Month: May 2002

As wonderful as the spud is, there’s something she does that just Drives. Me. Nuts. She’ll say, out of the blue, something like "Did you put the thing in the thingy?", and when you have NO CLUE what she’s talking about, she acts like you’re the biggest idiot on the face of the earth.

Grrrr.

And further, when you pump her for information, trying to figure out what she’s talking about, she does a lot of eye-rolling and hand-flailing before she comes out with some inane bit of information that barely makes any sense.

And FURTHER, when she IS able to form a complete sentence, she manages to get at least one part of it completely wrong. Here’s an example of a conversation that took place yesterday afternoon shortly after she got home from school.

Spud: "Are we going to the thingy?"

Me: "What thingy?"

Spud (after much eye-rolling and heavy sighing): "The booster thingy at the school. It’s on Tuesday May 16th."

Me: "Well, today is Tuesday May 14th. Thursday is May 16th. I don’t think there’s going to be another May 16th on a Tuesday for a few more years, and I don’t think I have anything planned yet. And I don’t know what a booster thingy is." (Thinking to self: "Is it time for her vaccination booster shots or something?")

Spud (eye-rolling, hand-flailing, digging around on my desk for a piece of paper): "The Academic Booster Night. On Tuesday May 14th."

Spud (looking at me like I’m a big damn dumbass): "The Booster thingy -"

Me (interrupting, lest I kill): "YES, WE WERE PLANNING ON GOING, GODOYOURHOMEWORK."

So we DID go to the PTA/ Academic Booster night – Your child is being honored for having maintained all A’s and/ or A/ B’s for this school year! claimed the lying letter they sent home with the spud – and you know what the "honoring" consisted of? Having the kids stand up so everyone could clap for them. Did they read off the names? NO. Did they hand out certificates? NO. Bastards. That damn PTA. I will NOT be suckered in again by them, damnit!

I am seriously in the throes of PMS, and want to eat everything in sight. I made Fred take my keys and purse to work with him (in the back of his Jeep) so that I couldn’t hit the store and the fast food places and buy a bunch o’ junk to shove in my face. If I were desperate enough, I could steal money out of the big jug we throw all our change in and walk to the store (or ride my bike), but I exercised pretty hard this morning and spent almost three hours cleaning, and all I feel like doing is sitting on my ass on the couch and reading, and possibly even snuggling with the Poo and taking a nap.

Which I think I’ll go do right now. Right after I share some pics with you – because I know you can’t get enough.

"Hm, whuh? Did you say something, Mom?"

Aren’t these some purty petunias?

 

 

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Ocean’s Eleven with us. Well, we invited them over to watch the movie with us, but the main reason we invited them over was so that we could give them a key to the house so that they can feed the cats while we’re in Gatlinburg. But you can hardly say "Hey, why don’t y’all drive half an hour to come to our house, pick up our house key, stay for ten minutes and then go away", now can you? Well, maybe YOU can. We can’t. Besides, they hadn’t seen Fred since his surgery, so they had to come ooh and ahhh over him, although just between me and the 1200 or so of you who wander through here each day, when he’s wearing a big, loose t-shirt, you can’t really see a difference, because those big, loose t-shirts? They camouflaged his tiny little belly so you couldn’t really see it before, and therefore, you can’t really see the lack of it now. Of course, I can see the difference, because he poses butt-ass nekkid in front of any possibly reflective surface he passes, and I get to see it, but I’m in the minority. Where was I? Oh yeah, so Fred’s parents came over to watch the movie with us, and they drove their brand-new car. They used to have a white truck, and apparently it was time to trade it in, and guess what they bought? A frickin’ FORD FOCUS. Y’know, like I want, because I love small cars and the Ford Focus comes in yellow? Yeah, that! Okay, I just searched my site for the words "Ford Focus", and apparently I’ve never once mentioned my love for the Ford Focus. But I do! I love the Ford Focus, because at heart I am a driver of small cars, NOT big SUVs, and the Ford Focus comes in yellow, and while it’s not my pure, perfect, clear yellow, it’s certainly close enough for government work. Egg Yolk Yellow, it’s called. Warms the heart, does it not? Anyway, the bastards bought themselves a Ford Focus, and the only thing that prevents me from eating my heart out with bitter jealousy is that they got the sporty version, and I would prefer the simple, plain, less fancified version. Ahhh, perhaps some day….

