(note my gorgeous petunias growing in the background)
The other plant looks different. The leaves are thinner and a bright green, and there’s not anything actually growing around the stick, everything that’s growing is nowhere near the stick. This is that one:
Now, here’s my question: is the second one a butterfly bush, or have I been carefully tending to a growing weed? It’s time to plant the butterfly bush in the ground, since it’s gotten too big for the pot, and if this one’s a weed, I don’t want to be planting it nowhere – I want to torture and kill it.
Help?
But that’s not all the gardening-type advice I need! My mother had a pot of gorgeous flowers hanging from below her deck. When I asked her what they were, she shrugged and said she hadn’t a clue. This is where y’all come in and tell me what the hell they are, because I really like them and want to grow some of my own next year. Here’s a pic:
I’ve discovered since writing this entry, that this is a million bells petunia plant, which you’d think I’d know, seeing as how I have ten zillion regular petunia plants in the front garden. Nothin’ gets by me, nosir.
I’m working on an entry about the trip to Maine, it should be up over the weekend.
Actually, that’s a lie. I’m not really working on it, I haven’t worked on it at all, but it should still be up over the weekend. And the vacation pics will be up at some point in the next week. Don’t pressure me, damnit!
There are, however, a few pictures I took that don’t really fit in the vacation pics category.
Monday night – the night before we flew home – we all went out to dinner at Ricetta’s in Falmouth. As we were sitting there talking, I looked up and saw the most adorable waiter talking to someone at another table. Since I had the camera with me, I snuck a few pictures of him. They didn’t come out great – I didn’t use the flash, because I didn’t want to make a complete fool of myself, so I used PSP to lighten the pictures a little – but you get the idea.
The more I look at the pictures, the more I think he looks like Ed.
The spud was all freaked out that I thought someone was cute, because I guess she thinks I should be blind to the presence of cuteness in anyone other than Himself, small animals, and children. Finally, I said “Would you CALM DOWN? I’m not going to divorce Fred and marry the cute waiter. Jesus!”
I was struck anew by how many personalized license plates there are in the Brunswick/ Topsham area. Here in Madison, you see a personalized license plate every once in awhile. They’re not rare, but most people have the regular issued license plates. In Brunswick and Topsham, I would guess that 30% or more of the license plates are personalized. I went to the grocery store in Topsham with my mother one day, and there were maybe 40 cars in the parking lot. Everywhere I looked, there was a personalized license plate.
Did I take pictures, you ask? Well, of course.
My favorites are “Buteful”, because when I first saw it, I misread it as “Buttful” (hee!), and “Titifly”, because I think someone was asleep at the switch at the DMV that day. I mean, if they wouldn’t let Liz get “LizBtch” on her license plate, why would someone be allowed to get “Titty Fly” on theirs?
Ah well. Think they’d let me get “Bitchypoo” on my license plate?
And lastly, you can read in Fred’s entry about the t-shirts I bought him in Maine, but here are pictures of the ones I didn’t buy him:
I didn’t buy the first one, because black shirts in our house don’t stay black for long, what with all the white cat hair flying around, so I try not to buy black t-shirts for Fred. I didn’t buy the second one because it didn’t come in XL, and Fred likes his t-shirts with a little extra room. They both cracked me up, though, especially the first one, because I’m the caller id queen. If the phone rings, I check the caller id, and if it’s not for me, I don’t answer it.
Reader Dez pointed out to me that apparently Fancypants has been reading the funnies, evidence presented here.
This one cracked me up, too. I love that comic strip.
So, the spud started 8th grade yesterday. Hey, she started 8th grade on 8/8! I just now noticed that. Freaky. Anyway, one of the things that pisses me off about Madison is that once the kids are past elementary school, they don’t get a supply list of the stuff they’ll need. So they don’t know what they’ll need until the first day of school, when each teacher gives them a list. And I understand that there’s not a standard supply list due to the fact that the kids have different classes in middle school, but there are these THINGS called COMPUTERS, and 99% of the people in Madison have them, and since we pick up the kids’ schedules two weeks before school starts, we know which classes they’re taking, and therefore, if each teacher had a LIST of the supplies their classes needed somewhere online, then people could BUY their freakin’ supplies BEFORE the first day of school, and Staples would not be crowded with frantic adults and children, running around in circles and trying to find the fucking dividers.
If you are the parent of a spazzy child like the spud, you MUST go out the evening of the first day of school to buy the supplies instead of waiting for the weekend, because if you do not, the spud will worry herself sick thinking about how her Algebra teacher will tell his students to pull out their scientific calculators and she will be the only one in the class without one, and everyone in the class will laugh and point.
So we went to Staples. Where everyone else in Madison was running around bellowing “WHAT KIND OF DIVIDERS DO YOU NEED, THE ONES WITH POCKETS OR WITHOUT?!” across the store. We still managed to run wildly through the store, throwing supplies into the cart, grabbed up the very last scientific calculator in the entire store, and were out of there in less than half an hour.
