Siamese twin Gerbera Daisy bloom!
9/14/07
Month: September 2007
9/13/07
* * * Good lord, is it just me, or is this month FLYING by? We’ve had weeks of the weather people promising that rain would be coming in about five days, only to arrive at said day, to hear the weather people laughing nervously and saying “Did we say it would be rainy TODAY? No, sorry. I meant in five days!” Rain has been perpetually five days in the future. It was like we were trudging through the desert toward a mirage. Finally, Tuesday not only did we get rain, we got pretty much an entire day of on-and-off rain. Already, everything looks greener and happier. AND they’re saying that we’re supposed to get more rain tomorrow! I’m not holding my breath, but it’d be nice.
Oh, the face cracks me UP.
Sleepy babies.
“Pet me, lady. PET ME!”
Speaking of cats, when I went to the pet store Tuesday to drop off Eddie Dean, Roland, and Jake, the shelter manager asked if I’d get a couple of pictures of one of the other cats while I was there. I did, and I think they came out really well.
Her name is Copper Girl, and she’s a sweetheart.
There are a ton of kitten pictures uploaded over at Flickr; see them here.
Tom and Boogs, hanging out atop the gate to the chicken yard.
9/12/07
sent this and made me cry first thing this morning. Bastard.
)
Fred has adopted and uses that description – “too act-y” – ALL the time now. We rented A Beautiful Mind last week, and he said “I don’t know. It’s not going to be too act-y, is it?” He’s expanded it to cover books. He opened a book on my bookcase, read a few lines, and said “Oh, that’s WAY too word-y.”
God knows that when we come up with good lines, we run them into the ground. To this day, we use “Helloooooo Mr. Gingrich!” on each other.
Fred saw a Saturday Night Live skit with Norm Macdonald as Bob Dole, and so when one of us (hi) is feeling bitchy and accuses the other of thinking mean thoughts, said accusation might be met with “Bob Dole didn’t say that!” as code for “I didn’t say it, but I cannot deny the truth of what you’ve said.”
I know all couples have their weird little in-jokes. Tell me about some of yours.
Habanero. We have a ton of these.
Flitting in line at the feeder.
Fire ants devouring a dead cricket. Yeah, gross. But cool, too.
Baby cucumber from our second planting.
Egg, minutes from the source.
Gerbera daisy, on the front porch.
Okra flower.
Spot, trying to sleep if the crazy lady with the camera would go away.
Stinkerbelle, wondering whether she should flee, or flop over on her side. I told Nance yesterday that Fred spends so much time talking about how gorgeous Stinkerbelle is, that I feel like he’s having a midlife crisis, only instead of dumping me for a younger, prettier model, he brought The Other Woman to live in my house. I suppose I’m lucky that if I had to, I could take her in a fight. I think. She might be one of those dirty fighters, though.
Yesterday I thought for sure that I’d lost Sugarbutt. I couldn’t find him anywhere in the house, and repeated calling didn’t bring him running (well, sauntering. He MOSEYS when you call for him, unless it’s snack time, then he’s The Flash), so I got all worried, because I’ve been leaving his collar off so it wouldn’t rub on his neck, and the other day he tried climbing the fence (other cats might try climbing the wood poles of the fence. Not our Sugarbutt – he was climbing the wire part of the fence and having a time of it, too), so we started putting his collar on him, but yesterday I’d left it off. Finally, despite the fact that it was raining, I looked in the back yard, and in the corner, there’s a spot that is sheltered by many tree branches. Sugarbutt was laying there, watching the rain. Brat.
9/11/07
9/10/07
here. My favorite would have to be either the “boiled” on a lobster plate, or the “bugstah” plate on a red Beetle. I don’t think I saw a single Beetle, old or new, that didn’t have a personalized plate.
Roland.
Eddie Dean. (Does he look strikingly like a wolf, or is it just me?)
Susannah (though given her propensity for biting, Detta might have been a better name).
Jake.
Billy Bumbler.
Callahan.
I know I recently had a discussion with SOMEONE about orange cats and how 90% of them tend to be male, but I can’t remember who the conversation was with, or even whether it was in person or via email. In any case, imagine my surprise when I found that the buff (light orange) tabby was female.
Callahan is the neatest color I’ve ever seen on a cat. If you just glance at him, he looks gray, but a closer look shows that he’s almost got an orangey tint to him. This shows his color a little better:
The brown tabbies look so much alike that I didn’t think I’d ever get them straight, but in just a couple of days, I have. Jake’s the smallest, Eddie Dean’s the prettiest (I mean, they’re all pretty, but Eddie’s particularly so, especially in person), and Roland’s the largest of the three.
They’re friendly and playful and in good shape (Susannah and Billy Bumbler both have goopy eyes, but terramycin is taking care of that) and I wish they were staying around a little longer. I know they’re going to be adopted really quickly, though.
