Category: Life

Stamps.com on Fred’s computer – my printer tends to mangle things like envelopes and labels – and can I tell you how freakin’ excited I am? It’s SO cool! I printed out a couple of envelopes last night and was all excited, like the geek I am. And when my labels come, I’ll be able to send out packages from home! Without having to go to the post office! Woohoo! Ahem. The other day in the mail, I received an offer from the publishers of "Real Simple" magazine, which is apparently brand-spanking-new. They’re going to give me a free trial issue of their magazine. The little booklet included in the mailing explained that "Real Simple" is "About creating calm in the middle of chaos." Because, you know, my life is so damn chaotic. Yeah. My sister, the Strep Queen of the World, thought that she had developed strep this weekend. She’d know, I guess, ’cause every time you turn around, she’s got it again. For a few years in a row, she had strep on her birthday, which sounds so very lovely that I’m green with jealousy. I informed her rather strongly that she’d better be feeling better by next week OR ELSE. She went to the doctor Monday and found that it wasn’t strep, in fact, that it was actually tonsillitis. Which sounds just as lovely, doesn’t it? Anyway, she’s on antibiotics and she’s already feeling better, which is a very, very good thing. I spent yesterday going through the cupboards in my kitchen, finding stuff to get rid of. I also cleaned off the top of the very dusty refrigerator and tossed all the junk which had accumulated over the last year or so away. I ended up, altogether, getting about a bag and a half of stuff to get rid of. Our extra room downstairs – the Crap Collector room, we should call it – is rapidly filling with stuff to get rid of. Where the hell does it all come from? Maybe the spud’s toys are mating and producing things we don’t need – towels, coffee mugs, plastic cups. I started reading Neurotica last night, and I highly recommend it. It’s made me laugh out loud more than once since I started reading it, and I don’t remember the last book which did. It’s kind of the literary equivalent of slapstick comedy, at least in parts. In fact, I think I’ll go read it now. Y’all have a good day!]]>

Happy, Texas were right – it was a riot. Down to You and Isn’t She Great sucked – I got 20 minutes into each of them and couldn’t stomach any more. The biggest surprise, though, was Angela’s Ashes. What a great movie. I may even want to ask for that for Christmas. I didn’t think I’d like it, but I forgot how much I like those dark, moody movies. I highly recommend it. Today’s rentals were Magnolia, Drowning Mona, Ride With the Devil, Swingers (Fred hasn’t seen the whole movie), and one other movie I can’t recall at the moment. Oh, the Beach. I’m sure Fred is dying to watch that one with me. Oh wait, he’s supposed to be dead and buried out by the pool. Pretend I didn’t say that. While we’re on the topic of movies, I was flipping channels last night during Once and Again, because I’d seen it before and there was a nasty confrontation coming up which I didn’t want to watch. I’m such a wimp that even a confrontation on TV ties my stomach in knots. Anyway, I was flipping through the thousand and one movie channels we never watch, and came across If Lucy Fell, which I had to stop and watch. Sarah Jessica Parker’s in that movie, and she was so damn cute. What happened between that movie and Sex and the City? I love Sex and the City, don’t get me wrong; 8:00 on Sunday nights, I’m in front of the TV, tuned to HBO, and this most recent Sunday I wouldn’t even come look at the pretty sunset when Fred said I should, because the show had already started. However, Sarah Jessica Parker’s character, Carrie, could not look skankier if she tried. There’s always a bizarre, big-ass flower pinned to her shoulder or she’s got some godawful theme going on with what she’s wearing, like one week she was dressed in some freakish Swiss Miss thing. Maybe it’s my lower-middle-class upbringing, but does New York Chic = Total Skankiness these days? None of the other women look skanky; in fact, they’re usually normally dressed. I don’t want to say anything out of line, here, but maybe Carrie should be looking at her wardrobe when she’s wondering why Big flew the coop. Speaking of Once and Again (which I was before that SJP rant), I just have to say that the kid who plays Jessie has the dreamiest eyes I’ve ever seen. And she’s a total clone, looks-wise, of her mother. Whoever did the casting for that part should be patting themselves on the back. Did everyone run right to Stephen King‘s page to download the first chapter of his current project? I did, and immediately paid the one dollar. I don’t like the fact that Amazon is collecting the money for him; I thought everyone would just send $1 bills and checks for $1 to a post office box. Could you imagine what it would be like if millions of people sent $1 each to a post office box? I’d kinda like to see that. So before I left the house this morning, I shut the back door, and counted the cats and I could have sworn I saw all five of them, but hours and hours later, when Fred opened the back door to go sit outside and call his father, the Tubbyman came out from under the steps and told Fred his tale of woe. The poor guy had been out there for about four hours, and there were marks on the door where he’d been digging, trying to get in. Luckily it was only about 81, and it’s pretty cool under the steps. And if he’d gotten thirsty, there was a whole pool of water for him to drink (it’s safe). Still, I feel awfully bad for him, even though he ate a wasp this morning, and barfed it back up on the living room rug, and then went outside and maimed another wasp, then left it for Miz Poo (whom I have taken to calling "Miss Doopie-doo", for no discernable reason), who tried to eat it before I saw her and squooshed it and took it away so she wouldn’t get stung. On second thought, I don’t feel that bad for him.]]>

