Author: Robyn

new logo for February, by the lovely and talented Ann. Thanks, Ann!

* * * Yeah, after that halftime show last night, I’m having nostalgic memories of Britney and Aerosmith from a few years ago. I don’t care much about the fact that we saw Janet’s boobie (although, the thought of having a spike through my nipple sure does make me cringe), but I could have done without seeing Janet and Justin humping from one side of the stage to the other. My friend Liz called last night at 9:40ish when I was waiting for Survivor Allstars to come on (LOVED IT), laughing so hard I could barely understand what she was saying. It turns out that the assmonkey she divorced several years ago was a big Carolina Panthers fan. Liz, naturally, was rooting for the Patriots, and when the Patriots won, Liz called his house, jeered at him, and then hung up the phone. Did I mention that she hasn’t talked to him since they divorced? I’m sure he thought he was never going to hear from HER again and I know that hearing from her was a shock, because he called her back and called her a c u n t. She jeered at him some more until he hung up on her. While I know that story sounds like she’s a psychotic ex, I loathe her ex-husband – one of the biggest jerks I’ve ever known – so much that I think an unwelcome blast from the past is exactly what he deserved. Plus, I think she needed a little closure. Heh. * * * You have just won one million dollars: 1. Who do you call first? Assuming Fred’s with me when I find out I’ve won, I’d call my sister and my parents. Everyone else would get an email or find out through the Momvine. 2. What is the first thing you buy for yourself? Little yellow Beetle, with a SUNROOF, o’ course. 3. What is the first thing you buy for someone else? A house for my sister (with an extra wing where I could stay when I visited!) 4. Do you give any away? If yes, to whom? Of course – to my sister, to the no-kill shelter I volunteer for, to a few of Fred’s relatives. 5. Do you invest any? If so, how? I’m sure we’d invest as much as we could in a rock-solid no-risk mutual fund. * * * So, last week or maybe the week before, Fred and I were watching an episode of The Shield on DVD. A guy came on the screen, and Fred said “Huh. He looks familiar.” I said, “I know where I know him from, but I don’t know where you’d know him from”, then went on to tell him that the actor had played Dodger on China Beach. “He was a lot hotter on China Beach, though,” I added. This past Friday, I suggested that we watch the premiere episode of China Beach I’d gotten for Christmas. I put it in, and Fred kept one eye on the show while he fiddled around with his new laptop. “Where’s that guy who was on The Shield?” Fred asked. I wasn’t sure whether Dodger was on the first episode or not, and told him so. A few minutes later, up popped Dodger. (Known as Jeff Kober in real life) “Hey look, there he is!” I yelled to Fred, who was messing around with something in the computer room. I stopped and rewound the tape. “Oh yeah, that is him, isn’t it?” Fred said. He came out to get a better look. “I don’t think he’s better looking than he was in The Shield, though. I think he looks about the same.” I turned and gave him the what-are-you-talking-about? look. “When we saw him on The Shield, you said he was better looking in China Beach,” he said. “Um, NO I didn’t. I said he was HOT in China Beach,” I corrected. “Well,” Fred spoke as if he were talking to a very small, very stupid child. “It’s the SAME THING.” Good lord. The man thinks that “hot” and “good-looking” are the same thing! I tried to explain to him that one has nothing to do with the other – a man can be good-looking and nothing close to hot, or ugly as hell but sizzling hot – but I don’t think he believed me. Can I get some backup here, ladies? Complete with example, please. * * * Okay, I’m going to toss up a couple of cat pictures here and call it an entry. I had a busy, busy morning and it’s about lunchtime and I’m hungry. Excuses, excuses… (Pictures taken by Fred. I think.) Spanky, illustrating why sometimes we call him “Gomer”. Further illustration… “We must stop meeting like this…. ]]>

mail2web to access my email on the server and delete the offending emails before downloading the non-virused email to my hard drive. For the record, y’all, you really should have McAfee or something similar running on your computer. Also, DON’T FUCKING OPEN a .zip file from someone unless you know it’s coming, and even then? DON’T OPEN IT. If you get an email that looks like it’s from me and has a .zip file attached? It’s not from me. I swear upon all that is holy that I will never ever send you a .zip file.