A metric tonload of kitten pictures can be seen here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stinkerbelle hasn’t been through the whole new-fosters thing, so her nose is a bit out of joint now that she can’t hang out in the foster room whenever she wants. The one who’s having the biggest issue with it, though, is Spanky, who wanders around the house howling forlornly as though there’s SOMETHING different, he just can’t put his paw on what it is.
9/9/07
Nance had her appendix out this morning! She had it done laparoscopically and she’s doing well (Rick left a message on my voicemail saying that “her body was rejecting her appendix and one of them had to go.” Hee!) and should be home tomorrow.
Y’all go leave comments for her on her site!!! (Or leave ’em here, I guess. Either way she’ll see them!)
Feel better, Nance!!!!
Who needs a stinkin’ appendix, anyway? NO ONE, that’s who. Your body was just cleaning house and was all “WHY am I hanging onto this thing? Time to get rid of it!”
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9/7/07
“Ah hets little sisters.”
Spanky likes to hang out on Fred’s bed. Where annoying little sisters are NOT.
I take exception, y’all, to those of you who “knew” we were going to keep Stinkerbelle (previously known as Maryanne). Y’all “knew” we were going to keep Rambo and Jodie, and you “knew” we were going to keep JoeBob and Myrtle, and you “knew” we were going to keep Sugarbutt… Okay, well. If you “know” we’re going to keep every cat that comes across the doorstep, obviously you’re going to be right SOMETIMES, I suppose.
The evening after he brought Stinkerbelle home, Fred said “We have TWENTY-ONE animals under our care!”, and then he had the utter nerve and gall to turn and look accusingly at ME. Like the only reason we have the chickens or the Stinkerbelle is because of ME.
The cool thing is that when I called the shelter manager to tell her that Fred was going to pick Stinkerbelle up and bring her home, she said “Well, I just got off the phone with this lady who’s interested in adopting her and Spanky!”, and I called Fred back to tell him that if he hadn’t picked up Stinkerbelle, he shouldn’t. But he had, and I could hear her howling in the background, and there was NO WAY ON EARTH he was going to take her back, so I called the shelter manager back and apologized, because what can you do about a man in love?
But the woman who wanted to adopt Stinkerbelle and Spanky ended up adopting Spanky and Gilligan instead! Yes, Spanky and Gilligan had been sitting in that cage at the pet store for three weeks or so, unadopted, and then in one fell swoop they got adopted, and we brought Stinkerbelle home.
Pretty good for kittens I was absolutely positive would be unadoptable due to their feral nature when I first saw them, ain’t it?
Poor Tommy is taking the brunt of the Stinkerbelle love, though. She follows him around and harasses him, and he’s patient with her, but I note that he’s spending a lot of time outside, and whether that’s to get away from her, I can’t say – but I suspect “yes.” The night before last, I was laying in bed reading, and Tommy was in the cat bed on the end of my bed, and she was laying in the cat bed on the trunk next to my bed, and she woke up and saw him, and jumped from the trunk to the bed and climbed into the cat bed with him, and he vigorously groomed her for at least ten minutes, then he decided “Okay, done with this. Bye!”, and jumped onto the trunk to settle down into the cat bed. She waited perhaps thirty seconds, then followed him.
So he jumped back onto the bed, and she followed him again, and he made a noise of annoyance, and ran off. She looked after him, considered it, and then flopped over in the cat bed and went to sleep.
Right now, she’s laying on the doormat next to the back door waiting for Tommy to come back inside. She hasn’t figured that whole “outdoors” thing out – I think the flap on the cat door, and Frick running around outside scare her – but when she does, we’ve got a collar for her, ready to go.
She’s a bratty little thing, but I’ll admit – I kinda like her.
A big-ass bowl of sweet potatoes!
I’m trying to convince him that next year, we should have a little plot of land devoted to growing sweet potatoes. I like sweet potatoes a lot, and they were so amazingly easy to grow that there’s no reason we shouldn’t grow more next year.
And speaking of the garden, BUG ALERT!!!
The garden is slowly starting to peter out. Fred pulled up the green beans over the weekend, mostly because we have more than enough green beans to get us through the winter. Lesson learned for next year: pole beans, not bush beans. Bending over picking them hurts his back.
The tomatoes are starting to peter out, too. The ones we’re getting are so small that it’s almost pointless to make sauce out of them – you just don’t get enough from each tomato to make the peeling and chopping worth the effort.
The okra are producing more slowly, though they are still producing, and probably will for at least a few more weeks.
At this point, the garden is a LOT less work than it was this time next month, and I ain’t complaining. The peppers – bell, jalapeño, and habanero – are coming in quickly, and I have more than I know what to do with. Fred wants me to make more salsa, which I’ll do this weekend, but we won’t be using ALL those peppers we’ve got, so we’ll have to figure out something to do with them.
