Author: Robyn

saturday entry, I present to you: 10 Things I Learned Last Week 1. Tape never stays where you stick it – in fact, it moves from where you originally put it to the place from which it will be most painful to remove. 2. A lot of gross boogery-looking stuff can fit through the tiny tubes leading from an incision to a drain. 3. Fred doesn’t like to be babied unless he’s in pain, and prefers to do most things himself (see: washing nether regions the day after surgery). 4. When you’re feeling grumpy, a stir-crazy person laughing his ass off for no apparent reason will cause you to laugh as well, whether you feel like doing so or not. 5. The answering machine can effectively record 45,000 messages from a worried mother-in-law (see: "Hi Robyn… I’m just calling to see if Fred’s out of surgery…", with a time stamp of ten minutes BEFORE Fred went into surgery). 6. I’m more bothered by the idea of accidentally hurting Fred than by the looks of his healing incisions (see: practically crying and running around in circles when realizing that the tape attached itself across an incision and needed to be pulled off). 7. Just because someone is recovering from surgery and isn’t moving around much does NOT mean he doesn’t need to use deodorant and lots of it. 8. A stir-crazy man is an annoying man. 9. I’d be a good nurse because I’m good at identifying needs and meeting them. 10. I’d be a bad nurse, because I’m a hover-er (see: "Want something to drink? Are you hungry? Want me to change the channel? Are you hurting? Want a pill?") and never want to let the patient do anything for himself. And in response to his Sunday entry about fallling down the stairs (calm down, he’s fine), I have to defend myself, ’cause doesn’t he make me sound like a TWIT. I was standing in front of the closet, AFTER OFFERING TO GO DOWN AND GET COFFEE FOR HIM, WHICH HE REFUSED TO LET ME DO, and you can’t see down the stairs from the closet, so all I heard was a loud, scary THUMP. I gasped loudly, WHICH IS SOMETHING I DO WHEN I’M STARTLED OR SCARED. It’s a reaction I cannot contain, no matter HOW MANY TIMES A HEARTLESS RAT BASTARD GIVES ME A HARD TIME ABOUT IT. With a bottle of cleaning spray in my hand (NOT bleach, as was erroneously reported), I turned and started toward the stairs, which is when a LOUD series of THUMPTHUMPTHUMPs began, and I screamed and ran to the top of the stairs. Again, SCREAMING WAS A REACTION I COULD NOT HELP. The thought of his stupid ass Fred falling down the stairs scared the shit out of me, causing me to scream. AN INVOLUNTARY REACTION. When I reached the top of the stairs, there he sat about halfway down, laughing. In fact, he laughed so hard for so long that I was afraid he was going to pop open a few staples, and his guts would spill all over the stairs. Miz Poo, having heard me scream – she always comes running when I scream or speak loudly; more on that in a moment – headed up the stairs to comfort me, NOT to try to save Fred from his own slipping and sliding journey down the stairs. Now you know the whole truth. As for Miz Poo coming when I scream or speak loudly, it’s something I recently realized. If Fred and I are laying in bed talking and he gets me excited (uh, not in a sexual way, you pervs), and I raise my voice, she comes running to rub up against me and purr wildly. She’ll even do it if I’m fake-yelling. I sat on the bed this weekend, Miz Poo asleep on the floor, and said at the top of my lungs, "God! I HATE THAT FANCYPANTS!" just to see what she’d do, and in a flash she was up and on the bed, rubbing and purring. What can I say? She loves me. If someone opens the door between the garage and the house while I’m in the garage lifting weights, she’ll do the same thing, rub against me and purr wildly. Fred has suggested that she can sense I’m worked up, since lifting weights really gets my heart pumping, which sends her running to soothe me. Oh, and one last story before I end this entry. If you don’t read Fred’s journal regularly, you don’t know that Tubby has an infected anal gland (gah) and was prescribed antibiotics to cure it. The first day, Fred gave Tubby both his pills. The second day was Wednesday, which is the day Fred had his surgery. He gave Tubby his pill in the morning before we left the house, but as you can imagine, he was in no shape to do that in the evening. It took me THREE tries to get that damn pill in Tubby’s mouth and get him to swallow it. I had him wrapped in a towel, with the spud helping to hold him, with a large amount of my considerable weight helping me hold him down, and it still took three tries to get it down his throat. The next morning, Thursday, although I had Tubby cornered and could get the fucking pill in his mouth, and covered his mouth and stroked his throat, he managed to spit it out four different times. FOUR TIMES. Eventually I gave up, muttering something like "Spit out that fucking pill, you little bastard, that’s JUST FINE. HAVE an infected anal gland, see if I care!" Ten minutes later, Fred took the pill off the dresser where I’d left it before I stalked off in a huff, walked over to Tubby, patted him on the head, and two seconds later the little bastard (Tubby, not Fred) was swallowing the damn pill. Damn him. And every day since then, Fred has given Tubby his pill without incident. That’s right – the man is recovering from major surgery, and I have him chasing Tubby down and shoving a pill down his throat. ]]>

