Hell’s Kitchen, starting tonight, and I’m looking forward to Tuesday Night Book Club tomorrow night. Hopefully it doesn’t suck.
Oh! And if you haven’t checked out Meerkat Manor on Animal Planet yet, you really ought to. I love those damn meerkats.
* * *
Reader Lisa sent me a link to
this cat video on John Heffron’s site, and it is HILARIOUS. Go check it out.
* * *
Saturday morning, Fred and I left the house around 9:00 to venture into Huntsville and go for a hike. It was my idea to start hiking together two or three days a week, because next summer we plan to climb Mt. Katahdin together, and I figured it would be better to start sooner rather than later, because I’m not – I think I’ve mentioned – much of a hiker, and it’s probably going to take me a long, long time to be able to do anything approaching the strenuous hiking Fred does on a regular basis.
Because I move much more slowly than Fred, he decided that we’d do half a hike together, then I could head off on a wimpy hike back to the car, and he could go off on a far more difficult hike and meet me at the car.
The first part of the hike wasn’t bad, though I did find myself bitchily saying “WHY are we going uphill AGAIN?” We saw lots of squirrels and several chipmunks (which are just unbearably cute, and I WANT ONE as a pet), and even one teeny black snake (I actually spotted it; Fred walked over it without seeing it). Then we split off, and he went off on his difficult hike, and I followed a mostly flat, wide trail which would eventually lead me back to the parking lot and the car.
The problem came as I was following the trail, and if I’d kept going straight, I would have been on the red trail, but if I went to the left, I would have been on the white trail, and I couldn’t remember at ALL whether Fred had told me what color trail to stay on. I was sure I’d asked, but if you ask Fred a question like that, what you get is a 15-minute lecture about where every single trail on the mountain goes, and he never ends up answering the question.
I decided to follow the white trail, because I couldn’t remember him saying anything at all about the red trail, but he’d mentioned the white trail, at least in passing, at some point.
Actually, what I tried to do first was to call him, but naturally – THANK YOU, T-MOBILE – I couldn’t get a signal.
So I followed the white trail for ten or fifteen minutes, and it started to get pretty narrow. Since Fred had repeatedly told me that the trail I needed to follow back to the parking lot was “so wide you could drive a truck down it”, I got a little worried. I pulled the plastic baggy out of my bra, pulled my cell phone out of said baggy, and found that I was getting a cell signal. I called him, asked what trail I was supposed to be on, told him that if I’d kept going straight, as instructed, I would have ended up on the red trail. And then he went on about how if I’d gone on the red trail, that would have been okay, because it would have eventually gotten me back to the parking lot, but it would have meandered a bit. Anyway, long story short, I was on the right trail, and not 5 minutes after I hung up after talking to Fred, the trail widened out again, and I started seeing a lot more people out hiking, which I was fairly certain meant that I was getting close to the parking lot.
And I was.
I ended up getting back to the parking lot about 35 minutes after we split off to our separate hikes (I’d been hoping to do it in 25 minutes, because Fred estimated it was going to take me between 30 and 45 minutes, and I wanted to show HIM I wasn’t THAT slow. Guess I really showed him, huh?). I got into the car, started it up, got a bottle of water out of the cooler, and settled down to read while I waited for him to show up. About 20 minutes later he did, and we headed for home.
Altogether, it took us about two and a half hours to do that hike, and for me, it was only about three miles! We did keep stopping though, because – have I mentioned? – I don’t really do much hill climbing, so I had to keep catching my breath.
Maybe this time next year I’ll be talking about how we did a 17 mile hike in three hours.
Probably not, but a girl can dream!
* * *
It was my intent to sleep in on Sunday, but the spud went off to work at 7, found out that she didn’t have to work until 1:00, and felt the need to call and tell Fred that she didn’t have to work until 1:00 instead of, you know, just coming home. Once the phone woke me up, I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I pulled a book off the bookcase and laid in bed for the next three hours, reading. Which I haven’t done in a LONG time, so it was a pretty nice start to the day.
The spud’s employer called at 9:30 to ask her to come in at 11:00 instead of 1:00, so she got a few extra hours.
Once I woke her up at 10:00 to get ready for work, I went into the laundry room to set up the new litter box system, scrub down the litter box, and fill it with clean litter. When I walked into the laundry room, I was extremely displeased to find that there was Tide all over the fucking place. See, I buy those big-ass containers of Tide, the ones with the spout on it, so I can put it up in the cupboard over the washing machine, and all you have to do is press down on the spout to fill the cup with Tide, put the Tide in the washing machine, and put the cup up next to the Tide container.
Only, the fact that there was a spout never hit the spud’s consciousness, so she’s apparently been pulling the container of Tide down from the cupboard, and dumping Tide into the cup from the other end of the container (the end where you loosen the cap – or take it off, which is what I do – to make the flow of Tide faster). And Saturday night when she was doing laundry, she’d managed to pour Tide all down her back, all over the laundry room floor, and all over the wall above the dryer.
Apparently she was under the impression that to clean laundry soap up all she had to do was to swipe at it with a cleaning rag or paper towel, and not worry about that pesky film it leaves behind. So I spent half an hour Sunday morning scrubbing Tide off the washer and dryer and off the floor. THEN I scrubbed out the litter box, put clean litter in it, and set up the new litter box system.
Then I spent the next hour vacuuming the entire house, repotting a couple of plants, cleaning the kitchen, and yelling at Tommy to get the hell out of the repotted plants.
He’s such a nosy little fucker.
After that, it was almost noon, and as I headed upstairs to take a shower, Fred got home from his hike. He took his shower, then I took mine (but not before stepping into the shower, which was very slippery, and banging the holy hell out of my leg on the side of the shower (I think it’s going to leave a badass bruise, and I’ll be sure to take pictures of it once it gets really colorful)). Then I sat in the recliner in the corner of the bedroom and spent two hours answering the email I’ve been studiously ignoring for about the last month.
But! Now my email is all answered, and it is my summer resolution to keep on top of my email. I don’t know that that’ll really happen, but it’s nice to think that it might.
And then I spent the rest of the afternoon reading, dozing off for a while, and paying bills.
Don’t I lead an exciting life?
* * *
The spud is leaving for California in less than a week. She’s been carefully putting money in savings to save for a down payment on a car, and I think she’s going to get really close to the amount we told her she has to have. Which means she and Fred might be shopping for a car when she gets home in July!
And which means I’ll be able to use my car whenever I want and not have to worry about whether the spud wanted to use it or not.
Hell, it feels like
I’m the one who’ll be getting a new car instead of her!
* * *
Suggy in motion.
I love his little old-man chin.
All of today’s uploaded pictures are
here.
* * *
Previously
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003: Wouldn’t it be funny if as soon as we put all the flyers out in the neighborhood, he came swishing home?
2002: “NO,” he said with great certainty. “That was YOU!”
2001: But look at that little face. How can you not see it and just grin like a fool?
2000: Which is better than it could have been – we were afraid his foot was slowly rotting off.]]>