I was amazed and delighted when Robyn presented me with the donations you wonderful people sent her in Mia’s memory. My thanks are not enough to describe the gratitude I feel for all of you animal lovers all over the world. Actions like this help restore my faith in the human family – not only of giving, but giving so unselfishly to a little cat rescue in Alabama. We are indeed blessed and consider all of you friends of our shelter.
As of this morning we’ve raised $1832.74 (I turned over just under $1500 today, and will take the rest to the shelter when I get back from Maine). Hopefully when I get back from Maine on the 25th, there’ll be even more donations waiting!
* * *
I caught up on my email last night – I don’t like to go on vacation with a bunch of email in my inbox, because I’m a dork – and I’ve started closing emails with “As ever, Robyn”, because of, well, because of
this. I’ve been closing my notify emails that way pretty much since last Fall, but I’ve started closing other emails that way, too, ’cause you have to have some sort of closing. You can’t just say “Okay, um, ‘bye, now!” and I don’t like to sign “love” to everyone even though I do love each and every one of you, and “xo” is not really me (though I do sometimes use it, sparingly), and “have a great day!” isn’t really a closing, so “as ever” it is.
But anyway, as I was closing an email last night, I thought to myself “I should find out how they close letters in, like, Russian and start using that.” and then I thought “No! I should translate some phrase like ‘live long and prosper’ into Russian and use that!”
And then brilliance (actually, it was late and I was tired and perhaps a little giddy) struck, and I thought “I should just make up a fucking word, and use THAT.” and I thought some more, and my favorite made-up word that always comes to mind is “floopy”, and so I said “Self, let’s just start closing email “floopy, Robyn.”, but then I thought maybe I’d want something a little longer, and I added to the word a little, and ended up with “floupelle”, so if you got an email from me signed “floupelle, Robyn” last night, that would be what was going on THERE.
I don’t know, though. I don’t like “floupelle” all that much. It doesn’t have that ring of finality to it, that “I’m ending this goddamn email, see?” air.
So here’s your assignment: make up a word I can use. And if I like it, I’ll adopt it as my own. But it better not be a word in another language that means something derogatory or embarrassing, or I will send
my badass boys after you.
* * *
Speaking of that, Fred and I have a word that we always use at the end of our emails to each other (and no, you don’t get to know what it is, Nosey Parkers) that indicates “I love and adore you madly” (and NO, it isn’t “I love and adore you madly” or even ILAAYM. Hee! I-LAAY-M! I’m far too amused by that!). We use it at the end of every single email, it’s a requirement, and the one time I got pissed off and sent a pissy email to him and deliberately didn’t include that word, I caught hell for it, believe you me.
So every now and then I slip and come very close to typing that to someone I’m emailing who isn’t Fred (random people, I mean, not any one person in particular), and I get all embarrassed as I’m erasing it, thinking that if I’d accidentally sent it I’d get an email back from the person saying “What the fuck does that mean???” and I’d have to explain.
Thus far I’ve always caught myself, but if you ever get an email from me with a strange word at the end, be kind and pretend you didn’t, okay? Because I don’t want to have to explain it.
* * *
Last night I was glancing at one of my old entries and came across this:
Saturday night at 7, Fred was wandering around in the kitchen making his evening snack. The spud walked into the room, grabbed a bag of microwaveable popcorn, and put it in the (can you guess??) microwave. I was sitting on the couch reading a magazine while waiting for them both to get the hell out of my way.
“Did you know that muttermuttermutter died?” the spud said to Fred.
“Yeah,” Fred replied.
“Who?” I said, turning around to look at them. “Who died?”
“Morrie,” they chorused.
“Oh my god!” I gasped. “Maury Povich is DEAD?”
“No,” Fred said. “Morrie, from Tuesdays with Morrie.” The spud’s been reading that book, and had apparently come to the end.
“Oh. Yeah, I knew he was dead.”
And I wonder why I have a reputation for being ditzy…
and I laughed until I cried. Which is when I knew it was way past my bedtime, and time to go to bed.
* * *
So ever since we got my car back in March, it seems that they – the general “they”, not a particular “they” – send me surveys at least once a week. Now, I fucking hate filling out surveys, so usually I toss them in the trash, but one day last week I got a survey in the mail, and opened it up to see what it was, and there was a crisp one dollar bill enclosed. I left the survey on my desk and yesterday as I was cleaning off my desk I came across the survey and tossed it in the trash, but then realized that I’d actually spent the lovely, crisp one dollar bill, and so I was probably legally bound to fill out the stinkin’ survey.
One of the first questions the survey asked was this one:
How do you feel about your new vehicle?
I feel a definite emotional attachment to my new vehicle.
I feel some emotional attachment to my new vehicle.
I feel no emotional attachment to my new vehicle.
and I seriously considered choosing the third answer, and then writing “It’s a fucking CAR, dumbasses. A CAR. Who gets EMOTIONALLY attached to their CAR?”, but I thought about it for a moment, and I realized that I am, in fact, quite attached to my car.
I’m so lame.
It ended up taking me twenty minutes to fill out the fucking thing, and if you figure that I only got a dollar for twenty minutes of filling out the stupid little circles, that adds up to an hourly wage of $3, and THAT isn’t even minimum wage, damnit. So next time I’m going to spend the freakin’ dollar and toss the survey in the trash, and I will not feel guilty.
Okay, I probably will feel guilty, but it’s a guilt I can live with.
* * *
A reintroduction of the And3rson kitties, since there are no kittens around to suck up the attention:
“Hiiii. I’m Miz Poo. I’m the only girl cat in the house, and I rule the boy cats with an iron paw. My interests are having strange things wrong with me that no vet can seem to cure – for a while I had eye problems, and now I’m having lip issues – and waiting until the Momma is busy and in the middle of doing something important, and howling pitifully until she picks me up and gives me love while telling me that I’m a pain in the ass. I KNOW I’m a pain in the ass, it’s my specialty!”
“Duhr. I’m Spanky. I’m pretty, but dumb. That’s okay, though, because I have soft, silky fur, and you cannot resist petting me. I like to roll around in spots of sunlight. Also, I like to wait until the Momma and the Daddy are in bed talking, then I crawl up on top of the Momma, rest my entire weight on my two front paws, and see how long I can lay there before the Momma yells “GodDAMN, Spanky, that HURTS!” My personal record is three minutes and ten seconds.”
“Spot here. I like to look up at you with an expression of abject terror on my face, and run away from you if you so much as glance at me, as if you’ve spent my entire lifetime beating me with rubber hoses. Lately, I’ve developed the special skill of going practically bald in one section of my body – first it was the backs of my legs, now it’s a patch in the middle of my back that I can’t reach – for no reason that the vet can discern (no, it’s not ringworm). The best part about losing a bunch of fur is that I can wait until the Momma has cleaned the house, then wander about dropping great tufts of hair all over the place.”
“I’m Mister Boogers. My greatest joy in life is standing in front of my mother with my stub of a tail straight up in the air so that my mother is forced to see my asshole. I can tell by the way she grimaces and turns away that it impresses her greatly.”
“Also, when changes are afoot anywhere in the house, I like to be right there and make sure that things are being done correctly. Because these humans, they’re not so smart, and without my
interference help, things might be done shoddily. When I’m not showing off my asshole or inspecting changes being made to the house, I like to follow Miz Poo around until she loses her mind, hissing and growling. Also, I like to lick the top of Spot’s head until he starts to like it, then bite him on the back of the neck.”]]>