The Bold and the Beautiful, and it was pretty damn fun. The pool has gotten downright cold over the last few days. It was up to a very nice 84 for quite a while, but the weather’s cooled off into the 80s during the day, and the pool was a brisk 80 this afternoon. Needless to say, we didn’t swim for long, since we’re wimps. I finished Jemima J Friday night, and was less than pleased. At the end, after having achieved a size 8, Jemima porked ALL the way back up to a 10, the cow. AND she got the guy, and – lucky gal – he still loved her after she got all fat (size 10!). Okay, I’ll cut out the sarcasm, but really. I don’t dislike the book because she lost weight. I dislike the book because her life was crap, she lost weight, and – voila! – everything happened for her. She got the guy, who wouldn’t look twice at her before she lost the weight, she got the job of her dreams, whereas before she lost the weight she couldn’t get her boss to give her a chance at reporting. I’d have had less of a problem if she’d lost the weight and found out that the guy she loved, loved her no matter what she looked like. Am I just babbling, here? Enough about that book, anyway. I finished Big City Eyes, by Delia Ephron, today. Pretty good book. I went through several magazines over the weekend. I’m just a reading machine lately! I received all kinds of little packages in the mail today. I got a free t-shirt from ibelieve, thanks to Heather’s freebies and dealies page; I also got a small bottle of ici, a small bottle of True Love, and a bottle of Jules and Jane hydrator. All stuff I ordered online. Have I mentioned lately that I’m a spoiled rotten wifey? All I’m waiting for now is my bottle of Demeter Angel Food, and my life will be complete. I’ve been spending a lot of time on Napster lately. When I sit in the living room to read, I listen to country music (shut up, I’m a country music fan, you gottaproblemwiddat?) and every now and then a song comes on that I desperately want to hear again (for instance, Sammy Kershaw’s "Politics, Religion, and Her"), so I jot a note to download it on Napster. Napster, I believe I’ve mentioned, rocks in a big way. Miz Poo is sitting on her pillow on my desk, actively grooming each and every part of herself, and she’s making a little grunting noise as she licks. She grooms herself more than any cat I’ve ever seen, and when she does it in the middle of the night, it shakes the entire bed. She’s such a little thing to be shaking a big ol’ king-size bed. I watched the Ellen Degeneres special on HBO last night. It was pretty funny – not laugh-out-loud funny, but smile funny. The only time I really laughed out loud is when she said "Scientists say we only use 10 percent of our brains. Imagine what we could do if we figured out how to use the other 60 percent!" I don’t know why it struck me as so funny, but I howled over that one. You know, there was more I was going to write about today, but for the life of me I can’t recall any of it, so I guess I’ll give up for today.]]>

