Month: December 2001

Thanks to all the explanations of what exactly the bling-bling is – I now feel so hip it hurts. For the uninformed, bling-bling is money and style – which is often represented by big, shiny jewelry. I knew y’all were a hip and happenin’ bunch of readers!

Thanks also to Miz Freak Magnet, who knew the poem I mentioned yesterday, and sent me the link to set my mind at ease.

Several of y’all had read it, I had many suggestions that it was a James Patterson book, and someone thought it might be by Mary Higgins Clark, but Himself did some looking around and informed me that the book I referred to yesterday is John Sanford’s Mind Prey, and he’s right! What’s sad is that we have the damn book on the shelf and if I’d just glanced through them, I would have found it. When I’m done with my magazines, I think I’m going to re-read it. I love me some Lucas Davenport.

With all my questions answered, I can rest easy now!

Did I mention that Fred is putting a computer together for my dad? He ordered all the pieces, expecting that they would get here sometime next week, and hopefully my dad would have his new computer (the old one is ass-achingly old and slow. When I was up there this summer, I would start up his computer and it would take for-fucking-ever, and then it would take forever for web pages to load, and I’d inevitably give up in a huff) by Christmas. Well, the parts all arrived yesterday, and it’s put together, needing only to be formatted and stuff like that. When Fred emailed my dad to tell him, my dad sent back an exclamation point-laden email. He’s reallyquite excited. The computer Fred’s putting together for him is costing in the area of $700 – including shipping from here to Maine – and a comparable system from Compaq would cost almost $1000. Guess who’s his favorite son-in-law right now?

Friday Five – on time this week!:

1. If you were to go to a movie this weekend, which one would you pick? Probably Harry Potter. Ocean’s 11 sounds good, and I do want to see Shallow Hal (so I can rant about it some more, don’tchaknow), but it’s a moot point, ’cause we never go to the movies.

2. What movie would you like to rent this weekend? I rented Pearl Harbor and American Outlaws, but what I really want to see is Made, which was out at the movie store when I went on Tuesday. I love me some Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau.

3. What one TV show do you always try to watch? Survivor – we always watch, or at least tape it!

4. If you (and your S.O.) were cool with it, what five celebrities (at the most) would it be ‘ok’ for you to have a fling with? Lordy, this is a tough one. David Morse, Donal Logue, Matthew Perry, Viggo Mortensen, Tim Roth. Hee! Fred loathes Tim Roth and thinks he’s the ugliest thing in the world, but I think he’s a hot little muffin.

5. How do you plan to spend your weekend? Oh, I think I’ll try something new and exciting and, say, sit on my ass reading for the entire weekend.

And last week’s Friday Five:

1. What did you have for dinner last night? Oven-baked boneless, skinless chicken breasts, brown rice, cooked carrots. Sounds better than it is. Really!

2. Do you ever get up for a midnight snack? Nope, never. Once I brush my teeth, that’s it – I don’t want to have to brush them again. Actually, once I finish my snack at 7, that’s it for the night, but it’s really the idea of having to brush my teeth again that keeps me away from the midnight snacking.

3. What’s your favorite dessert? At this moment, I’m craving Applebee’s Chimicheesecakes. DAMN they’re good. I don’t really have an all-time favorite, though. It all depends on what I’m craving, and what time of the year it is (ie, in the Fall I like the occasional slice o’ pumpkin pie). You can never go wrong with ice cream, though.

4. Tell us something about you that would surprise us. I cannot, for the life of me, think of one single, solitary thing. Except that I was born a man. A Kennedy. Yeah, that’s the ticket. I was born Teddy Kennedy’s son, and had a sex-change operation when I was 19, and the whole family is horrified and they disowned me. Amazing that we’ve kept the secret so long, ain’t it?

5. How do you plan to spend your weekend? Hm. This is a tough one. I think there was much ass-sitting, reading, tv-watching, a little online Christmas shopping, and a lot of snoozing on the couch.

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Thanks for all your emails about yesterday’s entry. I’m not going to respond to them, because I’m already a week behind in my emailing, and I don’t want to get further behind. So consider this a blanket "thanks", and know that I appreciate each and every one of them!

