Warning: Liberal use of the “c” word in this entry. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
So, ever have one of those days that starts out just fine, and then something goes wrong and then something else goes wrong, and then you realize you’ve called every car in front of you on your trip from one city to another “A stupid goddamn asshole cunt fuckhead”, so you come to the decision you should never have gotten out of bed?
No? Just me, then?
Seriously, yesterday started out just fine. I got up when Fred left for work, I got dressed and puttered around the house a bit, I started last week’s CSI and Grey’s Anatomy burning to a DVD for my sister/ nephew (CSI) and mother (Grey’s Anatomy) (PS: Torrents are THE SHIT), then I looked at the clock and realized that it was five minutes ’til seven, and the spud wasn’t out of bed yet. I went and woke her up, and when I was sure she was in the shower, I left for the pet store.
(I would have given her a ride to school, but her boyfriend – friend? guy she’s dating? I am unsure of the correct technology, here – was planning to give her a ride to school, so I knew she’d make it there okay.)
I was at the pet store, cleaning out a litter box when my cell phone rang. It was the spud, telling me she’d left something on the printer, and could I drop it off at school for her before her class? I briefly considered giving her a hard time about it, but I think this is pretty much the only time she’s done this, so I refrained.
I was almost finished cleaning cages at the pet store when one of the cats who’s been there for a little too long reached out and swiped her claws across the back of my hand, leaving long, painful scratches behind. I’m used to the occasional scratch (those kitties don’t always love to be held and snuggled and kissed on the top of their little heads, you know), but I’ve gotten pretty good at dodging the cats who intentionally try to scratch me, only this time I was distracted and she caught me by surprise.
I washed out the scratches, gave the cat a dirty look, and finished up my chores.
I left the pet store and went across the street to the gas station where I usually fill up on Monday mornings, because it’s the cheapest gas in Huntsville* and although I usually only go through about half a tank of gas in the course of a week, I prefer to have half a tank or more of gas at all times. Who knows when I’m going to need to make a run for the Mexico border? Best to not have to stop and fill up in that case, is how I see it.
So I pulled in next to the pump, got out with my debit card to pay at the pump, and looked down to see that the display on the pump was saying “Please pay cashier inside.”
Dudes, what the fuck? If I WANTED to go inside and stand in line to pay the cashier, would I be trying to pay at the pump? I said “FUCK THAT”, got into my car and left for home, deciding to stop on the way home to fill up the tank. Sure, I’d pay a little more, but I wouldn’t have to STAND IN LINE. I cannot abide standing in line when I don’t have to -thus the reason 90 percent of my shopping is done online. And even the slowness of THAT pisses me off sometimes.
Heading towards Madison, I pulled out my cell phone and called Fred to bitch. He pointed out that we were going to be going to Athens in the next few days, and he’d filled up at a gas station there for $2.06 on Sunday, so we could just take my car instead of his and fill it up on our way into town. I agreed that that was a good idea, hung up the phone, and pulled into the grocery store parking lot.
My trip to the grocery store was okay except… you know what I hate? Besides standing in line (which I didn’t have to do at the grocery store, because it was early and there weren’t many people there)? I hate it when the cashier looks at something I’m buying, and makes a comment about it. Like “Oh, that looks good!” or “Is that good?”, because although I am not as fat as I used to be, my brain still hasn’t caught onto that fact quite yet, and so I stand there feeling like the 300+ woman who’s buying a cake, knowing that they think I’m going home to shove it all in my face.
(Which I usually was.)
So I went home and put the groceries away and got Maddy’s food ready for her while Sugarbutt lolled seductively on the counter, giving me his best “Hey Momma, what you got there for the Sugarman?” eyes. I went upstairs and Maddy was sitting in her little car bed in her cage, and when she saw me she got all excited, and then when I opened the door to her cage, what did she do? She stepped OUT through the door and ran over to me. She’s so smart, my Maddy.
I was loading the syringe of cat food to shove in her face, and she was apparently so hungry that the smell of the food was driving her crazy and she started sniffing around my hands, and she actually ate some cat food off my hands and off the dish! I got all excited and thought we might have made a breakthrough, but I saw the light go on over her head as she thought to herself “Wait a minute. I’m a pretty princess and shouldn’t have to feed mySELF!”, and she whined and cried until I shoved some cat food in her face through the syringe, and followed it up with a bottle of formula.
I am surely pushing this cat into an eating disorder. She’s going to end up like a little Nicole Ritchie, with the huge sunglasses and the scary, bony legs.
The absolute best moment of the day came when I was just hanging out with Maddy, and Sugarbutt and Tom Cullen came in to hang out, too. Sugarbutt got into one of the cubes that stays in the kitten room. His tail was hanging out one of the holes, and Maddy saw it and became curious (she’s turning into a real little CAT!) and ran over to sniff his tail. I snapped a picture of that moment.