The Bold and the Beautiful (Brooke, dearie, even I can’t defend your obsession with yet another Forrester man. I thought I hated Macy, but now that she’s gone, I find that I really rather liked her. Leave those men alone, and get on with it), and then ate lunch, and spent the rest of the afternoon reading and watching TV and swimming. Pure laziness, in other words. So the book I’m reading is called Jemima J, and I’m hugely embarrassed to admit that the reason I bought it is because I read an excerpt in Cosmopolitan, and since it’s about a woman who’s 98 pounds overweight (at least at the beginning), it suckered me right in. As I was reading it last night before bed, though, it became pretty apparent that it’d been written by a skinny woman. According to the author, this is what Jemima J eats in a regular day: A huge bowl of cereal before she leaves for work Two bacon sandwiches, which she picks up at a cafe and eats while walking to work A bacon and egg sandwich at 11:30 A salad from the salad bar, with all the fatty fixins – coleslaw, potato salad, pasta salad, cheese Sometimes a cake, sometimes french fries, sometimes cookies, and sometimes another sandwich at teatime. A couple of chocolate bars to eat on the bus on the way home And all kinds of food, as she stuffs her face all evening long Now, give me a freakin’ break. If she ate all that every day, she’d be WAY more than 98 pounds overweight. The author is apparently one of those skinny people who think that fat people do nothing but eat and eat and eat. Secondly, like I’M SURE she’d eat those bacon sandwiches and candy bars in PUBLIC. No fat woman in this WORLD would eat stuff like that in public, where people could make snide and obnoxious comments. In Camryn Manheim’s book, she talked about her first day of work on The Practice, and how they had a big bowl of candy sitting on her (Ellenor’s) desk, and Camryn objected, saying (basically) "The fat girl wouldn’t have a bowl of candy sitting on her desk; she’d have it hidden in a drawer where no one could see it." Ain’t THAT the truth. Jemima J not only can’t seem to get a boyfriend, she can’t even get laid while 98 pounds overweight. I’m sick and fucking tired of skinny people assuming that fat people can’t get laid. Roseanne Barr/ Arnold/ Thomas once said that even at her heaviest she was beating the men off with a stick. There are a lot of overweight women online, and a huge percentage of them are married, with kids, or have boyfriends. Guess what? The skinny chicks DON’T get all the great guys – hell, I’m proof of that. And I have a pretty active sex life, thank you. f Jemima J can’t get a boyfriend, it’s not because of her weight. It’s because of her attitude. That said, I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying this book. I dislike the fact that Jemima J lost all 98 of those extra pounds – in 5 months, no less, with only one slightly concerned character, who thinks Jemima might be anorexic – and that that’s how she’ll find her happiness, but I’m only two-thirds of the way through the book, so things could change. I’m sure she gets her guy in the end; she damn well better! I didn’t mean to get off on a rant, but really. Can you blame me? ]]>

Miz Poo began howling frantically on the other side of the shower door. I opened the door and baby-talked to her, which usually calms her down. I left the door open a crack – she likes to be able to stick her head in the shower and see me without having the door in the way – and went back to showering. Next thing I knew, she’d leapt onto the shower seat, and was hunkered there, her pupils huge as she blinked rapidly against the water raining down on her. Not knowing what else to do, I petted her and baby-talked her some more. She sat there for about two minutes, getting wetter and wetter before finally leaping out of the shower and flopping down on the floormat to fastidiously clean every wet inch of herself. I think if any of the kitties lose their mind and go on a human-throat-gnawing spree, it’ll be her. She’s already a tad mentally imbalanced, but don’t tell her I said that. Speaking of the kitties, we harvested a stalk of catnip the other night. Spot always rubs his face on his catnip leaf for several minutes before eating it, Fancypants does the same, and Skittyboo and Tubbyman run around eating as many catnip leaves as possible, then roll around on the floor and become paranoid, spazzing out at every sound. Miz Poo, however, just doesn’t get it. Catnip does nothing for her, and she sits and watches the boys make fools out of themselves with a big kitty question mark over her little head. We watched The Whole Nine Yards last night, and liked it. I mean, it wasn’t exactly highbrow entertainment but it was, as Fred said, a cute little movie. I’m looking forward to watching Happy, Texas, since no fewer than five of my readers wrote to let me know that it was a great movie. Speaking of my readers, I have discovered that I suddenly have 40 subscribers to my notify list! Ah, just a few hundred more, and I’ll be poised to take over the world… Admire my brand-spanking-new yellow slippers. I bought them yesterday at Linens ‘n Things, and they’re already pretty much my favoritest (non-living) thing in the whole wide world. They are a true, pure, clean, happy yellow; not a trace of that goldish yellow in them. If I were going to get my Jeep painted yellow (which I would DEARLY like to do), this is the exact shade of yellow I’d paint it. Just looking at my new slippers makes me grin like a goon, and feel happy all over. Is this a happy kitty, or what? This is what she does when I rub her belly. She was purring very loudly when I took this picture, too. Note the picture cube behind her. Debbie bought me this picture cube from Old Navy when she was visiting last August. I lost it for a while behind the desk, but I swear I’m going to put pictures in it soon! Let’s see, have I fulfilled my requirements for the day? Babble, babble, babble, picture, babble, picture, babble. Check! I’m off to nap on the clean, warm laundry.]]>

