Category: Life

So we ended up watching Arlington Road last night. It was still pretty good the second time around, but I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. In fact, I started to doze off several times, but was so horrified at the thought that I’d start snoring, that I would jerk awake and force my eyes open. The kitten, that traitor-bitch, sniffed around Fred’s parents for a good twenty minutes (they have three cats – two female, one male) then settled smugly in Fred’s stepmother’s lap for most of the movie. She stared smugly at me as if to say "See? Yours is not the only lap in town, bitch."

I spent a good deal of time online yesterday (I bet you’re surprised, eh?) doing some Christmas shopping. I ordered music, books, videos, and an alarm clock from Amazon, and a gift certificate from TJ Maxx. Most of the purchasing I did was for Debbie and Brian. Fred was ordering movies last week, so I had him add a few movies on for my parents. I’m also getting my mom an Eloise book, and I want to get them both a gift certificate, but I have no idea for where to get it – maybe The Olive Garden. I haven’t got a clue what to get for my grandmother, no one ever buys anything for my uncle, my brother Randy will probably get a picture of the spud and a spud-made ornament, my ex’s family will all get pictures of the spud and spud-made ornaments, my brother Tracy will most likely get an Amazon gift certificate, and I haven’t got a clue what to get Tracy’s kids. (Yes, I’m aware that that’s one long damn sentence)

Hell, I’m practically done with my Christmas shopping, aren’t I?

Speaking of movies – kinda – we watched Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me Thursday night, and to my surprise I thought it was pretty damn funny. I particularly liked the part where Austin and Felicity were driving around what was supposed to be the English countryside, and he said (this is paraphrased, of course) "The amazing thing is how much England looks nothing at all like southern California." The other part I liked was when Fat Bastard started singing the "Chili’s baby back ribs" jingle. Of course, that part wasn’t nearly as funny the second time we watched the scene. And, of course, we had to watch both of the "That looks like a giant.." "Willie! Could you sign an autograph for me?" scenes with Fred’s parents last night. I love it when famous people pop up unexpectedly in cameos like that. After all the bad reviews I heard and read about the movie, it was better than I expected.

I slept until 8:40 this morning. 8:40. I don’t think I’ve slept that late since I’ve moved to Alabama. Fred, I don’t think I’ve mentioned, is a serious morning person, so by default I’ve become a morning person also. I was a night owl in my high school days, and continued to stay up until about 11 every night (I know! How incredibly wild and crazy of me!) until I got my first computer almost 4 years ago. When I figured how to use the piece o’ crap to get onto IRC, I would stay up until 4:20 every morning, when my ISP kicked me off to do some sort of administrative something. Then I’d give it up and go to bed, and dream about IRC. That lasted until I got a job and met Fred, which seems to have happened simultaneously, and since then I’ve considered sleeping until 7 to be a total waste of the day. —–+63310

1111111111111111 NM2MQWWWWWWA

The above is a secret message to you from Scrappy. I’m sure it says something like, "Let’s kill the Mommy bitch and eat all the canned cat food in the house, then lay around and lick the litter out from between our toes."

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The kitten is feeling tons better these days. She’s like a whole new kitten – she plays, runs around, sticks her nose into everything, and tolerates being sniffed by the Boys. It’s only now that I realize how much she wasn’t acting like a kitten. She must have been feeling pretty rotten those first few days, ’cause all she did was lay around and allow me to pet her. Now, it’s amazing if I can get her to stay still long enough to be petted and kissed. My baby’s growing up!

Yesterday, I was petting and talking to her, and I thought to myself, why am I lisping at her? I mean, there’s baby talk – and you know you baby talk your pets too, so don’t look so smug – but why the hell am I going the "Ith a good baby? Ith a baby hunnnngy? Oh, yeth. Oh, yeth. Thuch a good kitty! Yeth it ith! Yeth it ith!" route? How is it that Fred and the spud can listen to me lisping like a big idiot at the kitten and not clock me over the head with a cast-iron skillet?

