Category: Life

pretty cool site while I was reading a magazine (I don’t remember which one it was) over the weekend. For $6 a month, you can borrow two paperbacks (they only have paperbacks) at a time, and your membership covers the shipping. You order 2 paperbacks, read them, and return them in the postpaid envelope they send you. Depending on your membership level, you can have 2, 4, or 6 paperbacks checked out at one time. I don’t necessarily need a membership myself, since I have about a year’s worth of books waiting to be read at any given time, but I got a "bronze" membership for the spud. She’s decided that she likes Carol Higgins Clark, and I don’t have any of the books around still. I’m all kinds of twitchy today, because my bra’s bothering the hell out of me. I’ll go for days where wearing a bra feels just fine, but then I’ll start getting all twitchy. I think it’s got something to do with the fact that my period will be starting on Wednesday. Too much information? Nah! So, my FUCKING computer was being a pain in the ass yesterday morning, even after I’d rebooted three times, so I turned it off and flounced off to read. As I passed by the kitchen, I glanced out the window and caught sight of the Bradford pear tree in the back yard, next to the shed. I had Fred buy a big pair of clippers the last time he was at Lowe’s specifically so I could prune the tree, but hadn’t gotten around to it in the last month. This gives you some idea of what the tree looked like, only it had leaves. So I went out in the garage and grabbed the clippers, went out back and spent 20 minutes chopping like a madwoman. Then I went over and chopped on the other tree, and now they both look great. If you look closely at the bottom picture, you’ll see a nosy Miz Poo sitting amongst the branches. Or see the closeup: There’s nothing that cat likes more than to be in the middle of things. The flowerbed I took a picture of on April 8th is looking a lot better these days. The rose bushes haven’t grown much, but the Petunias are just happy as can be. That’s a little hedgehog next to the planter, by the way. I bought it for $3 at the grocery store about a year ago. I slept like a rock last night for the first time in weeks. I used to sleep on the side of the bed referred to as "Fred’s side." We’d lay on our respective sides, then he’d get up and go to his room, and I’ve go around the bed and sleep on his side. During the "recovery" weeks, he stayed in the master bedroom with me a couple of times, and I got into the habit of just sleeping on my own side whether he was there or not, and I tossed and turned a lot. Last night, he toddled off to his own room around 9:30, and I decided to try out his side of the bed again. After reading for about half an hour, I could hardly keep my eyes open, so I turned off the light and turned over. I fell asleep immediately, and slept in the same position all night long. That’s the good part. The bad part is that I had a long, involved dream about cleaning out the litter box. Can’t win ’em all, I s’pose. We’ve spent the past two evenings watching Eco-Challenge: New Zealand on USA. I love that show almost as much as I love Survivor. Not surprising, I guess, since they’re both Mark Burnett shows. My favorite team by far is Team Earthlink, because two of the members of that team were on the winning team, Team Eco-Internet the year before. The captain of Team Eco-Internet, Ian, tossed two of his team members off the team, and they – as Holly Hunter put it in voiceover the first night – muscled their way on to Team Earthlink. One of the team members he kicked off is Robyn Benincasa, and he tossed her because she has asthma problems, apparently. I love Robyn Benincasa. She rocks. And I hope she kicks Ian’s ass from here to Timbuktu and back. I also liked Team GO, though it doesn’t seem they have much of a chance of winning. I hope like hell that Team Earthlink wins. Or at least Team Eco-Internet DOESN’T. Have I ever mentioned that I like reality TV? Note to self: Get life.]]>

