Subversive Cross Stitch. Ah, if I’d only thought of that first… I have enough cross-stich pattern books and cross-stitch alphabet patterns that I could probably put together a “Go Fuck Yourself” for myself. I could hang it by the front door, because really what could be more warm and welcoming?
* * *
I read
On Writing for the third time last Monday night. It’s such a good book, though I find the C.V. section far more interesting than the writing tips (which is not to say that I couldn’t
use some writing advice from Stephen King, but I’m far too lazy to put them into practice). He grew up in Durham and attended Lisb0n High School, y’know, which is where I went to school as well, and it’s cool to see him mention people and places that I know.
Which reminds me – when I was in high school, several of the teachers who taught there (and probably still teach there), went to school with Stephen King and claimed to be friends with him. Yeah, they
wish.
Anyway, I read this line:
I found the idea of social drinking ludicrous – if you didn’t want to get drunk, why not just have a Coke? Hell, I’ve been saying that – or something similar to that – since I was in my early 20s. I totally don’t get social drinking at all, don’t really care for the taste of alcohol, cannot stand wine (and I’ve even tried the terribly expensive shit), and haven’t been drunk in at least ten years, when I had a fight with my best friend and got as shitfaced as I’ve ever been, and ended up barfing up a lung several times before passing out on my bed, and waking up several hours later still a little drunk.
Every now and then I’ll have a drink – I had a strawberry dacquiri with Liz at Applebee’s this past summer – and since I’m such a lightweight I’ll catch a buzz about halfway through the drink, and then I remember “Oh yeah. I
hate this feeling. I should have just had a Diet Coke.”
I
want to like the taste of wine. You wine-lovers wax poetic about it, and make it sound so good, but it just does nothing for me. Like coffee, I suppose it’s an acquired taste.
* * *
The Bean, ever since we got him (has it been a month? Something like that?) has never been a terribly affectionate cat. He’d let you pick him up and pet him and snuggle with him, and he’d purr like mad and meow a trilling meow, but he never sought affection, never came up to you and insisted upon being picked up and loved. Miz Poo howls and howls until you pick her up, and then she snuggled onto your shoulder, and she purrs loud enough to make the entire house vibrate, and she will stay there for hours or until something catches her fancy and she goes to check it out.
In the last week, however, the Bean has become more friendly. He’s started jumping up on the counter in the morning while Fred’s throwing his lunch together and rubbing up against Fred. He’s started laying against me and stretching fetchingly until I rub his belly. This morning when I came in from working out and sat down on the couch to call Fred, the Bean climbed up on the pillow next to me and rubbed and sniffed and purred and rolled around.
Maybe he was withholding his affection until he was sure he’d be around for a good long time?
* * *
Okay, you know what? I REFUSE TO DO MY CHRISTMAS SHOPPING UNTIL AFTER THANKSGIVING. Stop advertising the “Under the Christmas Tree” sale. Stop talking about Santa showing up at the goddamn mall when November is barely a week old. Is it not e-fucking-nough that you fucking bombard me with Christmas ads and Christmas movies and Christmas sales every fucking day from the day after Thanksgiving on? You have to start three weeks BEFORE Thanksgiving? Because the more you advertise your fucking sales, the less likely I am to buy from you, motherfuckers!
I swear, if it were left up to me, I’d leave the country from Halloween until New Year’s Day every fucking year.
Fucking radio ads.
* * *
Also, I am sick to DEATH of hearing about Jessica Lynch and Elizabeth Smart. I don’t want to hear any more about either of them, I don’t want to watch the stupid movies about them, I don’t want to read their motherfucking books, and I don’t want to see a fucking TV ad about them every 10.2 seconds. I’m glad they’re fine, I hope they live long and happy lives, NOW I WISH THE FUCKING MEDIA WOULD SHUT THE FUCKITY FUCK UP ABOUT THEM.
* * *
Very early Saturday morning – around 5, I think – I woke up and lay there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out why I was awake. I finally realized that I was hearing a distant kind of moaning sound. I sat up and took the earplugs out of my ears and listened some more. It was an almost rhythmic moaning sound, and I thought for a moment that it might be the Bean, who is still wheezy (though not
Weezy) despite progressively stronger medication in the weeks since we adopted him. I decided it wasn’t that, and listened some more. As I stared toward the door, I realized that Spanky was sitting near the door, staring out. And then Spot jumped up on the bed, looking nervous, and stared in the direction of the door.
Ohjesus, I thought immediately.
Someone’s in the house and they’re hurting Fred or the spud! Or maybe Fred dropped weights on himself and he’s hurt and can’t get out from under them, and he’s moaning in pain!
I got out of bed and put my nightgown on and slowly walked toward the door, expecting at any moment to see a strange man coming toward me. As I reached the top of the stairs, the sound got louder, and I realized it was coming from somewhere downstairs. It was also clearly the sound of a cat losing his shit. Miz Poo and the Bean were sitting at the top of the stairs staring down with some interest.
Ohjesus, I thought.
Someone’s in the house and Tubby’s trying to defend hearth and home!
