Thank you to everyone who’s donated so far – I have more than $500 in my PayPal account; I can’t wait to write that check to the shelter! The rest of you – get to donating! Whatcha waiting for?
You can donate to the shelter directly via PayPal now, too.
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People, please. For the love of all that is holy, it is NOT “You’ve got another thing coming.” It’s “You’ve got another THINK coming.” THINK. NOT THING.
Thank you.
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Sometimes when we drive back from Smallville, we take a different, less country road, route. On the way, there’s a stand that sells apples. A few weeks ago we passed the sign that said “Fresh orchard apples” and I said to Fred, “Doesn’t that sound like a euphemism for cow shit?” and he laughed and agreed.
Now I can’t pass that sign without thinking “I wonder how much they’d charge for a bushel of cow shit?”
* * *
I think I mentioned the other day that Fezzik, Westley, and Princess Buttercup had been adopted when I went to the pet store. Poor Inigo was in a cage all by himself, and when he saw me walk into the room, he started howling and pushing his little face against the cage. I usually start by cleaning out the cages on the bottom, letting the cats out of each cage as I get to it, so that when the most cats are out running around, I’ve got the bottom cages all cleaned and am working on the top cages, which they can’t run in and out of and get in my way.
However.
Inigo was one of my BAYBEES, so I wasn’t about to make him stay in his cage until I got done with the bottom cages. I opened the door to take him out, and he threw himself at me, purring, and let me hold him for the longest time before he demanded that I put him down so he could go play.
I basically let him stay out and play the entire time I was at the pet store, and he played very nicely with the other cats. I thought about putting him in a cage with the kitten he seemed to be having the most fun playing with, but there were no big cages available, so I didn’t.
The entire time I was cleaning, he’d play and play and play, and then come over and politely tap at my leg as if to say “Please, ma’am, may I have another?” and I’d pick him up and cuddle him for a few minutes.
When it was time for me to leave, I popped him in his cage and booked it out of there before he could give me the betrayed look and howls of rage.
It was actually easier for me to leave him than I thought it would be. Last year when I left
Jodie and Rambo and had to come back the next day to clean, it was very difficult to leave them, because they – Jodie, especially – were so scared. The fact that Inigo was pretty much taking it in stride made it easier to leave him.
I hope like hell he gets adopted before next Monday, though.
* * *
Note to myself: Do not give Miz Poo medicine on your desk. Because when she fights the medicine – and she WILL – it will go flying all over the damn place, and you will end up with little splatters of medicine all over your monitor, your desk, and your keyboard, and that medicine is some sticky-ass shit.
(Mister Boogers, Spanky, Miz Poo, and now Sugarbutt appear to have developed Upper Respiratory Infections. According to the
know-it-all front desk lady at the vet’s office, kittens can be carriers of Upper Respiratory Infections while not actually getting sick themselves. I think she just hates kittens and is a big fat LIAR.)
* * *
We went to the house last night, and I intended to get the rest of the switches and plugs in the upstairs changed out, but it was already too dark by the time we got there, so I’ll have to wait and do it this weekend. Fred spent a little time out on the roof of the house dealing with something that was causing a leak (I wasn’t listening all that closely when he explained it to me), and I started cleaning the paint spatters off the stairs. It took me an hour and a half to get down to the landing, and then Fred wanted to start rehanging the doors in the upstairs, so I never did get the lower half of the stairs cleaned.
The cleaned stairs, by the way, look pretty damn good. We’d pretty much decided not to paint the stairs (since so many people in Fred’s comments were opposed to it) and thought we might stain them, but actually I think they look just fine the way they are, so we might just leave them alone.
We started hanging doors upstairs, which quickly turned out to be a bit of a cluster fuck since we hadn’t made any attempt to keep the correct hinge with each door/ doorway. We got the door to one of the spud’s closets hung, but then it wouldn’t close, so we had to take it back down and start comparing hinges to find the right one for the door. We finally did, and Fred was so frustrated that he snapped “We are NOT taking ANY MORE doors down!”
When I thought of how crappy the doors would look, he gave me a long-suffering look and said in his “Look how patient and long-suffering I am” voice, “I’ll paint them.”
Yeah, well, I’ve
seen the paint job he’s done on a door we left standing in place and I WAS NOT IMPRESSED. But I bit my tongue and said nothing.
