Category: Life

Thanks for all your emails about yesterday’s entry. I’m not going to respond to them, because I’m already a week behind in my emailing, and I don’t want to get further behind. So consider this a blanket "thanks", and know that I appreciate each and every one of them!

Y’all seem like a hip and happenin’ crowd. Explain to me what a "man with the bling-bling" would have, exactly? Is that a sex thing? Inquiring minds need to know…

And while you’re helping me out, sometime in the past 5 years I read a book – fiction – where a mother and her two children were kidnapped, possibly from a school parking lot, and locked in a room in the kidnapper’s basement. The man periodically raped the mother, and at one point took the youngest daughter off, claiming he would release her, but he didn’t. Is this striking a chord with any of y’all? For some reason I’m wanting to read it again. I’m fairly certain it’s a detective novel, but can’t think of which detective or what novel, and it’s driving me buggy. Help?

Okay, one more plea for help. When I was taking a Lit class about eight years ago, I read a poem written from the perspective of the frog who turned into a prince when the princess kissed him, and it was about his longing for the pond from whence he came. Come on, help me out, here – it’s driving me nuts. I’m dying to read it again.

Amazon is driving me NUTS with the freakin’ pop-up ads. I hit that fucking site 15 times a day to check out a book or movie, or to find out the status on an order I’ve placed, and every damn time they hit me with a pop-up ad. I HATE THOSE THINGS. If anything were to make me switch loyalties from Amazon to some other online book store, it’d be those ads. Do you hear me, Jeff Bezos?

I stood in line for more than 20 minutes at the post office this morning. I got there 10 minutes after it opened, and there were only 4 people in line ahead of me, and one verrrry slow postal worker behind the counter. One woman got so annoyed that she stormed out with her package, yelling "This is ridiculous!" Which doesn’t solve the fact that she needed to mail her package – she’s going to have to go back sooner or later – but I’m sure was quite satisfying in the short run.

I was perfectly fine waiting in line though, because I had a cheesy romance-type novel to keep me busy. I carry a paperback in my purse at all times just in case of such a wait, and I highly recommend cheesy romance-type novels with simple plots that you can get right back in to even if it’s been weeks since you last picked up the book.

So, I was reading yet another US last night, and I ran across this picture:

And I don’t know about y’all, but all I could think was "What the fuck?" What the fuck was going through her head when she left the house dressed like that? Did she look herself over in the full-length mirror and say "Yeahhhhh, man, I’m lookin’ fine!" ? Did she notice that she wasn’t apparently wearing any pants? Or is she – who the hell can tell? And to top it off with the hat and the stiletto boots – did she even look at herself before leaving the house, or did she let someone’s blind grandmother dress her?

Ah, the mysteries of the world.

So I got the new scanner hooked up last night, and immediately had to scan the spud’s face, because that’s the kind of abusive mom I am.

And she went along with it ’cause that’s the kind of easygoing spud she is. Looks kinda cool, doesn’t it? Perhaps next time I’ll have her not smush her face down quite so hard.

I can’t get "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" out of my head. Make it stop, mommy…

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So, I’m currently reading my backlog of magazines, and last night I was reading the December 10th edition of US (why do they even bother to put dates on the stupid things, I wonder – how can there be a magazine out for a date that hasn’t occurred yet?), and US must be reaching, because this particular issue’s cover story was Women of the Year – Courage, Love, Tears, Compassion.

I get to page 46 and see that Nicole Kidman is the first Woman of the Year they’re listing. Why is Nicole Kidman Woman of the Year, you wonder? Because she sang and danced and played opposite Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge? Because she got to kiss (I assume; I haven’t actually seen the movie yet) Ewan McGregor? Because she solved that whole pesky world-peace issue? No, none of these. Nicole Kidman is a Woman of the Year because, and I’ll quote the headline, "For making it on her own."

Tom Cruise (and I think we all know how I feel about HIM) leaves her high and dry, stunning her and us (and most importantly ME), doesn’t seem to give a shit when she miscarries his child, she doesn’t roll over and die, and that makes Nicole Kidman a Woman of the Year.

