Category: Life

* * * This entry’s going up later than usual today, due to the busy, action-packed day I’ve had. Between the getting up at 7 to help Fred with the pet store cats, to the going back to bed for two hours, to the sex, to the doctor appointment (which has nothing to do with the sex, just so you know), to the sitting on my ass in front of the fire… well, that’s a busy day, yes indeedy. The doctor appointment was because I’ve been experiencing some foot pain for, well, months and months now. I did some research online and decided it was probably plantar fasciitis, so thought I’d try a few things before going to see the doctor – I tried inserts, and all they did was add arch pain to the mix. I tried putting ice on the foot and taking aspirin, and while that helped decrease the pain, it still hurt when I walked on it. My last attempt at healing (heeling! Ha!) myself was to buy some heel cups and try those for several days. The last straw was when I started walking Saturday morning, and the pain radiated up the back of my leg. That was a big enough clue that I needed to call the damn doctor, because this foot pain crap is interfering with my preferred form of exercise, and let me tell you, folks: an hour on the stationary bike is a definite form of ass torture. My ass is still killing me a day and a half later, damnit. But, hey – at least I went 16.3 stationary miles! That’s got to count for something, right? Even though I had to stop every 15 minutes to let my ass de-pain? Anyway, I was right – plantar fasciitis it is, and Dr. Ashley gave me a prescription for an anti-inflammatory and told me to keep on keepin’ on with the heel cup, the ice, and gave me a pamphlet with exercises I need to do each day, twice a day. Oh, and I can’t go back to walking for exercise until this is taken care of. Wah! Gel seat cover, here I come.

* * * Okay, that’s it for today, folks. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you what we did for Valentine’s Day (woohoo!), and talk about last week’s episode of Survivor. Can I tell you that I’m mighty excited to see the end of Joe Millionaire tonight? Why, yes, I AM a dork, thanks for asking!]]>

Friday Five. 1. What did you have for breakfast this morning? If you didn’t have breakfast, why not? I had a fried egg on an english muffin, and half a cup of black seedless grapes, along with a can of Diet Coke. I usually have a slice of fat free American cheese on the egg and english muffin, but I only had one slice left, and needed it for lunch. 2. What’s your favorite cereal? Frosted Lucky Charms. They’re Magick-ly delicious, you know. I haven’t had any in a long time, I but I miss them fondly. My second favorite cereal would be Fruity Pebbles. Mmmmm. 3. How often do you eat out? Do you want that to change? Once every other week or so, maybe less. Friday nights are “free” nights for us, eating-wise, so every now and then the spud and I will go to Applebees or another restaurant, and on the other weeks, we get fast food or order pizza. I would probably eat out every night if given the chance, but I’m sure I’d quickly gain back that 100+ pounds I’ve lost, so it’s better to stick to one “allowed” night a week. 4. What do you plan on having for dinner tonight? Got a recipe for that? I’m thinking McDonald’s, but I’m not sure what exactly – maybe a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, or McNuggets. And a Diet Coke, of course! 5. What’s your favorite restaurant? Why? Applebees. Because they have a decent selection of food, and also because they have Apple Chimicheesecakes. Mmmm.

