Month: April 2012

This week on Dinosaurs Can’t Eat Pizza, Nance and I made Green Chili Enchilada Bake, and I made the best Banana Bread EVER.

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Longtime readers know my nephew Brian. In fact, you’ve kind of watched him grow up.

Well, Brian is now 20 – he’ll be 21 in August – and last Summer he and his girlfriend, the wonderful Emily, moved in together. They became engaged in the Fall. I don’t have many pics that include Emily (well, I think I have them SOMEWHERE, but I’ll be damned if I can find them!), so here’s one from Brian’s high school graduation. Aren’t they adorable?

On Tuesday, Brian and Emily (after 30 hours of labor) became parents to Alexander, who I’m confident you’ll agree is the most beautiful baby EVER.

My mother made that quilt for Alexander.

This not only makes me a Great-Aunt for the second time (my oldest nephew, Chris, and his girlfriend are the parents to Jordan, who just turned three; they live in Maryland), and my parents Great-Grandparents for a second time, but also makes my younger sister a GRANDMOTHER.

I cannot wait to meet Alexander in person!

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Last week, Fred took Friday off. We’ve been needing to go to the dump for ages now (there are certain things that the garbage men won’t take, so we let a pile build up and then make a trip to the dump every six months or so.) When we were halfway to the dump, Fred said “Our AAA membership is up to date, right?” and I said “Yeah, why?” and he said “The truck was hard to start this morning, I just want to be sure we’ll be okay.”

So we went to the dump and then decided to go by Walmart to check out their fruit trees. We need… oh hell, I don’t know what we need. Fred’s in charge of the fruit trees, and he seems to have a bit of a fruit-tree-hoarding situation going on. Which is fine for now when the trees are pretty small and not producing much fruit, but give me another couple of years and I will be swearing up a STORM about all the goddamn apples/ peaches/ plums/ cherries.

(Actually, those are all pretty easy to preserve, I’m not sure I’ll be swearing TOO much.)

Anyway, the fruit trees at Walmart didn’t meet whatever Fred’s preferences were, so we headed from there to KMart. We looked at the trees at KMart and then decided to head over to Lowe’s.

(Yes, we’d probably be better off going to a nursery, but they are so freakin’ expensive.)

Only the truck wouldn’t start. OF COURSE.

“Did you bring your phone?” I asked.

“No, why?” Fred said.

Well, I hadn’t brought MY phone with me, of course. I’d thought of it when we were walking out the door, but I was so sure that Fred must have his phone that I didn’t bother to go back in and get my (fully charged, sitting right there on my desk) phone.

Fred went into KMart to see if the people at the service desk would let him use the phone. I waited in the car and flipped through an old newspaper. He seemed to be in there a REALLY long time, and I was like “What the FUCK? Is he in there telling them how he likes cheese, just not on a salad, or what?”

Eventually he came out and said that AAA had told him it would be about 50 minutes before the tow truck would show up. We sat, we yawned, we trash-talked the truck.

The tow truck came, and he was nice enough to run us home after we dropped off the truck. It took the garage a day and a half to determine that the issue was with the battery. We were afraid we’d end up having to pay like a thousand bucks to fix the damn thing, but it cost less than $200, thank god.

Now I’d like to win the lottery so we can get a decent truck that we won’t have to worry will die every time we take it somewhere.

We spent the weekend getting the garden planted. It’s planted now, but nothing’s more than a few inches tall. I swore last year that I was only going to do one row of tomatoes this year, and by god I stuck to it! I will have plenty of cherry tomatoes, and I cannot WAIT to eat tomatoes this summer.

Fred planted twice as much corn this year as last, because we both love the hell out of corn. All of the corn I cut off the cob and froze has been eaten already, and we only have a few frozen ears of corn left.

I harvested the carrots that grew all Winter in my raised bed, and then harvested the cabbage that grew all Winter in another raised bed, and planted garlic chives in one raised bed, dill and cilantro in another raised bed, and transplanted lettuce and spinach into the last raised bed (catnip is growing in the last raised bed). Fred has so enjoyed the carrots that I harvested, that he’s actually talking about making long, narrow raised beds to plant carrots and cabbage in this Winter.

This year, like every year in the past, I’m thinking that we need to have a permanent asparagus bed. Probably we’ll just talk about it and never actually do anything about it.