You know what? Bobby Sue in Kansas, whose husband left HER high and dry with their three kids, ages 5, 7 and 9, so he could run off with the local skank ho, and so Bobby Sue has to work three jobs just to make ends meet and pay the rent on their one-bedroom apartment, and has no health or life insurance, and worries the entire time she’s working at the diner that her 9 year-old will burn down the apartment trying to heat up some fucking SPAGHETTI-OS for his siblings, and can only come home for ten minutes between the end of her shift at the diner and the beginning of her shift at the hospital, to hug her kids and make sure they’re all alive and try to talk to them for a few moments and tell them that she loves them and beg them to stay in the apartment and don’t answer the door if anyone knocks, and you have my number at work, right? Call me before you go to sleep, and prays to god that no one calls the fucking DHS, and won’t be home until midnight until her kids are (pleasegod) sound asleep, and the five year-old continually asks where daddy is and has started to wet the bed at night, and the 7 year-old is such a good kid that she just gets lost in the shuffle, in fact, they’re all good kids and she knows that this life is a disservice to them, and sometimes she’d like to curl up in a ball and just give up, but she CAN’T, because you CANNOT DO THAT, you don’t just curl up in a ball and give up when you have three children to raise, and so Bobby Sue WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHERE HER FUCKING WOMAN OF THE YEAR AWARD IS, AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DOES IT COME WITH ANY MONEY, OR MAYBE A PART-TIME NANNY?

Jesus Christ. Women – and men – from one end of this country to the other are left every fucking day, and they don’t throw up their hands and die. They go on because there is no choice, because that’s what life is about, taking the shit you’re dealt and going on. And some of them have good support structures and some of them do not, and yet they still go on. And they don’t have millions, and they don’t have fame, they don’t have magazines to slaver over every detail of their fabulous I-managed-to-go-on life, and they struggle, and they go on. No awards. No magazine covers. No millions of dollars – and please, for the love of god, do not DARE email me and tell me that your heart breaks the same whether you’re a millionaire or have 29 cents in your pocket until payday in two weeks – it is INFINITELY fucking easier to get through life with money behind you, and anyone who whines the opposite should shut the fuck up and send me their entire fortune this very second. When you have money, you have the time to give your broken heart the attention and care it needs instead of working 60 hours a week and worrying endlessly about your children and how you’re going to survive from paycheck to paycheck.

And when you think of the thousands of people who will be going through this holiday season without the spouses, children, siblings, and friends killed in one fell swoop by unexpected acts of terrorism, the fact that Nicole Kidman is actually "making it on her own" is not so terribly worthy of a Woman of the Year award.

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Attention @home users who are on the notify list – please re-subscribe under whatever email address you’re currently using, because I got a ton of bounces last night, and I need to remove the bouncing addresses from the notify list for the sake of my sanity. Are y’all ready to take an axe to @home, or what? That whole situation has to suck.

My poor notify list. I always ALWAYS send out my notifies with the email addresses suppressed, only last night I was in a hurry to go watch Boston Public, and wasn’t paying attention, and I accidentally put the email nickname in BOTH the "To:" AND the "BCC:" fields, and so not only did my poor notify-ees get a notify email with 250 email addresses listed, but they got TWO of them. And then I spammed them by emailing and apologizing!

I swear I’ll be more careful next time…

Many thanks to reader Cynthia, who bought Waltzing the Cat for me off of my wish list. Y’all know how much I love the unexpected mail!

Speaking of mail – as far as the Giveaway goes, I’ve gotten everything that could fit in a padded envelope mailed, and everything else aside from the stereo will be going out tomorrow. For once, I’m way ahead of (self-imposed) schedule.

That picture on the front page, by the way, is of the front of our house with all the christmas stuff turned on. It’s darker than I’d like, but the one I took when it was lighter out was too light, so I had to pick one.

When I look out the front door, there’s a house directly in my line of sight that has done the unthinkable. That’s right, they’ve mixed the colors of their christmas lights, and it drives me nuts. Two trees are covered with PINK lights, there are strings of multicolored lights down the side of their driveway, a bush or two covered in blue lights, and white lights on the front of their house. I hate it, it looks horrible to me. Fred thinks I’m insane and that I pulled the "don’t mix the colors of lights" rule out of my ass. Obviously he has no idea of the subtle rules of a civilized society.

The house I like the most is to our left, and it has red and white lights across the top of the house, and lighted wreaths on several windows. Tasteful, pretty, and not an eyesore.

