4/28/06

Smart and Sassy is no more. Now I won’t have to wake up Sunday mornings and think “Oh, shit! I have to answer Smart and Sassy questions before I do anything else!”

* * * Thanks, you guys, for your honeymoon suggestions. At this point we’re leaning toward Hawaii, but I’m sure we’ll spend the next two years dithering about it before we make a decision! We did consider Australia and New Zealand (especially since that’s where the Amazing Race-ers were the other night, and Fred said “We’d just go there to listen to them talk!” and I said “Yeah, we’d say ‘No, we don’t need anything… but could you just keep talking to us?'”), and I actually suggested saving up to go there for our 15th or 20th anniversary, which we might do. I definitely want to visit Australia AND New Zealand someday, along with Scotland and Greece and just about every single country in existence, really. (Well, except Iraq and Iran and that area of the world. At least for the time being.) So many choices, so little time… * * * So last week, I think it was, I put a picture of Mister Boogers up on Flickr, and as I usually do, I put a note on the picture that explained that the collar he was wearing was an electric fence collar. A few days after I posted the picture, I got a comment on the picture from a complete stranger, saying: i think this is cruel to animals! I toyed with the idea of responding with Well, luckily you don’t get a vote in my life, dumbfuck, but instead opted to say: Crueler than letting them wander the neighborhood at will to be mauled by a dog or run over by a car? I heard nothing else for a week, and figured I wouldn’t. But then I logged into Flickr this morning and found another comment responding to mine: what kind of neighborhood do you live in? My cats won’t get anything like this! Of course the only possible response was: A neighborhood where there are dogs hanging out in their back yards and don’t take kindly to cats dropping in, and a neighborhood where cars tend to drive down the streets. You don’t live in a neighborhood with dogs and cars? I didn’t actually CALL him a dumbass, but I hope he got that it was implied. * * * My GOD was yesterday a busy day for me. I started it by dropping the spud off at school on my way to the pet store (I was covering for the usual Thursday morning person). I spent an hour at the pet store, cleaning cages, scooping litter boxes, and loving on kitties, and by the time I left there I was dripping with sweat. (62.5 pounds lost since my surgery almost 3 months ago, and I’m still dripping with sweat when I leave the pet store. I wonder if it’s something that will always make me sweat?) I left there and drove home. As soon as I got home I went upstairs to empty out the litter box (something I’d put off for longer than I should have, AS USUAL), and I kid you not – the INSTANT I got the lid put back on top of the litter box, Tommy ran in and shat it up. Little bastard. I dragged the dirty litter down to the garage (the dirty litter in a garbage bag, I mean. I wasn’t carrying handfuls of it down the stairs or anything) and the dirty litter boxes out into the back yard, where I filled them with soapy water and let them sit. I got my sneakers on and went for my 3.9-mile walk (which takes me almost an hour and 15 minutes – I have short ‘n stubby legs), and at one point while I was listening to a Keith and the Girl podcast, I laughed out loud, and I don’t even want to know what the people in the cars passing me by thought of me. My god, those people crack me up – and now that Chemda’s touring in Europe and they’re not doing the podcasts as often, I can go back and upload some of the old ones I haven’t listened to yet. When I got back from my walk, I went out back and scrubbed down the dirty litter boxes (golly, I wonder why our back yard isn’t as green as it could be?) and rinsed them out, then scrubbed down the bird bath and refilled it, and THEN scrubbed out the water dish we have sitting on the back patio and refilled it, because GOD FORBID our cats should have to come INSIDE the house if they get thirsty. Then I came back inside and went upstairs to take a shower and do some laundry. Outside the laundry room I was greeted by a ball of poo (not Poo, though. Actual POOP.) sitting there on the carpet with a piece of grass sticking out the top. Apparently one of the cats had used the litter box and jumped out to find that he (or she) had a hanger-on, and remedied the situation by dragging his (or her) ass along the carpet. I love my cats, but sometimes I really HATE MY FUCKING CATS too. I cleaned that mess up and commenced with the showering and laundry-ing. I was standing in front of the TV watching QVC (shut UP, we apparently lost power for a short time while I