Author: Robyn

Thank you to everyone who’s donated so far! The rest of you – get to donating! Whatcha waiting for? You can donate to the shelter directly via PayPal now, too.

* * * Every time I go to type in “livejournal”, it comes out as “liverjournal” instead. Now THAT would be a fascinating journal, wouldn’t it? 11/16/06 Today I processed some Tylenol. I told her she wasn’t supposed to be taking Tylenol because it makes Me work too hard and I am a fragile organ, but the bitch never listens to Me. I think I’ll turn dark-gray and make her start having diarrhea just to fuck with the bitch. * * * Questions and comments, answered: You know what I found the funniest thing about your day. That you actually RANG your husband from outside the house. LOL! What, I’m supposed to go inside and get him? That’s WAY too much effort for me! I’ve actually been known to call him on his cell phone when we’re both inside the house, me upstairs and he downstairs, just to ask him a question or remind him of something. * * * Here’s a random question (that you’ve probably addressed before, but in the years I’ve read, I don’t think I’ve seen): We know how you & The Spud came to AL to be with Fred, but I’m curious to know if Fred is originally from Alabama? And if so, does he speak with a southern twang? Obviously I’ve never spoken to him, but from his pictures he doesn’t look like someone who speaks with a drawl. Fred’s lived in Alabama his entire life, bouncing back and forth between Huntsville (where his Dad lives) and Decatur (where his Mom used to live). He does have a slight Southern accent, but he decided as a child that he didn’t want to have a strong drawl, so he trained himself to talk without one – or mostly without one, actually. * * * Do the kitties wander up and down the steps as the sun moves? That’d be too funny if they did. No, that’s too much effort for them. They’ll flop down in the biggest sun puddle and fall asleep, but if they wake up and are no longer in the sun, they’ll go climb in a cat bed or up onto my desk to fall back asleep. * * * Isn’t Lisb0n High School where Stephen King graduated? I played basketball in high school and remember traveling to LHS for games and seeing/hearing that somewhere. Yep, Stephen King is a Lisb0n High School graduate. In fact, several of my high school teachers went to school with him, and although probably none of them ever gave him a second look while they were actually IN high school with him, they’d talk about him to us like they were his best friends. * * * I like your new t-shirt but it seems to me that it would be more accurate if it said that the world was annoying YOU, one idiot at a time…. thus necessitating your move to the country, and the way you hate to stand in checkout lines, and all the other ways the public pisses you (and me) off. If I ever see a “World, you’re pissing me off, one dumbass at a time” t-shirt, I very well might have to buy it. * * * I think I mentioned that I listen to my iPod while I’m working at the Smallville house. I’m doing my best to get caught up on Keith and the Girl podcasts, though I seem to be falling further and further behind, despite the fact that I usually listen to several hours on Saturdays and Sundays. The Girl – Chemda – briefly had a song popular in the clubs a few years back. Her “club name” was Caprice, and at the end of one of the podcasts, they played her song. I liked it a lot, and immediately came home to download the song. Except it wasn’t available on iTunes, and I couldn’t find anyplace online to download it. Finally, I thought to look on eBay, and found the CD for sale with something like seven versions of the one song. I bought it for a couple of dollars, and when it arrived I immediately took it out to my car so I could listen to it while I was doing errands. I LOVE that freakin’ song. LOVE IT. I listen to at least one version every time I drive anywhere, and just can’t get enough of it. Another song brought to me by Keith and the Girl (one that’s actually available in the iTunes store) is Summertime, sung by Brother Love. That’s another one I’ve started to really like – every time I open iTunes, I listen to it at least once. (In fact, I just went and started it playing. And now I’m wondering why I have not one, not two, but THREE versions of Britney Spears’ Me Against the Music. What the hell?) Anyway, I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – if you’re looking for an entertaining podcast, I recommend Keith and the Girl. * * * I’m so not looking forward to tomorrow. We’ve got a guy coming out to leave a dump truck in our driveway (I always mistype “driveway” as “driveaway” and have to go back and fix it. Grrrr.), and we’re going to spend the day loading up all the shit laying on the driveaway driveway into the dump truck, along with things like the carpets from the upstairs rooms and whatever bushes I can get cut down before the guy comes to take the dump truck to the dump. I suspect that, come Sunday morning, I’m going to be one hurting motherfucker. At least my hip is feeling better. It was