* * * I’m pleased to announce that I’m feeling better today – I know you were up all night, worried! By the time bedtime rolled around, I was feeling just fine, and ended up watching the first half of ER while folding clothes and putting them away. I came to realize that if you wear two pair of underwear every day (what, you think I’m going to wear the underwear I wear while exercising for the rest of the day? Ew.) and don’t do laundry for almost a week, you might come pretty damn close to running out. I was down to my ratty back-of-the-drawer purple underwear yesterday, which gave me the heads up that the laundry needed to be done. Anyway. Enough about my underwear. We taped the Michael Jackson thing to watch at a later date, so don’t ruin it for me. I want to see myself what a freak he is. Actually, we flipped channels a couple of times, and watched Michael Jackson from 7:30 to 8:00 instead of watching the Friends rerun. I turned to Fred while Michael Jackson and the reporter were walking through that store (?), and he was pointing to hideous things and saying “I want this and this and this and this. Oh, did you get this? Excuse me, this too!”, and I said to Fred “If I ever have so much money that I can buy crap like that, I have too damn much money. And bad taste.” Heh. * * * Poor, poor Fancypants. He keeps going to the window and sadly looking outside. The cat door is open, but it’s so damn cold out there that he won’t go out. But he wants to go out, and thus the dilemma, which is solved by sitting and staring through the window and sharing his pain by meowing his sad, sad high-pitched meow. I’m about to go toss his ass out the cat door if he doesn’t shut up. * * * Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting in front of my computer (like, duh!), when I saw the mailman coming. He stopped in front of my mailbox, put the mail in it, and then sat there for a few minutes, looking through boxes. I got excited, because I thought that perhaps I’d ordered something and forgotten about it. I waited and waited for him to come put the box by the front door, and then got sidetracked reading something. When I looked up again, the mailjeep was up near the end of the street. I got up and went out to get the mail. To my surprise, when I opened the door, there was no package there. It had been raining on and off through most of the day, so I decided he must have put it by the garage door, where there’s more shelter. I went out and grabbed the mail from the mailbox, and then walked over to the garage. To my further surprise, there was no package there, either. After some looking, I decided that maybe the package had been for someone else, and I thought no more about it. This morning when I came down the stairs, there was a dark shape in the window to the left of the front door. “What the hell?” I said. I opened the front door, and found a package from Amazon, tucked into the frame of the window. I’d like to believe that there’s no way on earth I would have missed seeing that package if it was there yesterday, but I walk around with my head in the clouds so much of the time, that I probably looked right at it and just didn’t see it. It was another birthday present – Twelve, from the fabulous Bald Moses (and Frank!), and I’m really looking forward to reading it. Whee! Me love books, have I mentioned? * * * Speaking of books, I’m listening to Me Talk Pretty One Day on tape when I walk (which hasn’t been much lately, thanks to the crappy, cold weather, and where the hell is spring, I’d like to know), and it cracks me up. I was listening to the title story and laughing out loud this morning – I’m sure I was quite a sight, bundled up in my long johns, sweats, jacket, hat that Heather made me, and a pair of Fred’s huge, oversized gloves, laughing my ass off. God, I love David Sedaris. * * * There are things that make me cry for undefinable reasons. I watched an episode of Sports Night a few weeks ago, The Quality of Mercy at 29K, and when Dana got back from seeing The Lion King and said The lights went out, and this woman, with a voice like thunder, this woman, she summons all the animals of the jungle to appear and honor the birth of the new lion king. She summons the animals with her voice. I teared up. Sometimes when I come to the end of books I start crying. When I saw The Sixth Sense, the ending made me burst into tears, and I sobbed all the way home. All this to tell you that yesterday I was reading God-Shaped Hole, a book that I foolishly thought was going to be of the light-hearted Zany Chick variety. What happens at the end is made clear from the beginning, and it happens even though you don’t want it to, and even though you hope against hope that it won’t. I was a few pages from the end (and hoping against hope for a resurrection) when I read the line But Joanna wouldn’t understand the incredulity of my grief. And I burst into tears. Even just thinking about it makes me tear up, and I have no idea why. I have no clue why that one line affected me so strongly, maybe because it sounds like the truest thing I’ve ever read. the incredulity of my grief]]>

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Say sent me this candle for my birthday, and it smells so good that I keep going and sniffing it. It’s making me crave oatmeal raisin cookies – and I don’t even like oatmeal raisin cookies! Well, I like oatmeal cookies, but I don’t usually care for raisins in my cookies. Y’know, if it’s not one damn cat trying to steal my afghan, it’s a damn ‘nother! Right after I took this picture, Tubby lifted his head and meowed bitchily at me. Taking a nap looks like a good idea. Move over, Fancypants!]]>

