Author: Robyn

Which is not to say that I can’t appreciate a cool shoe; I just don’t lust after them the way other women do. Maybe it’s because I have weird feet and they’ve never been comfortable in anything other than shitkickers, sneakers, and fuzzy slippers. Just another example of my weirdness. Yesterday, the temperature outside was 35 and with the wind chill felt 27. Today, it’s 55 out. I’m not complaining about the warmer weather, but a little consistency couldn’t hurt Mother Nature! I have to check the temperature every day before I know what to wear on my walks, and it’s a good thing I do, because I’m thinking that sweats and long johns on a 55-degree day wouldn’t work quite as well as it does on a feels-like-27-degree day. Which reminds me – I need to buy some decent long johns. I think the bunny ears would look smahhhhhshing on Mr. Fancypants. And the party hat on Tubby. And Miz Poo would kick ass as a cowgirl. Speaking of the cats, I was sitting in front of the computer around 10:00 last night paying bills, when a loud crashing sound came from the library, where the cat door is located. I turned around to see a fancy blur go by at the speed of light. Miz Poo, who had been laying on the floor behind me asleep, stood up, her tail bushed out, blinking sleepily. I hadn’t heard Fancypants go up the stairs, so I looked in the kitchen and living room before concluding that he had. I went up the stairs, and at the top stood Spanky and Spot, both with their tails bushed out, both staring warily toward the master bedroom. I went into the bedroom, softly calling for Fancypants, but got no reply. I checked the closet and bathroom, then got down on my stomach and looked under the bed. He was laying there, curled up into a freaked-out looking pile, his eyes big and dark. I talked to him for a few moments, checked around him to be sure there were no signs of blood or small rodents, and then left him alone. The other cats milled around with dark eyes and bushy tails for another half hour or so before settling down. I checked out in the back yard to make sure there were no neighborhood cats hanging around, and saw Tubby sitting under the bird feeders. He meowed bitchily at me to let me know that all was well. When I went back upstairs a while later to watch last week’s ER, Fancypants was flopped in the middle of the floor with his legs kicked up, licking himself. Business as usual, in other words. I have no idea what happened, but can guess that either he tried to put the smack down on the wrong kitty, a dog got after him, or he was in someone’s back yard and they chased him out. Whatever happened, I guess I’m glad he knows that home is the safe place to be!

Evil, yet fancy. I walked by these trees this morning and loved them so much that when I got home I grabbed the camera and drove back to take a picture of them. ]]>

Heather from Texas – had a whole segment where she was joking about how she was constantly cooking, trying to fatten up the other girls, but it didn’t work. They took a few questions from the audience, and one of them asked “Did any of you actually gain weight while you were in the house [with the other bachelorettes]?” One of the other women (not Heather) said, JOKINGLY, “No, even though Heather tried to fatten us up with her cooking!” So the show moves on for a few minutes, and then all of a frickin’ sudden Heather is CRYING, because it was so MEAN of that other woman to imply that she was REALLY trying to fatten them up, sob, wail, gnashing of the teeth. I think that everyone there had a little cartoon question mark over their head, ’cause I sure as shit did. At this point I don’t care who Aaron The Bachelor with his smack-me face picks, because Helene gets on my nerves, and Brooke is too sweet for his slimy self. I actually thought Gwen was going to end up being his final choice, and was pretty surprised when she ended up leaving last week. Even the annoying ones are too good for him, though. That’s just my opinion, folks, brought about mainly because if a guy’s going to kiss someone with the cameras all around, I do NOT want to actually see his tongue waggling around all over the place. Gah. I was watching Felicity and cross-stitching Friday night, and as the show went to commercial, I glanced up. The commercial began with a woman jogging slowly along a rather scenic trail. She stopped and put her hand to her forehead, staring distractedly off into the distance. I just can’t concentrate, came the voiceover, a soothing, female voice. I wonder if I’m pregnant? If failure to concentrate is a sign of pregnancy, I’ve been pregnant for 34 (almost 35!) years. And speaking of commercials, have you seen the Visa Checkcard commercial with Charlie Sheen? He’s in a movie store, wants to write a check, and so the guy says he’s going to have to call it in. Time passes, with Charlie snoozing on the couch, staring off into space, and trying to flirt with a passing girl (who’s not interested). Finally, we see the clerk, holding up a driver’s license. “This doesn’t look like you,” he says, and lowers it so that we can see Martin Sheen. “It did when I came in here,” says Martin Sheen. I don’t know who came up with that commercial, but it’s funny as hell. Oh, you silly, crazy readers. I’ve gotten enough email to lead me to believe that y’all think that I plan to do the cooking for Thanksgiving. Ha! No WAY, man. I’m going to scrub the house from top to bottom for the three days before Thanksgiving and then spend half of Thanksgiving day cooking? Not in THIS lifetime. Cooking will be Fred’s job, though I’m sure I will cook a supplementary dish (squash casserole) or two. The turkey and all that stuff? His responsibility. And do NOT feel sorry for him (that’s an order!). His sister’s bringing a bunch of food and so is his stepmother, so it’s not like there’ll be all that much for him to do, aside from the dessert and turkey. On the up side, his father brought over a turkey roaster so that the oven is freed up for anything else that needs to be cooked. I’m going to give the roaster a trial run this Wednesday, when I try cooking a chicken in it. Ah, good times in the And3rson house, yes indeedy.]]>