feeling much better yesterday morning when I woke up, though it still hurt a little. I was pretty relieved, because I’d decided I had (a) Rapid Onset Hip Cancer, (b) Rapid Onset Hip Arthritis, or (c) A Broken Hip (broken in a way that apparently didn’t involve falling in any way). Apparently what it really was was (d) A Pulled Muscle, Dumbass. Who, me? A hypochondriac? Right. Like YOUR mind doesn’t immediately go to the Big C whenever you’re having the slightest bit of pain. Here’s Doctor Robyn’s list of diagnoses. Who needs to get dressed and go to the doctor’s office? Headache? Brain tumor. Blurred vision? Brain tumor. Diarrhea? Ass cancer. Constipation? Ass cancer. Tar-like poo? Ass cancer. Normal poo? Ass cancer. Back pain? Spinal cancer. Coughing? No, that’s not cat hair caught in your throat. That’s throat cancer. Wrist pain? Ankle pain? Leg or arm pain? Bone cancer. Aching tailbone? Tailbone cancer. Ringing in your ears? Ear cancer. Frizzy hair? Flat hair? Curly hair? Hair cancer. That’ll be a hundred dollars, please. Don’t make me send the bill collectors after you! * * * With all the comfy cat beds spread throughout the house, why NOT sleep on a hard, cold mantel? Brudderly love. All of today’s uploaded pictures are here. * * * Previously 2005: Cat hair on the seat of your pants! It’s the Next Big Thing! 2004: Do you suppose that cats realize that when we kiss them, it’s a sign of affection? 2003: NAS-TAY. 2002: No entry. 2001: No entry. 2000: Thanks, y’all, for your emails regarding hamster sex. 1999: So, I didn’t get the kitten.]]>

Thank you to everyone who’s donated so far – I have more than $400 in my PayPal account; I can’t wait to write that check to the shelter! The rest of you – get to donating! Whatcha waiting for?

* * * While I’m thanking people, I’d like to thank Vix again, who helped me with a super-secret project, and rocked at it. * * * There’s this guy Fred knows named Tim Thompson. Everything Tim does turns immediately and irrevocably to shit. When we have bad days where everything goes wrong, we refer to it as a “Tim Thompson day.” Sunday was a Tim Thompson day for me. First, I had to paint. And I don’t like to paint. Painting makes me make this face: I’m not a good painter, I hate painting, it bores the shit out of me. Fred is a fast painter, he’s a good painter, and he’s allllllllways trying to get me to paint. Before we bought this house I had never painted anything, ever, and since we’ve bought the house I’ve painted more than I ever want to paint again in my life. So Sunday morning I began painting the trim in the stairway. To me, the paint job I did looked like crap, but Fred told me it looked perfectly fine (a lie, I’m sure -he probably went back over and fixed it). Then Fred decided I was in the way, sitting on the stairs and painting, so I went upstairs and worked on the trim in the hallway. There are pictures of the finished hallway and stairs here, by the way. After lunch I was released from my painting duties to go outside, where I really fucked up. I’d spent Friday afternoon raking the side yard and I thought I could just run over the leaves with the riding lawnmower, pick them up in the grasscatcher and then dump them in the mulch pile we’ve started. Running over the leaves didn’t do much but crunch them up and toss them all over the yard, so I raked them back into a pile, and on Sunday I used a shovel to shovel the leaves into the grasscatcher and then hauled them to the mulch pile. That went okay, and then I decided to run over the pile of leaves behind the shed. First, I ran over some huge metal thing with the riding lawnmower. Didn’t hurt the mower, but scared the shit out of me. I pulled it – whatever the hell it was, some big metal ring – out of the ground and tossed it on the trash pile. Then I started running over the pile of leaves, and about went deaf from the sound of twigs and gumballs hitting the metal underneath of the mower. At one point a gumball hit the side of the shed and bounced up, hitting me in the cheek. Could have been worse, I suppose. It could have hit me in the eye. After a few trips back and forth across the pile of leaves, I hopped off the mower to look in the grasscatchers to see if they were full. They weren’t full – in fact, there was nothing in either of them. I pulled the tube thingy off the side and found that it was crammed full with crunched up leaves and grass, and who the hell knows what. I called Fred on his cell phone and asked him to come out and help me. He did – bless his heart; he had to climb down off his tall-ass ladder and come outside to help his fuckup of a wife – and then I shoveled the rest of the pile into the grasscatchers and hauled the whole mess out to the mulch pile. After that, I decided it was time to work on clearing the ditch. There’s a ditch on the boundary between our property and the church’s property next door. It had gotten very overgrown and full of trash and weeds, and I wanted to get it cleared from the street to the point where there’s a fence post even with the side of the shed. I had cleared a