9/8/13

Yeah, I know. It’s been almost 6 months since I wrote here, and the thing is that the longer I go without writing here, the less I want to write here (and when I was pretty much at a level of not wanting to write here to begin with, there wasn’t much lower to go.) … Continue reading “9/8/13”

Yeah, I know. It’s been almost 6 months since I wrote here, and the thing is that the longer I go without writing here, the less I want to write here (and when I was pretty much at a level of not wanting to write here to begin with, there wasn’t much lower to go.) I had decided to shut the site down, but I was hit with a wave of “But what if I want to wriiiiiiite theeeeeere” and sadness at the idea of shutting down when I’ve had this site for coming up on 14 years (good god, I really had to stop and do the math on that one.) So I’m giving myself ’til the end of the year to decide whether I want to keep the site going or not, or if it’s time to shut it down. Yeah, I know, you’ll miss it. But shit changes and you can always check in over at Love & Hisses and at Dinosaurs Can’t Eat Pizza and on Facebook (even though I don’t post much on Facebook, but I assume that if I suddenly kick off Fred will post something over there. YOU’D THINK SO, anyway.)

Right after I posted last time, a whole lot of shit went wrong, one thing right after the other, the refrigerator needed fixing and then the cars started acting up (both of them, OF COURSE) and I don’t even remember everything that happened, it just was a lot to deal with, most of it costing money, but in and among all that other shit, Spanky started going downhill, and we had to deal with  trying to make him healthy and then trying to decide when the right time was to take him to the vet for the last time. I always tell people that they’ll know, that you’ll see it in their face, but we waffled so many times for poor Spanky, and then the day he went into the small bathroom off the computer room and just stayed there and didn’t want to come out, we knew. And he was such a good, sweet boy, right to the end. I know he lived a good long life and everything, he was almost 17 years old, but it still sucked of course.  Because he was really and honestly one of the good ones, and we’d had him longer than we’d been married, and even still every now and then I see a toy that I think Spanky would like, or a treat, and I forget for a minute that he’s gone.

I’d like to think that between Elwood’s death in December (from FIP, if you missed it) and Spanky’s death in April, maybe we’ll not have to go through that again any time soon, all the remaining cats are pretty young still (except for Miz Poo, who is 14 and I’m pretty sure she’ll live forever). But Elwood was only 3 and we were not expecting that at all, so who the hell knows?

Of course, Maxi, Newt, Joe Bob, Sugarbutt, and Tommy are all around the same age, so christ almighty. That’s going to be a fun few years when they hit old age.

We recently switched vets because although I really like the vet in Tennessee that we’d been using, it’s a half hour drive and I KNOW half an hour isn’t that bad a drive, but it seems longer sometimes. So I decided we’d try a vet 10 minutes from home, located in a strip mall next to the grocery store. I thought we’d have to try several vets in the area before we found one we’d like, but we really hit gold with this guy. He’s easy to talk to, he knows his shit, and we both really really like him. We’ve been taking one cat a month for their checkup, and it’s worked out really well. Of course, the first cat I took to him was Elwood, so in the first few months of being our new vet, he not only got to diagnose Elwood with FIP, he got to euthanize Elwood AND Spanky. Fun times!

(I should add that we did have a vet even closer to home, and Fred really liked him, but he’s a much older gentleman, and I think he’s pretty much phasing out his practice. If I’m to be blunt, we were afraid that he’d up and die on us.)

The biggest thing going right now (aside from the refrigerator shitting the bed, requiring that we buy a new one last weekend AND THEN the goddamn washer shitting the bed THIS weekend, I’m expecting the dishwasher to go next, but at least we could go a while without a dishwasher, NOT THAT I WANT TO) is that Fred has switched jobs and is now working from home. He’s doing, basically, the same kind of work (he’s a software engineer), but he’s gotten back the 5+ hours a week he was driving back and forth to work, so he’s saving on wear and tear on his car and saving on gas. The down side is that we turned my second foster room into an office for him, so I can only foster one litter at a time. I was chafing at the idea of losing my second foster room, but it took about two days of him working downstairs in the computer room where my computer is for me to be 100% behind him having a separate office for work where he wouldn’t be all up in my shit. And it took one screaming kitten fight during a conference call for him to put the kibosh on the idea of having kittens in his office.

So he’s been working from home for 2 weeks now, and it’s been going well. Most of the time he’s upstairs and I hardly know he’s there until he comes downstairs to get coffee. He’s enjoying the work, and I’m enjoying the fact that he occasionally WANTS to leave the house. Not that we’ve gone anywhere exciting, YET, but he’s a little more relaxed about running up in town to do errands, whereas before he would bitch and moan about leaving the house.

Another good thing about him being home working is that I can leave the house for several hours and not worry about it burning down while I’m gone. I mean, not that I worried THAT much about it, but now I really don’t have to.

So. I don’t know. There’s just not all that much going on with me. New refrigerator: we thought we were getting the one white; we got the black one. I think I like the black better – it’s actually smaller, overall, but has more space inside than the old one did. New washer is coming tomorrow, and I need to do 10,000 loads of laundry. Of COURSE it broke during the first load of the day when my plan was to do a fuckton of laundry and then hang it on the line to dry. And it being a perfect clothes-drying day and all. OF. COURSE. MOTHERFUCKER.

