March 2010 – Page 3

3/5/10 – Friday

Yesterday morning, I had breakfast with friends (cat-lovin’ friends, so there was plenty of talk about poop and worms and such at breakfast, of course, which always makes me laugh. I know it sounds gross, but there’s very little you can talk about at a meal that will put me off my feed these days.). Before I left the house, I noticed that I seemed a bit colder than the weather (mid-30s warranted), and while I was eating breakfast, I was REALLY cold despite the fact that I could feel the warm air coming down from the vent nearby. Then on the way home, I had the heat turned up full-blast and wondered why I was so cold, and suddenly the light bulb went on over my head, and I felt my forehead.

When I got home, I took my temperature with the new thermometer, and it read 99.9. Then I took my temperature with the OLD thermometer, and it read 100.3. Then a few minutes later, I used the new thermometer again, and it read 100.4.

So even though they couldn’t seem to agree on the exact number, it was clear I had a damn fever along with some lovely chills. I also felt really, really tired and had a headache. I took some Tylenol and then called Fred to discuss whether I should call my gynecologist to report the fever. I had no other symptoms that the piece of paper they gave me before I left the hospital listed, and I just KNEW if I called the office they’d want me to come in, and I had NO desire to schlep my ass all the way across Huntsville, given the way I felt.

Ultimately, we decided that I should go take a nap and see if the Tylenol would bring my fever down.

I got my bottle of water and was going to head to the living room to lay down on the couch under my electric throw, when I noticed that there were four cats gathered around the wash stand, in the dining room. From under the wash stand, I could hear a cat banging around and growling. At first I figured that one of the cats had a toy he was protecting from the other cats, and almost walked away. I decided to make sure it wasn’t something more, and I was about to get on my hands and knees and look under the wash stand, when Jake shot out, a huge fucking vole in his mouth. He was going to run down the hallway, saw me, and changed course into the kitchen.

“Really?” I said grumpily to the other cats. “We NEEDED another good hunter in the house? You think? I blame you,” I said to Newt. When I’d gotten home, Newt was out in the side yard watching a vole run around, and occasionally pouncing on it. I opened the door and called him inside, and he’d come in willingly enough. The vole ran off in the direction of the driveway, and I figured it would run across the driveway and into the foliage between the garage and workshop. Apparently, instead, it ran into the back yard and into the jaws of Jake. (Fred, by the way, is SO proud of Loony Jake and his huntin’ ways.)

I followed Jake into the kitchen. He went to the corner near the sink, dropped the vole, then snatched it up again by the scruff, and growled at me. I grabbed Jake by the scruff, shuddered, grabbed the vole by the tail, and Jake released it.

This vole, I’m telling you, was a big motherfucker. We’re seeing a lot of big voles lately, it seems. I guess baby vole season hasn’t started yet. Its body was bigger than my fist. But I had it by the tail (UGH) and carried it out beyond the garage and let it go.

I got inside, grabbed my bottle of water, and headed for the living room. I got my heated throw, turned it on, and started to lay down on the couch, when I smelled the distinctive smell that drives me to a homicidal rage.

Someone had peed somewhere.

I spent the next ten minutes sniffing every damn inch of my couch before I found that one of the pillows had been peed upon. I gathered up all the pillows, tossed them in the washer, told all the cats that I hated them, resniffed the couch, determined that the source of the smell was gone, and was just about to lay down when Fred called to see how I was doing. I took my temperature, and it had gone down to the mid-90s. It continued to drop down to normal (my temperature regularly runs about 97.2) and never came back.

I continued to feel really sleepy all afternoon, so I mostly sat on the couch and watched TV (I would really love to know how the holy fuck they’re going to wrap up Lost in the next 10 episodes, given that the storylines seem to be meandering with no forward motion lately). Last night, we watched 24, which I completely slept through, and Survivor, which I did not.

I slept pretty well last night, and this morning I feel perfectly fine.

Very weird.

(And yes, if the chills and fever come back, I’ll go to the doctor. I promise!)

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I saw this on People of Walmart. I wonder if anyone ever submitted a picture of you when you’re buying 80 lbs of kitty litter.

Better watch your back!

I only check out People of Walmart occasionally, so I’m actually not sure – do they only post pictures of people in Walmart, or do they include other stores? Because if it’s Walmart only, I’m safe – I get my litter at Sam’s! 🙂

And 80 lbs of cat litter? I WISH I only bought 80 pounds at a time. It’s more like 400 pounds at a time! I seem to recall (though I’m too lazy to go looking for it) posting a picture once of the inside of the back of my car with 10 40-pound buckets of litter, two huge bags of cat food, and another ton of canned cat food.

