7/31/09 – Friday

So, it being the last of the month, did anyone notice that the banner at the top of the page has changed throughout the month?

(Thanks again, Jean!)

There’ll be a new banner up over the weekend (Aly, I’m using the one you sent me back in June!), but if anyone is feeling creative and wants to send me one for future use, feel free to!

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Yesterday morning, I went out to the garden. Fred’s been complaining for some time that he can’t even walk between the two rows of tomatoes, and Wednesday morning he outright asked if I’d get off my lazy ass and get out there and prune the tomato plants (well, not in so many words, but he got the point across). I told him I would, so yesterday morning I rubbed a Bounce fabric softener sheet over my arms and legs (to repel mosquitoes – and it worked GREAT, I didn’t get bitten one single time!) and headed out there.

At the beginning of every summer, it’s my intent to keep a close eye on the weeds, to work in the garden for some time every morning and help keep it under control. That usually lasts about three days before I hit the “fuck it” wall, and stop going out there.

(Weeding is BO-RING.)

So yesterday morning, I went out there, and I carefully stood back from each tomato plant, and I regarded it closely before carefully pruning what needed to be pruned.

That lasted about ten minutes. Then I started just randomly hacking at the plants, and an hour and a half later, I’d made multiple trips to the mulch pile (where I was stacking the tomato vines I’d pruned away), gotten a bushel full of decent green tomatoes (the cracked and split tomatoes I tossed to the chickens and pigs, and then onto the mulch pile because there were a LOT of fucking cracked and split tomatoes), and it was possible to move between the two rows of tomatoes. I knocked a shit ton of cherry tomatoes onto the ground between the two rows, and I have to say that stepping on green cherry tomatoes feels kind of like stepping on bubble wrap – you get that same cool popping sensation under your feet.

(Really, I should have taken before and after pictures, because the difference is amazing. Didn’t think of it, though!)

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Fred had to take Sugarbutt and Maxi to the vet yesterday. Someone’s been leaving blood-covered poops in the litter box, and it wasn’t until yesterday morning that Fred discovered Sugarbutt was the culprit. And Wednesday night I’d been petting Maxi and realized she had a nasty-feeling spot on the top of her head. She didn’t like having it touched, and when we looked at her straight-on, we could see that the area around one of her eyes was swollen.

It’s her M.O. to come inside in the morning to get something to eat, then disappear for the day. She disappeared yesterday morning, and then I got nervous that she wouldn’t come around again in time to go to the vet, so I’d periodically go outside and call for her. She didn’t show up and didn’t show up, then about 20 minutes before Fred got home from work, I went into the back yard to brush Tommy (he hates the Furminator, but I can usually get a good swipe or two in before he grabs my arm and sinks his claws in (as long as I don’t pull away, I don’t get injured, and he lets go pretty quickly)), and Maxi was hanging out right outside the fence. I coaxed her into the yard and brushed her, and she put up with quite a lot of brushing with the Furminator before she ran off and rolled around in the grass.

I carried her inside and shut the door so she couldn’t disappear again, and she seemed to think there was nothing strange about that – she ate, then went and sat patiently by the door for me to let her out.

Fred arrived home, boxed up Maxi and Sugarbutt, and headed off to the vet (I stayed home and fed the pigs, which is usually what he does when he gets home from work).

An hour later he came home. Sugarbutt’s fine, just needs antibiotics – go figure, since I’d already decided he had cancer and was going to spend the next several months wasting away.

Maxi, on the other hand, had a raging abscess on top of her head. Fred said that when the vet started shaving her head, pus started coming out of the abscess, and kept coming and kept coming. We theorize that she got into a tussle with another animal, and it got her on top of the head and near her eye. We have to give her antibiotics twice a day, put ointment in the hole on her head twice a day, and put some stuff in her eye two or three times a day.

She was so freaked out by the whole vet thing that she peed in her carrier several times on the way home.

Poor Maxi.

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Last Thursday, I downloaded the second season of Gossip Girl from iTunes so that I’d have something to keep me entertained on the trip to and from Pennsylvania. I paid for it with my debit card.

(Aside: Is it just me, or could Serena and Nate practically be twins? Sleeping together was pure narcissism on their part.)

Over the weekend, Fred bought a new driveway alarm from Amazon and used a Bank of America card to pay for it.

Tuesday morning, when I checked my email before we left for the airport, I had an email from Bank of America, saying that there was potentially fraudulent activity on the card, and Fred needed to log on to the website. I forwarded the email to him and asked him to see what was going on. When I landed in Detroit, I had a text message from him, telling me that the charges were from iTunes, and had I used the BoA card to pay for iTunes purchases?

I had not, so I texted him back “Absolutely not.”

Turns out those several iTunes charges had been made from another country, in foreign funds. Fred notified the BoA people, who shut down the account and are sending us new cards.

Wednesday and Thursday morning and afternoon, we got automated calls from BoA, attempting to locate Fred and alert him to the fraudulent activity. At the end of the call, after they’ve given the number for Fred to call ASAP, they say “If you’ve already logged onto the web site or talked to customer service, please disregard this call.”

How about “If you’ve already dealt with this shit, hit “8”, and we’ll stop harassing you”? How about that, Bank of America?