Hands Clean? If you haven’t, it is – in short – about the record company exec she had an affair with for 4 years, starting at the age of 14. The record exec was in his late twenties (I think). Which makes me wonder if he’s out there somewhere waiting for Alanis’ dad to come kick his ass. I have, by the way, apparently turned into an 80 year-old man. A grumpy one, even. You see, we live at the end of a cul-de-sac, and there’s a family to the left of us with a large number of small boys, and in the house to the right of us is a family with a single young boy. The children like to all play together, and the mothers are friends, and to get from one house to the other, the children AND the mothers don’t bother to haul their asses 5 feet to the street, where they would walk from their own driveway to the other. Instead, they tromp directly across our front lawn, not ten feet from the window where I spend a goodly part of my day. And on a nice day, they tromp back and forth a LOT. To me, this is just the height of rudeness, to tromp across someone’s lawn because you’re too damn much of a lazy bastard to go out of your way NOT to tromp on their lawn. I wanted to plant daffodils down the side of our driveway this spring, but knowing that our fuckhead neighbors and their kids would just stomp across the line of flowers made me not bother. So they tromptromptromp all the live-long day, and I sit in front of my computer and shoot them dirty looks and mutter nasty words to myself, and next I’m sure I’ll be hiking up my saggy-ass pants and bitching about how we’d have a nice lawn if it wasn’t for those goddamn neighbors. Oh, wait. I already do that! I’ve told Fred that we should plant bushes and trees all around the border of the lawn to prevent it. I bet we’d certainly become the neighborhood pariahs then, wouldn’t we? Oh, wait. We already are. (No, not really) So, I had occasion to be sitting in a waiting room for several hours on Wednesday, and I was lucky enough (that’s sarcasm) to be sitting directly in front of the TV, and Maury was on. The show had to do with women who had hair that was four feet long and their loved ones who wanted them to cut it off. They did, in the end, cut it off – though none of them went for the Demi Moore in Ghost look; once the hair was cut off, they all had shoulder-length or longer hair – and they looked so much better in their after pictures. But really, who needs hair that’s down to their knees? Why would you want that much hair? I think that once the hair’s past the middle of your back, all it does is get in the way. And it probably causes neck problems, too. After Maury was Jerry Springer – the TV was on the classy channel, apparently, and someone from the group taking up most of the waiting room asked if I minded if they changed the channel and turned the volume down. I was reading and didn’t mind in the slightest, so I smiled and shook my head and went back to reading. As I was trying for the fourteenth time to actually pay attention to what I was reading instead of letting my mind wander, I heard the group in the corner discussing the likelihood of another group of people going to hell. "There’s such a difference between what they say and how they act," said one woman. "And they act like WE are going to hell, when THEY are actually the ones who are!" Apparently the Committee for Deciding Who is Hellbound was meeting in the waiting room. You’d think they’d have their own office somewhere, wouldn’t you? I wonder if I’m going to hell for reading F’d Company in public? Oh, wait. I AM going to hell, but not for that… I was most interested in trying to figure out which group of people they were so certain had an express ticket to Hell, but it was never clear whether they were talking about the Baptists or the Lutherans or the Catholics or the Buddhists or some other group entirely. I suppose I could have gone over and asked, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself in case they should decide I needed to head to Hell right away. 1. What is your favorite restaurant and why? Currently, it’s probably Applebee’s, because I love and adore their Oriental Chicken Salad, which you can get half-size (in case you’re planning on ordering dessert) or full-size (in case you want to be stuffed after you eat dessert). 2. What fast food restaurant are you partial to? I really like Subway, but because I’m the laziest gal in the South and Subway doesn’t have drive-thrus, I generally opt for Wendy’s, which has some pretty good salads. I think I may have the new Buffalo Twister from KFC for lunch today, though. I’m an equal opportunity fast food restaurant eater, really. 3. What are your standards and rules for tipping? Since I worked as a waitress, I’m a really good tipper – I know what it feels like to work your ass of and get a quarter for a tip or even get no tip at all. As long as the server makes the slightest bit of effort and doesn’t make us wait for 45 minutes to get our check, they’ll get a good tip. I think I’ve only ever not left a tip once, and in that case the waitress was openly hostile for no apparent reason. If you’re having a bad day, that’s your problem and not something you need to take out on me – I may not look like it, but I’m one hell of a tipper. I’ve been known to leave a 50% tip for especially good service. 4. Do you usually order an appetizer and/or dessert? It depends on how hungry I am – I’ll split an appetizer with the spud sometimes, but when we go to Applebee’s we ALWAYS get dessert – apple chimicheesecakes rock. 5. What do you usually order to drink at a restaurant? Diet Coke – if they have Pepsi products, I’ll have water instead. —–]]>