* * * I think that the Bean either misses Tubby, or is confused by his absence. Every morning since Tubby died, the Bean runs around making his squeaky-toy noise incessantly, and when I sit up to yell at him (what? I’m trying to sleep!), he jumps up on the bed, sits down, and stares up at me. No coincidence, morning was when the Bean would spend a lot of time harassing Tubby, who would always be laying under my dresser. The Bean would smack and jump and bite and lick Tubby until Tubby had had enough, at which point he’d smack the hell out of the Bean, who would go on to harass other kitties. I think the Bean misses his early morning hijinks. Poor Bean. * * * So, this is what my Wednesday was like. Fred woke me up when he was about to leave for work so that I could come downstairs and post my entry about Tubby (we wanted to post our entries simultaneously, because we’re weird like that). I blinked the sleep from my eyes, put on my nightgown, and headed for the stairs. I’d successfully navigated the top stair and was putting my foot on the second stair down, when my foot slipped, and I bumpity-bumpity-bumped down seven or eight stairs. I came to a stop about halfway down the stairs, and sat there, stunned. “Bessie?” Fred said after a moment of silence. “OW!” I said. “I’m okay!” Fred and the spud came to the bottom of the stairs. “Did you fall down the stairs?” Fred asked. The spud stared at me, wide-eyed. “Yeah, on my ASS,” I said. They began laughing hysterically, the bastards. I gave them a dirty look, walked carefully to the bottom of the stairs and went into the computer room. In the kitchen, the spud was weak from laughter. After asking for some more details, Fred finally stopped talking about it. I had fallen more on my right butt cheek than my left, and scraped up the little toe on my right foot, but I was able to move and hadn’t broken anything, so I considered myself lucky. I have an impressive bruise on my right butt cheek (and no, you may NOT see a picture), all purple and blue. I have a less impressive bruise on my left butt cheek, and the entire right side of my body feels like I lifted some really heavy weights. After posting my entry, I went back to bed, where I only dozed a little. I flipped from my right side to my left, and since Miz Poo likes to cuddle up next to me when I’m laying on my left side, she jumped up on the bed next to me. Immediately, the Bean got excited – he gets very excited whenever one of the other cats does anything – and jumped up, swatting at her tail. This startled Miz Poo, who reacted by springboarding off my right boob, leaving a scratch up near my armpit and another one ACROSS MY NIPPLE, before she landed on the other side of the bed and settled on the pillow there. “Ow! Goddamnit!” I yelled, startling the Bean, who made his squeaky-toy noise and ran away. I decided I wasn’t going to get any sleep, so I got up, put some laundry in, and came downstairs to look up the symptoms of a urinary-tract infection, most of which I had. I called to make an appointment with my doctor, and then went out to the garage to exercise. My ass cheek was hurting an awful lot – hey YOU skid 7 or 8 steps on your ass and see how you feel! – so I only exercised for about 5 minutes on the elliptical trainer before giving up and going inside to shower. I spent part of the morning watching Thirteen. Evan Rachel Wood is just amazing, but there’s nothing like that movie to make you appreciate what you’ve got. I mean, the spud gets attitudinous from time to time, but NOTHING like the girls in that movie. I was hoping Holly Hunter would just finally haul off and slap the hell out of that child, to tell the truth. The cats gathered around me, sprawling out in front of the fire and on the blanket on my lap. I got to the doctor’s office about 5 minutes early and ended up cooling my heels for about an hour before I got to see her. She apologized for making me wait so long, but at this stage in life I’ve accepted that unless you get one of the very first appointments of the day, there’s going to be a long-ass wait, and I had my book to keep me occupied, so it was all good. My doctor started asking questions about my symptoms, and after a minute or two, it was pretty clear she was moving away from urinary tract infection questions and toward diabetes questions, the most obvious being “have you been drinking a lot of water lately?” It turned out that when they tested my urine they’d found no sign of a UTI and so she wanted to find out if I had developed diabetes. She sent me to the lab to have my finger pricked, and it came back with a number that indicated that I was pre-diabetic (though later I realized when the lab tech asked when I’d last eaten, I’d told her noon, but I actually ate at 1. Ahem.). She did the diet-and-exercise song and dance (Fred said later, “Did you say ‘Obviously you don’t know who I AM’?” Heh.) and recommended the South Beach Diet before sending me back to the lab to have blood drawn for some other tests. Lab tech: “Are you a hard stick?” Me: “Yes indeedy.” Lab tech: “Let’s just use the butterfly needle to get blood out of this huge throbbing vein on the back of your hand!” Me: “Um, okay. Ouch!” I had had my blood drawn, paid my co-pay and was sitting in the parking lot when the lab tech came out and waved me down, telling me that the doctor wanted to see me again because my white blood cell count was elevated. So I went back into the exam room, and the doctor came back in. “Your white blood cell count is elevated,” she said. “Which means that you have an infection somewhere.” I smiled. “I’m having the lab do a culture on your urine to be sure you don’t have a UTI, but are there any other symptoms of anything? I don’t want to just prescribe antibiotics for you without knowing what the infection is.” She ran down a list of potential symptoms, none of which I had (and none of which I can recall, except diarrhea). She puzzled over it for a few minutes, told me to “be really attuned to your body over the next few days”, and said they’d call when the results on my blood test and urine culture came back. And then I came home. Yesterday I woke up and all the UTI symptoms I’d had Wednesday were gone. Maybe it was just a reaction to stress – who knows? I feel fine, though. I’m sure it’s nothing. Well, probably a brain tumor, but other than that, nothing. * * * I looked at the pictures on the camera’s memory stick yesterday and discovered a whole series of Tubby pictures, so here they are. (Picture taken by Fred, who complains when I don’t give him credit for the pictures I use. Yet he has used a million and three pictures that *I* took and didn’t give me credit for them. Bastard.) Getting some Beany love. Is that a look o’ love, or what?]]>