I went to Fred’s bedroom door and knocked. From the other side, he mumbled a “What?”, and I opened the door.
“Come out here,” I said. “One of the cats is going nuts downstairs!”
Fred followed me back out to the landing at the top of the stairs, and then stepped over Miz Poo and the Bean, and walked down the stairs.
“There might be someone in the house!” I whispered hysterically. Fred ignore me and kept going.
“It’s Tubby,” he said when he reached the living room. Tubby was sitting in front of one of the living room windows, his tail bushed as big as it could be, and making a scary, half-growling half-howling sound.
“There must be something outside,” Fred said, and just as I hissed “DON’T JUST OPEN THE DOOR WITHOUT LOOKING!”, he flung the door open.
There, on the other side of the window, sat an orange cat, who was puffed up and growling. Fred chased him off, and then we went upstairs to lay in bed and talk until my pounding heart stopped, uh, pounding.
“So, you thought someone was in the house?” Fred said.
“Yes!”
“And yet I notice there was no gun in your hand!” he said disapprovingly.
“I thought about it!” I said.
“Yeah, and that could have been the last thought you’d had!”
Hmph.
* * *
Pet store kitties are
hither.
* * *
Heeee’s too Beanie for his fur, so Beanie it hurrrrrrrrrts…
How can this possibly be comfortable?
A year ago: Pictures!
Two: The cats continue to be terrified of the big slobbering thing living outside.
Three: “Who the hell’s this from??? It’s signed ‘your father’, but I have no idea who it’s from!!”
Four: Twice he bounced up and flailed his front paws at the butterfly/grasshopper, and on the third bounce, he hit the fence with his back feet and actually ran paralell to the ground for three or four steps before pushing off, flipping over, and finally landing on the lawn.]]>
“NOW I WISH THE FUCKING MEDIA WOULD SHUT THE FUCKITY FUCK UP”
This is EXACTLY how I feel about the media PERIOD! Doesn’t matter WHAT they are talking/writing about as it’s usually verbal diarrhea. Same goes with advertising agent with all the blathering about this that and the other. Can we get some relief from this barrage??? Merry Christmas Y’all!! LOL!
I haven’t been reading you that long, so when you mentioned Fred’s room so casually, I thought I’d find out what was going on, and being the bright person I am, I read your faq. I just wnat you to know that I am so envious. I’ll bet a lot of people would find that sort of arrangement strange, but I can totally relate. And Brad is a horrible snorer. At least now I have evidence of someone who actually does it and it works for them. So maybe I’ll re-present my case. 🙂
Thank you, thank you, thank you!! I thought I was the only one who felt this way about these two people!! (Lynch and Smart)
I also wish them well but I don’t want any more details or movies or books!!!
See!! I knew I was normal or at least by “Robyn’s Rules” lol
I agree, Robyn, with your whole “promoting the heck out of Christmas” rant. It really gets out of hand. Here is the latest example from my neck of the woods: Around the middle of October, one of my local stores (can’t remember which one) took all their Halloween stuff and put it out on a table with a 50% off sign! Two weeks BEFORE Halloween! At the same time, they were starting to put out their Christmas merchandise. The minute Christmas is over, stores have Valentine’s Day stuff out! I HATE IT!
my best friend’s dad is enemies w/ stephen king…some incident when they were in college about stealing a motorcycle and a stash of weed, but i think all was forgiven when my best friend got some super stephen king scholarship for college (univ of maine). funny thing, once my best friend was at the movies and saw stephen king and went up to him and he looked annoyed (nothing like the maine mall cinema for those celebrity sightings!), but then she just said “thanks for paying a chunk of my college” and he said “thanks” but then she had to run away because she didnt want him to find out that she isn’t using her english degree and is doing medical billing instead. hehe.
I am completely with you on the alcohol thing. I don’t care for the taste of any of it either. Pizza and beer? Nah, give me a Coke or an iced tea. Something I can wash the pizza down with. I have a friend who is always trying to get me to have a beer and I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal.
On vacations I have to take a sleeping pill and where ear plugs because of my mans snoring. Thank God he works the midnight shift and on his days off still stays up at night so there’s very little sleeping together time.
I’m with ya’ll about the Lynch/Smart stuff. More so the Lynch though. Loved the earlier entry about her being the only POW, funny stuff.
I’m with you on the Christams shit. On Nov. 1st Santa came to a shopping mall near my town, Nov 1st, jeez. Then my neighbor puts up both of their trees that day also. Yep, TWO trees, one in their kitchen and one in the livingroom. I see them every time I leave the house, glowing day and night. Couldn’t fucking believe it.
I so agree with you about wine. I feel like such a complete idiot sometimes because it seems like everyone drinks wine and I just can’t stand the taste of it. I wish I knew what the big fuss was.
Robyn, is Simone just a mean cat or something when you try to approach her?? I am just wondering why no one has snatched her up cause she’s a beauty.