I could eat you in two bites

Speaking of weird quirks o’ mine, I noticed another one on my way into work yesterday. On the drive into work, there are about six traffic lights I have to negotiate before I pull into the DI parking lot. There are days when I hit every red light, and there are days when every light I approach is green, and of course there are days with some greens and some reds. The odd little quirk I noticed comes into play when I’m approaching an "old" green light. If I’m afraid it will turn yellow before I get close enough to safely get through, I avoid looking directly at the light. I mean, I can still see it in my peripheral vision, but I have this vague fear that if I look directly at the light it will certainly turn yellow and I’ll be stuck there forever, waiting for it to turn green again.

I’ve never failed to make the light stay green using the Bitchypoo Method.

Of course, I use this method when avoiding the people wanting money outside of Wal-Mart, but there it never works. "Would you like to contribute to the Mothers Against Drunk Driving?" they chirp, running over to me and making eye contact whether I like it or not. Well, what am I going to say, "No, I think mothers should keep their damn nose out of drunk drivers’ business, damnit!" Instead, I dig around in my wallet for a buck or two so they’ll go away and let me continue on in peace. At least they don’t try to get your name and address. Once upon a time – at least five years ago, I’m guessing – I got an envelope full of address labels and a "Won’t you help our blind, paralyzed, brain-damaged, divorced, wife-beating veterans? They made these address labels just for you!" letter. Being a softy, I sent them five bucks. Five dollars. FIVE DOLLARS. And for the rest of my life, I will never be free of these people. They took my five dollars and spent it making forty bazillion more address labels, which they send to me at regular intervals with letters begging for more money. Through three moves and a name change, they’ve managed to keep up with me, sending address labels all the way. The solution, I’ve decided (although it’s not a solution for the address label people; I don’t think there’s any way to get rid of them), is that when you give your money away, you have to do it anonymously. Pay with a money order, give them a fake address. Once they get your address, it’s all over, ’cause you know they sell your address to other charities looking for money, and pretty soon all you ever get in the mail are solicitations for money, address labels, and let’s not forget the packs of free greeting cards. I always save the cheesey greeting cards, but I’d never send them out to anyone. Well, not anyone I liked.

Last night, for the first time in a few months, instead of ordering pizza from Domino’s or Papa John’s, Fred made homemade pizza. His homemade pizza kicks serious ass, even when it’s just pepperoni and sausage pizza like we had this time. Sometimes he makes pizza with sausage, pepperoni, black olives, green olives and onion that is just to die for. Have I mentioned what a great cook he is? Somehow, I feel that that’s come up before.

i am weak from hunger…mother? i can’t see you…

Fred’s dad and stepmother are coming over to watch a movie with us tonight. I’m not sure what movie we’ll be watching, but it will be one I’ve seen before. I’m not a big fan of watching movies over and over, unless I like them a lot. When Harry Met Sally…, Sleepless in Seattle, Flashdance, Fame – any of those I’ll stop to watch when I’m flipping channels. Our choices tonight will be The Mummy, Big Daddy, or Arlington Road. Out of the three, I guess I wouldn’t mind seeing Arlington Road again, but none of them really cranks my tractor. Fred just loooooves to watch the same movies a thousand times in a row though, and as a result we’ve watched the same three or four scenes from The Matrix about six times now.