Saturday’s dinner. That’s a hamburger under that pale piece of iceberg lettuce. Cooked on the George Foreman grill! Those are oven-baked (homemade) fries, and a bowl o’ pole beans. Sunday’s dinner – Vietnamese Honey Roasted Chicken (this was the first time I made it – and it’s SO DAMN GOOD) with the skin removed (I forgot to get a picture of the whole chicken before we took it apart), jasmine rice with some of the leftover pan drippings on top, and steamed yellow squash (Wendy suggests serving sliced cucumbers, but we didn’t have any cucumbers, and I didn’t feel like going out, for I am a lazy wench). I didn’t eat that entire chicken breast half, by the way – in fact, I only ate about half of it. God, you know what I’d do if I were famous like Russell Crowe? I’d totally do a Google search on myself, and then when I ran across this entry of Kymm’s (read the part at the bottom), I’d find out where she lives and just SHOW UP one day, knock on her door and take her to lunch. Because HOW FUCKING COOL would it be to make someone’s year like that, to just show up and see the expression on their face? If I ever won the lottery, I’d give money to people who could use it, anonymously. You know? Send $10,000 to a single mother of two who’s having a hard time of it and imagine the look on her face when she opens her door to find an envelope of cash sitting there. The best job in the world has GOT to be working with the group that goes around with Publisher’s Clearing House and hands out those big-ass checks. Oh, man. Al has a great proposal story. Actually made me tear up, it did. Although I’m not really a big-wedding kinda gal, sometimes I wish I had the whole big shebang, and walked down the aisle in a white dress and danced at my reception and all that. Hey, Fred and I should renew our vows on our fifth anniversary (this year will be four years) and y’all could come! I’m just kidding. But it’d be cool, wouldn’t it? I downloaded If I Close My Eyes Forever from Say’s blog on Friday, and I’ve been listening to it over and over again. I just love the hell out of that song, but when I played it for Fred, he said he’d never heard it. Freak. I had forgotten how much I really like Ozzy, and I downloaded Crazy Train, Momma I’m Coming Home, Bark at the Moon, and Dreamer via Grokster over the weekend. Crazy Train makes me think of the many times I worked the closing shift at McDonald’s, and once we were closed to customers, we’d put Ozzy in the tape player and blast it as loud as the closing manager would let us. We happened to catch the latest Osbournes episode last night (I already saw it Tuesday night, but Fred hadn’t), and when Ozzy was onstage Fred pointed out that he seems like a completely different person. He seems to be really THERE, you know? When he’s shuffling around the house, it’s like only about a quarter of his mind is aware of what’s going on, but when he’s on stage (or even in his video, the bit of it that we saw), he seems really sharp and completely aware. I read in Entertainment Weekly recently that he said he only feels alive when he’s drinking or doing drugs. We watched Domestic Disturbance over the weekend, and it wasn’t bad for completely empty entertainment – but it was a little jarring, the way Vince Vaughn went from apparent good guy to bad guy so quickly, and also the way one second John Travolta didn’t believe his kid, and the next he did. What can you expect from a movie that’s less than ninety minutes long? Also, John Travolta holds his face EXACTLY like Billy Bob Thornton in Slingblade. EXACTLY. I probably wouldn’t have noticed, except that we just watched Slingblade last weekend, and Fred’s been walking around saying "I b’lieve one o’ them fellers was from Arkansas. Mmm-hmm." We leave one of our windows open part-way for most of the day so that the cats can go out into the back yard if they want. Over the past three days, I’ve rescued approximately 23,987 baby dragonflies, who fly in to check out the situation, and then forget how they got in. It’s not easy to rescue a baby dragonfly, just so you know, because they’re very touchy about being convinced to hop onto a fly swatter and then ride to the nearest open window or door. But I can’t NOT rescue them – that’d just be wrong. The wasps and flies, on the other hand, are another story altogether. If I can’t get ’em with the fly swatter, I suck ’em into the vacuum cleaner. The big flies make a very satisfying THWOOMP! sound as they fly down the attachment tube. Some day one of them will figure out how to get out of the vacuum cleaner and come after me.]]>

