Month: December 1999

Here’s our lovely Christmas tree. We go for the minimalist look, can you tell? Lights and ornaments, that’s all we decorate our tree with. No tinsel, no garland, none o’ that fancy stuff, no sir! Here’s another picture of the Scrapster. She loves to lay on the arm of the couch next to Fred. Actually, in this picture she’s coveting Fred’s dinner, which was an excellent steak. Fred hit Winn Dixie this evening and bought a ton of meat and vegetables to fill up our new freezer. The one I mentioned as being a tad too large? He bought enough meat to get us through at least a month, and as you’ll note, it isn’t even close to thinking about being filled up. In fact, there’s still room for him to kill me and store my body. You just keep that in mind when I go missing, people. Y’all think I’m joking, but the joke will be on you when I’m not here to entertain you anymore. You don’t see the way he looks at me, as if he’s thinking "If I just knock her over the head a few times, I won’t have to listen to the bitching and whining anymore!" Little does he know that my loyal readers will bitch and whine at him in my stead. Right?]]>

medium for about a week now, and have won 10 or 15 games. Not 10 or 15 in a row, you understand, but at least two or three a day. Maybe it’s time I move up to hard. Maybe I’ll just stay at medium until I win a few games in a row. And maybe I’ll actually get off my butt and register the damn thing. Ya think? Fred is all kinds of thrilled and eager for christmas, because he has apparently bought the perfect present for me. You may recall that we said we weren’t going to buy presents for each other. Well, that evolved somehow into we’re going to buy a couple of small presents for each other, and then basically each of us trying to keep up with the other. "How much have you spent?" "$100." "Oh, shit! I better get a few more things…" "No!" "Yes!" And so on. He was going to get me an autographed picture of the cast ofAlly McBeal (I love that Fish!), and a script, but was outbid. Then he got this sudden brilliant insight, and he’s been teasing me about it ever since. He won’t even give me the slightest hint of what it is because he wants it to be a total surprise. Aside from maybe a Litter Maid, I can’t imagine what on earth it is. He just told me that it’s inexpensive "but special." I haven’t a clue what it is. Which is good, because I really like surprises. ]]>

her, and I told them that I needed to talk to the spud and make sure she wanted to go. "Like she won’t want to!" we exclaimed at each other. I bet you can see where this is going. "Spud," I said bright and early the next morning, "There’s a possibility you could go to Maine for a week after christmas. Do you want to?" She thought about it for 20 seconds and said "No." Ironic, isn’t it, that the only thing we didn’t consider ended up being the thing that put a wrench in the works? Come to find out, she’s a bit scared of flying by herself, even though there will be a nice flight attendant to bring her from plane to plane. At least this way I won’t have to worry about the flight attendant forgetting about the spud and her ending up in Paris. But I’m betting by week 2 of christmas vacation, the spud will be desperately wishing she had gone to Maine. I can almost guarantee it. ]]>

Snood suckiness continues. I semi-mastered the easy level and have moved on to medium. After reading that I was playing on easy, Audrey emailed me. "I began playing at the evil level my very first day," she sneered. "And once I was on the phone, not really paying attention, and I ended up with twenty zillion points. The other time, I took a nap and woke up with a million points. I usually don’t even look at the screen while I’m playing. Frankly, Robyn, I’m amazed you can bear to confess to playing on easy. My friend’s nephew is three months old, and he manages medium." She went on in this vein until I ran away crying. Maybe I should start an "I suck at Snood" webring. Just kidding about that email from Audrey, of course. I mean, she did tell me she plays on evil, but she didn’t rub it in. She didn’t need to, I could read between the lines. ]]>