Linens ‘N Things, since it’s quickly becoming my favorite store. Even more than Wal-Mart, if you can believe such a thing. It’s just a cool little store, even if every aisle I tried to go down was blocked by boxes and carts left there by stockers. Which reminds me – I went to Wal-Mart late Friday morning, and everywhere I went, there were huge pallets laying in practically every aisle. What the fuck is up with that? (As a side note, I should just give up and change the name of this journal to "What the fuck is up with that?") This particular Wal-Mart is of the 24-hour variety. Shouldn’t they be doing the stocking in the nighttime hours, or does that just make too much sense? I’ve been informed that the next cat we get will be one of these. Fred always likes the weird-looking cats. The day we got Tubby, we almost got a Bengal kitten, but I talked Fred out of it, since I couldn’t see paying hundreds of dollars for a kitten, when there were so many mutt-type kittens who needed a home. So it serves me right that we ended up with the ever-annoying Tubbyman. So after all my talk yesterday about not liking Big Brother, I made a point to watch it yesterday. They’re all a bunch of drama queens, though not as bad as the Real World cast. Then again, I haven’t watched all that much of the show, so they may be worse than the Real World-ers. I guess the problem is that I don’t quite get the attraction of Big Brother. Survivor is cool ’cause they’re "stranded" on an island, but on Big Brother, it’s just a bunch of people sitting around bitching. Don’t get me wrong, if they had a channel devoted to it, I’d probably be glued to the TV. I hate the small pictures you get online. You can’t tell what anyone’s doing. Hey, go check out Webshots. I downloaded the software, and like it a lot. You’re given the option every day of downloading the pic of the day, and you can download more pictures from their archives. My current favorite is this one. It’s Tuesday, so of course I hit the movie store. This week’s rentals are The Whole Nine Yards, Happy, Texas, Angela’s Ashes, Down to You, and Isn’t She Great. I can’t wait ’til Erin Brockovich and Magnolia come out next month. Man, I can’t believe I’ll be leaving for Maine in two weeks. The past four weeks have flown by. I’m not particularly looking forward to the 2-day drive (there OR back), but it’ll be nice to have my own vehicle whilst in Maine. And I won’t have to worry about fitting all of the spud’s stuff in her suitcase, since I can fill up the back of the Jeep. Okay, I just really don’t have anything to say today. I think I’ll end this one here.]]>

