Month: February 2001

Do any of you have any clue what kind of plant this might be or where I can find information about it? I got it from Fred’s stepmother last Fall and she said she thought it might be called a "travelling iris", but wasn’t sure. I need to find out what it likes, light-wise, ’cause I’m kicking it outside once the weather warms up some. Have I mentioned how much I adore daffodils? I found this particular gorgeous specimen whilst on my walk a couple of mornings ago. It was just growing on the side of the road, minding it’s own business, not in anyone’s yard or anything. So I took it. How can you look at that flower and not be happy? —–]]>

itchy sandpaper. Yes, I was covered from neck to ankles with an itchy red sandpaper-textured rash. My skin apparently woke up and realized that I’d been smothering it with oil for the last week, and it got PISSED. Oh, it itches. Oh, it hurts. Oh, I AM SUCH A DUMBASS. I know that this will pass and in a few weeks I’ll be back to my normal dry-skinned self, but that’s not much consolation when I wake up in the middle of the night to find that I’m frantically scratching my butt-cheeks. And that wasn’t the last of my dumbassery for Saturday, oh no – of COURSE not. For dinner Saturday night, we had Karawynn’s Ex-Texas Chili (well, not hers, but I used her recipe to make it. You know what I mean). Instead of, as Karawynn suggests, washing my hands with a salt and water paste after chopping the jalapenos, I just used soap. HOURS later, whilst taking my contacts from my eyes while getting ready for bed, can you guess what happened? That’s right, my eyes just about bulged out of my head and started burning, because I’m a dumbass. Not happy eyes, let me tell you. And I got my fingers all over my contacts, so what do you suppose happened when I went to put them in my eyes Sunday morning? That’s right, bulging and burning. I ended up having to throw the contacts away, due to my dumbassery. Lest you think I do nothing but bitch on this page (ha! You KNOW I do nothing but bitch on this page, right?), I will say that my knee is completely better this morning and I was able to exercise as planned. But don’t get me started on the road construction I had to walk around… —–]]>

Himself needed more salad, and I figured if I got a big-ass bag of salad (everything at Sam’s comes in Big-Ass size, you know), he’d be set for a while and I wouldn’t have to buy so much stuff at Publix on my way home. I found a bag of the Spring Mix we both like so much, and it appeared, to my eye anyway, to be about twice the size of the bags we get at Publix every week, and it cost $3.49 for the whole big-ass bag. One little bag at Publix is $2.99, so obviously the Sam’s salad was quite a bargain. It was a good-looking salad, too, appearing to be very fresh, and I didn’t see any of the gross limp stuff you get when bags of prepared salad have sat around for too long. And then the next morning, I was informed by Fred that there wasn’t TWICE as much in the Sam’s salad as in the Publix salad, but rather there was more than THREE times as much salad. For only 50 cents more than the little bag of Publix salad! I believe we’ll be buying our salad at Sam’s from now on. The only thing that really ticks me off about Sam’s is that EVERY time I go there, I make sure to check for cinnamon Altoids because I go through two tins a week (and if you’d like an empty Altoids tin, just let me know!) and they have every single kind of Altoid EXCEPT for the cinnamon flavor, which happens to be the only flavor I care for (for which I care, to be grammatically correct). It’s a conspiracy to keep me from cinnamon-y fresh breath, it really is. Damn that Sam’s. Good salad but no cinnamon Altoids. Where are their priorities, I ask you? I know I have some technically savvy readers out there (pardon me while I kiss reader ass), and I’m sure someone can help me with this. Remember the .mpg I made back in December of Bobby from "The Practice", yelling "You drove him CRRRAZY!"? Sure you do, it’s this one. Well, what I would DEARLY love is to have a .wav of Bobby yelling just the "CRRRAZY!" part, because I’d LOVE to hear that every time I got mail. It would just rock my world, it really would. The only thing is, I have no idea how to convert part of an .mpg to a .wav, which is where y’all come in. If someone out there could help me out, I’d be eternally grateful and hey – I’ll even link to you, if you’d like! Actually, I wouldn’t mind also having a .wav of him yelling the whole "You drove him CRRRAZY!" Hop to it, now! Did y’all watch the Grammys the other night? I didn’t, except for the few times when Fred flipped channels during commercials. Am I interested in the Grammys? HELL no. Am I interested in seeing Eminem perform with Elton John? Not in THIS lifetime. I understand why people are up in arms about Eminem and his doofy lyrics, I really do, but that kid just bores the ever-lovin’ shit out of me. Yeah I know little boy, you’ve had such a rough little white boy’s life, such a sad thing it is. Fuckin’ yawnsville. Hey, remember when Axl Rose of Guns ‘n Roses had those songs with anti-gay lyrics? And remember when Elton John performed on the Freddy Mercury Tribute Concert with Axl and they sang "Bohemian Rhapsody"? Remember that, the whole irony of anti-gay Axl and ultra-gay Elton performing together, oh couldn’t you have just cut the irony with a knife? Hey, I wonder what Axl’s up to, anyone seen him lately? No? Gosh, I wonder why. ]]>