Funny that we have so many peppers when he’s the only one who’ll eat them.
9/6/07
(Click on any picture to see the full-sized version; all pictures open in a new window)
Sunday
Sunday morning we met Debbie at the Kopper Kettle for breakfast. I had a garden omelet, and it was really good. I always forget just how much I like mushrooms and onions in an omelet. From there, Debbie and my mother and I went to Home Depot (I had to get a gift card for my father for his birthday, and so did Debbie), then over to Target where we spent about an hour browsing. In the meantime, my father went to Harpswell to pick up Mireya, and dropped her off at Target with us.
We went into Brunswick to the movie theater, and saw The Nanny Diaries. Debbie thought it dragged, but I kinda liked it – more than Invasion, less than Hairspray. I don’t usually care for Scarlett Johanssen, but I kind of liked her in the role. If I recall correctly, the book was better – but the books usually are, aren’t they?
After the movie, we went to the grocery store to buy a small plant, and then to the cemetery where part of my grandmother’s ashes are buried, to plant it (it was a mini chrysanthemum) in the ground and clean up around the family headstone. It was the first time I’d seen my grandmother’s marker since it was placed, and I’m glad I got to see it.
It would have been her 89th birthday.
We dropped Debbie off in Topsham and were on our way home when we saw an “Open House” sign and ended up going to check it out.
My good lord almighty, people. It was a “For sale by owner” house, and I will give you this little piece of advice: if you’re going to sell the damn house your own self, you do NOT FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST follow potential buyers around and talk their ear off about every little detail of the house. What you need to do is back off, give the time and space to look around, and chances are very good that if they have questions, they’ll find you and ask them.
We spent an hour walking around this house. It was in a good location, I suppose – 250 feet of water frontage on the Androscoggin River, and it was pretty and all, but they were asking $275,000, and the house? Not worth it at all, at least as far as I could tell. I might be spoiled by the housing prices in Alabama, but if I were to spend that kind of money on a house, I would expect it to (1) Be in far better shape than that, and (2) Have more than one – ONE – bathroom.
We finally extricated ourselves from the desperate grasp of sellers who’d already bought another house in the Harpswell area and are probably starting to get a little worried about the possibility of unloading the old house, and headed back to my parents’ house.
I had about ten minutes to cool my heels, and then Liz showed up to whisk me off for dinner and a movie. We had dinner at Governor’s in Lewiston (across and up a ways from The Big Apple, where I worked when I was 18, and the McDonald’s I worked at, on and off, for three years). I ended up having clams, and Liz ordered the same, although she asked for poutine as a side. I’d heard of poutine but never actually experienced it for myself. I mean, fries with gravy and cheese – does that sound appetizing? I think not.
Liz offered me some of her poutine, and in actuality, it wasn’t bad. Not something I’d want to have regularly, but kind of tasty.
I had a whoopie pie sundae for dessert, which was a mistake – I was mostly full from the clams, and couldn’t eat much of the sundae. It was good, though.
We made it to the theater only to find out that although I’d looked to see what time the movie (Superbad) started, I’d changed the time in my mind from 7:10 to 7:30. The lady selling tickets said that we’d probably only missed about the first five minutes, so we got tickets anyway.
I really liked the hell out of Superbad. Fred has no desire to see it – he thinks the trailer makes it look horrific – but when it comes out on DVD, I’ll be renting it to watch again, for sure.
We ran by Liz’s apartment to pick up Season 1 – 4 of Footballer’s Wives (which she’s lending me), and I helped her move some furniture down a flight of stairs (she’s moving – actually, by now she has moved, I guess) and getting rid of everything she can, so she has to actually move as little as possible.
Home, I talked to Fred for a while, and then went to bed.
Monday
Monday was my father’s birthday, so we met at our favorite Chinese buffet restaurant in Brunswick. I’d tell you the name of it, but I’ll be damned if I can remember. Tracy, Mireya, Debbie, Brian, my parents, and I met up there. We had a good meal, and the waitress must have heard us talking about it being my father’s birthday, because she brought over a piece of cake.
From the restaurant, everyone met up at my parents’ house to hang out and talk, and give my father his presents. Hopefully he liked those Home Depot gift cards – he seemed to, anyway – because he got plenty of them! He’d requested chocolate zucchini cake, so we had that and ice cream, and it was gooood.
Brian was making faces for the camera, so Mireya got in on it, too.
“Ah, zees lahf. So challenging. So painful. So deefoocoolt.”
“Ah can only deal with zee – how you say? – anguish by napping. A lot.”