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Saturday morning, I glanced out the window and saw Elwood running across the back yard with a dead mole in his mouth. (Stupid moles; don’t they know better than to enter a back yard stuffed to the brim with cats?) I ran for the back door in hopes that I could head him off before he brought the damn thing into the house. I reached the laundry room as he burst through the cat door, and I bellowed “NO!” at the top of my lungs. He immediately spun around and flew back through the door as I followed.

We have a couple of pieces of wood in the back yard propped up against each other – we call it “the tepee” – and Elwood ended up under there with his kill. I dithered about it for a few minutes, but he didn’t seem inclined to leave the tepee and bring the dead mole inside, so I decided to just leave him where he was, since he was already cleaning his mole in preparation for dining upon it.

For the next hour I checked on him frequently, and he was in the tepee (I didn’t look any closer than just glancing to see if he was still in there). The other cats hovered around the tepee, but none of them actually entered the abattoir.

Eventually, of course, I forgot about him, and I wandered upstairs to hang out with Emmy and the kittens. When I came back downstairs, Jake was laying under the dining room table looking smug and self-satisfied.

There in front of him was the back half of a dead mole.

(Do you like how I qualified that it was the back half of a DEAD mole? As if perhaps you might think that the back half of a LIVE mole would be laying there kicking?)

I called Fred inside and asked him to dispose of the half-mole, which he did (he put it in the pig bucket, and don’t EVEN give me that look. Pigs will eat anything, and better the half-mole go to feed them than lay moldering and stinky somewhere.)

Monday morning I got up and was doing my usual morning stuff (scooping litter boxes, opening blinds) when I found a dead mole (whole. A whole-mole.) laying on the rug by the front door.

You know, seriously, WHAT THE FUCK. I had to pick it up (I might have used the litter scoop), and I put it in the pig bucket.

(Again: don’t GIVE me that look, damnit.)

Since Monday, I’ve been a tiny bit skittish about the fact that we have about 300 cat toys that look VERY MUCH like dead moles. A hundred times I’ve been like “OH CHRIST, WHERE ARE THEY GETTING ALL THESE – oh. A toy.”

I think that all we need now is to have a madly squawking baby bird brought into the house and I’ll be able to declare that summer is HERE.

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PS: Someone asked if I ever found the half-dead Brown Recluse. I found him four days later when I was vacuuming the upstairs bathroom. He was hiding UNDER the litter box AND HE WAS STILL ALIVE (though barely). I’m pretty sure that I saw “bomb” on his list before he ate it so I couldn’t charge him with anything. I stomped on him and then sucked him up with the vacuum cleaner attachment. Then I emptied the vacuum cleaner directly into a small trash bag, put that trash bag into another, knotted it closed, and took it out to the big trash can.

I pity the fool who has to take Zombie Spider to the curb for the trash guys to pick up, ’cause it ain’t gonna be ME.

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Previously
2011: All that work for nothin’, damnit.
2010: Yesterday I told Shelly (whose husband found work after 10 months, yay!) that I’m trying to embrace my inner frugal bitch.
2009: No entry.
2008: An impromptu Saturday entry to share cool links with y’all.
2007: (What I wanted to say: YOUR MOTHER. Now go to bed!)
2006: So, in essence, the fucking DVR TATTLED on me.
2005: E’gar goes into the shop.
2004: I must be mumbling or something today. Everyone I’ve spoken to has looked at me like I’m speaking French and they can’t understand what the hell I’m saying.
2003: No entry.
2002: Blah blah blah.
2001: No entry.
2000: “Um… you mean, she lies on your butt to muffle your farts?” he ventured.

This morning, I saw a spider crawling across the ceiling of the bathroom. It had that particularly leggy look that Brown Recluses have (I know there’s another way to tell that they’re Brown Recluses, some mark on their back or something, but it’s the long skinny legs that always tip me off), so I looked around for a way to kill it. We didn’t have a fly swatter upstairs (and I don’t think a fly swatter would have reached the ceiling, anyway) and I was afraid that if I came downstairs to get the Dyson handheld, the spider would disappear. Finally, I saw the broom hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and I clipped the dustpan over the bristles, and tried to squash the spider.