* * * We adopted Tubby in the summer of 1997 from the no-kill shelter I volunteer for now. Fred and I went to look at cats and none of them really struck our fancy, until Fred saw a small (!) black and white cat hanging out on one of those cat trees. Fred petted him and scratched at the base of his tail. The cat reacted immediately by raising his ass, and Fred loved him. As we filled out the paperwork, the lady running the shelter told us that his name was Jack and he’d been found with his sister. They’d thought at first that he was feral, but they were able to tame him. We took him home. He was a bit of an odd duck. It was as though he wanted to be friendly, but he just wasn’t sure how that went. The first night, he snuggled up to Fred’s back and then bit him. “Jack” was never a name that fit him, so after a few days of deliberation and bringing up every name in the world that starts with “S”, we settled on the name “Snoopy.” It wasn’t until he was a few years old that we started calling him “Tubby”. He didn’t have much use for the other cats. He didn’t pay much attention to them, except for his special relationship with Mr. Fancypants. He was willing to be physically close with the other cats, but he didn’t really go looking for it. He was a funny, funny cat. We always knew that to get a decent picture, all we needed to do was point the camera at him and sooner or later he’d do something funny or bitchy or cute. He was our protector. Last year a stray cat came through the pet door into the house, and Tubby chased him off. He was always calm and laid-back until the situation called for him to be a bad-ass, and then he was the baddest. Who’s going to protect us now? 1997 – 2004. Good boy, Tubby. Good boy.]]>

Self Magazine on Sunday when I ran across the Body Confidence Awards for 2004. Guess who got a Body Confidence Award? Robyn at the now defunct Tampatantrum, for the Blogger Boobie-Thon. Too cool! It would be kind of neat to do something like that to raise money for the non-kill shelter I volunteer for, wouldn’t it? I don’t particularly want to see y’all’s boobies, though, nice as I’m sure they are. I’ll have to think on that… Also receiving a Body Confidence Award was the awesome Catherine Dent from (the awesome) The Shield, who heard that a top stylist referred to her body as “a challenge” and refused to work with said stylist ever again.

