Author: Robyn

Survivor‘s going to be on in an hour and fifteen minutes, and I do believe I’ll go mad with the waiting.

My prediction for the million bucks is Colby, but it really all depends on who wins immunity. If Colby and Keith are the final two, Colby’ll win, no doubt. If it’s he and Tina though, I think he’ll have a tougher time of it. Keith vs. Tina? Tina, no doubt.

I almost hope Colby doesn’t win, just because he’s won every reward and immunity challenge in recent history. I could feel Elisabeth’s frustration last week. You’d think Colby would be smart enough to throw one or two of the reward challenges, just so everyone wouldn’t feel so frustrated.

I spent the morning (after exercising, o’ course) on the couch watching Felicity and Once and Again. We don’t have the channel Felicity comes on – what is it again? – but FOX shows Felicity at 3:30 am Thursday mornings, and since I go against that "females can’t program the vcr" stereotype, I tape it. Once and Again comes on Wednesday nights at 9, and since Himself’s face would melt off if he was in bed as late as 9:03, I have to tape that as well.

About Felicity, I have this to say: What the fuck is Ben’s problem? He friggin’ breaks Felicity’s heart once a month. She needs to kick his stupid ass to the curb and take up with Noel again. Ben ain’t nothin’ but heartbreak, baby.

And every Ben I’ve ever known has been a total asshole. What’s up with that?

About Once and Again, I have this to say: TWENTY-ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR A FUCKING WEDDING??? God in heaven, what’s up with THAT? I have to admit, I just don’t get the whole thing where you hock your kidney to pay for a big wedding that lasts a few hours. What a waste! My first wedding – the expensive one – cost something like $300, and most of that was food. We had a sit-down dinner at a semi-nice restaurant for 20 of my family and friends. The second – and last – one cost about $100, was just Fred, the spud and I, and included the best damn cake I’ve had in my life. And I giggled half-hysterically through the entire ceremony.

The only way it could have been better is if we’d flown to Vegas and gotten married by John Wayne Bobbitt. Which we seriously considered. Well, him or Elvis.

Anyway, back to the subject. I’m thinking Lily and Rick need to work on their communication skills. The wedding they did have ended up being really nice, I’ll admit. I teared up more than once.

Oh, and in what universe is Lily the prettier sister? Puh-lease.

I have discovered a new way to deal with bugs. I tend to leave the back door open on nice days (and we’ve had a lot of nice days recently) so the cats can go out into the backyard if they’ve a yen to, and as a result we get the occasional uglynasty red wasp in the house. Since I’m not really the cruel type (at least not usually) what I’d prefer to do is shoo them back out the door, but they tend not to comply with that. I don’t like squishing them, because they leave a mess on the windows. And since I wash my windows every three years whether they need it or not, that’s not a good thing.

One day last week, another red wasp wandered in, buzzed around the ceiling, buzzed around the window, and gave me dirty "I’m going to sting you, bitch!" looks. I tried to shoo him out the door, but no go. So I hooked up the vacuum cleaner, attached the attachments to make the hose longer, and sucked that fucker right out of the air. One minute he was making threatening "Right in the eyeball, bitch!" faces, and the next, THWOOMP! he was gone into the vacuum cleaner to live out the rest of his life with a lot of cat hair and dust.

I’ve done it to one other red wasp since then, and Fred got a nasty long-legged mosquito the other night, but since then we’ve been relatively bug-free.

I think word is getting out in the bug world. "Psst! Avoid that house! Bob went in there last week and then Wanda a few days later, and they haven’t been seen since! I peeked through the window the other night and they were going after Antoine! It’s an abattoir in there!"

What? You don’t think bugs would use the word "abattoir?"

 

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Fred had no problem whatsoever getting Spanky into the cat carrier this morning. He popped him in the carrier before Spanky knew what was going on, and in the carrier poor Spanky stayed for half an hour until the vet’s office was open and I could go drop him off.

During that half hour, Miz Poo, Mr. Fancypants, and Tubby sat around and sniffed at Spanky through the holes in the carrier, probably relieved that it wasn’t their turn, not this time. Spanky made one strong attempt to escape, but since he could only fit a single paw through that two-inch hole, he was not terribly successful.

I sent Moira an email last night, and she insisted I put the story in my journal so, word for word, here it is:

We’ve been having a problem with one of the cats pooping next to the litter box, on the rug it sits on, instead of inside the litter box itself. Every time it’s happened, I’ve gotten all pissed and bitched about it to Fred. Finally, he suggested that I put newspaper next to the box, and just toss the paper when it happens. So I cleaned the entire litter box area and put down several pieces of newspaper to catch the wayward poo. The next morning I come downstairs, and what do I find? A little pile of cat poo.