Mid-afternoon, Debbie, Brian, Tracy, and Mireya left, and I hung out downstairs, packing and reading and checking my email and the like. Around 6, as I was discussing with Debbie the idea of just ripping down bitchypoo.com and starting up elsewhere (something, obviously, I decided against), Liz called to see what I was doing. She wanted to go for ice cream and I wanted to see her again before I left, so she came and picked me up.
I hadn’t realized we were going to Brunswick to Cold Stone Creamery, but we did, and though I ordered a size small of the Founder’s Favorite and that’s what they charged me for, the girl (who was new) made me a medium, and again I couldn’t even eat half of it. We ran over to Bookland, where I bought some more cards and post-it pads (you can never have too many cards or post-its!) and Liz bought… the New York Post? Maybe?
We’d been racking our brains ever since she picked me up, trying to remember Brad and Angelina’s daughter’s name (we could remember Maddox, Zahara, and Pax, but not the kid they had together), and Liz looked at an entertainment magazine (CHEATER) and reminded me that it was Shiloh. The funny thing is that when she walked up to me and said “Shiloh!”, I thought she was talking about the Shiloh Chapel in Durham.
Liz dropped me off at home, and I found that my father had managed to get the wireless router working.
That morning, when I got out of the shower, I found a spray bottle of Paul Mitchell Volumizing Spray Root Lifter under the cabinet, so I used some of it, and I liked the results. I need to get me some o’ that.
I was in bed by midnight, sound asleep.
Tuesday
Because my flight was due to leave Portland at 1:30, we left the house at 10:30. I was packed and ready to go by 8:30, so hung around outside taking pictures of the wild turkeys – an adult and a baby – who’d showed up to peck around underneath the bird feeder. When they left, I took other pictures.
Shade garden in my parents’ back yard. I’m thinking of putting something similar around the side stoop – hydrangeas, impatiens, and… those other plants that I cannot recall the name of. Ugh. What the FUCK are they called? (A Google search for shade plants reminds me that they’re called hostas. Duh.)
It takes less than an hour to get to the airport, but I’d rather be there early with time to burn, and so I was. They offered to come in and wait ’til I was through Security, but there was no point to that – I knew where I was going and what I was doing, and they didn’t need to park and come in.
I got my tickets, went through security, and was sitting by my gate in less than 20 minutes. As soon as I sat down, I remembered that I’d wanted to check the gift shop for a zip-up Maine hoodie. They had zip-up hoodies, and they had Maine sweatshirts, but no Maine zip-up hoodies, and that was the ONE thing I’d been looking for during my entire visit but just couldn’t find.
Ah well – always next year.
I surfed the web and emailed until my flight began boarding, then ran to the bathroom, checked my email one last time, received an email I perceived as threatening, shot off a reply (note to myself and everyone else: never respond to threats from a bully), and boarded the plane.
My flight landed early in Cincinnati, so I killed time looking through the gift shops, talked to the spud briefly (when I found out how much she’s going to have to pay for car insurance in Rhode Island, I clutched my chest and reeled around the store, because HOLY JESUS GOD IN HEAVEN!), bought a few things, and then it was time for my flight to board.
I landed in Huntsville, called everyone to let them know I’d gotten home, walked down to the baggage claim area just in time to see my suitcase coming toward me, grabbed it, and walked out the door, handed my bag over to Fred – who put it in the trunk – we stopped for dinner, and then we were home.
And my GOD is it nice to be home. You have NO idea.
9/5/07
this was not AT ALL my idea. And what Fred fails to mention is that he harassed the everloving shit out of me until I yelled “GODDAMN! Stop and get her on your way home from work, then!!!”, and he did, and I had to call the shelter manager and be all “Fred is a great big baby who miss his little puddy tat, so we’re adopting her, mmkay?”, and then I had to call Fred and say “And this does NOT mean that I’m going to stop fostering, because it was YOUR idea, get it? Also, maybe you should start cleaning out the litterbox sometimes, too!”, and he was all “Fostering, okay. Litterboxes, no.”, and I was all “Well, okay then. As long as you realize that we’re going to end up with That Gay Chick on our front doorstep, yelling that she wants that damn kitten.”, and he was all “I’ve got guns. Gay chicks don’t skeer me.”, and I was all “You can’t kill her. What would my readers think?!”, and he was all “I’ll just wound her, gotta go, loveyoubye.” (We’re leaning toward the name Stinkerbelle, by the way.)
Debbie took this picture of me to
show how the doorways in the barn
were very low. That, or perhaps
she was trying to show how I always
wear t-shirts that are too
damn big for me. Or maybe how
I always stand around with my mouth hanging
open. One or the other.
Although I’d never seen one in
person before, I’ve heard of Hummingbird
Clearwing Moths, and when I saw this
one flitting around, I knew almost
immediately what it was. Very neat.
Spider in the barn.
One of the people at the party
made mini whoopie pies. They
were GOOD. I love me a good
whoopie pie, have I mentioned?