Big Brother. Oh, I’m all into the reality shows – I know I’ve mentioned Survivor more than once, and I also watch The Real World every week, though I skip Road Rules. But I watched the hour-long Big Brother last Thursday, and ended up reading and only glancing up every once in awhile. My main problem on that show is Karen, who apparently couldn’t wait to trash her husband on national TV. What the fuck is up with that? "Do you still love him Karen?" "No, not at all." Why do some people go out of their way to be as cruel as possible to the people they’re supposed to love in front of as wide an audience as possible? What’s she going to prove by announcing to the world that she doesn’t love him, that he doesn’t like to kiss, and that he’s never complimented her? How do you suppose her kids feel? Four years ago when I had to go to court, in the process of divorcing my ex, one of the questions my lawyer asked while I was on the stand was "Why do you want to divorce <the ex>?" I was at a loss for words. The truth was that we had grown apart and barely talked; I’m fairly certain that he was as happy that the marriage was ending as I. But I couldn’t bring myself to say "Because I don’t love him." It just seemed like a cruel thing to say, with him sitting there. My lawyer finally jumped in after I sat there staring off into space and searching for the words for several moments and said something like "Is it because you don’t want to live with him any longer?", and I managed to answer in the affirmative. Karen strikes me as being the sort of over-emotional woman who’ll spill her guts at the drop of a hat. A loose cannon, I guess you could say. Sure, she’ll living happy now, trashing her husband at the drop of a hat, but I think she’s got a rude awakening coming when she gets back to the real world. Anyway. So, Fred’s parents came over Friday night, and we watched The Hurricane. To my surprise – I only rented it because I knew Fred wanted to see it – I liked it a lot. We watched Boiler Room Saturday, and I liked that a lot, too. In fact, I liked it so much that I didn’t want it to end, and I can’t recall the last time that happened. I watched My Dog Skip on my own, and bawled like the big crybaby I am at the end. That Frankie Muniz is just a little cutie-pie; I just wanted to pick him up and hug him. Luke Wilson is pretty cute too; I wanted to pick him up and do other things to him. I was supposed to do laundry this morning, but since a certain someone didn’t bring the laundry downstairs (though I note that it’s all nicely bagged in laundry bags in the upstairs closet), I’m more than happy to wait ’til tomorrow to do it. ‘Cause that’s just the kinda lazy gal I am.]]>

Miz Poo, who was playing with a toy mouse, knocked it under the couch. I asked Fred to pick up one end of the couch so I could get her mouse out, along with any other mice she and the other cats had knocked under there recently, and he did so. Found under the downstairs couch: 25 toy mice, 5 plastic Coke bottle caps, 1 whopper (the candy), 1 Hershey’s kiss. Found behind the downstairs couch: my most favorite towel ever, a purple bathsheet. That towel’s been missing for about as long as we’ve lived in this house, so I’m going to say around two years. I guess I should clean under the couch a little more often, huh? Miz Poo says, "Have a nice weekend!" No, really, that’s exactly what she’s thinking, despite the evil glare in this picture… ]]>

This morning glory plant just kind of popped out of nowhere, and it’s growing in the gravel along the fence (obviously); it’s doing better than the morning glories we have growing in a planter, and I’m not watering it or feeding it at all. I think, if given a few weeks, it will probably start climbing the legs of the loveseat it’s growing by. I’m curious to see whether it’ll start flowering. Fred is threatening to have the yard guys yank it up, but I’d love to see it covering that corner of the cement surrounding the pool. This would be the spider plant I bought about a month ago. I’ve never seen one produce so many babies, so I’m going to assume it’s happy where it is. I bet it’s awfully root-bound, though. I’ve got a baby spider plant inside, with it’s bottom part in water, but no roots are apparent yet. If I’d had a clue, I would have repotted this plant right after I bought it, because there’s nothing attached to the bottom of the planter to hold water; when I water the plant, the water just pours out the bottom. In spite of my neglect, it’s looking pretty good, though. That’s what I really need – a bunch of plants I can ignore and neglect, and they’ll thrive anyway. And there’s Spanky, looking like a doofus (actually, I think I caught him in a blink), trying to decide whether he wants to come out into the heat of the day, or stay inside where it’s cool (he stayed inside). Spot, laying in his usual place. He’s such a pretty cat, isn’t he? The other cats will deny it, but Spot’s really the alpha cat in this house. The kitten thinks she’s bad, but Spot would kick her ass from here to hell with one paw tied behind his back. Tubby, in his usual spot. He’s probably thinking something along the lines of "Should I eat now, or later? Hm, I think I’ll eat now and later!" The spud’s room, looking like it should. Let me remind you, it took 4 2-hour sessions to get this room in decent condition. It will probably take the spud half an hour to junk it up again. Note the absence of crap on the floor. I hope these are primroses. I just looked online at 43,000 pictures of primroses, and none of them looked like this. But I’m pretty sure that primroses are what I ordered! Anyway, aren’t they pretty? I like them a lot. And of course, no picture-based entry would be complete without a picture of the beloved Miz Poo. I’m not sure what she’s staring at with such interest, but I do know that right after I took this picture, she turned around and tried to eat that lily petal sitting to her right. ]]>