Category: Life

check it out if that sort of thing interests you. Today is laundry day. I don’t know where the Laundry Day graphic went, and I don’t feel like looking for it, so just imagine it’s here. I’m not sure how Laundry Day ended up on a Monday. It was Friday once upon a time, wasn’t it? Oh, I know. It was Friday, and then it was Saturday for a couple of weeks, and then because Himself has decided he’s Crocodile Dundee and must hike through woods and wrestle alligators in his spare time, there was no time to do laundry on the weekend. Therefore, Monday is Laundry Day. At least this week it is. The spud had to go to a classmate’s house Saturday afternoon, because a bunch from her history (I assume it’s history, but I’m not sure, to tell the truth) had to get together to write a play about immigrants, and this morning they had to perform it. Let me show y’all a bit from the play they wrote: Laura: I’m hungry.
Erin: Me, too.
Mother sees Jennifer.
Mother: Can we please trade you money for some food? Jennifer: Sure. (They trade.)
Erin: Ouuoo What is this food?
Laura: Would you like to go to my church?
Mother: No thank you. We have already found a church.
Erin: We are looking for a house. Do you know of one that we can stay at?
Jennifer: You may stay at ours for a while until you find a house. Mother: O.K. ‘ (Mother will ask Jennifer for a newspaper)
Jennifer: Sure – here you go. (Pick one up off floor.) A few minutes later . . . .
Mother: Girls! I think I’ve found a job!!
Daughters: Yeah!
Erin: Now we can look for a house!!
Immigration Family will say together: I think we’ll have a good life here! That’s about half the play, right there. I don’t know about y’all, but I had no idea our immigrants had such an easy time of it. They got an A on the play, though, according to the spud. Tonight, Fred has the pleasure of accompanying the spud to her school, because there’s a meeting for all the band parents. Tomorrow, I get to attend the PTA/ Open House deal. Fun, fun! Okay, I’m off to do the laundry. I can hardly stand the excitement! Y’all have a good day.
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Monte Sano State Park, where I’d never been, and where Fred hadn’t been in years. Warning: tons of pictures ahead! This is the view from the picnic area of the state park. Looks an awful lot like Gatlinburg. Some people left their dog tied up and went for a hike. Poor doggie! I bet he would have liked to go hiking, too… That’s the picnic table we used in the foreground, and the spud (the flash of red in the background) throwing some trash away. After lunch, Fred and the spud went for a walk, while I sat on my ass at the picnic table and guarded our stuff, and read Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, which is absolutely hilarious. Monte Sano Tavern ruins. More ruins. Look! It’s nay-chuh! Part of the trail Fred and the spud hiked. They were gone about an hour. A local radio station is having a Survivor-type contest, wherein 9 people are to live in a Toyota Tundra for 14 days; whoever’s left at the end of 14 days wins the truck. Big fuckin’ woop, huh? If I’m going to live in a truck for two weeks, I sure as shit want MORE than the truck by the end, knowwhatImean? We drove by the dealership on our way home, but I didn’t get a very good pic. —–]]>

Think I’ll go pick up a stripper and show her the wonder that is Fred, my mind finished. "How about we go out to dinner?" he finished. I’m not sure what happened next. I believe I blacked out. When I came to some time later, Miz Poo was sniffing in a semi-concerned manner at my eyeballs, and Spanky was rubbing his ears on my feet. Fred glared down at me from his computer chair. "Har har," he said. "Verrrry funny." You have to understand, people; this is the man whom I have not been able to drag to a restaurant more than, maybe, twice a year in the last four years. And every one of those times, it was my suggestion, my insistence, and my getting on my knees and begging that led us to actually leave the house and eat somewhere other than our own kitchen table. Since it was so early yet, he wanted to do something and then go out to eat. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, and I didn’t have a clue, we went upstairs to loll about on the bed and discuss our options. We spent so long discussing them that by the time we decided to haul our asses out of bed and get ready to go, it was almost dinnertime. "So, are you going to get all gussied up?" he asked with a smile. I shrugged and nodded. "Really?" he said with an even bigger smile. "You’re going to wear makeup?" I nodded again. "Really?" "YES," I said, a tad irritated. "What’s up with the makeup obsession?" "I don’t know," he said. "You just look prettier with makeup on." The instant the last word was out of his mouth, he got a stricken holy god in heaven, what the fuck have I said??? look on his face. I gave him a hard time, so y’all don’t need to email him and tell him what an ass he is; I’ve got it covered. So he hopped into the shower, and I went into the closet and stared at my thirty-five oversized t-shirts, and tried to decide what, exactly, "gussied up" might entail. Since my usual method of