NEXT to the newspaper. As if the little bastard had said “Oh, can’t poo on Mom’s newspaper, don’t want to get it all nasty!”

Figures, doesn’t it?

And since this is apparently going to be an all-kitty entry, I must inform you all that the reason Spanky needed to go to the vet’s this morning is because he’s been having problems peeing. Every time I walked by the litter box, he was in there, and this morning he was in pee position on the rug in front of Fred’s shower, and nothing happened. I thought at first that he might be diabetic because it seemed that he was drinking a lot as well, but come to find out (I just picked him up from the vet’s) he actually has Cystitis which, according to the informational pamphlet they gave me, is the medical term for "inflammation" (their quotes, not mine) of the Urinary Bladder.

We have to give him 3 pills a day for 3 weeks. Thank god Fred’s pretty good at getting the cats to take pills, because I’m completely hopeless.

Oh, and we have to give him the ultra-expensive Hill’s Science Diet Prescription Formula. And since it’s hard to control what he eats when there’s food available all the time in the food dish, that means we’ll be feeding that ultra-expensive food to all the kitties.

AND all of the other kitties need to have their yearly exams and shots, and I made the stupid mistake of making an appointment for each of them on a different day next week.

Since I don’t want to take a second mortgage out on the house to pay for all those appointments, I guess I need to call and cancel them and reschedule one every other week or something.

Tomorrow, perhaps I’ll fascinate y’all with stories about dryer lint.

 

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So, after reading an entry at HateYourDaddy, I went onto Napster to download He Stopped Loving Her Today (shaddup) and was amazed anew at the freakin’ idiots who can’t spell. Not sure whether I had the title of the song right, I searched under the artist’s name. George Jones.

No files found! said Napster. That was odd, I thought. Maybe Napster was being screwy. So I disconnected from Napster and reconnected. Searched on George Jones. Again, no files found! Okay… Searched on "stopped loving" under the song title. Up came a huge list of He Stopped Loving Her Today, sung by Georg Jones. And Georges Jones. And Geroge Jones. Not a single George Jones in the bunch.

It better not be any of y’all perpetrating the misspellings, ’cause I don’t want to hunt you down and snatch you baldheaded, and you know I will. That sort of thing just gets all over me.

(Note: I have been informed by Himself that Napster has turned on filtering because the court ruled against them, so people are misspelling stuff on purpose. Who’s the dumbass now, huh? That’s right, me.)

Spanky had a vet appointment today. The plan was that I would drop him off around 7, and Fred would pick him up on his way home from work. I started the way I usually do: I got the cheap cardboard carrier down from it’s usual spot over the washer and dryer. I left it out on the stairs while I lifted weights, so that the cats could get weirded out by it’s existence and then get over it. When I was done lifting weights (owwww, my arms…) I went upstairs, carrying the carrier with me, got dressed (since I didn’t want to show up at the vet’s office in bright green shorts and a lavender t-shirt; I don’t generally wear that particular outfit in public), opened the carrier, and went looking for Spanky. He wasn’t hard to find, since he was rolling around in a patch of sunlight in the dining room. As I picked him up, he was wary but happy, purring his fool head off and rubbing his whiskers against my shirt.

Hey Mom, where we going? he asked happily. We going to go have snacks? I like snacks, but Tubby always steals my snacks! Oh hey, you know, you shouldn’t leave that box thing sitting out, because it’s got all those kitty fear molecules all over it from when you take us to the place where they stick things up our butts and scare us. Um, Mom? Mom, that’s not funny, stop trying to scare me! Mom! Mom! I don’t want to go in the box, Mom! They will hurt me at that place and I will drool all over the place and embarrass myself and you in front of the butt-sticking guy! NO! NO BOX!

As I put him in the cat carrier, which opens from the top, he made like a flying squirrel, each of his four paws outstretched as far as possible, each in a different direction. I managed to cram him into the carrier – eventually – and started to close the top, and somehow he came shooting out between the two panels before I could get them locked shut.

"DAMN. IT!" I yelled. The spud came out from the kitchen where she’d been eating her morning bowl of cereal. Spanky ran into the dining room and hid behind the couch, certain that I would never find him.

"Can you get him?" I asked the spud. She bent down and picked him up.

Oh thank you, he said frantically. She was going to put me in the BOX! The BOX! I don’t like the BOX! I like SNACKS but Tubby always tries to steal my SNACK!

I went over and took him from the spud and headed back for the carrier.