I consider that pretty damn good.]]>
2002-08-09
I love that yellow house to the side.
I don’t know what that plant is called, but I always refer to it as “That big pile of wheat”. I can only imagine the bugs living in there… (note: I’m told it’s called Pampas Grass. You learn something every day, don’tcha?)
Down another street. The Crepe Myrtle to the right (by the garbage bag) always has a big, nasty pile of Japanese Beetles underneath it. Gah.
Last year, there was a lot more water in this river thingy, and there were even fish living in the water. No fish this year, though.
See those kids standing there? The sidewalk that goes off to the right behind them leads to the scary walkway I walk down most days.
This yard is still my favorite, especially now with all the stuff flowering, and the gorgeous green of the lawn.
There’s this Dachsund who lives somewhere in the neighborhood, and I call him (or her) “Weinerdog”. This is where I usually see Weinerdog, trotting down this sidewalk. No Weinerdog today, though. Weinerdog, where are you?
Not in our subdivision, but nearby, there’s this road with small, older houses, sitting on a ton of land. I’m jealous of how much land they all have, and I bet with the Yuppification of Madison, that land is worth a pretty penny.
There’s this little pond of water at the corner of two roads I walk on, and it’s about two feet deep. There are two bullfrogs (“Hallo, Clarice”) who live in this little pond, and the other day when I walked by, I noticed that there are fish living there now, too.
A main part of my walk is down this street. I like the sidewalk, but hate the traffic, because it’s hard to hear the book I’m listening to (currently, The Talisman).
I walk by this new subdivision-in-construction most every day, too. I wish they’d start building the houses, because I’m curious to see what they’re going to look like.
The scary walkway. See all that overgrown foliage on the right side? I’m always afraid someone’s going to jump out of it and grab me.
The scary, overgrown foliage.
This is another neighborhood I walk through occasionally. It leads to the hill that kicks my ass.
The bottom part of the hill that kicks my ass…
And the top part of the hill. The problem with ass-kicking hills is that they never photograph well.
Halfway up the hill, there’s a street that turns off to the right. I walk down this street instead of going to the top of the hill sometimes. This part of this subdivision always reminds me of Gatlinburg, because it’s hilly and quiet, and there are lots of trees.
Another of my favorite yards – there’s a groundhog that lives in this yard somewhere, but he wasn’t around today. I’m always afraid he’s going to run out in front of my Jeep and I’ll run him over, which would suck.
Fred loves this house, because it’s so big and imposing.
A cool shot of the sun coming through the clouds down the street from our house.]]> 
Getting impatient, because Fred hadn’t carried the bag of food upstairs and poured some fresh food for his majesty, Tubby started bitching “Give me food, damnit!”
This is the reason it takes me a long time to write entries some days. She looks so damn comfortable, how could I possibly disturb her sleep?
Friday Five.
This week’s questions are focused toward those who have weblogs, but I’m going to change “weblog” to “journal” and answer the questions that way.
1. How long have you had a [journal]? It will be three years in October, which just amazes me. Before I started the journal, I thought for sure I’d run out of things to talk about after about a week – imagine my shock when I think about the fact that I’ve posted 5 days a week for most of the life of my journal.
2. What was your first post about? It was a basic “welcome to my journal” post, followed by a bitch about my parents, who were going to come visit for 10 lonnnng days.
3. How many changes (name, location, etc.) of your [journal] have there been, if more than one? I’ve only changed the directory so that you can go straight to bitchypoo.com and not have to go to bitchypoo.com/bitchypoo.html. I’ve thought about changing the name once or twice – I always thought “The Bitch Factor” would be a good name – but since the domain is bitchypoo.com and I don’t want to have to deal with moving shit around and buying a new domain and all that. When I bought RobynAnderson.com, I thought I’d move bitchypoo over there, but I like that I only have to type bitchypoo.com to get to my main page.
4. What CMS (content management system) do you use? Do you like it or do you want to try something else? Well… I use Dreamweaver, but I sense that that’s not really a CMS. I’ve thought about switching my diet journal over to Moveable Type so that people can leave comments, but don’t know if I’m going to do that or not.
5. Do you read people who have both a journal and a weblog? Or do you prefer to read people who have all of their writing in one central place? I prefer weblogs to not have journal-type entries in them – I’m picky, and prefer to have journal entries each on their own page – but it all depends on the writing. To me, weblogs are meant to have short, quick entries, whereas journals are for longer entries. Of course, that’s just my opinion.]]> 
because it cracked me up.
We had originally planned to go into Washington for a few hours before driving to Baltimore to catch our 6:00 flight, but Fred had heard that after about 2:00, the traffic in the area becomes incredibly horrible, and was worried that we would get caught in traffic and miss our flight, so we, instead, drove directly to the airport. We were there by 1:00, and after turning in the rental car, we headed for the ticket counter. The line was pretty long, so I suggested to Fred that we find a restroom and something to eat and perhaps later the line would have cleared out a little, but he wouldn’t go for it. We stood in line for about an hour, and I was glad I had something to read while we stood there. Finally, the ticket chick waved us over, and asked our names. Fred told her, and he and I slapped our driver’s licenses on the counter. She got our boarding passes ready, and never once so much as glanced at our licenses.