I got it about half-squashed, and then decided to knock him to the floor, where I could finish the squashing and toss him in the toilet and then flush (and yes, that’s like 38.6 gallons of water that’s totally WASTED, but you must always flush the dead poisonous spider or it will come back to life, crawl out of the toilet, and come to find you). So I scraped the dustpan along the ceiling, expecting that the spider would kind of stick to the edge of the dustpan and… he disappeared. He wasn’t on the dustpan, nor was he on the bristles, and I couldn’t see him on the floor anywhere. I grabbed the flashlight and shone it in every conceivable spot and he was nowhere to be seen.

So what I’m telling you is that there’s a half-crippled, possibly rabid, REALLY pissed off Brown Recluse on the loose, and he’s coming for me.

Should I go ahead and pick out Fred’s next wife now, y’think, or just let him be a merry widower for a while and then he can pick out his own wife?

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Man, I don’t think I’d be Princess Kate (or whatever the hell they’re calling her. The Duchess of something-or-other. You know, Wills’s WIFE. You remember the wedding from sometime last year, I presume?) for a million dollars and a tiara. First they were dating and all the entertainment magazines were howling for a wedding. Then the wedding was announced and the entertainment magazines were frothing for details of the dress and all that. Now they’re screaming for a pregnancy. How much stress must that put on a newlywed couple, particularly the bride? She goes out in something the slightest bit less than form-fitting or had a late night and slumps a little, and they’re all “BUMP WATCH! WHEN IS THE BABY DUE?”. She wears something that IS form-fitting and they’re all “PRINCESS KATE IS WAY TOO SKINNY, THE PALACE IS CONCERNED!”, all rife with “quotes” from “insiders” about how “the queen” is all “That bitch is too skinny! How’s she gonna carry an heir and a spare when she’s got no meat on her bones?!”

If I were Princess Kate, I’d have a daily announcement to the tabloids. I’d come out onto the balcony, all dressed to the nines with my tiara (she has her own tiara, I hope) and make a speech.

“Paparazzi! I am not, at this moment, pregnant. I did have an extra slice of pizza last night, thus the bloat. Please move along, nothing to see here! Pip pip!”

(Don’t I have an excellent British accent?)

Isn’t he off with the Royal Army/ Air Force/ Navy/ Marines or something? Wasn’t there a big fuss about how Kate’s ALL ALONE but she’s managing to muddle through? See, obviously I’m not paying enough attention to the royals. Back when Diana and Charles were first married, I devoured every single bit of information I could about her. I have the book that came out right after they were married, and though she’s gone (and the happily-ever-after was bullshit anyway), I can’t quite bring myself to donate the book or pack it away. I know she had her issues, but DAMN I loved me some Princess Diana.

I still can’t believe she’s gone.

Pip pip!

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Previously
2011: No entry.
2010: No entry.
2009: (What can I say? They were priced REALLY well, and I’m a sucker for cat toys.)
2008: “So, would you want a pregnant cat?” she asked hopefully.
2007: It can’t happen soon enough, if you ask me.
2006: Taking the week off.
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003: “Helloooooo, Fancypants! Hey, buddy, whatchoo doin’?” I said in my special Fancypants voice.
2002: Know what I’m thinking? Psycho stalker, desperate to come into the house, rape and rob us and leave us for dead, stealing the computers and the big-screen TV on the way out.
2001: I should have stayed in bed this morning.
2000: No entry.

This week over at Dinosaurs Can’t Eat Pizza, Nance and I made “Healthified” Italian Sausage Egg Bake. One of us is too stupid to follow directions correctly. You’ll have to go read to find out who it is (spoiler: it’s not Nance).

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Hello Robyn,

Attached is your order confirmation for Saturday, August 11 2012. If you do need to make any changes, feel free to let us know no later than Wednesday, August 8 2012 by 5pm to ensure we can accommodate the changes. Just reminder, the tiered stand is due back to our shop during business hours on Sunday, August 12 2012. We are open from 10am to 4pm.

Apparently Canadian Robyn Anderson is getting married (or hosting a wedding) in August. How sweet! Awww, I remember when she was a college student and too dumb to know her own goddamn email address. Hasn’t gotten smarter in the three years since then, I guess. Probably all those study groups she missed!

Pretty sure I’m going to print out the receipt and mail it to her with a note that says “Congrats on your wedding! I’d super appreciate it if you’d figure out your own email address, STUPID. xoxo, Robyn Anderson of the United States.”

Wow. 10 dozen cupcakes! That’s a lot of cupcakes. I should show up on the day of the wedding, all “I got the invoice, I figured I was invited!”