* * * Have you ever read anything by Ayn Rand? Should I? Will I like it, or will it bore me? If you’ve read anything (or everything) by her and you know we have the same taste in reading material, give me an opinion down there in the comments, wouldya? (And for the record, I DO like more than Zany Chick stuff. But it’s got to be interesting. If it’s not interesting I won’t bother to give it more than a chapter or two.) My brother Randy gave me a copy of something by Ayn Rand (I don’t remember which book) when I was in high school but I either lost it or didn’t like the first few pages. When he asked if I’d read it, I gave him a big fake smile and said “Yeah, it was good!” and then ran away before he could ask for details. Also, Kafka. Should I read something by him? I told my senior English teacher that my favorite book was The Metamorphosis, WHICH I HAD NEVER READ. I was all about trying to impress my teachers with the books I was reading. It usually worked, too. Heh. Give me your Kafka opinions in the comments as well, if you please. * * * Good fucking god. That Randi chick on My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance is just getting all over my nerves. Get OVER yourself, princess. Interesting fact: the actor who plays Steve is actually married in real life. If I were his wife, I’d be pretty pissed at all the crap Princess Randi is saying. * * * Petstore kitty pics from yesterday are here. * * * The spud wanted to download Yaho0 Messeng3r yesterday, so I stood over her and supervised while she downloaded and installed it. Then I came back downstairs, installed it myself, and taught her the simple stuff – how to message someone, add them to your friends list, stuff like that. Then I signed on after dinner and chatted with the spud until I logged off to go watch TV with Fred at 7:00. Fred kept saying “What on earth can you possibly be TALKING about?” Nothing too exciting, but it was still kind of fun. spud: Hahah spud: type spud:lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllll spud: mum? mom: Yeah? spud: oh. thought u got off or somthing. spud: do you know much about the salem witch trials? mom: Not really mom: Are you studying them in school? spud: no. we are going to start on the mla paper and i can’t decide on a topic. spud: fun. fun. fun. in the sun. doodoodooodooo mom: The Salem witch trials sounds like an interesting topic mom: Do you have any other ideas? spud: yeah that is what i want to do but i need to make sure that i can get at least 7 sources or so from it. spud: Pope leo x See? Nothing earth-shattering, but I think she enjoyed it, and she still types slowly enough that I can go do other things in between responses. I also gave her the rules – no messaging with anyone she doesn’t know, no giving out her last name, address, phone number. If someone messages her, she is to say “I’m not allowed to chat with people I don’t know”, and if they persist, to come get me and I’ll show her how to add people to the ignore list. I swear, we’re going to make this kid so paranoid about anything to do with chatting online. Better paranoid than hitchhiking across the country to meet some perv though, eh? * * * Hey! Remember when I mentioned the carpet guys who came to replace the carpet upstairs that Tubby had peed on and pretty much ruined? And how they pulled up the carpet and sprayed some kind of magic something-or-other that immediately killed the stink? And how I didn’t know the name of it? Well, the carpet guys came back last week to deal with the piece of carpet in the computer room that has caused us trouble for the last year or so. While they were here, Fred said “By any chance could we buy some of that stuff from you?” The guy said “Let me see if I have some in the van I can sell you”, and when he came back inside, he had a gallon jug which was half full of the stuff. He sold it to us for what it cost him to buy (LOVE the carpet dude!), and now we have more than we’ll hopefully need anytime soon. Know why I couldn’t find a link for it online? Because I was spelling it wrong, of course. It’s called Axi-dent. The stuff we have is in a big jug and doesn’t look exactly like the stuff in that link, but surely it’s got to be the same stuff. And it ROCKS. * * * Miz Poo sure does love to be outside in the sun. Also, she loves to lay on the side table, under the warm, warm lamp. She does NOT, however, like it when Daddy gets too close with the camera. ]]>

Which Happy Bunny Are You?

You are the cute but psycho happy bunny. You’re adorable, but a little out there. It’s alright, you might not have it all, but there are worse. (Thanks to reader Kris who sent me the link!) * * * This cat looks an awful lot like Fancypants, doesn’t he? He’s here, too. (Thanks to Nance who sent me those links and cracked me up) * * * You know, I am neither pro- nor anti – Howard Dean, and I just don’t get the brouhaha over his speech in Iowa. To me, he didn’t look like he was “losing it” at all – he looked like he was trying to hype up his supporters and getting pretty excited in the process. Kind of nice to see some emotion from a presidential candidate, though after that there’s no way on god’s green earth the man will get himself elected (although, I’m told that there was no way he was going to be elected before the YARGH speech either, so there ya go). That said, the man has some seriously craaaaazy eyes. It might be interesting to have him in charge of running the country just to see how long before he snaps and declares war on South Dakota. * * * I got a box of birthday presents from the lovely and wonderful Nancypants on Saturday. What did I find in the big box o’ birthday love? Why, the best presents possible, of course! A cozy fleece blanket featuring my favorite shade o’ yellow! And a framed picture of MY BAYBEE! Also, there was a cat ink stamp and a pad of ink. I would show you the efforts of my using the stamp, but I am fumble-fingered to the extreme and managed to make a bit of a mess of it. I’m no Kathy or Stefani when it comes to being talented with the stamps, believe you me! (Nance also tossed some therma-care heat wraps in the box, with the suggestion that I stick them on my ass if I get cold. Hee!) Nance rocks! As does Dale. Rock, I say! I had the blanket wrapped around me when I was sitting in front of the computer this morning, and a tiny little edge of the blanket was resting on the desk. It took about 10 seconds for Miz Poo to sense that there was unused blanket somewhere in the house, hunt it down, and sit her ass down on it. When I got up to go make breakfast, I left the blanket on the chair, and when I came back a minute later, Miz Poo had claimed both the blanket and the chair for herself. I sense that there is a battle of epic proportions in my future, a show-down between Miz Poo and I as to just WHO the blanket belongs to. (And I suspect that I won’t be the winner of that battle, sadly.) * * * While I’m thanking people, I’d like to thank reader Sofia in Sweden, who sent me a Magnetic Poetry Kit for Cat Lovers – can you believe I didn’t already have one of those?! Please email me so that I can thank you properly, Sofia! Thanks also to Anelie, who sent me the soundtrack to Xanadu (shaddup, y’all, I love that movie!)! * * * Hee! That Erin sure does crack me up.]]>