In the Kitchen with Rosie (yes, the Oprah book, you just shaddup – Heather suggested I try it out after I whined about always burning the red beans and rice, and this was pretty damn good), and okra as our vegetable. I know boiled okra is slimy, but I really like it. And Fred took this great picture of Tubby last night (no, I haven’t thrown over my love for Miz Poo in favor of Tubby. You’re seeing all these Tubby pictures lately because Nance loves him to death, and we’re all about feeding the addiction). He’s quite the little model, isn’t he? Okay, here we go – sights from my walk. I did my best to remove any identifying marks so as to not encourage stalkers, but if you see anything I missed, I’d appreciate a heads up. Thanks! This is me, in my jaunty yellow cap, grinning like a fool. You’ve gotta love the self-timer function on the camera. I think I should have used the flash for this picture, don’t you? This is from our driveway looking up the street. We live at the end of a circle, and from our house to the end of the street always seems to be the longest part of the walk, both coming and going. Fred and I both call this cat "our buddy." He’s one of the few outdoor cats we see on our walks that will come over to be petted. In fact, as soon as he sees me, he comes running over, meowing his cute little head off. If he thinks I haven’t petted him enough when I try to leave, he’ll try to "herd" me to the side of the sidewalk, in hopes (I guess) of getting me to stop and pet some more. Not far from where our buddy lives, there’s a house where two scottish terriers (I think) live. A lot of the houses in our area have electric fences in the front yard, and these two dogs will bark their fool heads off, but can’t get close enough to tear off one of my legs. You can imagine my terror at the idea of them getting that close. Next door to the barking dogs, someone lost their mind and planted fake daffodils in their flower beds. It absolutely cracks me up. Another yard with an electric fence and two barky dogs. These guys bark in a more friendly manner, though, and I’ve stopped a few times to pet them. I love the way trees blossom in the spring. Have I mentioned? Believe it or not, there’s a house back there. You can’t see it, even if you stand at the end of the driveway and peer up at it, because the people who live there have grown a veritable forest in their front yard. No doubt they’re pissed because a yuppie-filled subdivision popped up across the street from them. It kills me, because I’m the nosiest person in the world, and I’d like to see what the house looks like. Not enough to trespass, ’cause I’m afraid there’s a scary old man with a gun up the driveway a ways. This is the yard where I saw a beaver a few weeks ago. I love this yard, because of the little waterfall. It took the people who own this house a couple of months to get the waterfall running right. When we were looking for a house last fall, this little church was up for sale. I tried to convince Fred that it’d be cool to buy and renovate a church to live in, but he wouldn’t go for it. He has no sense of fun, that man. These flowers are growing alongside a fence. They look like morning glories, a little, but I don’t think they are. I could be wrong, though. Another thing that fascinates me, this trailer in the middle of yuppieville. See, up until maybe 10 years ago, there wasn’t much to Madison, but in the past 10 years, they’ve built it into a total yuppie community. I’m guessing that this trailer was here long before they started with all the subdivisions, and the guy who lives there ain’t going anywhere. I never see the guy who lives there, but I’ve seen a taxi leaving several times, and I think he drives a taxi. You can’t see in the windows at all, even at night, and being the curious sort, I’d like to see what it’s like in there. They finally finished widening this road and paving the sidewalk – which they were doing when I was doing all my 3Day training last year, and had to tromp through the mud and the muck every thrilling day – and it’s turned into a pretty good road to walk down. They also finally finished this big-ass church, and it looks pretty cool. I don’t know what kind of tree that purple one is (note: it’s apparently an American Redbud tree. My readers know just about everything, I swear), but I’d love to have one in our back yard. Think Fred would chop down one of the Bradford Pear trees and plant one of these instead? Probably not. There’s this big old farm house I walk past most days, and I’d love to see the inside of it. They have electric candles in all the windows, and they keep them on all the time. I wonder what that’s about? The farm house from the front. I’d love to own a big, rambling farm house. And part of the land the house is sitting on. It’s pretty close to the road, but has a lot of land behind and to the side. This walkway is pretty much the scariest part of my walk, because it’s pretty secluded, and if some psycho jumps out at me, well, I’m probably done for unless I can beat the shit out of him with my walkman. Needless to say, I’m pretty aware of my surroundings during this part of my walk. And I pretty much run through this part. Having a fence on each side of the sidewalk creeps me out for some reason. Someone got tp’d! As long as it’s not in my yard, I think tp’d trees look pretty cool. Remember last Fall when we were looking for a house, and we made an offer on house number three, and said to each other that if they accepted the offer as written, we’d take the house, and then we found that the realtor had lied about the sellers accepting the offer as it was? Well, this is the house. And it’s still for sale. Thank god it didn’t work out with this house, because the one we ended up in is way better. Around the corner from the above house – and coincidentally, across the street from the second house we made an offer on (which we withdrew because of the rotting windows) is a river. They’ve spent several weeks clearing the land beside it, and now they’re not doing anything. I thought they might put a walkway along it, but who knows? Nice port-a-potty, eh? My favorite yard of all the yards I pass, because it’s so bright and well-kept. I don’t really care for tulips, but I like the colors in this one. Fred told me he thought this ground cover stuff is called phlox. I tried to convince him to put some in the flower bed with the roses and holly bushes, but he’s declared that he’s done messing with it all. From the end of our street, looking down toward the end of the circle. The street veers to the right, so you can’t see our house from here. And we’re home again, home again, jiggity jig. I’m always more than happy to be home at the end of the walk. ]]>