I hope that dumbass doesn’t expect me to pay for the cupcakes.

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I went to Walmart yesterday morning because I wanted to look for plants for the big plant pots that go on the front porch. We went to the high school last weekend to look at the plants they had for sale, but I think it was just too early in the season – they didn’t have anything that floated my boat. Neither did Lowe’s. At first I wasn’t able to find anything at Walmart that I particularly liked, then I went outside the store – you know, the plants they have lined up outside? – and found some Begonias and Impatiens that I thought were pretty.

I haven’t put them in the planters yet, because I have to mix up some dirt from Dirt Mountain and a few scoops of chicken litter from the compost heap and mix them together and put them in the planters, and OH it was just too much work for me to contemplate after a trip to Walmart.

I also bought a cat bed because I wanted to donate a cat bed filled with cat toys and treats for Cat Tales (the Challenger’s House fundraiser), and as USUAL I waited ’til the last moment (Cat Tales is Friday night), and I found a bed that I liked, but do you suppose I could find a price tag anywhere? OF COURSE NOT. I ended up doing a Google search on my phone while I stood there in the aisle to make sure it wasn’t, like, $50 (it wasn’t).

When I got home, I went to all my toy-hiding spots (there’s a big box in my closet, some jars of cat toys in the front room, and even more in my desk drawer. It’s an illness, I’m telling you) and found a bunch of really good cat toys (a lot of Kong toys that I got for a song at Barking Deals), some good cat treats, and a mouse chaser. Whoever gets that thing is going to get some awesome, awesome stuff.

Then, because Fred had a half day off from work, we went up to the shelter to drop off the cat bed & toys, as well as 8 jars of habanero jam, with the shelter manager. It was a really pretty day, so it was nice to get out of the house for a while.

We’d talked about getting the summer squash planted yesterday – since Fred had his half day off – but neither of us really wanted to do that much work, so we put it off. We’ll get it done over the weekend.

I’d also planned to get my tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach, and cabbage planted in the garden, but in a surprise twist, Mother Nature gave us a bit of a cold snap (not really COLD, more kind of COOL), and it was supposed to get down to 32 last night, so I’ll probably do that this weekend, too.

This is such an awesome time of the year. I love watching our garden grow. I remembered to get a picture of the garden before we started planting (actually, I think Fred may have already planted the corn before I took the picture, but the garden LOOKS unplanted, and that’s what matters), and I’m hoping to remember to take a picture every two weeks or month (I haven’t decided which) to document the growth.

I had intended to drive the sweeper around the property Tuesday morning, but I couldn’t get the GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING PIECE OF SHIT riding lawnmower to start, so I was all “FUCK YOU, YOU STUPID GRASS CLIPPINGS YOU JUST GO AHEAD AND STAY RIGHT THERE.” When Fred got home from work he couldn’t get the mower started either, so he called the lawnmower repairman, Billy. Then he went out and messed around with something, and by the time Billy showed up 10 minutes later, he had it running. So I made him hook up the sweeper for me, and I spent about an hour going around the front and side yards and sweeping up the clippings, which I dumped into a pile by the garden. When the plants are big enough, I’m going to put empty feed bags around them, and then pile grass clippings on top of the bags (the grass clippings are a trick I learned from Katherine, mother to Nate and Dora, Kara’s kittens who were previously known as River and Inara). I’m hoping that this year is the year we get the low-maintenance garden. Well, low-maintenance as far as not having to weed.

We’ll see how that turns out.

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2011: It was the kittens that made me feel better.
2010: (We call him “Creepy Cousin Spanky” when he acts like that.)
2009: No entry.
2008: If you see my bottle of Feliway, please send it home. Thankyew.
2007: “If a fluffy black cat prances across the yard, goes upstairs and shits on the carpet, could you give us a call?”
2006: “Hmm,” I said, like that meant something to me.
2005: Just because the fuckers are talking to me doesn’t mean I’m obligated to listen to their bullshit, does it?
2004: Hey, you know how I always say Ben Affleck has a humongous noggin?
2003: No entry.
2002: Apparently the Committee for Deciding Who is Hellbound was meeting in the waiting room.
2001: “Jesus has arrived in Madison,” he said nonchalantly.
2000: Now that, my friends, is wickedly fast.