was on my walk, and when I turned the TV on, it was already tuned to QVC.) when my sister called. I talked to her for about half an hour, then got dressed and ran downstairs, grabbed the deposit I needed to make and the shopping list I made, and was out the door. My first stop was the credit union, where I was told that the insurance check (from the insurance company, paying for the repairs on E’gar) couldn’t be deposited because it was made out to “Fred And3rson”, but I’d endorsed it “Fredrick L. And3rson”, and insurance companies are apparently sticklers for exact endorsements. I thought about taking the check (when she sent it back out to me), signing it the correct way, and sending it back in, but I try not to be quite THAT obvious about my constant forgery of Fred’s signature, so I decided to stop on the way home and deposit it. Then I headed off to Sam’s, where I bought only a few things – Snuggle liquid fabric softener in the “Oh my GOD, NOTHING needs to be THAT soft!” size and garbage bags – that weren’t on my three-item (bottled water, paper towels, shrimp) list. I actually left Sam’s without spending $100 – I think that’s the first time EVER. Let me digress for a moment to say that I was THISCLOSE to going on a shooting spree during my trip through the Sam’s parking lot. What the FUCK is up with people who just MOSEY the fuck along in the parking lot when a car is trying to get past them? JESUS CHRIST, PEOPLE, GET OUT OF THE FUCKING MIDDLE OF THE LANE! MOVE OVER TO THE SIDE, YOU ANNOYING-ASS MOTHERFUCKERS! And THEN I get inside and need to go into the frozen foods section to get my shrimp, and every person over the age of 78 was crowded into the frozen foods section, crowded around the women who were giving out samples of whatever they were giving out, and just fucking STANDING IN MY WAY. I don’t give a shit if the old people visit Sam’s every day for lunch, but MUST THEY stand right the fuck in the way? ARGH. So I left Sam’s and went to Target, where I bought some shorts, a bunch of socks, and underwear in a size smaller than the too-big underwear I’ve been wearing for the last month. I don’t know if y’all have this issue, but when MY underwear is too big, it tries to solve the issue by crawling up my ass, and I spend all my time in public trying to find a hiding place where I can wedgie-pick without horrifying the people around me. I went through the shoe section, trying on shoes, because suddenly my shoes are too big for me, and I was trying to determine what size I should be wearing. I actually got a pair of size-8 canvas slide-on shoes on my feet (I’ve been a 9 wide for years), but when I tried on non-canvassy shoes, it was clear that 8 was too small. I think I may have gone from a 9 wide to a regular 9, but I’ll require time in a shoe store to determine that for sure. I left Target and went over to the pet store, where I bought nail clippers for the cats (our other ones have mysteriously vanished), and a sifting tray to replace the one we already have and which has a big crack down the side of it and needs to be replaced. (It’s too bad you can’t just buy the sifting tray, because I don’t need the other parts to the litter box). By this time it was the middle of the afternoon, and as I swore under my breath at the woman standing in my way as I headed out of the pet store, I realized I hadn’t eaten a single damn thing all day. Luckily, I was right across the street from a smoothie store, and one for which I actually had a $1-off coupon. Someone at my WLS support meeting on Saturday recommended the smoothies at this place, so I decided to get a low-carb smoothie and give it a try. Naturally, I realized once I’d ordered the smoothie that I’d left the $1-off coupon at home OF COURSE. I paid for the smoothie and headed out the door. I took one sip and realized I didn’t like the smoothie at ALL (but then had to take a second sip to confirm that, of course), and ended up tossing it when I got home. THEN I realized that I’d forgotten to go to the bank, so I ate lunch (which put me in a much better mood, no surprise there) and then went back out to the bank. Where I sat in line for what seemed like forever (luckily I’d brought a book with me), and by the time I got home, it was only a few minutes before Fred was pulling into the driveway. God. Just thinking about yesterday makes me feel like I need a NAP. * * * By the way, E’gar is home and running just fine. I sure did miss him! * * * “Would anyone notice if I gnawed off her pointer finger so she couldn’t flash that fucking thing at me anymore?” * * * Previously 2005: KIND OF LIKE HERPES. 2004: The mind boggles, does it not? 2003: Sam’s! Whoo! 2002: No entry. 2001: No entry. 2000: Ah, the intrigues of 11 year old girls…]]>