If you guys see a picture of me posted on People of Walmart or elsewhere, you better tell me!

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Is it just me, or is this Mr. MFSW and a room full of partying cheerleaders?

If it is him, way to spend your interweb photo royalty checks, Grandpa!

For comparison purposes, Mr. “Motherfucker say what?!”:

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I had severe endo too, and they had to switch to abdominal incision from the laparoscopic because of this. This was 4 yrs ago and it’s the best thing I could have done! I’m on bio-identical hormones. Have you decided on which kind of hormones? Or is your head spinning at the thought of that so soon??!!

Right now, I’m on an estrogen patch and progesterone cream and feeling good, but I’m reading about my options. I finished The Hormone Solution the other day, and just started What Your Doctor Might Not Tell You About Menopause this morning. At this point, I’m much preferring the latter to the former, mostly because I’m disturbed by the fact that Dr. Erika Schwartz (the doctor/ author who wrote the first book) “prescribes” Progesterone cream in the following dose: 5-7 mg per kg of body per day. When I figured that out, it was 360 mg of Progesterone per day. The conventional wisdom (and what Dr. John Lee, the late doctor/ co-author of the second book and pioneer in the field of bioidentical hormones) “prescribes” is 20 mg per day. Needless to say, that’s a huge difference.

But anyway, I’m going to keep reading, and discuss it all with my doctor at my 6-week checkup!

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You need some of these!

Indeed I do!

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do you follow “shit my dad says” on twitter? if you’re not, you should really check it out. in any case, that old curmudgeon in the photo sort of looks like the shit my dad says guy!

I do follow that guy on Twitter, and it usually makes me laugh. And you’re right, I see the resemblance!

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After my hysterectomy, and despite my 9″ incision, I was feeling good pretty quickly. I asked my doctor if I could do more than he’d originally given me permission to do. He gave me some great advice, which is that after major surgery, your body heals at a rate of approximately 10% per week. So even tho I was feeling 75% better, my body had only healed 10%. And just in case I still thought I knew better, he told me that the result of over-doing it could be herniating my incision and having to start over with the staples. Needless to say, I stayed put. Argh.

Herniating my incision is my biggest fear! I am definitely taking it easy, but also REALLY looking forward to the next three weeks being over and getting the clearance from my doctor to get back to business as usual. I’m enjoying the downtime, but it’s kind of starting to get old!

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Can I tell you my horror story of stuff in the wall, can I, can I??? Anywho, last summer, we kept hearing sounds in the wall and ceiling. We thought they were bats. We figured first frost, they’d go away. Ummmm, nope. After hearing fluttering in the wall that turned into purring noises, we called the exterminator. We had a yellow jacket nest about 6 ft wide by 2 ft tall in the wall over the doorway to our kitchen. The purring noise was all bajillion and one of them buzzing their wings at the same time to cool the nest. Yeah. SUCK! So $1200 later and our house is pest free. For now.

That is the CREEPIEST (and yet COOLEST) story EVER.

Pictures, please?

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What do you guys do to keep the dogs’ fur from matting with all the dirt and outdoor living?

Fred brushes them pretty regularly, which seems to do the trick (and you should SEE the amount of hair he gets off them!). They do very occasionally get a mat, and we carefully clip out the mat with small scissors.

What amazes me about the dogs is how incredibly dirty they get, and then the next morning you see them, and they’re absolutely pristine. I always say their fur must be made of Teflon. The dirt slides right off!

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I live with my sister, and she’s the “handyman” of the house. This sounds exactly like something I would of said. “Oh yeah… she brought in a CHAINSAW to cut a hole in the wall.” LOL!!!

For those of you who didn’t see Fred’s comment, he didn’t bring a circular saw in to cut through the wall, it was a jig saw. IN MY DEFENSE, the handles on the jig saw and the circular saw are very similar, and I guess I didn’t look that closely at the saw – just saw the handle, and my brain filled in the rest, erroneously.

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Personally, I think cold snaps, but warm spells.

That’s right, warm SPELL is what I was looking for. Doesn’t “cold snap” make it sound like the cold is a living thing that comes up and flicks you on the nose and runs away giggling while you’re sputtering and trying to figure out what just happened?

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…do you mind being facebook friends with your readers? Or do you reserve it for people you really know? (In other words, if I try to friend you, it won’t freak you out, will it?)

I love to be Facebook friends with my readers! And I’m not that easily freaked out. 🙂 You can find me on Facebook here. I don’t update my status all that often, but I enjoy checking out everyone else’s!