Debbie’s work people were cool to hang out and listen to, and we stayed for a few hours before leaving and heading into Augusta. Brian had a gift certificate to a store in Augusta, so we went so that he could try on sneakers, and then we checked out a few more stores, and then headed for home.
Debbie had checked out the movie listings before we left for the party, and found that Hairspray was only playing at 9:30 at night, no shows during the day. I called my mother (who’d gone out to eat with my father and friends of theirs) and told her we were going to the movie if she wanted to meet us at the theater. She did, and we pulled into the parking lot just a few minutes after her.
I have to say, I really liked that movie. I’m not sure that Amanda Bynes was perfect for the role of Penny Pingleton, and I like John Travolta, but I found him a little creepy in the role. I really, really liked Nikki Blonsky as Tracy, and I hope the girl goes on to have a long and lucrative career.
Again, the Hairspray music is so happy that you can’t (well, I couldn’t, at least) help but love it.
Saturday
I had taken Debbie’s car home the night before, so Saturday morning I picked her up a little after 9, and we headed to South Portland for breakfast and to meet up with Lanna Lee. We weren’t positive where we were going (Lanna and I had first made plans for breakfast at the Muddy Rudder, then I found that they don’t do breakfast, then I suggested Country Buffet, and she countered with IHOP, which ended up being a very good choice.) Debbie and I arrived and got out of the car, then as we were standing looking around like lost lambs, Lanna pulled in and I recognized her immediately.
We had a good breakfast (I highly recommend the garden vegetable crepes – I think that’s what they were called), and a very enjoyable conversation, and then Lanna topped off a cool experience by making me a BALLOON CHICKEN AND A BALLOON CAT. My inner five year old (and, honestly, my outer 39 year-old) were so thrilled that I wanted to skip through the restaurant and sing “Iiiiiii have a balloon chicken and youuuuuu don’t!”, but I refrained.
We sat and talked for so long that the waitress started coming by and asking if we needed anything else, and after the second or third time we got the “get the hell out of here” hint, so we went out to the parking lot and talked for a while longer before heading our separate ways.
I always get so nervous about meeting a reader beforehand, mostly because I’m afraid I’m going to make a blithering idiot out of myself, and it always turns out to be really fun. I suppose one of these days I’ll end up meeting a crazy, but so far so good!
Debbie and I headed over to the mall to do a little shopping and wait for Liz to meet up with us. Liz was a little late, so after we checked out Lane Bryant and a place that sells hair products, we walked through the mall and over to Vinny T’s. We lurrrrve Vinny T’s, and the food was really good as usual, but the service was so substandard that I did something I just never ever do – I left a 10% tip. I know that sometimes the kitchen staff is slow and you can’t really blame the server for what’s going on, but this time it was all the server, from the fact that he didn’t bring out the olive oil (for the dipping of the bread) ’til he’d been asked twice, he let our drinks go dry for a long, long time, and he forgot to put in the “to go” order Debbie had asked for (which actually turned out well, because I gave her my leftovers to take home instead).
We said goodbye to Liz, and headed back to Topsham. We stopped at Harry & David in Freeport so that we could buy a cheesecake, stopped in Topsham to pick up Brian, and then headed out to my brother’s house in Harpswell. We got there right after five, and Tracy had put guacamole and chips on the table, and oh my LORD. I have never been a guacamole fan, but I think I’m going to have to change my tune on that one. That stuff was REALLY good.
We – Tracy, Mireya, Debbie, Brian, my parents and I – sat outside and talked while Tracy grilled the steak for the carne asada he always talks about in his diary, and the discussion of which always makes me drool, but I have never had. It was FABULOUS. I had carne asada, more guacamole and chips, and a piece of cheesecake, but I kept eyeballing that guacamole. I wanted to take a BATH in the stuff, I wanted to stick it in my purse and take it home, I wanted to marry it.
I guess there’s a difference between freshly made guacamole and the crap you buy in the stores, huh?
I don’t know what Tracy was
saying to me here, but apparently
it was something that confused me.
The look on my face is cracking me UP.
Tracy did all this cooking even though his ribs still hurt, so Debbie cleaned up the kitchen most of the way, then left a few things for me, and headed home. I cleaned off the meat slicer, did the last few dishes, and then headed home with my parents.
Oh yeah – I also got to hang out with my brother’s cats, which I’d been looking forward to. They are SO damn sweet, those cats.
Dulcinea’s got something to say.
“‘Sup?”
Remember Gizmo from when she was a baby?
She’s all growed up! I understand she’s not the
brains of the operation, but she sure is cute.
