The other night, we were watching Killers. It was an okay movie, I usually like Ashton Kutcher’s movies even though he strikes me as having douchebag potential in real life and I can usually tolerate Katherine Heigl (ditto on the real-life douchebag potential). It had a super-weak ending, though.
But anyway, we were watching the movie, and it begins in France. Ashton Kutcher was driving a sportscar down the road, and he was all OVER the damn road in that thing, and after he’d spent a long stretch of the road on the right side, I turned to Fred.
“They drive on the left side in France, don’t they? Doesn’t most of Europe?” I was pretty sure I was right, but I know there are random countries that drive on the right side, so I wanted to check with him.
Not that he’s been to France, either, but I thought he might know.
He paused for a long time and then slowly said “They drive…. on the opposite side of the road than we drive on.”
Which, hello, isn’t that a strange way to word it? So I turned and looked at him and I said, “What side of the road do we drive on?”, just to test him.
He took a lonnnnnnng time to deliberate, and finally he said “We drive on the right side of the road.”
“Are you sure?” I said, testing him.
Another long pause. “Yes. The right side of the road.”
“Are you having a stroke?” I said.
“I might have been dozing,” he said.
Fair enough.
I was searching through the freezers yesterday wondering if I had any cranberries left over from last Fall. I’m getting ready to start back up with the habanero jam making, and in the process of making my grocery list, I couldn’t remember if I’d used up all the cranberries or not.
In the house we have two refrigerators, each with its own freezer, and one stand-alone freezer (let us not discuss the TWO freezers we also have out in the garage). I searched all three freezers, but found no cranberries.
What I did find:
*Small ziploc bags holding (according to the label) ground chicken hearts and livers, from last December. Not sure what I was planning to do with those. I’m also not quite sure whether they’re raw or cooked. No doubt I was planning to give them to the cats, but if I recall correctly, the last time I offered the cats raw hearts and livers, they turned their noses up at them. Spoiled fuckers.
*Edamame. It was like CHRISTMAS when I found those! Ever since Sam’s stopped carrying my beloved edamame in snack-size (frozen) containers, I haven’t had much luck finding edamame in bulk, and that makes me very sad. Apparently, at some point, I did find a couple of small bags at the grocery store, stuck them in the freezer, and promptly forgot about them.
*Cube steak, given to us by Fred’s former coworker about a year and a half ago. He raises his own cows, and we traded him some pork for beef.
*Frozen cookie dough, intended (I am sure) for pig cookies. I have no idea how long that’s been in there.
*VitaTops 100 calorie muffin tops. I bought a pack, tried one, and decided I don’t care for them. I’m pretty sure they’ve been in there about a year.
*Hot dog and hamburger buns. I must have bought them when they were on sale, but have no idea how long they’ve been in there.
*At least 20 2-cup bags of pecans, from our own trees, from Fall 2008. I took a bag out, roasted them in the oven, and they’re still good. Yay! We didn’t get any pecans last Fall, but I think we’re expecting a good harvest this year. I love the hell out of pecans.
Most of all, I found English muffins. A TON of English muffins. What the fuck? How many English muffins do we need to have on hand? I counted thirty before I decided to stop counting. THIRTY. I’m an English muffin hoarder. You’re going to turn on the TV one day and I’ll be standing there, surrounded by mounds of English muffins, my hoarder eyes all atwirl as I say “Well, I likes me some English muffins! You cain’t have too many English muffins! You can toast ’em and eat ’em with jam! You can toast ’em and put a piece of cheese and some scrambled eggs on ’em! You can make tiny pizzas out of ’em! The possibilities are endless!”
I also loves me some Hoarders. The new season of Hoarders has started, in case you didn’t know, and it’s running concurrently with a Hoarders offshoot called something like Hoarders: Piles of Crap.
More Hoarders than you can shake a stick at!