* * *

I finally wrangled the spud into going into her room with me yesterday after she’d finished her homework, and we methodically went through every piece of clothing, every toy, every EVERYTHING she has in her room, and she ended up getting rid of three garbage bags full of clothes and toys (which we’ll be donating to the Downtown Rescue Mission this weekend), and filling a large box of stuff to "store" in case she wants it when she grows up and moves out of the house, and her room? People, you can actually WALK around her room, you can SEE the floor, and I DUSTED in there, which is something that does NOT get done regularly, unfortunately. But it looks so good in there now that I’m going to take her shopping for a new comforter this weekend to complete the new clean and cozy look. "If you’re careful," I told her last night at dinner, "Before Grammy and PaPa come to visit in two weeks, we’ll only have to dust and vacuum in your room, instead of spending two hours cleaning!" A mother can dream, can’t she?

* * *

I was in the bedroom folding laundry this morning, when I turned and saw Spot in the closet, sitting very very still. His tail was very still as well, sticking straight out behind him, and the more I looked, the more it seemed that he wasn’t actually SITTING there, that he was more SQUATTING there, and so I stomped my foot at him and said, sharply, "SPOT!" And he didn’t move. Which is very odd in and of itself, because Spot is so neurotic that if you so much as mention his name in passing, he has diarrhea about it for a week. If you happen to be walking across the room and he’s somewhere in that same room, he loses. his. shit. and starts dodging around like you’re trying to capture and torture him. And then he has diarrhea for a week. Anyway, he still squatted in the closet in that same position, and finally I walked into the closet and nudged him with my foot, whereupon he ran out the closet door and headed for open ground on the side of the bed away from the closet. Where he had been squatting was a tiny puddle of pee. I wiped it up and went to look for him. He was squatting on the other side of the bed in the same position. I called Fred. "You’d better call the vet’s and make an appointment," I said, and told him why. "Are you going to take him?" Fred asked. "I can’t get him in the box," I told him, remembering the last time I’d tried to put Spanky in the carrier box, and how utterly unsuccessful I’d been, and reasoning that I’d certainly have difficulty with dorky, skittish Spot. After a short conversation with Fred, who made it clear that I had to step up and get Spot’s ass to the vet so he wouldn’t have to stay there overnight while they tried to get urine from him (uh, Spot, that is. Not Fred), I hung up the phone. "He just kind of freezes and goes limp when you pick him up," Fred had told me, "He doesn’t spazz out like Spanky does." And it was true. I got the box, I put it down next to the squatting Spot, grabbed him, tossed him in, and closed the top. Then I left him in there while I quickly took a shower. All the other cats sniffed about, while Spot sat there quietly. He’s such a good boy. We’re still waiting to see what the vet has to say, but I predict it will be something along the lines of "He has a urinary tract infection, dumbass." In fact, I’m so sure of it that when I was picking up groceries earlier, I made sure to pick up a bag of cat food made especially to "promote urinary tract health." We were feeding Urinary Tract Health food to them before, when Spanky was having his problems, but they didn’t seem to care for it, so we went back to the regular food. Bad idea. I guess if they’re hungry, they’ll eat it, right? Speaking of cats and food, we need to put Tubby and Miz Poo The Portly on diets. And since there’s no way to only put two cats on a diet, they’re all going to have to go on a diet. Once we’re back from Gatlinburg, we’re going to go to feeding them twice a day, instead of leaving the food out all the time so that they can suck down food whenever they want. Y’see, Tubby gained five pounds in the last year. FIVE pounds. Now, if you or I (assuming you’re not a lollipop girl) were to gain five pounds, we might wail and smack the scale and cry to the gods, but honestly, no one else would probably be able to tell by looking at us. Tubby, on the other hand, weighed 17 pounds last year, and now weighs 23. We can no longer blame his tubbyness on big bones (but really, he is. He IS big-boned. He’s just got a lot of fat on top of those big bones). The last time we tried taking the food away except for 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at night – two years ago or so, I think – the only cat who really freaked out was Spot. Who has no weight problem at ALL. And while he doesn’t eat much, he likes to know that he CAN eat if he wants to, I guess. They all quickly realized that Fred fed them when he got up in the morning, and so they’d go into his room and howl and climb all over him earlier and earlier each morning – we’re talking 2:30, 3:00. That’s when he started keeping his bedroom door closed so they couldn’t get in. We’ve decided that this time around, I’ll feed them around 9, after I’ve been up for a while and exercised. And if they start trying to wake me up at 3 am, I’ll shoot the bastards with some canned air. I’m guessing that Spot will have diarrhea for three weeks when we change the way they eat.

Miz Poo considers it rude to stare at her while she’s trying to clean her belly.