huge. I had wanted something to hold about a month’s worth of meat, frozen vegetables, and bread, but the one Fred ended up buying will probably hold a year’s worth. Last night, as we were laying in bed talking, I said "Promise me you’ll never tip me over into the freezer and shut the top, as a joke." Because I could imagine the scenario where I would be leaning over trying to get something on the very bottom of the freezer, and he would grab my legs and tip me in, thinking it was funny. He was aghast, and said sternly "It wouldnever occur to me to do such a thing! Not ever!" But if I end up MIA, y’all know where to tell the cops to look… As I mentioned, we watched the South Park movie last night. At the risk of making myself look like a lowbrow, white-trash, potty-mouth idiot (too late!), I thought it was hilarious. And when they started singing "Uncle Fucka", I thought Fred was going to pass out, he was laughing so hard. We’re both Trey Parker fans – Fred more than I – and have so far enjoyed everything he’s had a hand in creating. If you’ve never heard the opening song – Shpadoinkle Day – in Cannibal!: The Musical, you’re really missing out. (Note: Fred asked me to point out that Trey Parker not only wrote this song, he also sang it). Fred thinks Trey Parker could write musicals for the stage, and I agree. ]]>

I know what I mean. So, I’m getting a little stressed. I ordered all kinds of Christmas presents from Amazon last week, and only two of them have arrived. I’m waiting on all kinds of gift certificates and cds and movies to arrive here so I can wrap them and send them on to Maine. I knew when I placed the order that I should have had them sent directly, but I don’t really like doing that. I prefer to wrap them myself, then send them all together in a big box. I’m getting to the point where, several times a day, I desperately check the email I’m registered under at Amazon, hoping against hope to find a "We’ve mailed out the rest of your order!" email. With the bitchypoo luck, though, everything will arrive next weekend, requiring that I mail my Christmas packages out Priority mail. Not that I don’t anyway. I’m just saying. ]]>

The Little Drummer Boy. Man, it just gets me right there when they sing "I played my drum for him … I played my best for him". I was driving along sobbing half-hysterically, barely able to see the road, and trying to sing along. That was quite a sight, I’m sure. The other song that makes me tear up is "O Holy Night." I once saw Lorrie Morgan’s (shut up) Christmas concert – in fact, I skipped out on a fairly important class to attend – and when she sang that song I got goosebumps. She followed it up with "Ave Maria", and I was a puddle on the floor. Anyway, I got back to work and read about a 9 year-old boy who went to school every day and shopped for food at a nearby market, while his mother lay dead on their living room floor. He didn’t tell anyone because he was afraid they’d put him in an orphanage. Doesn’t that just break your heart? The thought of that poor child doing his best to take care of himself, going to school faithfully, and every day going home to sit in an apartment with his mother’s body just made me feel incredibly sad and lonely for him. *Warning* – If you’re eating and/or you have a weak stomach, you may want to skip the rest of this entry. We were sitting around the table eating dinner tonight, and Fred told me that Fancypants was by the kitchen entryway trying to cover something up. Whenever Fancypants comes across something that should be in the litterbox, he tries to cover it up, even if it’s sitting on the carpet or bare floor. Occasionally, we come across a big yakked-up furball with lines around it where he dragged his paw across the carpet in a vain attempt to cover it up. Fancypants knows his place, and he knows that if Alpha Bitchypoo Mommy sees something like a nasty, messy furball that she has to drag the Resolve Carpet Cleaner out for, she is very much not happy, so he attempts to cover it up. Or so I’d like to think. Anyway, I got up from the table to check it out, and where he’d been scratching a few moments earlier was a poop spot. One of the cats had used the litterbox and not gotten completely clean, it appeared. (We tried teaching them to use toilet paper, but it was an all-around failure) I glanced about four feet to my right, and found another spot. And another, and another. Altogether, I found five or six such spots, including a nice nasty one right in front of the couch. As I stood in the living room swearing, Fred suggested that it might be the work of the kitten. I picked her up and checked her out, but she was perfectly clean. I checked Spot, and Fred checked Tubby and Spanky. All clean. Finally, Fred chased down Fancypants, and found a huge amount of poo hanging off of his furry black bloomers (the cat’s bloomers, that is. heh). We cornered him in the bathroom, and Fred held him while I tried to pull the stuff from his fur with a big wad of paper towels. God, the smell. I’m sure you can imagine. Fred and I stumbled about the bathroom, gagging loudly, he hanging his head inside the shower in case dinner came back up, and I hovering over the bathtub. He got tickled by the situation and giggled madly between the gagging. The paper towels weren’t doing any great job, so we decided to trim what we could of his bloomers. I held him while Fred cut, and to say the least Fancypants didn’t care for it. He growled and cried and bit the hell out of my shirt. Suffice it to say that a great deal of poo-covered black kitty hair went into the toilet, and Fancypants now feels violated and abused. Obviously, we need to have him professionally groomed and trimmed. And, as I told Fred, new rule for the future: No more long-haired cats! ]]>