I guess I should add here that if you MUST mix light colors, you might as well go all the way and have one of those houses where every item in the yard is covered with lights, and moving lighted reindeer structures in the yard, a huge Santa on the roof. You get the idea. Those kinds of houses, I like. It appeals to the white trash in me.

I ought to take a walk around the neighborhood with the camera for a future entry.

So, the realtor we bought our house from? Who lives two houses away? He came over yesterday asking Fred for help with his DVD player. When they were back at his house, Fred was talking about something, and mentioned me by name.

"Who’s Robyn?" said the realtor. Apparently, he’d forgotten my name. Bastard.

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So, since we’ve moved into this house, the only real complaint I’ve had is that there’s nowhere for me to just sit and read, unless I want to sit in the living room – where sooner or later someone else turns on the TV, ’cause they’ve never heard of sitting quietly and just READING – or on the bed. No chairs set off where I could just sit quietly and read, and snuggle with the cats. For the last few months, I’ve been saving up money, and finally I had enough to drag Fred and the spud out shopping for a chair to put in the corner of the bedroom, where I can sit and read to my heart’s content.

Saturday, we left the house around 10:30, vowing (or perhaps that was just me) not to come home until a chair was found and purchased. Our first stop was the antiquey-basement-smelling Rhodes Furniture, where we found exactly one chair we liked, but it was more than I wanted to spend. We walked next door to the La-z-boy Gallery, and walked in the door to find, smiling up at us, three "Factory Special" chairs, all of which were well within the price range, and – according to the tags – could be covered with the fabric of your choice. So we sat and waited for a salesperson to happen by, or to see us and come over.

And waited and waited and waited.

After close to 10 minutes, Fred suggested we leave and go to the store where we bought the couch and loveseat and see if we could find anything there. We found one chair, and again we sat to wait for a salesperson. And there were salespeople aplenty, wandering by and ignoring us, standing around and chatting and ignoring us, and glancing at and ignoring us.

Fred suggested that we looked like we didn’t have any money. I agreed that it probably did look like we didn’t have any money, since the spud – did I mention that she was with us? – had taken it upon herself to wear shorts and a t-shirt for the rather cool day, and obviously we couldn’t afford to dress our child in warm clothes, so could also not afford the fine furnishings, and why should they waste their time?

Back to the La-z-boy Gallery we went, where we again sat down, waiting in vain as the salespeople clustered about the register, chatting and ignoring us. Finally, Fred went up and stood there, arms crossed, until one of them said "Can I help you, sir?" Fred smiled his asshole smile and said "I’d like to buy a chair if it’s not too much trouble."

I couldn’t see him from where I was, but he said they all froze as one, like deer caught in headlights. Finally, one woman came forward, all apologetic and ready to help. She came over and got the numbers off the tag and went back to check the price, and Fred asked various and sundry questions, and then we went back to look at fabric swatches and decide on the one we liked.

There was only one we liked, and the saleslady came back and said "Okay, let me check my chart and see if that affects the price."

Fred smiled his asshole smile and said "I bet it goes up."

Sure enough, it would have been an extra $110 to get the fabric we liked. Shocking, no?

"I can live with what it’s covered in if you can," I said to Fred. He stood and mentally weighed the satisfaction of storming out of there against having to listen to me whine about wanting a chair for the next several days, and decided on the lesser of two evils.

"We’ll take it," he said.

"Let me go see if we have any ready in the warehouse," said the saleslady.

Fred smiled his asshole smile and said "I bet they don’t."

The saleslady came back. "It seems that there are none in the warehouse, but you can take the one off the floor." Discussions ensued about how there had been strange asses sitting on that chair, and Fred wasn’t certain he wanted a chair strangers had been farting in in his house, and perhaps we should get a price break.

She didn’t go for that.

We decided – because of the evil cats and their propensity for barfing on the least desirable surfaces – that the chair needed to be Scotchguarded.

Fred smiled his asshole smile. "I bet you charge for shipping."

"Oh yes – that’s a $30 delivery charge," said the saleslady, who no doubt was growing tired of Fred’s asshole smile. "But you could fit it into the back of an SUV easily," she hastened to add, and also said that it could be picked up Sunday.

"I think I’ll pick it up Monday," Fred replied. "Between 3:30 and 4," so he could leave work and pick it up, and then come home.

So we left.