* * *

So, remember last week when I sent out a cry for help, because I was searching for a particular Calvin and Hobbes strip? Big thanks to reader Lisbeth, who sent me the strip and the picture. For your perusal, this is the picture: and this is the strip from whence it came: The reason I wanted to see the picture so badly is because one morning a few weeks ago, Fred came to wake me up to say goodbye before he left for work, and I was sound asleep with, as he put it, "A big, goony grin" on my face. And then he mentioned that Calvin picture, and for some reason, I just HAD to see it. Now I can rest easy. Thanks, Lisbeth! Okay, let me check. Cute picture of Miz Poo? Check. Cat stories? Check. Cool comic strip? Check. Okay then, that’s it for today, y’all! ]]>

So, we had a pretty low-key Mother’s Day ’round these parts. I got a stuffed shirt from Fred (and the kitties), which is much cuter in person than it is in that link, and a pomegranate and sweet orange candle from the spud, who knows the way to her momma’s heart. I was also supposed to get flowers, but when they hadn’t arrived by Saturday afternoon, Fred called the place from whence he’d ordered them, and found that he’d apparently entered the wrong date when placing the order, and they were scheduled to be delivered this Friday, the 17th. Which is after Mother’s Day is long past, y’know. So he rescheduled them to be delivered on Tuesday, and I’ll have a good week to admire and enjoy them before we leave for Gatlinburg next Thursday.

Whee!

After I exercised Sunday morning, Fred was having a craving for various kinds of fresh fruit (freak), so we drove to a farmer’s market in Huntsville and bought a buttload of stuff – collard greens (no, not a fruit. I know that.), cantaloupe, grapes, uh… and some other stuff, I don’t remember what. On the way home we stopped at Target so he could get some strawberries and I could grab a package o’ sushi for lunch, and he also bought a couple of kiwi (kiwis?) and a round watermelon, which was just cute as a button.

When we got home, he made the fruit salad and tore up the collard greens while I lounged on the couch and read.

What? It was Mother’s Day! Momma don’t do food-related or cleaning-related stuff on Mother’s Day!

Eventually, I sat down and ate lunch, which consisted of my sushi (california roll), fruit salad, and romaine salad. I was almost done eating, when I looked down into the little tray where my sushi had been. Oh, look! I thought stupidly to myself. It’s a little blop of guacamole! I like guacamole!

Fred reminded me later that guacamole is MEXICAN food, and not generally found with sushi.

I grabbed a big blob of the guacamole and popped it in my mouth.

Hm… didn’t really taste like guaca- HOLY SHIT! MY MOUTH! MY MOUTH WAS BURNING LIKE SOMEONE HAD THROWN A MATCH IN THERE!

It was not, unfortunately guacamole. It was green horseradish (also known as wasabi). Luckily, my mouth didn’t burn for long.

I’m such a dumbass.

Because I am in the throes of PMS, I couldn’t get to sleep last night. I finished reading Shopaholic Takes Manhattan, which I liked, but found rather irritating at points. Of course, that could have been due to the PMS.

When I still hadn’t fallen asleep by midnight, I hauled my ass out of bed and started cleaning out the closet, which I’ve been meaning to do for ages now. I came up with a large armload of clothes to get rid of, and another armload for the giveaway (y’all like cheap, barely-used t-shirts, right?)(note to self: stop buying t-shirts without trying them on, bitch!). I also moved the ironing board so that it was on the wall at the end of the closet, rather than the wall at the side of the closet, which confused Fred and made him turn the closet light on so that it was shining blindingly into my eyeballs at some ungodly hour this morning.

I also moved my sweaters to a shelf in the guest bedroom, as well as the thousand and three bags and purses I had laying on the closet floor.

Fancypants, who likes to hang out in a corner of the closet (come out of the closet, Fancypants!), was disturbed and distraught by the changes I’d made to his hideaway (it was still there, but there weren’t clothes hanging over his spot anymore), and so he swished back and forth, meowing mournfully. I half-expected that come this morning I’d find a big pile o’ poo to show his displeasure, but so far, so good.

The spud is being "honored" for having maintained all As and Bs on her report card this year, so we get to go to the PTA meeting tomorrow night and watch them present her (along with all the other all-As/ all-As&Bs kids) with a piece of paper that she will surely want to frame and hang on her already-crowded wall. And then on Thursday, there’s a band concert she’s playing in. That means TWO nights I’ll have to leave the house after dinner.

Thank god her last day of school is next Tuesday. I can’t keep up this frenetic pace!

"Miz Poo, I am TRYING to write an entry, here… Could you please haul your portly butt over to your pillow?"

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Fred and I were sitting in the living room watching TV – I know! The excitement! – the other night, and I said to him, "Don’t look at me."

"Okaaaaaaay," he said obediently.

I held up a magazine to block his view in case he decided to go all wild and look at me anyway.

"Is my hair -" I began, and he groaned. I give him all kinds of hell for begging me to grow my hair long and then never so much as giving it a passing glance, never running his fingers through it, never playing with it and making little braids all over my head, nada.