Why, why, whyyyyyyyyyyyyy? ::sob:: (Also, heh!) I, for one, did NOT see this one coming from a mile away. (If you don’t want to click those links, or they’re long gone by the time you read this entry, those links both have to do with the breakup of Jennifer Lopez and the large-noggined Ben Affleck) Oh, and while I’m thinking of The Affleck, Kate mentioned in my comments the other day that she thinks Scott Peterson and Ben Affleck were separated at birth. I can see the resemblance, although Ben’s big, bloated, scary head (seriously, seeing that head come toward you has got to be a scary thing) is twice the size of Scott Peterson’s. For the record, I don’t dislike The Affleck at ALL. I’m just frightened by his noggin. You know, the older I get, the more everyone seems to resemble someone else. Last night we were watching an episode from the second season of The Shield, and I thought Boy, that Connie sure does look like she could be Jennifer Jason Leigh‘s sister! I’ve always noticed that I have a very strong resemblance to Ashley Judd. (In my dreams, that is)

* * * Fred and I went out last Sunday in search of a shelf unit to fit the kitchen closet. There’s a lot of stuff I keep stored in that closet, and there’s only one shelf, which doesn’t hold all the crap I keep crammed in there. So we went to Lowe’s – within a mile of our house there is not only a Lowe’s, but also a Home Depot – and checked out the shelf units. We found one that would fit in the closet and was less than $20. Fred had to track down a Lowe’s employee to find out that they were out of stock, but “the truck” would be delivering more on Monday or Tuesday. “Do you want to go to Home Depot?” Fred asked as we trudged back out to the car. “I hate Home Depot, but if you want to look…” “Let’s just look!” I said. And we drove over to Home Depot and went inside, and that’s when I discovered why Fred hated Home Depot so much. Because while Home Depot has many of the same items as Lowe’s, something about the way the store is arranged is much less inviting. They also didn’t have anything like the shelf unit we’d liked at Lowe’s, and so we went away empty-handed. Damn Home Depot. “Home Depot is like the Wal-Mart, and Lowe’s is like the Target,” I said. I think I’ve mentioned how much I’ve come to hate Wal-Mart in the last few years, haven’t I? And how much I love Target? On Monday, I had to go out and buy new sheets for my bed. In a non-sex-related act of he-man-ism, Fred managed to rip the fitted sheet and since I had only one set of sheets for the bed and sleeping on a semi-ripped sheet was bugging me, AND since I had a 20% off coupon at Bed, Bath and Beyond, I took the spud and headed out to buy new sheets. After a great deal of looking around, I located the sheets I wanted – I cannot, for the record, stand really soft sheets. I MUST have crisp, cool sheets to sleep on. Once upon a time I bought a set of those t-shirt sheets because that damn OPRAH made them sound so amazing, and I lasted all of ten minutes on the sheets before I got up to take them off the bed and put the old ones back on. Anyway, I found the sheets I wanted – a solid smoky-blue color – bought a couple of extra pillow cases, grabbed a 6-muffin tin, and then decided to look at throw pillows. The throw pillows on our couch are getting rather threadbare, due to the fact that that damn TUBBY likes to sleep on them and get them all covered with cat fur, and then I have to vacuum them, which makes him want to sleep on them all that much more, and so forth into infinity. What was I saying? Oh yeah, the pillows. So I searched in vain for throw pillows, wandering all over Bed, Bath and Beyond, and when I found the correct section, I couldn’t find a single throw pillow that I liked, and I was puzzled. I thought this place had a bunch of throw pillows that I liked last time, I thought to myself. And then I realized I was thinking of Linens ‘n Things. Apparently I’m determined to compare everything in the world to Wal-Mart or Target, because I immediately thought Bed, Bath and Beyond is the Wal-Mart and Linens ‘n Things is the Target! Yep. I need a life. What’s new? * * * At this moment, what is your favorite… 1. …song? Girlfriend, by Bob Guiney. I know, shut up, I can’t HELP IT. I mean, YOU listen to the line Could you make a phone call to Jesus to clean up my soul and resist the charms of The Bob, just try it! 2. …food? Lobster, always and forever. But we’re having General Tso’s chicken for dinner tonight, which is running a close second at the moment. 3. …tv show? Survivor!!!!!! ONLY A LITTLE MORE THAN A WEEK! WHOO! 4. …scent? Sand & Sable perfume – it smells like summertime to me. Summertime at the beach. 5. …quote? “Fuck those fuckers.” – unknown * * * (All pictures taken by Fred) The Bean yawns. And yawns. Also, he yawns. I call this one “The Bean. Addled.” More addle-ation. The BEST picture EVER. Click on it if you want the full-sized version for yourself. ]]>