good part of the ditch with the riding lawnmower and the chainsaw, but my extension cord would only reach so far and Fred needed his extension cord on Friday, so I couldn’t use it to work on the weeds and shrubs near the road. This is the ditch. This picture doesn’t properly illustrate just how much brush and crap there is to clear away from the ten feet of the ditch leading up to the culvert. On Sunday Fred didn’t need his extension cord so I could add his to mine and work on the part of the ditch nearing the road. I dragged the extension cords, my chainsaw, and my hedge trimmer out to the ditch. The hedge trimmer did a pretty good job of chopping down the weeds that had grown, and I got about two feet of the ditch cleared when suddenly the hedge trimmer stopped working and I didn’t know why. I unplugged and re-plugged the trimmer. Nothing. So I decided, okay. Maybe I ran the hedge trimmer for too long at one stretch and it was overheated and needed a rest. So I’ll use the chainsaw instead, right? I got the chainsaw and plugged it in and… nada. Nothing. Wouldn’t work at all. I stood in one place and swore up a storm (quietly, though – I didn’t want the people in the church parking lot to hear me, it being Sunday and they being Of God and all that shit), trying to figure out what was going on. I went into the shed and checked to see if the extension cord in there was plugged in. It was. I followed the cord to the end to see if the light on the other end was on, and it was. I went back to the chainsaw to try it again, and it didn’t work. And then I glanced down at the second extension cord and saw. I had cut through the goddamn motherfucking extension cord. I CUT THROUGH THE GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING EXTENSION CORD. “You,” I told myself. “Are a goddamn motherfucking idiot.” I grabbed the now-useless extension cord and carried it around to the trash pile. “What a fucking idiot,” I said to the extension cord. “I’m sorry you’re DEAD and USELESS because I’m a goddamn idiot.” It seemed to have no opinion on the subject. I put the hedge trimmer in the shed and decided to use the chainsaw to cut down some of the bushes around the fencepost. I had cut down three fairly big bushes when I accidentally hit the fencepost with the chainsaw and the chain came off. “Oh, GODDAMN!” I said, louder than I’d intended. Luckily, there were no Of God people in the church parking lot, so no one was around to hear my blasphemy. And then I muttered a litany of very bad words under my breath as I put the chainsaw on the porch and stomped inside the house. “I give up!” I yelled at Fred. “I fucking GIVE UP!” Fred put down his paint brush and followed me into the kitchen. “What happened?” he asked. “I’m such a GODDAMN FUCKUP! I quit! The house wins! You WIN, you stupid house! I give up! Let’s sell this fucking house and buy a soulless McMansion on three feet of lawn in the heart of goddamn Yuppieville!” “What happened?” Fred said again. “I CUT THROUGH THE GODDAMN EXTENSION CORD AND THEN I MADE THE CHAIN COME OFF THE CHAINSAW!” There was a long silence. Fred stared contemplatively at the ceiling. His lips twitched. When he spoke, his voice sounded very strained. “You cut through… the extension…cord,” he said. “YES.” I sent hate rays directly into his brain and was surprised that he didn’t immediately fall over dead. “You cut through… the extension cord,” he repeated. “YES.” “HOW did you… cut through the extension cord?” he asked, covering his mouth as if I couldn’t see his shit-eating grin. “I DON’T KNOW,” I snarled. And he lost it, falling over onto the counter and laughing loudly, the fucker. “Do you want me to fix the chain on your chainsaw?” he offered. “NO,” I bellowed. “I want to SELL this goddamn house and buy a MCMANSION in the HEART of YUPPIEVILLE!” “Oh Bessie,” Fred said comfortingly. “You’re just having a Tim Thompson day.” I looked at the clock to see if I could possibly push for going home early, but it was only 2:00 and I knew Fred would never go for it. “I suppose I’ll go mow the lawn,” I said grudgingly. I went out and started the lawnmower, and began a circle around the side lawn. When I’d made two trips around I stopped to see if the grasscatchers were full. There was nothing in the grasscatchers. “OH COME ON!” I yelled. “What the FUCK?” I pulled the tube thingy off at the bottom and found that it was crammed full of grass and leaves. I pulled all the crap blocking up the tube out and then tried to put the tube back in place. I had no luck. “Oh, I GIVE UP!” I yelled, and stomped back into the house. Fred was standing on the stairs, painting. “Where do you want me to paint?” I asked in a low kill me now voice. After some prodding, I told him that the grasscatcher wasn’t working. “Was it ever working?” he asked. “Yes, I mowed around the tree near the mulch pile and it worked fine, so I emptied them and went and I -” here the link between my brain and my tongue went down for a moment and I mixed “did” and “do” – “I do’d two trips around the yard and there was nothing in the grasscatchers!” “You