dressing up consists of putting on underwear and a bra underneath my sweatpants and t-shirt before leaving the house, I was a tad stymied. With a little help, I decided on a sweater and black pants. I put on some makeup – mascara, liner, blush – and tried to tame my hair, failing miserably. Maybe fifteen minutes after beginning to get ready to go, we were out the door. The spud was more dressed up than either of us, as she was wearing a long red cotton dress. We had no idea where we were going for dinner. What we did know is that we didn’t want to eat anywhere in Huntsville, so we headed for Decatur and points beyond, figuring we’d stop when we saw a decent-looking restaurant. An hour later, after having passed every possible fast food restaurant and sixteen chinese restaurants, we turned around and headed back into Decatur. Fred used the cellphone to make a quick call to his mother, who lives in Decatur, and asked for suggestions. She suggested a restaurant, and then went on to tell Fred about all the chicken dishes they served. When he hung up, we made a joke out of it, imitating Bubba from Forrest Gump: "Blackened chicken, marinated chicken, barbequed chicken, chicken and rice, chicken and beans…" Another ten or fifteen minutes of driving – Fred loathes Applebees, Ruby Tuesday’s, and O’Charley’s, so those weren’t options, just so you know – we turned around again and stopped at a little Mexican place we’d passed at one point or another. La Cabana, it was called, and it had a couple of Survivor-type torches by the front entrance. The inside did not scream of elegance, but we were so starved we didn’t much notice. Between the three of us, we polished off the basket of chips and salsa, and they were goooood. I almost immediately baptised my sweater with a big chipful of salsa, which I dribbled clumsily down the front. I ordered a frozen margarita and then realized I like sweeter frozen drinks, like dacquiris or pina coladas. This did not stop me from sucking down the margarita, until the alcohol went to work on me (I’m a bit of a lightweight, believe it or not), and my face turned a glowing red and my eyes glazed over. The food was excellent. We took a detour on the way home so that Fred could show me a dead armadillo by the side of the road (he was surprised that there would be one this far north). We stopped by the movie store, and more than three hours after we left the house we were home again, home again, jiggity jig. I sent out feelers on the way home (get your mind out of the gutter, people): "So, will we be doing this every Friday, going out to eat? Kind of like a date night, only the spud along?" He was non-committal, shrugging and smiling and telling me we’d have to see next Friday. It was a lovely evening out, and very enjoyable. I can only hope it happens again (hint, hint, Fred). —–]]>

Night at the Roxbury) Quarterback Princess. Lordy, it was odd to see Helen Hunt all cute and young, before she perfected the head-on-a-stick look she currently favors. It’s apparently working well for her, since according to IMDB, she’s got 4 movies in the making this year alone. Speaking of movies, we watched American Psycho the other night. As Fred pointed out, Christian Bale does that asshole look very, very well. I’ll say this for the movie: it didn’t suck as badly as the book, if only because it didn’t last as long. Can I tell you how much I loathe Bret Easton Ellis? He and Jay McInerney were just the toast of the 80s, weren’t they? Oh, they’re so YOUNG, oh, they’re such brilliant writers! Anyone heard from Bret or Jay recently? I didn’t think so. So, I’m thinking about starting a separate diet journal, and it would probably look a lot like, oh, maybe this. I haven’t decided whether it’s something I really want to do; I’ll probably decide one way or the other this weekend. Man, I wish the sun would come out. It’s been crappy, overcast, and in the 70s all week. I think Fred’s going to drag the spud and I to Lynchburg this weekend, and make us take the tour of the Jack Daniel’s plant. Which will be cool, and I’ll be able to take lots of pictures – especially since the battery is charged and everything. Miz Poo has learned a new trick. She discovered that she could jump from the floor to the counter, from the counter to the top of the refrigerator, and from the refrigerator to the top of the cupboards, and therefore she would be at the very highest spot in the house. She was pretty amazed at herself when she did it yesterday, and I managed to get a shot of her up there with the regular camera, since the digital cam was downstairs. It was pretty cute. I’m going to end this for today, folks, but not before I tell you that if you have a lot of hardwood or vinyl floors, you know how quickly dust bunnies of cat fur and litter can accumulate. Well, I have a solution for you, and it’s the Bissell EasyVac Plus. This is far and away the best stick vac I’ve ever owned, and it blows away any of those Dirt Devil products. I use it on the kitchen floor, our hardwood stairs, and around the litter box, and it picks up each and every teeny piece of litter. I can’t recommend it highly enough! And hell, Bissell isn’t even paying me to say that! —–]]>

