Comment-answering extravaganza tomorrow! Get ’em in while the gettin’ is good!
I’m sorry I scared some of you with my entry yesterday, but I can promise you that if Spot (or any of the cats) passes on, I will absolutely NOT do a FUNNY entry about it. Promise! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Peoples of the Innernets Readers:
Thank you very much for your well-wishes, I greatly appreciate them. I am feeling a little better – I still like to hang out by my own self all the time, but occasionally I come out of hiding and sit and stare with great love at The Daddy for a while before I slink off for some privacy – and even The Momma thinks my eyes are brighter and I don’t look so ratty.
Even though I never did look ratty, and I hate her.
So thank you for your good wishes, and I will try to make that awful woman take more pictures of my beauty and put them up so you can be amazed by me on a more regular basis.
Now, if you don’t mind, I was in the middle of napping, so go away.
Sincerely,
Spot J. And3rson.
PS: For those concerned, Snackin’ Time has been reinstated. I hardly think it’s fair that EVERYONE BUT ME gets Snackin’ Time, but The Daddy distracts me while the other cats eat their Snackin’ Time, and I do enjoy a good brushing. The weird lady said that she couldn’t stand the sad faces at Snackin’ Time, which surprised me because I thought she was not only weird, but heartless. Guess I was wrong about the heartless part.
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I finally got around to taking pictures of all the holiday cards I received this year, and you can see them here. I had intended to take pictures of them as they were displayed – attached to ribbons, hanging from the walls in the front room – but after I snapped a couple of pictures I realized it wasn’t going to work out, because it wasn’t possible to take the pictures from the right angle. So once I took the cards down, I laid them out and took pictures of them.
I went through and blurred any last names off the cards, though I left first names on there. I also didn’t blur out any picture cards, but if anyone wants me, in the interest of privacy, to blur out their card, just say the word and I’ll do it immediately!
I ended up getting 154 cards this year, and I loved every damn one of them. Thanks, you guys!
Know what annoys me? The fact that in 2005 I read 191 books, in 2006 I read 129 books, and in 2007 I read a paltry 119 books. It drives me CRAZY that my numbers have gone down so far between 2005 and 2007. I mean, I know that we were doing a lot of work on the house last year (and in 2006), but still. 119? That’s hardly any reading at all! It’s my goal in 2008 to read at least 150 books. 150 is a nice round number, and well within the realm of possibility, I think, so we’ll see how that goes. (Though it’s January 17th and I’m only on book number 5 for the year. I clearly need to settle my ass down and get some reading done!)
I didn’t have to go anywhere at all yesterday, and it was AWESOME. I thought I’d sleep in a bit, but I was awakened by the sound of Lupe the Roomba fighting with a big roll of bubble wrap, and I had to go out and disentangle her, put her back on her dock and then yell at the cats for setting her to cleaning for the SECOND TIME (the first time being before Fred left for work, so he heard Lupe sing and start cleaning and went to rescue her). I don’t know who did it, but I do know that Skittles likes to stand with her front paws on Lupe while she (Skittles, not Lupe) keeps an eye on the other cats, so it’s not out of the question that she accidentally hit the “clean” button. Once I was up, I wasn’t interested in trying to go back to sleep, so I cleaned out the litter boxes, set Lupe in the laundry room to clean, vacuumed the upstairs (and the stairs) with the Dyson. Then I got a couple of packages of black-eyed peas out of the freezer, put them in a pot on the stove with water, crushed garlic, an onion, a couple of chicken bouillon cubes and the bone from a pork shoulder we finished off over the weekend, and let it simmer for a couple of hours. Then I went back to bed for a little while and read. When I got bored with that (and with being harassed by Skittles, who is a sweet and loving cat, but knows not the concept of settling down to be petted, instead she has to stand on you and knead using her claws, and I can only take so much of that, even if she IS filled with love and purring loudly) I got up, folded and put away some laundry and then put the leftover turkey carcass (which we had for dinner Sunday) on to boil. I think the black-eyed peas ended up simmering for about three hours, and when I took out the bone from the pork shoulder, I found that there’d been more meat left on the bone than I’d realized, and after a quick call to Fred, we decided we’d use it as the main course for a meal at some point in the future, so I packed it up in a plastic container, let it cool, and then put