do’d two trips, huh?” Fred said, and laughed. “I’m going to throw something at you,” I threatened. In the end, he dragged me outside, pulled the crap out of the tube, fixed it back where it was supposed to go, and took two trips around the yard on the lawnmower. “Now I do’d two trips around the yard!” he said, grinning. So I killed him and buried his body in the back forty. “It stopped spitting grass into the grasscatcher about halfway through your first trip,” I told him. He cleared it out again, raised the blade a couple of inches, and this time when he made a trip around the yard, everything worked just fine. And that was the end of my Tim Thompson day. I mowed the front and side yards, which took a little more than an hour, and when I went back inside Fred was mostly done with the stairs. I did a little cleaning up, waited for Fred to take his pictures, put some canned food on a plate for Maxi and Newt (what? We can’t let them STARVE!), and then we came home. I love this house and I’m excited about it still, but I could do with a few more victories and a few less fuckups on my part. On the up side, it’s entirely possible that we could be done with the inside of the house by the end of the year, or shortly thereafter! * * * The other things I did over the weekend: Began switching out switches. Naturally I didn’t get an “after” picture of the process. Put the doorknob mechanism back on the door with NO HELP WHATSOEVER. Am clearly genius. Painted crown molding. And then Fred and the paint guy he had come out to the house MOCKED MY PAINT JOB. Fuckers. Took a trip around the back forty several times. The leaves, they are a-changin’. Spotted a praying mantis – the first praying mantis I’ve ever seen as an adult. We’d see them in Guam all the time, but I hadn’t seen any since. This one looked at me like she wanted to leap at my face and suck my brains out through my eyeballs. Spotted a strange bug. Fred called it a “stinkbug.” Bought a candle and put it on the mantle. When I went to blow it out as we were leaving, I saw a wasp floating around in the melted wax. I found it both creepy and mesmerizing. Check out the full-sized version. Newt lurrrrrves his Momma.   LURVES her.   We’re going to have to start calling her “Missus Boogers” if she keeps giving us these looks.   No dignity at ALL.     And lastly, swept up dead wasps. It was a slow weekend for wasps. All of today’s uploaded pictures are here. * * * Previously 2005: Senator Stanley J. Boogerton. 2004: No entry. 2003: So I’m not reporting that. At all. Never happened! 2002: Riley’s response? “Nuh uh!” 2001: Dr. Phil looked at me judgmentally, and I began to babble. 2000: And I don’t even like cherry Poptarts! 1999: Fred has agreed to let me adopt the kitten! ]]>

can teach an old Fred new tricks.

* * * Comments: Where did you get that cat hair mug??!! I have to HAVE one! I got mine on sale at Parisian, but you can find them online at Our Name is Mud. It’s become my favorite mug, ever, and I’m thinking of rounding out my mug collection with a couple of the other mugs the same company offers, ’cause they crack me UP. * * * How do you feel about the neighbors who took the 2 adults cats in, letting them roam loose? Our cats never go outside. I remember our vet saying the average life span of a male cat outdoors was only 2 years. I’m not thrilled about it, but apparently Maxi and Newt were so miserable inside that they felt they didn’t have a choice. I know that during the several days we had them inside our house, they howled until they were hoarse, and I’m pretty sure they tried to dig their way out (via the windowsills). * * * Man, that picture is scary — reminds me of the sick sister in the movie Pet Semetary. Does your spine stick out all crazy, too? My spine does NOT stick out all crazy. Give me a few years, and maybe I’ll develop myself a Dowager’s Hump and it’ll be a different story. * * * Robyn! Good lord woman, what are you doing up and writing a journal entry at THIS time of morning?! I mean, I’m glad to hear from you and all, but… good lord. Is this some sort of new leaf you’re overturning, or somethin’? I was up early yesterday because I had an early appointment on the other side of Huntsville. Believe you me – I didn’t WANT to be up that early, and I’m not usually up that early if I can possibly avoid it! * * * My favorite new t-shirt. * * * And I always wonder why there’s so much cat hair on the stairs… * * * Previously 2005: Can’t a girl be a dumbass without the whole world going into an uproar about it? 2004: For once, he had no good comeback. 2003: “Oh yeah. I hate this feeling. I should have just had a Diet Coke.” 2002: No entry. 2001: No entry. 2000: No entry. 1999: Can you tell this irks me? ]]>

do know that before we move into the Smallville house, we’re going to have a pest control person come out and figure out where they’re coming from and how to stop them. I could probably handle a wasp sting okay (with perhaps copious amounts of whining), but I’d hate it if one of the cats was stung by one of them and got sick. Fucking wasps.