Oh! I forgot – when the lady was getting our information – name, address, all that – she asked for the phone number, and Fred gave her his work number, and then she politely said "May I have your home number?", and he said

with an asshole smile

"I’m sorry, you may not."

She handled it well, only pausing for a moment and jotting something down on her form – probably customer is asshole – and going on to fill out the rest of the form.

So Fred got in to work this morning to find a snotty, bitchy message from her, wondering if we still WANTED the chair, since we hadn’t BOTHERED to come pick it up yesterday. When he called back to give her hell, she claimed she’d been on pain medication due to some sort of surgery, and had been confused.

Likely story.

Anyway, long story short (too late!), Fred picked up the chair and brought it home with him this afternoon. We put it in a corner of the bedroom, and the cats are freaking out.

I can’t wait to snuggle up on that chair under a quilt with a good book and a bad kitty tonight! (By the way, the chair’s not nearly as close to the bed as it looks in that picture).

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But for now, I love it.

The mouse is one of those new-fangled ones without the ball inside to collect dust and other nastiness. As I said to Fred, "What will I do now that I don’t have to clean dust off my ball?" Oh, I slay me.

I also love, though have not yet laid hands upon it, our new scanner. No weird yellow and green stripes on the side of things I’ve scanned! It’s on it’s way from Alpharetta, Georgia, and will hopefully be here early next week. Kickass! I plan to do something along the lines of scan all the pictures I have on albums and put them on a cd, but that’s going to be some seriously time-consuming stuff. Maybe I’ll make it my New Year’s Resolution for next year.

So, how much did it suck to sit down all excited about the fact that Survivor was about to start and then find out it was a recap of everything that had happened up ’til now? SUCK. Man, I was pissed. What made it worse is that I had seen, not two hours earlier, a commercial for it that was nothing but A BIG FAT BLATANT LIE, about how Lex is on the hunt to find out who voted for him.

Lex is getting on my nerves.

At least Temptation Island was on, so I got my trash fix. Tony, of Genevieve and Tony, is about the most annoying man in the world to me right now, and I’m not sure why. I just canNOT stand him for some reason. My prediction thus far is that Catherine and Edmundo, and perhaps Thomas and Nikkole are the likeliest to break up at the end.

SOMEONE better break up, or I won’t be watching Temptation Island 3, that’s for sure.

Speaking of trash tv, on The Amazing Race, I can’t believe FUCKING Team Guido made it the other night. Those two have the most incredible damn luck, the bastards. And Drew and Kevin were pretty much my favorites – I didn’t like ’em at first, but they really grew on me. My favorite line of the night was when one of them – I don’t know which is which, to be honest – said "My testicle is rolling around the streets of Beijing!", followed closely by "Eat, you fat bastard!"

Team Guido, I hate you.

Did you see when they were in the market, and Drew and Kevin were in front of the Guidos, and one said "Slow them down!", so the other was walking as slowly as possible to do so, and the Guido (hell, I don’t know which is which for them, either) got a pissed-off and disgusted and "This is so childish!" look on his face? Conveniently, he forgot about shoving Emily’s Mom at the airport so they’d miss their plane a few weeks ago.

Assholes.

Okay, moving on.

You know what? "Mmmm-hmmm" is NEVER an appropriate response when you’re in the service industry and your customer says "Thank you." NEVER. "Mmmm-hmmm" means "Yeah, whatever, asshole." THE APPROPRIATE RESPONSE would be either "Thank YOU!", or "You’re welcome! Have a nice evening!" I worked in the service industry, and we would have gotten our asses kicked for saying "Mmmm-hmmm" to a customer.

Damn Dairy Queen teenage worker. "Mmmm-hmmm" my ass.

Which is where that ice cream is heading as I speak.

 

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Her name is Brady James. She’s – I’m not positive exactly, but 27, 28, something like that. She grew up in a small town in mid-Maine, not far from Bangor. She’s medium height, medium weight, has a head of frizzy medium-brown hair, and dark-blue eyes.

She was never a great student – in fact, while other students were studying for finals and doing whatever it is most high school students do, she was the head of an elite little group intent on mainlining as much beer as possible without requiring medical attention.

She wasted the better part of a decade, leaving her hometown the day after graduation and hitching her way from Maine to California and points in between, supporting herself by waitressing in the shittiest dives imaginable. When she found herself celebrating her twenty-fifth birthday by inhaling a huge amount of whiskey and fucking the lead singer of a Journey cover band, she sensibly decided she was getting too old for shit like that.