9/4/07
Click on the small picture to see the bigger version; all pictures open in a new window)
Tuesday
Debbie wanted to go to Rockland, and I hadn’t been there in probably, I don’t know. Twenty years? So we headed out fairly early and hit TJ Maxx. This TJ Maxx was actually a TJ Maxx and More, and we spent a lonnnnng time browsing through the store. I saw many things I liked and wanted, and picked up a ton of stuff, but in the end I only bought a set of cups. Not that we really need more cups, but they had roosters on them, and I’m only so strong, y’know.
(And then I got the cups home and found that they’re too big, and too thick – I prefer a certain thinness to my plastic cups – so that was $4 down the drain. Grrr!)
Debbie found a giant fork and was going to put it back, but I told her that if she didn’t buy the fork I’d be very sad, so she bowed to the pressure and bought it. A $5 giant fork! I carried it out to the car for her, and a little girl getting out of a car with her father pointed at me and said “She has a fork!”, so I held it up proudly and said “I have a fork!”
I can’t help it if giant forks make me happy.
I loved these cat towels, but didn’t buy them because they were $10 apiece, and I just don’t even think so. Even though they would have worked perfectly in the guest bathroom, $10 is too damn much. Even though they were cute as HELL.
We drove around the area for a bit before stopping at the Brown Bag for lunch. I had a crabmeat sandwich on wheat bread, and I tell you what – BEST crabmeat sandwich EVER. Highly, highly recommended if you ever find yourself in the Rockland area.
We dropped Debbie off at Debbie’s house, then Brian and I drove his new (to him) car from my parents’ house back to his and Debbie’s house. Brian bought a 1990 (or 91, I don’t remember) Dodge Spirit. It’s older than he is, but it works really well for the price. And Brian is a perfectly good, careful driver.
At Debbie’s, I sat and surfed the web on my laptop (I had no problems hooking up to Debbie’s wireless modem) until Liz arrived. After spending so much time in the car, you’d think the last thing I’d want to do is sit in the car some more, but I always enjoy a good road trip. We made our yearly sojourn to the Seabasket, home of the best seafood EVER. After dinner we went across the street to Big Al’s, a discount store with just about anything you could think of to want. It’s the place we found the chef’s hat last year (which Liz laughed about, and then bought and wore while we drove around and yelled “Shut it down”, a la Hell’s Kitchen).
I found a long-sleeved Maine t-shirt for $5.88, and a couple of scoops for 88 cents each (which I intend to use to scoop cat food out of the bins into the cats’ dishes). Liz bought her friend – a Raiders fan – a faux leather jacket for $15.88. (Don’t be a snob – it was a fucking STEAL.) After, we went to Bookland (I adore that store – they have the best post-it note pads EVER) and then to Cold Stone Creamery.
I know that I’ve raved about Cold Stone Creamery in the past, but I think I’m kind of over it. I got the Founder’s Favorite (pecans, brownie, caramel, fudge in a sweet cream ice cream) in the medium size dish (regular dish, no waffle cone dish), and couldn’t come close to eating half of it. It was good, but nothing special, y’know?
Liz dropped me off at Debbie’s house, and I hung around for a few minutes before taking Debbie’s car and heading to my parents’ house.
That night on the phone, Fred told me that the back part of the house – especially the kitchen and laundry room – were stinking like something had died. He’d been cleaning the litter boxes every other day, so it couldn’t be that. I offered that maybe it was something in the garbage, but he’d taken the garbage out and the smell remained. We talked about whether something had died under the house, and decided that if it went on much longer, Fred would poke around under the house.
Debbie’s cat, Tigger. He’s a sweet, laid-back monkey. I got a ton of pictures of him, but not a single picture of the more high-strung Punki. Hmph.
Wednesday
I had to wake up early and leave the house by 6:30, because Brian had an orthodontist’s appointment in… I don’t even remember the name of the town. Somewhere past Portland. Biddeford, maybe? Anyway, that’s why I took Debbie’s car home with me the night before, so she wouldn’t have to come get me and then drive all the way back to Topsham to hop on the interstate. She and Brian were ready to go, so we stopped and got gas, went to McDonald’s for breakfast, and headed to Biddeford (I think). Brian had to have his braces tightened – I’d add “poor thing” here, but apparently having his braces tightened is not a painful event for him; I, on the other hand, can still clearly recall when I had braces and had the damn things tightened the DAY before Thanksgiving, and I couldn’t eat at all the next day, it hurt so bad – which didn’t take long at all.
At some point during the morning, I talked to Fred.
“Is there a reason the lights on the front of the Litter Robot would all be off?”
“No – is it plugged in?”
It was plugged in, it wasn’t off the tracks, it was a mystery. Finally I told him to empty it out, put it in the garage, and set up a regular litter box in its place, and I’d look at it when I got home.
From Biddeford, we headed to Kittery, where we did some shopping. We didn’t do a lot – I just wanted to hit the Kittery Trading Post, the kitchen store (Kitchen Connection? Maybe?), and Big Dogs. I bought a few t-shirts at the Trading Post, some kitchen stuff at the kitchen store, and not a damn thing at Big Dogs.
