Month: November 2001

Sadie the lapdog.

I think that our dog thinks she’s a Mexican jumping bean. I took her for a walk this morning, and when we got back home, I blew some soap bubbles for her.

BUBBLES!

She was about as thrilled as I’ve ever seen her, racing around, trying to sniff and eat the bubbles, running from one end of the yard to the other. I had just blown a fresh batch of bubbles when she SPRANG up from the ground to try for a particularly large bubble, and the next thing I knew, her hind feet were even with my HEAD, and she was flying through the air with the greatest of ease.

The spud and Sadie greeting each other.

Yesterday, Fred and I were outside (well, maybe it was Sunday. The days kinda run together) and Sadie was all excited, jumping up on me and wagging her tail like hell, when the need to fly came over her, and she SPRANG up into the air (not as high as today, though) next to me, and on her way by tried her damnedest to lick my face. I don’t recall if she was successful in the licking part, though, because I was watching Fred, who was laughing so hard he could hardly breathe.

Belly rub! Belly rub! Gimme belly rub, damnit!

We watched Legally Blond over the weekend, and I enjoyed it, though Fred thought it was stupid, which is no big shock. Is it just me, or was Reese Witherspoon totally channeling Christine Taylor’s Marcia Brady? The way she walked, the way she talked, everything about the character was similar to the extreme, wasn’t it? Or is it just me?

The spud and Miz Poo discussing their day.

I have a rash upon my left arm. It’s got to be dog-related, because it showed up a few days after we adopted her (hey, it’s been a week today, by the way), and it’s itching like hell. I suppose I should try some hydrocortisone or something, instead of just scratching at it and bitching about how much it itches, ya think?

Tubby snoozing his day away on the sweater dryer/ kitty hammock I put there JUST for the kitties.

I had a busy morning today, starting with 20 minutes of High Intensity Interval Cardio, followed by a shower, some laundry, a quick shake, a visit to Target, then to Publix, then the movie store, and finally home. All in the space of two hours, which I thought was pretty good.

Spot, snoozing the day away on the bed. MY side of the bed, of course, where better to drop all those white cat hairs than on the side of the bed belonging to a woman who wears only black pants?

My computer is PISSING ME OFF lately, because it’s gotten all kinds of slow. It IS two years old, after all, and it’s about time for a new computer. Something’s happened to it so that I can’t even burn damn cds, and that just ticks me off. Fred has half-promised that we’ll look into getting new computers next month with the extra money he gets from selling his sick and vacation time back to the company. I need a new scanner too, because the one my parents gave us is adding a lovely yellow-and-green stripe to everything I scan. I need, I need, I need…

Miz Poo doesn’t much care to see the spud playing with that big panting slobbery thing.

I found out over the weekend that I was nominated – well, the diet journal was nominated, and that I is different from the Bitchypoo I, kinda – for an Outstanding Entry award, for my August 27th entry, which is awesomely cool. Honor to be nominated, and all that. I’d like to thank the academy… Oh, except considering the caliber of the entries I’m up against, I’ll have to be happy with the honor of it.

The irony is that I nominated Secra’s entry.

Well, now my isp is pissing me off, because my internet access has been up and down all afternoon, and now it’s down. Fuckers. It makes me mad because it’s never just one day affected by periodic outages, but several days in a row. Always.

I think I’m going to go stir my black beans and pout.

 

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Survivor certainly lived up and exceeded all my expectations last week. Now if they’d only get that little whiny bitch Lindsey off of there…

I know y’all have been wondering how the cats and the dog are getting along. Without further ado, I present photographic evidence:

Here’s Sadie checking out the fancy thing under the tree.

Miz Poo is waiting for that panting thing to make one little move in her direction…

Spot looks a tad leery, doesn’t he? Poor Sadie just wants to plaaaaaay.