On the left, my entree – angel hair pasta with sauteed garlic and onions and a sprinkle of parmesan. In the center, what Fred and the spud had – spaghetti sauce with browned ground turkey, black olives, mushrooms and onions over angel hair, and a healthy sprinkle of parmesan on top. On the right, the vegetable for this meal – okra. It was overcooked and mushy, though. Bleh. Holy cow. I just went to the post office to mail a few things, and it was another good mail day. Mary Ellen’s cool mom, Gail, sent me some more pens. Whee! I think I’ll never run out of cool pens to write with ever again. Thanks, Gail! Would you like to know what I just hate? I hate it when there’s a web page touting some wonderful product, but you CANNOT place an online order. You know, if I WANTED to call someone a place an order, I wouldn’t be looking online, I’d be looking in a catalog, okay? Got that? I also hate that Bath and Body Works doesn’t have a web page you can order from. Obviously, they know that if you can order online, you won’t go into the stores so that the salespeople can follow you around and harass you into buying stuff you don’t need. That’s okay – I’ll just buy from Lush. I got my big-ass order of Lush products via UPS yesterday, and I’m happy once again. (Not that I was particularly unhappy, mind you) What I find interesting is that I ordered from the Lush Canada site, but the UPS ticket shows it as being shipped from Washington state. Interesting, no? Oh, I also hate sites where you CAN purchase the stuff they’re selling online, but they DON’T have a PICTURE of the item for you to look at to decide whether you want to buy it. That’s totally lame, and I’m sure they’re not selling ANYTHING on their sites and have decided that it’s useless to sell anything online. Dumbasses. So, I was reading Newsweek this morning while I was blow-drying my hair (It just bores the hell out of me to stand there and blow-dry it, so I usually read. Which is probably why my hair looks the way it does. Heh.), and I came across a story about Osama Bin Laden’s half brother Yeslam and how he’s "under scrutiny" and blahblahblah. What made me laugh out loud was this part: Like the rest of Osama’s relatives, Yeslam adopted a different family name to distance himself from his infamous kin. So what do you suppose he changed his family name to? Something very different, right? Something that you’d hear and never ever link to Bin Laden in a million years, surely. He changed it from Bin Laden to Binladin. Holy cow, did I laugh my ass off. On the one hand I understand, ’cause it’s kind of like hiding in plain sight – "Is he related to Osama?" "No, it’s spelled differently. One word instead of two, and l-a-d-i-n instead of l-a-d-e-n. No relation at all" – but on the other hand, it’s kinda of like changing your last name from Smith to Smyth and thinking no one would ever connect you with your family, the Smiths. Bet you had no idea I read Newsweek, did you? I was making an attempt to tame the pile of crap laying on the floor around my desk (this attempt was spurred by seeing that several spiders had taken up residence in and amongst the nooks and crannies of said crap, and had even laid eggs), and one of the things I’ve been needing to do is go through this rather large pile of floppy disks, see what was on each one, and decide what to do with whatever it was. I found a huge amount of pictures from March of 2000, many of which were cat pictures. For instance, there was: where Tubby is showing his evil side, and also meowing his obnoxious "Meh!" at me. There was also: where Tubby is laying by the kitchen table and obviously starving to death. I also found a more recent picture that Fred took a few days ago: The boys do like their fresh air and sunshine, yes indeedy. Friday Five: 1. What’s your favorite TV show and why? Survivor and Friends are pretty tied for first. Ironic that they’re on at the same time, no? 2. Who is your favorite television star? Oh my GOD, I have the total hots for Michael Chiklis, who used to be The Commish, and is now Vic Mackey on The Shield. I don’t know what the man did to himself between then and now, but he went from a bit of a shlump to a total hot little muffin. Rwowr! And I’m just loving the hell out of the show – I’ve even got Fred hooked on it. 3. What was your favorite TV show as a child? Little House on the Prairie. I’ll still stop and watch it if I’m flipping channels. I was also (surprise, surprise!) a Brady Bunch fan. But then, who isn’t? ("Mom SAID, don’t play ball in the house!") 4. What show do you think should have been canceled by now? I don’t know, nothing particularly annoying comes to mind. There are a whole slew of sitcoms I’ve never watched and wouldn’t miss – Yes Dear, King of Queens, The Hughleys, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Becker. 5. What new show do you hope escapes the axe this season? Andy Richter Rules the Universe is one of my favorite new shows this season. Greg the Bunny is okay, but Fred likes it more than I do. Bernie Mac is always funny, too. ]]>

Tubby’s lookin’ scruffy and could use a good brushing. He’s also meowing bitchily at me. I don’t know why this cracks me up so much. It’s like the chair is a kitty condo, with Spanky on the first floor and Fancypants on the second. The chair is Spanky’s favorite place to be. Have you ever seen a happier cat? Tubby sneaks back through the window after a hard afternoon of snoozing under the tree.