Oh Mom! he purred. Where were you? Something bad just happened, but I don’t remember what. Are we going to go lay in a patch of sunlight and stretch? I like to do that. That and snacks. Is it time for a snack?

He was halfway in the box before he realized what was going on. I had a firm grip on him and was certain that this time I’d get the job done. He grabbed at the outside of the box with his front paws, trying to squirm away from me. I forced his front paws into the box, and he managed to get his head outside the box.

"GOD. DAMN. IT. GET. IN. THERE!" I bellowed, sweating more profusely than I had even during the sixth set of Pulley Extensions which kick my ass in a big way. Spanky shrieked in terror, squirmed frantically, and shot out of the box like a greased pig. He zoomed across the room, through the master bedroom, and into the master bathroom. I stood up and panted, swearing loudly and inventively.

"Should I get the other carrier?" the spud suggested. The other carrier is made of hard plastic and opens in the front, instead of on top. I asked her to get it from the downstairs closet and shut the door to the master bathroom so he couldn’t escape.

He hadn’t really thought that one through, apparently.

When the spud came up from the basement, we went into the bathroom together, walking through the crowd of cats huddled in front of the closed door. Miz Poo’s tail was fluffed out as far as I’ve ever seen it. Much as she and Spanky fight, I guess she didn’t care for hearing him yowl in terror.

Spanky was huddled in the closet doorway and eyed the new cat carrier with suspicion. That’s not a snack! he protested.

When I walked toward him, he scooted past me and ran behind the toilet. I put the carrier on the other side, hoping he was stupid enough to run right into it. He didn’t, only curled up as small as possible, perhaps hoping we wouldn’t see him. I tried pushing at him, and he wouldn’t budge. I picked up the spray bottle and sprayed him, hoping it would make him move. It did not.

So I gave up. Called and changed the appointment to tomorrow. Fred’s going to get the damn cat in the damn carrier before he leaves for work.

Spanky has already forgiven me. All it took was a single yummy kitty treat.

 

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Bridget Jones’s Diary last Wednesday and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m not a big Renee Zellweiger fan, never really have been, but I liked her a lot as Bridget Jones. Hugh Grant was great in his role, and I even liked Colin Firth, despite the stonefaced demeanor. I’m thinking of making every Wednesday movie day here in Bitchyland – the matinees are half-price, and there’s hardly ever more than two or three other people in the entire theater. And hey, now that my ass is but a fragment of it’s former self, I fit very comfortably in the theater seat. Bonus! AND I used my big purse to sneak some lite popcorn in with me, so I didn’t have to buy anything at the snack bar besides a small Diet Coke. Speaking of my ass (which I did in the previous paragraph; weren’t you paying attention?), I got checked out today by a rugged, good-looking (so far as I could tell) tanned young man who was working on a sign near the Wendy’s where I got my lunch. I was pulling up to the exit, and he turned and looked at me, and the further I went, the more he turned, smiling the entire way. It’s entirely possible that he was smiling at me in a mocking god in heaven that’s one fat woman! way, but I don’t think so. I’ve been the target of many a christ in a sidecar I’ve never seen anyone so fat! smirk, and this wasn’t that. So I stopped and had sex with him. Hee! Fred didn’t believe me either. What I actually did was smile back at him and kept on going, which I believe is a good response to most anything life throws at you. ]]>

Self magazine is as full of shit as any piece of crap woman’s magazine has ever been. Ever how much calcium coupled with ever how much magnesium does NOT do away with PMS, not in the slightest. What it does is make your PMS sixty-three times worse than it’s ever been before. Today, I have: stomped my Walkman to pieces, swore loudly at each and every red light I came across, entertained thoughts of taking Fancypants out into the country and dropping him off in front of some anonymous farmhouse, snarled at a Staples cashier, and sighed in a loud and repeatedly annoyed manner at the two 70 year-old women who kept chattering through the trailers before Bridget Jones’s Diary started. Oh, and had a bitchy, hissyfit-like conversation with my shorts as I walked down the street, due to their insistence on riding up between my thighs. And thought about putting my motherfucking fist through my motherfucking monitor because my motherfucking internet access has been going down every 9.8 seconds. And been pissed because during the 6 seconds my motherfucking internet access has NOT been down, I haven’t been able to access Diarist.net’s list page, so I don’t dare to try to send out a notify via that list. Where will the Bitchypoo notify list move next? Oh, the excitement! And felt guilty because I’m about a week behind in my emailing/ journal reading. I swear I’ll get to it one of these days.