Y’all seem like a hip and happenin’ crowd. Explain to me what a "man with the bling-bling" would have, exactly? Is that a sex thing? Inquiring minds need to know…

And while you’re helping me out, sometime in the past 5 years I read a book – fiction – where a mother and her two children were kidnapped, possibly from a school parking lot, and locked in a room in the kidnapper’s basement. The man periodically raped the mother, and at one point took the youngest daughter off, claiming he would release her, but he didn’t. Is this striking a chord with any of y’all? For some reason I’m wanting to read it again. I’m fairly certain it’s a detective novel, but can’t think of which detective or what novel, and it’s driving me buggy. Help?

Okay, one more plea for help. When I was taking a Lit class about eight years ago, I read a poem written from the perspective of the frog who turned into a prince when the princess kissed him, and it was about his longing for the pond from whence he came. Come on, help me out, here – it’s driving me nuts. I’m dying to read it again.

Amazon is driving me NUTS with the freakin’ pop-up ads. I hit that fucking site 15 times a day to check out a book or movie, or to find out the status on an order I’ve placed, and every damn time they hit me with a pop-up ad. I HATE THOSE THINGS. If anything were to make me switch loyalties from Amazon to some other online book store, it’d be those ads. Do you hear me, Jeff Bezos?

I stood in line for more than 20 minutes at the post office this morning. I got there 10 minutes after it opened, and there were only 4 people in line ahead of me, and one verrrry slow postal worker behind the counter. One woman got so annoyed that she stormed out with her package, yelling "This is ridiculous!" Which doesn’t solve the fact that she needed to mail her package – she’s going to have to go back sooner or later – but I’m sure was quite satisfying in the short run.

I was perfectly fine waiting in line though, because I had a cheesy romance-type novel to keep me busy. I carry a paperback in my purse at all times just in case of such a wait, and I highly recommend cheesy romance-type novels with simple plots that you can get right back in to even if it’s been weeks since you last picked up the book.

So, I was reading yet another US last night, and I ran across this picture:

And I don’t know about y’all, but all I could think was "What the fuck?" What the fuck was going through her head when she left the house dressed like that? Did she look herself over in the full-length mirror and say "Yeahhhhh, man, I’m lookin’ fine!" ? Did she notice that she wasn’t apparently wearing any pants? Or is she – who the hell can tell? And to top it off with the hat and the stiletto boots – did she even look at herself before leaving the house, or did she let someone’s blind grandmother dress her?

Ah, the mysteries of the world.

So I got the new scanner hooked up last night, and immediately had to scan the spud’s face, because that’s the kind of abusive mom I am.

And she went along with it ’cause that’s the kind of easygoing spud she is. Looks kinda cool, doesn’t it? Perhaps next time I’ll have her not smush her face down quite so hard.

I can’t get "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" out of my head. Make it stop, mommy…

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So, I’m currently reading my backlog of magazines, and last night I was reading the December 10th edition of US (why do they even bother to put dates on the stupid things, I wonder – how can there be a magazine out for a date that hasn’t occurred yet?), and US must be reaching, because this particular issue’s cover story was Women of the Year – Courage, Love, Tears, Compassion.

I get to page 46 and see that Nicole Kidman is the first Woman of the Year they’re listing. Why is Nicole Kidman Woman of the Year, you wonder? Because she sang and danced and played opposite Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge? Because she got to kiss (I assume; I haven’t actually seen the movie yet) Ewan McGregor? Because she solved that whole pesky world-peace issue? No, none of these. Nicole Kidman is a Woman of the Year because, and I’ll quote the headline, "For making it on her own."

Tom Cruise (and I think we all know how I feel about HIM) leaves her high and dry, stunning her and us (and most importantly ME), doesn’t seem to give a shit when she miscarries his child, she doesn’t roll over and die, and that makes Nicole Kidman a Woman of the Year.

You know what? Bobby Sue in Kansas, whose husband left HER high and dry with their three kids, ages 5, 7 and 9, so he could run off with the local skank ho, and so Bobby Sue has to work three jobs just to make ends meet and pay the rent on their one-bedroom apartment, and has no health or life insurance, and worries the entire time she’s working at the diner that her 9 year-old will burn down the apartment trying to heat up some fucking SPAGHETTI-OS for his siblings, and can only come home for ten minutes between the end of her shift at the diner and the beginning of her shift at the hospital, to hug her kids and make sure they’re all alive and try to talk to them for a few moments and tell them that she loves them and beg them to stay in the apartment and don’t answer the door if anyone knocks, and you have my number at work, right? Call me before you go to sleep, and prays to god that no one calls the fucking DHS, and won’t be home until midnight until her kids are (pleasegod) sound asleep, and the five year-old continually asks where daddy is and has started to wet the bed at night, and the 7 year-old is such a good kid that she just gets lost in the shuffle, in fact, they’re all good kids and she knows that this life is a disservice to them, and sometimes she’d like to curl up in a ball and just give up, but she CAN’T, because you CANNOT DO THAT, you don’t just curl up in a ball and give up when you have three children to raise, and so Bobby Sue WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHERE HER FUCKING WOMAN OF THE YEAR AWARD IS, AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DOES IT COME WITH ANY MONEY, OR MAYBE A PART-TIME NANNY?