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told him I loved him, which served to do nothing so much as freak him out. That didn’t stop me, though. I wrote him love poems and followed him around school gazing adoringly at him. He was the worst kisser, ever, and I say that out of honesty, not because I hate the way he treated the 16 year-old me (though of course I do hate the way he treated me, as well as the fact that I took being treated shabbily with no qualms whatsoever). He’d come at me with his mouth wide open and his tongue at the ready. No slow, gentle kisses to start us off; his tongue was down my throat no matter where we were. He was a senior, and he was under the impression that the other senior boys considered him a big stud when he backed me up against my locker and tickled my tonsils with his big nasty tongue. He was mistaken. On Halloween night, at a party we were attending, he told me he thought we should see other people. I agreed calmly, instead of bursting into tears – which is what he obviously expected – and went back to the party. Peeved, he left. The next day at school, in the hallway, he broke up with me. Nice guy, huh? In tears, I called my mother, who came and picked me up at school. Once home, I climbed into bed, wrote amazingly bad poetry about my broken heart, and cried a lot. Two hours later, I climbed out of bed, got dressed, and went back to school. I am obviously not one to wallow. It took about a week to get completely over the three-month relationship, and once I was over him, I was only mortified that I’d ever thought myself in love with such an ass. Though, to be fair, he wasn’t as much of an ass as he could have been. I’m betting I would have put up with pretty much anything back then, just to have a boyfriend, just to have someone to hug and kiss and call my own. Pretty pathetic, eh? I’m not nearly so much a doormat these days. I’m sure you find that hard to believe!]]>

I was awakened at 4:10 this morning by a couple of loud, scary, thudding noises. I sat straight up in bed and immediately began calling "Little kitty? Little kitty?!" I peered around the room until I saw her a foot or so from the side of the bed in a pile of Fred’s clothes, under a big, heavy hardcover book. She’d apparently tried to jump up on the bookcase near the bed, and hit the one double-stacked shelf near the top and knocked a few heavy books onto the floor, including the one that landed on her. She was just laying there quietly, which scared me. I picked her up and checked her out – her heart was pounding a mile a minute, but otherwise she seemed fine. After a few minutes, she starting purring.

Speaking of the kitten (and it seems I always am, doesn’t it?), she’s apparently feeling much better, and today for the first time since we got her, she was playing. I bought a laser light at Office Depot today and she chased that around for a while. Now she’s playing with a toy mouse. She’s been eating like a pig since yesterday, and she’s developed a round little tummy.

I’m feeling incredibly lazy today (like that’s something new). At work, instead of straightening up my office so it would look like an office and not a room with piles of crap everywhere, I spent most of the day web-surfing. I made Fred make dinner tonight – he made shrimp sauteed with onions and garlic in olive oil, with angel hair and parmesan. Have I mentioned that he’s truly a kick-ass cook? Never fails to impress me. As further proof, I’m not going to move my November entry links over to the archives page tonight, even though I should, because I’m just that slothful.

The lady who owns the company in charge of cleaning our office dropped by today. As I’ve mentioned, our office space grew by three offices and a conference room, so she was going to check out the new office space and give us a new weekly price. She’s only charging us $5 more per week, can you believe that?

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I woke this morning at 2:30ish, feeling something wasn’t quite right. I thought about it for a few minutes before I realized that the kitten wasn’t on my face (where she is wont to lay), arm, or back. I got up and looked for her in the bathroom and closet, and then checked the living room, kitchen, and dining room. Finally, since I wasn’t hearing yowls of kittenish rage to notify me that she was being eaten alive by one of the Boys, I went back to bed. "She’s exploring," I told myself. "She’ll be back when she’s done being nosy." I lay down, flung the covers over my legs, and looked down to see a half-asleep kitty rolling across the bed. When she came to a stop, she sat up and swayed back and forth, blinking sleepily up at me. I tucked her under my chin, and we both went back to sleep.

Today was quite uneventful at work, but busy nonetheless. I continued to organize – my cheap four-shelf metal bookcase arrived via Office Depot, providing space for me to pile the tons of 3-ring binders I have cluttering up my office. One of my bright ideas, at the beginning of this year, was to assign each receipt category a number, and put each receipt in a binder, labelled with it’s assigned number. So, category 1 is Checking, and receipt # 1/1 is the first deposit receipt of 1999, 1/2 is the second, and so on. What I failed to take into account is that we accumulate a shitload of receipts each year, so I have 3-ring binders all over the place, and my office ain’t that big. Maybe next year, I can talk the bosses into purchasing a scanner, so I can scan in each receipt, then toss the receipt itself. That sounds like I’m just begging for trouble, doesn’t it?