Yesterday I was watching Hoarders: I Cannot Let Go of This Invoice from 1983 and the organizer was helping this skateboard-collecting guy start cleaning up his house, and she was all “Should this go in the toss pile, the keep pile, or the recycle pile?”, and the guy was all “Toss. No. WAIT. What do you mean by “toss” and “recycle”? Because this has use! Someone could use this! If you toss this, does it go to the landfill?” They debated the meanings of “toss” and “recycle” until I felt like I was watching Bill Clinton debate the meaning of “is.”
I would be absolutely horrible at helping a hoarder clean up his or her house because I would have NO FUCKING PATIENCE for the woman who was dithering over whether or not to toss out a rotten cantaloupe and I’d end up yelling at her and grabbing everything and tossing it in the dumpster while she wailed over her loss.
Speaking of shows I love, have you seen that there’s going to be a reality show about a polygamous family on TLC called Sister Wives?
You better believe I’m counting the moments ’til THAT show premieres.
Is it just me, or do Moxie’s eyes look almost red in this picture?
Moxie atop the cat tree, Melodie and Dodger climbing up the cat tree, followed closely by Jake.
Melodie on the stairs.
And smacking at the curtains.
Where Martin spends most of his day.
Corby, asleep on the cat tree.
Corby and Reacher are pretty sure that if they’re under the foliage, you can’t see them, and thus you can’t yell at them to get inside.
Tommy, atop the pantry. He goes up here sometimes to get away from the kittens.
Previously
2009: Kanye: Douchebag.
2008: No entry.
2007: By the way, I still want a pet hummingbird.
2006: Maddy sadly contemplates the vast expanse of my thigh. How will she ever cross it and reach freedom?!
2005: For the record, there’s a big fucking difference between pranking someone and just being an asshole.
2004: Like, so world-weary, like “I can’t be bothered to sign ‘love’, because it sounds so warm, I need something COLDER, so I’ll just scrawl ‘as ever’”.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.
In France they drive on the right, most of Europe drive on the right, but in the UK just to be independent we drive on the left.
I wish they would show Hoarders over here, I love shouting at the television 🙂
In France, they drive on the right side of the road – same as in the US and Canada. Here in the UK though, we drive on the left. Oh so much fun taking driving lessons and confusing for my mum when she came to the UK to visit me from Canada and we went to Paris for the weekend. 😀
Oh me too Alison, Hoarders looks exactly like my kind of tely!
Hoarders is insane. Last night I watched one (I don’t know if it was new or not), where this lady was like “I HAVE MY OWN MIND AND I’M USING IT – THAT IS WHY I’M KEEPING THIS.” And the husband was like, super pissed at everyone trying to HELP. They had an arm chair full of what looked like cat litter and cat poop/piss next to their couch! I think that family actually made me mad rather than sad. Obviously this is NOT normal OR healthy.
Ugh!!!
They drive on the right in France.
To note, my cousin just moved to Scotland and had to learn how to drive a stick left-handed, and he said it was the one thing he was worried about in such a big move, lol.
We have a side by side in our basement – one side for beer and snacks, one side for frozen stuff that won’t fit upstairs. I routinely find things I forgot about down there, and I rarely keep a lot of stuff in it. I think there is a collection of hotdog buns that are probably burned now, and a frozen pizza. I tend to hoard frozen veggies upstairs, like a 1/4 cup in the bag that I just need to toss, but don’t for some reason.
Oh god, I’m becoming a HOARDER.
Robyn – Im laughing so hard right now at your English Muffin hoarder story that I have tears running down my face. Im trying not to laugh too hard since I am at work and really dont want people staring at me and pointing the crazy lady laughing at the computer screen.
Thanks for making my day – you are hilarious!