"Is my hair straight today?" I demanded.

He thought for a long moment. "Yes," he said very certainly. "It is straight. It’s always straight, though, because it dries pretty much straight." He was pretty proud of his answer, because he’d covered all bases – claiming straightness, but acknowledging the fact that I may not have spent half an hour blowing every strand straight as a stick and coating it with something to make sure it would stay straight for an entire day.

I had, in actuality, not blown my hair straight that morning. In fact, I put some styling crap in it, pointed the blow-dryer at it for about five minutes while reading a magazine, run a hairpick (toepick!) through it, and called it good enough.

To recap. In the eyes of my husband, this hair:

is as straight as this hair:

And in like manner, I would guess that to his eyes, this hairstyle:

is very similar to this one:

(note to self: very short very blond hair not a good look. Try out different hairstyles for yourself at Clairol’s Try it on Studio!). I think I’m starting to understand how his mind works, and y’know what? That’s fine with me! I’d much rather spend 5 minutes with the blowdryer than 30. God knows I’ve got better things to do.

Like sitting on my ass in front of the computer.

Although you can’t really tell from the picture I took yesterday (the non-straight hair), my roots have grown out to an amazing length, and although I usually have my hair colored at a salon (said with a snobby accent), it’s just so freakin’ expensive, and if I’m growing my hair longer, I don’t need to have it trimmed every 6 weeks either, do I? No, I don’t. So while I was at Target, I purchased a box of hair color, and I’ll be requiring Fred’s haircoloring services tomorrow morning. I could do it without help, but I have the unfortunate tendency to miss large spots of hair on the back of my head when I do it myself, so I always ask for help. Fred’s done it before, and he’ll do it again with a minimum of complaining, because that’s the kinda guy he is.

I think I’ll call him Fredriq, and make him talk in a French accent and squeal with excitement while he’s doing it.

Yes, I AM so mean to my husband. But he loves it. However, if YOU try to be mean to him, I’ll kick your ass. And I can do it, too. Have you seen my calf lately?

* * *

It’s raining like hell yet AGAIN today (hell-O, could we have another TWO sunny days in a row sometime soon, PLEASE?), and two minutes ago I glanced out the front window and saw a scary-ass sky.

Y’know, when I lived in Maine, we saw dark and crappy-looking skies all the time, but I never worried that a twister was about to drop it’s ass out of the sky and spin me away.

There’s something to be said for living in Maine, cold weather be damned.

* * *

So, we have this big basket at the bottom of the stairs. I put it there soon after we moved in, with the idea that dirty dishclothes and various other clothing that gets left laying around downstairs (specifically, SOCKS. I don’t know where they come from, but there seems to always be at least two pair scattered on the floor at any given moment) could be put into the basket, and eventually taken upstairs and tossed into the washer. When I was repotting plants the other day, I needed to make room for one of them (which I still haven’t brought inside):

This plant – which I can’t seem to remember the name of of which I cannot seem to remember the name – is very unhappy on the front porch. We had a plant like this one at the old house and it thrived, but the porch at the old house didn’t get direct sunlight for hours in the morning, and the porch here does. Anyway, the pot that this plant was in didn’t have a tray to catch the water, so I needed to repot it into a pot that did, and in the pot that this plant was in, I potted the geranium Fred’s mother sent when he had his operation.

Confused yet? Anyway, because I was standing in the doorway taking pictures, I got a shot of the geranium. Just for you!

I’m not crazy about geraniums, but I have to admit that this is a pretty good-looking plant.

Oh! And while I was taking pictures, here’s a shot of the butterfly bush I ordered months ago and finally received in the mail last week:

It is not, contrary to how it looks, green at the top. That would be part of the rose bush from behind the planter. At this point, what will someday be a blooming butterfly bush is now nothing but a stick in a pot. Actually, there are two of them – one on each side of the porch.

Well, I went a little off track there, didn’t I?

Anyway, I want to put the plant – the one whose name I can’t remember – inside at the bottom of the stairs, where the basket was sitting. So, I carried the basket upstairs and put it in a corner, deciding that that was the perfect place for it. This corner:

When I came upstairs that night, the basket had been knocked over. It appears that Tubby really likes to lay in that spot, and so he weaselled his butt behind the basket and knocked it over so he could lay there.

FINE. I moved the basket so that Tubby could lay there at his leisure and wouldn’t have to knock the basket out of the way every time. I’m accomodating, I’m easy, NO PROBLEM.

