1-13-09

Randomness

1. The dogs love the spud. Have I mentioned that the dogs love the spud? Because the dogs? They love the spud.

1a. The dogs are also kind of fond of Fred. But secretly, I’m pretty sure that Miss Gracie prefers me. To Fred, that is. They both are passionately in love with the spud and would throw both Fred and I over for the spud without thinking about it twice.

2. The spud is a Twilight fan. O lord, where have I gone wrooooooooong?

3. The spud has pretty blue nails.

4. I actually think the spud looks more like her father than like me, but I take the comments y’all leave saying that she looks like me as a HUGE compliment, as I am an old hag and she is a young, um, non-hag.

5. It’s supposed to get super-cold Thursday (stay below freezing), so last night we made a practice run at putting Vaseline on the roosters’ combs and wattles. We have WAY TOO MANY little roosters – it’s getting close to time to cull the herd, I think. I felt very much like I was invading their space and being inappropriate with them.

Maybe greasing up c0cks could be a new career path for me!

6. I went to South Huntsville yesterday morning for my yearly appointment with the nutritionist. My appointment with the surgeon who performed my weight loss surgery is in another couple of weeks. The appointment went fine, and this is the first year I’m aware of where I weighed the same (within a pound and a half) at the end of the year as I did at the beginning. “Robyn,” you are saying. “Didn’t you have like ten pounds of fat and skin removed from your midsection? Shouldn’t you weigh less than you did last year?” Alls I can say is that the scale never reflected a loss of more than five pounds after surgery, and after three or four months, it went right back to where it was the day I went in for surgery (I had a lower-body lift in May, for those of you not in the know) and it stays within a three point range most of the time.

As part of my appointment with the nutritionist, I had an InBody scan, where you step on a scale-like thing and it analyzes your body fat in the different parts of your body. Muscle-wise, I’m right where I should be in all parts of my body except for my legs, which are close to where they should be (and somehow more muscular than they were a year ago despite the fact that I probably only lifted weights for a sum total of three weeks all year. Actually, despite my lack of weight-lifting, I apparently put muscle on all over my body, and put on an overall muscle weight of almost three pounds. Huh. I wonder what the hell that’s about? I wonder how reliable this thing is?). The scan recommends I lose twenty pounds of fat, given my body fat percentage, and could I stand to lose twenty pounds? Sure I could. But I’m pretty happy where I am right now.

HOWEVER, I’ll be taking another InBody scan next year as part of my regular appointment, and I’d really like to see what happens when I get into (and STICK TO) a regular weight-lifting routine, so I’m going to start lifting weights again and hopefully keep it up so I can blow that In-Body scan away. It’s not my goal to lose weight, but it is my goal to gain strength and to see what the scan says this time next year.

I’m going to start lifting weights… next week. This weekend will be spent cleaning and rearranging the garage to make that possible.

7. Because I arrived early in South Huntsville for my appointment, I went over to TJ Maxx to look around, and ended up buying a set of (NON-Fiestaware) bowls. They’re adorable, they have roosters on them. In fact, I couldn’t figure out why the roosters looked so familiar ’til I got home and realized that the canister where we keep our Splenda is the same design.

8. After my appointment, I went to Sam’s, whereupon I loaded a BUTTLOAD of kitty litter into my cart. And then, because I was pushing a cart that weighed more than me, I came way too close to wiping out a little kid who went wandering in front of my cart. Attention, Sam’s Club shoppers: Don’t assume that woman pushing a cart holding 240 pounds of Fresh Step cat litter can actually control the damn thing. (Attention, me: You’re a dumbass. Don’t fill a cart so full you can’t control the fucking thing.)

I can’t imagine why people keep asking how many cats I have…

9. After Sam’s, I went to the pet store where I found to my dismay that Lem and Delmar have still not been adopted. On the up side, they looked bored, but not scared. Lem was actually tracking a small fly around his cage. Delmar was sound asleep. Well – given that Delmar was sound asleep, I can’t actually say that he wasn’t scared, I guess. I’m extrapolating.

(Delmar’s asleep in that cubby thing behind Lem.)

10. George and Gracie are being spayed and neutered and ID chipped today. Fred drove the truck up to the vet’s office and I followed in his car. Once the dogs were at the vet’s, Fred drove his car to work and I drove the truck home. I hate driving big vehicles and I don’t have any desire to ever drive that truck again, for the record. We were worried that the dogs would be scared, but when we got them into the vet’s office, they were completely curious. A little nervous, maybe, but mostly curious. George weighed 65 pounds this morning, which means he’s gained 12 pounds in the three weeks since he got his rabies shot. Gracie weighed 49 pounds, which gives her a gain of 6 pounds.

We’ll go this evening to pick them up. If dogs are anything like cats after being spayed and neutered, George will be bouncing around like nothing happened, and Gracie will spend all night conked out in the dog house.

11. We had this very broody hen, I believe I mentioned to y’all, and Fred was all “Weeeee neeed baby chickens!” and finally I was all “What the fuck ever, put eggs under her and shut up about it!” So he did, and she’d sit on her nest and occasionally she’d get up and go get something to eat and while she was gone from her nest one day, another chicken got into that nest to lay an egg, and when Broody Hen came back to get on her nest, there was a chicken there, so Broody Hen got on another nest. And then the hen on the nest of Broody Hen’s eggs went wandering off, and the dogs came wandering in, and ate all of Broody Hen’s eggs.

Fred has since made it impossible for the dogs to get their heads in the nest boxes. Also, he filled some eggs with a combination of Bitter Apple and cayenne, put the eggs back in the nest boxes (before he made it so they couldn’t get their heads in the nest boxes), and they ate two of the three eggs. I think they may have been broken from the eating-eggs behavior. Fred put Broody Hen in a cage for a few days to break her from the broodiness, and now she’s released and acting fairly unbroody. Hopefully she’ll go broody again in a few months, and we can let her have some babies.

12. About the phone: I mostly only really want the G1 because it’s new and shiny and the spud keeps adding cool applications to her phone which only makes me want it more. Given that I am rarely more than half an hour from home, I really don’t need a phone with internet on it and all kinds of cool applications. Want? Yes. Need? Not really. Maybe in a few years when the monthly cost goes down, I’ll reconsider. As it is now, my contract with T-Mobile expires next month, and I will likely go with Virgin Mobile and see how that works for me.

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President-Elect Thomas J. Cullen has a rare moment of relaxation before wading back into the fray.

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Previously
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: If nothing else describes me, “Morally strong, with waffly ways” does.
2005: Who loves their readers more than me? That’s right, NO ONE.
2004: Let us go forth and speak of this no more.
2003: But one of these days he’s going to wake me up, and I’m going to pull his arm off and beat him about the head with it.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.