Sadie has been into pretty much everything there is in the back yard to get into since we brought her home. We had most of a 40-pound bag of mulch sitting against the fence, and she dragged it halfway across the yard, leaving a big pile by the patio. Here’s Spot digging in said pile of mulch (we suspect he’d just used it as a big litter box):

Luckily, we have an awesome shop-vac, and I vacuumed up most of that pile with no problems. The sound of the vac freaked Sadie out, and she went running back and forth along the fence, occasionally barking. When the vacuuming was done and the shop-vac was put away, she went sniffing around where the mulch had been, whining and acting as if we’d taken something away from her.

Yesterday, Fred got out the catnip bubbles I bought at Target last week and went out to blow bubbles for the dog. She was pretty impressed, and went racing about, trying to eat the bubbles. From the doorway, Miz Poo watched for a few moments until she could bear it no longer, and then she went running out into the yard. Sadie saw her running, and thought "Hey, she wants to PLAY!", and started chasing after her.

Miz Poo just about lost her mind. She bushed up her tail, arched her back, and FLEW into the house faster than I’ve ever seen her run before.

Damn was it funny.

Then today, Fred was out playing with Sadie, and she was very hyper, since it was her first visit from The Man for the day, which gets her very excited. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Fancypants and started chasing him, wanting to play. Fancypants lost his fancy little mind and went running into the house, leaving poor Sadie with no one to play with but Fred.

Poor Sadie. Those damn mean cats just refuse to play with her…

 

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How damn excited am I about Survivor tonight?! Pretty damn excited, that’s for sure. I SO hope that tonight is when they break up the two tribes into three, and I canNOT wait to see the looks on Silas and Lindsey’s faces when they find out.

I’ve not found anyone that I particularly like on that show, but I’ve found plenty of people to HATE!

Here we see that Fred is where he belongs.

So yes, we got a doghouse for the dog. I was at Petsmart (where I’m never going to shop again due to ungodly high prices), and saw a doghouse. $129 it was.

"That ridiculous!" Fred said. "The same thing at blahblahblah is only $90! Wait on that, and I’ll stop at Lowe’s on the way home." So he stopped at Lowe’s and got practically the same thing for $80.

And then today at Sam’s, I saw the exact same model for $65. Figures.

Robyn, you’re saying. Unless you’re saying Bitchypoo, that is. Robyn, why are there no pictures of the dog – whose name has been decreed Sadie, by the way – on your site tonight?

Because, dear reader, she’s such a hyper-spaz that every time I go out to take her picture, she wiggles and jiggles and jumps and pants and doesn’t hold still, so I can’t take her damn picture.

I’ve got plenty of pictures of her tail, though.

See something on the floor, sit on it.

The cats continue to be terrified of the big slobbering thing living outside. I keep telling Fred we should toss Fancypants out into the back yard and slam the door shut.

Close your email client RIGHT NOW, we’d never do such a thing. At least not to Fancypants. Tubby is another story.

Miz Poo enjoys sitting and watching the panting, drooling thing out back run back and forth and play with it’s toys and flop down on the patio and then run back and forth some more, but the one time I tried taking her out back, she lost her mind and went running down my back with her tail fluffed out.

Poor Sadie. She’d looooove to play with one of those fluffy little things…

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Thanks, y’all – I am absolutely overwhelmed with suggestions for dog names, and emails about the dog. I won’t respond to each of them, because that would take forever, just take this as a blanket "thank you".

Apparently my readers like suggesting names. As I said (typed) to Athena earlier, I can only imagine what would happen if I were pregnant and asked for name suggestions (I’m not – pregnant or asking, that is. Besides, we picked out the names of our future children before we ever even met in person. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ll mention it again – Molly Jayne, and Seth Forrest).

I really like the name Sally for the dog, but Fred is partial to Sadie and, well, she IS his dog, so I guess he gets final say in the matter, though he hasn’t decided for sure. At least, I don’t think he has.