Sob. I hurt. I hurt from my toes, where I have a nasty, painful-looking blister on my little bitty piggy toe (right foot) to my calves and shins and all the way to my butt, where every muscle is screaming for mercy. Why?, you ask. Why are you in such pain, Robyn? Why, oh why? Because, dear readers, I got cocky. For something like two months now, I’ve been doing the WalkAerobics tapes from hell, led by Satan McCruel herself, Leslie Sansone. At the end of each exercise session with Leslie, I would be dripping sweat and proud of myself. "I’m kicking ass!" I would inform myself proudly. "I’m a WalkAerobics ass-kickin’ fool!" Two months, five days a week is an awfully long time to spend with one exercise guru, though, and as I was at the end of mile 2 on Tuesday, as Leslie perkily proclaimed that mile 3 was coming up, I suddenly became aware that if I had to look at her perky, happy, laughing fucking face ("We’re gonna let Jo lead, ’cause she used to be A BALLERINA OR SOMETHIN’!" she shrieks gleefully in mile 3, and I hear that "OR SOMETHING’!" in my nightmares, people) for one more instant, I would cross that thin line between Well and Unwell that I am so fond of straddling, and I would grab Spanky who was making his rounds of the house, howling mournfully at the walls for no apparent reason, and I would make him into a hat, and Tubby into a matching skirt, and perhaps Mr. Fancypants into a kicky pair of fancy gloves, and I would attach a collar and leash to Miz Poo, and I would parade around the front yard, smiling and waving at everyone who went by until the men in the white coats came to carry me away, and I would spend the rest of my natural life on the Psych ward in a small scary Southern town named something like Muscle Shoals or Tuscaloosa. In other words, Leslie was beginning to bore me. But that’s okay! That’s fine! I thought to myself. Am I not an ass-kicking WalkAerobics diva? Am I not? I certainly am! Therefore, I did what any self-respecting WalkAerobics diva would do when, say, the vcr is broken or looking at Leslie’s VERY FUCKING HAPPY face for one more instant makes them want to drive to Pennsylvania and hunt her down and bellow "OR SOMETHIN’!" over and over into her ear until she’s screaming and not at all happy and sobbing like a little girl. In other words, I decided to taking my walking self outside, where I would walk quickly to the end of the street and back (a distance of 1.2 miles) a couple of times. No sweat, not for the WalkAerobics diva, not a care in the world. Well, maybe one care in the world – what if it wasn’t much of a workout? I decided, then, that I would walk in one direction for 15 minutes, and then turn around and walk home, which – in theory at least – would make a half-hour walk. And if I still didn’t think I’d exercised enough, why, I’d just do some calisthenics or pop in that Advanced Tae Bo tape. At exactly 8:00 am, after a quick warmup, with my sneakers on my feet, my walkman tucked into my shirt pocket, and my watch on my wrist, I set out for my walk. It was a lovely, overcast day, with enough of a breeze to keep it a tad cool. How I enjoyed walking. Lawdy, I thought to myself after a long while, It must be juuuust about time to turn around. I have an excellent sense of time, you know, and if it felt like 15 minutes had passed, I was pretty sure it was so. But I’d brought the watch for a reason, and so I double-checked myself. To my dismay, it had only been five minutes. Apparently, time slows down when you’re walking, and no one bothered to tell me. A moment later, I felt a somewhat stabbing sensation in my shins, and afraid I’d been attacked by killer bees, I let out a high-pitched scream and did a mid-air leap, then bent over to inspect my shins, which were killer bee free. I blushed slightly and shot a dirty look at the gentleman sitting in his lawnchair in the middle of his driveway, who was laughing and pointing at me. I reached the end of the street exactly twelve minutes after leaving the house. I stood at the end of the sidewalk, looking across the busy road located there, gasping for air and wiping the sweat from my face, trying to loosen up my suddenly tight calf and thigh muscles, while trying to look as though I were simply standing there contemplating the mysteries of the universe. I decided, instead of crossing that busy road to go another three minutes down that road, only to turn around and come back, I’d head for home, and take a side street or two to stretch out the trip a bit. Thirty-five minutes after leaving the house, I was rounding the corner and heading up the small hill in front of my house. My right piggy toe was throbbing, and I could feel the blister growing by the moment. I stumbled into the garage and through the door, to be met by the very concerned Miz Poo and Spanky. I collapsed on the couch and may have even passed out for a few minutes. As yesterday went on, my muscles began throbbing. It started with my shins and went to my calves, and then up my body. This morning, I attempted a stretch and almost screamed when the muscles in my ass sent out a stabbing pain. Did I learn my lesson? Hell, no. I went out and did it all over again today.
