying it a great deal so far. We watched a bunch of movies this weekend, the best one being The Pianist. What a downer of a movie. Of course, now that I know the movie’s based on the book, I’ll have to be sure to add the book to my wish list.

* * * Pet store kitty pics from yesterday are here. * * * So, Fred’s father has a small lemon tree. It’s planted in a big pot, and he keeps it outside for the summer, and then when the weather gets cold, he pulls the pot into his garage, where it stays for the winter. Ever since last summer, when Fred’s father gave Fred a lemon from the tree and Fred declared it the Best Lemon Ever, we’ve been looking for a lemon tree. We tried all the area nurseries, we looked online to see if we could order a lemon tree, we bitched and moaned about the lack of lemon trees in this area, and then we forgot about it for a little while, and made do with lemons from the grocery store (Fred likes fresh lemon juice in his iced tea). A few months back, when we were driving to Memphis with Fred’s mother, we somehow got on the subject of lemons and lemon trees. “We just can’t find one anywhere!” Fred said sadly. “And I would really like a lemon tree of my own.” We all sat in silence and mourned the lack of a lemon tree in our life. “Did you check the (something or other) Nursery?” Fred’s mother asked. “Yeah, we checked there,” Fred said. “And the (something) Nursery?” “Yeah.” Long, long silence. “Well,” Fred’s mother said tentatively. “You could always just plant some seeds from a lemon…” Fred and I glanced at her and then at each other. “Plant seeds from a lemon?” I said. “Yes, seeds from a lemon. To grow a lemon tree.” Fred quickly changed the subject. Later that night, while we were laying in bed talking, he brought it up. “Plant seeds from a lemon,” he said. “To grow a lemon tree.” “Can you really do that?” I asked. “The time the lemon spent in the refrigerator doesn’t ruin the seeds or something?” He shrugged. “Fuck if I know.” “Well, it won’t hurt to try, huh?” I said. “We have potting soil, and lemon seeds from your lemons. Let’s give it a try!” Some days later, I poked holes in the bottom of an empty, clean yogurt container, filled it with soil, and planted a couple of seeds from a lemon. Then I put the container on the front step and waited. “I don’t think anything’s going to happen,” I said two weeks later. “Surely it doesn’t take THIS long for a lemon seed to sprout.” Fred agreed. But since we are who we are, neither of us got around to moving the container off the front step, and a week later after I went out to get the mail, I glanced down and saw it. Our lemon seeds had sprouted! You can plant seeds from a lemon and eventually end up with a lemon tree. Who the fuck knew? (Yes, it’ll probably be 50 years before we actually GET a lemon off the lemon tree, but that’s not the POINT.) Next, we’re going to try our hand at growing a peach tree. By the time the spud has graduated from high school and we’ve found a house we like on many, many acres, both the lemon and peach trees should be ready to plant in the ground. Just call me Farmer Robyn. * * * Yesterday I finally downloaded and installed Firefox. Fred’s been using it for a couple of weeks now and really, really likes it a lot. I like it so far, too – especially the popup stopper extension you can install – but I’m having a problem with Eudora. Even though Firefox is set as my default browser, if I click on a link in an email, it comes up in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Fred tried to figure out what the problem was and couldn’t, so I threw myself on the mercy of Eudora support. Their response? It’s a Firefox problem. Smells like bullshit to me. So if I’m on your notify list and you see me leave, don’t worry. I’m switching all my notify email to a gmail account. Which doesn’t really solve the problem with Eudora, but 9/10 of the links I get are in notify emails, so it’ll be easier to deal with. Stupid Eudora. * * * Bath time!]]>

* * * We went to the quarry for a little while this morning. We only stayed for about 45 minutes, because more and more people were showing up, and the quarry’s only really cool when there’s no one else there. I gave my board shorts and coolmax shirt a test run. The shorts were fine, but the t-shirt was a tad too small – “too small” meaning “it fit the way it’s supposed to” – and I was uncomfortable. I may have to look into getting a cheap t-shirt to wear in the water while we’re in Hawaii. We’ll see. Have I mentioned that the board shorts are just as ugly as they could possibly be? They’re hideous. Which, oddly, makes me just like them that much more.

* * * We were flipping channels the other night, and flipped by VH-1 Country (yes, there’s a VH-1 Country! Who the hell knew?). Loretta Lynn was singing, so I made Fred stop so we could watch the video. After a few minutes I realized that Jack White (and I only know what he looks like because I saw Cold Mountain) was playing guitar. I had no opinion on Jack White one way or the other before I saw the video, but that he was playing backup for Loretta Lynn gave him instant cool credits as far as I’m concerned. The song, “Miss Being Mrs”, is sad as hell, by the way. * * * Okay, it’s time to clear out my picture queue. And, not surprisingly, I have about ten thousand pictures of Meester Boogers yawning. The yawn and stretch. This one particularly cracks me up. The stretch, but no yawn. The distracted yawn. He’s a yawning motherfucker, that’s right.]]>

You’re Australia!
You’re easy-going, relaxed, and yet somewhat tough and hardy all at the same time.  You can appreciate culture, scuba diving, and even safaris.  This makes you pretty interesting and intriguing to others, though also really unpredictable and even wild.  Your knowledge of nature is unthinkable to most of those around you, even though your respect for it is sometimes less than perfect.  People really like your accent.
Take the Country Quiz Hmm. Sounds just like me. They forgot “You’re a badass!”, though.