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Stinkerbelle in one of her rare un-hatin’ moments.

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Previously
2009: DAMNIT.
2008: Q. What is the last heavy item you lifted? A. Miz Poo!
2007: “Yeah, it’s really fleein’ the interview,” Fred said.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: You suppose they’d mind if I went over after dark and pressed my face up against the window to see what’s going on?
2003: Maybe I should go for the dreadlocks look…
2002: Any resemblance to persons living or dead are completely coincidental. I don’t fart.
2001: every Mulvaney shat gold upon command three times a day.
2000: Here at casa bitchypoo, we believe in extremely lazy Sundays.

3/4/10 – Thursday

If you and I are not Facebook BFFs, you might have missed my status update last night. Last night – oh, the horror! – we watched 2012, the apocalyptic movie starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, and two very annoying children. At almost three hours long, it was one bloated piece of crap. Roland Emmerich does … Continue reading “3/4/10 – Thursday”

If you and I are not Facebook BFFs, you might have missed my status update last night.

Last night – oh, the horror! – we watched 2012, the apocalyptic movie starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, and two very annoying children. At almost three hours long, it was one bloated piece of crap. Roland Emmerich does some good-looking destruction shit, but when it’s interlaced with overacting and incredibly annoying children, well, I just hope John Cusack and Amanda Peet were VERY well paid for their parts.

If you’re going to watch it, I recommend you fast-forward through the character development horseshit (except for the parts involving Woody Harrelson, because he’s funny) and just watch the pretty explosions and destruction.

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On the GOOD side of stuff to watch, I finished Season 3 of Californication yesterday, thanks to Webster and her suggestion of NinjaVideo.net. (THANK YOU, Webster, you’re a life-saver!)

I started watching it on my laptop, and though the picture wasn’t very good (the laptop is getting old), I kept on going, because I HAD to know what the hell happened. Round about episode 9, I updated my DivX player stuff so I wouldn’t have to watch the episodes in Flash, but then whenever I tried to go to the site, something tried to get me to download stop.php, and a check of Google told me it was malware, so I watched the final episodes on my desktop (which I hate to do, because I like to relax while I’m watching TV, damnit!)

But that last episode of the season – WOW. Hank Moody’s been smart-assing his way through life for the first three seasons (minus the last show), but shit got serious in that show, chickens came home to roost, and I’m thinking David Duchovny deserves some sort of acting award for his performance.

I have no idea if there’s going to be a Season 4 (I hope there is), but if not, that was a pretty good way to close out the series.

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You’ve met Mr. “MOTHERFUCKER SAY WHAT?!”, right?

Meet his brother, Mr. “THE FUCK YOU SAY!”

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According to weather.com, it’s supposed to be warm and sunny for at least the next five days. I don’t know that I believe it, but it’s nice to think it could be true!

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It being that time of year, we’re starting to gear up to get ready to possibly think about planting the garden. Some day.

Last night I ordered seeds for Sungold cherry tomatoes (the best kind of cherry tomatoes there are, in my opinion), swiss chard (which I’ve never had, but I understand it’s like spinach, you can eat it raw in a salad or cook it, and it grows better in hot weather than spinach does), carrots, and catnip. I’m going to have two raised beds behind the back yard this summer – one’s going to be for carrots, and one for catnip. And BOTH will have fences around them so the cats can’t get to ’em!

I tell you, I canNOT wait ’til we get our first tomato of the season. I know it’s ages and ages away, but I’m still looking forward to it a LOT.

Summer can’t get here soon enough.

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“You’re wearing… THAT?”

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Previously
2009: Hail Stinky/ Full of Hate/ The Tom is with thee.
2008: The pigs reported that he tasted “Too humany.”
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: Dumbass things I did yesterday.
2004: I think I need to go back to high school.
2003: “Well, good luck to Daddy on that,” I said.
2002: (You just shut up)
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.

3/3/10 – Wednesday

The snow is gone – it was gone by early afternoon – and what remains is muddy muddy mud. And it’s kinda cold. The air, I mean. Well, I assume the mud is cold as well. There’s nothing going on ’round these parts, so here – some pictures I’ve been saving to share with y’all. … Continue reading “3/3/10 – Wednesday”

The snow is gone – it was gone by early afternoon – and what remains is muddy muddy mud. And it’s kinda cold. The air, I mean. Well, I assume the mud is cold as well.

There’s nothing going on ’round these parts, so here – some pictures I’ve been saving to share with y’all. I think I took them about a month ago (before surgery, at any rate), just so y’all know I really AM still taking it easy, I wasn’t out traipsing around with the camera yesterday.