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David Crockett State Park. It was pretty nice, and of course I took as many pictures as I could before the battery ran out (the downside of taking off on the spur of the moment is that I didn’t have a chance to recharge the battery before we left).
We always stop at this little country store, because they have awesome fried pies, and occasionally sell the best jam in existence (made by one Mervin Mast and family). We bought a jar of jam, but passed on the fried pies this time.
That would be the sign out in front of the country store. Exciting, yes?
Cool corn-husk piles. They look like they’re just begging to be bonfires, but according to Fred, they use them to feed their horses "or somethin’."
Fred was just obsessed with these yellow wildflowers, and they were everywhere. Kind of like my kudzu obsession, I guess. He made me take several pictures of them.
More flowers.
They hang signs out by their mailboxes advertising what they’re selling. This family was apparently selling "sweet potates". (That’s right, Robyn, go for the low blow!)
Another sign (duh).
The last of the flower pictures.
An Amish house. That’s not their car in the driveway, though (which you probably already figured).
We stopped here to get a bag of okra, but Piggy McTakeItAll (the non-Amish person in this picture) took the last of the okra, just before Fred got there. Hmph. Is that a cute kid, or what? Another shot of the same people, though this one isn’t through the windshield. Fred got out of the car and hissed "Don’t be all obvious!", and ordered me to get a picture. Now, it’s a BIG-ASS camera, and you HAVE to hold it up to a certain height to look at the screen. How freakin’ subtle can you be? The kid saw me take both pictures, but the mother was oblivious. Fred said he was afraid they’d think the camera would steal their soul. Hee!
Fred and the spud, walking to the door of another Amish house, this time to buy tomatoes (and excellent tomatoes they were). Won’t Fred be pleased that I’m posting a picture of his butt on my page! This little cutie was skipping from the barn to her house, and I managed to catch her in mid-skip. The family living in this house had around seven kids already, and the mother was pregnant with another.
As Fred was turning the Jeep around, he hissed "Take a picture of these kids! Take it quick!" The other three kids who had been standing there took off, but I got this one. Look, it’s hard to focus and snap the pic when someone’s snarling at you to hurry up! There were lots of carriages heading our way as we left Amish country to go get lunch. I would have snapped a picture at the state park, but I was out of battery power. That was our Saturday. Sunday and Monday were spent doing laundry, laying around the house, reading, and watching movie after movie. You know, the usual non-stop stuff!
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Benny Mardones, "Into the Night"? Sure you do. She’s just sixteen years old, leave her alone, they sayyyyyy… Sound familiar? No? Well, go download it off of Napster and listen to it. Go on, I’ll wait. Okay, remember now? Here’s something embarrassing – I used to LOVE that song, just love it to death. Oh, in my little teeny-bopper heart I longed for someone to love me that much. Of course, I didn’t realize at the time that the song was about some perverted 40 year old (guessing) who fell in lust with a poor, innocent 16 year-old (all 16 year-olds were innocent in the ’80s, you know) and wanted to steal her away into the night so he could do nasty things to her. In fact, I didn’t realize until last week when I was driving to the movie store exactly what the song was about, since I hadn’t heard it in so long. I about drove off the road. The next thing you know, I’ll be figuring out that "She-Bop" isn’t about dancing… (That last part was a joke, by the way. Please don’t email me and tell me what it’s really about, ’cause I don’t think I know you that well.) (Addendum, 11/8/01 – someone doing a search on Benny Mardones who actually knows the singer in person emailed to tell me that the song, in his words, Was not about a 40 year old trying to pick up a 16 year old. 16 year old was a girl that used to walk his dogs, she was abused, and mistreated by her parents. The love was him wanting to be able to have a part in her life and show her that some people do care about others, not sex and kinky stat. rape kinda things 🙂. Just thought y’all would be interested to know that) So I’ve lost in the area of 40 pounds since the end of June (don’t be too impressed, it’s really just a drop in the bucket), and one of the side effects I’ve noticed (aside from having to crawl, gasping for air and dripping sweat and cursing the existence