* * * While we watched Cold Mountain last night – while I watched Cold Mountain, I should say, and Fred yammered through the entire fucking movie until right before the sex scene I turned to him and said “Are you planning on ever shutting up SO I CAN HEAR THE FUCKING MOVIE??” and then he quieted for a few minutes before resuming his smartass comments – I had to, at various times, turn away. Usually it was when I saw a knife or sword and knew it was about to be used. I am, if I’ve never mentioned it, squeamish as a prissy little girl. I guess I should more accurately say that I’m selectively squeamish. Things like cleaning out the litter box or cleaning up a line of barf left as a present by one or more of the cats are things I can deal with without much batting an eye (unless the barf is still warm and it soaks through the paper towel, and then all bets are off). Poopy diapers don’t much bother me – well, that’s a lie, they’d probably bother me nowadays, but back in the day when I was dealing with the spud’s atomic neck-to-knee shits I just considered them something to be dealt with and didn’t make a big deal over it. Which is not to say that I didn’t foist diaper changes on whoever else was standing around whenever humanly possible. Just because they didn’t bother me doesn’t mean I went out of my way to come face-to-face with shitty diapers. But I digress. It’s mostly the blood-and-guts stuff that makes my toes curl and want to squeal and run away. When we watch Nip/ Tuck, those fuckers always show at least one surgery in loving detail and I have to turn my head and tell Fred to let me know when it’s over. He sits and gazes with shiny eyes at the screen, getting so caught up that oftentimes he forgets to let me know it’s over. When we were watching Cold Mountain and someone got stabbed in the gut with a knife or sword, it made me cringe. I’ve never in my entire life been stabbed in the gut – or anywhere else, for that matter – but I have enough of an imagination that I could swear I know just what it feels like to have cold steel stabbing past your skin and into your intestines and whateverthehell other organs are laying in the path of the knife or sword. (Ooh! Ooh! Digression! For some reason, I’m reminded of the time years and years ago that I read a novel. In the novel, a bad guy was kidnapping and killing young boys. Near the end of the novel, he had kidnapped yet another young boy, who made a break for it and ended up in the basement, where there was a huge pile of garbage bags. The boy runs through the garbage bags and some of them break open to reveal the decomposing bodies of the boys the bad guy has killed. The author goes into some detail about the smell, and later after I’d put the book down for the night (or maybe finished it), I was laying in bed thinking about the fact that I was dead certain that I knew exactly what it smelled like in that basement. Which made me start wondering how the holy fuck I knew what a decomposing body smelled like. What the hell? Had I once smelled (been RESPONSIBLE FOR) a decomposing body and repressed the memory? Had I, in fact, ONCE KILLED SOMEONE and the memory was trying to break free into my conscious mind? I swear to god, people, this bothered me so much that I couldn’t sleep that night. It wasn’t until the middle of the next day that I realized that the smell I was recalling was the smell of the rotting garbage in the garbage bin when I worked at McDonald’s. It might not have contained any decomposing bodies, but if you spend a little time in a small building that contains nothing but a dumpster filled with week-old McDonald’s garbage, I can almost guarantee you that you know what decomposing bodies smell like. Gag.) (Digression #2: I once had an extremely realistic dream that I was leaving a bar late at night, got into an argument with a stranger over what kind of car I was driving (it wasn’t American-made, which pissed him off). I got into my car, backed out, and hit him (an accident, I swear!). When I got out to see if he was okay, I was pretty sure he was dead, though I didn’t, y’know, check for a PULSE or anything. I picked him up, stuffed him in my trunk, and drove up 95N toward home. It being late at night, there wasn’t much traffic, so I pulled over and opened my trunk to toss him over the side of a ravine (conveniently located right next to the highway). When I started to pull him out of the trunk, he began flailing and moaning, and I freaked out and pushed him over the side of the ravine. He landed at the bottom (and it was a deep ravine) and I could still hear him moaning and there was this bloody, gurgling sound underlying the moan. I shut the trunk and took off, feeling incredibly guilty, but also as if I had no choice, and woke with my heart in my mouth. I had to actually sit and wonder if it was something that had really happened that I had – sound familiar? – repressed and was trying to fight it’s way back to my conscious mind. Can you tell that I was really big into the idea of repressed memories when I was younger?) (Also, Stephen King once said that when he was young, he thought that sanity was something very fragile – like you could be walking down the street, one moment sane, the next insane – something I thought as well. I also thought that you could flip back and forth from sanity to insanity like flipping a switch (though involuntarily), and also that if you were insane, you knew it. Thus, I’d every once in a while check in with my sanity. “Am I crazy?” “Nope, not today.” “‘k, just checking!”) I can watch someone get shot and it doesn’t bother me too terribly much – maybe because I haven’t read a detailed description of what it’s like to be shot – but watching a stabbing or strangling or someone having their throat slit is something I have a really hard time watching. Either I’m too empathetic, or I’m just a big baby. Still a badass, though. A cringing, whiny, “Oh, I can’t watch the fake operation, it’s too groooooooss” badass, but a badass just the same. * * * For the record, say what you will about Cold Mountain, I loved it. In fact, I put it on my wish list. Fred thought it moved too slowly, but I didn’t think it did at all. I’m not a big Renee Zellweger fan, but I thought she was amazing in the part of Ruby. Hm. I loved her as Bridget Jones, too. Maybe I’m more of a fan than I thought I was… * * * Five minutes ago, I was packing a box of books to send to my sister. Once I’d gotten the box packed, I wasn’t sure whether to send it to my parents’ house – my sister is house- and dog-sitting while my parents are in Hawaii – or to my sister’s apartment. ::beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep:: (I dialed my parents’ phone number) Behind me, Fred was listening to music. Me: Can you turn that down a little? Fred: ::turns it down a very little:: Spud (answering the phone): Hello? Me: Hey. Fred: (sounding annoyed) Hey. Me: What are you doing? Spud: I just (rest of sentence drowned out by:) Fred: (sounding even more annoyed) Reading Dooce, like you told me to! Me: I’m ON THE PHONE! Fred: Oh. Maybe you just had to be there. * * * Bath time! ]]>