Odd Thomas late last night – and liked it a great deal – but I was so blindsided by the twist at the end that I burst into tears. Hmph. Gotta love that Dean Koontz. Next up is Bad to the Bone (from the Casey Jones series by Katy Munger), followed by Autobiography of a Fat Bride, followed by the next in the Casey Jones series, followed by The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club, followed by the next in the Casey Jones series. When Fred suggested that I read Odd Thomas, I had just finished reading Blood. “I can’t read that next,” I told him. “I have to read a book from the Casey Jones series next, because my plan is to read one series book, then one non-series book, then a series book, and so on.” “Okay, RAINMAN, ” he snarked. He’s one to talk.

* * * On The Bachelorette last night, what the hell was up with that Rick guy? I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a man refer to himself as a metrosexual, first of all. Second of all, what kind of yahoo doesn’t like BASIL? I mean, basil. BASIL. That’s got to be about the least offensive herb out there, second only to parsley. How can you possibly not like basil? Freak. Run, Meredith, run! I know he’s a cross between Greg and Peter Brady combined and adorable as hell, but you don’t need the headache. I’m starting to really like Ian, despite his strong resemblance to Phillip Spaulding. What was up with Paula hating that blond girl on American Idol last night and telling her that she was “affected”? I don’t think I’ve ever seen Paula do that before, she’s supposed to be the nice one! A week and a half to All-Star Survivor! I was talking on the phone to Liz last night, and I pointed out that the cool thing with the All-Star cast is that there won’t be that learning curve while we try to figure out who’s who and whether we like them or not. We can start right away with the Jerri hatred and the Alicia love. Woot! * * * When I was in Maine, my mother, the kids, and I stopped at Sears one day so that she could look at treadmills. She wanted one to put in her basement to use on the days it was too cold or slushy or rainy out, and so the kids and I had a high time trying out all the exercise equipment. Brian fooling around on the Gazelle and I think the spud was on an elliptical trainer. Anyway, while we were there I took advantage of the moment to try out the elliptical trainers and decided that I really liked the NordicTrack elliptical trainer. Fred and I had been talking for a while about getting an elliptical trainer, but wanted to wait until I had actually tried one out. When we got home from Maine, I mentioned to Fred that I liked the NordicTrack, and to my surprise – usually when I suggest that we need a new piece of exercise equipment, he tells me we have no room in the garage (which is true) – he said he’d stop at Sears at some point and check them out. Long story short (too late!), the NordicTrack elliptical trainer was back-ordered and so Fred ordered one and it arrived yesterday, so he went and picked it up. When he brought it home, he decided to put it together immediately. And then he spent three hours putting it together. At one point I had dinner cooking on the stove and was trying to help him. “Tell me what the instructions say to do next,” he said. I picked up the book and looked at it, and honestly, it could have been written in another language completely. It made no sense to me at all. “It makes no sense to me at all,” I said. “It’s like it’s written in Greek!” Fred took the book from me. “I’ve GOT it,” he said. “I’ll do it, go back inside.” Note to the husbands out there: You don’t actually have to say the words “You’re a dumbass” to get the idea across, and thus when your wife is mad at you later and you so very innocently say “Are you mad about something?” and she says “YOU CALLED ME A DUMBASS!” and you say “I did NOT call you a dumbass!”, you are wrong and she is right and you’d best commence to begging for forgiveness, you fucker. So the elliptical trainer is put together, but we need batteries for the display thingy (as the spud would say), so I haven’t really used it for exercise yet, though I’ve been out in the garage a few times trying it out. What I really like about it is that it’s quiet enough that I’ll be able to watch a movie or a TV show while I’m on it, and actually HEAR it (the stationary bike is too loud to hear what’s going on if a TV or movie is playing). I’m thinking I’ll start taping the Ellen Degeneres Show every night, because that is one funny-ass woman. * * * Since we bought the kick-ass new camera last month and we have a backup still-pretty-good camera, I decided that we’d give our old camera – the one that writes pictures to floppy disks – to the spud. I bought a pack of floppy disks, showed the spud how to copy all her pictures to her hard-drive, and gave her the recharger to recharge the battery to the camera. She’s been a picture-taking fool ever since, and she’s taken some pretty good ones. What does she take pictures of? Silly readers. I think you KNOW. Spanky might be a little dumb, but he’s certainly HAPPY. Tubby does his thing… …while Miz Poo considers kicking his ass. ]]>