Is it a ghost? A ghost in front of a door? Oooh, scary! And arty, don’tcha think? Why… it’s the inside of the closet door! We have a rack JUST like that. We keep our spices on it. Great minds apparently think alike. And… the inside of the closet! Uh. Foam noodles to the left, plastic cups to the right. It doesn’t get any more exciting than this, folks. Look! More closet! “Hey,” I said. “That looks like Florida!” Fred agreed. Another shot of the beach. Which I can’t really make fun of, since I took 45,000 pictures of the beach when we were in Florida last year. Someone on the phone… And still on the phone, this time without the flash. Someone heading to the water, apparently. We had a sign like this on our balcony when we were in Florida, too! Apparently all the hotels have the same signs. (The only reason I know it isn’t the same hotel is that the comforter is different, and there are cabana-type things on the beach, instead of chairs and umbrellas) Someone has painted her toenails, and is proud of that fact. Another shot of the beach. They wrote something in the sand, but I can’t tell what. It includes “Nick”, though. “Honey, take a picture of the sign on the back of the door!” “And the hideous curtains, too!” A ceramic snail. At least I hope it’s ceramic, ’cause if it’s real, it’s a big one! Flowers! On the table! I wonder where the closet is in relation to the table… An open tin of oysters! “Honey, DO NOT forget to get a picture of the top of the tin after it’s opened!” “And the can opener, too!” Tinned oysters on crackers with a nice cold beer? Yeah, baby. After all that artsy-fartsy picture taking, someone needs a nap.

* * * Heh. Y’all weren’t REALLY expecting exciting, amazing pictures, were you? Suckers! I’ll admit, I was a little disappointed – and confused. Why was a roll of pictures from Florida dropped on a mountain in Alabama? It’s a mystery, is what it is. After Tubby kicked ass the other day, I expected that word would spread to all the neighborhood kitties – “Don’t go in their yard! The fat one will kick your ass, and then the humans will come run you off!”, but I had just gotten out of the shower this morning and was putting lotion on my face when I heard the distinct sound of a growling, hissing, yowling cat. I came out of the bathroom, lotion in hand, and saw (I thought) all the cats sitting at the top of the stairs. I pushed through them and as I went down the stairs, I heard the same yowling, growling, hissing sound again. “Hey!” I yelled, and the sound stopped. I got to the bottom of the stairs, came through the computer room, and saw Fancypants sitting by the cat door, all fluffed up, peering out the window. I walked over to him and saw an orange cat slinking away. I could see his shadow as he climbed the fence, and then I went out back to be sure he’d actually left the yard. He was sitting atop the fence, and when he saw me, he growled and hissed. “Hey!” I called, waving my arms. “Go on, get out of here!” He continued growling and hissing. I didn’t want to have to walk across the wet lawn in my bare feet, so I repeated the motion, and he repeated his. I gave up and ran across the lawn toward him, calling “Buddy, you don’t live here! Go!” He held his ground, growling and hissing at me. I stood and considered my options. I thought about tossing my bottle of lotion at him, but that stuff is too damn expensive, so I walked back to the house, grabbed the hose, turned it on, and turned it in his direction. Like a shot, he was gone. I guess I’m the hero this time around.]]>

* * * We’ve taking Miz Poo off the Elavil. After four days on it, she turned into a total zombie. Instead of harassing me 14 times a day for love and affection, she’s been sitting around staring off into space, never purring, never chirping, and just plain not acting like herself. Since the constant grooming had pretty much stopped by the time we started her on the Elavil, we’ve decided that it was really the essential fatty acids that helped, by getting rid of the dry skin and thus the need for grooming. After being off the Elavil for two days, she’s starting to perk up a bit, and did quite a bit of chirping this afternoon. Of course, if the constant grooming and scratching starts up again we’ll rethink our decision.