I went to PetSmart this morning and got a couple of bowls – for water and food – a leash, and a couple of toys. $61. I’m a damn idiot for buying pet supplies at a pet store, when Target was RIGHT THERE. I mean, I’m a damn idiot in general, but that’s one specific description of my idiocy. Just so you know. I need to buy a container to keep her food in, but the ones at PetSmart were $36 – that was the least expensive one – and since I can get a covered trash can for less than $10, and that’s what we keep the cat’s food in and it works for us, I believe I’ll be buying the same thing for the dog food.

Which reminds me – Fred opened the bag of dog food last night and offered each of the cats a piece, and Tubby ate his and begged for more. We put the bag in the kitchen closet, and Tubby spent half the evening sniffing at the bottom of the door and trying to figure out how to get in there.

The dog is doing well. She spent last night outside on a comforter (shhhh, I’m still working on Fred about the outside part…) with one of my stuffed animals by her side. This morning she bounded back and forth across the yard, and we heard her bark for the first time. She has a deceptively deep bark for a little skinny thing. Luckily she doesn’t do it much.

I went out after I lifted weights this morning and sat in one of the chairs we have out there, and she settled right in against my legs and seemed happy. I left the back door open, and Spot stood and stared at her for a long time. She spotted (hee!) him and walked toward the door, and he arched his back and backed up in horror. She hasn’t really tried to get inside, and she obviously understands what "no" means.

You know what our adoption of this dog means, don’t you? It means that we’ve transformed from crazy cat people to "those weird people next door with ten thousand animals." Because it was bad enough having FIVE cats, but now we have FIVE cats and a dog. And next, we’ll of COURSE have to get a dog to keep this one company, dogs being social creatures and all, so we’ll have FIVE cats and TWO large-ish dogs, and then the spud will want a parakeet, and an iguana while she’s at it, and how about a couple of fish, and the next thing you know, the health department will be breaking down the door, where they’ll find me dead on the floor, having inhaled more cat hair, dog hair, parakeet feathers, fish goo, and iguana scales (?) than my body can process at one time.

Anyway.

So, we had to drop Fred’s Jeep off yesterday to be worked on, because it was doing all sorts of weird little things that needed taking care of, besides which it needed it’s 50,000 mile tune-up (or whatever the hell they do), and the nice car guy called Fred mid-morning to tell him the many, many things that were wrong with the Jeep – and there were MANY little things wrong with it – and how much it would cost.

$1200.

Gah. I just KNOW that it’s more than likely that all these little things, or at least some of them, were caused by that damn accident he was in a few months ago.

His Jeep wasn’t ready until this afternoon, so I went to pick him up at work, and I was sitting at a red light. Ahead of me was a middle-aged guy in a red convertible, and there was someone trying to get out of the parking lot we were sitting next to. So he waved her out, letting her go in front of him, and she crossed the lane to our left, to get to the left-most lane. Then he waved to the car behind her, to let THEM go as well since our light was still red. She, car #2, also needed to cross the lane to our left, to get to the lane on the other side of that one, and a car was pulling up slowly in that lane, and Mr. Convertible held up his hand to order them to stop. Which they did, since they were stopping to let her go anyway, but Mr. Convertible was FAR too pleased with his traffic-commanding self, and he smiled to himself and checked his three hairs in the rearview mirror.

I briefly considered making a citizen’s arrest. I could have charged him with impersonating a traffic cop. And then I would have left him, cuffed, on the side of the road as I took off in his convertible, which I would have needed to seize as evidence.

Just doing my job as a concerned citizen, ma’am. Nothing to see, move it along…

 

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So, yeah, we seem to have gotten ourselves a dog. It was a sneak attack – I went to pick up Fred at work, since his Jeep is in the shop, and he suggested that we "just go look" at the animal shelter, to which I agreed, with the idea firmly in mind that we’d be bringing no dogs home tonight.

You see how well that worked.