Yesterday at Dinosaurs Can’t Eat Pizza, I posted my favorite risotto recipe. It’s made in the microwave, so you risotto purists might want to skip it (or go over there and be horrified, whatever works for you).

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So, remember how I had that hysterectomy two years ago? And then my gynecologist strongly recommended that I go on an estrogen patch due to my age. (And how what she meant was that I am a bit young to go without those hormones, but what Fred assumed she meant when she said “at your age” was that I am ANCIENT because he is stupid?) So I went on the patch and then I was like “Well, what happens if I go off the patch?” I went off the patch, and nothing at all happened, no hot flashes, nothing at all, I was FINE. Then I saw her last January and she was like “Mmm, yeah. I STRENUOUSLY OBJECT to your going without estrogen because I am old school and I think you should just do what I tell you to do, stupid, and also I have zero bedside manner and you hate me.”

(I might be paraphrasing.)

I waited until after I had my breast/ upper arm/ neck lift last February, and then I waited until after I had my neck lift revision in October, and then finally I started back on the patch in November. And I swore to myself that I would stay on the damn thing for at least three months and then I’d see how I was doing. And nothing much happened as a result of being on the patch, no difference in anything except that I gained some weight.

(Which is probably due more to the surgeries I had last year, because I have perhaps mentioned that every time I have surgery I gain 10 pounds and eventually it comes back off and I HAD SURGERY TWICE LAST YEAR AND I THINK YOU CAN DO THE MATH.)

So last week I was replacing the patch on Monday, and I thought to myself, I thought “Self, this is utterly goddamn motherfucking ridiculous. I was FINE off the patch, never had a single hot flash, perfectly perfectly fucking FINE, why am I dealing with these goddamn things?” Because those patches are ANNOYING with their adhesive and trying to figure out where to put them.

A reasonable person would have done a slow step-down off the patch, but have I ever claimed to be reasonable? I have not. So I took that patch off, and I’ve been off them ever since.

And the hormonal wallop has turned me into a raving fucking lunatic. I misread a recipe earlier this week and I was in a RAGE. I wanted to track down the writer of the recipe and I wanted to kill them DEAD. Fred was all “Ha ha, well we can still use this food, we’ll just do this”, and I wanted to stab him in the face. I was playing Words with Friends one morning, and each game was taking for-fucking-ever to load, and I wanted to HURL the fucking thing across the room. I had this actual conversation with myself in my head:

Irrational lunatic asshole me: I am going to throw this goddamn thing across the room at the wall SO FUCKING HARD that I am going to dislocate my shoulder and I will need a sling, and that is FUCKING FINE because it will be SO SO SO SATISFYING.

Rational reasonable asshole me (I cannot stand that rational voice in my head, she is SO GODDAMN ANNOYING): Don’t do that, because then you will have NO iPod to watch Gossip Girl on and you will have NO iPod to get your ass kicked on in WWF games and you will have NOTHING sitting on the bedside table to grab and use as a flashlight in the middle of the night when you have to pee!

Irrational: I WILL THROW THIS FUCKING THING AGAINST THE WALL AND IT WILL MAKE ME BRIEFLY SUPER SUPER SUPER HAPPY.

Rational: NO. Put it down. PUT IT DOWN!

And so on. Rational won out (fucking bitch, she almost always wins) and I put the iPod down and I flailed around in bed and yelled “COOOOOOOOOOOOOOME OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!”, then got up and stomped off to take my shower.

I am a pure delight to live with right now, I tell you what. In the rare calm moments, I have apologized to Fred, telling him that I KNOW I’m being irrational, that I can say to myself “You are being irrational right now”, but I cannot stop myself. It’s fucking insane. If I didn’t know that it will take about two weeks to pass – but that it WILL pass – I think I would be throwing myself off the nearest cliff or kicking chickens or something.

(Note: I would never kick a chicken. I might stab Fred in the face, though.)

(“TONIGHT on News at 10! She wrote on the internet that she was going to stab her husband in the face AND THEN SHE DID! Coming up in 10 minutes!”)

In no particular order, things which have recently annoyed, pissed me off, or crossed my irrational bitch radar.