alien pic) F’d Companies. And at the same time, from Kim, I received After All These Years. What are the chances that I’d get two books from my wish list, one from a reader in the U.K, and one from a reader in the U.S, both on the same day? Sweet! And THEN, today was ANOTHER good mail day (I usually hit the post office on Tuesday and Friday, but I had to go to the library to renew a Danielle Steele book for the spud (whyyyyyy? whyyyyyy? my GOD, where have I gone WRONG?!), and I thought I’d stop since I was practically in the area. What did I find? Doctor office pens, which the wonderful (and funny!) Mary Ellen bullied her mom (who works in a doctor’s office) into bringing home for me. And they’re REALLY NICE pens, too! Boy, I’m going to be a writing fool, yes I am. Thank you, Mary Ellen! Okay, I spent half the weekend taking pictures and resizing them for y’all. Enjoy! By far, the most popular request was to see the inside of the fridge. So I took pictures of the fridge, inside the vegetable and fruit drawers, the freezer, and the other freezer (which is way too big and never full, but I wasn’t the one who bought it). A lot of people wanted to see the inside of our cupboards, by which I assumed they meant they wanted to see where the food is kept. As you can see, we don’t have a lot of canned and bottled stuff – I even waited until after Fred got groceries on Saturday to take these pictures. Inside our medicine cabinet, y’all wanted to see. When I think medicine cabinet, I think in the bathroom over the sink, and we don’t have one of those. We keep the majority of our medicine on a shelf in the kitchen, in baskets so that we can remove them and rummage through them. There are bottle of tylenol, aspirin, synthroid, and birth control in the drawer by my sink in the bathroom, but you didn’t really want to see those, did you? My crappy purse. It was $7 from Wal-Mart, and I’ve had it for years. I try out other purses from time to time, but this one works best for me, because it’s got two outside pockets, one that I keep a book in, and one that I put the cellphone and a tube of Blistex in. I keep my checkbook, wallet, sunglasses, keys, pens, and various other things in the middle compartment. Von wanted to see my toes, not because she has a foot fetish (suuuuure you don’t, Von!), but because she wanted to request something a little different. The white part on my right foot, on the toes and just under them, is from when Himself cruelly threw hot grease onto my foot. It looks a lot better now than it did three years ago, believe me. Reader Stacee requested a picture of my shoes. She said it didn’t need to be a special pair – whatever I was wearing at the moment would do. I was wearing my ugly slippers from Land’s End, so I took a picture of those, but I thought I’d share the other ones I wear on a regular basis as well. These are the Nike Air Presto Fazes I wear to walk in. They’re awesome – cushiony, but supportive at the same time. Just like a good man. I wear these Keds when I’m going shopping, out to eat, out to run errands – most of the time, in other words.

These sandals are what I’m wearing if I just need to run to the store or somewhere where I won’t be doing a lot of walking. I have more shoes than these, but these are the ones I wear most of the time. The inside of my Jeep. Hanging from the rearview mirror is my tag from the 3Day, and (though you can’t see it) a wooden smiley-face bead necklace. It’s a bit messy, but compared to the mess I used to have in the car I drove in high school, it’s a model of pristinity (?). You can see the dust on the dashboard. Could be worse, definitely could be better. I force myself to clean and dust the Jeep once a year whether it needs it or not. The bin thingy between the seats which is supposed to hold cds is filled with trash. Those are peanut m&m wrappers, and considering I haven’t had peanut m&ms in almost a month, you can imagine how long that trash has been building up. The inside of Fred’s Jeep. His has less mess than mine, but you can’t see the annoying pile of cds on the passenger side floor that always manage to be where my feet want to be. A shot of his dusty dashboard. The flowerbed directly in front of the computer room – there’s not much there, but everything will grow. The small green plants are petunias (some of them are flowering) and the spiky things are rose bushes. You can see Miz Poo’s face in the corner of the window on the right. The other front flower bed. That’s a row of holly bushes in the front, and rose bushes in the back. We thought we’d plant the rest of the petunias we bought in that flower bed, but we ran out of steam and decided it looks fine as it is. Fancypants, looking evil as usual. No doubt he’s trying to decide whether he’ll poo on the floor outside the laundry room, or skip it this time. Miz Poo, looking a little befuddled. Miz Poo again, wishing I’d settle my ass down in front of the computer so that she can smother me with love. Gomer, trying to decide whether he wants to be NEAR the extension cord, or ON it. Tough decision for such a small brain. Tubby, recovering from his traumatic butt-cleaning episode and looking like a kitty meatloaf. I wonder who on earth could have requested a picture of Tubby? That’s it for today. Chris suggested I take the camera with me on one of my walks, so I did – but that’s an entry in and of itself. In fact, it’ll be tomorrow’s entry, you lucky people! See you then.

]]>

anyone "babe", let alone a woman he hardly knows). When, in the real world, Fred came out of the bathroom to get dressed for work, I was laying there, sound asleep, with a huge grin on my face. He woke me up, and I woke up laughing so hard tears came to my eyes. Definitely a good start to the day. Earlier, while I was still sleeping, the tabby I mentioned last week wandered through our back yard. Our cats were still inside, since it was cold out, and so Fancypants had to content himself for checking her out through the window.