SaveKaryn has brought her debt down to $0, in case you were wondering. So yesterday was my feed-and-scoop day at the petstore. I walked through the store to the wall of cages, and found – to my surprise – that every cage was full. There’s always been at least one empty cage since I started doing this, and I usually put the cats in the empty cage (one at a time – two at a time, in the case of the kittens who share a cage) while I’m cleaning out their cage. The store employee let me into the cat room, and I stood and wondered how the hell I was going to accomplish what I needed to, with no conveniently empty cage. I thought about calling Fred and begging him to come help me, but I didn’t want to, because he would feel like he had to, but wouldn’t be happy about it, and I can’t stand it when he’s a pouty bitch. Besides, I didn’t really want to pull him away from work. I realized that there were three cat carriers sitting on top of the cages, and so I pulled a couple down, deciding to use them, or at least try. Knowing my past attempts at putting cats in carriers, I was doubtful it would work. It did, though, it worked just fine, to my shock and amazement. A couple of the cats tried to bust their way out, but the flimsy cardboard container wasn’t so flimsy and held admirably. The cat we’ve been calling Fancypants, Jr, tried to escape when I opened his cage – the hard part about opening a cage with more than one cat in it is that they tend to all rush the door, and more often than not, one manages to slip out. Fancypants, Jr. tried to slip underneath the cage, which would have been a bad thing, because there’s a gap between the underneath part of the cages, and once he’d gotten under the cages, he could have slipped out into the store, and then the hijinks, I’m sure, would have ensued. I grabbed Fancypants, Jr.’s tail at the base, which he very much didn’t like, but since my main goal was to prevent him from going under the cages, I was successful, and when he rolled onto his back to hiss and spit at me, I grabbed him up and tossed him in one of the carriers. The little bastard.

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You open the door to get out an envelope, and Miz Poo comes barrelling from the other end of the house to jump up and snooze on the quilts. Spanky loves to lay outside. Here, you can see that he’s taking a break from stalking back and forth across the yard. I have no idea what was up there – probably a bird – but Tubby sat and stared up into the tree for a long, long time. ]]>

This is what the sky looked like in the afternoon, before all those tornados hit Alabama and Tennessee. It was as if the sky couldn’t decide whether it wanted to show white, puffy clouds or dark, scary ones, so it compromised. I have finally discovered what the little flower button my camera does. It makes it so I can get a closeup of my flowers! The blurry rose pictures of the past are, well, a thing of the past. I love the color of this rose. I also love the color of this one. It’s got yellow in it, so of course I’d love it! I’m also partial to this color. I like most roses, especially the ones that aren’t your average red ones. But I like those, too. ]]>