Jesus Christ. Women – and men – from one end of this country to the other are left every fucking day, and they don’t throw up their hands and die. They go on because there is no choice, because that’s what life is about, taking the shit you’re dealt and going on. And some of them have good support structures and some of them do not, and yet they still go on. And they don’t have millions, and they don’t have fame, they don’t have magazines to slaver over every detail of their fabulous I-managed-to-go-on life, and they struggle, and they go on. No awards. No magazine covers. No millions of dollars – and please, for the love of god, do not DARE email me and tell me that your heart breaks the same whether you’re a millionaire or have 29 cents in your pocket until payday in two weeks – it is INFINITELY fucking easier to get through life with money behind you, and anyone who whines the opposite should shut the fuck up and send me their entire fortune this very second. When you have money, you have the time to give your broken heart the attention and care it needs instead of working 60 hours a week and worrying endlessly about your children and how you’re going to survive from paycheck to paycheck.

And when you think of the thousands of people who will be going through this holiday season without the spouses, children, siblings, and friends killed in one fell swoop by unexpected acts of terrorism, the fact that Nicole Kidman is actually "making it on her own" is not so terribly worthy of a Woman of the Year award.

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Attention @home users who are on the notify list – please re-subscribe under whatever email address you’re currently using, because I got a ton of bounces last night, and I need to remove the bouncing addresses from the notify list for the sake of my sanity. Are y’all ready to take an axe to @home, or what? That whole situation has to suck.

My poor notify list. I always ALWAYS send out my notifies with the email addresses suppressed, only last night I was in a hurry to go watch Boston Public, and wasn’t paying attention, and I accidentally put the email nickname in BOTH the "To:" AND the "BCC:" fields, and so not only did my poor notify-ees get a notify email with 250 email addresses listed, but they got TWO of them. And then I spammed them by emailing and apologizing!

I swear I’ll be more careful next time…

Many thanks to reader Cynthia, who bought Waltzing the Cat for me off of my wish list. Y’all know how much I love the unexpected mail!

Speaking of mail – as far as the Giveaway goes, I’ve gotten everything that could fit in a padded envelope mailed, and everything else aside from the stereo will be going out tomorrow. For once, I’m way ahead of (self-imposed) schedule.

That picture on the front page, by the way, is of the front of our house with all the christmas stuff turned on. It’s darker than I’d like, but the one I took when it was lighter out was too light, so I had to pick one.

When I look out the front door, there’s a house directly in my line of sight that has done the unthinkable. That’s right, they’ve mixed the colors of their christmas lights, and it drives me nuts. Two trees are covered with PINK lights, there are strings of multicolored lights down the side of their driveway, a bush or two covered in blue lights, and white lights on the front of their house. I hate it, it looks horrible to me. Fred thinks I’m insane and that I pulled the "don’t mix the colors of lights" rule out of my ass. Obviously he has no idea of the subtle rules of a civilized society.

The house I like the most is to our left, and it has red and white lights across the top of the house, and lighted wreaths on several windows. Tasteful, pretty, and not an eyesore.

I guess I should add here that if you MUST mix light colors, you might as well go all the way and have one of those houses where every item in the yard is covered with lights, and moving lighted reindeer structures in the yard, a huge Santa on the roof. You get the idea. Those kinds of houses, I like. It appeals to the white trash in me.

I ought to take a walk around the neighborhood with the camera for a future entry.

So, the realtor we bought our house from? Who lives two houses away? He came over yesterday asking Fred for help with his DVD player. When they were back at his house, Fred was talking about something, and mentioned me by name.

"Who’s Robyn?" said the realtor. Apparently, he’d forgotten my name. Bastard.