And then, perhaps worried that there was food at stake, Tubby had to come check out the situation for himself (pardon the blurriness of the picture).
Pictures courtesy of Himself. Later, when I was sitting in front of the computer (like I spend 65% of my time – the other 35% is divided amongst sleeping, eating, craving junk food, and shopping) reading email, I glanced into the front yard, and saw Fancypants wandering through the flower bed directly in front of the window. "That damn Fancypants!" I muttered. "Jumped the fence again, I guess." A second later, I remembered that the back door wasn’t open, and hadn’t been opened in the five minutes since I saw Fancypants snoozing on the couch. Apparently Fancypants’ evil twin (except that I’m sure Fancypants is actually the evil one) now lives in our neighborhood. Today was another good mail day – I received a card in the mail from Suzy (thanks, Suzy!), and from reader Terry in Texas, who is apparently of the opinion (like me) that you can never have too many calendars, I received: two of ’em! Not a great picture, but you get the idea of what they look like. Now I need to decide where I want to hang ’em. Thank you so much, Terry! I’m still taking requests for stuff of which you wish to see pictures – I’ll probably do and post the entry for that on Monday. 1. What are the first things that you do in the morning to start your day? I lay in bed for ten minutes or so, petting Miz Poo and arguing with myself whether I’m ready to get up, or if I need to just go back to sleep. When I finally roll out of bed, I pop my contacts in, take my Synthroid, clean out the litter box, get dressed, and go downstairs. Once downstairs, I check my email, drink water, and argue with myself whether I want to skip exercising completely (for the record, I almost never decide to skip exercising, but the devil on my shoulder gives it her best try every morning). Sometime between 8:30 and 9:00 (sometimes later on the weekend), I force myself to go lift weights or go for my walk, depending on what day it is. 2. What are the last things that you do at night before going to bed? To me, bedtime starts at 9:00. I brush my teeth, take my birth control pill, and change into my nightgown. Fred and I lay in bed, cuddle, and talk for half an hour to 45 minutes, and then he wanders off to bed. I get up and either watch TV if I’ve got something on tape to watch, or read until 11:30 or 12:00. Then I pop my contacts out, pee one last time (though I get up one to three times to pee during the night), and settle in with Miz Poo next to me. 3. What daily routine have you recently added to your day? Honestly, I don’t think anything at all has changed in recent memory. 4. What routine do you wish you get rid of? I’d be more than happy to turn over cleaning out the litter box to someone else, but I had to agree to clean it out myself every day before Fred would let me get Miz Poo, so I can’t really complain. I also wouldn’t mind having someone else do the laundry, but I’m the one who’s neither working nor going to school, plus I know which shirts can’t go into the dryer, so I’m not complaining about that, either. 5. What’s the one thing that makes you feel like something is missing if you don’t do it some point within your day? There are two things, really. If I don’t take a shower, I feel wrong all day long. Also, if I don’t exercise, I spend the rest of the day in a bit of a haze.

]]>

baaaaack. So, in a blog I read, a blogger had a cool idea. She took suggestions for pictures of things that people wanted to see – her rats, cats, purse (that was my suggestion!), that sort of thing, and then took pictures of the requested items and posted them. Since I’m nothing but a big ol’ copycat, I think I’ll do the same. Like her, I won’t take a picture of my boobs (oh, wait – I already posted one of those, didn’t I? Well, I won’t take another one, though you can knock yourself out asking) or any kind of nekkidness, but other than that (within reason), anything’s fair game. What would you like to see? Last night, for the 143rd time since I’ve been living in the south, I attempted to make red beans and rice for dinner. The difference was that I was trying to make 2 batches of it, one for dinner and one to freeze to have dinner at some other point in time, since two batches is as easy to make as one. Each batch was in it’s own pot boiling merrily away, and I went into the kitchen to fry up the turkey kielbasa, when I smelled it. Burned fucking beans. I swear to god, EVERY fucking time I make them, I burn the damn beans. EVERY time. Fred makes red beans, and do they burn? NO. Bastard. From here on out, he’s making them, because I give up. I know what I’m doing wrong, but I’m powerless to stop my dumbass self. I’m not keeping enough water in the pot, but cooking is just SO BORING that I wander off to check email or read, and before I know it, the water’s boiled away and the damn beans are burned to the pot. Grrr! I was making two batches of the stuff because – as I mentioned – cooking is SO BORING, and I planned to freeze the other batch, so that I could just take it out of the freezer one morning, let it thaw, heat it, and serve it up like I’d been slaving over the stove all day. My plan was to start making double batches of every possible entree from here on out, but after the bean disaster I may have to think twice about that.

I was stomping around the kitchen after I’d discovered the burning beans, and I growled "It’s such a waste!", whereupon Fred reminded me "It’s a waste of about 40 cents, Bessie!" Oh yeah. Thank god beans are cheap. Of the 82 (at this moment) people who took my straightening iron poll yesterday, almost half wanted me to come eat fried chicken in the dark with them. Just goes to show that given a goofy choice, 49% of Bitchypoo readers will choose it. That line ("Come eat fried chicken in the dark with me, beautiful") or something similar came from The Stand, by the way. Fred suggested it. —–

]]>

I was watching The Bachelor Monday night (y’all may just shut up this very moment – you KNOW that reality TV is like crack to me. Except for Fear Factor, which I loathe because of the nasty shit they always have to eat. Bleh.), and I was all horrified. "What KIND of man would do this?" I thought, aghast. "What KIND of man would go on a show where he had twenty five gorgeous women dying for him to fall in love with… Oh." What kind of man WOULDN’T do it is more the question, I guess. So, the show has caught and held my attention (big shock there, eh?), and I was happy to see the bachelorette (gag) I didn’t like go, and the one, two, three I did like stay. Apparently Alex and I have similar taste in women. Anyway, while I was watching the show, Shannon (a sweetheart, but maybe too nice) was using a straightening iron on her hair. It seemed to work really well for her, and I was awestruck at the smooth, shiny straightness of her hair. I have a hard time getting my hair as straight as I’d like, because it’s fairly wavy. So naturally, I made up a poll for those of you who’ve used a straightening iron to answer. Give it a go, would you?