of one Leslie ohihateher Sansone, to the door of the gym after I exercise in the morning) is that 68 is too cold to keep the house during the day. We’ve kept the house at 68 ever since we moved in, ’cause we’re those annoying people who really like it cool (cold) in our house. However, we’ve recently taken to bumping it up to 72 during the day. In the old days, we would have considered this practically tropical. What’s going to happen when I lose another 40 pounds? Will we be running around in an 80 degree house? I wrote an email this morning that amused me, so I’m going to reproduce it here in part, and then call it a day. I’m still losing weight, slowly but surely, in fact I’m doing the "official" weigh-in tomorrow morning, so I’m trying to keep off the scale in the meantime, but I’ve lost in the area of 40 pounds since late June. Unfortunately, this is just a drop in the bucket. HOWEVER, Fred is losing at such a fast rate that it makes me want to punch him sometimes. I swear, he weighs himself in the morning AND the afternoon, and every time I see him get on the scale, I just want to go poke his eyes out with a pen. He hops up on the scale, all perky-like, and then chirps "Oh, another pound gone since this morning!" And I always snarl "Oh, SHUT UP!" We were laying in bed talking once, and he said, all serious, "I think the reason I’m losing faster than you is because I’m exercising more intensively than you are." It was all I could do to not jump on him and sit on his chest until he suffocated to death. I mean, you should see me in the mornings when I’m done exercising, I’m practically crawling for the door, sobbing "No more! No more!" with sweat dripping off every part of my body. And that’s just the warmup. Heh! Anyway, he said "I think it’s ’cause I’m exercising more INTENSIVELY than you are," and I screamed "NO, IT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE A MAN AND MEN ALWAYS LOSE WEIGHT FASTER THAN WOMEN BECAUSE GOD HATES ME!" And, oh my god, do you know what he said? Honestly, I don’t know how I didn’t kill the man. He said "Maybe you’re losing slower than me because you BELIEVE you’ll lose slower than me!" At least I’m lucky, in that he doesn’t say anything if I sit down with a big-ass bowl of pudding (like I did Saturday night)(hell, at least it was non-fat, no-sugar pudding!) and stuff it all in my face. Sometimes, y’know, a gal’s just gotta have a big-ass, chocolatey snack. I’m no choc-a-holic, but I need my chocolate sometimes.]]>

The Next Best Thing yesterday, among other movies, and watched it last night – which is a first for me, since I usually start watching my movies the day before they’re due back – and I liked it a lot. I have to say, though, that it appears Madonna tries to look as hideous as humanly possible 95% of the time. Which is a shame, ’cause she can be really pretty when she wants to, but her current look just isn’t working. She also looks about ten years older than she is. Rupert Everett is just about the best-looking man in film these days, in my opinion. Okay, what else? Hairballs, insects, cats, movie. I guess that about covers it! ]]>

I always forget what a pretty cat Spot is. Not only pretty, but a true gentleman, and he rules the house with a velvet-covered iron paw. He’ll kick kitty ass if he has to, but only if he truly must. Here we see Miz Poo at the tail end of a Fancypants swish-by. She looks none too pleased. I don’t know what I’m doing right with the Morning Glories, but they sure look happy, don’t they? They’d probably be even happier if they’d been planted in a bigger pot. "I wonder if I can fit under the fence…?" That’s it! Go on, go do something more exciting than sitting in front of your computer. I plan to spend the rest of the day cleaning up hairballs, reading, and possibly napping. Oh, my high-stress, high-pressure life.]]>

Squint "An E-scort. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of those. I wonder if they’re new." Yes, the light dawned rather quickly, and I was pretty embarrassed. Woop! Woop! Woop! Cute kitty pic!: Oh, how I love my Miz Poo. So, do any of my readers know anything about plants? I bought this little plant at the store today, and I’d like to look up info about it, but I have no idea what kind of plant it is. Anyone know? Fred’s mom and stepfather stopped by yesterday, and they called about half an hour before they got here to let us know they were on the way. Fred and I ran around, picking up the house so we wouldn’t look like the slobs we are. When we were done, the house looked pretty damn good. I told him we should pretend we were expecting visitors every day, and run around and spend a while cleaning up, and the house would look that good every day. I’m not holding my breath, though.]]>