Click on any of those pictures to see the full-sized version, by the way. I also found a little movie of Spot. I like to call it When Good Kitties Go Bad. Check it out. So, with everything around here being so nuts for the past few weeks, I managed to miss out on nominating entries for the Diarist Awards. However, I’m still presenting to you: Who I Would Have Nominated (if I’d gotten off my ass and actually done it) Mo in the Mirror. I think it’s impossible for anyone to read this and not relate. And you’ve gotta love the Mo Pie! I love Jessamyn’s A Letter from My Father. I love Jessamyn, period. Each entry is so well-written that it makes up for the fact that she doesn’t update nearly often enough to suit me. (Because it IS all about me, you know) Nicole’s book review of the book written by the woman who claims that J.K. Rowling stole the word "Muggles" from her, and stole ideas, as well. I love it when Nicole gets heated up, because entries like this one are the result. (Edited 9/05 to add: There were a bunch more links, but three years and a few months later the journals no longer exist, so I edited the links out.) This time around, there were a bunch of pages I had bookmarked that are no longer where they were, and have either been taken down or moved so that I can’t find ’em. Dora Eliza took down her archives so that I can’t link to her entries for February 15th, January 29th, or January 25th (just thought you’d like to know I really liked those entries, Eliza! Even if I can’t remember anymore what they were about…). Fred wrote an entry at some point that’s no longer up, and Joley wrote an entry on February 14th that I can’t find. You know, I always consider these entries – the ones with a bunch of pictures and then a bunch of links – to be cheater-type entries, because how hard can it be? Well let me tell you, it’s hard. It’s hard because I want to say something that will do justice to each link, and I always feel like I never quite do.< Just so you know. -----

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Once and Again Monday night and watched it last night, and here’s what I don’t get – why wasn’t it a possibility for Rick to go to Australia and Lily to stay at home and do her syndication thing? It was only nine months, which would be hard, but if the guy having the hotel built was willing to fly the entire family over there and put them up in a house, I’m sure he would have been willing to fly Rick or Lily back and forth every few weeks. Of course, the surprise at the end put a different spin on it, I guess. I’m going to miss that show. So, something ODD happened yesterday, and if I end up dead in a few days, y’all will have some idea who to look for, okay? Fred and I were sitting in front of our respective computers around 3:00, when I glanced up and saw a light blue minivan (sorry, didn’t get the license plate number, but it was light blue. And a minivan. Pass that along to the police investigators, won’t you?) driving down the street toward our house. I didn’t think much of it, because we live – I think I’ve mentioned this 15 times in the last week – at the end of a cul-de-sac, and a large number of people find it necessary to drive down the street, turn around in front of our house, and drive back from whence they came. When I say a large number, I mean in the area of 15 cars or SUVs a day, so it’s not unusual to see an unfamiliar vehicle drive down the street. So I went back to what I was doing, and glanced up a moment later to see the minivan (light blue. Kind of a smoky blue. And a Chevy, I think. Or a Pontiac? Oh, I’m hopeless when it comes to identifying the make or model of a car. But it was probably less than 5 years old, officer) pulling into our driveway. This is an unusual occurrence (okay, JEEZUS CHRIST, why does EVERY FUCKING WEB PAGE IN EXISTENCE have fucking pop-up windows, someone tell me? If I’m going to Merriam-Webster to look up the correct spelling of "occurrence", I don’t want your stupid fucking pop-up trying to sell me some cd by some Ashanti person, okay? In fact, I’ll be sure to go out of my way to avoid anything by that name from here on out for the rest of my life, motherfuckers), because the only vehicles pulling into our driveway on a regular basis would be mine and Fred’s, and from time to time his father and stepmother’s truck. Light blue minivan? Never seen it before. "Huh." I said to Fred. "A light blue minivan (got that? light blue!) just pulled into our driveway, and someone’s coming to the door." A nicely dressed black man – shirt and tie nice, not suit nice, and holding a bottle of Tide laundry detergent – rang the doorbell. "All yours!" I said to Fred, and hid around the corner. I don’t answer the door, have I mentioned? Except for this previous Sunday, which I’ll cover after I’m through telling this particular story. Anyway, Fred opened the door, there was some conversation, and finally Fred said "Nope, sorry," and shut the door. Come to find out, the guy CLAIMED he was selling cleaning supplies and wanted to come in and demonstrate them for us. "We already use Tide," Fred told the guy, probably hoping the guy would hand over the bottle and we’d be all set for another 100 loads o’ laundry. (Side note: Does anyone actually use the recommended measurement of laundry detergent? ‘Cause I don’t, I use about half of what they suggest, and my clothes always come clean) The guy tried to get pushy about coming in to demonstrate other products, until Fred said he wasn’t feeling well because he was recovering from surgery (and lifted his shirt to flash his goop-filled drains at the guy), which is when the guy gave up and left. He got in his minivan (there was a second person in the vehicle with him, but aside from the fact that the second person was likely male, I have no further details, officer) and drove away. To me, this is REALLY odd because 1. he drove directly to our house and didn’t stop at any other houses in the neighborhood and 2. Are there still door-to-door cleaning supply salesmen? I think NOT. Know what I’m thinking? Psycho stalker, desperate to come into the house, rape and rob us and leave us for dead, stealing the computers and the big-screen TV on the way out. Bastards. If the updates stop coming, I expect y’all to call the cops. Speaking of evil people at the door, Fred and I were upstairs hanging out Sunday afternoon, when the doorbell rang. We weren’t expecting company, so I went to the study and looked down to see if there were any cars in the driveway. There weren’t, and I thought about not answering the door, but if it were one of the neighbors coming by to say "I see your husband is walking oddly and wearing a girdle. Everything okay?", they’d have seen both Jeeps in the driveway and known we were home. "Go answer the door," I told the spud. Which was stupid, because when she did, the people at the door asked if her parents were home. She called me, and since Fred was still moving rather slowly, I couldn’t make HIM go talk to whomever it was (plus, he was dressed for comfort rather than fashion), so I walked grumpily down the stairs. I opened the door to be faced with a couple of young teenagers, a boy and a girl. The boy greeted me and held out a pamphlet. I glanced down at it, saw "Church of Christ" in big, bold letters, and got annoyed to the extreme. "Nope! Sorry!" I growled, and slammed the door in their little cherub faces. They’re lucky I didn’t swear at them, damnit. I’m so going to hell. But, it’s Nance‘s fault! She told me last week that I need to learn to be more of a bitch. Mission accomplished. Miz Poo is NOT a fan of the vacuum cleaner. ]]>