it in the freezer. After I showered and dressed and cleaned up the kitchen, I had a couple of scrambled eggs and a small bowl of oatmeal for breakfast (a late breakfast, since it was almost 11), and then settled down in front of the TV. I watched the latest episode of Real Housewives of Orange County*, the second episode of Cashmere Mafia (I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it – I can’t stand the redhead, though, and I’m not crazy about Lucy Liu. Sex and the City, this ain’t. And that’s not a compliment. I’ll give it a few more episodes before I decide whether to keep watching it.), then decided the turkey had been simmering long enough, scooped it out into a bowl to cool (in the refrigerator), put some rice on to cook, and went back to watch… something else. I don’t remember what, though. I actually ended up clearing all my shows off the DVR, and had to turn to the The O.C. disk I’ve had for months. I watched an episode, then Fred got home and I decided I was done watching TV. At some point during the afternoon, I went through the turkey and pulled all the meat off the bones and shredded it, then took two small casserole dishes, put a layer of rice, a layer of turkey and a layer of turkey gravy, then covered each dish with tinfoil and stuck them in the freezer. When we’re in the mood for turkey and rice casserole, all I’ll need to do is butter some crumbs, put them on top of the casserole, and bake. Yum! Speaking of the turkey, I don’t know how I did it, but on Sunday I made the BEST turkey I’ve ever made. It was still slightly frozen when I put it in the roaster, so maybe that was it, and I roasted it breast-down (not on purpose – I cannot for the life of me tell when a turkey is breast-up or breast-down, it’s one of my many failings), so maybe THAT was it, but whatever the hell I did, that was some FINE turkey. And also, speaking of food, last week I made a batch of black-eyed peas with crushed garlic, a chopped onion, and a chopped piece of turkey bacon, and Fred swore they were the best black-eyed peas he’d ever had. I am SUCH the Suzy Homemaker.
*My opinion on this week’s The Real Housewives of Orange County, cut and pasted from an email: Quinn drives me CRAZY, and I don’t know if it’s her hypocrisy (I love how one minute she’s all “Praise the lawd!” with her mother, and the next she’s all “I must release my physical side! I am a sensual woman!”, oh is THAT what it says in the bible, don’t sleep with people you’re not married to EXCEPT when you have to release your physical side? Yeah, I know, she covered it with “Jesus didn’t come to save the perfect people, he came to save THE SINNERZ!”) or the fact that she and Billy are SO AWKWARD around each other (though I’ll concede that maybe it’s just because the cameras are around), but I can tell you that I cannot STAND the way she says his name. I can’t even describe the way she says it, but it drives me up a WALL. And I don’t know about Billy, that man must have hidden talents or something, because he comes across as kind of sleazy and smug and UGH. Tamra drives me crazy too, with her “OMG! I AM SO OLD!” and the botox and talking about getting a FACE LIFT, but y’know, last week when she was going to get smaller implants put in (after the doctor told her she wouldn’t be happy without any implants at all) and Simon said something like “I wouldn’t be happy with little mosquito bites”, I just wanted to smack him. I mean, god almighty – does it occur to him that her breasts aren’t about HIM? He’s an ass. They’re both asses, and the fact that her kid is spoiled rotten and only wants to party and have money handed to him – where does she think that CAME from? Did you see the flashbacks with Lauri to the first season? She’s CLEARLY had some work done since, and it’s not to her benefit. I just don’t get why women would do that to their faces! She’s just so scary and plastic looking, and I don’t get how that’s attractive to George. He might as well be marrying a RealDoll! Vicki needs to watch her step – she’s going to end up with her ass divorced and Jeana married to her husband if she doesn’t watch out (though honestly I don’t really think Jeana would do that – they’re just trying to make it look that way). She can claim that she’s having the time of her life, but she is a ticking timebomb and she’s one of those people who sucks the oxygen right out of the room and has a temper tantrum if she thinks she’s not the center of attention. The shrieking – MY GOD, the shrieking!
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Newtles and his stuck-out tongue.
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Previously 2007: An entry in pictures. 2006: I’m not germ-phobic or anything, but GAG ME. 2005: Stuff I Bought. 2004: No entry. 2003: Frequently asked questions. 2002: I love me some messing around with the camera. 2001: I was being subjected to porn without realizing it! 2000: Ben and me, we had sex in the back of a van.]]>