* * * Since I’m feeling amazingly uninspired, writing-wise, these days, let’s fall back on some FAQ questions, shall we? Reader Liz asks: And, oh and does fred annoy you? Not any more than I annoy him, probably. 🙂 The lovely Andrea asks: I already know this, and I know you wrote an entry about it somewhere, but maybe people want to know how you & Fred met? I did write about it, but it’s been a few years (two and a month, to be exact), so you can find that here. It’s a tad sappy, be warned! Okay, after re-reading it, I’m back to warn that it’s not a tad sappy. It’s dripping with sap! * * * On Christmas day, Fred, my father, and Brian went for a hike to double-check a geocache Fred had placed. While they were hiking, they found a roll of film that someone had dropped. Naturally, they brought it home, and it sat on my desk for a month before I finally sent it off for processing. We were all a-twitter, wondering what could be on it. Porn? Death, destruction and mayhem? Childbirth? Cats? We were thrilled with the possibilities. Yesterday, the developed roll of film arrived in our mailbox, and we excitedly ripped the envelope open. Leafing through the pictures, our eyes widened and our jaws dropped. “What is that?” I said, and then turned the picture sideways. “Is that….?” Fred said, holding another picture under the light. Eh. You know what? It’s getting late and I don’t have time to scan them before American Idol comes on. Come back tomorrow to see them, y’all. Mean? Me?]]>

chicken vindaloo and some Shield-watching. Hopefully they’ll appreciate the show as much as we do. Speaking of food (see: chicken vindaloo, above), Fred’s stepfather made a big batch of seafood gumbo over the weekend, and they offered some to us. We went to their house yesterday to visit with them, play with their new cat (who looks so much like the old one it’s scary), and pick up a bowl o’ gumbo, which we had for dinner last night. My GOD was it good, and I’m sitting here craving it. I’m going to make turkey stew later this week, and send some over to them in the same bowl. It won’t be as good as the gumbo they gave us, but I don’t think anything could be.

* * * From time to time I go through my “My Documents” folder, reading stuff I’ve written and getting rid of stuff I’ve saved for no apparent reason, like old addresses and the like. On my most recent foray through the folder, I found something that amused the hell out of me, but I have no recollection of having written. I mean, I vaguely remember the story idea, but I don’t recall actually writing down this one-page beginning. Since the entries have been boring as hell lately, I typed it up for y’all, and you can see it here. I wish I’d kept going with the story when I did write it, though. I’d like to have seen where it went – like I said, I only vaguely remember the idea. * * * Did you hear that Tubby was a hero over the weekend? Who’d’ve thunk it? Fancypants always acts like he’s the big badass, but when it came to defending house and home, he was hiding upstairs. I’m sure Tubby was just worried that the other cat would eat some of his food. For the record, the quilt Tubby’s sleeping on is the one someone (I have my suspicions) peed on last week, and which I washed twice (with bleach). I took it out of the dryer, folded it, and put it on top of that container (which holds Christmas wrapping paper), and in less than 5 minutes Fancypants had sniffed it out and was sound asleep on top of it. Damn cats. * * * The spud informed us over the weekend that she doesn’t believe people have really gone up into space. She has no solid reasoning – or even unsolid reasoning, no reasoning whatsoever – but has decided it’s all a big lie. Yep. Apparently I’m raising a freakish conspiracy theorist. Hopefully she’ll learn to have some reasons behind her beliefs in the future, rather than “I just don’t believe it.” Because really, you can’t argue with that.]]>

Friday Five. 1. As a child, who was your favorite superhero/ heroine? Why? I think Wonder Woman. As for why – well, cool see-through plane. Need I say any more? 2. What was one thing you always wanted as a child but never got? Nothing comes to mind, although I seem to recall wanting more animals than we had – we only had one dog and one cat. 3. What’s the furthest from home you’ve been? California, two or three times, to visit the ex’s family. 4. What’s one thing you’ve always wanted to learn but haven’t yet? Sign language. Maybe one of these days I’ll take a class. 5. What are your plans for the weekend? Oh, I have a couple of movies – Unfaithful and The Banger Sisters – to watch. Aside from that, the spud needs some new jeans and bras. I’ll either haul her to Wal-Mart tonight or tomorrow. Other than that, nothing specific. We might have Fred’s parents over to eat Chicken Tandoori and watch a couple of episodes of The Shield. Oh, yes. There will definitely be The Shield in my weekend!