Straightening Iron – good or bad?

Does a straightening iron work well? Yes, it works great. My hair’s never looked better! Not bad, but it’s so expensive that it’s not worth the cost. No, it doesn’t work worth a damn. Come eat fried chicken in the dark with me, beautiful. Current Results

Of course, it’s all really a moot point. The ones I’ve seen online are $70 or more, and I’ll only have the one-length hair until my 35th birthday, because then I’m CHOPPING IT OFF. That’s right, my 35th birthday present to myself is going to be having my hair cut like this. Ashley Judd’s ‘do, that is – not Hugh Jackman. In a perfect world, having my hair cut like her would make me LOOK like her, but I’m not holding my breath. Mother Nature is getting ON MY NERVES. It was almost 80 here yesterday. Today? 55. I guess I shouldn’t really complain, because 55’s better than 30, but still. Give me back my 80, you bitch! Ah well. At least it’s sunny. Fred bought and planted 4 rose bushes in our front flower bed yesterday. Now all that remains is to put down the black felt to prevent weeds, buy and plant some petunias, and put down mulch, and that bed will be all set. A guy came today to clean out the other flower bed (uh, we hired him to do it, it’s not like he was wandering by and decided to), and this weekend Fred’s going to plant more rose bushes there. I love the idea of planting rose bushes in our front flower beds, because they’re way more interesting to me than the boring green bushes that were there when we moved in. I still have to buy lily bulbs for the back yard, and I’ve ordered a couple of butterfly bushes with a coupon I had. One will go in the back yard somewhere and the other will go in front of the fence on the side of the house. I had thought of planting one in the front flower bed, but they really get too big to go there. Oh, and I want to grow tomatoes, too! Okay, enough of the gardening babble.]]>

this url, which claimed Osama Bin Laden had been captured at a railway station in New Delhi, and I got about two paragraphs in, exclaimed "Oh my god, that’s awesome!", and then said "I wonder why CNN isn’t reporting… DAMNIT!" I also got this email: I had found your little journal looking around, and who the hell do you think you are. Excuse me, but us poor people have some depth that you just couldn’t understand. We are hard working people, but have you ever thought of how many children one might have? Or maybe a wife’s support walked out on her, or maybe she is a single working mother that works her ass off. People like you really disgust me, like totally. You say don’t make me come after you, well don’t make the poor folk come after you. Some people cannot be born into money, some people have so little hope that they give up, and maybe can’t attend the best job, have the best clothes, but at least there is a roof over our heads and a place we can call home. It is people like you who make this world filthy, not us poor people, so you can just take your Walmart eating ass where ever the hell you came from, you really make me sick ("Walmart eating ass" will be the name of my seventh novel, in case you were curious.) I read it and thought "What the fuh?", then realized that it had to be about this entry. And then I came to the conclusion that it had to be a joke. No one’s that much of a dumbass, are they? So I replied: Despite the fact that the timestamp on your email is 10 minutes before midnight on March 31st, I’m going to assume that this is an attempt at an April Fool’s joke, because I refuse to believe that anyone could possibly be that dumb. Nice try, though – you almost had me!

* * * * * I watched Life as a House Saturday night, by myself, because Fred watched the preview with me (god, I love dvds), grunted "That’s a CHICK movie", hitched up his pants and ran away before the chick-movie rays could start shrinking his penis. What an awesome, incredible movie. Not a false step anywhere – I loved it from beginning to end, and immediately declared it my favorite movie. In fact, I went directly to Amazon and added it to my wish list, and I’m thinking about renting it to watch again this week. I love Kevin Kline; how can you not? * * * * * I feel like I spend my entire life walking around the house closing doors and drawers, and pushing chairs in. Apparently I’m the only one who understands that there aren’t little elves who do that sort of thing. * * * * * Man. I just got back from the post office. What a GREATmail day it was! From the wonderful Nance, as thanks for sending her a set of grumpy mugs, I received a thank you card and: a cat pin, from the folks responsible for Boyd’s Bears. Adorable, isn’t it? I don’t know where, but Nance got the idea that I like cats. Where could she have gotten a silly idea like that?
I also got (it was addressed to both of us, but it’s really more for Fred): from reader Debra. Thanks Debra, though I’m sure I’ll be cursing you when Fred’s playing the cd for the 53rd time in a row! From, as the return address said, a fan of my web site, I received The Quarterly Purge: which looks really good, especially Is Fat a Feminist Issue? – I can’t wait to read it. Thanks, fan in Vegas! (I’m assuming it came from the editor, Marinn, because the signature in the letter from the editor looked a lot like the writing on the return address, but perhaps I’m assuming too much. 🙂 Next, reader Angie in WI (who works in IL), sent me a sheet of smiley-face stickers, a highlighter, and a pen: What cracked me up is that it came in an envelope from her work, addressed to "Robyn Anderson, OFB LTD", and I figured I’d sent away for a free something-or-other, and I’d claimed I was the owner of OFB LTD so that I could get it. Hee! That’s totally something I’d do, too. Thanks, Angie! Lastly, but certainly not least(ly?), I received from reader Lorraine (in CA) a daffodil poster: I love it! In fact, I was recently thinking that not much of the stuff we have hung on the walls around here really reflects my taste (of course, we only have three or four pictures hung up in the entire house, so that’s not saying much), so I’m going to have the poster framed and try to figure out where I want to hang it. Thank you, Lorraine! Have I mentioned that I love getting real mail? It’s funny that all those things arrived in the mailbox at once, because the last few times I’ve looked, there’s been nothing in it at all – this was definitely a nice surprise, considering I had to get up an hour (okay, an hour and a HALF) earlier than usual, to go have my blood drawn for another thyroid test. Thanks y’all for making my day!]]>