I put the basket between Fred and the spud’s bedroom doors, where it fit perfectly. Oh, except that it appears:

that His Fucking Majesty likes to lay THERE as well. When I asked Fred "IS THERE ANYWHERE HE DOESN’T WANT TO LAY HIS BIG ASS?!", I was informed that Tubby likes to lay pretty much everywhere upstairs.

The little bastard. And no doubt when I finally get around to hauling the Nameless Plant inside, Tubby will be R IGHT THERE munching on it’s poor little leaves. I swear, Nance, I’m boxing his ass up and sending him to you! Let him spend his days running away from Gump and we’ll see how bitchy and demanding he is.

 

 

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Dude. That was a mighty long sentence, wasn’t it?

So anyway, be patient – the giveaway will take place the week after they leave with the spud (they leave on June 6th, so the week after that), and there’s plenty of good stuff. Something for everyone here at BitchyMart!

* * *

I went to Lowe’s twice this week. Tuesday, for sandpaper (more on that in a sec) and today for a couple of houseplants and some potting soil. Until about a month ago, I completely avoided going to Lowe’s at all, and I’ve been there so often since that I think I’ve absorbed an overload of testosterone and will be growing my own penis any moment now.

* * *

I was catching up on my journal reading (I’m about a week behind at this point – but I’m still caught up on my email, and the last time I was caught up on my email for more than a week, was… NEVER!) this morning, and I read Say’s May 1st entry, which reminded me of a discussion Fred and I had about the fact that Puff Daddy is supposed to have a show along the lines of The Osbournes. We were both of the opinion that such a show would SUCK because P. Diddly Doo (™Shepard Smith) is way too conscious of his image and would never really let go the way the Osbournes do. Borrr-ring.

Then I thought of the PERFECT people to carry a show like that. Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock! That would be almost as good as Ozzy and family, because those two are guaranteed to be a total freakshow.

* * *

Y’all, there exists a Calvin and Hobbes strip, where Calvin is having his school picture taken, and in the last frame of the strip, his hair is slicked back, and he’s got a big, goony smile on his face. If someone could either scan that strip and send it to me or even just let me know which C&H book it’s in, I’d be eternally grateful (Later note: Got it! Big thanks to reader Lisbeth, who passed it along to me. Thanks, Lisbeth!).

* * *

I was at Target earlier, and as I wandered through the bakery section at the front of the store, I stopped and checked out the sushi for about the billionth time. I always stop, consider buying some, and then keep moving. Today, I bought some. California Roll because, according to the ingredient list there was no uncooked seafood in it, and because it looked pretty good.

It rocked. I loved it. I see a strong love for sushi in my future.

* * *

I finally hauled my ass to the store yesterday (and if you’ve seen my ass, you know that’s quite an undertaking, hawhaw) and bought a collar to fit around the pencil-neck of one Mr. Fancypants. The engraved tag I ordered last week came over the weekend, and since the little bastard is still hopping the fence regularly, I felt it pretty important that he be collared and tagged.

Fred laughed his ass off when he saw that the name on the tag read "Mr. Fancypants." But, please. If someone were to call and ask "Are you the owners of Stimpy?" We’d probably reply with "Stimpy? No… Oh, wait! Yeah, he’s ours…", whereas if they referred to his as Mr. Fancypants, we’d immediately say "He doesn’t make us call him Mister."

So, I bought a red collar, but only because the pink ones were too big, and it had a bell on it, and when Fred got home, we captured Fancypants and put the collar around his skinny neck.

"Should we take the bell off?" I asked as I was fastening the collar.

"No," Fred said, giggling cruelly. "Let’s see what happens."

Well, what happened is that Fancypants took a single step, heard a bell ringing from his neck, and mildly freaked out. He ran upstairs, hopped over Spanky, who was lounging at the top, and ran into the master bedroom, where he curled up miserably behind the chair.

Spot, who had been snoozing on the bed, had his back arched and his tail fluffed out and was staring at Fancypants by the time we got upstairs.

Fancypants ran from the chair, across the bed, and hid underneath my dresser, in a big fancy ball of hate.

Eventually, we took the bell off the collar and Fancypants has pretty much adjusted – thankfully, he’s not one of the high-strung ones – though occasionally he’ll retire to the table by the front door and shoot hate rays at anyone who walks by.

He’s got such long fur that you can’t even see the collar when he’s curled up like that.

* * *

As I was sitting at the red light in front of Sam’s this morning, I glanced up at the sky, and saw that it was so dark and scary that I half expected a twister to drop out of the sky and carry me away to Oz.

Fortunately for me – and unfortunately for you – that didn’t happen. Good thing, too, because I would never have experienced the wonder that is sushi.