So after work, I had to get groceries instead of rushing home to be with my beloved Scrappy-doodle. I’ve been going to Bruno’s lately, because it’s half a mile from home, and it’s a pretty nice store. Their frozen vegetable selection just sucks, though. They never have brussels sprouts or asparagus; instead, they seem to have an entire aisle of chopped onions and green peppers. What’s up with that? Today, I went to Publix, which is a lot further away, but it’s worth the drive. Well-stocked shelves and the people who work there are so friendly it’s frightening. I was able to find everything on my list with no problem at all. There was a Bill Gates clone intent on buying up every single shrimp in the seafood section, and I didn’t feel like waiting around, so I guess I’ll be picking up my shrimp elsewhere this week. George Stephanopolous bagged my groceries, though, so that was a big plus. It was "look-alike day" at Publix today – the cashier looked an awful lot like Shelley.

The only thing I don’t like about Publix is that they insist on taking your groceries out to your car for you. I just hate that, from the stilted conversation I feel compelled to make with the bagger; to the stupid "Oh, this is me" I blurt out, pointing to my truck; to the way the bagger stands there trying to figure out whether to put the groceries in the cab, or in the back of the truck; to the way I flap my hands around and say "Oh, just put them in the back"; to the way I stand there, trying to figure out whether I’m supposed to help; to the way there’s only one bag left to be put in the back of the truck when I decide I should help, and the bagger and I grab it at the same time; to the way the bagger says "have a nice day!" while walking away, and obviously thinking to himself "what a freak."

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I got pretty much moved into my office today. I really like the color I chose; it’s a light lavendar blue. I’ll try to remember to take pictures tomorrow. It’s nice to be in my own office again. I spent the majority of the day straightening stuff up, ordering a bookcase for my office, and paying a huge stack of bills. I left about 1:30, because it was the kitten’s first day alone all day (I locked her in the master bathroom), and I was missing her. I half-expected to get home and find that the Boys had figured out a way to knock down the bathroom door and eat her. But she was safe and sound, and sitting on the carpet in the closet half-asleep when I opened the door. She did her princessy little meow, and immediately began purring as soon as I picked her up, so I’m guessing she’s not too pissed at me.

I had to take her to the vet again today, because her eye wasn’t looking so hot. She’s been sneezing since we got her, and the vet checked her out Friday and said it could be because of the litter or the change in her environment, but he didn’t think she had a cold. She sneezed all weekend long – usually in my face – and this afternoon her left eye was draining, and she was holding it at half-mast. The doctor diagnosed a cold (durrrr) and gave me two kinds of medicine for her – one in liquid form, one in pill form. Fred managed to get the liquid down her throat, but come Hell or high water we can’t get her to take the pill. She flails all over the place when we try to stick it in her mouth, and when Fred wrapped it in cream cheese (at the Dr’s suggestion), she licked up some cream cheese, and ignored the pill. Next, we’re going to try mashing it up in turkey baby food. She yowled all the way to the vet’s, and all the way home again. I suspect she’s noticed that every time she gets in that carrier, someone sticks something up her butt (the thermometer, that is).

It’s really cooled off around here. It was about 40 this morning, I discovered when I stopped on my way to work to return movies. Because I park my truck in the garage, I hadn’t realized how cool it was outside, and not only was I wearing a short-sleeved shirt, but I wasn’t wearing a jacket. Of course, even if I’d parked in the driveway I still wouldn’t have been wearing a jacket, since I don’t own one. I had a crappy $25 jacket last winter, one I ordered out of a Lane Bryant catalog, but I left it in Maine when I flew up for the weekend last February, and Liz never got around to sending it back to me. Doesn’t really matter, I guess, since I was outside maybe 2 minutes all day. You sure can’t get away with running around without a coat in November in Maine, that’s for sure, and I have to admit that’s something I don’t really miss about Maine. I guess I’ll be looking through the myriad Lane Bryant and Roaman’s catalogs cluttering up the house. I’m sure I can find another $25 piece of crap!

