Go here to download it!
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I just spent six hours – SIX HOURS, PEOPLE! – taking down and washing every fucking light cover in the Madison house, and then getting on my hands and knees and scrubbing all the hardwood floors in the house and THEN getting on my hands and knees and scrubbing every inch of the kitchen and dining room with those damn Magic Sponges.
I ain’t cleaning the fucking floors in this house ever again, goddamnit.
Anyway, that’s why the entry is going up so late. Sorry ’bout that.
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Sunday afternoon I am amazed that the goddamn lights we took down at the Smallville house – the ones we hate and at least five of you have offered to buy from us, which is why they’re sitting in the garage at the Madison house waiting to be boxed up and put on eBay – didn’t explode from the amount of hate I was shooting at them. Sunday was a weird day, starting with the cats letting me sleep in, and not in a “Let’s let Mom sleep in while we barf from one end of the house to the other and then kill each other!” way, in a “sincerely quiet so Mom could sleep” way. Very odd, and so I woke up a bit on edge. I puttered around the house, doing my morning chores – opening all the blinds, scooping out the litter box, giving the cats fresh water, checking on the chicks and giving them food and water – then took a shower and did some more stuff around the house before heading to Madison around noon.
Once in Madison, I’d almost finished cleaning the windows in the downstairs (did I mention that I spent all day Friday cleaning? It took me the entire day to get the upstairs cleaned and straightened around, but when I was done, it looked AWESOME) when Fred, who’d been eyeing a dog who appeared to be wandering around the neighborhood, decided the dog was lost, so we gave him water, and I went to pick up dog food (because god forbid any animal ever feel the slightest twinge of hunger when we’re around). The dog – who appeared to be some kind of Greyhound, and after Googling around, I determined that he was probably an Italian Greyhound, and a pretty old one, at that – ate some food and drank some water, and started following me around.
He was a cute little dog, and I entertained fantasies of being unable to find his owner and bringing him out to Smallville, where he’d follow me around some more and maybe chase a squirrel or something. Whatever dogs do.
But because I had to at least make an attempt to find his owner, I made up a flyer with his picture on it and started driving around the neighborhood hanging them on Yield and Stop signs. I’d gotten six or seven of them hung up when Fred called to let me know that he (and his father, who had come over to help do some handyman stuff) had seen someone driving slowly through the cul-de-sac and they waved him down to ask if he was looking for a dog, and he was.
Hmph. I’d already named him “Sammy” in my head.
Dogs don’t like the flash, for some reason.
He had a bit of an underbite. Too cute.
(Yeah, shaddup. I don’t want a damn dog, but it’s a different story when they show up on your doorstep. And he was cute, though Fred discovered that he was 16 years old and I do believe that’s damn old for a dawg. No doubt if we’d ended up keeping him, it would have only been to shepherd him through his dyin’ years.)
So after that, I separated out the lights from the Smallville house, measured the biggest ones, and headed over to Staples to find boxes to put them in. My intention was to clean them up a little (a VERY little), take pictures, box them up, and let Fred list them individually on eBay. Except that Staples didn’t have any boxes that were big enough, so I went to Lowe’s and found that they didn’t have any big-enough boxes either, and I was filled with a black hatred for the goddamn lights and my goddamn husband and every goddamn thing that ever was.
I said to myself “Fuck it” and I said to myself “Fuck them” and I said to myself “Fuck him”, and I decided that I was goddamn good and done with the goddamned lights, and I was thisclose to loading the goddamn lights up in my car and taking them to Goodwill or possibly even the goddamn dump, and the only thing that stopped me was that deep down I knew I needed to take a deep breath and calm the fuck down and probably I’d end up with my ass divorced if I dumped the goddamn lights off at the goddamn dump and I flat-out don’t have the time or patience for a long, drawn-out custody battle for Tommy and Sugarbutt (who love me best, clearly).
Thus I said to myself “I am going to play me some Snood and surf me some web, and I’ll think about the fucking lights tomorrow.”
I sure am coming to hate that goddamn Madison house, is all I have left to say about that.
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Friday night, after spending all day cleaning That Goddamn House and the evening watching TV with Fred, I got home to Smallville and I did my evening chores (which very much resemble my morning chores, only I close the blinds instead of opening them, and I do Snackin’ Time for the inside and outside kitties) and I settled on the couch and I listened to
Delilah (DON’T JUDGE ME) and played 185 games of Snood, and then around 11:00 I got really, really lonely. I am not the sort of person who gets lonely, I hasten to tell you, I’ve never been a lonely kind of gal my entire life.
I like being by myself and I am well able to entertain myself and the last time I remember being desperately lonely was on New Year’s Eve 1994, when the spud and I lived in Lisbon Falls with Debbie and Brian, and Debbie went out for the evening, and the kids were sound asleep long before midnight, and I watched
Sleepless in Seattle, which ended right around midnight, and I was walking through the house turning off lights in preparation for bedtime, and I thought to myself, “I’m never going to be in love like that*”, was overwhelmed with a wave of melancholy, and collapsed against the hallway wall and sobbed until my face was swollen and red.
I think strong waves of lonely melancholy arriving every twelve years or so is a pretty good track record, really.