Of course, if you think about it, someone who’s up to terrorist-type activities is surely going to not only fly under an assumed name, but also will have the resources to get a passable driver’s license.
We went through security – “Don’t make eye contact with the wand guys!” I hissed to Fred, believing that it was the eye contact that had doomed me in Huntsville – with no fuss, and then found ourselves some food. Well, Fred ate a couple of pieces of fruit he’d brought with him, and I ate a crappy chicken salad sandwich (which caused me to burp up chicken salad all afternoon. Yummy!). Then we found our gate and proceeded to wait. And wait and wait and wait. Fred thought that the time went back fairly quickly, while in my opinion it just crawled. Whatever it was that Fred was reading just sucked, so he went into the bookstore and bought a David Sedaris book – I’ve been suggesting for ages that the man check out David Sedaris, but does he listen to me? No! – and proceeded to read and giggle like a fool.
Finally, FINALLY, we boarded our plane to Cincinnati. Because Fred was in charge of buying the tickets, we were in the very last row of the plane. And because the plane was packed and Fred is skinny while I am not, I made him sit in the middle seat instead of where he wanted to be, next to the window. I’ll encroach upon the space of someone I’m related to, but not a complete stranger, and if I had ended up in the middle seat, I would have spent the entire flight scrunched up, legs crossed, arms crossed, trying to make myself as small as possible, so that I wouldn’t encroach upon the space of the woman in the aisle seat.
The flight went quickly, though due to turbulence, the flight attendants couldn’t take the time to serve us drinks from the drink cart, but rather came through and passed out cups of water.
Once off the plane in Cincinatti, I informed Fred that we must find a bathroom immediately. As so often happens when we’re together anywhere, I stopped paying attention to what was going on and just kept following him.
“Restrooms are over here,” I heard him say. We entered a hallway, and I just had think to think “Where does the hall branch off to the ladies room?”, when I realized I’d followed him into the mens room. There were crowds of men standing around doing manly bathroom-type things, and as one, they all paused what they were doing, and turned to stare at me.
“Uh. Oops!” I said loudly, and hauled ass out of there.
We rode the shuttle to Concourse C, which is where – in my experience – they put all the bitty planes with tiny whining engines run by hamsters on wheels. We sat down by our gate, and Fred went off to get us something to eat. While he was gone, the ticket agent announced that there was an “oversold situation”, and anyone offering to take a later flight would be compensated. Since Fred and I had talked in passing about giving up our tickets in such a situation so that we could return to Washington for a vacation, I went to find him. After much discussion, we decided not to go for it – though if given the opportunity on my way to or from Maine, I’ll probably take it.
We weren’t even done eating when our plane started boarding.
“We’ll be walking out to the plane and up those rickety steps!” I told Fred, who hadn’t apparently had that pleasure yet. I found that with 100-plus pounds less of me, those steps were a lot less rickety, thank god.
Aside from me, there were maybe three women on the very packed plane – the rest appeared to be men returning from business trips. Although the flight was just over an hour, by the time we landed, all I wanted to do was get our asses home so I could strip down and never get dressed again ever in my life. By 9:30, we were home, petting cats, checking mail, and unpacking. I’ll tell you – there’s just nothing like sleeping in your own bed, there really isn’t.
As we were checking our email – I got 600 entries for the 
This is Fancypants’ favorite place to lay while outside. He can be found there most mornings, just hanging out and watching for birds.
Tubby, on the other hand, prefers to lay under a chair. Doesn’t he look annoyed and disturbed?
The face o’ evil.
The cats have recently taken to sleeping on this particular shelf, I have no idea why.
Sunday morning I walked out of my bedroom to see a cat orgy going on. Every cat except Miz Poo was present. Miz Poo has morals, you know.
That Fancypants just loooooves to snuggle up to Spanky.
Miz Poo takes over her daddy’s chair.
A newly-bloomed rose in the garden. I love the way the color is darker on the outside than the inside. Just gorgeous!
I love this rose, too. In fact, I like most roses, as long as they aren’t the boring red ones.
For some reason, the cats don’t like to walk across the bath mat. Spanky just got done drinking out of the toilet, and if you look closely, you can see a drop of water on his nose.
You can’t really see it, but Tubby was sprawled out of the floor rubbing his face all over the sock o’ love (ie, stuffed with catnip and tied close), and Miz Poo and Spanky were looking on with faint disgust.
See something on the floor?
Sit on it.
Sit on it.
Sit on it.
If you see us wandering around Washington in the next few days, please come up and say hi!
I’ll see you on the flip side.]]> 
]]> 