Robyn, been reading you for a while now, and gotta say, sick and freaking tired of Christmas already, haven’t had a drink in about 10 years, and So very tired of Jessica Lynch, Elizabeth Smart. Enough already. Let it rest.
I can’t wait to see the double issue of playboy starring Elizabeth and Jessica….don’t lie…you KNOW it’s in the works! (just a few more years Elizabeth!) Wouldn’t surprise me to see them dressed in santa lingerie for a July printing either. heh.
I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who feels that way about the whole Christmas thing. I mean, I LOVE Christmas, but I don’t want to spend six or seven WEEKS gearing up for it! It should be illegal to even mention Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving, really.
Kellie – I have to say, deciding to sleep apart is probably one of the smartest things we did, and we’re both perfectly happy with it. Sometimes, when the cats are going wild around me, I wish *I* was the one sleeping in the small room with the door shut, though! 🙂
Bonnie – she really isn’t mean at all, but she does get nervous if you try to pick her up. I think that she’s warmed up to me a little, since she sees me every week and I pet her and talk to her. I think it’s just going to be a matter of someone wanting a sweet, shy kitty who will probably hide under the bed for a few weeks before calming down and becoming friendly.
Robyn, when you figure out where you want to go between Halloween and New Year’s, will you let me know so I can come too? I swear to God i’ve had that thought in my mind for several years now, and I’m so elated someone else feels the same way! i used to love the christmas season up until my teens, and ever since then (i’m almost 25)I have progressively hated it more & more, mostly because of its commercialism & my aversion to anything religious. I feel force-fed all this holiday crap every fucking year, and THERE’S NO ESCAPE! Unless, that is, I go to another country! 🙂
>>>I found the idea of social drinking ludicrous -if you didn’t want to get drunk, why not just have a Coke?
I had to chuckle at this one, was this King’s statement? I mean, one could also say “I find the idea of drinking soda ludicrous, why not just have a water?”
Because believe it or not, there are some of us who *love* the taste of beer. Not the typical American swill water (you know, Bud, Coors, etc.) but nice, rich, flavorful microbrews—there’s a huge difference.
I don’t care for wine either (despite living in a region that produces some of the best Pinot Noir known to man – what can I tell ya?) but to each their own. 🙂
C.
P.S.: My Christmas shopping is done! 🙂
Elizabeth – you bet I will! I’m thinking warm and tropical. 🙂
Gempdx – Yeah, Stephen King said that. Of course, he was talking about it in terms of watching social drinkers as someone who struggling with addiction. I was talking about it as someone who just never took to the taste. When I was in high school, the only beer I’d drink was Michelob Light, because it tasted the least like beer and it was the cheapest way to get drunk. Heh. Also – DONE with your Christmas shopping? Freak! 😛
Ugh – I just realized I posted with my screen name instead of my first name. Oh well.
The only reason I have my Christmas shopping done this early is because I went to Europe on my honeymoon in September. While gawking and gasping at the unbelievable Harrod’s department store, hubby and I decided that we would just do all of our Christmas shopping there.
Believe me, if it wasn’t for that, I’d be doing in early December along with most everybody else I know. 🙂
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Best laugh yet over a Beanine Boy picture. I totally heard “Bown Chicka Bow Wow” Pimp music when I looked at the first picture. I think I heard Barry White too! His look just screams
Hey Baabeeeh! HAHAHAHAHA You must start making a Best Of Bean Calander for us!!!!! I swear I’ll put it up in my dh’s workshop! HAHAHA
Grouchy grouchy grouchy…….can you say PMS?
**singing* Jingle Belllls Jingle Bellsssss
I think I shall put my tree up this weekend in honor of my OLDER sister:P
I’m sick of the exploited barbie doll teens too. And that Elizabeth Smart has the creepiest dad since Jessica Simpsons dad.
I’m just curious Robyn, since it was you who turned me on to Wendys grilled chicken sandwiches years ago by mentioning that you ate them, with a side salad instead of fries (Oh the willpower dilemmas *that* bit of info has caused me over the years!) did your wendys down there change their sauce on the chicken sandwiches too? I HATE the new sauce, the weird smoky tasting stuff they put on them now. Blah. I’m so bummed since that was my favorite fast food.
Gino’s almost 9 years old, and just became affectionate in the past 2 years. He was more like a tomcat than a pet cat.
Hey – Robyn, it’s almost Christmas, now, don’t you want to get some Christmas SHOPPING done? Don’t cha?
I hate wine, too. Not too crazy about beer, either. They’ve never done much for me. I don’t have any thing against folks that do drink, but it’s just nice to hear from folks that aren’t into it either.
I had to write to thank you for posting the link to the subversive cross stitch site. Absolutely LOVED it!!!
It’s a good thing I don’t live close to you, or I might be in to adopt Simone. When you described her, you could have been talking about my cat Mojo. He was very shy, but once he settled in, he was just a sweetheart. He died in July, so we’re down to a one cat household (still miss him, though).
I really like your site. Thanks!
Robyn, I must give you props for your work with kitties everywhere. Kind-hearted and yet still bitchy~a winning combination! Always look forward to your posts…