Check out Donna’s kitties, grooming each other. Sugarbutt and Tom Cullen still love to groom each other like that, though they get too worked up and start fighting about ten seconds in to the lurve session.
* * *
Yes, it was River Phoenix my sister was thinking of at Christmas time. I don’t know why we all have this mental link between River Phoenix and Christian Slater – possibly because they kind of resemble each other. I think they were about the same age, so there’s that, and maybe they ran around with the same crowd. Who knows? I’m just glad I’m not the only one who knew immediately who she was talking about. (Faith, you cracked me up with your Jack Nicholson guess!)
Can you believe it’s been 14 years since River Phoenix died?
* * *
Saturday we went to the house early – I’ve been getting up around 6 because Mister Boogers invariably starts acting an ass right on the dot of 6 am for some reason (I call him my “Boogie alarm”) – stopping on the way for breakfast at our favorite little country restaurant. The place where two people can eat a very filling breakfast for about $10.
We won’t be going back there anytime soon, I think. Not only was there a roachlike insect on the table when we sat down, there was another one crawling across the floor behind Fred. I managed to put it out of my mind and not think about it while I was eating breakfast, but I don’t know that I’m going to go out of my way to go back there (not that it’s out of the way – it’s only 2 minutes from the Smallville house and we drive by there to get to the house, but you get my point).
We worked in the house for about an hour – we moved a bunch of stuff from the house to the shed and the burn pile, then Fred went upstairs and did some caulking in the bathroom and on the stairs* while I started moving stuff out of the dining room so I could clean the walls and paint the trim (I did that in the computer room and half bath on Friday).
We left the house a while later and stopped by a carpet store to order a piece of carpet and padding for the spud’s bedroom. Her room is located directly above mine, and she stays up way later than I do, usually. Whatever we can do to muffle the sounds of her moving around in her room, we’re going to do. After the carpet store, we stopped by a lighting store. We were having issues with the bathroom light in the upstairs bathroom (the light over the mirror hangs down too far, so that it’s impossible to open the medicine cabinet, and that’s not acceptable as far as I’m concerned), so talked to a woman at the lighting store, who pointed out that we could turn the light the other way to make it work. We hadn’t even thought of that, so thanked her and left.
From there, we went to several different furniture stores to look for a bed. The bed I’m currently sleeping in is just too damn high. I really really hate having to climb into my bed every night, and so we decided that Fred would take my bed, we’d get me a new bed, and we’d get rid of (probably Freecycle) his king-size bed. None of the stores we went into had anything I liked, though they all had beds that Fred liked. I like really simple, straight furniture with clean lines, and he likes the ugliest, most ornate furniture god ever put on this planet.
Since we were shopping for me, I got to veto the ugly, ornate stuff.
We didn’t find anything we like, so we went back to the house and did some more work. I don’t remember what Fred did – caulked and hung stuff and worked on a door from the spud’s closet to the attic, I think. I finally got the dining room walls wiped down, cleared off the mantel, and cleaned out the fireplace before I painted the trim around the bottom of the room. Once I was done with that, I painted the doors in the computer room (leading to outside), thought about staining the quarter-round we’re putting in the guest bedroom closet and the spud’s closet, couldn’t find the stain, and then we left.
We stopped on the way home at one last furniture store, and there I found a sleigh bed that I really like, so we ordered that in the queen-size version (there was another I liked that had drawers underneath it, but it was WAY too expensive) along with a mattess and boxspring. The only issue with the bed is that it might or might not be delivered before we move my stuff into the house, so I might be sleeping on the couch for a few nights. We’ll see how THAT goes.
It’s funny – Fred said “I feel like I accomplished a lot today!” and I said “I feel like I accomplished NOTHING!”
At Lowe’s, we were in the parking lot and Fred said “Oh look, it’s Guy.” Guy used to work for Fred’s company when I worked there (for those of you new to the Bitchypoo chronicles, I was the office manager for Fred’s company for several years, then quit to fulfill my lifelong dream of sitting on my ass. It’s worked out well for me.), and I haaaaaaaated him. I found him a pompous know-it-all pain in the ass and was thrilled to never have to deal with him again.
Anyway.
I said, “Guy?”
And Fred said “Yeah, who used to work for us?”
