6/30/09 – Tuesday

The shit that is PISSING ME OFF these days.

1. A few weeks ago, Fred was home from work and I was making dinner or puttering around the house or sitting on my ass in front of the computer, I don’t remember what exactly I was doing, and it’s not important (and yet I cannot seem to stop blathering about it. Was I wiping down the counters? Scrubbing the toilet? Talking to a cat? IT’S A MYSTERY.). The doorbell rang, and Fred went off to answer it. I didn’t concern myself, because I figured it was someone wanting to buy eggs. A minute later, Fred came in and reached for his wallet.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Remember Woody?” he said. “The guy who moved us here from Madison? From Woody’s Moving?”

“Yeah…?”

“Well, his truck ran out of gas, and he needs to borrow some money.”

I looked out the window. “His truck ran out of gas in our driveway?”

“No, not that truck. His moving truck, it’s down the road a ways and he ran out of gas. He forgot his wallet at home, and he doesn’t have his ATM card with him.”

“Then why doesn’t he drive home and get his wallet?” I asked.

Fred responded with something that I don’t recall. He continued digging through his wallet.

“I don’t like this,” I said. “Tell him we don’t have any cash.”

“Bessie,” Fred said. “He moved us into this house!”

I misunderstood, and flipped out. “Oh, he MOVED us? So, what, we OWE him? FUCK that!”

“No, he moved us, so he knows what we have. He knows we’re not poor!”

Which, in retrospect, was a dumb argument because most of the time we really don’t have much cash around the house. But that’s neither here nor there.

Woody had asked for $40; Fred gave him $30. Woody assured Fred that he’d be back the next day, asked what time would be best (Fred told him “After 3:30.” “In other words,” I said. “‘My wife will be here alone until 3:30. Feel free to drop by, tie her up, and rob us!'”). Woody thanked Fred profusely and then left.

We haven’t seen Woody since, and it’s been at least a month. I think you can imagine my shock.

I’ve already told Fred that the NEXT time someone stops by to ask us for money, I’m going to give them the phone number for Woody’s Moving Service and tell them to get it from HIM.

Honestly, I’m not sure why this has me so pissed off, but when I think about it (and I only think about it occasionally, I don’t sit around and think about it all the time), I FUME. We’ve had people ask us for money, and have given it willingly knowing (despite their assurances) that we’d never see it again. The Walkin’ Dude (also here, here, and here; he hasn’t been back since that last one), if you’ll recall, got twenty bucks or so from us, and thought that we were his fucking gravy train. That didn’t piss me off (well, except the part where he didn’t have the good sense to be embarrassed and stay the fuck away), just annoyed me a little.

This thing with Woody, though, even though I knew we’d never see that $30 again, well – Woody better not show his fucking face around here again, because I am the shy and retiring type (stop laughing!), but I will tell Woody to go fuck himself and to get the fuck off my porch and not come back and I very well might bitch-slap him in the process.

2. Robert the egg-buying man. Truth be told, this doesn’t piss me off, just more annoys me. Robert the egg-buying man loves our eggs. LOVES THEM. He stopped by one day and bought all the eggs we had on hand, and then he asked Fred if we could have 10 dozen eggs by the following Friday. Fred told him that we likely could, and Robert tEBM said that he’d be by Friday afternoon.

We made sure to save 10 dozen eggs for him, but Robert tEBM never showed up. So we sold the fucking eggs. He showed up a week later and apologized, saying that since the weather had been non-rainy, he’d been trying to catch up on work. Fair enough, I s’pose, though I’m not sure how much time it takes to swing by and buy some eggs THAT ARE BEING HELD ESPECIALLY FOR YOU.

Then, last week Robert tEBM stopped by and bought all the eggs we had on hand (a couple dozen, I think) and asked Fred if we could save him three dozen eggs for Sunday. Because we are stupid and trusting, we did.

Never showed up. WHAT A SHOCK.

We are no longer going to save eggs for Robert tEBM unless he pays for them in advance. Fucker.

3. Back when Gmail was new and you had to have an INVITATION to sign up for it (November 2004, this was. Damn. That’s like 300 years ago in internet years!), I signed up not only for the email address I use all the time (mizrobyn), I also signed up for robyn.anderson, not knowing what I’d use it for, but figuring it’d be handy to have as a backup email. Well, I don’t use it at all, though I check it every couple of weeks just to see (I think I’ve used it in a few different places where I signed up for message boards or whatever). There was never anything much in the in box, until late last year. Apparently when you sign up for a user name with Gmail, if there’s a period in the user name anywhere, Gmail doesn’t really “count” it. So when I signed up for robyn.anderson, I also got robynanderson by default. And there are Robyn Andersons ALL OVER THE FUCKING PLACE who just ADORE giving out that email address as their own.