I saw this little colander at TJ Maxx and really liked it for some reason, so bought it and brought it home to put the eggs that are too small to sell in. Of course, we get a lot more small eggs in the course of a day than we’ll use in that same day, so they tend to build up, and when Fred was making dinner last week, one of the eggs toward the bottom was rotten, so now that colander lives in the fridge.

But I still really like it, no matter where it lives.

Birds in the tree outside the computer window.

One of our Light Brahmas. You probably can’t tell from the picture, but these chickens are HUGE.

Pretty rooster of an unknown breed.

This rooster stood there on one foot for ages. Mud = cold feet.

“What?”

“Whatcha doin’ there, Bob?”
“STANDING ON ONE FOOT, WHAT’S IT TO YOU?!”

I took some leftover scones out to the dogs. They’re so funny – George will just stand right there and eat whatever you give him, but Gracie takes whatever the snack of the moment is, and runs off. Probably so George won’t steal it from her.

::CHOMP::

Miss Stinky in her porthole window. She’s the only cat I’ve ever seen in that window; I wonder if she’s the only one who’s figured out that she can get there from the mantel.

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Previously
2009: “LAYDEES,” he crows. “I SAY! CAN I GET SOME LOVIN’?”
2008: That, my friends, is a powerful stench. And it wasn’t a pleasant one.
2007: No entry.
2006: “MmmHMMM, I KNEW that was going to happen, the dumb bitch was lifting shit long before she was supposed to!”
2005: By the way, Erika: who watches your kids while you’re busy reading PEOPLE and firing off those indignant letters?
2004: Have I mentioned that I adore my DVR?
2003: Ah, you poor damn AOL users.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: See? I always say “Thank you” to the freaking servers at fast food places. Yet all I get in return is rudeness.

3/2/10 – Tuesday

Mother Nature is a whore. Seriously. That’s what it looks like out there right this second. LE SIGH. The dogs are out running the perimeter, which surprised me since in this sort of weather they’re usually lazybonesed up in the coop. Oh well. At least the snow isn’t supposed to stick around for long. (Huh. … Continue reading “3/2/10 – Tuesday”

Mother Nature is a whore. Seriously. That’s what it looks like out there right this second. LE SIGH.

The dogs are out running the perimeter, which surprised me since in this sort of weather they’re usually lazybonesed up in the coop.

Oh well. At least the snow isn’t supposed to stick around for long.

(Huh. Apparently it snowed last March 1st, too. Fucking Mother Nature.)

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It is apparently Elwood’s goal in life to stand or sit or lay so that his asshole is directly against me. I feel like I spend the majority of my life fending off his back end.

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Speaking of assholes, here are a couple of entries in the “Christ, what an asshole” category:

I AM DENISE ALBERT AND I HAVE A CHILD AND NO ONE HAS EVER BIRTHED A CHILD IN THE HISTORY OF HUMANKIND BEFORE, THEREFORE I AM SUPER IMPORTANT BOW TO ME. (She later said, after everyone posted comments talking about what a self-important asshole she is, that she was trying to be funny. DOUBT IT.)

After years of shooting her mouth off to everyone who would listen – and I believe she even wrote a BOOK – about her autistic child who became autistic (in her opinion) due to his MMR vaccinations, and then about how the Healing Powers of Jim Carrey HEE-UHLED! her child, it turns out that self-appointed Voice of Concern Dr. Jenny McCarthy is reversing her position.

I think it’s likely that her exact words were “Oopsie! Nevermind!”

(Please note that I DO NOT CARE whether you vaccinate your child or not. It’s your decision; I vaccinated mine, and I’d do it again. But for the love of god, do research and rely on information from reputable sources rather than from the fucking Hollywood flavor of the moment.)

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One day last week, the cats kept leaping up on top of the canning cabinet (which we use as a pantry, at least until we get the Amish-built pantry that has been sitting in the garage for NINE MONTHS into the house) and staring intently at the wall. I was all “What the FUCK has gotten into you fuckers? GET DOWN!”, but finally Fred realized that there was something going on inside the wall.

There was something moving around in the wall, and it sounded like it was trapped and couldn’t get out.

You can imagine how thrilled I was at the idea that something was trapped inside the wall and couldn’t get out, would ultimately die, and stank up the kitchen.

(Also, probably it was a mouse, and the mice around here are awfully cute. Not that I want one living – or dying – in the walls, you understand.)

We cleared everything off the top of the canning cabinet/ pantry, and Fred went out to his workshop to get a saw.

Newt kept an eye on the wall from close-up.

Suggie kept an eye on the goings-on from across the room.