And one instant later, Sugarbutt realized that Maddy was sniffing his tail, and he simultaneously hissed and levitated out the hole in the top of the cube, and he hung there for several long seconds, then pulled this running-sideways Matrix move, where he ran along a part of the wall and out the door. This act scared Tommy, who was hanging out in Maddy’s cage, so badly that he hit his head on the side of Maddy’s cage with a resounding ::clang:: and then tore out of the room so fast that he was nothing but a big black portly blur.
I called Fred to tell him about it, and ended up laughing so hard I was crying and he couldn’t understand what I was saying.
GOD I wish I’d had the camcorder in there with me. That’s a moment that would surely have won us ten thousand dollars on America’s Funniest Home videos.**
So I discussed with Fred what time I’d be at his office to pick him up for an errand y’all don’t get to hear about just yet, and we decided I’d be there at 10:30. At 10, I called to tell him I needed to run to the spud’s school and the post office and then I’d be there to pick him up. And just. like. that. I got into a bad mood. Because Fred bitched about the fact that if I was later picking him up to run the errand, the later I’d be dropping him back off at his office, and the later he’d be eating breakfast, and he was hunnnnngry.
YEAH? HUNGRY? JOIN THE FUCKING CLUB, FUCKER. I HADN’T EATEN YET EITHER AND YET I WAS GOING TO BE SPENDING THE MORNING DOING ERRANDS I DIDN’T PARTICULARLY WANT TO BE DOING, I HAD SHIT TO DO, AND I HAD PLANNED TO WATCH DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES IN AND AMONGST DOING ALL THE SHIT I DIDN’T PARTICULARLY WANT TO DO.
So I got dressed, drove like a speed demon to Fred’s office, and got there at 10:28.
“Did you not go to the school?” he asked, surprised that I was there so early.
“Well, NO,” I snarked. “I had forgotten that the world revolves around you and your carefully timed pot of coffee between 8 and 9:30, your breakfast at 10:30, and your 11:03 bowel movement.”
“Oh, shut UP,” he said, rolling his eyes at me.
My bad mood faded a little during our errand, and then I dropped him off at his office and headed toward the spud’s school. Well, no. Actually first I thought I’d go to McDonald’s and get a fruit bowl, since I was fucking STARVING TO DEATH, but how many cars do you suppose were sitting in the drive-up at 11:30? Why, ten million OF COURSE. And there were even more people in the fucking lobby, and I growled “OH, FUCK THIS,” and pulled back out onto the road. I saw a gas station up the road and decided I’d stop there for a bottle of water and find something to eat.
I ended up buying a small pack of cashews, and a J@ck Links piece of beef (I don’t remember the official name of the stuff) along with my bottle of water. And then I got in my car and headed toward the spud’s school, trying to open the package holding the piece of jerky-like beef, and I could not get the fucking thing open. I finally had to CHEW my way into the package, and when I got into the package and bit into the jerky-like beef, it tasted EXACTLY like the cat food I accidentally ingested when Maddy shoved her cat-food-covered face into my mouth the other day.
I was so pissed I thought about pulling over and throwing the beef barfy onto the ground and running over it several hundred times while swearing loudly, but I (a) didn’t want to pull over and (b) didn’t want to be arrested for introducing such a toxic piece of shit into the environment, so I settled for swearing loudly while I drove down the road.
And then. AND THEN. The road I was on? The road from Huntsville into Madison? Old Madison Pike? Oh, there was CONSTRUCTION, of course. Construction. WHY WOULDN’T THERE BE CONSTRUCTION? But of COURSE. Construction. And the traffic was backed up so far that I couldn’t see the actual construction, and I was in such a place that there was no way to turn around.
So I downed the pack of cashews and swigged some water and tried to calm down, but we were MILES past the “eat and calm down” stage. I was in full-bore pissed-off stage, and as I sat in place for ten minutes, I swore and swore and swore, and usually that calms me down in a “cursing zen” kind of way, but not this time. All I ended up doing was pissing myself off some more, and FINALLY the traffic started moving and I thought we were finally getting somewhere, but I moved about twenty feet and stopped, but luckily I was in such a place that I could bang a u-ey, so I did so in a squeal of Badass Tires, and I went back the way I’d come, got onto the highway, and approached Madison from another direction altogether.
I stopped by the post office, mailed off the CSI/ Grey’s Anatomy disc, and headed for the spud’s school. I got there right at noon and went in to the front office and dropped off the spud’s paper at the front desk.
I went back outside and got in my car. I noticed that a woman a few cars up was pulling out, so I sat and waited for her to get out of the way. And she stopped her goddamn car DIRECTLY behind mine. Why, you might wonder, WHY would she stop her car directly behind mine? Was there another car in the way? Had her car broken down? Was she having a stroke?
Why, no. No other car. No broke-down car. No stroke. She apparently had the OVERWHELMING GODDAM NEED TO PUT LOTION ON HER GODDAMN HANDS.