There’s a Robyn Anderson in Canada who’s going to school to be a teacher, and I ended up on her study group’s email loop for a while. There’s a Robyn Anderson in Illinois who’ll be attending her reunion in Dallas this summer – her mother was nice enough to forward her flight information to me. I got her email confirmation from American Airlines confirming that she’s signed up for their frequent flyer program, too. I get business emails, I got an email asking how I was doing, since I was apparently having a problem pregnancy and confined to my bed and who on earth was taking care of my two young children, anyway?

You know, I know Robyn Anderson is not an uncommon name but GODDAMN, people. When you’re giving out your email address to people, you think you could maybe double-check that you’re giving it to them correctly???

4. Assfucks on eBay that bid on shit, get the winning bid and then don’t bother to pay for what they won, or for that matter, to even so much as let you know they’re no longer interested. And you can apparently no longer leave negative feedback for buyers. That’s some fucking horseshit.

5. On Friday, Fred picked all the zucchini and yellow squash in the garden. And then he sprayed them to kill the squash bugs that have started showing up, which meant he couldn’t pick them again for two days. Yesterday when he got home from work, he went out to pick the squash and zucchini and holy SHIT that stuff grows fast. We ended up with a ton of squash and zucchini, and some of the zucchini was so big that I ended up putting it to the side to feed to the chickens. The chickens LOVE squash and zucchini from the garden, it’s one of their favorite things to eat. This doesn’t really go under the heading of things that piss me off, I guess – it goes under the heading of a win/ win situation. I didn’t have to mess with squash and zucchini for a few days, now I’ve got enough to dice and freeze AND enough to make the chickens (and dogs, for that matter) happy! Also, Fred’s started harvesting the corn and I give the ears that are half-eaten by bugs to the chickens, and they must have thought yesterday was their BIRTHDAY. I tossed several ears to them, and then had to tell George to back off because apparently dogs are rather fond of corn on the cob, too, and he was grabbing all the corn he could get his mouth on and carrying them off to his eatin’ spot, then going back for more WITHOUT EATING WHAT HE’D ALREADY GOTTEN.

Corn hoarder.

(Edited to add: Giving corn on the cob to dogs, apparently not a good idea. DAMNIT. When will I learn to Google this stuff first??)

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Someone mentioned yesterday that I hardly ever talk about Creed or post pictures of him. That’s true – but in my defense, (1) It’s hard to get decent pictures of black cats and (2) That little monkey hardly ever holds still. I snap plenty of pictures of him, they just never come out!

But in any case, today will be all about Creed. Here are some fun facts about the sweet little guy:

1. He lurrrrrves his brudder and sister. LURVES them. He loves to play-fight with them, snuggle up with them and sleep, follow them around to see what they’re doing. If they’re in a room where he is not, and he doesn’t know where they are, you can hear him calling out to them with a plaintive “Where ARE you? I’m lonely!” cry.

2. If he’s feeling playful and you bend down to pet him or pick him up, he’ll stand up on his back legs and wave his front paws around like he’s a wee boxer. It’s severely cute, and I’ve tried and tried to get it on camera, but have had no luck as of yet.

3. He’s a snuggler – there’s nothing he loves more than to curl up beside you and go to sleep. Unlike Dwight, who has to be laying on top of you to go to sleep, Creed will curl up next to you, just barely touching you, and drift off to sleep. If you pet him while he’s sleeping, he reaches one paw out to touch you without ever waking up.

4. He is both very laid-back (I put him on top of Mister Boogers yesterday just to see what would happen, and he and Mister Boogers looked at each other for a few moments, then Creed hopped down and moseyed off to see what there was to be seen) and prone to go ::FLOOF:: at the drop of a hat. Any unexpected noise, any cat running by suddenly, and ::FLOOF:: he goes.

5. He’s the current produce inspector at our house, and he takes his job very seriously.

The Creed Cave. It’s the perfect size for him!

Look how annoyed they are with me. “Okay FINE, we’ll pose together. Can you just TAKE the picture and get it over with??”

Note please that I have to put the keyboard up against the monitor when I’m not using it, because the kittens will tromp all over it.

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Really? You think you wanna mess with Sheriff Mama? Are you SURE?

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Previously
2008: I’ve warned Nance that the house is a pig sty, but I don’t think she believes me.
2007: No entry.
2006: Must be ’cause I’m so approachable.
2005: Hobbies.
2004: Fred calls Miz Poo “Musty.”
2003: He sighed. “Because everybody knows that 256 (the total number of pages in the book) is 2 to the 8th, which is 2 to the 6th times two squared, which is 64 times 4, so you should print four blocks of 64 pages.”
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: Folks, it’s Dumbass Day.