This sand castle was outside the Kittery Trading Post. Since we were there, some asshole vandals toppled it.
Cool car, seen in Kittery.
We needed to be back in Topsham by 2 or so, because we were planning a few hours at Popham Beach, followed by a cookout. We wanted to have lunch at Bosun’s Landing, but found that it’s only open Thursday through Sunday.
“Let’s just drive up Route 1,” Debbie suggested. “We’ll come across another restaurant, surely.”
“Okay!” I said.
More than an hour later, after much driving and plenty of stopping at red lights, and going through Ogunquit (which will forever make me think of Frannie Goldman, since that’s her hometown) among other towns, we gave up on finding a real restaurant, and ate lunch at Dairy Queen.
(Not that I’m complaining – it was a good cheeseburger, to say the least.)
We drove from there to Topsham, picked up stuff at Debbie’s house, and then headed to Popham. We found my parents almost immediately, but couldn’t find Tracy (my brother) and Mireya (my niece) for anything, and we were standing and staring in all directions, and finally realized (as we saw them walk down the boardwalk) that we weren’t able to find them ’cause they hadn’t arrived yet!
We hung out on the beach for a couple of hours, watching the people and talking. Debbie and Mireya played in the sand, and then Tracy – who is a crazyman, out bodysurfing the waves, GODDAMN that is some cold-ass water! – got his ass handed to him. The water picked him up, slammed him onto the floor of the ocean, and cracked a rib or two. Yikes. He got out of the water and sat for a while, wincing, and though everyone suggested he take a trip to the hospital, he didn’t want to – since they can’t do anything for cracked ribs but tape them, anyway.
Unfailingly, there’s a family who leaves all their shit strewn around and go off to walk along the beach or play in the water, and the seagulls descend and make a huge mess. The seagulls have become increasingly aggressive, and you have to just about be right on top of them before they fly off. They ain’t a-skeered of YOU. They ended up eating every bit of edible stuff this family had left laying around, despite being run off many times. The question is, just how much time are other people supposed to spend saving your stuff from the goddamn seagulls? The answer seems to be, about half an hour. After that, it’s your loss.
The funny thing is that that girl in the background, in the water, looks a lot like the spud. She wasn’t there, but I guess she was there in spirit!
The grills at Popham are up away from the beach a bit, so my father and Brian went up and started a fire, and lugged all the food from the car to the grill area. The rest of us eventually joined them, and I have to say, I have never seen so many goddamn mosquitos at one time. We were spraying ourselves and each other (okay, I did no actual spraying, Debbie is the one who did most of it), and I don’t think I got any bites, but everyone else did.
Guess they’re sweeter than I am.
I rode home with my parents, and we were just about into Bath when the phone rang. Brian’s car – which we’d taken to Popham – had broken down on the interstate. My father stopped and looked at the car, then took my mother and I home, picked up the tools he needed (it was the alternator, so the battery needed to be charged… or something.) and went back to get it running.
That night while I was talking to Fred on the phone, he said “Oh – I figured out why the lights on the front of the Litter Robot had gone off.”
“Why’s that?”
“There’s an on/ off switch on the back, and it got turned to “off” somehow.”
“Oh. I thought you knew about that,” I said.
“I didn’t.” Long pause. “I found out where that awful smell was coming from, too.”
“Where’s?”
“The bottom of the Litter Robot, the drawer where the clumps get dumped into? That’s what smelled.”
“Oh, really? Even after you’ve been emptying it?” I said, concerned.
“I haven’t been emptying it.”
“You haven’t been emptying it when you clean the litter boxes?”
“Uh, no,” he said.
“Did you think magic elves would come and empty it at night while you were sleeping?”
“I thought it would fill up, and a light would come on to remind me that it needed to be emptied.”
“That might happen, but by that point you’d probably be dead from the fumes,” I said.
“TELL me about it.”
“I empty it every time I clean the regular litter box next to the Robot.”
“I get that now.”
Thursday
We hung out at the house for a good part of the day Thursday. I finally got around to writing out the postcards y’all had requested – 120 cards in three hours, woot! I hadn’t bought enough postcards and had to run to the grocery store to buy some more. I don’t know – I feel like I’m sending out the same several different cards every year. I think next year I need to do something different – maybe take a picture, print it out, and use that as a postcard?
In the afternoon, my parents and I ran over to my… I guess she’s a cousin? She’s my mother’s first cousin, so that makes her my second cousin, right? Anyway, I always referred to her as my aunt when I was a kid. Her daughter – my third cousin? – is a year younger than I am, and we spent a lot of time together when we were kids, but I haven’t seen any of them since the spud was a few years old, so maybe sixteen years? They haven’t changed at all, Nikki and her husband Burt, and it was nice to see them. They live next door to her mother, my grandmother’s sister, and Nikki called and told her to come over. Aunt Muriel (my grandmother’s sister) looks exactly the same as she did last time I saw her, I swear.