So I got really, really lonely and sad because I was in my dream house alone with six annoying cats and I wanted to NOT be alone, even if it was just having someone sleeping upstairs or hanging out in her room texting her boyfriend like mad. The only reason I didn’t get up, get into my car, and drive to Madison is because (1) I don’t have a key to the Madison house, I handed it over to the realtor and to get into the house I would have had to go through the garage, and I didn’t want the garage door opening to wake Fred up and (2) They were coming to deliver wood early Saturday morning and I needed to be there to pay them.
I got over my sad wave of Woe-Is-Me in about an hour and a half, and then I slept like a baby.
That Goddamn House cannot sell fast enough for me.
*To which current-day Robyn says “In love like
what? Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks’ characters didn’t even know each other, it was no great love story”, and then-Robyn replies “Shut up. In love like the love story that was getting ready to happen, you hateful bitch.”
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Why does your realtor need your utility bills?
Because when prospective buyers are considering a house, they like to see what the utility bills run through the different seasons of the year. That, or my realtor is just a nosy bastard.
Will you talk more about the chicks? I think they are cute. I want to know what they are like. I want some, but am not sure about keeping them outside in Michigan. Plus silly husband says 8 animals is enough. 🙂
So far, they’re funny as hell, especially when they go running across the pool at top speed, flapping their wings, or when they start scratching at the pine shavings on the floor of the pool, looking for food. That’s all I can tell you so far, though – they’re fun to watch, very entertaining, and so cute I’m afraid I might squoosh them to death if I pick them up. They’re skittish and don’t much like being picked up, and I look forward to seeing them grow.
Also, what do you think about all the goings-on on Grey’s Anatomy lately?
GREY’S ANATOMY SPOILER ALERT.
I’m disappointed that the writers made it happen. I don’t think George and Izzy should have ended up sleeping together, but I suspected, as soon as STUPID GEORGE basically said “Izzy? She’s way too hot. She’d never want me!” to HIS FUCKING WIFE, that that’s what was going to happen. It makes a little sense, Izzy’s hostility toward Callie, and Izzy is all OVER my fucking nerves. I don’t like her anymore, I’ve had it with her bitchy attitude toward Callie and her stupid “I get to say whatever I want and you have to love me anyway. I’m Izzy! I get to be like that!”
I don’t think Izzy is hot at all – I guess I can see why people might think she’s pretty, but she’s boringly, blandly pretty in a bland, completely uninteresting way, and if white bread boring turns you on, go for it.
This is how I suspect the rest of the season will go: longing looks between George and Izzy, culminating in Callie catching them making out in a fucking closet. Snoresville.
Also, I think Meredith does not pull off dark or disturbed in any kind of interesting way.
And yet I cannot take my stupid eyes off this show. I fucking love it. I hated Alex the first season, but he’s gotten interesting (another one everyone thinks is so hot, but I totally don’t see it) and I’m kind of liking him. Christina and Bailey remain my favorites, and I’ll be interested to see the new spinoff with Addison Montgomery and whether they’ll be able to pull it off.
My question: Do the chickens smell up the house?
Strangely enough, not at all. That was my major concern, that the house would stink like chicken poop, but even when I’m in the room with them, I don’t smell anything. Y’all might be saying “You’re just used to the smell!”, but nay. I’m very sensitive to the smells of my house, and if the chickens were stinking, I’d know it. I imagine as they get bigger they might start to stink, but they’ll be out of the house by then, so I’m not going to sweat it.
Have you seen this site? It’s pretty out there cat furniture. Think you’d ever get some for your kitties?
I think the day I spend hundreds of dollars on cat furniture (no matter how cool – and that stuff is really cool, I’ll admit) is the day I deservedly get my ass divorced.
Sorry that I don’t know a thing about chickens – how long does it take before they’re big enough to go outside and live on their own?
I didn’t know the answer to that, so I asked Fred and he unhelpfully said “When they’re done feathering out.” Turns out, when they’re five or six weeks old, but we’ll be moving them (pool and all) to the garage in the next little while.
Have you named all the chooks yet?
I’ve only named two of them so far – the suspected rooster, which I’ve named Fricasee, and the americauna that looks very much like him, whom I’ve named Flappy McGee. I probably won’t be naming the rest because the gold ones all look too much alike, and the black ones look too much like each other, as well.
oh….is poor Spot settling in? I worry about him the most..your ‘sensitive’ guy.
Spot is settling in surprisingly fine. He’s gotten into the routine of following me around the kitchen, squeaking for food – just like he did in Madison – and he knows that every night when I walk through the door it’s Snackin’ Time, and he squawks for food accordingly. He’s staked out his favorite daytime spot – the recliner in the computer room – and at night he sleeps in a cat bed at the foot of my bed. He’s doing just fine – the older he gets, the faster he acclimates to new situations.
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Brudderly bookends.
Sleepin’ Sugs.
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Previously
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: Another reason I love the man: he makes me laugh every day.
2003: I’ll tell you what, he’s lucky I didn’t go get the cleaver and chop that fucking finger right the fuck off.
2002: My mind is blank…
2001: It’s just the little things that get to me, y’know?
2000: Married people! Having sex in the middle of the day! What IS this world coming to?]]>