1. My spell check knows how to spell Rihanna’s name better than I do. Why is that in my spell check? What the fuck? Anyway, I heard some song on the radio and I was like “Who’s this, I kind of like this song.” and Fred was all “Rihanna.” and I was all “Ugh.” and he was all “I take it you don’t like her?” and I was all “No, I find her repugnant.” Then he laughed and asked why and I said “I don’t care if she wants to get back together with Chris Brown, it is her right as an adult to have sexytime with whatever consenting adult reciprocates the interest, but as a (god knows why) public figure she’s got all these little girls WATCHING her, and I think she’s got a duty to be aware of that and fucking DENY that she would ever have anything to do with a man who would beat the shit out of her.” Fred said, “So she should lie?” And I said “Oh, right. Lying to the entertainment press is completely unheard-of, she should never do THAT. Shut up before I stab you in the face.”

2. Penn Badgley. God, I hate his stupid, smug, smarmy fucking face. HATE HIM SO MUCH. We watched Margin Call last weekend and as soon as I saw him, I was like “I did not know HE was in this. UGH. I HATE HIM.” I had to look away from the TV every time he was on, because oh god I hate him so much. HATE HIM. I wish Chuck Bass would man up and push him off the nearest tall building.

3. That actress who plays the wife on Awake. Cannot stand her. Her voice is, like, baby talk. It makes me want to stab myself in the eardrums repeatedly. You know who’d be better in that role? Dexter’s wife. She’s got a similar look and voice and doesn’t make me want to commit mayhem. This makes me hope that the reality where the wife is alive is the dream. SO ANNOYING.

4. How the Alzheimer’s seems to be taking over my brain, and I can’t have a fucking conversation without having to come around to the topic by meandering is 63 other directions first. “Who’s that? She looks familiar,” Fred said when we were watching Margin Call. “She’s, oh, I can’t remember her name.” I said. “She’s the sister of the actress who’s married to Brad Paisley. Who was the girl in Father of the Bride. She’s, oh, she dated whatshisface on How I Met Your Mother. Kimberly Williams! Was her sister. She dated the guy, not Barney, come on. She was a baker?” And on and on and ON. (Ashley Williams was her name.)

5. God, I hate Penn Badgley. His stupid fucking name doesn’t even look like it’s spelled right. I just saw his face because I had to look on IMDB to re-remember Ashley Williams’s name. I HATE HIM SO MUCH.

6. Does this blanket look navy blue to you?

No, right? It looks purple? So why, when I dyed a white blanket with a bottle of navy blue dye, did it come out purple? I’d be more annoyed, but I think it’s kind of pretty. (Also, Corbie looks kind of greenish there for some reason, but the color of the blanket is what it looks like in person. If that makes sense.)

7. Why, when I am at the grocery store, do I feel guilty buying Coke products in front of the Pepsi guy, and vice versa? (Note: I loathe Pepsi products; Fred’s the Pepsi drinker. Ugh.) They don’t actually care, do they? Yet I skulk down the aisle, apologetically put the bottles in my cart, and scuttle away as fast as I can.

8. I am not even going to reread this thing, because I have kittens to cuddle. THANK GOD for the kittens. If you see any typos, let me know and I’ll fix them. Or not. Depends on how annoyed I am by them!

Tell me about your recent irrational bitch moments. I love a good irrational bitch story.

PS: God in heaven, I loathe Penn Badgley.

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Previously
2011: Meet the McMaos.
2010: She’s not pregnant. She’s just big-boned.
2009: (The smell of boiling chicken livers: gag me.)
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: Now, I’m sure I’d rather be skinny and bald than fat and hairified, but what I’d MUCH prefer to be is skinny and hairified, thanks.
2005: I think that a more accurate description would be “covered the annoyance of itching by making your skin feel as though you’re being set on fire.”
2004: Meme.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: Fred’s such a bastard.

This week at Dinosaurs Can’t Eat Pizza, Nance and I made Brown Sugar & Balsamic Glazed Pork Loin. Spoiler: SO GOOD. You’ve got to go over and check out the balsamic vinegar that’s apparently been sitting in my cupboard since 1862. Gah.

Also, I find it appalling how damn CLEAN her crock pot is. Damn her.

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Once upon a time, I said that if keeping up this site ever felt like an obligation rather than a pleasure, I’d shut it down.

Truthfully, it’s been feeling like an obligation for a while now. Don’t get all up in arms, I’m not shutting Bitchypoo down. I’ll repeat and bold that for you damn skimmers (you know I love you) :

I am not shutting Bitchypoo down.