Back in Maine – Portland, to be exact – she did a 9-month secretarial course and got her certificate. For a couple of years she worked temp jobs before deciding she needed some permanence and a steady paycheck, and she ended up at Decker and Baker, a company that sells and buys farm equipment.

The job, you can imagine, is both stimulating and mind-spinningly glamorous.

Her boss – who actually went to high school with her, only he went to college instead of wasting part of his life going whereever the wind took him – hates her. Haaaaates her, and she’s not sure why. She thinks he’s an asshole, but she’s strangely drawn to him. And repulsed by the very thought. Greg – her boss – is so asexual that she’s sure he doesn’t have any sexual organs, that he’s a Ken doll brought to life.

She lives in a trailer on the outskirts of Portland, on an acre of land that is the only thing she has left of her parents. She has two cousins, Janey and Jimmy. Brady’s, Janey’s, and Jimmy’s fathers were brothers, and they died together on Christmas Eve. They were all three dressed as Santa, and a botched bank robbery got the cops after them. They were more than a little drunk and decided not to go down without a fight.

They went down, all right.

Several years ago, Jimmy’s mom kidnapped the lead singer of a fairly big rock band – I won’t mention names – and there was, as they say, quite a fuckarow. But I won’t go into that. Let’s just say that no one died, no one got hurt, and leave it at that.

So Brady lives her ordinary life in her trailer, and it’s like she’s waiting for something to happen, waiting for life to begin, only maybe it’s passing her by. For a while she dated a criminal type – a petty thief, a burglar, a convenience store robber – and then he did something she couldn’t live with, and she ended that. She’s got a best friend who works at a law firm, one of THOSE law firms, you know? The ones where you see the ads on tv, the sweaty lawyer with the slicked-back hair who tries his damnedest to sound reassuring but only manages to be vaguely terrifying. Her best friend – I don’t know his name – loves to tell her stories about the idiotic lawsuits people try to bring, and the idiotic lawyer who agrees to help them out for a fee – always for a fee.

Brady’s not real – she’s a character who’s formed herself over several years, and who has appeared in a few of the short stories I used to write. But as time goes by, details of her life come to me, and sometimes things happen in my own life that I think would be interesting to show up in hers. For instance, I think one of her bosses (NOT the one she’s drawn to and yet repulsed by, because I think one day she’ll end up with him) could be a big loud asshole of a man who spent two days in Texas and thinks that makes him a Texan.

Longtime readers will know that I mean Tex.

Tex, being a big loud asshole, could make Brady’s work life very difficult, and that could be fun to write.

I haven’t written fiction in a long time. That sentence actually originally read I haven’t written in a long time, but I’ve written 5 times a week most weeks for more than two years, and one or two of those entries aren’t bad, and so I guess I can consider it real writing, even if I’m not pulling in millions (or hundreds) of dollars for what I write. But I don’t write for money – I write because I like it.

About ten years ago I was driving down the road, and a scene came to mind, a scene that interested me, and so I thought about it for two days before I wrote it down. I thought it was going to be a short story, but it ended up being an ungodly length. It took me eight months to write, and when I was done writing and editing, I was sick to death of it.

I glanced at it recently, and it made me cringe. Too much high drama, but not the worst thing I’ve ever read (I mean, I HAVE read We Were the Mulvaneys, after all). Not publishable by any stretch of the imagination, but not bad for the effort I put into it.

I don’t know why I don’t write fiction any more. I keep fairly busy, so maybe I can claim lack of time. Fred keeps pushing me to write a book so he can retire (only half joking). I’ve been thinking more and more often about Brady and her life, and it’s possible that I may reach the point where I feel the need to start writing her story.

It’s only been 7 years since I first met her, after all.

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It’s the oddest thing – three times so far today, twice yesterday, and once the day before I’ve received emails with no subject and nothing in the body of the email, and when I’ve tried to respond, it gets kicked back as an invalid address. Fred suggested that perhaps the people the emails are coming from have been infected with viruses that are kicking out the emails. Anyone heard anything about that sort of virus?

Having learned my lesson after infecting, re-infecting, and yet again re-infecting myself, I have McAfee running, and it has nothing to say about these emails, so it’s all rather odd.