learned from her mistakes, and good for her. Now isn’t there anything we can do to force Joey Buttafuoco back into obscurity? I should add that I was MIGHTY sick of hearing about the whole Amy Fisher thing back when it was happening. I mean, they made THREE MOVIES about the whole thing. To my chagrin, I actually bought the version starring Drew Barrymore for $5 at Wal-Mart. If I ever watched it, I’ve blocked it from my memory, though.

* * * I realized yesterday that if I don’t want people staring at my chest, it’s probably best not to wear t-shirts or sweatshirts with something written across the chest. Simultaneously, I realized that people weren’t staring at my chest yesterday because I have such spectacular boobs, but rather because I had “HAPPY” written across my chest in huge white letters. What a blow to the ego. * * * I’m so damn glad American Idol is back. I sure did miss that show. That redheaded kid who did the Dean Martin impression and then sang for real was just amazing. And adorable. I’m looking forward to seeing more of him. I liked Scooter Gal, but she needs to tone it DOWN just a tad. I also liked the Daddy’s girl, the blond with the bluesy voice whose name I cannot recall. When Survivor starts in a week and a half (!), I’m going to be in hog heaven. We watched the first episode of My Big Fat Obnoxious Fianc� Monday night. NOT a big fan of that Randi chick – get OVER yourself, princess! – but then I would bet it’s probably edited so that any halfway negative thing she said about him was left in, and any halfway nice thing she said about him was edited out. But that girl takes herself WAY too seriously. For crying out loud, he’s obnoxious, but he’s also kind of funny. Ah well, we shall see how it goes. I’m betting that even if her entire family doesn’t stay for the wedding, she’ll end up with the money or at least part of it. The guy – Steve – looks an awful lot like Matthew Perry, at least to me. * * * Kat, who apparently has a camera installed somewhere in my house, suggested in my comments yesterday that I use blogrolling to organize the GFY page. At the very moment she posted that comment, I WAS ON THE BLOGROLLING PAGE. How freaky is that? Only I was on the blogrolling page to check it out for myself – it hadn’t occurred to me to use it for the GFY page. What an awesome idea! That Kat, she rocks. So I’m signed up for blogrolling and I’ve started adding links, but here’s my question that hopefully one of you can help me with. I want to add the 1-click blogrolling to my link bar, but when I try to drag it up there, it shows the circle-with-a-line you-can’t-do-this symbol. I’m running Internet Expl0rer version 6.0. Help? Anyone? Can you help a clueless sister out? * * * This picture of the Bean absolutely cracks me UP. He wasn’t actually yawning – he was licking his lips. (Another fabulous picture taken by Fred.) The Bean loves his Daddy, but he has a special place in his heart for the Momma. Especially when she’s laying on the couch and providing acres and acres of flabulous softness upon which he can lay his little head.]]>

Hello and welcome, readers who are finding their way here via iwilldare.com. The information you’re looking for – the information jodi was referring to – is available in the comments. “The Outlaw” was NOT my husband, Fred, but rather a man named Timothy Hensley who was married and pretended not to be – I’m pretty sure Jodi will corroborate this. Like I said, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “comments” until you see the comment about who Timothy Hensley is. Also, please stop searching my site for things such as “Fred married” and “The Outlaw”, because there’s no such information available on this site. Thanks!

