* * *
Several people have emailed me, letting me know that they’re blogging for Blogathon this year. I’m sorry, but I don’t take part in Blogathon at all, in a blogging or (especially) donating capacity. I think y’all know that I happily contribute to charities and have donated to a lot of your causes and will continue to do so, but I don’t support Blogathon, haven’t for a couple of years, and don’t intend to in the future.
kthxbye.
* * *
Spoilers for the movie Premonition with Sandra Bullock and the hothothot Julian McMahon in this section; skip to the next if you haven’t seen it.
We watched Premonition last week, and I have to say that I liked it a lot, right up until the end. Like Fred said after the movie was over, we watched the whole goddamn movie with the belief that she might have a chance to save him, and yet he still died. We should have seen that coming, I suppose, but still we hoped.
There was a bug, though, and I’ll explain it in excruciating detail because I MUST. The movie opens with the girls waking Sandra Bullock up and telling her they’re going to be late; that’s on Thursday. Sandra Bullock takes the girls to school, and we see both girls’ faces several times, and the older one’s face is perfectly fine, no stitches. Later, at home, Sandra Bullock puts stickers on the sliding glass doors. BUT on Tuesday (or maybe Monday; it’s been almost a week since we watched it, so I can’t remember which), the older girl runs through the sliding glass doors, shattering them and cutting her face all up. Her face is still stitched up on Saturday.
But Thursday – no messed-up face, no stitches. That’s a pretty big bug, and there was no explanation for it that I can recall.
Still, I liked the movie right up until the stupid ending.
That Sandra Bullock, cute as a button.
* * *
Speaking of movies, I watched
Sense and Sensibility (another Netflix movie) yesterday. I’ve seen it before, but was struck with the need to see it again. I just love the hell out of Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, and the part where Hugh Grant informs Emma Thompson that it was his brother who married, not him, and she bursts into tears and Mrs. Dashwood, Maryanne, and Margaret sidle out of the room is possibly one of my favorite scenes in all of moviedom.
* * *
Sugarbutt’s neck really isn’t getting any better, so I’ve got an appointment to take him to the vet tomorrow morning. Which reminds me – I need to get the cat carrier out this afternoon and leave it out so that when I snatch Sugarbutt up tomorrow morning to stuff him in the carrier, he won’t immediately know what I’m about to do, and fight to get the hell away from me.
Every time I get the carrier out of the closet, all the cats scatter – especially Miz Poo and Spot – and hide for a couple of hours. Once they get accustomed to having it sit in the middle of the computer room floor they sniff at it then forget about it. So when I pick Sugarbutt up tomorrow, he’ll just thing I’m going for a snuggle. Then I’ll stuff his ass in the carrier and he’ll feel all horrified and betrayed.
Sugarbutt has Stranger Danger issues.
* * *
When I am in the kitchen, I always and forever have company. This company is in the form of Spot, who believes that my being in the kitchen should always equal his receiving a tasty, tasty treat. I’m always happy to share if I’ve got something he might like – ground round or chicken, usually – but when I’m standing at the counter cutting up okra to dehydrate, I figure that’s not really his sort of thing. He still sits in the middle of the floor and stares at me. If I ignore him and keep cutting okra, he eventually starts squeaking at me, and the sound of Spot squeaking is like having nails drilled directly through my eardrums.
I’ve tried circumventing the squeak by showing him what I’m doing – holding out a tray of chopped okra – but he sniffs it and gives me the most disapproving look as if he’s thinking “Yeah, I see what you’re trying to distract me with. I don’t buy it. Give me some of the good stuff, BITCH.”
So when I’m standing in the kitchen cutting up something he wouldn’t be interested in, I start to get tense after a few minutes, because I can always see him out of the corner of my eye, and I know it’s only a matter of time before he starts with the goddamn squeaking again. Sometimes I swat at him with a dishtowel to run him out of the room, but he always comes back.