We went in and looked, and there were many 3 month black labs who had all come from the same place, where they were apparently being abused. There was an ultra-friendly guy who yipped and barked and jumped about like a mexican jumping bean. And then there was a dog they’d named "Prance":

She was very sweet and friendly, and took to me right away, jumping up to put her front paws on my chest to be petted. She’s not a large dog – I’d call her medium – and according to the guys at the shelter, she’s 7 months old and not likely to get any bigger.

Fred kept saying "Well? Well? What do you think?" Since our only point of contention in the dog discussion is that he thinks a dog would be fine living out back and I think that that’s cruel, I told him that if the guy answering questions agreed that it was fine to leave a dog outside all the time, I would agree as well.

Expecting, of course, that the guy would be all kinds of horrified at the thought of leaving a dog OUTSIDE.

Instead, when the question was posed to him, he looked at me as if I were perhaps mentally deficient.

"Well, yeah," he said. "She’s a DOG. As long as she has a doghouse and a pillow and plenty of attention, she’ll be fine."

Hmph.

She’s awfully sweet, though, and enjoyed running around the back yard and snacking on things the cats had left out there.

I’ve already had to put a moratorium on discussions of her eating any kind of poo, because Fred and the spud will just talk that sort of thing to death, especially at dinner.

According to the guys at the shelter – it was actually the Humane Society – she’s part shepherd, part lab, and may have some collie in her. When she gets to running (Fred was out throwing a ball around with her), she actually bounds, and it’s awfully cute.

Now she needs a name, which is where y’all come in. It’s got to be a name that starts with "s", since all the cats have names that start with s. Of course, if a non-s alternative is presented that is just perfect for her, we’d probably go with that – the "s" thing isn’t written in stone. So, send me your suggestions, would you?

 

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In lieu of, y’know, a REAL entry today, I’m going to toss up a bunch of pictures I took Saturday when we drove up into Tennessee to drive about and gawk at the Amish people, and call it good enough.

We passed this really cool field where there were hayrolls (is that what they’re called?) as far as the eye could see. This picture doesn’t really do it justice.

The Amish house where we stopped so Fred could get popcorn. A HUGE container for $2. Whattabahgain.

More Amish houses.

Some colorful foliage (for the most part, we seem to have missed the changing of the leaves)

We happened upon a convenience store with 10 or 15 cats and kittens in the parking lot. Apparently, this is where they live, because the owners of the store feed them and provide litter boxes. This orange kitten was attempting to nurse, and mama wasn’t being terribly accomodating.

There were boxes for the cats to sleep in, but this little guy is the only one who was actually sleeping.

These guys were pretty scared. The tabby in the back actually hissed at me (is there anything cuter than a hissing kitten? I think not), and the others let me pet them, but they didn’t like it much. Have I mentioned how much I adore orange cats?

This cutie was really friendly. I called to him, and he came running, and followed me around for the 10 minutes or so that we were there, begging to be petted. Damn, I wanted to load all the cats up in the car and bring them home with us.

Another really friendly one.

More scared little kitties, and the friendly kitten was checking them out. I’m fairly certain there were two different litters and two different mothers.

 
Man, all I wanted was to just pet his little head, but he was so scared I couldn’t get near him.

After we (I) played with the kitties, we drove around the Amish colony some more, and then went to David Crockett State Park, where we ate lunch, and then Fred and the spud went on the swings.

They went on the merry-go-round, too. For that matter, so did I.

The lake at the state park.

Shoal Creek, running alongside the park. I got this picture on the way out of the park.

On the way out of Alabama, we passed "The Fiero Factory", which is surrounded by old Fieros. I don’t know about y’all, but when I was 17, there was nothing more in this world I wanted than a Fiero; I just thought they were the coolest cars ever. Even my Dad’s insistence that they were gas-guzzlers couldn’t sway me. Now, I just think they’re funny-looking ’80s throwbacks.

 

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I was in the shower this morning minding my own business when the FUCKING detachable shower head took it upon itself to DETACH, and it came flying at me before I realized what was going on, and hit me smack between the eyes. Holy FUCK did it hurt, which if you were there (and if you were in the bathroom while I was taking a shower this morning, I have bigger problems than being attacked by the shower head) you might have realized from my screamed "WHAT THE FUCK! OUCH! GODDAMN IT!"