McAfee rocks.

I’m slowly ftp’ing my pictures up to my server, and it’s a huge pain in the ass. Just so you know.

Friday Five (Late again!):

1. What was the last book you read? Did you enjoy it?: Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher, and yes, I enjoyed it a great deal, although the story moved at a snail’s pace and it had a rather abrupt ending. Currently, I’m reading John Grisham’s Skipping Christmas, which is about a couple who decides to not celebrate Christmas, to go on a cruise instead. I have difficulty believing that the people around them would be so horrified at the thought that they’re skipping christmas, but then again, that’s the whole story, so without that concept, there’d be no book.

2. What’s your favorite book of all time?: Either Stephen King’s The Stand, or Robert McCammon’s Swan Song. I like me some end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it tales, yessiree.

3. What’s the worst book you’ve ever read?: The only one that comes to mind is Joyce Carol Oates’ We Were the Mulvaneys. God, it was such a load of crap, and I resent every moment I spent reading the loathesome thing. I only bought it because Oprah went on and on about how awesome it was, and I’ll never believe another word from that woman’s mouth ever again. I reviewed the book in this entry.

4. What book that you’ve read would you most like to see adapted into a movie?: Any of Andrew Vachss’ Burke books. Except that I’d have to do the casting, and probably the directing, because it has to be done just right, and if they tossed fucking TOM CRUISE or some other pretty boy in there as Burke, I’d have to perform my special Bitchypoo Shit Fit® for three weeks straight. I don’t know who I’d cast as Burke, but I’d sure know him when I saw him. Knowing Hollywood, they’d cast MICKEY fuckin’ ROURKE as Burke, and I’d have to kill myself. Mickey Rourke is such a loser asshole. I hate him.

5. How do you plan to spend your weekend?: Well, let’s see. My usual weekend plans are to sleep in, exercise late, shower late, and then spend the rest of the day surfing, getting caught up on email, and reading. And that’s about exactly what I did.

Tom Cruise. I fucking hate Tom Cruise. I was never a big fan or anything, though I thought he was okay, but hearing those rumors about he and Penelope Cruz getting married makes me want to bitch-slap him. What a classless asshole. And that whole Cruise/ Cruz thing is JUST TOO PRECIOUS FOR FUCKING WORDS.

Speaking of celebrities, did y’all catch Celebrity Fear Factor last night? It was pretty good, ALTHOUGH I have to say, it’s not quite fair that they weren’t required to eat especially nasty. No doubt they were afraid America wasn’t ready to see Donny Osmond gagging down a bull testicle. Kelly Preston was pretty funny, and we weren’t terribly surprised to see John Travolta show up at the end, either. Who’d’ve thought Coolio would win, though? And I have to say that it was pretty cool that even the losers each got $25,000 for their charities.

Okay, that’s it for today. The big giveaway will be up tomorrow, and I’ll probably take names through the weekend.

Oh, and I’ve been meaning to mention this – don’t assume that I still have your address from last year’s Christmas Card Extravaganza, ’cause, well, I probably don’t, so if you want a Christmas card, be sure to do what that paragraph down there says. (Edit: Paragraph has been removed)

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So, I don’t think I’ve mentioned that here in BitchyLand, we are going to be getting ourselves new computers, and soon. Our current computers are (horrors!) two years old, and I’ve been bitching loudly for several months about the slowness of mine, and so Himself decided to order the pieces for truly kickass computers, and the pieces have started coming in, so he and someone longtime readers know as Tex have started to put them together. They’re just waiting on the blah-blah and the blah-blah to arrive, and then they’ll be done. Woohoo! Fast computers at a fraction of the store-bought price.

Thankyajeezus for hooking me up with a geek.

Rumor has it that I may even be getting a 19-inch monitor as well one of these days, which would also be rockin’.

The problem (and there’s ALWAYS a problem with me, isn’t there?) is that I need to start backing up all my shit – I have quite a hefty picture folder on this here machine – and given the choice, I’d burn everything to cds, since this computer DOES have a cd burner and all.

Except (and there’s ALWAYS an "except") that the fucking thing doesn’t work. So I can save everything to FLOPPIES (which should only take, I dunno, 48906 floppies), or I can ftp everything up to my server (which should only take 9955 days) and then re-download everything onto the new computer.