* * * My eye is bothering me, damnit. I hope like hell that I’m not developing yet ANOTHER fucking case of conjunctivitis, but all signs are pointing that way. It’s my own damn fault for not continuing with the medicine once my eye wasn’t red anymore, but still. Why, god, whyyyyyyy? I have to remember to be online at 9 tomorrow morning to order Red Sox tickets for my friend Liz, who won’t be home. She gave me all her credit card information (whee! shopping spree!), and I’m deathly afraid I’ll forget, so I keep reminding myself, and then I get annoyed at myself, and it’s a whole vicious circle. My whole life is a vicious circle, really. * * * Big, bad thanks to the wonderful Melissa, who not only sent me Ella Minnow Pea off my wish list for my birthday, but also saw I Capture the Castle on my wish list and offered me her extra copy. Melissa rocks. But you knew that.]]>

Do all of [your cats] have distinctive purrs, or meows? They definitely have distinctive meows – you can always tell who’s meowing! Spot has a squeaky, jagged meow. When he was a kitten, he showed up on Fred’s patio (this is before I moved to Alabama) and howled all night long. We suspect that this scarred his vocal chords, and as a result, he can’t produce a long meow the way most of the other cats can. He rarely meows, but usually when he does, it means he’s about to put the smack down on one of the other cats. Spanky has a high-pitched meow, and he’s really the only one who howls for long periods of time. You can never tell why he’s howling – I suspect he just likes to hear himself “talk” – but he’ll eventually shut up if you talk back to him. Tubby has a short, husky, bitchy meow that I always spell as “Meh. MEH! Meh.” And that’s pretty much how it sounds. He never just gives one “Meh”, but they come in sets of three or more, some of them more emphasized than others. Usually when he meows, it’s because he wants something, and if you tell him to hush, he can turn the “Meh” into a “Meeeeeeeeeeeh”, with it sounding more demanding and husky as the sound draws out. Fancypants has the highest-pitched meow of the bunch, and there’s no mistaking who’s meowing when you hear it. When he meows, he usually flounces back and forth, rubbing on anything in the area. In the evening when we’re watching TV, if Fancypants is flopped on the floor, Fred will lisp “Who’s a Fancypants?” at him, and Fancypants will respond with a soundless meow. It’s pretty damn funny. Miz Poo has a meow similar to Spanky’s, and they’re the only two I ever mix up. She doesn’t howl like he does unless she wants to be picked up, and then she adds a little trill to the end. She’ll also howl with an almost keening noise if she’s carrying a toy from one part of the house to the other. The only two cats with really distinctive purrs are Spot, who purrs so loud you can hear him from a room away, and Spanky, who – when he’s really happy – has a purr that sounds exactly like a cricket. Reader Elizabeth asks: In your mind, go back in time to when you met Fred online and say everything was the same except for one thing: he hated, despised, and loathed cats, and was even ALLERGIC to them. Would you still be where you are today? You know, I have no idea. I’m trying to think of more to add, but I can’t think of anything. I have no idea on earth how things would have worked out – and I’m VERY glad that he loves cats as much, if not more, than I do! I will say that when I moved down here, we each only had a single cat apiece. He’s really indulged my kitty jones, and I’m still thrilled that he caved in on the Miz Poo issue (go back to mid-November of 1999 to read about it). How’s that for a non-answer? Reader Shannon asks: I’d love to know all [your cats’] names/sexes/& nicknames! Going oldest to youngest, we have: Spot: Male. We usually call him “Buhhhhddy”, because he’s such a buddy. Spanky: Male. We call him “Skitty-boo”, because although he’s the happiest of the cats, he’s also the most skittish. Stimpy: Male. We always call him “Mr. Fancypants”, or just plain “Fancypants”, ’cause he’s such a fancy thang. We never ever call him by his “given” name, and if I’m making an appointment for him, I have to stop and think what his given name IS. Snoopy: Male. We always call him “Tubby”, for obvious reasons. I always forget his “real” name, too. Scrappy: Female, the only girl of the bunch. We call her “Miz Poo”, and I always have to stop and wonder who the vet is talking about when he uses her name! Reader Anne asks: Why is Tubby so tubby when your other cats seem to be lean? Well, ok, why are Tubby and Miz Poo fat and the other three not? Do some cats just eat like pigs and there’s not much you can do about it? Excuuuuuuuse me? Are you implying that my Poo is portly? Well, maybe she is, just a little. But if she’s tubby, then Tubby is in a whole separate class, as we see below. Right now, Tubby weighs more than 20 pounds, and Miz Poo weighs just over 10 pounds, so she’s literally half the size of him. But I digress. I think that Tubby has gotten so big because when he was a baby, he lived on the streets until the shelter brought him in, and as a result, in his subconscious he remembers not being able to eat, and is making up for that as an adult. Or he could just be a pig for no particular reason – he won’t tell me. As for Miz Poo, I have no idea. She was hand-fed as a baby, and certainly never went hungry, so your guess is as good as mine. We do leave dry food out all the time for the cats, so they can eat whenever they want, and surely having food available to them at all times has helped contribute to their tubby portliness. For a few days a couple of years ago, we decided to change the way we fed them, and went to feeding them twice a day, leaving the food out for 15 minutes, and then putting the food away. This didn’t work because Fred was the one feeding them when he got up in the morning, and the cats were waking him up earlier and earlier. We didn’t do that for long before we went back to the old way of leaving food available all the time. Interestingly, it was Spot – the skinniest cat we have – who was most worried about the fact that there was no food where it had always been. Every time we went near the kitchen, he’d try to lead us to the food bowl so we’d know there was no food. And: And about Miz Poo’s tongue shaving: Does that mean she can’t taste any more and will always have a slick tongue? How is poor Miz Poo and her sneer and her slick tongue? Actually, no. Her taste buds grew back pretty quickly, and she’s able to taste as well as she ever could. Thank god, because she was having one hell of a time grooming herself. She’ll always have a sneer, even if the lip heals, because of the plug the vet removed and sent off for testing. Overall, she’s doing fine. We started her on essential fatty acids last Sunday, and already there’s a remarkable improvement in her dry skin. She’s stopped grooming constantly, and her dandruff has almost completely gone away. She’s not the most beautiful cat in the world to everyone, but she is to me. Reader Lena asks: Where, when and how, did you get Tubby? How old was he when he got fat? We got Tubby at a store that the people who run the no-kill shelter were running, in June of 1997. Back then, all they had was a store, and not the entire house they have now. (We got Miz Poo at the same place) As for how old he was when he got fat – well, it’s really been a lifelong process. He’s always been a voracious eater and was never really skinny. Got a burning question? Ask!]]>