Those motherfuckers at Yahoo have, well, go read this, and if you’ve got a Yahoo id, follow the instructions. I went and looked at my information and was THRILLED, let me tell you, to find my home address listed (though I guess you can’t really see the information in another person’s Yahoo profile). I also switched my email address to my hotmail email address. If you don’t have a crap email address, you ought to go sign up for one with hotmail or yahoo or any of those free email services that you can use if you place online orders or register for anything, to reduce the spam that comes in to your primary email.

* * *

We were watching the end of Survivor last night (MAN, I can’t believe they voted that person off. Damn it!) and during the commercial break after the vote and before the scenes from next week’s show, Fred got the camera and went out to take a picture of the full moon

OH! I guess maybe that’s why the cats are acting like total freaks these past few days – not only is it heavily hormonal around here right now (ie, THAT time o’ the month), but it’s also a full moon. That always makes ’em act twice as crazy.

                                                        and as he opened the door, something went running away from the patio. He turned and told me he’d startled a skunk, who ran across the yard and hid under the shed. I came out to check it out, and as I was peering across the yard toward the shed, Fred pointed toward the fence and said "There’s something on the fence!" It was a cat, and we deduced that it was unlikely there’d have been both a cat and a skunk in the back yard at the same time, so probably what he’d thought was a skunk was more likely a second cat. We went back in (to find that we’d missed the damn previews) and Fred wandered off to take more pictures of the moon. We settled in to watch The Shield, which I taped Tuesday night, and about halfway through the show, I thought I heard the sound of a cat meowing. I paused the tape, and we listened. It appeared to be coming from outside, so we went to check it out.

It was the same two cats, and they ran halfway across the yard, then turned to watch us. There was a gray one, which we’ve seen in our yard before, and a long-haired tortoiseshell. The tortoiseshell was making those growling, hissing, I’m-in-heat-do-me sounds (I’ve never actually had a cat who was in heat, but I know the sounds of "do me, you bastard" in cat language, for some reason). We called and called to them – I don’t know why we thought they would come over to be petted, they obviously had more important things to do – and finally Fred walked toward them, and they jumped the fence into the neighboring yard to howl and hiss and have hot kitty sex.

I think they were attracted to our back yard because I keep a bowl of dog food on the patio. Last Fall, when we were briefly dog owners, I noticed that the birds liked to eat the dog food we left out there for the dog, so even after there was no dog to eat the food, I kept the dish filled for the birds.

Don’t look at me like that.

Well, apparently not only do the birds like it, but the neighborhood cats do, because I just filled up the bowl (I’ve switched to the cheapie dog food) Tuesday, and this morning it was mostly gone. Doing my part to nourish the neighborhood kitties, yes indeedy.

I was teasing Fred last night for not being the particularly complimentary type, and thus when I went to sleep, I dreamed that he said "Bessie, you’re almost as pretty as -" and then he compared me to someone famous, but I can’t remember who. When he woke me up to help give Spanky his medication, I told him about it, and then gave him a mock-dirty look.

"Well, it COULD have been a compliment!" he said teasingly. "For instance, if I said you were almost as pretty as Phyllis Diller, that would be one thing. But if I said you were almost as pretty as Cindy Crawford or Sean Young, that would be another!" And he smirked at me, the joke being that he LOATHES Cindy Crawford and Sean Young and thinks they’re the most hideous creatures to walk the face of the earth.

Bastard.

Friday Five:

1. If you could eat dinner with and “get to know” one famous person (living or dead), who would you choose? Okay, this is going to sound cheesy as hell, but y’all know I’m just about the nosiest person alive, right? With the caveat that he’d have to answer every question I asked truthfully and completely (it sounds like I’m implying he’d lie, doesn’t it? I swear, I’m not!), I’d want to dine with Jesus, so I could pump him for information about how everything truly happened and how he felt every step of the way. See, the thing is that the bible was written by men – it’s not like the hand of god came down and scribbled the whole thing personally, so how likely is it that the whole life, death, and resurrection of christ is correct in every detail? Not likely, I think.

(Close your email clients, because I don’t want to hear that I’m going to hell.)

Failing that, I’m not sure who I’d choose to have dinner with. I’d say Stephen King, but I think I’d just sit there and go "Heh. Heh. Where do you get your ideas? Heh. Heh. You write good books. Heh."

2. Has the death of a famous person ever had an effect on you? Who was it and how did you feel? Another cheesy answer coming up. I was really freaked out by Kurt Cobain’s death. Not because I thought he was a particular genius – I wasn’t much of a Nirvana fan, really – but because he was so young and had such a young child and wife, and to me (though it shouldn’t have been) it was a real surprise.