The mouse in the wall got quiet while Fred was out in his workshop, but when I knocked on the wall, it would start moving around again. It sounded pretty much like it was leaping upward, trying to grab hold of something.

Fred came in from his workshop, and though I’d expected he’d gone out to retrieve some sort of handheld saw to saw a hole through the wall so we could rescue the trapped animal, what he actually came in with was a circular saw. (At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what it was – it had a round blade, and I’ve heard mention of circular saws before, so I put two and two together.)

“That mouse is going to drop dead from a heart attack when you turn that thing on and start sawing,” I said to Fred.

We debated on whether or not Fred should go ahead and cut the hole in the wall, then decided to wait and see if the mouse could figure out a way out on its own. About ten minutes later, we realized we hadn’t heard any more noises from inside the wall. Fred pounded on the wall and waited. Nothing. We waited a little while longer, heard nothing, and – most telling – the cats all lost interest in the wall.

Too bad, though. I’m sure I would have had QUITE the tale if he’d actually had to cut a hole in the wall and tried to grab a mouse to save it. I bet he would have dropped it, and one of the cats would have gotten hold of it and ran off into the house.

Oh well. I’m sure there’ll be other mice (unfortunately).

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Jake and Elwood love to hang out in the foster room on sunny days.

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Previously
2009: March came in like a lion yesterday.
2008: No entry.
2007: “Yes, they’re AWFUL. They taste like my grandmother’s attic*!”
2006: I call him Bob.
2005: Bouncing like that just can’t be a good thing.
2004: “DAMN it’s cold in here, give me some ass!”
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: Let’s just hope she wasn’t preparing him for the slaughter.
2000: No entry.

3/1/10 – Monday

Happy March! New month, new banner. This one was created by the wonderful Christine, who has done many, many of my banners lately. Newt over there in the corner of the banner is cracking me UP. Thanks, Christine!!! * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * … Continue reading “3/1/10 – Monday”

Happy March!

New month, new banner. This one was created by the wonderful Christine, who has done many, many of my banners lately. Newt over there in the corner of the banner is cracking me UP.

Thanks, Christine!!!

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I’m a little bit torn between being really fucking annoyed at Mother Nature – hello! It’s March! In Alabama! This is some ridiculous, cold-ass shit for March in Alabama, and I am ready to have the temperatures consistently in the 50s at least, thank you very much – and being kind of glad that the temps are what they are. Last year, we had a long warm snap (does warmth snap, or is that only for the cold?) in January, which convinced the fruit trees that it was Spring and thus time to blossom, so despite the 300 (slight exaggeration) fruit trees we have, we ended up with very little fruit.

I’m definitely grateful that we haven’t had any rain for a week. Things are still muddy outside, but not as muddy as they were (not that I’d know, I’ve hardly gone outside these last two and a half weeks, but that’s what Fred reports). Of course, we’re due rain and snow tonight, so there you go.

I guess it’s March’s plan to come in like a lion. LE SIGH.

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I did NOTHING yesterday except lay on the couch for hours, reading Fred’s finished masterpiece from beginning to end.

Fred wrote a book, which you might not know if you’re not a regular reader of his site. He wrote it, finished it, edited it, edited it, and edited it yet again before he turned it over to me for a beginning-to-end reading. I knew the plot of the story and had read about half of it in bits and pieces while he was writing it. I also knew most of the plot points, but there were still parts of it that took me by surprise. It’s a real book, and I might be biased (in fact, I likely am), but I think it’s damn good.

Now he’s trying to find an agent, so who knows when y’all will get to read it?

Anyway, I read his book from beginning to end, spent some time online, put some laundry away and nothing else at all, but by the end of the day I was hurting and actually needed to take some of the good drugs to make the pain go away. I was bitching and whining to Fred at bedtime that I was ready to get over this “healing” and “recovery” bullshit, and he pointed out that it’s still been less than three weeks since I’d had surgery.

And I was like, “Are you fucking kidding me?! I thought last Wednesday marked three weeks!!!”

Apparently I lost track of time and thought I was coming up on four weeks, rather than three.

So then I was like, “Huh. Well then, I’m doing pretty damn good for three weeks!”

It’s all about perspective, I guess.

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It’s da Poo.

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Previously
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: Natalie Maines could use some wardrobe advice, though, and I hope I’m not trampling all over her Right to Freely Dress Like a Bag Lady when I say that.
2006: It was so friggin’ cute I made Fred listen to it, too.
2005: I have my finger on the pulse of pop culture, apparently.
2004: A day in the life.
2003: What makes me crazy.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: Okay, enough of the wallowing.