On one of Fred’s many trips to Lowe’s this past weekend, he purchased a music box which plays small records. The spud is completely enthralled by it, and for the past two evenings has spent an eternity each night playing record after record. It’s sweet and all that she’s getting into the Christmas spirit – they’re all Christmas songs – but it sure is mind-numbing after about the tenth song. They all tend to sound alike, you see, and hearing basically the same sound over and over ain’t the thrill at 31 that it is at 11.

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Today is the two year anniversary of something very painful to remember. But for your entertainment, I’ll tell the story. It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and Fred and I decided to make a big breakfast consisting of scrambled eggs, hash browns, biscuits, and gravy. While Fred prepared the gravy, I stirred the scrambled eggs. The eggs were almost to the perfect state of doneness, and Fred was still stirring his boiling gravy-oil, when he said "Oops – watch out!" I turned to him with a questioning look on my face, and an instant later it was brought to my attention that there was a great deal of pain coming from my right (bare) foot. In an instant, I lost my mind, and danced away from the stove, screaming "Ow! Ow! Ow!" Fred bent down and with his bare hand wiped the boiling gravy-oil off my foot, burning his hand badly in the process. He stood up and started running cold water into the kitchen sink. I stood there until he turned and told me to go into the bathroom and run water on my foot.

I went into the bathroom, and when the first spray of water hit my foot, I about lost my mind again. Fred came in to check on me a few minutes later, just as I was realizing that when he’d wiped the gravy-oil off my foot, he’d wiped the skin from the top of my foot off also. I had a big gray hunk of skin hanging down over my toes, and my foot was swelling rapidly. Fred offered to go to K-Mart for burn cream and bandages, until I informed him that there was no way he was getting out of taking me to the emergency room for this.

We hastily got dressed, grabbed the spud, and headed for the emergency room. We sat in the waiting room for three hours, due to a several-car accident that arrived right before us. I sat there, a sneaker on my left foot, my right foot bare except for a big, gray, nasty piece of skin hanging off my foot, rocking back and forth as the pain ebbed and waned. We finally made it back to where the doctors check you out, where we sat for another hour and a half. The doctor came in, checked out my foot, and pronounced that I’d probably live. He checked out Fred’s hand, too, and then went on his merry way. The nurse came in and popped me in the ass with demerol. Once that took effect, she cut all the skin off the burned area of the top of my foot and toes, which really hurt, demerol or no. Then she smeared the burned area with burn cream, wrapped it up in bandages, and we finally went home.

I ended up taking a week and a half off from work, because it was extremely painful to walk on my right foot. I had to clean and re-medicate my foot twice a day, and that hurt, too. The word for that holiday season was "pain." I did all my shopping at 3 am two days before Christmas at Wal-Mart. It’s not an experience I’d want to go through again, lemme tell you that. There’s a scar on the top of my foot, but it’s slowly fading away. What did I learn from the whole experience? 1. Don’t stand next to Fred in bare feet while he’s making gravy, and 2. I’m completely useless in an emergency. I would probably have stood there screaming for five minutes before it occurred to me to go stick my foot under the water. Thank god for Fred!

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Yesterday, after the spud and I got home from taking Scrappy to the vet, I was downstairs at my computer reading email or something, when I heard my name ("momma", that is) two or three times within about two minutes. Later, Fred told me about the conversation he and the spud had been having:

spud: The vet asked momma if she was gonna let the kitten go into heat, and momma said no. But the kitten has already been in heat!

Fred: No she hasn’t, she’s too young.

spud: Momma let her go into heat!

Fred: No, she’s too young to go into heat. (pause) Wait, what are you talking about?

spud: Momma let her lay in the sunlight this morning.

Fred: Er, that’s not what that means…

Cute, huh?