“Oh, HIM,” I said. I looked him over as he took his kid’s hand and headed for the store. “He’s lost a lot of hair, huh?”
“Yeah,” Fred said.
Then Guy turned so his back was to us, and I said “Wow. He’s lost a LOT of hair.”
“Yeah, it’s really fleein’ the interview,” Fred said.
Just as I started laughing, Guy turned around, saw Fred, and waved. Fred waved back. I just sat and looked like a snooty bitch BECAUSE I CAN.
*This led to many hilarious moments ie, “Your caulk is getting all over the stairs!”, “Your caulk is dribbling all over the stairs!” and “I like to fill up cracks with my caulk.”
* * *
We got out to Smallville around 8 on Sunday, and set immediately to work. After three hours of wiping down walls and baseboards, puttying, and painting trim, I stomped downstairs to the laundry room (where the only comfortable piece of furniture (a recliner) is located) and slurped down a bottle of water while fuming. Then I dragged Fred out to the front porch (it’s our “thing” when one or the other of us is tired of doing whatever we’re doing, or at a stopping point, to declare “Let’s take five!” and sit on the front porch in the rocking chairs and talk or just watch the traffic go by) and said “It’s 11:21 and I am officially BURNT OUT!”
He tried to point out that we were so close to being done and I said “I don’t care! I’m tired of it! I don’t want to putty or caulk or paint! I don’t want to scrub floors or walls or baseboards! I don’t want to carry shit out of the house and empty the garbage can twice a day! I don’t want to paint! I want to just sit around and do nothing AND I AM NEVER GOING TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT AGAIN!”
“It’s almost over,” he pointed out.
“IT WILL NEVER BE OVER!” I bellowed. Then I threw a little more of a hissy fit, and I felt better.
I finished painting the trim in the spud’s bedroom, puttied the holes in the upstairs bathroom, then we hung the door in the downstairs bathroom and Fred hung blinds in the spud’s bedroom while I transplanted sugar snap peas from the little bitty containers the seeds were planted in, to slightly bigger peat pots (everything we’ve planted is growing, but the sugar snap peas are growing like mad), vacuumed, Swiffered, and mopped the floor in the spud’s bedroom, and then got on my hands and knees with cleaning rags and sprayed and wiped down every inch of the spud’s bedroom floor.
Rooms that are now completely done (except for curtains): The half bath (except for the cap things that need to be put on the screws holding the toilet down), the computer room (though I really need to put another coat of paint on the doors), and the spud’s bedroom.
Still to be done: The rest of the fucking house. See what I mean about it never being done? UGH.
* * *
Saturday night, while Fred lolled about in the bathtub reading and singing to the cats** I started packing up the master bedroom. I didn’t get too terribly far – just the bookcase and the stuff in the closet – but may I say that I just have too damn many books? The bookcase in the bedroom holds all the “I haven’t read these yet” books, and I filled up five boxes with books.
Today, in and amongst all the cooking I’ll be doing to get us through the rest of the week, I intend to get Fred’s bedroom packed up (we store a lot of stuff in there), along with the rest of the master bedroom, whatever’s in the guest bedroom that needs to go, and probably I’ll toss all the stuff in the foster cat room into a box while I’m at it. Oh yeah, and the hall closet.
UGH.
**Last weekend I wasn’t feeling well and went upstairs to lay on the bed and take a nap. Fred was in the bathtub and didn’t know I was in the bedroom. He sang to the cats, and sang to the cats, and sang some more. I fell asleep and woke fifteen minutes later, and he was still singing. That musical episode of Scrubs? That’s his fantasy world. He would ADORE living in a world where people sang to each other all the time.
* * *
Sugarbutt does his Popeye impression. He cracks me up when he sits around with one eye open.
“Hey! You! GUYYYYYYYYYS!”
Such a sweet boy.
* * *
Previously
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: You suppose they’d mind if I went over after dark and pressed my face up against the window to see what’s going on?
2003: Maybe I should go for the dreadlocks look…
2002: Any resemblance to persons living or dead are completely coincidental. I don’t fart.
2001: every Mulvaney shat gold upon command three times a day.
2000: Here at casa bitchypoo, we believe in extremely lazy Sundays.]]>