Author: Robyn

monkeypod tree for my back yard. I suspect they won’t grow in a non-tropical environment, though. Plumeria blossoms smell amazing. The spud and I both bought Plumeria cuttings to grow our own Plumeria trees. I really REALLY want a pet gecko. We saw tons of them in Hawaii, and it brought me back to my childhood on Guam and the thousands of them we saw during our two years there. Back then I was scared of them (probably because of the way their tails come off. Eeek!), but now I think they’re just the coolest thing. “Aloha”, when said by a native Hawaiian, sounds musical, almost as if they’re singing it. The $2.99 breakfast special, while a good price and filling, always includes very bland pancakes. Taking 10 books in my suitcase along with 5 books in my purse was WAY overdoing it – I only ended up reading about 6 books, two of those on the plane. But I’d still rather have too many books than not enough. If I had to do the trip all over again, I would rent a car for at least part of the week. The only time we had access to a car is when my father wasn’t working, and even then we had to cram four people in the back seat. Nooooooot the most comfortable way to sit, trust me. We took the bus to the Aloha Stadium (there’s a swap meet there, and it was AMAZING), and on the way the bus stopped at Pearl Harbor, and there were about 600 people in line to get their tickets, and Debbie and I immediately decided “Fuck THAT.” Fred is horrified that I went to Hawaii and didn’t visit Pearl Harbor. Hell, I’m a little horrified, myself. But anyway, if we’d had a car, we probably would have ended up going to Pearl Harbor. We also could have spent the week driving all over the island, and swimming on beaches that were all but uninhabited rather than the busy beaches of Waikiki. So if you ever find yourself going to Oahu and are (like me!) too much of a princess to spend the day on a sweltering bus, make sure you rent a car. Whatever the price, I guarantee you it’s worth it.

* * * Okay, that’s it for today. Like I told the notify list last night, I kept a handwritten journal the entire time we were in Hawaii. I’m going to type up those entries and add pictures to hopefully make a pretty decent travelogue. I intend to at least get started on that this weekend while I’m getting over the worst of the jetlag. * * * “Do I LOOK like I missed The Momma?”]]>

* * * My sister called just before 8 this morning from Newark airport. She and Brian have a five hour layover in Newark, and then a NINE hour flight from Newark to Hawaii. I think a nine hour flight would drive me insane. Also, my ass would go numb and fall off. I’m glad as hell that we’re flying from Huntsville to Dallas, Dallas to LA, and LA to Hawaii. I’d rather have a couple of layovers and shorter flights than a NINE HOUR flight. Three times since she’s gotten home, the spud has informed me that her grandparents (her father’s parents, who live near LA) “Only took five hours to get to Hawaii!”, and three times I’ve responded with “Yes, and they didn’t have to fly across the country before they flew to Hawaii, either.” I expect to have the conversation at least once more before we actually get to Hawaii.

* * * Looky, looky! It’s a Robyn avatar! You can make your own, here. * * * There’s a program here that will supposedly tell you what stars you look like. When I submitted this picture: it said I was a combination of Demi Moore, Elizabeth Hurley, and Chi Hsu. When I submitted this one: it said I was a combination of Sophie Marceau, Catherine Bell, and Elena Obraztsova. When I said I was male, and re-submitted the second picture, I came back as a mix of Jason Biggs, Christopher Walken, and Hugh Grant. Sounds good but… I NEED MORE COWBELL! * * * From US Magazine a few weeks ago: US Magazine, I love you, but WHAT THE FUCK? Why the fucking hell shouldn’t men cheat on beautiful women? Are you trying to imply that beautiful women shouldn’t be cheated on BECAUSE they’re beautiful? What, the bitches don’t get enough of a charge from stealing all the attention, now it’s supposed to be a rule that they can’t be cheated on? What? Okay, here’s a shocker: men who cheat on beautiful women cheat for the EXACT same reasons they cheat on ugly women. Because they can. Because they’re assholes. Because their wife doesn’t understand them. Because they have wandering eyes and think that if they look, they must touch. Because their life is stressful and they just need to blow off steam. The question, you stupid fucking US Magazine, is not “Why do men cheat on beautiful women?”, but why do they cheat at all? Why do men cheat? Why do women cheat? Why do cheaters cheat? Beautiful women are supposed to get a special dispensation from any kind of pain or horror because they’re beautiful? What fucking planet do you live on, US Magazine? Because I’m starting to think the answer is “not Earth.” Here’s a horrible fact of life, beautiful people: the impact of a beautiful woman or man lasts only a little while. Once you get to know that beautiful person, they become not “That beautiful woman, Mary Jo”, but “My friend Mary Jo. Yeah, I guess she’s beautiful, that’s how men react when we walk down the street. I hate her. No, wait. I don’t, because she’s funny as hell and a great person.” Conversely, Beautiful Person, if your head has been turned by your own beauty and you think the world owes you whatever your little heart desires, people will figure that out pretty quickly and they won’t see your outer beauty but your inner ugliness, and they won’t have any desire to spend any more time with you than they absolutely have to. I hate you, US Magazine. You really piss me off. (Yet I am helpless in the face of your “Stars: They’re just like us!” page. Ugh.) * * * * * * I’m outta here. Aloha! ]]>