Decisions, decisions. They both sound like so much FUN.

Ooh, and we’re getting a new scanner, too, since the one we have puts a weird yellow and green stripe down the side of everything I scan. Merry Christmas to ME!

We’ve slowly started decorating for Christmas. Well. *I* have slowly started decorating for Christmas. We have electric candles in all the windows (which I just did today), and I’ve started putting Christmas decorations on the mantel. Perhaps I can get Fred to put the tree together in the next few days.

This year, if I haven’t mentioned, we’re going to put the tree in the study – in front of the big window – and then shut the door to the study so the cats can’t get to, and ruin, any ornaments. This will be traumatic for Spot and Fancypants, who both like to sit in front of that window and watch the street at night, but they’ll get over it.

And hopefully their getting over it won’t involve any angry piles of poo left outside the study door. Little bastards.

Speaking of the cats, have I ever mentioned that my cats are just dumb as ass? Dumb. As. Ass.

The weather has been rainy but warm for the last few days, and so I left the back door open all day long yesterday. I was in the kitchen cleaning up after lunch, when Tubby started doing his chattering thing. I looked over, and he was sitting inside, staring at two birds who were standing on the patio, and chattering his stupid head off. Miz Poo then chimed in with her own whiny, high-pitched chattering. The entire time, the door was halfway open, and either of them could have gone out there to catch the birds (or at least try), but it never occurred to either of them.

The birds enjoy hopping around our patio, because the dish of dog food and water that were there when we had the dog (it’s been, what, two weeks now?) are still there, and the birds apparently are rather fond of dog food. I thought that once it rained and the dog food got wet, they’d give up and go back to the bird feeders, but they haven’t – instead, they pick pieces of wet dog food out of the dish and eat them anyway.

A few weeks ago, Fred was sitting at his computer some time in the early morning, and he glanced over at the window, the one facing the front yard, and Spot was sitting there, all casual-like. Obviously, he’d hopped the fence and decided to look around. Fred went over to the window (Spot was looking elsewhere) and put his face right up to the window, then tapped on it. Spot looked around and then did a big jump and ran off.

There’s just nothing as much fun as startling a cat and seeing it jump.

I went to the Hallmark store today and spent more than I’d intended to on cards and a Christmas ornament. While there, I purchased a couple of small Yankee Candles, one in christmas cookie scent, and the other in buttercream. The buttercream was one of the smaller ones, and what I assumed was a tealight size. When I got home, I found that it wasn’t a candle at all, but was in fact something called a "potpourri tart." I suppose I have to buy a potpourri warmer to use the damn thing, don’t I? What a scam.

I’ve been cleaning and organizing around here lately, and it looks as though either tomorrow or Thursday (depending on when I get off my butt and get the pictures taken), there’s going to be another big Bitchypoo Giveway™! Oh, there’s all kinds of neat stuff, y’all will not be disappointed, believe you me.

Man, I love giving cool stuff away.

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So, Thanksgiving wasn’t terribly horrid. Kind of boring – how much fun can it be to hang out with a bunch of people you don’t know, after all? – but not actually painful.

Except for my butt, which hurt from sitting on a cement step and watching Fred and a bunch of old guys toss the football around.

Fred’s sister’s husband’s family (got that?) was there – his parents, and sister and her family – and they made up the majority of the attendants. They were all very nice, though.

Fred’s mother was funny as hell. We were sitting about eating, and she said that she’d never had devilled eggs with sugar in them. Becky (Fred’s sister) gave her a look and said "What? There’s not sugar in them!", and Fred’s mom said "Oh, I guess it must be from the sweet dickle relish." Man, did her face get red when Fred and Becky started laughing. She also told a story about how she’d bought a new pair of jeans and some part of it was sticking up funny or something (I was eating and didn’t catch every detail, all right?) and so she cut part of something off, and there was all this white powdery stuff, and she immediately thought to herself "There’s anthrax in my pants!"

Let me tell y’all something. The phrase "anthrax in my pants" is FUCKING FUNNY when it’s spoken by a sixty-three year old woman.

It would also be a good code phrase. If any of you ever see me in public, just walk up to me and say "I have anthrax in my pants!"

Anyway.