We had a nice visit, caught up on what all the kids are doing, and didn’t stay long. They’re on a big piece of land, and I LOVE what they’ve done to it, they’ve got a knack for landscaping.
Gussied up for the show. This is about as gussied as I get – note the makeup. Eyeliner, mascara, and blush – oh, my!
That evening, my mother, Debbie, and I went to see Hairspray at the Maine State Music Theater on the campus of Bowdoin College in Brunswick. We had seats that were in the balcony, and they were good seats. The show was just about to start when a man, a woman, and their two daughters came in and sat down. The youngest daughter – maybe 10 or 12 – sat in front of me, and all was well.
Except that it wasn’t. It wasn’t at ALL. Because apparently the person in the seat in front of her was too tall, so she switched seats with her father, and he was a tall motherfucker with a big, high combover, and he was sitting in front of me. As the show began and then progressed, it became clear that Combover Dad had a serious case of Ants in his Pants. I’d say that the man did not sit still for longer than 90 seconds at a time, and that would probably be stretching it. As I said to Debbie as the show went to intermission, “I feel like I’m watching two shows – one to the left of the combover and one to the right.”
Combover Dad stood up during intermission and had a boisterous conversation with a man sitting in our row about their teenage daughters and how he’d bought his daughter a Cooper. (The other man bought his daughter a used Mercedes, I believe, and everyone was so impressed that we rolled our eyes in tandem.) Debbie asked if I wanted to switch seats, and I thought about it for a second before asking to make sure she didn’t mind (she didn’t – she’s a sweetheart, and also taller than I am), and we switched seats.
You know what happened next, don’t you? As the lights went down and the show began again, Combover Dad and his daughter switched seats. So that Combover Dad was in front of me. Debbie and I shook our heads at each other and then switched seats again.
The rest of the show was uneventful until about fifteen minutes from the end. And then Combover Daughter developed a sudden case of cooties, and she began scratching at the side of her head. And the top of her head. And the other side of her head. And then she held both her arms in the air, her hands on her head, and scratched. And dug. And played with her hair. And she was in pretty much this position, and so suddenly I was unable to see the goddamn show without leaning over into my mother’s space. The child did this, the digging and the pulling and the scratching, for so long that I was amazed, and I could do nothing but laugh. Because, seriously? I have to put up with Combover Dad and his pant-ants for the first half, and then Combover Daughter gets cootified to ruin the show for me some more? What are the chances?
(And, yes. I did consider leaning forward and whispering “Excuse me. When you sit like an orangutan, with your arms in the air like you just don’t care, I cannot see the stage. Want to knock it off, Princess?”, but (a) I didn’t want to get cooties on me and (b) parents these days sometimes take exception to other people suggesting that their dear, sweet Princess might be doing anything other than acting like sheer perfection, and I didn’t want Combover Dad to come after me with his combover. Because that shit was scary.)
Finally, Combover Daughter dropped her arms, and I thought she was done with the cooties, but I was so very wrong. Instead, she pulled the ponytail band out of her hair, and she flipped forward, making her hair fall down toward the floor, and then she sat up and FLIPPED her hair back so that it would fly back in a fluffy manner. And she did this three more times, and I was laughing so hard in disbelief that I thought I might be asked to vacate the premises.
She settled down in time for me to enjoy the final song, and then the show was over.
The show – what I saw of it – was really good. I had never seen Hairspray, didn’t know anything about it at all, had never heard the songs, and I liked it a LOT. The songs were so happy, and just the whole tone of the show is so happy and peppy that it had me seriously wanting to see the movie.
Next time I go to a musical, though, I hope Combover Dad and Cootie Girl are nowhere around.
We dropped Debbie off and headed home, and I brushed my teeth and popped out my contacts and settled in at my Dad’s computer to write a funny entry about the show (it was going to be called “Conversations with God Regarding Annoying People”), but first I checked to see what people had been using the site search engine to look for, and what I saw there, well, as I mentioned the other day, it was the reason I shut the site down.
And I lost the will to write the funny entry – and it was going to be FUH-NEE, believe you me – and now it’s lost and I can’t drag it up from the bottom of my brainpan. It’s gone! It’s fleein’ the interview.
Ah well – there’ll be others. Someday. ::sob::
Debbie ended up taking Brian to the emergency room because he was throwing up and there was blood, so they got to spend a couple of early morning hours there only to find out that the blood was coming from Brian’s throat, he didn’t have strep or mono, and it would eventually go away on his own. Poor kid – and poor Deb!