Needless to say, I’m in a horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad mood, and I’m going to take a few days off from the journal and away from the computer. I may be back before the end of the week, I may not. I’m sure I’ll be back next Monday, with bells on, ready to go, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and all that. See you sooner or later! —–

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Little Nicky came out today, god knows we can’t miss that…) I headed for Sam’s Club, which is about a half-hour drive through the most congested streets of Huntsville. Once there, before I got out of the Jeep, I looked through my wallet for my membership card so I wouldn’t have to search for it at the door like annoying people do. I looked in all the crooks and crannies of my wallet but it was nowhere to be seen. A lightbulb went on over my head as I recalled cleaning out my wallet last night and taking out what I thought was a used-up Wal-Mart gift card and tossing it in the trash. But the used-up Wal-Mart gift card was still in my wallet. What a dumbass. What’s worse is that I was about two-thirds of the way home before I realized I should have just gone in to customer service and told them that I’d lost my card. Dumbass, take two. Took another 6 packages to the post office, where the same guy waited on me. No doubt when he sees me walk through the door tomorrow, he’ll be sure to put up his "closed" sign immediately. So with 7 packages yesterday and 6 today, that’s (doing the math) halfway there. Or somethin’. The pile that’s been covering the couch in the computer room is slowly disappearing, thank god, since I like to snooze on that couch with Miz Poo from time to time, and having the pile there (whose bright idea was it to put that pile there anyway, huh?) is putting a crimp in my style. Did y’all watch Boston Public last night? When the paramedics were working on Christine, I pointed out "They never say ‘joules’ on ER." And then in every medical-type scene we sat and discussed the fakiness of what was going on, comparing it all to ER. The implication being, of course, that ER‘s a medical show, so they always do everything correctly. What’s up with Guber, running around firing everyone at the drop of a hat? And that kid from Freaks and Geeks is getting a tad creepy, isn’t he? Doesn’t he know that it’s not even funny to be talking about his "list"? Speaking of Anthony Heald (Guber, if you didn’t know), he reads the audiobook I listen to when I’m walking outside, Dean Koontz’s Dark Rivers of the Heart, and there’s a huge difference between listening to Stephen King read a book, and hearing an actor like Anthony Heald read a book. When exciting things are happening in the book I’m listening to, Anthony Heald’s voice reflects that, speeds up so much that you can almost hear his heart pounding. On the other hand, when he reads a scene with a lot of scientific detail, his voice goes all flat and dry, and you can practically hear him yawn. The only parts I don’t like is when he’s doing a woman’s voice, because he sounds exceedingly prissy. Overall, though, I highly recommend it. Speaking of Stephen King, I’m currently a little more than halfway through Dreamcatcher, and I need to warn anyone who’s not read it yet: do NOT read this book while eating! Stephen King is, at least during the first third or so of the book, absolutely fascinated by poop and farts in obsessive loving detail. Gah. Not the thing to be reading when you’re eating a ham sandwich and a pickle, believe you me. —–]]>

from Miz Kelli Jelly Bean, who saw that I was coveting the paperclip earrings she herself had, and sent me a pair, not once, but twice, because the post office lost the first pair! Well, SUPPOSEDLY they lost the first pair, but to tell the truth, the ex-Marine/ Drew Carrey clone who works there certainly looks like the kind of guy who would steal paperclip earrings to wear his own self, the bastard. By the way, I spent a large part of Sunday afternoon drawing names for the free stuff and sending off emails to let the people who had won know what they’d won. If you haven’t gotten said email from me by now, you didn’t win, sorry. But take heart – there’ll be more free stuff someday, I’m sure of it. Now I’ll be spending the week packing up all that free stuff and taking it to the post office. I sent the first 7 packages today, and have figured – using a calculator, since I’m not math smarty-pants – that if I take 7 packages every day, I’ll be able to get them all out by the end of the week. At least I’m hoping that’s the way it’ll work. I plan to go see Bridget Jones’s Diary this week sometime. I was going to go today, but realized that dinner was going to be chicken soup, and the half chicken in the freezer needed to simmer for a few hours, and I wouldn’t be home in time to get it started. Then I planned to go tomorrow, but I have a hair appointment in the morning and need to hit the movie store and Sam’s Club, so I’m thinking I may run out of time to go to the matinee. Maybe Wednesday, if I can clear time in my busy schedule. I ask you, how the hell did I ever get everything done when I was working full-time? ]]>