I am making changes, though. I’m having a hard time coming up with non-cat-related shit to talk about, probably you’ve noticed. This isn’t because I’m hiding anything from y’all. I wish I had some big secret that NOW I CAN REVEAL ALL about, but I don’t. My life’s not that exciting. Things are pretty calm around here, and that’s very much how I prefer it.

So here’s what I’m doing: I won’t be posting at Bitchypoo 5 days a week anymore. How often will I be posting? Well, I don’t know. I’m not going to write here unless I have something to say and/or need to let the obscenities fly. Twice a week, maybe? I truly don’t know at this point.

I will be posting over at Love & Hisses 5 (sometimes 6 or 7) days a week. All the cat stuff will be posted over there. If I feel the need to create a obscenity-laden cat post, it’ll be over here. Crooked Acres Thursday? Over there. If you have a comment (here at Bitchypoo) that needs a response, I’ll answer it in the comments. Unless it’s cat-related, in which case I’ll answer it over at Love & Hisses.

Robyn, you might be saying. We don’t care if you write about all that cat stuff over here. Just do it over here! Well, the thing is that it’s a pain in the ass to write the post and then have to cut and paste it, and then when I do something dumb like mess up a link, I then have to go to several different pages and edit it on each page, and I know that sounds petty, but GOD is it a pain in the ass.

Listen, I love Bitchypoo and I love that I’ve had this site for so long (13 years in October!) and I plan to keep it going as long as I have something to say and obscenities to spew, but it’s just not going to be as often. I’d like to promise that fewer posts will mean higher quality but, I don’t think there’s any threat of THAT.

On the days that there will be posts here, they’ll be published at 6 am (central time). You can always join the notify list (I only send out an email when there’s a post; I don’t share your email address with anyone, but I can’t promise that Google Groups doesn’t), and of course there are always feed readers (I don’t truncate my posts because I find that annoying).

So.. there you go. That’s how it’ll be from here on out. I suspect some of you will be disappointed, and I’m sorry for that, but this is what works for me, you know?

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(This is where you’d expect to see kitten pics and stories, and permanent resident pics. Those are now located over at Love & Hisses. Sorry for the pain-in-the-assness of having to go over there.)

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Previously
2011: Maggie’s baby story.
2010: Can you HANDLE the G&G?
2009: Lord, I ask you: WHEN WILL THE SUFFERING END?!
2008: I try not to do the snackin’ time call unless it’s really snackin’ time, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
2007: When one mows the lawn on a windy day when it hasn’t rained in a long time, one gets a lot of dust on one’s face.
2006: No entry.
2005: I am not pregnant, and I’m especially not pregnant with twins. I’m sorry to disappoint – some of you got REALLY excited, didn’t you?
2004: I can totally see the Bean clinging frantically to the top of the Jeep while I cluelessly drive around.
2003: But you’d better believe that if I had a penis, it’d be a big swingin’ one.
2002: “Walmart eating ass” will be the name of my seventh novel, in case you were curious.
2001: No entry.
2000: Well, I’ve got magazines to read, and naps to take.

My favorite part of this picture is Darwin in the box, over there on the left, looking upward. She really likes to look at the “ceiling” of the box. I can’t see anything, but I’m also not a wee kitten. Maybe Ceiling Cat is talking to her.

Newbery, obsessed with my feet.

“Do NOT boop my nose, lady!”

“I am but a wee innocent baby kitteh!” Uh huh.

“Calgon, take me away!”
(Note to self: “Calgon” would be a good kitten name.)

“::tap::tap::tap:: Hey, let me out! I gotta pee!”

Darwin the observer.

Newbery, taking a break from biting my feet.

Darwin (l) and Newbery, trying to decide which foot to bite next.

Fight! Fight! Newbery and Razzie, I believe.

A short Noms video. The Noms, 1 month old!

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Old Man Spanky, snoozing.

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Previously
2011: Breath cancer, you say? I wonder what the treatment is for that.
2010: Random dogs and other stuff.
2009: Fred giggled helplessly. Which somehow did not help.
2008: However, I don’t subscribe to the “only pick it up if it’s heads up!” theory of thought.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: There’s a saying that men make plans and god laughs.
2004: No entry.
2003: Won’t be happening in my lifetime, thanks.
2002: No entry.
2001: I get the weirdest freakin’ referrals to my site.
2000: No entry.