* * * Pet store kitty pics are hither. * * * Rumor has it that Timothy Hensley is a lying c*nt. (Word censored not because I’m afraid of it, but because I don’t want to be inundated with porn seekers. Any more than I already am, that is.) * * * So I got a birthday check from Fred’s parents – they always send money for our birthdays, and it’s always much appreciated – and that along with the money I got from my parents for my birthday AND the money I’ve been halfheartedly saving for a few months meant that I could buy something I’ve really been wanting. A Kitchenaid mixer! I mean, I know that I don’t really use the mixer all that much, but I’ve been absolutely drooling over the Kitchenaid mixers ever since we went through a spell of watching Em3ril a lot a few years ago. So I went on Amazon and ordered the mixer, and I couldn’t quite decide which shade of yellow to order. (You knew it was going to be yellow, right? Some day I’m going to have a kitchen with plenty of cupboard space and various yellow appliances) Lemon seemed too bright: Sunflower seemed too gold: I decided on Majestic Yellow, which seemed like a nice, clear shade of yellow, but not eye-poppingly bright the way the Lemon seemed to be. I placed the order with Amazon, opted for the free shipping, and sat back to wait. Every now and then, I’d look at the color I’d chosen and decide again that I’d made the right choice. Visions of the cookies and cakes and muffins and mashed potatoes I’d make with the mixer danced through my head, and I could barely stand the excitement. Last Friday, it finally came. But as I was bloated and full and sleepy from having pizza for dinner, I wisely decided to wait until the next morning to wrestle the mixer from the box. I’m weird about stuff I really, really want. I’ll really, really want it for a long time, I’ll save up the money to buy it, or put it on my wish list until I have enough money to buy it, I’ll be extremely excited once I’ve ordered it, or have enough money to go to the store to buy it, and then once it’s in the house and it’s mine all mine, I don’t want anything to do with it. I leave it on the counter and circle it for a few days, think about opening it, until finally at some point I just open it. So Saturday morning I took it out of the box and looked at it. “Huh,” I said. “This is not quite what I was expecting.” Fred came out of the computer room to look at it. “Huh,” he said. “It’s kind of like the yellow version of avocado green.” And he was right, it was. It was yellow, but not the clear, light yellow I’d expected. It was more of a gold-yellow, and in fact the color of a shag rug you’d find in a house that was stuck in the ’70s. I tried to convince myself that I liked it. I made a special spot for it on the counter. I said “Isn’t it great??” to Fred (his reply: “Uh, sure. If you say so.”). I imagined using it to make cakes and cookies and muffins. But when it came down to it, I just didn’t like it. And considering how expensive it was, it was ridiculous, I decided, to keep it if I didn’t absolutely love it. So I’m exchanging it for the lemon one. It might be too bright, but at least it’ll make me happy when it catches my eye. * * * I finally got off my ass (or rather, sat down ON my ass) and began organizing the GFY page. Ho-LY shit, is that going to be a serious undertaking. I mean, go look at the current page. And then think about the fact that I have to alphabetize all of that by journal/ blog name. Ugh. I’m shooting to have it organized and up in the new spot by February 15th. Let’s see if I actually make that goal. Oh, and that reminds me – does anyone know if Krista, formerly of Holy Shenanigans, is around and blogging elsewhere these days? I miss her! * * * While I’m asking for help, I know y’all can help me with this. There’s a video I’ve seen twice on VH-1 (because I am ooooooooold). In the video, there’s a guy and a girl, and they’re apparently breaking up (she may be packing her bags, I don’t remember), and she leaves in a cab, and he pauses and then starts running after her cab. The cab gets into some sort of accident and he’s standing there and what appears to be her spirit gets out of the wreck and walks over to him and kisses and hugs him, and all is right in his world, and then the camera pans over a newspaper, and we see that he was killed in an accident on a bridge. My question to you: What’s the song, and what’s the group? Both times I saw the video, I thought Oh, I like that song, what is it? and waited to find out, and no sooner had the name of both the song and the group went in one brain cell and out another. What makes me even more stupid is that BOTH TIMES I found out the name of the group, I thought Oh, I like all the songs by them that I’ve heard. I should put their cd on my wish list. Won’t you help an early-onset Alzheimer’s-having sister? * * * “Hey, Momma, want to share some of that ice cream with me?” “How ’bout if I come really close? Interested in sharing now?”]]>