France drives on the right. The UK and Japan are lefties; I’m pretty sure Australia, India, and South Africa are, and a bunch of other smaller countries that I can’t think of…
Ah, Wikipedia to the rescue:
“Total: 76 countries, territories and dependencies
Today road traffic in the following seven European jurisdictions drives on the left: the United Kingdom, Ireland, Isle of Man, Guernsey, Jersey, Malta and Cyprus . None shares a land border with a country that drives on the right and all were once part of the British Empire. Some Commonwealth countries and other former British colonies, such as Australia, Barbados, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, South Africa and Trinidad & Tobago drive on the left, but others such as Canada, Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the United States drive on the right. Other countries that drive on the left in Asia are Thailand, Indonesia, Bhutan, Nepal, East Timor and Japan. In South America, only Guyana and Suriname drive on the left. Most of the Pacific countries drive on the left, in line with Australia and New Zealand, with Samoa joining most recently, on 7 September 2009, the first country for three decades to change the side on which it drives.”
When I lived on Okinawa, there were remnants of right-hand-drive rules everywhere – Okinawa was left-hand until the US took over after WWII, then changed to right-hand to keep the US happy, then changed back to left-hand in the late 70s. I lived there in the late 80s and I’m pretty sure there were some people who still occasionally forgot – you’d get taxi drivers, especially, who’d feel the need to make a left turn from their far-right lane, across all six lanes of highway traffic. That was lots of “fun.”
***
I wouldn’t dither over a rotten cantaloupe, but just yesterday I pulled the sticker off one of those round cup-like containers of gum after we chewed the last piece of gum, because “I could wash it out and use it to… store things in.” I don’t know what things, mind you, I just know that at some point, soon, I’m going to think to myself, “I wish I had a container about *yea* big and *so* round to put these ____ into – if only I hadn’t thrown away that empty gum container!”
I’m sitting on the top of the hoarder slide, holding onto the sides, looking down and yelling about being scared, but the kids coming up the ladder behind me are getting impatient so I’m going to push off any moment now…
Hoo boy, the commenters over on that TLC link are pretty outraged so far. Bless their hearts.
“shows like this let the children who are our future see unconventional lifestyles and children learn from seeing these things.”
*Munch-style Scream*
STOP THE FUCKING PRESSES!! Children-who-are-our-future might see and learn things that they don’t necessarily see at home?!?!!? Quick, the only solution is to blind all the children lest they see something unconventional!!
For shit’s sake, people, teach your children (-who-are-our-future) what you want them to learn, and if they see something on TV that you disagree with, discuss it with them. Preferably without acting like the sky is falling directly onto your pointy little head.
The only problem I personally have with the polygamy issue is that it really is deeply rooted in patriarchal/sexist mindset. The original logic was, if you marry Sally and she dies (i.e. in childbirth, as was common not so long ago), then you marry Marie and she dies, then you marry Ruth and she dies, and then YOU die, when you get to heaven, you and Sally and Marie and Ruth are all going to be reunited in heaven – so why not bring heaven to earth? So my question is: if Sally marries Joe, and he gets killed towards the end of WWI, so she remarries Bill who dies in a factory explosion, then she marries Stan who dies in WWII, why doesn’t the same “bring heaven here” mindset apply? If polyandry were as accepted (relatively speaking) as polygamy, AND if certain break-away fringe groups would stop with the teenage wife/middle-aged man thing, that’d end any objection I might have to the concept.
It’s certainly not for everyone (I would be incapable of sharing my man, no matter how “sisterly” I felt), but as a concept, as long as it’s not being FORCED on anyone and everyone’s being provided for materially and emotionally, big whup. Tell the children-who-are-our-future that there are lots of different people in this big wide world, and there’s no need to emulate them all.
Every single time I watch one of those Hoarders shows, I want to throw out stuff in my house.
Best line of the day: “…..my hoarder eyes all atwirl…”
😀
I was watching a show last night and the lady wanted to go through cards because there might be pictures in them. I’ve been there, done that, and found pictures of my Mom and Dad and then had a good old cry. One of the best things I heard on those shows was something like you don’t own the stuff/junk, it owns you.
What KIND of english muffins?
DH’s mother and former step-father are hoarders, and oh! the stories I could tell… We regularly sling the accusatory “Hoarder!” at each other when doing housework and making keep-or-pitch decisions. Ha.