People. If I’d had a golf club, a bat, or some other implement that was good for breaking things, anything other than a soft-sided cat carrier in the back seat, I would have gotten OUT of my car, and I would have gone Nicholson on her ass, and I would have been screaming very loudly (you have NO idea how loud I can be if I want to, people. I could break eardrums with the volume of my voice, just ask Fred), “SERIOUSLY? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, YOU SELF-INVOLVED, SELF-IMPORTANT CUNT? SERIOUSLY? YOU HAVE TO STOP RIGHT HERE AND PUT LOTION ON YOUR FUCKING HANDS? SERIOUSLY??” As it was, I swore loudly and inventively and when she didn’t move, I hit the gas and started backing out directly towards her (calm down, I was backing out slowly. Mostly.), and that got her attention, and she drove away.
THEN I had to go to the bank, where I had to wait far too long to deposit one check, but that was to be expected and the only person I was pissed off at was me, for being dumb enough to forget to bring a book to read while I waited.
From there, I went over to the grocery store to pick up something for lunch, because I was STARVING and unwilling to go home and cook something, I just wanted something easy that I could go straight home and eat. And I ended up going to the same cashier as I’d gone to a few hours earlier, and she smiled and greeted me with “Back again?!”
And I threw my smoked salmon wrap on the floor and bellowed “ARE YOU CALLING ME FAT?”
No I didn’t. But I wanted to.
Then I went home and ate my salmon wrap, and then I ate some salad, and then I cleaned the kitchen and watched Desperate Housewives as I threw a Shepherd’s Pie, three-bean salad, and hamburger patties together (not together, together. I threw the Shepherd’s Pie together, then the three-bean salad together, etc.). I half-watched an episode of Dr. Phil while I cross-stitched, and then I talked to Fred on the phone for a few moments. He wanted to go to a tractor place and drive a tractor, and thought I should just throw the steak we’d been planning to have for dinner in the freezer, and we could go to the tractor place and then out to eat for dinner.
So I agreed, and a little before 3:00, I went upstairs to feed Maddy so I’d be ready to leave when Fred got home. Maddy was her usual cute self, and I swear just rubbing her little bitty ears makes me happier than anyone has a right to be, so after that I was back in a somewhat good mood for the rest of the day. But for a while there, I’m telling you. I thought my liver was going to explode from the stress!
(I kid. Livers don’t explode from stress (I hope).)
Fred got home around 3:45, and we headed for the tractor place. Since I thought it was going to be a long drive (it was, but not as long as I expected), I remembered to do all the stuff my physical therapist had recommended, like put a rolled-up towel on the back of my seat for back support, and a Boppy on my lap for arm support, and I’ll be damned if my back didn’t hurt at all.
At the tractor place, Fred was disappointed to find that I was completely uninterested in coming inside to hear him talk knowledgeably to the tractor guy about tractors and tractor parts and all that incredibly fascinating stuff. I love my husband, but I couldn’t possibly be any less interested in tractors. I do NOT give a shit what kind of tractor he buys, I honestly just don’t. If you’d spent the last month hearing every last detail about every last tractor god put on this earth, you too would be uninterested in anything tractor-related.
Cats, I can talk about ’til the cows come home. The house? I’m ready to talk about it! Same goes for books, TV shows, clothes (for a limited amount of time) and whatever stupid thing the dumbasses in Hollywood are doing. (I AM SO DEEP.) But tractors? Snoresville. Totally.
So I sat in the car with my book, and I happily read for over an hour, while Fred was apparently off a tractor, and when he was done, he made me accompany him to see the tractor he’d bought, and the various implements. He tried to get me to drive the tractor, even got on himself and drove it around, but I refused.
“Yeah, babe. Fascinating. Can we go eat now?”
See more Maddy pics hither.
This is Rachael‘s Darby, who I LOVE. He’s just such a character, and I always love seeing pictures of Darby. He cracks me up!
This is Cathy’s Princess Sophie. Cathy says, This is my little bundle of love. She is 10 years old and I adopted her from an animal shelter when she was just a kitten. She is with me in my store everyday and gets lots of love from my customers. This is her typical position – and her typical expression. Ah the life of a cat especially in a home where they are loved more than anything in this world… What a gorgeous kitty!
Trisha sent this one in. She says, This is my boyfriend’s parents’ cat. Her official name is Stinky, but I affectionately call her Tub-Tub, in honor of you know who – also because she is quite tubalicious! I love her pretty colors. Hey, now. She’s not tubby, she’s just big-boned! (I love her colors, too!)
This is Andrea’s late cat, Tiger. Andrea says, Tiger was a 23 year old cat who was my husband’s buddy and my boyfriend for ages and ages. He passed away last August, but when you asked for yawny cat photos, I immediately thought of this one. Enjoy. We do miss him, my sweet Tiger kitty. Awww, rest in peace, Tiger!
Tommy practices his kitty yoga.