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From Carrie:

1. Assume that you have been assigned complete control over the Spud’s future. What will she become? Will she go to college? Will she live close to home or far away in some exotic location? Will she marry? How many grandchildren will she have? This is actually a hard one, because I don’t have any specific dreams for the spud, aside the most important – that she be happy. However, I’ll give it a try.

After discovering an aptitude for math and the sciences in her Sophomore year of high school, the spud will ace every course the school offers, and be accepted at the University of Alabama (Huntsville) and major in pre-med. She transfers to the University of Maine for her Junior year, and finishes her college education back in Alabama. Representatives from Harvard and Yale get into a slapfight trying to convince her to attend their medical schools, and she decides instead on Cornell. After finishing medical school, she becomes a surgical intern in Honolulu (assuming there’s a teaching hospital there) and then does her residency in Colorado.

By the time she’s finished with school and her training, she has become well-known in her field and after much thought decides to join a practice in Portland.

Like her mother, she’s never gotten over her love for the ocean and the state of Maine.

At the age of 32, successful in her field, she meets the man of her dreams. She’s, of course, dated before now and even had a couple of serious relationships, but they didn’t work out due to various factors. The man she meets is also a surgeon, and they become friends, and are friends for months before he tentatively suggests that there could be more.

And there is. A year later, they marry in a simple ceremony on the beach, and she’s never looked so happy.

Of course, the mother of the bride is a total sobbing mess.

Two years later, the spud gives birth to twins, two girls who are as good-natured and sweet-tempered as she was when she was a baby. She stops working until they’ve begun school, at which point she begins working part-time again, and soon after she and her husband open their own practice. They are blissfully happy, forever and ever.

And by the time she has turned 60, the spud is a grandmother 4 times over.

2. If you were to build an extra room onto your house, just for yourself, what would you do with it? First of all, it would be a sunroom on the back of the house. I’d paint the wall the palest possible yellow, and the room would be filled with all kinds of plants. There would be pillows for the cats to lounge upon all over the place. There would be a stereo in one corner of the room, the radio station set to WZYP, and always set at a low volume, just so I could hear whatever was playing, but not loud enough to distract me. In another corner of the room – very important, this – would be an oversized recliner, where I could sit and listen to the radio while I read or cross-stitch, or just stare off into space and think deep thoughts. And a heavy quilt to lay over my lap when I get cold.

And I’m sure there’d be a smiley-face somewhere in the room.

3. Have you ever tried any odd diets? How about not so odd ones, like vegetarianism or low carb? Oh, I did the Atkins diet for all of half a day before I got so sick at the very idea of any kind of protein that I gave it up. When I was a kid I went to Nutri-System for several months (the food sucked so incredibly bad that I can’t believe I continued to eat it for as long as I did), which I consider not only an odd diet, but a crappy and stupid one. Can you tell I’m no fan of Nutri-System? I’ve never even considered going vegetarian, though – that’s not going to happen, ’cause I just like my meat too much.

4. Have you ever had any recurring nightmares? I’ll occasionally dream that Fred has died, and I always wake up slightly freaked out. I hate those dreams!

I once dreamed that I could fly. To date, that’s the coolest dream I’ve ever had, and I wish it was a recurring dream.

5. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done – and gotten away with? I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.

6. What’s your first childhood memory? When I was three years old, standing in the driveway in front of our house in base housing (I’m not sure where we were – possibly Indiana) with my father, who convinced me to ask god for marshmallows. Every time I did, one would come falling from the sky. My dad did NOT have marshmallows in his hands or anywhere on his body, and I couldn’t see anyone on the roof of the house. To this day, I have NO idea how he did it, and honestly? I don’t want to know.

7. If you had to estimate how many smiley faces are currently in your house, beaming down at you, what would you say? (Or do you know the exact number?) If I include the smiley-face pens (5 of them) and the smiley-face pencils (a dozen or so of them), I would guess that I have maybe 100 smiley faces in various places around the house (though perhaps not surprisingly the majority of them are clustered in the computer room).

8. Other than your c-section, how many other times have you been in the hospital? Once to have a non-cancerous tumor removed from my right knee, once for a cold-cone biopsy, once to have endometriosis removed, and once to have tubes put in my ears. So, three. Unless I’m forgetting something… Oh, wait! I had my tonsils out when I was five or so. That makes four.

9. If you were going on Star Search, what would you do for the audience? Since I’m amazingly untalented, I would probably stand in one spot, blush, and giggle like a madwoman before trying a half-hearted dance combo across the stage, falling off the edge and breaking my leg.

10. What’s the best Mother’s Day gift you’ve ever gotten? We don’t really go all-out on Mother’s Day, so I’d say the flowers I got for Mother’s Day last year from Fred and the spud were pretty damn nice. They certainly beat the many years I was with the ex (father of the spud, you know) and received nothing, nada, zilch every year.