It is my considered opinion that I don’t pull my weight when it comes to renovating the house because I can’t cut or hang crown molding (though I can help hang it), I suck at painting, you DON’T want me to replace lights (trust me), and it’s taking me forever to replace the switches because it’s hard to get the wires out of the back of the switch thingy. I feel like I spend a lot of time wandering around, listening to my iPod and half-assedly swiping at things with a cleaning cloth, and doing dumbfuck things like slicing through the extension cord with the hedge trimmer. So when Fred says something that indicates that he thinks I’m not pulling my weight, it makes me squawk indignantly.
As I mentioned, though, I bit my tongue and didn’t say anything, but a few minutes later when he was trying to put the screws in the bottom of the door to the spud’s room and he said, impatiently “Hold the door UP a little!”, because I’d held the door up a little and then apparently let it go back to where it was without realizing it, I squawked indignantly “I AM!” and he said “No you’re not, you let it go back too close to the wall!” and I squawked indignantly “NO I’M NOT!” and he laughed at me and I
killed him and buried him in the back forty told him to shut up, and then felt better about it.
Today, my hip is KILLING me. I have no idea what I did to it, but it hurts to lift my leg, and I’m walking with a limp.
I’m sure it’s Fred’s fault.
* * *
* * *
Previously
2005: “Fascinating.”
2004: All your frog are belong to us.
2003: No entry.
2002: I am freezing to death.
2001: I think I need to get a life…
2000: In other words, Robyn is a total spaz about her eyes, comprende?
1999: On the way into work, and the whole time I worked today, I reconsidered that reconsideration.]]>
Everything negative is the fault of our hubbies. That is why we married them, we needed someone to blame.
I’m going to throw down the gauntlet and ask you to PROVE that it’s “think” and not “thing.” If you say “You’ve got another THINK coming,” then grammatically that makes “think” a noun, which it isn’t. I know this phrase is a play on words, i.e. “If you think blah blah blah, then you’ve got another think coming,” which I consider to be a sort of dumb saying. Another thought coming, yes. Another “think” coming, no. And I gave this waaaaaay too much think. hahaha I slay myself.
I’m with Jane. It’s Thing. Maybe Think is a southern think?
I think both are correct, depending on context.
Judas Priest, for example, said “you’ve got another thing coming.”
BUT…
If I were saying, “If you think I’m going to put this chain back on your chainsaw AGAIN,” I’d end with “you’ve got another think coming.”
Oh. So that’s where Robyn got it from. Heh.
She didn’t get it from me — I’d have said it right. 😉
What was I thinging? Sorry Fred!
Okay, I have to stop this. You’ll hear no more from me on this subject.
Really!
I’ve always heard that saying as thing, not think — but I agree that thought made the most sense!
I don’t know how I missed the Paypal option, but I did mail a check directly to the shelter today, so I hope that helps!
Robyn, you don’t give yourself nearly enough credit for all of the work you’ve put in on your new home. Just reading about everything you do makes me feel exhausted AND guilty! You are a cleaning machine, woman! If you weren’t around, Fred might have pretty walls and crown molding but he’d probably still be using a dirty toilet with the frog as his guest. (No offense, Fred) 🙂
Those two pictures make it look like Sugarbutt sympathizes with you; Tom Cullen, not so much.
And I’ve always believed it was think also. I know thing has been used and when it’s been used it was done correctly but I still believe it’s supposed to be think.
‘Think’ is not a noun, it’s a verb. You, sorry to burst your bubble, are incorrect.
Alternative forms
to have another thing coming (only common form in US)
[edit] Expression
to have another think coming (mainly British)
To be deluded, to be mistaken
along the same lines…”you can’t eat your cake and have it too”, NOT “you can’t have your cake and eat it too”
because in fact, you can have cake and then eat it, but you can’t eat it then have it again.
and to support think vs thing…
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/thing.html
It is THINK. Period.
“If you think… you have another think coming.”
It might SOUND like “thing” because of the combination of the consonant sounds, and an 80s hair band might’ve gone by the sound of the word when they wrote their lyrics, but it’s THINK. No amount of inappropriate common usage will change that fact. THINK.
Harumph.
I’ve never seen this guy be wrong before: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/thing.html
Oh, also my dictionary does give a definition for “think” as a noun: “The act or an instance of deliberate or extended thinking; a meditation.”
You’re all a bunch of English major geeks, aren’t you?