The thing is that I’ve been really lucky and never suffered from any type of depression more serious than a day or two of the blues. At my lowest, I’ve always known that things would eventually get better. When someone feels that life is too full of pain to go on, it confuses me, because I can’t really understand it. Which is to say, I understand THAT people feel that way, but I’ve never felt it myself, so I can’t relate.

Also, I was stunned by the death of Princess Diana, because it was so unexpected and I loved her so much when I was growing up. Hell, I actually HAD a Diana ‘do when I was a kid, and I spent the entire day watching the wedding on TV when she married Charles. It seemed like maybe her life was starting to come together for real when she died. I had no idea she’d even been in an accident until I came out to the dining room table and glanced at the cover of the Sunday paper. I gasped "Oh my god!", and Fred came running to see what was going on.

3. If you could BE a famous person for 24 hours, who would you choose? Someone with an awesome body and a great singing voice. Sara Evans. Sarah McLaughlan. Martina McBride. I’d say Madonna, but honestly? She scares the bejeezus out of me.

4. Do people ever tell you that you look like someone famous? Who? I’ve been told I resemble Rosie O’Donnell, thank you. Could be worse, could be Phyllis Diller, right? Really, though I’d much prefer to be told I strongly resemble some sex goddess like Michelle Pfeiffer, I’ve always thought Rosie was pretty cute, so I’m not complaining.

5. Have you ever met anyone famous? I met Stephen King when I was 14 or so – he was signing books at a theater in Lewiston where one of his movies (I want to say Cujo, but I don’t think that was it) was premiering, and I was absolutely tongue-tied. My mother had to step forward and tell him how to spell my name. I also saw him many years later after t he Rock Bottom Remainders played in Portland (and Dave Barry as well.

Other brushes with celebrity – I saw Tim Burton and Lisa Marie at the baggage claim in the LA airport the second time I flew out there to visit the (ex) in-laws. I recognized him and knew who he was (this was after Batman, but before Edward Scissorhands), but when I pointed him out to the in-laws, they hadn’t a clue.

I also saw Jean Smart with her kid at Disneyland during the same visit.

Hey, check out this cool picture of the moon Fred took yesterday morning:

Have a great weekend, and happy Easter (if you celebrate it), y’all!

 

—–]]>

Jennifer Weiner, the author of Good in Bed (which I really liked) has a blog that I’m enjoying. Check it out.

This morning, I was about to eat breakfast, and since it was still rather cool outside I didn’t want the back door open while I was sitting at the table eating. So I shooed the cats inside and started to make my breakfast. They sat about looking sadly at me and then gazing out the window, then back at me. Since I’m not a heartless bitch (shaddup), I came up with a solution – I opened one of the windows in the library, took off the screen, and voila! Instant access to the back yard for the kitties. They milled about confusedly, sniffing out the window, looking at me, and then stepping out onto the window sill. Eventually, they figured it out and went out through the window and resumed their wanderings about the yard.

Five minutes later, I was eating breakfast, when I glanced up at the door, where Spanky was sitting and howling mournfully. "Momma!" he cried "Momma, I’ll be good! Let me in Momma, let me in!"

Obviously in the few minutes he’d been outside, it slipped his little pea brain how he’d gotten there. I had to go into the library, stick my head out the window and call to him. He turned and looked at me for a long moment and then immediately did a double-take – I swear to god, if he was a cartoon, his double-take would sound like "doink!" – and then ran over to the window as if he’d never seen it before, sniffing wildly. I went back to eating breakfast, and eventually figured out how to get back inside, because he’s sitting in the computer room doorway giving the vacuum cleaner dirty looks at the moment.

Have I mentioned that instead of chasing flies with a flyswatter, I use the vacuum cleaner attachment to suck them into the innards of the vacuum cleaner, where they probably die horrible, dusty, cat-hair-filled deaths? I’d try Shelley‘s cool hairspray-and-lighter method to fry them in mid-air, but I’m too afraid that I’d do something like burn the house down. And you KNOW that’s something I’d do, don’t you?

Hell, at least it’d give me a good journal entry.

Here’s a special something just for you, Nance::

This is why I buy the cheap comforters – because at least two cats spend all day long snoozing on the bed. And it gets so hair-matted after a few months despite regular vacuumings (that’s right, I vacuum my bed, you wanna make something of it?) that it’s easier to just buy a new one instead of having the old one dry-cleaned.

Oh, speaking of cats, last night as we were watching Greg the Bunny on TV, Fancypants swished into the living room and after getting some petting from Fred, settled in the middle of the floor, directly in front of me. He proceeded to groom and groom and groom. For many minutes he groomed, and then I noticed that he was spending a GREAT deal of time grooming his mid-section – IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN – with his legs kicked up in the air. He finally stopped and looked up at me with big, dark eyes and gave me a come-hither look.

Which is when I saw his little kitty penis pointing directly at me.

(Little Kitty Penis will be the name of my second novel)

"Agh! Get out of here!" I yelled, tossing a pillow at him. Rolling and flailing, he got to his feet and flounced out of the room.

Apparently Spring fever has hit him hard, the little perv.

  —– ]]>