Is it just me, or do you get pissed off when you’re the victim of unexpected pain?

I swore for a few more minutes until I started thinking about how it must have looked, with me just standing there, lathering up my hair, when the shower head flooped down to smack me, and then I started laughing, dried off, and went to call Fred and make him laugh as well. I have a sore, slightly red and swollen, spot between my eyes. I guess I’m lucky it didn’t hit lower and break my nose or hit the top of my head and knock me out.

I was reading an old entry of Kathy’s, and the note from her kid made me think of the time not long before we moved to Alabama when the spud wrote in one of her notebooks, "Momma is dum. Daddy is dum. The cat is not dum." God, that makes me laugh almost as much as when she was mad at me for some reason after we moved to Alabama and she wrote "I hat you mommy" on a piece of paper and left it in the hall outside her doorway.

Fred and I have to been known to say "I hat you" to each other from time to time, just to giggle over it.

And Fred just reminded me of the time she made up a report card and gave herself an "A", and Fred an "A", and what did I get? An "F".

I think that means I’m doing something right.

I went back to Petsmart today to get a smaller collar for the pencil-neck geek of the house, and there was a woman walking around with the cutest damn puppy. I think he was a Jack Russell Terrier (but then, I tend to think that any small dog that’s brown and white is a Jack Russell, so no doubt I’m wrong – but then again, after looking at a picture of one, I think I may be right), and I stopped to pet him, and he jumped up on me, and GOD was he adorable. Fred’s been bugging me to get a dog lately, but I think he’s just being difficult, because he wants to get a dog, and then leave it outside all the time. What’s the point of GETTING a dog if you’re going to leave him outside, I ask? He always responds with "They’re DOGS. They’re SUPPOSED to stay outside. It’s not like they’ll freeze or anything!" Hmph.

Okay, since I haven’t done this in the last few weeks, how ’bout some Friday Five:

1. Do you eat breakfast? What did you have today? I do eat breakfast every day, which is a switch from how I used to eat. These days I usually have a protein shake after I lift weights or do cardio, and then have a spinach and onion omelet with a pan-fried potato a few hours later. But today was my free day, so I had a sausage mcmuffin and hash brown (and large diet coke!) from McDonald’s.

2. What beverages do you usually have in a typical day? 4 – 6 liters of water, a protein shake in the morning, a protein/ carb shake in the evening, and 2 (sometimes 3) 12-ounce cans of Diet Coke. As you can imagine, I make 45,000 trips to the bathroom every day.

3. White bread or wheat bread? Wheat, although I had to be dragged over to the wheat side kicking and screaming. For two years after I moved to Alabama, we bought white bread for me and wheat for Fred, but I finally gave in last year and started eating wheat, mostly for the fiber. I’ve gotten used to the taste, though.

4. What’s your favorite kind (potato/tortilla/corn) and flavor of chip? Plain Pringles, though I haven’t had chips in about a month, and was never really much of a chip person.

5. How do you plan to spend your weekend? I think we’re going to drive up to Lawrenceburg, Tennessee (about an hour away), drive around to gawk like fools at the Amish people there, then pick up sandwiches at Subway and go to Davey Crockett State Park for a picnic and to see if they have a suitable playground for Fred to play on. I’m married to a five year-old.

Y’all have a good weekend!

 

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God, what a dumbass I am. I forgot the truly most important item on the relationship list yesterday, and that is:

8. Friendship. Actually, putting up with each other isn’t the most important thing. Our friendship is. He’s my best friend, and if something interesting or funny or even slightly noteworthy happens, he’s the one I want to tell, immediately. I can tell him absolutely everything, and (I think) I have, and I know that he’ll continue to love me unconditionally, no matter what. In return, he’s told me all his dark, dirty secrets, and I only love him more.