11. My son is sitting behind me on the floor right now, staring off into the distance and not making a sound or moving a muscle. He’s been doing this for about two minutes. What on earth is he thinking? He’s thinking "e=mc²? That just doesn’t sound right…"

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Yesterday, I was going to make a pot of my incredibly good (if I say so myself) chicken soup, and I wanted to check the sheet of paper to see how long I should boil the chicken.

See, here’s the thing. I can cook, but I’m not a talented cook, and I have no innate cooking skills. I don’t experiment with recipes much – I like to follow the instructions closely – and I like to know that something needs to cook "for ten minutes" as opposed to "until brown", because I think that brownness is subjective. HOW brown? Light brown? Medium brown? Dark brown? Almost-burnt brown? Don’t tell me "until brown", people! I like having concrete instructions to the point where if a recipe instructs "Cook for 8 to 10 minutes", I will set the timer for 9 minutes, and go off to do something else until the timer goes off. It’s just the way I am, okay? And I’m old and set in my ways, so don’t try to change me.

The sheet of paper? It wasn’t there. It wasn’t on top of the fridge, it wasn’t on the floor, it wasn’t anywhere at all. After searching for it for five minutes, I found Fred, who was sitting in front of his computer, and said "Have you seen the sheet of paper Farmer Rich gave us?"

"Yes," he said. "I threw it away."

You can imagine the temper tantrum that followed. I NEEDED my sheet of paper, people! And the entire time, Fred had a smirk on his face, so I half-suspected he was fucking with me, that he KNEW how important the sheet of paper was to me and had simply hidden it somewhere. Finally, he went out into the garage and dug into the garbage can to find it.

It was soaked with juice from the pole beans we’d had with dinner the night before.

"I’ll go rinse it off," he said. Again, with the smirk. I assumed that he knew that rinsing a piece of paper would make it disintegrate, and I sat down to put on my shoes to go for my ass-kicking hill walk. He came back into the garage.

"It fell apart," he said, and threw it away. Bastard.

Luckily, my chicken soup came out excellent anyway.

* * *

Sunday, Fred and I were in the computer room, each sitting at our own computer netsexing each other (just kidding! We were actually netsexing complete strangers…heh. Kidding on that one, too), and Fred said in a deeply concerned voice, "Bessie, it appears that you’ve been hacked!"

I turned around and saw this on his screen:

"Oh my GOD!" I screamed, and turned around to view the offending page on my own computer. I was horrified. A man’s naked ass! Next to a picture of my beloved baby!

I got to the page on my computer, and saw no naked butts.

"It’s not showing up on mine," I said, clicking the "refresh" button.

"I know," Fred said proudly. "I was just fucking with you."

It appears that there is a site (well, used to be a site – the guy took it down) where you could go, enter a url, and have that page come up with nekkid hairy asses wherever there’s a picture. I’ve gotta hand it to Fred, he definitely freaked me out with that one!

* * *

I spent the morning running errands – including spending an ungodly amount of money on Mother’s Day cards – so I think I shall spend the afternoon (what’s left of it, anyway!) sitting on the couch and reading the rest of The Nanny Diaries, which is a pretty damn good book.

 

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Poo hair, and I was sporting a studly little red mustache, from when I applied a moisturizer with alpha-hydroxy acid in it to the area where I’d Nair’d off my mustache. "I can’t believe you let me go out in public like this!" I yelled at Fred. He looked up and looked me over. "Why?" And then I remembered that I was talking to the man who can never tell whether I’m wearing a bra. (Hint: if my boobs are down by my knees, I’m not)(I make myself sound mighty attractive, don’t I?)

* * *

So, the fucking plumber was supposed to show up around 10:30 on Friday. 10:30, 11:30, noon, came and went. I sat and fumed, because I’d planned to take the spud to the good chinese restaurant for their buffet – which they only offer at lunchtime during the week – and I’d WANTED to get there at 11 when they opened, so as to avoid the lunch crush. That did NOT happen, and when the plumber showed up at 12:30, it was all I could do not to kick him in the head. You really don’t want to get between a hungry fat woman and her beloved chinese buffet. The plumber looked, and hemmed and hawed, looked upstairs, looked downstairs, looked at the roofline, and decided it wasn’t the plumbing causing the problem, because the plumbing is contained in the walls, not the ceilings. He told me we needed to have the roofing people who did our roof come out and take a look, preferably that same day, since it was raining like hell. I called Fred at work, dumped the problem in his lap, and hauled the spud to Applebee’s for Oriental Chicken Salads and dessert (Apple Chimicheesecake for me, Hershey’s Pie A La Mode for her). We’d just started eating our desserts when my cellphone rang, and HOLY SHIT was it loud. I turned all shades of red as the Flintstones theme song reverberated throughout the restaurant, causing stares from every corner. It was Fred, checking to see where I was and when I’d be home, because the roofing guy would be on his way, sooner or later. After a quick trip to the post office to check the box (no interesting mail today, sadly), I went home and sat for almost two hours waiting for the roof guy to show up. Luckily, Fred had gotten home in the meantime, so he could deal with the guy. I hate, hate, hate, having to deal with the service guys, because I always feel like a complete idiot. Which I am. But I don’t like FEELING like I am. Anyway, the roof guy came, put up something to stop the leakage for now (and of course it hasn’t rained a single drop since), and this week I’ll get to deal with the claims adjuster (home insurance is a good thing), and someone from the roofing company to give us an estimate. PLUS the dishwasher guy will probably be around sometime this week as well. Joy.