* * * When Fred got home from work yesterday, he shoved a teaspoon full of vitamins (with essential fatty acids!) down Miz Poo’s throat, and then followed it up with an Elavil chaser. She spent most of the evening hiding under the couch, poor baby. Speaking of cats, one of the little bastards peed on our new chair in the computer room. I didn’t realize it until the spud asked me what that stain on the comforter that sits on the chair was (so actually, whichever little bastard it was peed on the comforter, and it soaked through to the chair), and I realized it was CAT PEE, which is the worst-smelling stuff on earth. Except for Fred’s farts. I bought Nature’s Miracle, and some stuff to repel the cats, and if they ever pee there again, I’ll strangle all of them, I really will. Whenever something like this happens, I always try to blame Tubby, and Fred always tries to blame Miz Poo. Heh. Of course, it could be worse. As I was leaving the pet store yesterday after buying the bottle of Nature’s Miracle, one of the employees told me of how she’d had to hold her cat down and give it some medicine, and the cat responded by going on a shitting rampage through the house. Man. Better her than me!

* * * I can’t get my friggin’ mail from Hiwaay.net, and it’s pissing me off. I don’t know why I care so much – probably 60% of my mail is spam – but it’s driving me nuts! I’m thinking about just creating new email accounts on bitchypoo.com and robynanderson.com and trashing the hiwaay.net account. We shall see. * * * We’re trying to decide where we’re going to go for Spring vacation, which is at the end of March. Right now we’re considering DC, Las Vegas, or the Bahamas. Could we get any further apart than those three? Time’s up. That was 7 minutes.]]>