In fact, I’m going to go back and add that to yesterday’s list right now…

Okay, y’all, help me out, here. We have this flight of stairs, see, and on this flight of stairs is carpet, and on this carpet is tons upon tons of cat hair, and vacuuming won’t get the damn stuff up completely, and it’s nasty and I hate it.

I don’t want to hate the carpet on my stairs.

In the old house, we had hardwooded stairs, but due to the "DAMN that’s expensive" factor, we won’t be hardwooding these stairs, and so I must come up with a decent way to get the damn cat hair up, or forever gnash my teeth every time I catch sight of the nasty stairs. I remember reading once, long ago, in a journal I can’t recall, that there’s such a thing as a carpet rake, which will loosen the cat hair and thus you can vacuum it up, but a google search brought me nothing.

Help? Suggestions, links, anything would be very much appreciated.

While I was looking for a new picture to put on the front page, I came across this one of the spud from (I think) ’95:

No, I’m not sure what she was trying to do, but it made me laugh out loud when I saw it.

I was reading the latest US Magazine the other night while half-heartedly watching TV, and then I saw something in the pages of said magazine that made me almost swallow my gum. So I scanned it, of course, because what fun is guffawing over how US apparently needs better proofreaders alone?

Who can tell me what three things are wrong with this? Anyone? Bueller? Well, look it over, and see if you’re right.

1. It’s Billy Bob Thornton, not Billie Bob Thorton (thanks to reader Fitchypoo, who pointed out that his last name was misspelled as well as his first!).
2. Billy Bob Thornton isn’t IN The Last Castle.
3. "Directed By Name Here". Name Here? Is he Indian? Anyway, The Last Castle was directed by Rod Lurie.
It took me, like, ten seconds to notice all of that. Perhaps I need to get a life, ya think?

Did y’all get a lot of trick or treaters last night? I thought that perhaps we’d only get a few, but I’d guess we got 50 or so. The spud was in charge of handing out the candy – blow pops and skittles – which she really enjoyed for some reason. In fact, she’s already asked if she can hand out the candy next year. I thought she might go out herself this year – I know I went out when I was 13; I think I was in a ’60s costume, with my sister and cousin – but she never mentioned a costume until the night before, and there was no way I was going to go out looking for a last-minute costume. She didn’t seem too disappointed, in any case, since we let her keep some of the left-over candy.

I won’t even be stealing any of her candy this year, since I’m a fan of neither skittles nor blow-pops (I was in charge of getting the candy this year, and didn’t want little snickers sitting around calling my name).

While I was out getting that candy Tuesday, I picked up the other stuff on the grocery list, and as I was looking for toothpicks, I wandered a large section of disposable foam cups. Did you know that they make foam cups in espresso size? Something just cracks me up at the thought of a bunch of yuppie types standing around sipping espresso out of foam cups.

Which reminds me, speaking of disposable stuff. You know the really cheap Gladware containers – the ones you buy to use like Tupperware, but are 1/10 the price, so if you lose them, it’s no big deal? Well, I got a 4-pack of those at least five months ago, and they’re holding up better than the damn Tupperware is. We put them in the dishwasher, use them all the time, and they show no sign of needing to be tossed. A surprising bargain, those things. You can even freeze stuff in them! Two thumbs up from the Bitchypoo.

We just got back from Moose Bond Farm, where we picked up our supply of chickens. We were lucky this time around, because although we’d only put in an order for 5, he had extras, and since we’re new customers, he let us have them. The only thing that sucks is that they won’t have any more chickens until the spring, and we’ll have to suffer with the store-bought ones, which aren’t nearly as good.

The farm is located in Hartselle, and to get to it, we have to drive through downtown Hartselle, which is just the sweetest little town I’ve ever seen in my life. Every time we drive through there, I want to buy one of the big old houses and renovate it. And then we drive out into farm country, and all I want to do is buy a little farmhouse on 300 acres and become a cat farmer or something.

A cat per acre sounds about right to me…

 

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