No one’s going to ever change my mind. If you think you’re going to change my mind… well, you know how THAT ends. 😛
Yeah, it’s grammatically incorrect. That is SO not a valid argument, you fools.
I didn’t read all the comments, but apparently the saying is supposed to be gramatically incorrect. Like Jane said. Or at least that’s what I read in 3 seconds of Googling.
“If you think blah, blah, blah then you’ve got another think coming” is merely US slang. Slang is informal language and you can’t apply formal grammar rules to it.
Tom Cullen says, “so there! Myah!”
Yep, Robyn’s right. The expression isn’t the height of wittiness, but the grammar is part of the “joke.” I’m sure it was knee-slappingly funny in the 1800s. 🙂
It’s amazing how many expressions get changed because of the way people hear them, though. I’ve had authors insist that “for all intensive purposes” is correct. ARRGGHHH. It’s “for all intents and purposes,” which stylistically speaking is redundant, but sorry. That’s the damn expression.
OK, crawling back into my geek hole now…
Another English major freak weighing in… personally, I hate the saying anyway, so to me it’s annoying no matter whether “thing” or “think” is used. SO THERE. THPPPBT. Heh.
Robyn, have you seen this yet? I’m in love.
http://www.fluffytails.ca/christmas.asp
The main page of that site tells some background about the kitties.
For the record, I never use the damn saying at ALL. I just happened to see it used incorrectly in a book and it annoyed me.
Whitters – I HAVE seen that site, but it had been a while. It cracks me up. Can you imagine what life would be like around here if I put up a full-sized tree? I’m thinking it’d be knocked over in 30 minutes or less.
LisaL: I see “for all intensive purposes” all the time and it drives me NUTS.
I hate to have to agree with the front desk lady at the vet…but she’s probably right.
When we adopted Little Miss Hemi-Bo from a cat shelter at 3 months, she came home with a host of ear mites but no upper-respiratory infection; however, our boy Navin came down with the URI three days later. We were told it was because Miss Bo was most likely a carrier. Poor guy, even though he was sick, he tried so hard to keep up with his new little sister! She groomed him when he was ill (she probably thought it was the least she could do!) and two years later, they’re still best buds.
I’ve been ‘lurking’ around for a while, and this is the first time I’m commenting…I just felt your pain a little too much when I read about you having difficulty hanging the doors. My husband and I started hanging 3 new ones a few months back, and when I “couldn’t hold the door straight” (which I TOTALLY was holding it straight) I had to tell him to get someone else to help because I was certain if he didn’t, it would have turned into an episode of Jerry Springer-hitting eachother with doors and all.
Hubs and I are actually quite the gluttons for punishment, so we put up a (fake) tree every year. It’s only five feet tall, but we do the lights and ribbons and ornaments and everything. Shockingly enough, our cats don’t climb it. Rick will occasionally bat at the lowest-hanging ornaments, but he hasn’t broken anything. Ferris is in lurve with the tree and sleeps under it for the month that it’s up – when we take it down, he actually goes into a mourning period for about a week where he just sits and stares at the spot where the tree used to be. Poor baby.
Of course, now we have a new kitten (7 months old) who is quite the little monkey. So he might be all up in that tree this year. We shall see…
Ooh. Another one that drives me crazy is: “I could care less.” It’s COULDN’T care less. If you COULD care less, then you obviously care at least a little. Sheesh.
Elizabeth, that one drives me crazy, too! It’s one of my biggest pet peeves.
I also hate it when people write “just desserts” instead of the correct “just deserts.” And when they misuse “good” and “well.” It’s “I don’t feel good,” not “I don’t feel well” – unless you’re talking about your sense of touch not working correctly.
I’m sorry, Robyn – I bet you’re regretting starting us geeks down this path!
I’m nothing if not up front and honest. I stand corrected and take my spanking like a man.
No harumphing here.
AHEM.
Tommy looks “special”
Heh. Niki made me laugh out loud.
Fred, I immediately thought of that Judas Priest song as well! 🙂
Stop killing Fred.
Sugarlips has such an interesting little face!
Well, whenever anyone says “you’ve got another thing coming,” I can hear Judas Preist singing in my brain.
So of course my gut reaction is that it’s ‘thing’ not ‘think.’
However, I suppose that “you’ve got another think coming” makes more sense. I guess.
(Regardless, don’t you hate it when people say irregardless? Burns my buscuit, it does!)