new logo? Very appropo for this month, methinks. Thanks to creative reader Amy for the new logo! Next new logo will be up on August 1st.

* * * So Fred and I were doing something yesterday that required us to be standing in the kitchen – probably getting our 7:00 snacks – and he turned and squinted at me. “Are you combing your hair differently or something?” he asked. “It looks different.” “I blow-dried it this morning,” I said. “I’ve been experimenting with different ways to do it.” Pause. You know what’s coming, right? “Different good, or different bad?” I asked. His eyes went wide, and he got a panicked look on his face. “Just… DIFFERENT!” he yelled, and then ran away. Jesus christ. After almost five years of marriage, wouldn’t you think he’d KNOW that there are only two ways to answer that question? 1. “I love it the way you have it now. You should ALWAYS do it like that!” 2. “It’s beautiful, but I prefer it the way you usually wear it.” What I need to do, clearly, is hire a woman to follow him around 24 hours a day, and when he’s asked a question that puts him into panic mode, he can pause time and turn to consult with her before he answers. I guess the problem is that he tends to have no opinion whatsoever when it comes to my hair. I have a feeling he never really even looks directly at it, and thus if I were to shave it off, it’d take him three weeks to even notice anything was different. On the other hand, I have an opinion on HIS hair, but when I think his hair looks it’s best (very little or no gel, and mussed rather than carefully combed back), he thinks it looks horrible and refuses to go out into public like that. Hmph. MEN. * * * Speaking of my hair, I realized last night that with the way it’s cut, I could easily do my hair in a style similar to Dana on Season 1 of Sports Night: Next time I blow-dry my hair, I may experiment with it and see if I can. Speaking of Sports Night, I’ve been watching it while I work out; I just started Season 2, and I’m enjoying it immensely. That is one good damn show. In the past, I never thought Felicity Huffman was all that good-looking, but the more I watch the show, the more I like her, and the prettier she seems to become. I got The Office from Netflix on Tuesday, and I started watching it yesterday. I liked what I could understand, but the problem was that I was having a hard time understanding what everyone was saying, because I wasn’t always directly in front of the TV – I was off to the side lifting weights for part of the time. I decided to send it back to Netflix and try it again in the future when I have time to sit in the living room and watch it rather than trying to watch it while I work out. Also arriving on Tuesday were Cold Mountain and 50 First Dates, both of which I’m going to watch with Fred. * * * Important things to know in life: 1. Unless you want your ENTIRE house to smell like boiled ass, it is not a good idea to put the baggie of poo and pee chunks (that you cleaned out of the litter box) on top of the dryer WHICH IS RUNNING and then wander off to do something else. Because believe you me – when an hour later you’re as far away from the room where the litter box is located as it’s possible to be and still be IN the house, and you are happily vacuuming the rug and you catch the strong odor of cat shit and you curse and stomp around and try to figure out where one of the little bastards shit, and you follow your nose back to the room where the litter box is located, you will GAG at the smell and it will make you VERY UNHAPPY. Also, it might be time to move. I’m not sure you’re ever going to get that smell out of the house. 2. When you have a yeast infection and you buy the box of Monistat and it says on the back “Itching and burning might increase a tiny little bit after medicine is applied”, that is what we where in BitchyLand refer to LIES FROM THE MOUTH OF SATAN. The itching? The burning? It will make you want to grab a semi-sharp knife and amputate the lower part of your body at the waist because JESUS CHRIST, THE ITCHING! THE BURNING! THE ITCHING AND THE BURNING! AND YOU HAVE TO DO THIS THREE NIGHTS IN A ROW AND IT WILL DRIVE YOU INSANE. 3. The decor of any room can be enhanced by the addition of a cat in a fruit hat. Meet Carmen Meownda: (Thanks again, Pinky!!) That is all. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ]]>