The View, godhelpme, and then the last fifteen minutes of You’ve Got Mail. So, it’s been many weeks since I put my New Year’s resolutions on my page for the world to see. Let’s see how I did, shall we?: Robyn’s Resolutions for 2001 1. I will shave my legs once a week. Har de har. As if. In fact, I’ve only shaved my legs TWICE this year. Shaving my legs is just such an incredibly boring thing to do that I can only force myself to do it when the hair on my legs is about long enough to braid (attractive, yes?). Perhaps when it’s summertime and I wear shorts in public more often I’ll be able to get them shaved on a more frequent basis. Don’t hold your breath, though. 2. I will grow my hair out, because my husband likes it when I have long hair. Yep, still growing. Kinda hard to fuck that one up. 3. I will keep my purse in a more organized manner. Pshaw. Another "as if". I simply don’t have it in myself to stand there at the store after receiving my change and receipt and neatly putting everything back where it belongs while the person standing in line behind me is breathing down my neck. I did get a bigger purse, though, so I could fit a paperback in one of the side pockets in case I get caught standing or sitting in line unexpectedly. That counts for something, surely? 4. I will keep to my downstairs-on-Wednesday, upstairs-on-Thursday cleaning schedule. Um, no. In fact, I came up with a complex cleaning system, where I perform a few certain chores each day (Monday: Vacuum upstairs, clean bathrooms. Tuesday: Vacuum stairs and entire basement, etc.), but it’s not quite working the way I’d hoped. I didn’t dust yesterday as I was scheduled to, and I didn’t clean the kitchen today (my knee, you know). 5. I will have my eyebrows waxed and plucked by a professional at least once. No, I still haven’t done this yet, either, but the year’s still young. I hope to get this one accomplished before the end of the year. 6. I will get my ass in gear, reorganize my site, and move it all over to robynanderson.com. By Valentine’s Day. Nope. Haven’t even started on the reorganizing I’d planned. I hope to buckle down and get some serious work done on it by the first. But who knows? So that’s what, one resolution upheld out of 6? Hey, tons better than my usual record… —–]]>

Knology truck stop at our mailbox. "Hey, I can give him my package!" Fred said excitedly, and ran over to the stairs. I looked closer at the truck. Fred ran to the stairs and snatched up his package – only HIS package, scattering my packages to the floor. "HEY!" I yelled after him as he sprinted out the door. "That’s not the mailman…" How did I know? ‘Cause, um, first of all I can READ, and I was pretty sure the US Post Office would frown on their mail carriers driving vehicles with advertising on the side. And secondly, I’d already gotten the mail when I’d gotten home from running my errands an hour earlier. I’d love to be able to report that Fred ran down the Knology guy and then found to his embarrassment that it wasn’t the mail guy, but by the time he got to the street, the truck was too far away for him to catch up to it. You’d better believe I gave him hell for only grabbing his own package, though. ]]>