dulce vanilla cologne, too, because it looks a lot like the bottle of dark vanilla I have, and I really like that. Oh, and a Love’s Baby Soft gift set – for myself, of course – because I wore it all through middle school and the very smell brings me back to my ill-spent youth. The problem with me is that I go shopping for presents for others, and end up buying just as much stuff for myself. Then I went to work and spent an hour online doing more Christmas shopping, and by God I’m about done. All I have to do is buy a bunch of little presents for the spud’s stocking, and Fred’s stocking. Oh, and presents for the kitties, of course, but I think they’ll take one look at our tree and consider that present enough. Last year once the Boys were done with the tree, half the lights were on the floor and the other half were twisted around the highest branches. We grew accustomed to hearing the nightyly bong-bong-bong-bong sound of ornaments bouncing down the stairs with the help of kitty paws. Which reminds me, for some reason, of when Spanky was about six months old. This was around Easter; he was walking along minding his own business, and I happened to glance down at him. He had three inches of Easter grass sticking out of his butt. "Fred!" I yelled, because have I mentioned how useless I am in a crisis? Fred came, assessed (get it? ASSessed? Heh) the situation, and grabbed the end of the grass. Spanky began walking away, then – apparently feeling the pull of the grass coming out – stopped and looked back at Fred as if to say, "What the hell are you doing?" He walked a bit further, then stopped and looked back again, puzzled. The wheels turned in his head as he thought to himself, "But they’re over there, and my butt’s over here. They can’t be doing that…" He walked a bit further, and the other end of the Easter grass came out. We put it back in the spud’s Easter basket and went about our business. Just kidding, of course. Don’t email me and tell me what a horrid mother I am. Also don’t email me and tell me how dangerous cellophane Easter grass is to cats, ’cause I already know. We only buy paper Easter grass now. I spent the day at work telling myself "I really need to pay those bills…Oh, just one more game of Snood!" Kymm was not kidding in the slightest when she spoke of it’s instantly addictive powers. I played, and played, and played. And want to know something lame? I was playing on the "easy" level! I tried "medium", but immediately ran away with my tail between my legs. Oh, how lame I am. ]]>

Today was just a stinky, stinky day. To start off, I boiled some eggs this morning, and made myself an egg salad sandwich for lunch. Of course once the eggs were peeled and mashed up, the entire upstairs – and downstairs too – reeked of that nasty eggfart smell. So I bagged up my lunch and Fred’s and headed off to work, and halfway there I realized I was carrying the stinky eggfart smell with me, which means of course that those damn little sandwich bags aren’t nearly as airtight as I had hoped they were. I had to stop at FoodWorld for milk and cereal, and of course when I hopped back into the truck, there was that lovely, farty smell to greet me. I carried the smell with me into work, and became concerned that everyone would think it was me, so I made sure to tell Fred it was my egg salad sandwich, and for good measure put a sign on the refrigerator door.

Due to an egg salad sandwich, the refrigerator and kitchen

area will smell like a giant fart for the duration of the day.

Thank you for your patience.

And it tasted excellent, of course, which made the eggfart stenchiness more than worth it.