I only discovered Hoarders last week in Las Vegas (we don’t have TV reception at home). Not coincidentally, our home and garage are now clean and de-cluttered. And I’m exhausted, too.
The creepiest episode (we saw several) featured a family of four: Abusive father, hoarding mother, and two middle-aged kids who never moved out or got lives outside the filthy, dysfunctional house. What made me really mad is that the county gave them their cats back (after discovering the cats living in horrible conditions).
When we were in France, we didn’t drive so I don’t remember what side of the road. I do remember that they drove like maniacs, and we had to be very, very careful in the crosswalks.
The way I remember it is, basically anywhere that has been subject to British “rule” will drive on the left.
Going from Seattle to Scotland, I was worried about stick-shifting with my left, but found it was actually EASIER to drive that way once I stopped popping it into 4th when I really wanted 2nd.
Also, here, if you take your test with an automatic – then your license (licence) is for an automatic only. Weird, eh?
LMAO at the left/right side of the road conversation. Is it weird that I can picture the scene so vividly when I’ve never met either of you?
And I can’t watch any shows that deal with hoarding. The GOD-AWFUL mess and nastiness and lame-ass dithering of the people trying to justify keeping all that shit – it makes me so anxious, I feel like I’m going to have a panic attack. Which is somewhat reassuring, I guess…not much danger of me turning into a hoarder.
“…..called something like Hoarders: Piles of Crap”
This tickled my funny bone! I can NOT stop giggling!
I LOVE Hoarders (A &E). Will watch “Hoarding: Buried Alive” (TLC) in a pinch–the pacing is just Not Right on that show. We tend to fast forward through Hoarding, while watching every cat shit-laden minute of Hoarders. We even sat through two straight hours last week, including Sir What’s His Name (who was really sweet, and reminded me of something out of “Arsenic & Old Lace” or “Harvey.”). Also, “Hoarding” makes me feel like jumping up & cleaning afterwards, while “Hoarding: Buried Alive,” not so much. And I love the guy on Hoarders who shows up with the Got Junk crew and gets very, very cranky after awhile…
(If you don’t toss those English muffins, they may send the other Robin out to “counsel” you–my husband calls her “The Hair.”)
(In the interests of accuracy, I should report that we watched the second Hoarders last night, & I realized I was wrong. He calls her “Dr. Hair.”)
You stopped counting at 30 packages of English Muffins. Very funny. It’s why we have freezers. To collect bargains.
How are your fruit trees coming along?
I suspect the pigs are going to be some happy, english muffin eating pigs (or maybe the new batch of piggies will).
I had a freezer, a little one since it’s just me, out in the garage. Went to use it this spring after having it unplugged for about 6 months. I did not work. I’m not sure if it was bacause it wasn’t turned on during the winter. Now I wish it worked because I’m a bargin hunter since my income is limited. My freezer is usually stocked full of the bargins I find. Luckily, I try and keep it organized so I eat the old stuff first to avoid the nasty freezer burn you get with freezers in the refrig.
My million dollar idea is a reality show called “I Will Throw All Your Shit Away.” I will let you be on the show with me – we’ll throw everyone’s shit away!
Want to get the shit scared out of you, make your first experience in a car in England in a taxi going really really fast on the wrong side of the road! It was really weird when I road in a friends’ car over there to be sitting in what I’m used to being the drivers seat, but the steering wheel’s on the other side.
Can one hoard cats? Just askin’!
and chooks?
oops! chook = aussie for chicken. sorry 🙂
Having spent far too much time with both AK and KH, I can confirm your suspicions. Nobody can ever love an actor as much as they love themselves, and this provides a constant source of tension even in the most affable relationships. (AK tried to teach me quadratic equations after I mentioned how much I’d sucked at them in high school, which may have annoyed me more than it should have. I really hate algebra.)
Yaaaay!!! Bitchypoo appeared in my rss feed this morning. The link’s been broken for weeks, and I’ve had to come to your site manually (HORRORS!!!!).
Whatever you did, thank you!