That’s it for tonight, folks. We’ll revert back to your regular-length yammerings tomorrow.

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Kitten update: We named her Scrappy (yes, like Scrappy Doo), and I took her to the vet’s today to make sure she’s healthy (she is). She’s been sneezing since we got her — and let me tell you, it’s amazing how much spit one little kitten can spray when she sneezes — but the vet said there’s no sign of upper respiratory infection. And I forgot to mention her princessy, demanding little meow when she feels you aren’t paying enough attention to her. She’s so damn adorable.

Fred apparently woke up this morning with his mind missing, because he left for Lowe’s around 8:30 for fire extinguishers and other various things. Busiest day of the shopping year, and the man goes shopping! "You hate people!" I reminded him. "Yes, but I like gatherings," he replied. "Ironic, isn’t it?" Nah, we didn’t really have that conversation.

So he came back from Lowe’s with fire extinguishers, a big plastic sweater box (more on that later), electric candles for the windows (Christmas decorations – a light in each window), and a wooden sign to put in the yard that says "Merry Christmas!" on it. I was amazed and impressed, because we talked about putting electric candles in the windows last year, but I never got around to buying them. The total extent of our Christmas decorating last year consisted of a wreath, ordered from L.L. Bean, hanging on the front door. Then, he wentback to Lowe’s tonight, and bought big red bows for each window, a wreath for the front door, and lights for the front stairs. Is he in the Christmas spirit, or what?

Amazingly, the leftovers from dinner yesterday are almost gone. They were even better reheated and eaten as a late breakfast/ early lunch this morning. I never did bake the frozen pumpkin pie I bought; guess we’ll have that some other time.

Has anyone started on their Christmas shopping yet? I have gone so far as to make a few lists in my head, but 90 percent of my shopping will be done online this year, thank God. Fred and his sister, step-sister, and step-brother are going in together and buying a computer for his dad and stepmother. Well, I guess it’s technically from me, too, but I don’t really think of it that way. Fred and I have agreed to only exchange one gift with each other this Christmas. We’re at the stage in life where if we want something, we pretty much just go out and buy it (clothes, cds and movies, I’m talking about here. I haven’t really splurged on that oceanfront mansion in Maine yet), so it’s hard to come up with a decent Christmas list. We’re asking my parents for a scanner (so y’all can see that horrid picture of my tubby ass in a ballet costume at the age of 14!), and his parents for a pressure cooker.

About that covered sweater box I mentioned earlier. We’ve been feeding the kitten canned cat food, because she doesn’t seem to be able to comfortably eat dry food yet. We’ve put her litter box and food in the master bedroom closet (I think I mentioned that yesterday), and every time I turn around, one of our Bad Bad Boys (I suspect Snoopy, but I could be mistaken) goes in and eats what’s left in her dish of the canned cat food. They’re also using her litter box from time to time, but I’m guessing that’s a reminder that she’s not exactly king of the hill around here. Fred decided to solve the food problem by buying a big covered sweater box, turning it upside down, and cutting a hole in it so that only the kitten can get to the food. It works great, but guess what? She found the bowl of dry food we feed The Boys from in the kitchen, and eagerly scarfed down some of that. I guess she won’t starve to death, anyway.

Know what’s awesome? It’s Friday, I’ve had three days off, and I still have two more days until I have to go back to work! That just rocks.

Have a good night, one and all!