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So, since we’ve moved into this house, the only real complaint I’ve had is that there’s nowhere for me to just sit and read, unless I want to sit in the living room – where sooner or later someone else turns on the TV, ’cause they’ve never heard of sitting quietly and just READING – or on the bed. No chairs set off where I could just sit quietly and read, and snuggle with the cats. For the last few months, I’ve been saving up money, and finally I had enough to drag Fred and the spud out shopping for a chair to put in the corner of the bedroom, where I can sit and read to my heart’s content.

Saturday, we left the house around 10:30, vowing (or perhaps that was just me) not to come home until a chair was found and purchased. Our first stop was the antiquey-basement-smelling Rhodes Furniture, where we found exactly one chair we liked, but it was more than I wanted to spend. We walked next door to the La-z-boy Gallery, and walked in the door to find, smiling up at us, three "Factory Special" chairs, all of which were well within the price range, and – according to the tags – could be covered with the fabric of your choice. So we sat and waited for a salesperson to happen by, or to see us and come over.

And waited and waited and waited.

After close to 10 minutes, Fred suggested we leave and go to the store where we bought the couch and loveseat and see if we could find anything there. We found one chair, and again we sat to wait for a salesperson. And there were salespeople aplenty, wandering by and ignoring us, standing around and chatting and ignoring us, and glancing at and ignoring us.

Fred suggested that we looked like we didn’t have any money. I agreed that it probably did look like we didn’t have any money, since the spud – did I mention that she was with us? – had taken it upon herself to wear shorts and a t-shirt for the rather cool day, and obviously we couldn’t afford to dress our child in warm clothes, so could also not afford the fine furnishings, and why should they waste their time?

Back to the La-z-boy Gallery we went, where we again sat down, waiting in vain as the salespeople clustered about the register, chatting and ignoring us. Finally, Fred went up and stood there, arms crossed, until one of them said "Can I help you, sir?" Fred smiled his asshole smile and said "I’d like to buy a chair if it’s not too much trouble."

I couldn’t see him from where I was, but he said they all froze as one, like deer caught in headlights. Finally, one woman came forward, all apologetic and ready to help. She came over and got the numbers off the tag and went back to check the price, and Fred asked various and sundry questions, and then we went back to look at fabric swatches and decide on the one we liked.

There was only one we liked, and the saleslady came back and said "Okay, let me check my chart and see if that affects the price."

Fred smiled his asshole smile and said "I bet it goes up."

Sure enough, it would have been an extra $110 to get the fabric we liked. Shocking, no?

"I can live with what it’s covered in if you can," I said to Fred. He stood and mentally weighed the satisfaction of storming out of there against having to listen to me whine about wanting a chair for the next several days, and decided on the lesser of two evils.

"We’ll take it," he said.

"Let me go see if we have any ready in the warehouse," said the saleslady.

Fred smiled his asshole smile and said "I bet they don’t."

The saleslady came back. "It seems that there are none in the warehouse, but you can take the one off the floor." Discussions ensued about how there had been strange asses sitting on that chair, and Fred wasn’t certain he wanted a chair strangers had been farting in in his house, and perhaps we should get a price break.

She didn’t go for that.

We decided – because of the evil cats and their propensity for barfing on the least desirable surfaces – that the chair needed to be Scotchguarded.

Fred smiled his asshole smile. "I bet you charge for shipping."

"Oh yes – that’s a $30 delivery charge," said the saleslady, who no doubt was growing tired of Fred’s asshole smile. "But you could fit it into the back of an SUV easily," she hastened to add, and also said that it could be picked up Sunday.

"I think I’ll pick it up Monday," Fred replied. "Between 3:30 and 4," so he could leave work and pick it up, and then come home.

So we left.

Oh! I forgot – when the lady was getting our information – name, address, all that – she asked for the phone number, and Fred gave her his work number, and then she politely said "May I have your home number?", and he said

with an asshole smile

"I’m sorry, you may not."

She handled it well, only pausing for a moment and jotting something down on her form – probably customer is asshole – and going on to fill out the rest of the form.

So Fred got in to work this morning to find a snotty, bitchy message from her, wondering if we still WANTED the chair, since we hadn’t BOTHERED to come pick it up yesterday. When he called back to give her hell, she claimed she’d been on pain medication due to some sort of surgery, and had been confused.

Likely story.

Anyway, long story short (too late!), Fred picked up the chair and brought it home with him this afternoon. We put it in a corner of the bedroom, and the cats are freaking out.

I can’t wait to snuggle up on that chair under a quilt with a good book and a bad kitty tonight! (By the way, the chair’s not nearly as close to the bed as it looks in that picture).

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