The other day I was cutting up cherry tomatoes for dehydrating, and I could see Spot sitting on a corner of the rug, watchingwatchingwatching me. I tensed up because I HATE that goddamn squeak he makes, and I chopped faster, hoping to finish and get the hell out of the kitchen before he could start in on me, but still he sat and stared.
Finally, I’d had enough. I grabbed a dishtowel, whirled around, and waved it at him, yelling “Get! Go!” at the top of my lungs. Which is when I realized I was yelling at a bottle of white vinegar, not Spot.
Probably the vinegar wasn’t going to start squeaking at me, but in case it was going to, it’s certainly been warned. You can’t trust those bottles of vinegar.
* * *
Yesterday Fred and I were sitting at our respective computers. I was looking up information on preserving okra – I’ve been slicing, dehydrating, and then freezing it, but Fred complained that he really likes whole okra, and so I was looking to see what I needed to do to prepare okra for freezing whole (answer: blanch, which REALLY brings out the snotty consistency), and I wandered across a page with interesting okra information.
“Huh,” I said out loud. “Did you know that okra is also called gumbo?”
“Uh, no,” he said.
“Interesting, huh?”
“I… guess so. Did she have big ears or something?”
“Um. WHAT?”
We turned from our computers to face each other.
“Did she have big ears?” Fred repeated.
“Who?”
Long silence, while we pondered the conversation and tried to figure out where we’d taken a wrong turn.
“Did you say
Oprah is also called dumbo?” Fred said.
I think we’ve both lost our hearing since we moved to this house. The number one thing we seem to say lately is “Huh? What? I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”, which for some reason irritates the fucking shit out of me when Fred yells it to me from another room.
I tried to get Fred to use his cell phone for texting, so we could just text each other when I’m, say, in the kitchen and he’s in the front room.
He wouldn’t go for it, though.
* * *
I am very, very mean. I take the foster kittens a snack every morning and every evening (a couple of spoonsful of plain nonfat yogurt), but before I’ll give them their snack, I stand over them and say in a bizarrely cheerful voice, “Who ready for the yum-yums? WHO READY FOR THE YUM-YUMS?!” until Gilligan and Spanky “speak” to let me know that they, in fact, are
ready for the yum-yums, so hand it over lady.
“Please, might I partake of the yum-yums, lady?”
“I’ve got a belly and it’s needin’ the yum-yums. HAND OVER THE YUM-YUMS.”
Once the yum-yums are eaten, Gilligan and Spanky go after my feet, if I’m wearing socks.
They cannot abide the socks.
* * *
In what’s going to become the guest room sits the spud’s bed. We’ve been intending to move it out to the garage, but given that we’ve got no guests (NANCE), there’s no big hurry to do so. Atop the spud’s bed sits a small doll bed that my father made for the spud and which she left behind (she’s a wee bit past the playing-with-dolls stage). Atop the doll bed is a little mattress and quilt my mother made for the bed.
For these past few weeks, the doll bed has sat atop the spud’s bed, unmolested. No one’s looked at it twice, and then suddenly for no apparent reason, it’s become the place to be.
“I am former Senator Stanley J. Boogerton, and I approve this bed.”
Spanky, especially, likes the bed. He likes to spend his days on the bed atop the bed, and if you go past the doorway, he calls you in with his goofy little meow to come visit and see him in laying on the bed he believes was created just for him.
* * *
Previously
2006: I may have Hepatitis.
2005: But not to worry, it was just cramps. Whew!
2004: I want to rip her goddamn fucking ::fliiiip::TAP::TAP::TAP::FLIIIP::TAP::TAP::TAP::FLIP::TAP::TAP::TAP::FLIP::TAP::TAP::TAP:: head off her stupid fucking goddamn neck
2003: No entry.
2002: I caught the eye of one of them, who noticed my intensely guilty terrorist-like face, and waved me over to wand me down.
2001: No entry.
2000: Because, you know, my life is so damn chaotic. Yeah.]]>