* * *

For those of you who don’t read Fred’s journal and don’t know this, he has developed Hepatitis A. One of the symptoms of Hepatits A is that you turn yellow, and he has. Just compare my blinding whiteness with his Simpsons-like yellowness: To me, he looks an awful lot like he went out and bought some cheap tan-in-a-bottle and slathered it on. Hee!

* * *

Your Tubby love for the day: ]]>

The mail lady has been sitting up the street talking to one of my neighbors for more than ten minutes. I ought to stomp up there in my slippers and huffily demand my mail.

So, I have some facial hair – I think I’ve mentioned my thick, lush mustache before – and in an effort to battle it (since I didn’t much care for the waxing experience last year) I purchased some Nair

okay, now she’s sitting in front of the mailbox right before ours, talking on her cellphone. What the hell does a girl have to do to get her freakin’ mail?!

                                  made especially for facial hair. Since I have always been burned – literally, I’m talking, not emotionally – whenever I used Nair, I put off actually using the stuff. "I should wait until (whichever day), because (day after whichever day) I don’t have to go anywhere, so if I end up with a mustache-shaped burn, at least I won’t have to go out into public with it and be stared at," I kept telling myself. Unfortunately, I apparently never go two days without leaving the house, and so the perfect time to try out the Nair never came.

Finally, last night

let’s see – insurance bill, yard guy bill, and 7 crappy catalogs that are going straight into the trash. Why was I so eagerly awaiting the mail, again?

                                 as Fred toddled off to bed and I prepared to watch Felicity and The Amazing Race II (both of which I taped Wednesday night), I said "I need to just suck it up and try the stuff out!", and so I went into the bathroom and slathered my mustache and between my eyebrows (I tend toward unibrow-ness) with the Nair. I waited five minutes, washed it off, put more on, on the areas I’d missed, waited another five minutes, and washed THAT off. No burn! Whee!

Until this morning, when I thought my skin had had enough time to heal from having the hair chemically dissolved off of it, and slathered my face with the moisturizer I use. The moisturizer that contains alpha-hydroxy acids, among other things.

I am now sporting a fashionable little red mustache.

* * *

Y’all, help me out. There exists, somewhere in cyberspace, a picture of an old woman holding up her middle finger. If it strikes a bell, help me out, won’tcha? I can’t seem to find it anywhere. And I need it! (Note: I’ve got it! Big thanks to the readers who sent it to me – you rock!)

* * *

* * *

I am finally, you’ll be pleased to know, virus-free. I ran McAfee twice to double-check myself, and found 8 infected files on my system. They’re deleted, and I’m all clean now. No more cyber-ho’ing for me, no sir.

Of course, it could have been the spud who infected me, as she’s wont to surf to incredibly cheesy kid sites, and watch cartoony things and follow links. In fact, I started up my internet explorer yesterday, and instead of the page going to google, which is what I have my home page set as, it went to search4u.com. When I investigated further, I found that not only had search4u taken it upon itself to set itself as my home page, but there were also some PORN sites bookmarked.

No, the spud hasn’t been looking at porn. There are sites out there that are kind enough to bookmark porn sites for you without your knowledge – I’ve had it happen before. Honestly, I tend to find most porn fairly boring. Probably because most porn is geared toward men. "Oh, look! A thin blonde with large breasts! A skanky man with a large penis! This is so exciting! WhatEVER will happen next?"

Anyway.

* * *

I went into the garage to lift weights this morning, and as I lay on my back counting out loud, I glanced at the ceiling and said "Oh, shit."

In case you can’t tell, those are two very wet lines working their way across the garage ceiling. We apparently have a leak or something, and so now I’m sitting and waiting for the plumber to show up.

It’s always something, isn’t it? Dishwasher, leaking pipes, hepatitis.

This is what we get for living the high life.

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