‘Tis, which had been sitting on my bookshelf for about a year, perhaps longer. I have so many books sitting impatiently, waiting for me to read them, that my head spins when it comes time to pick out a new book. I end up closing my eyes and doing the whole "Eenie-meenie-miney-mo" thing. The current plan is to read a book I’ve had for a long time before I can read one of the ones I got for Christmas or my birthday. Old – new – old – new. It would work well, except that I finish a book and get sidetracked by magazines, and then can’t remember whether I read an old one or a new one. I also keep a book in the downstairs bathroom (what, like you don’t read in the bathroom?). I recently read Rebecca, which I had amazingly enough never had to read in high school (I liked it a lot; it holds up well all these years later) and this morning I finished off a Harlequin Romance. Shaddup, I like a good Harlequin from time to time. My "bathroom books", as I call them, come from a different pile of books entirely. They come from the two shelves in the library that hold the books I brought with me from Rhode Island 4 1/2 years ago. I brought them with me because I hadn’t read them yet. And a lot of them are Harlequins. I wouldn’t want a steady diet of Harlequins, but reading one every few months is enjoyable. They’re like total mind candy, and you can always count on a happy ending. It appears I’ve gone a bit astray from where I meant to go… Anyway, I kind of liked ‘Tis, although I was a little leery of it since Pamie ended up throwing it across the room when she read it (go further down the page and read her review of Hannibal; it’s dead-on). What bugged me the most, though, is that he spends a great majority of ‘Tis talking about one woman and how much he loved her at first, and then after several years he married her (why, Frank? You don’t sound like you love her; WHY DID YOU MARRY HER?), and some years later they divorced and yadda yadda yadda. The book ends in Ireland, as he and his brothers are scattering their mother’s ashes (thus we come full circle to Angela’s ashes), and we never hear a single word about the woman he’s currently married to, the woman to whom the book is dedicated. I wanted to hear about her, wanted to learn their love story, and he never wrote one single word about her. Maybe he was just setting me up for book number three. —–]]>

Did I see Spot before I left? I don’t remember… "Is it the fence?" I called, hoping it was that and not a dead cat which had put that tone in his voice. "No, just come look…" I went upstairs, and our back yard looked like it had been hit by a bomb. The table and chairs, previously near the back of the house, had been thrown to the other side of the pool – and some of the chairs were resting atop the pool cover. The Rubbermaid storage closet, which had been reinforced by wire when Fred put it together, and had been resting against the back of the house, was in pieces near the table and chairs. The huge faux-clay planter (thermolite? is that what that stuff’s called?) had broken into several pieces, which were laying in various spots around the back yard. If we hadn’t had a fence, no doubt we’d be needing to buy a whole new supply of backyard items. A tornado never did touch down in the area (at least, not yet), and after the weather calmed down some, Fred and I went for a drive, exclaiming over the downed trees all over the place. We were lucky enough to have not lost any of our shingles or shutters, or – thankfully – any cats (Spot was hiding under the bed with Mr. Fancypants). A year ago yesterday, I said this in my journal: You know, in Maine we never had to worry about tornadoes coming from out of nowhere and snatching up our houses and cars. The worst I recall dealing with in Maine were the occasional ice storms. Ice storms don’t whisk your home away, you know. Ain’t that the truth. —–]]>

Saundra‘s journal entries, I went out a few weeks ago and purchased The Works Tub and Shower Cleaner. This stuff works just awesomely well – you spray it on, come back a few minutes later and rinse it off, and everything’s shiny clean. The only part that sucks is that I have to actually stand inside the shower to spray the inside of the shower doors, and thus I end up inhaling at least some of the stuff that’s flying around in the air while I’m spraying. Therefore, every time I take a guzzle of water, it tastes a tad bit chemical. I hope I’m not doing serious damage to myself, but if you saw how clean the showers get, you’d know how much it’s worth it. If you’re a fan of Bath and Body Works, as y’all know full well that I am, and you’re suffering from dry and itchy wintertime skin – again, as I am – have I got a product for you! It’s called a Sea Salt Rub, it comes in a jar, and it’s just heavenly. This morning (well, afternoon actually, since I spent ALL morning cleaning, as I’ve mentioned) in the shower, after washing off with my usual Dove soap, I used the salt scrub on myself, and the salt scrub isn’t just salt, oh no, it’s salt combined with a lovely scented (coconut, in my case) oil, and even now, hours after my shower, I still feel soft and smooth. I’m sure I’ll be happy ’til tomorrow morning when I wake up with big zits all over me ’cause the oil blocked my pores. Even then I’ll be happy, ’cause I am just a zit-poppin’ fool. But, that’s a discussion for another day. ]]>