Tonight, we had jambalaya for dinner. Usually I make the jambalaya with kielbasa and chicken, but Fred suggested I try substituting shrimp for the chicken this time. So I had to defrost the shrimp, then peel it, and the more I peeled, the shrimpier-smelling the kitchen got. The kitten was losing her mind, and tried more than once to climb my leg to get to that good-smelling stuff. Once I cooked the shrimp, the kitchen smelled even shrimpier, but my didn’t the jambalaya kick ass. What’s better, there’s enough left over for both Fred and I to take for lunch tomorrow. I’m sure once Tex gets whiff (so to speak) of the fact that our lunches contain shrimp, he’ll claim the whole office stinks from that.

So, Patrick Naughton’s lawyers have come up with the lamest defense ever. You remember Patrick Naughton – the Infoseek guy who intended to meet a 13 year-old and was thwarted because she wasn’t actually a 13 year-old girl, she was an FBI agent. Well, the brilliant defense his attorneys came up with was (drum roll) he didn’t expect her to really be 13; he assumed she was an adult and all their conversations were role-playing, because in chat rooms no one is who they claim to be. I told Fred they should put me on the jury. I’ll have the other jurors chanting "Hang him! Hang him!" in no time.

Here’s the house, all decked out in it’s holiday finery:

Impressive, eh? That Fred does a pretty good job, doesn’t he?

Okay, go join my notify list.

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Oh my God. Someone shoot me and put me out of my fucking misery, won’t you? I am a completely cranky, irritable bitch today, and I can’t stand me for another moment. All I want is to crawl into bed with my stack of magazines and a big-ass tin of Christie’s chocolate chip cookies, and a 6-pack of ice-cold Coke (in the 20 ounce bottle) and not come out for a week. That’s all I want.

Is that so wrong?

I’d blame my mood on pms, but Fred claims I always blame my bad moods on pms, so I won’t. Even though it’s the right time of the month for it, I’m not saying it’s pms. Not at all.

Work today was… well, it was work.

Not that I do anything all day, anyway.

So, I’ve been looking through my Nedstat stats, and have only this to say: join the freakin’ notify list, ’cause you’re inflating my stats when you check back several times through the day, and I get all excited and do a happy dance until I realize the same person checked back several times.

I’m just saying. You want me to be happy, don’t you?

I was supposed to get the groceries on the way home tonight, but I had no desire to run the Publix bagger gauntlet, and my lame suggestions that Fred should be responsible for getting the groceries sometimes were met with a blank stare and a change of the subject. So I didn’t stop and get groceries, and when I got home Fred all but ran to greet me at the door to show off his "Who Wants to be a Millionaire!" game that came in the mail today. I admired his game-playing skills for a few minutes, then went upstairs and fed the kitten. Today was her first day to not be locked in the bathroom, and I was relieved to find her alive, since Fancypants was chasing her around this morning, and when I spoke sharply to her for chewing on the cord to the lamp, he reached out and rolled her over onto her back. I had visions of her limping down the stairs with an eye dangling out and missing big patches of fur. Instead, she came toward me howling to let me know she was starving to death, and I’d best get my ass up those stairs and feed her pronto.

Then she snuggled on me for a long time, stretching and demanding I rub her tummy, then snoozing on and off while we watched Wild Wild West, which arrived in the mail today from Amazon. It was enjoyable enough, but I read magazines through about half of it, and hardly remember anything about the half I did see. Fred told me even he has no desire to see any of it again, but I just know next time his parents are over to watch a movie, he’ll suggest that as one of the choices.

As promised, here are some more office pics:

That’s my truck out the window.

This is my office, from the doorway looking in, and from the corner looking toward the side of the room where the door is located. It’s not this messy anymore – I got some cleaning and straightening done today – and aren’t the walls a lovely color? The bulletin board is hung up, and so is the gigantic Cartman poster with it’s back to the camera behind the E:Cargo box. I plan to bring in a couple of plants to liven up the place. See my nifty metal bookcase? All the stuff on that bookcase used to be scattered around my office in random piles. And you’ll notice, on the top shelf, the 3-ring binders wherein are stored all our 1999 receipts. Impressive, innit?

Tomorrow, I’ll put up a picture of the front of our house, with all Christmas decorations and all.

 

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