Bonnie – hope it’s a great one! So, since I’d spent the weekend making a buttload of copies of last week’s Oprah (the “What it’s like to be obese” one from Wednesday), I needed to go out and buy boxes to mail those tapes out. St@ples is conveniently located, not even five minutes away, so I headed over there. I strode confidently through the front door and headed for the shipping supplies aisle, knowing exactly where it was because school supplies aside, the only reason I ever go in there is to buy boxes or padded envelopes, though there is the occasional purchase of bubble wrap to spice things up. I’d loaded up with an armful of boxes (and some padded envelopes, because you can never have too many of those, especially when you’re mailing stuff out all the time) and was headed toward the front of the store when an employee hailed me. “Can I help you find anything?” “No thanks!” I said, and continued walking. “Find everything you need?” she asked with a wide smile. “Yep. Thanks!” I said over my shoulder. She followed me. “Going to ship a lot of things, huh?” she said. “That’s right. Thanks!” Obviously she’d never taken Customer Service 101, wherein the “‘Thanks!’ = go away” equation is covered thoroughly. Somewhere around the tins of butter cookies, I lost her. I stood in line while the elderly gentleman ahead of me argued with the cashier about whether the two clipboards he was buying were $0.99 or $1.04. I was about to step forward and offer to pay the ten cent difference when the employee who’d been following me earlier came back into view. “I can help you at this register!” she announced, waving wildly. I walked over and dumped my armload of stuff on the counter, and then we spent the next five minutes doing the “What’s your zipcode/ email/ phone number/ true haircolor/ contacts or glasses?/ is the weight on your driver’s license true?/ the first day of your last menstrual period?” dance. As she finally began ringing up my items, she gave me another wide smile. “Do you have the St@ples Business Plus card?” she asked. “Nope.” Pause. “Would you like to apply for one?” “No thank you.” Another pause. “They don’t cost anything, and you get 2.5 percent of your purchase back blah blah blah blah.” I stared at her with a blank smile, noting that she’d tromped willy-nilly all over the unspoken code of honor I, as a customer, and she, (as someone who wanted me to write down my name, address, phone number, and god knows what else so that a large corporation could track each and every one of my purchases every time I made a purchase at their store, needing such information for such nefarious purposes as deciding whether or not they needed to send me another coupon so I’d get off my lazy ass and Spend! Spend! Spend! at their store, or perhaps sell this information to the government, so that Big Brother could keep track of my padded-envelope-buying habits, decide I was spending too much of my time mailing things out, and toss my ass in the gulag for a hard 20 years, only I would die a cold and horrible death in mere months without my beloved Poo by my side, and Fred? I’m sure Fred would have a skanky blonde as his date for the funeral (that’s a joke between the two of us, don’t get het up)) as the employee, are both supposed to hold dear. To wit, I only have to say “No” once, because I’m PRETTY FUCKING SURE I mean “No”, and you’ll only embarrass yourself if you keep going on about it, goddamnit, so hear me say “No” and shut the fuck up about it. The entire time she babbled on about the incredible features of this card, I kept up with the blank, horrified smile, staring at her as if she’d shown up to work butt-ass naked and just hadn’t noticed yet. Finally, she trailed off, and then, before she could finish the transaction, she smiled once again. “Is this for business or personal?” she asked. “Business,” I said brightly. “As in none of your fucking.” And then I hauled ass out of there.]]>

Nance once again, but am sad to report that she declined.” I wouldn’t link to somone who annoys me or says something rude about me, because why would I send traffic to someone like that? If someone caused me to roll my eyes hard enough, though, I might link to them from Fred’s forum, since it gets a lot less traffic. And speaking of linking, why is it that any time I say something about Fred and link to his site, like such: “… after doing the laundry, I had sex on the kitchen floor with Fred once again. Floor continues to be TOO FUCKING COLD…” he gets a gazillion referrals? Who are y’all expecting to see on the other end of that link? Are you hoping that one of these days you’ll follow a link and find a nekkid picture of Fred? I guess you never know – it could happen. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. Fred won’t let me take nekkid pictures of him anymore, the bastard, since what happened the last time I did… Let me tell you about the saga of the box. Fred went out and bought some new sneakers last week, and was going to get rid of the boxes until I told him we should keep them just in case we needed them in the future. You just never know when you’re going to need a shoebox. So then… well, I think the story should be illustrated with pictures.