I’m not really complaining, though – I suppose I’d rather be alerted too many times as opposed to not at all.

I just think it’s weird that I downloaded stuff from iTunes, and then a few days later fraudulent charges were attempted at iTunes, using a card I have never used there. What are the chances?

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Do you prefer the food in Maine – restaurants and stuff – to the food in Alabama?

There are certain foods – lobster, whoopie pies, Italians from the Kitty Korner – that I like a lot and have to have every time I visit Maine, but for the most part I find that most of the food I eat in both places is pretty similar. Plus, I can always get lobster and whoopie pies if I miss them that much. (Not the Italians from the Kitty Korner, though. Those are a Maine-only thing!)

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I love Nance’s kittehs. How do you not abduct them when you leave? Julie and Waldo anyway. Ungrateful Maddy would have to come around to you a bit more!

Oh, are you kidding? Julie would DIE without her DADDY. Our assholes would pick on Waldo. And Maxi, Kara, and Stinkerbelle provide plenty of evil – if we added Maddy to the house, I’m pretty sure it would burn down late one night, and we’d all perish in the flames o’ hatred.

(Did I mention that Maddy allowed me to pet her, though? Could have knocked me over with a feather!)

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I don’t receive the notifies anymore… Any idea why?

I responded to Stephanie directly on this, but I’m posting the question just to say that I don’t really mess with the notify lists, so if you suddenly stop receiving your notify email, it’s probably either bouncing or going into your spam folder. If neither of those is what’s going on, then I just don’t know. Sometimes unsubscribing and resubscribing can make it work again (kind of like pounding on the side of the TV when it’s messing up.).

And anyone who wants to join the notify list, you can find instructions here.

Alternately, I do not gaze lovingly upon the list of subscribers to my notify list daily, I don’t get notified when someone joins, and I don’t get notified if someone leaves. I really have no idea who’s subscribed to the notify list and who isn’t, so you’ll never receive an email from me asking why the hell you’re not on the notify list. If you’re receiving a notify and it’s become a pain in the ass to you, go ahead and unsubscribe. You won’t hurt my feelings, I promise!

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Did you think to buy some Trader Joe snacks to take home to Fred? I’m thinking he’d like the Snap pea crisps. Just wondering if you bring him a care package after your trips. 🙂

I did not buy any Trader Joe snacks to bring home, because there’s a Trader Joe up near Nashville that I keep intending to drive to, just haven’t gotten around to it. (Also, I only brought one small suitcase with me and didn’t have room to stuff bags of snacks in there.) I don’t generally bring home anything for Fred from my trips unless I stumble across something (usually a t-shirt) that I think he’ll really like; I didn’t this time around.

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Completely off topic but couldn’t help think of you when I got my latest cross stitch catalog. Do you get the Stitchery catalog? I thought you needed the Picasso rooster. T63-752 I saw a million kitty ones too I would get you if I had extra money floating around.

I don’t get the Stitchery catalog anymore because I haven’t ordered from there in a long time. I do still have some of their old catalogs laying around with about a billion pages dogeared to mark the patterns I love, though! I’m currently in a downswing as far as the cross stitching goes – I stopped about halfway through a picture I was working on, and haven’t had the get up and go to pick it up again, even though it’s sitting on the couch glaring at me every night.

(That said, I really like this one and this one and this one… So many cross stitches, so little time and motivation!)

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Have you seen Drop Dead Diva on Lifetime? I planned on hating it due to the conceit that anyone who woke up in a chubby body would be horrified even though the body belongs to a funny, talented and smart person. But dang it I like this show.

I have not. What’s the consensus, everyone? Do I want to give it a try? I taped More to Love this week, but haven’t watched it yet and am not sure whether I want to.

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I’m slightly disturbed by the fact that you hadn’t had a chili dog prior to turning 40. Also – you bought tiny plates and don’t know what to do with them? Hello?! Tiny kitty mouths to feed.

Yeah, Fred’s weirded out by the fact that I’d never had a chili dog before. To be fair, I didn’t even know I liked chili ’til I moved to Alabama, so I never would have even thought to give a chili dog a try before!

And the tiny kitty mouths have 10,000 plates to eat from already.

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That looks like you all had enormous fun. Poor old Fred, left at home to mind the menagerie!

Oh, please. Don’t cry for him, Argentina. He’d be miserable if I made him leave the farm for longer than a few hours!

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I am so jealous of how perfectly Nance rocked that hat! That is not any easy style to wear-I used to be a major hat person and could never pull that off. How does Nance eat the stuff she does and stay so thin? You would NEVER know she was ever heavy if someone didn’t tell you.

Doesn’t that hat look perfect on her? She actually tried on another hat that looked even better, but the picture came out blurry.

As far as how she stays so thin – she really doesn’t eat that crap all the time. We just eat a lot of junk when we’re together, because we let our inner fat chicks out to play. 🙂

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“Did not enjoy the trip to the vet, THANK YOU.”

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Previously
2008: Getting the crap ball rolling, so to speak.
2007: Pictures from around Crooked Acres.
2006: But I’ve been secretly calling it hepatootis to myself.
2005: No entry.
2004: Hawaii recap.
2003: No entry.
2002: Around the neighborhood.
2001: “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!” I yelled.
2000: All hail Dumbass Bitchypoo.