if you buy two more of these, you can get one free, would you like to go grab some? that I decided it wasn’t worth the bother. Personally, I prefer my salesclerks to be available, but if I need or want help, I’ll let them know. I was sitting in front of the television last night making snarky comments to myself about the Cindy Crawford Pepsi commercial ("That’s right, Cindy, leave the kids ALONE in a steaming-hot truck so you can get a nice cool Pepsi and cavort around in your short-shorts in front of a bunch of little boys!"), when I remembered something that happened when the spud was about 6 months old. I had dropped her off at my parents’ house, because they were going to watch her while I worked for four or five hours. On my way from their house to work, I stopped at a convenience store to get a bottle of Coke, and when I came out of the store and went to get in the car, I caught sight of the base of the spud’s car seat, and for a brief, sickening moment I FORGOT that I had dropped her off at my parents’ house and was absolutely convinced for some reason that I had left her in her car seat on the back of the car while I was putting something in the front seat, and forgot that she was there, then drove off with her on the back of the car, and she was smushed and dead somewhere on the road. I don’t know WHY I was so convinced that I’d done such a thing, because I never put her car seat on the back of the car that I can remember, and I was always very conscientious about putting her in the car first thing before worrying about arranging anything else.

I guess I was a doofus even way back then. I was relieved to see that my current favorite girl on The Bachelor, Amanda, is still in the running. I don’t think she’s going to make it past next week though, because I don’t think she’s enough of a challenge for Alex the Serial Smoocher, and he made it clear last night after Shannon‘s hissy fit that he likes a difficult woman. I hope I’m wrong, though. Miz Poo’s favorite place to hang out in the back yard is amongst my dead daffodils (click on the picture to see the full-sized version): Fred had his staples removed yesterday along with two of the four drains, and though I accompanied him to his appointment, the entire time the doctor was removing the staples and drains, I sat in a corner of the room (in a chair), in a practically fetal position, with my toes curled so tight that my calves ached when I woke up this morning. I think it’s safe to say that I’m a bit squeamish. I’ll LOOK at the scars and the drains and all that stuff, but I don’t really want to TOUCH the scars, lest I cause pain, or something goopy get on me. Actually, I don’t mind goopy things getting on me (get your minds out of the gutters, pervs), because I had to actually touch a boogery, bloody looking thing to remove it from the hole of Fred’s drain over the weekend and wasn’t icked out at all, but the idea of touching Fred’s less-than-a-week-old scars just gives me the shivers. And not in a good way.

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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.

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