baby!
He insisted that I should get him nothing for his birthday, but please. As if! If he doesn’t know by now that that sort of thing doesn’t fly with me, he never will.
Happy birthday, baby. You don’t look a day over 43! (Ha! That joke just neeeeever gets old!)
* * *
Currently reading:
Maneater. I had no idea until I read the bit about the author on the backleaf that this was written by Brian Grazer’s wife. I’m not very far into the book, but so far it seems tolerable. The main character seems to be an all-surface-no-depth kind of gal, and so I suspect the whole book’s going to be very tongue-in-cheek. Sometimes that works; sometimes it doesn’t. I’m not sure which this one will be.
Finished yesterday:
Other People’s Dirt, which was sent to me by awesome reader Dawn. It’s not a bad book – it reads very fast – but I think I would have liked a bit more in-depth gossip about the people the writer cleans for. Worth a read, but I’d get it from the library, a second-hand store, or borrow it from a friend rather than going out and buying it new.
* * *
The spud is on her way to the O.C as I type. Actually, she just text messaged me that her plane had landed in Dallas. She has a 2-hour layover in Dallas, and then a three-hour flight to Orange County.
Until now we’d forbidden her to use her phone for text messaging, because those babies cost 5 cents a message, and T-Mobile doesn’t appear to have a plan that includes unlimited text messaging (another reason we’re switching to Verizon at the end of the year – though the main reason is that Consumer Reports ranked it the highest, and I am ALL ABOUT the Consumer Reports these days. Even though they has NO USE for my kind of car. Fuck you, Consumer Reports! You don’t run my life!). But there is a 1000 text messages per month for $6.99, and since she’s going to be gone for just about the entire summer, I told her she could text message her friends – and me! – while she was gone.
So we did a test run with text messaging while we were waiting for her plane to leave. I got her text message just fine, but when I tried to respond, the fucking predictive text input HORSESHIT made it impossible to figure out how to type in the message I wanted to. So I told her I’d check the book I got with the phone when I got home, and text message her while she was in the air.
I did check the book when I got home, and I got all frustrated and swore at the phone, and then I figured out how to set it so that only what I typed in showed up (fucking pain in the ass phone), and I text messaged her.
And here’s something you might not know about me – I hate it when people use “u” instead of “you”, “2” instead of “two”, “gd” instead of “goddamn”, etc. in email. Because there’s no reason for it! It really and truly and honestly does NOT take that much fucking longer to hit the extra keys. I just find it extremely annoying.
But by the time I was about three words in to the text message to the spud, I was using “u” and “2” and “gd” with abandon, and it STILL took me 4-fckng-eva 2 get th gd msg typd n & snt.
Then, after I’d sent the first message, I remembered that I hadn’t actually signed her up for the 1000 text messages per month, and I went online to do so, and realized that I didn’t know her password, so I had it sent to her phone, and went to text message her to let her know that she needed to send it to me so I could sign her up for the plan. And THEN I remembered what the password was, so I text messaged her AGAIN to tell her nevermind, and so when she landed in Dallas, she had three text messages from me and one from T-Mobile with her password, and I’m sure she was thinking “Oh, HELL NO. She’s not going to be doing THIS every fucking day, is she? Because I wanted the text messaging so I could send and receive text messages from my FRIENDS, not my clingy fucking mother. CUT THE CORD, WOMAN!”
Oh, she just called. She thought it was funny that I’d text messaged her so many times. Heh. She found her gate with no problems, and actually asked a woman in a uniform for help. Now she has almost two hours to kill before her flight to the O.C. leaves.
Another five hours, she should be in California (the theme song for The O.C. is playing in my head right now) and I can stop worrying!
* * *
I just spent half an hour text messaging with the spud. My last message to her was “K, call asa u r n cali. Luv u!”
I think I’ve officially reached the highest level of dorkdom. Though a truly proficient text-er would have said “ca” instead of “cali”.
* * *
She flew out to California (“
Califorrrrrnia! Califorrrrrrnia! Caaaaaaaaaaliforrrrniaaaaaaaaa!”) on American Airlines this time – Independence Air doesn’t fly to Orange County – and the agent who checked her in asked if I wanted to pay the $75 to have a flight attendant take her to her gate in Dallas. It was with great pleasure that I said no. Because the tickets were expensive enough – I had no desire to add $150 ($75 each way) to the total.
I think the spud would have preferred me to pay the extra money; I know she was a little nervous about being responsible for finding her own gate. To be truthful, I think if she had her way I’d be paying the $75 ’til she’s 32, but I think she’s old enough and smart enough to figure it out on her own.
And she did!
Since she was traveling as an unaccompanied minor, I was able to get a pass to go to the gate with her. The security line wasn’t long at all, and we got through the metal detector pretty quickly, but apparently they felt the need to run my purse through the x-ray machine a second time (perhaps it was the bottle of Benadryl?), and people started piling up behind me while I was waiting for my purse, so I had to move to the end of table.
Now, the whole process of putting my purse on a conveyer belt so that it can be x-rayed and then passed even further along a conveyer belt is something that fills me with a bit of anxiety. I don’t like being so far from my purse, and I especially don’t like the bit where my purse has to ride along the conveyer belt, because any yahoo could come along and distract me while someone else grabbed my purse and took off with it. I always have my cell phone, all my keys, and my wallet (which includes my driver’s license, credit cards, and – most importantly – my Gold Crown (Hallmark) card), so if I lost my purse I’d be a tad screwed. And I know security keeps an eye on things, but I haven’t got much confidence in them. Because I know things at the airport are SECURE and all, but let’s be honest – things have relaxed more than a little in the last 3 1/2 years. When Fred and I flew in the summer of 2002, they all but gave us enemas and analyzed (ha! ANALyzed!) the contents before they’d even let us through the metal detector. These days? Things are a bit more relaxed. I know it, you know it, and the terrorists know it. Thank god we have Jack Bauer to keep us safe!