Sittin’ in the box. Sittin’ in the box. I’m Spanky, and I’m sittin’ in the box, yeah, baby. I’m Fancy, and I’m in the box. Fancy in the box, Fancy in the box. Minding my own business, I’m Fancy in the box. Miz Poo wants to know just who the holy hell Mr. Fancypants thinks he is, sitting in the box like that… Miz Poo sniff-searches Fancypants for illegal catnip. Fancypants gets riled and flounces off, leaving the box for a sneering Miz Poo. Which was her dastardly plan all along. Not to be outdone, once Miz Poo wanders off in search of food, Fancypants returns and reclaims the box.]]>

We’re getting a lot of doves on the feeders lately, and it’s funny as hell to see them try to sit their fat asses on the feeders and eat without falling off. Usually, they walk around on the ground and eat seed that’s fallen from the feeders. As I’ve told Fred, doves are the Tubbys of the bird world. Oh, how the kitties love to lay around the bedroom. Just like me! Spanky appears to be very deep in thought. Or possibly depressed. See that basket? That basket usually sits at the bottom of the stairs. I put dirty dish towels in it, and every so often I bring it upstairs to wash them, and set the basket in the corner until I go downstairs again. Tubby doesn’t often sit in that corner, but he likes to be ABLE to sit in that corner if he so wishes, so he knocked the basket over so that the corner was clear. Did he then sit in the corner he’d protected so viciously? NO. He was laying in the study, being a bitchy little bastard. “Mih. MIH. Mih.”]]>

Miz Poo watches the doves at the bird feeder. Spanky looks like his usual kinda dumb self.]]>

creepy homo) is questioning the numbers. Or, to put it another way: Siegelman: “I won! I’m still the governor!” Riley: “Nuh uh!” I suspect the battle over who truly won will be fought for the next few months until Riley and Siegelman bore the shit out of the entire state of Alabama. That’s my prediction, anyway. I taped the documentary Journeys with George last night, and I’m pretty eager to watch it. I won’t be watching it tonight, though, because between The Bachelor and The Amazing Race, my tv plate is pretty full. Oh, wait – after checking the television schedule, I see that The Amazing Race isn’t on tonight because the Country Music Awards are. That just means I have one less show to tape and watch, I guess. I still haven’t watched Boomtown, which I taped Sunday night. My life. So very exciting. So, last Friday Fred and I actually ventured out to the grocery store together. This is VERY unusual, and we’ve only been in the same grocery store at the same time MAYBE three times in the 6 years we’ve been together. Anyway, Fred was going to the store to get some snack food for the evening, and asked if I wanted anything. I did, but wasn’t sure. I was in the mood for chinese food for dinner, but the really good chinese restaurant is several miles down a busy highway. A drive I didn’t really want to make during rush hour, because it takes maybe 15 minutes in the morning, but can take half an hour during rush hour. And I know that those of you who have to drive 2 hours each way to commute to work are really feeling my pain right now. Anyway, I decided to go with him to see what the grocery store had in the area of chinese food. I ended up buying a big pan of frozen General Tso’s chicken, a small bowl of beef and broccoli, and some spring rolls. Fred chose what he wanted, and we headed for the checkout line. Now, since Fred goes to get the groceries every Saturday morning, the majority of the cashiers who work there know him by sight. And since I’m usually in there a couple of times during the week, some of them know me by sight as well. It just so happened that we ended up in the line of a cashier who always recognizes us separately by sight, but since we’ve never been in there together before, she had no way to know that we were married. Her brow furrowed and her eyes narrowed as she looked rapidly back and forth between Fred and I, and I think I saw smoke coming from her ears as she put two and two together. As we walked out to the car, I said to Fred “I guess that destroys her image of you as a swinging single!”]]>