1/31/07

fold-up tote bags and DROOLED. Note to Debbie: Still my favorite Christmas present!!!). And I cannot get the goddamn garage door to go down. Apparently the beams are off-kilter, and I can’t get them to go on-kilter no matter how much I try. And it’s PISSING ME OFF. And I’m fucking cold, even though the space heater is half an inch from me, blasting on high, probably cooking me. How do you prefer your Bitchypoo? Medium rare? Coming right up! Spring, where art thou?

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Yesterday was a busy-ass day for me. I left here a little before 8:30 to drive to the other side of Huntsville for an appointment with my nutritionist (it being my one-year Surgiversary and all), and to have a metabolic cart test done. I hate doing that metabolic cart, because you put a clip on your nose and have to breathe in and out through this tube in your mouth, and it makes me feel like I’m smothering to death. Metabolic cart test: my metabolism is high. I am skeptical of the metabolic cart test, personally, but it’s certainly interesting to see the little printed-out chart. My BMI according to the nutritionist is 26.3. Normal for a woman is 20 to 25. Thus I am still overweight. But I can handle it, since I’m no longer in the “Holy shit!” BMI category. My BMI the first time I went into the nutritionist’s office was 52.1. For the record. The nutritionist told me to keep doing what I was doing, and I left his office to go sit in the parking lot in my car and read for an hour until my appointment with the surgeon. Now, just a note here. My original appointment with the surgeon was scheduled for 11:15. Monday, when his office called to remind me that I had an appointment, the appointment-reminder-lady told me that they’d had a cancellation and 10:45 was available, and would I be interested? I was, so they rescheduled me for 10:45. What time did I actually see the surgeon? Why, at 11:45, of course. OF COURSE. Good thing they rescheduled me for 10:45, huh? I wasn’t pissed off, though, because I brought my book and bottle of water with me, so I sat and read and read some more, until he came in to see me. He told me that if I get my BMI to or under 25, I don’t have to wait until the two-year mark to have plastic surgery done. Woot! By the time I left his office, it was close to noon, and although I’d considered blowing off my next appointment, I decided that since I was on that side of Huntsville and I REALLY needed to have it done, I’d just suck it up and go have it done. I wasn’t sure where the office was, so I went to make sure I could find it. I found it, but then couldn’t find a damn place to turn around, and after a certain point, the road that the office was on doesn’t have any streets off to the side of it, so I ended up having to drive all the way over the damn mountain to the other side (note to those of you in the area: did you know that Cecil Ashburn Drive takes you from Bailey Cove Rd to Hampton Cove? I didn’t, until now.) to turn around. I made it back to the office just in time for my appointment, so parked and – a little nervous – walked in. “I have a 12:45 with Hilary?” I told the girl at the front desk, who very strongly resembled a much younger (and much shorter) Nicole Kidman. She directed me upstairs, and I told the woman at that desk my name and who my appointment was with. She beckoned for me to follow her, and led me into a waiting room. A fancy waiting room. A hoity-toity waiting room. “Hilary will be with you in a few minutes,” she said. Across the room, three women wearing fluffy robes and fluffy slippers lounged on a couch, sipping water from fancy glasses and flipping through glossy magazines. One of them, a well-preserved older woman, glanced up at me and then nudged the woman – a younger, well-groomed woman – sitting next to her. The second woman looked me over, then looked back at the first. Not our type, she mouthed. The first woman nodded in agreement. The wall next to me was a wall fountain – I guess that’s what they’re called, when the whole wall is water? A wall of water? I don’t know what they’re called but they are the exclusive province of hoity-toity places, I assure you. A few more moments passed as I looked around the waiting room from under lowered lashes and registered that relaxing fancypants music was playing through hidden speakers. Hilary stepped into the room, introduced herself, and led me away. I smiled tentatively at the three women as I walked by them, and they rewarded me with fake, icy smiles. As the door closed behind me, I heard one of them whisper to the other, Is she… pregnant? (Okay. I made that italicized section up. Except for the wall of water and the fact that there were three women in robes in that room. Who ignored me. But that’s okay, ’cause I ignored them, too. SO THERE.) Hilary led me into a small room, one playing the same fancypants Music o’ Relaxation that had been playing in the waiting room. She gestured toward a wide padded table covered with a sheet and told me to lay down face-up. It got a little Three-Stoogesesque (or possibly more “Who’s on First” Abbott and Costelloesque) as I tried to determine where my head was supposed to go, and finally she patted the table and said “Head on this end, face up.” I got up on the table and laid down, my face under a light. “So, you’ve had this done before?” she asked, looking at the sheet I’d filled out in the waiting room. “Yes, but it’s been quite a while,” I said. “And what brings you here now?” she asked, or something along those lines. “A bunch of crazy bitches who read my online journal keep ragging at me about my horrible eyebrows, and I saw one of your pamphlets around Christmas time, and since I was going to be on this side of town today, I thought I’d just come and have my eyebrows waxed,” I said. (Only I didn’t really say the “crazy bitches online” part. But I was thinking it! I actually just mumbled something about being 39 and deciding it was time to get this thing done regularly.) I have to say, getting your eyebrows (and upper lip) waxed at a hoity-toity fancypants place? Somehow, it hurts a lot less than it does at the cheap hair salon at the mall. Maybe it’s the relaxing music, or the warm table (there was some sort of heating blanket under there and it was HEAVENLY) or a woman who really knows what she’s doing. I prefer to think that it’s MAGIC, myself. It took, maybe, ten minutes to have my eyebrows completely done and my upper lip done as well, and I have to say – I don’t see a huge difference in the eyebrows, but I do like what I see. Before. After. Now, in a couple of months when I’ve gotten lazy about plucking the hairs that have grown back, y’all remind me to go have it done again, okay? So from there, I went straight home with the intention of settling on the couch and maybe taking a nap, but when I checked my email I found one from the shelter manager, letting me know that there was space at the pet store, and I could take Fantine there. I grabbed Fantine up, gave her some love, tossed her in a carrier, and took her to the pet store. I took my time getting her cage set up, letting her sniff around the cat room for a while, then I hugged and kissed her, told her to get adopted fastfastfast (I always tell the kitties that I take to the pet store to get adopt fastfastfast), and left. I always feel awful leaving cats at the pet store. I hope like hell she gets adopted before Monday! Then I came home, ate lunch, and had half an hour to sit on my dead ass and surf the web before I had to start dinner. We had jambalaya last night and between the chopping and the cooking, it takes about an hour to make. It took me almost exactly an hour to make, and we ate dinner at 4:30 (which, for the record, is far too fucking early for me, but Fred would eat dinner at 3:00 every day if allowed, I’m sure). Once we’d finished eating, Fred and I headed out to his car, to drive over to Smallville and check out the floors, which had been stained. Except that as I was walking by the spud’s car, I looked down and noticed that her right front tire was completely flat. After telling the spud not to go anywhere and that Fred would take care of it when we got back, we headed out to the house. I really, really like the stain color we chose. It looks good (and will look even better once the polyurethane is added, I’m sure), and the floor guy actually told Fred that he was going to start recommending that color to people, it looked so good. I don’t have a picture of the floors – though no doubt Fred will put up pictures of the floor in a future entry – but the stain we chose is called English Chestnut. We weren’t able to go in and see all the floors, just went into the laundry room and looked at the kitchen floor, then looked at the living room floor from the front porch. It definitely looks good – the first thing Fred wants to do when we can get back into the house is to put quarter-round down in the front room to see what the completed picture will look like. I suspect it’ll look damn fine, myself. Newt was there when we got there – we haven’t seen Maxi in a while, and I think Fred is getting worried – so we filled up the food bowl and gave him a can of wet food. He’s gotten particularly skittish lately, it seems, maybe because we haven’t been around all that much. Hopefully Maxi will show up this weekend while we’re working on the house. I hope so! We got home and Fred and the spud went out to change the tire on her car. Except that her car didn’t have a jack, and even after he took the jack from my car, Fred couldn’t figure out where to put it (there’s a specific place to put the jack, and he wasn’t able to find it, even looking around under the car with a flashlight), so he gave up and had me call AAA. “Tell them your husband is out of town!” he whispered, sure that they’d take his Man card away from him if they knew he was allowing a tow truck driver to change a tire on a car in his driveway. We needed to go to Lowe’s for potting soil, so I told the spud to get her AAA card and driver’s license, and keep an eye out for the tow truck driver. “Tell them your dad is out of town!” Fred instructed her. We went to Lowe’s and bought the potting soil – and a couple of blackberry bushes, woot! I also eyed the blueberry bushes and the strawberry plants, all of which we’re going to eventually have Smallville – and were home in about twenty minutes. Just as we pulled into the driveway, the tow truck came up the street. “Tell them I’m out of town!” Fred joked, but I just smiled and left him to deal with the driver, who took about two minutes to change the tire. (Time to revoke Fred’s Man Card, obviously.) Then we killed about half an hour online (I had to call my sister and let her know that CopperTop’s horse had given birth. SO SWEET!) before it was time to settle down and watch TV. Well, I settled down while Fred stood in the kitchen and planted in planters the two apple trees and two peach trees we’d bought online. It’s way too cold outside right now to put young trees in the ground so they’ll be in pots for another month and a half or so. (This morning it looked as though Fred opened a bag of potting soil and tossed it around the entire kitchen during the planting process.) I had to pause the TV and assist Fred in getting the pots of trees upstairs to his room, since it’s the only room in the house where we keep the door closed, plus it gets a lot of morning sun, which the trees will hopefully enjoy. The rest of the evening was spent watching TV, then after Fred went to bed I read until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and went to sleep. You’ll forgive me if I don’t do a damn thing today!
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She loved that banana/ catnip toy. I should have taken it to the pet store with her.
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Previously 2006: No entry. 2005: Hey, can you eat raw kale? 2004: No entry. 2003: My whole life is a vicious circle, really. 2002: No entry. 2001: I mean, what the fuck did I do? 2000: Yeah, I know, woe is me.]]>