So I stood at the end of the table (which was next to the conveyer belt) and saw my purse come out of the x-ray machine, and I glanced up the conveyer belt, and I realized that there are in fact two sides to the conveyer belt, and so I walked along the back of the conveyer belt in hopes of grabbing my purse.
Which is when Barney Fife popped up from his station behind the woman running the x-ray machine, and bellowed “MA’AM! PLEASE STEP AROUND TO THE FRONT OF THE CONVEYER BELT TO RETRIEVE YOUR ITEMS!” And then he put his hand on his skinny hip as though he might be required to pull a gun on me and shoot me three times in the gut and twice in each kneecap, just in case.
I put my hands up, said “Oh! Okay!”, and backpedaled as fast as my stupid ass could move. Then I went around the front of the conveyer belt, elbowed my way to my purse, and grabbed it.
Then I rolled my eyes, shook my head (BECAUSE I AM A REBEL) and pulled the spud toward the escalator.
And yes, I felt as guilty as if I’d been planning to hijack the nearest plane. Because all you have to do if you are in a position of authority – or think you’re in a position of authority – is glance at me with some suspicion, and I’m ready to confess everything down to the time I was driving the riding lawnmower around the front yard and ran over some flowers in my mother’s front flowerbed (because I am a KLUTZ) and then pretended I had no idea how that had happened.
SORRY, MOM!
* * *
The section about the kittens.
Yesterday afternoon I was hanging out in the room with the kittens, rubbing bellies and kissing little heads and just generally having a good time, when Snoopy, who’d been attacking my feet (these cats have a real thing for feet and the attacking of) got a strange look on his face. He backed away from my foot, thought for a moment, and then walked toward the corner of the room which is located behind the door.
And then DO YOU KNOW WHAT HE DID? He climbed INTO the small litter box which was located as close to that corner as I could get it, and he hunkered down, and he BEGAN TO POOP.
Y’all, I was so proud, I about burst.
Then I noticed that Snoopy was having some problems. I don’t know if he was constipated or what, but he climbed back out of the litter box and the poop didn’t stay behind IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. I watched him, and he wandered around with a somewhat pained look on his face, so I picked him up and put him in one of the big litter boxes and rubbed his belly, then squeezed him gently, in hopes that that would help coax the rest of the poop from his poor little system.
What? WHAT? Oh, shut up. Constipation is hard enough if you’re an adult; if you’re a month-old kitten, I’m sure it’s about excruciating, because you don’t know WHAT THE FUCK is going on. I was just trying to help.
Snoopy hunkered down again, and he gave me a look as if to say “What the holy fuck is going on here, woman?”, and then he started to climb out of the litter box, and I said “Momma, are you going to HELP THAT POOR BOY?”, and she looked at me disinterestedly, and I had to leave the room, because if I had to watch that poor baby walk around the room with an inch of poop sticking out, I don’t know what I would have done.
When Fred got home from his hike half an hour later and headed upstairs to change his clothes, I asked him to look in on the kittens and let me know if there was poop everywhere, because I needed to know whether or not to take a bucket of warm water and lots of rags to clean up poop the next time I went in there.
He reported back that there was no poop to be seen, and Snoopy had not a smidge of poop on him anywhere.
After dinner, I went back up to do some more visiting. The kittens were wild last night, jumping on each other and biting, then jumping on me and biting, and running around and jumping some more. While I was holding Flossie (whom I have taken to calling “Miz Flossie”, big shock), I looked up to see Snoopy walking toward the litterbox with purpose in his step. He climbed into the litterbox, hunkered down, and pooped with no problem at all. While he was doing his business, Peanut climbed in next to him, looked him over, and I swear I saw a little lightbulb go on over his head.
Ten minutes later, Peanut climbed into one of the big litterboxes, peed, ate a piece of litter, and climbed back out to attack one of his brothers.
This morning, Flossie peed in the litterbox.
It appears that they’re getting the hang of it, THANK GOD.
Oy’s lookin’ a little wild.
Edgar shows off one of his sharp little teeth.
Flossie cracks me up when she eats. She always looks so intent. Eating is HARD WORK, PEOPLE!
Peanut wishes he had a paper to read.
Did I mention that the kitties love to attack feet?
Flossie always looks worried, doesn’t she?
“Somethin’s not right, but I don’t know what it is…”
He is the POOPIN’ KING!
Another yawn pic!
King Oy looks down upon his subjects. And then he jumped on them and bit their tails.
This picture makes me laugh until I snort.
More – lots more – kitten pics over at
Flickr, and there’ll be more going up later. Speaking of Flickr – can someone tell me what exactly a “set” is? Yeah, I know, I’m a dumbass. But should I be posting these fosterkitties pics to a set rather than using tags? Use small words and speak slowwwwly, if you would.
* * *
Apparently there’s a nest of young swallows around here somewhere, and every morning several of them like to hang out on the ledge directly outside the study room (the room upstairs where the spud’s computer is). They drive Mister Boogers cuh-ray-zee, because they’re SO CLOSE and yet so far.]]>