virtual tour – and a lot of cat hair and dust tends to gather there, like such (am I picture happy this week, or what?): "I told you after I vacuumed the entire upstairs on Monday that I was going to do the stairs and downstairs on Tuesday, but then my ankle started hurting!" I pointed out. Notice that I said I vacuumed the ENTIRE UPSTAIRS, as though it’s an all-day event, rather than taking up 7 minutes of my valuable ass-sitting time. He had no recollection of that whatsoever, of course. Sometimes when I babble on about housework and such, I can actually watch the words go in one ear and out the other. But that’s okay, ’cause I do it to him too. Probably one of the reasons we’re so happily married. Did y’all watch Boot Camp last night? It was pretty good, especially the reactions of the DIs when they found out Yaney had been made squad leader; one of the DIs (I don’t know which one it was; except for the female, I can’t tell any of them apart) asked if the recruits had had crack for breakfast. My favorite part, though, was when another of the DIs (or perhaps the same one, I dunno) was talking softly to Yaney about the missing equipment, and realized that Wolf was nearby, and without missing a beat turned around and bellowed "Get out! Get out of my face!" and Wolf turned and ran as fast as his legs could carry him. Wolf has a face that’s begging to be smacked, in my opinion. My friend Liz once told me I’d make a good drill instructor. I might have had the bellowing down pat, but the physical stuff would have killed me. Recruit Yaney, by the way, is a friend of Melissa‘s. And from what I saw on Boot Camp last week, he’s pretty handy with the balloon art. SIR! RECRUIT BITCHYPOO IS DONE WITH HER ENTRY AND READY TO POST IT, SIR!]]>

McCall’s, but has been revamped. It’s not bad, not bad at all. In fact, I think I almost prefer it over O. Almost, I say. Between reading the US article about single motherhood and checking out Heather’s cuties, I’m wanting me a baby something fierce. The deal is that as soon as Fred gets to his goal weight I can go off the pill, but I don’t know about that. Maybe when I get to my goal weight, we’ll see. According to US, Camryn Manheim chose her baby’s name by standing at the bottom of the stairs and yelling her two choices at the top of her lungs to see how they sounded. That cracks me up. The spud’s name is a good one to scream at the top of your lungs; it’s two syllables, and according to Fred I tend to add an "a" sound at the end when I’m exasperated, which he loves to mock me for. Seth, which is what we decided we’d name a boy, would have to be lengthened, I think. "SEEEEEEEEEETH!" for instance. Or perhaps "SETH. FORREST. ANDERSON!!!" would do. Anyway. Today’s babblings are now concluded. —–]]>

Maury was on, which until a few days ago I hadn’t even realized was still on the air. As a side note, I have to ask – how much of a loser do you have to be, really, to need to be in front of a big audience to tell your mother that you’ve been diagnosed with brain tumors or to tell your mother (different mother and daughter, by the way) that you’ve been prostituting yourself, or to tell your boyfriend that you’ve been boinking his best friend? I mean, you drag me on to Maury to tell me that you’ve been screwing my best friend, I’m thinking there’s less of a chance I’ll forgive you than if you’d told me quietly in the living room. Anyway. So I sat in the waiting room for 45 minutes and the examining room for another 10, and finally the doc showed up, and guess what? That’s right, I have conjunctivitis. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. Got the prescription, went to the grocery store, waited around for another 10 minutes to have it filled, wandered around to get the groceries we’d run out of in the three days since Fred got groceries – and had to go back and forth to locate the parmesan, since they’ve remodeled the store since last I was there I couldn’t find the damn stuff – and then went home, dealing with the FUCKING road construction on the way. Once home – it was noon by this point – I dragged the groceries upstairs, put them away and went into the bathroom. This is where the day got especially good. On the bathmat next to the shower, someone – I have my suspicions – had left a nasty little poo-shaped present. I gathered up the bathmat to take down to the washer and heard the very distinctive sound of a retching cat – I passed Spot on the stairs doing his thing. At least it wasn’t on the carpet, that’s all I can say. I kept going past Spot to the washer, next to which is the litter box. NEXT to the litter box was another pile of poo. "GODDAMN IT, WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU FUCKING CATS?" I shrieked in a ladylike manner. I put the bathmat in the washer, tossed the pile of poo next to the litter box INTO the litter box, and grabbed a handful of paper towels to clean up the results of Spot’s retchings – a moth and a piece of grass, surrounded by a puddle of bile. Yummy. That’s when I realized what someone had been trying to tell me all morning long, with the goopy eye, the disconnected feeling because I had to wear glasses most of the day, the road construction, the wind that kept blowing off my baseball cap, the long wait in the waiting room, the Maury on TV, the long wait in the grocery store, the confused wanderings around the grocery store, the road construction again, and all the nasty cat-related nastiness. I should have stayed in bed this morning. ]]>