In conclusion, nothing exciting going on with me. I’ll try to write more often. I’m probably going to change the design of the site so that it doesn’t guilt me every time I look at it.

Oh, here’s something: I use Filezilla to upload pictures for Love & Hisses. I host the pictures you see on my own site, then link to the same picture at Flickr, because it’s become pretty obvious that I can’t trust Flickr to not change up their shit every few year. Pictures I linked to in 2005 were showing up as great big blank squares and I had to go back through and fix them, and hi. Do I look like I need more shit added to my list of shit I don’t particularly want to do, but needs to be done?

(I need an intern, is what I’m thinking.)

So I use Filezilla, which is a free FTP program, to upload the pictures. And I start the pictures uploading, and then I wander off to do something else, and I check to be sure the pictures uploaded correctly, and shut down the program. I never really looked at anything in the block of useless text Filezilla likes to throw at me, until the other night. Which is when I saw this:

FilezillaCanKissIt

Really, Filezilla? “Try typing a little faster next time”? How about you try fucking yourself next time, how about that? What the fuck with the fucking ATTITUDE? Who shit in your Corn Flakes? What the fuck? I think Filezilla needs a smack on the ass and to be sent to bed without dinner. Asshole.

*********************************************************************

Previously
2012: No entry.
2011: We bought ducks.
2010: For today, feast your eyes upon the sheer gorgeous stripey perfection of the kitty known as Corby McGee.
2009: It’s like we’ve entered another universe completely.
2008: Yes, more chickens.
2007: No entry.
2006: I think that “Proven to be beneficial to livers” should be Fred’s new tagline.
2005: Give me some of that, Barbara Bush, you ignoramus.
2004: No entry.
2003: Because believe it or not, it never once occurred to me that the Walton family was comprised of hillbillies.
2002: Look, I drink a gallon of water a day. I need to know that I can pee when I need to, so stop rolling your eyes at me.
2001: No entry.
2000: Can I tell you how much I loathe Bret Easton Ellis?

28 thoughts on “9/8/13”

  1. Kitten fight on a conference call! Kitten fight on a conference call!

    Sorry, I just like the sound of that.

    Appliances tend to go in threes, in my experience. We had a furnace breakdown/water heater thing/pressure tank meltdown over a couple of months.

    “Type faster?” Really? Fucking fuckers.

    1. Meh. I’m so put of the loop I just thought Love n’ Hisses was just a rename of this one. Now, however, I TOTALLY see the difference – no, not really.

      We love you, Robyn, and all your funny-crazy shit you choose to share with us. Close this down, or don’t. Won’t change MY opinion of you. Not that my opinion matters any.

      Just be you … do-be-do-be-do . ❤

    2. I had to ask Fred to be sure, but realized that the washer is our third appliance (we also had to get a new air unit in early April), so maybe we’re done for a while! (But the damn dishwasher really IS giving me the side eye!)

  2. enh, don’t feel bad about the length of time away… I’m still in the middle of writing my entry from CHRISTMAS. I probably would have kept going but I’d written it twice and it disappeared so I gave up. And then got busy.

    This is inspiring me to finish up and post.

    maybe.

    You though? You keep writing.

    please ;-D

  3. I think I’ve been reading your blog since just a couple of months after you started writing it. You were still working as an office assistant at Fred’s company and freaking out about the need to clean your house before a maid came over to clean your house. I read here, I read over at L&H, and I follow you on Facebook. You’re a good writer, and blogging is clearly a writing outlet that you need. If you choose to shut Bitchypoo down, so be it. Keeping up with two blogs is a pain in the ass. And you’re technically keeping up with THREE. Just…don’t shut them all down, okay? (I mean, it’s totally your choice, regardless, and there’s nothing anyone could really do to stop you.) You are read by far more people than I think you realize, and you would be sorely missed. Thirteen years of reading the writings of one Robyn Anderson has turned you into a defacto part of my family and an integral part of my life. Even my son knows who I’m talking about when I mention Bitchypoo Robyn (as opposed to an Aunt Robin in the family)! So, all I respectfully request is a continuation of your writing voice SOMEWHERE. Be it here or elsewhere is not important. 🙂

    1. Oh trust me, I’ll probably always blog SOMEwhere. Where else am I going to post all those kitten pictures, if not on a blog? 🙂

      Man, I wish I had a cleaning service still. Those were the DAYS!

  4. Robyn – So glad to read you today! You can make the most boring chores sound exciting. Have been reading you for years and hope to keep reading you!

  5. Robin, yours was the first blog I found when I got my computer 13 years ago. I’ve read you every day since, transitioning to L & H but I still check every day here in hopes that you’ve written. You feel like family to me. I don’t note very often as I’m a reader not a writer. As far as shuting down this site it’s your choice of course but following your links to older entries is great. Anyway THANK YOU for sharing your life with us.