* * * Okay, confession: Possibly once or twice while I was killing wasps last weekend one of them MIGHT HAVE flown at my face, causing me to run like hell through the house (up side of losing all that weight: I can RUN and not fall over from the exertion) squealing like a little girl, sure that my number was up. “I found her dead on the floor like that,” Fred would inform the cops in his usual earnest manner. “I don’t know what happened, I only know that the entire house shook and someone was squealing, and then she crashed to the floor and I thought she was kidding around so I didn’t check on her for fifteen or sixteen hours. By then, of course, she was good and dead.” And the cop would look at me and shake his head. “Too damn bad,” he’d say. “We get more people scared literally to death by wasps than you’d believe.” Then he’d scoff and shake his head again. “Damn pansy-ass city folk.” “She always was a bit of a wimp,” Fred would say, conveniently forgetting that he’d been pointing out wasps for me to kill all weekend long.” “Well, I’ll send out the medical examiner, but I’m sure he’ll say her death was caused by the face that she was a complete and utter spaz,” the cop would say. Fred would nod in agreement. Only I was FAST LIKE THE WIND and the damn hypothetical wasps never caught up to me. So there. (Also, I fully expected Fred to come down and say “What the fuck are you doing?”, only he never even noticed I was crashing through the house like a bull in a china shop. Nonexistent ghosts, he hears. Me running from one end of the house to the other sounding like a herd of elephants, nada.) * * * And last night as we were at the house and I was painting (KILL ME), I felt a tickling in my boobal area, so I looked down and found not one, not two, but three of those damn ladybug lookalike bugs crawling around in my shirt. I did a little dance and flicked them off me, squealing, and then stomped on them. You thought I was going to say I found a wasp down the front of my shirt, didn’t you? If that had happened, I’m not sure I’d have lived to tell the tale. * * * I’m about three weeks behind in watching my TV shows. I’m pretty much up to date on Lost (I still need to watch last night’s episode, though) and Grey’s Anatomy, but I have two or three episodes each of ER, Desperate Housewives, Brothers and Sisters, and Breaking Bonaduce to watch. I watched Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters yesterday afternoon (is it just me, or is every man on that show except Uncle Saul just impossibly good-looking? Also, is it just me or is Sally Field reprising her role she played on ER as Abby’s crazy mother?), but then picked up an episode of Lost, a Dr. Phil, a Junk Brothers, and a Biggest Loser. I am NEVER going to catch up. * * * Hey. If one of you photoshoppin’ geniuses could take this picture and photoshop the toys and the carrier in the background out of the picture (and make sure you keep the picture full-size), I would appreciate it so much I’d link to you and give you big internet smooches. Thank you, Vix!!!! and Suzie!!!!! (I’m making a t-shirt for my niece for Christmas and think it’d look better without the stuff in the background.) * * * How lame am I for laughing at something in my entry from a year ago? I read I did threaten to name him “Doo McGillicuddy” and just call him Sugarbutt, but Fred wouldn’t go for that. and laughed out loud. I mean, for god’s sake. How perfect a name is “Doo McGillicuddy”? (I giggled again just typing the name.) Don’t be too surprised if the next foster kitten gets that name. * * * Doesn’t Tommy look thrilled?   Maddy in mid-leap.   Dance, Maddy. DANCE!   All of today’s uploaded pictures are here.   * * * Miz Poo sniffs out the situation.   * * * Previously 2005: as a customer and a HUMAN, I outrank the computer, and I’d like a little RESPECT, thank you. 2004: All this cleaning is making me lightheaded. 2003: No entry. 2002: No entry. 2001: No entry. 2000: Little things make me happy. 1999: Guest entry by Fred.]]>