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the kitten. The spud had yesterday off from school (and, what’s up with that, I have to ask – when I was a kid, we never got Wednesday off in addition to Thursday and Friday! Kids these days…) We left the house around ten to pop over by the office so I could type up a quick license for Fred to fax to a customer, and after that I swung by the credit union to deposit Fred’s bonus check. (side note: every time a somewhat large amount of money comes into the company, the owners immediately begin salivating for a bonus. This time, I had the bonus checks made out and ready to go before the customer had even called with their visa number. ) After we sat in line for about 15 minutes at the credit union (really, what was I thinking? it was the day before Thanksgiving!), I surprised the spud with lunch at her very favorite chinese restaurant, where we hit the excellent buffet a couple of times each. Then it was my intention to take her to the movies to see “The Bachelor”, since I doubted she’d be much interested in “Being John Malkovich” or “Dogma”. When we pulled into the parking lot ten minutes before the movie was to start, the line was about 30 people long. “Huh,” I said, nonplussed. “Want to go to the movie store instead?” “Okay,” said the always easygoing spud. As I turned the truck around and pulled back out of the parking lot, I had a stellar idea. “Want to go visit thekittens?” “Yeah!” the spud said eagerly. As we drove in the direction of The Classic Cat, I called Fred on the cellphone (yes, I have one of the obnoxious things. there a problem with that?) and said “Hey, there were too many people at the movie theater. We’re going to visit thekitties!” Fred sighed dramatically and said “Just remember, if you get one, you have to clean the litter box out every day (instead of taking turns, as we had been doing).” We walked through the door, and she spotted me, and began howling immediately. Now, I’m not a dumbass. I know she’s probably been doing that to everyone. But, still. When I took her out of the cage and started petting her, she acted like she was home. The spud checked out all the kittens, and then went into the room where they keep the adult cats and petted all of them. I actually, you will be shocked to learn, put the kitten back in her cage and told the spud it was time to go. “Can’t we get a kiiiiiitten?” she begged. “Oh, please, let’s get a kitten! I’ll help take care of her!” Well, I resisted for a few minutes, then told her to get my wallet from the front seat of the truck before I changed my mind. And here she is: Isn’t she adorable? Fred thinks she’s ugly, but I think she’s about the cutest thing ever. She’s ten weeks old. We haven’t decided on a name yet, but I think Suzy would be a good name. I will, of course, keep y’all posted. The Boys are hugely freaked out. Spanky has dealt with us bringing kittens home – Stimpy and Snoopy, to be exact – but neither of them was nearly this little. He won’t go near her, only watches her carefully from a distance. Snoopy is interested in her, and has sniffed her from up close, but he isn’t sure what to make of her. Stimpy thinks she’s the spawn of satan, and hisses every time she gets within two feet of him. This morning, she was in the master bedroom closet using the litter box we put there for her, and he went into the bathroom to watch. She apparently finished and was coming back out through the bathroom, and out came Stimpy, running like the hounds of hell were after him, and hissing to beat the band. It’s hilarious, considering that he’s ten times bigger than she is. Spot isn’t particularly freaked out, but he’s not a big fan, either. He’s been through the new-kitten thing before. He has hissed at her once or twice, but it was kind of half-hearted. For her part, the kitten isn’t particularly interested in the Boys. She’ll glance at them from time to time, but mostly ignores them. Happy Thanksgiving! Did everyone have a good one? I slept in until 7:30 or so (because I was up several times in the night with the kitten, and even when I did sleep, I had horrid dreams of rolling over and crushing her, or of Snoopy kicking her ass), and then had to run to the store for Tender Vittles and soda and other stuff I can’t recall. When I got home from the store, Fred informed me that we only had dill pickle relish for the devilled eggs, instead of sweet pickle relish. So I went back out and got pickle relish and tin foil. We ate dinner at noon, and boy did it kick ass. Have I mentioned what a great cook Fred is? He did 99.9% of the meal himself, and only asked me to make a few things. We bought the turkey from a place called Tim’s Cajun Kitchen (a smoked cajun turkey, even), and it wasn’t that great — kinda dry, and the smell of smoke has been following me around since we ate. Everything else rocked, though. We had cornbread dressing, cranberry sauce, summer squash casserole, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, broccoli, corn, and devilled eggs. There are tons of leftovers, so that should carry us through the weekend. Sorry about all the kitten talk. I’ll try to keep it to myself for the most part — I know it’s boring to those of you who aren’t cat lovers, and probably boring to those of you who are! —– ]]>