  6. Love hearing from you Robyn, no matter how long it has been. Talking about appliances going out, I feel the pain. Same thing happened to me. So sorry to hear about Spankys passing. Thanks for keeping us posted.

  7. So wonderful to hear from you, Robyn!!!

    Not that it will alter your decision, but writing every six months sounds like heaven to me rather than losing your voice here entirely.

    I’m so sorry to read of you losing two members of your kitty family. Finding a local vet is wonderful 🙂

    When it rains it pours, but what a run you’ve had with appliances. Our washer is leaking slowly and we sop it up with a couple of towels. How crazy is that? It has to be at least thirty-five years old. I kid you not!

    Anyway, congratulations on the good and I’m sorry about the bad. Glad to not read of any health problems! So miss reading about your everyday life!

  8. Thank you, everyone, for reading all these years!

    Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do if I did take this site down – I must search at least once a week to figure out when something happened! 🙂

  9. I’m mostly a lurker, both here and at Love & Hisses, and I haven’t been reading for nearly as long as some, but I have to say that I think it would be a terrible waste to just take this blog down entirely. Put it into mothballs if you must (ie, don’t post to it any more or allow anyone to comment on old entries, etc.) but for heaven’s sake, don’t just delete the whole thing! I’ve been through most of the archives, and your writing is so much fun (and the comment threads are often the icing on the cake) that I’d really hate to see it all vanish without a trace. I mean, I know nothing on the internet lasts forever, and it IS a lot of work to keep up with even a single blog, much less multiple ones, and goodness knows you have plenty to keep you occupied with the fostering and so on. But you’ve kept a record of your LIFE here, the likes of which very few other people do, and I can’t possibly be the only person who’s gotten a crapload of enjoyment out of following along, even so many years after the fact. In fact, I’ve been rationing myself in my archive-reading for months now, taking in only a week’s worth of entries every now and again, just to delay the inevitable moment when I finally run out of amusement and general Crooked Acres goodness. (And when I finally get to the end, I might just go back and start all over again from the beginning!)

    So, obviously it’s not my decision to make and you’re going to have to do whatever you feel you need to, but once again, my vote would be to leave the site up and the archives accessible, even if you declare that the blog itself is indeed at an end.

  10. Wonderful to see you posted here, Robyn! Bitchypoo holds such a fond place in my heart, I would be sad if you took it down, but I read L&H, and DCEP. Thanks for the entry!

  11. Oh, it’s good to see you over here! 🙂 I love L&H, and I love DCEP, but I love that you can kind of let loose a little over here :).

    Filezilla used to do that all the time to me when I had a podcast and would try uploading it. Such a pain in the ass!

  12. Don’t go, Robyn! Even though your posts are rare, we get to see the real you. Because I’m sure it’s hard to bite your tongue sometimes over on L&H!

  13. Well, hi! Good to see you again (and thank you, feed reader). I love the kitten pictures, stories, etc, and the food adventures, but I have missed the full amount of snark found here.

    If I got a message like that Filezilla one, I would have had to step away from the computer to get my blood pressure back down. Oy!

  14. seriously, what is the point of taking it down, just let it sit and age like a fine wine.. and when you see fit, you can feel free to come and make some noise and wander off again 😉

    as for filezilla, I use that too. I stopped listening to it ages ago simply for that reason. I don’t even check to see if the files uploaded, I just assume they did and if I can’t find them, then I simply upload them again 😉

  15. The “try typing faster” message is coming from the server, not Filezilla. Filezilla is just displaying a command line window of its communications with the server. And the message itself is not custom-written by your host, it’s part of the actual FTP server application that many hosts run (I think it’s pureftp, but might be more than one available server that’s using the same base code), which was probably written for free by some grad student at 4am ten years ago. And he was a smartass.

    I was excited to see an entry. I hope you won’t take the site down even if you only occasionally update.

  16. You could leave it up & if you feel like writing, just write–no apologies, no need to catch everyone up. a rant, what you cleaned that day (our Dyson just died, so I was searching BP on cleaning stuff–and then I got lost in the archives), a crawl through a spider-infested crawl space. I would really miss it if it all went away.

    But also: I can understand why, after doing this for 14 years, you just wanna stop. At least archive it for yourself somewhere so you can look back!

  17. I’m so sorry to hear about Spanky. I loved seeing him and his gentle, furry self from time to time. Condolences! I bet kitten therapy helps with the grief, though. The circle of life and all that….

  18. As someone who has many blogs, I understand the pull to just shut down when you’re not using a blog a great deal… however, as a reader, I’d miss Bitchypoo… even with the semiannual updates. In fact, I was quite thrilled today to find that you’d made a couple of entries and I’d missed them (Farglesnotting Google Reader being gone has messed up my mojo).

    Your call but do remember to back stuff up so YOU can search it, if nothing else!

  19. I’m so glad I checked on you here today, Robyn. Glad all is fine on Crooked Acres.

    When you, Jane and Nance stopped blogging within the same year, I thought it might have something to do with GOMI.

    So sorry about Elwood and Spanky. Never easy,is it?

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