I didn’t bring the camera with me, but Fred’s sister’s husband (let’s call him Ron) has a digital camera and spent a good part of the afternoon taking pictures of everyone and printing them out. The one of Fred, the spud and I came out so well that I had Fred call and ask him to email me a copy, but he must have deleted it or something, because I haven’t gotten it yet. I scanned what we had, and the scan didn’t come out that great, but considering it’s a scan of a printed-out picture, it’s not bad.

Note that I’m wearing my blue sweater. I love that sweater, and I’ll hate it when it’s too big to wear.

Fred dressed up.

That fakey smile on my face means "Take the fucking picture and get it over with, damnit!"

Thrilled to see the camera, as usual.

And hell, while I’m sharing pictures, there’s always:

The cats basking in front of the fireplace.

Miz Poo warms her ass on the dvd player, while we watch The Grinch.

Saturday afternoon, a large part of Alabama got hit with bad weather and tornadoes. This is what the sky looked like late afternoon (click on the picture to see the full-size version). It was awesome and scary.

Cute spud story alert: While at home bored the day before Thanksgiving, the spud decided to write a letter to my parents, and gave it to me to send for her. I glanced down at it as I was folding it to put in the envelope, and caught this:

Fred is making sweet potato cassarole and coconut cake to bring for Thanksgiving. Fred’s coconut cake is superbe.

Superbe! Hee!

Okay, quick Thanksgiving coverage, a buttload of pictures, cute spud story. I think that covers it!

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Huh. I didn’t get online until after 12:30 (central time!) today, and the world didn’t stop and mourn me or anything. I don’t know if I like that.

See something on the floor? Lay on it.

First things first – Athena is preg-o-nant. Woohoo! I’m so damn excited – I keep saying "I can’t believe Athena’s pregnant! That’s so cool!", and Fred keeps looking at me like I’m a freak. Business as usual, in other words.

I got up fairly early this morning to get my exercise done before 8:30, so I could watch 1 1/2 episodes of ER. Channel 30 – I have no idea what station that is shows old episodes of ER back to back every morning at 8 and 9. They’re also showing them in order, which is cool. Carter just decided that he wants to be an ER doc instead of a surgeon, and Benton’s kid was just born, if that gives you any idea of what’s going on. I have no idea what season it is. I noticed this morning while I was watching the 9:00 episode between showering and blow-drying my hair that the actress who played Carla (and Renee on Ally McBeal) used to be so damn pretty before whatever happened to her happened. She just got kinda weird last year, remember? Drugs, I think.

Anyway.

The spud and I left the house at 10 to go to Target, where we wandered aimlessly around the store and then she went off to look at girly lipgloss stuff, and I picked up a couple of boxes of kitty litter (we use the Arm & Hammer brand, and Target’s the only store around here that carries the 30-pound boxes, so I had to stock up for a couple of weeks), a red chenille sweater (a purchase I’ll no doubt be regretting the first time I wash it), and a wreath and red bow.

For the past two or three years we’ve ordered a live wreath from LL Bean for the front door, but after we ordered and received ours last year, I decided that it was sheer lunacy to buy LIVE wreaths which die after a few months, when for less than half the price you can get a decent fake wreath, and use it for years. It’s not like many people come to our front door and you can’t tell from the street whether it’s fake or real, so it’s all good.

After leaving Target – the skinny teenage cashier got a real workout hauling that 30-pound box of litter across the scanner, believe you me – we went to Michael’s, which recently opened right across from Target. We picked up stuff for the spud to make soap (I have her make stuff to give for christmas to all the relatives – she usually paints ornaments, but by the time she’s done one or two of them, she gets bored and slaps the paint on them, and they look like crap, not that the relatives would ever admit that. This year, she’s making beaded ornaments and soap, both of which are difficult to screw up.), some cross-stitching stuff, and cellophane to wrap the soap in.

Then it was home to peel 49 (slight exaggeration) sweet potatoes, boil, drain, and mash them for Fred, who’ll be making sweet potato casserole for tomorrow, along with his specialty, coconut cake. Mmmm, sweet potato casserole. Mmmm, coconut cake. Mmmm, Thanksgiving!

And now I’m sitting on my ass in front of the computer, which I will most likely do for another hour or so, until I get kinda caught up on my forum and journal reading, whereupon I will wander about the house and look for something else to do.

It don’t get any better than that, nosir.

Americans, have an excellent Thanksgiving. The rest of you, have an excellent Thursday.

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