here. Also, there’s a new movie of the “week” (if by “week” you mean “whenever the hell I get around to it”). This one’s starring Meester Boogers with a brief appearance by Spanky and a slightly longer appearance by Miz Poo. The first part is what happens every single night when Fred shakes the box of Kitten Chow. Meester Boogers runs from wherever he is, across the bed, and onto the floor to wait for his little pile of food. (I have mentioned that our cats think Kitten Chow is the best treat ever, right?) The next little bit is what Meester Boogers thinks of having the cat door closed so he can’t go outside. And lastly, Miz Poo was trying to come back through the cat door, and the Booger was freaking out at the very idea. Look, I can’t HELP it that all the movies star Meester Boogers. He’s the only cat who doesn’t just lay around sleeping 24/7! Anyway, click on the “Movie of the week” link over there under “Other”. It’s a long motherfucker, so right-click and “save as”, wouldya? Thanks, you’re a pal.

* * * The hardwood and tile floors downstairs are CLEAN, thankyajeezus. Of course, they have little kitty footprints across them because that little Beanie bastard can’t stand not to walk across a wet floor, but at least they’re CLEAN footprints. The bathroom is clean, the kitchen is clean, the living room is dusted and vacuumed, the stairs are vacuumed, and the computer room is vacuumed. In other words, at this very moment, the downstairs is presentable for company. I suspect that by this weekend, when Fred has his parents over, it’ll be less presentable. But I don’t care, I’ll be in Hawaii! Whoo! * * * I took my heart (or rather, my sanity) in my hands and went to Wal-Mart today. I needed earplugs, and Wal-Mart is apparently the only store in the area that carries the soft foam ones I like. I also had to get a few other things, and the spud wanted to check out their flip-flop collection. She ended up buying three pair of flip-flops and a set of toe rings. I don’t wear flip-flops because I can bear to have the thingy between my toes, so I have no idea where her sudden flip-flop love comes from. (She got a pair that light up while she was in California. If they were anything but flip-flops, I would have stolen them from her so fast her head would’ve spun.) Then we went to the grocery store and got sushi for lunch, because it was well past lunch time and we were both starving. I got my usual (California Rolls), and she got something else, I don’t remember the name of it. We ate as soon as we got home, and when the spud was done, she showed me her plate. “What’s this?” she asked, pointing to little orange speckles on her plate. I shrugged. “I don’t know, spices?” “They look like FISH EGGS,” she said. I looked again. “Yeah, they could be.” “Well, that’s gross!” she said, and flounced into the kitchen to put her plate in the dishwasher. “You eat chicken eggs all the time,” I said. “Why are fish eggs gross?” She looked simultaneously confused and disgusted. “When do I eat CHICKEN eggs?” She wrinkled her nose. I stared at her for a moment, chewing on the California roll in my mouth. I waited for the light to dawn on her face, but all was dark. “Like, every day when you have scrambled eggs!” I finally said. “Oh!” she had the good sense to look a little embarrassed. “I guess I wasn’t thinking!” Heh. She gets that from her Momma. * * * I’m 99.9% packed. And because I’m using a big-ass LL Bean duffel bag with wheels (the yellow one, naturally), every time I thought I was done packing, I remembered something else I might possibly need, and packed that, too. Despite my father telling me this afternoon not to overpack, I have overpacked in a big way. I was still able to lift the bag… which means I need to pack more, right? * * * “My mother is abandoning me, and I am bereft.”]]>

George Michael is shutting down the forum on his website because people are taking potshots at him. Here’s what one braniac had to say: “It’s a fans’ forum, it’s freedom of speech, and I don’t think it’s down to George to take his ball home and say ‘I’m not playing any more’.People have opinions and they are entitled to them; that’s what a forum is for.” Well but, here’s the thing. It’s a forum for the fans… but it’s on George Michael’s site. The site that belongs to George Michael, who can do whatever he wants with the site that belongs… to him. Sure people are entitled to their own opinions (opinions are like assholes, and every asshole has an opinion), but he’s supposed to provide the bandwidth for them to have their opinions? Um, no. Don’t think so. I provide comments on this site so that people can comment, but if I started getting comments like “Why the fuck do you bother to call these things ‘entries’? They SUCK. Why don’t you DIE?!” all the time, chances are pretty good that I’d shut down the comments. I actually think he should get kudos for leaving the forum open for a few weeks so that people who’ve made friends with other posters can make plans with each other. And I’m not even a George Michael fan. Though “Faith” rocks the casbah.

* * * I put up some pictures this weekend. You can see the pictures I took in Gatlinburg back in May here (there’s not a whole lot there, but I got some cool aquarium pics), and I put up the best of the quarry pics here. Also, I have no idea if I ever actually linked to these pictures, but there are pictures from our trip to Vicksburg, MS last year here. * * * I’ve been watching Sports Night while I work out in the morning, and I finally saw the episode from whence Fractious Times got their name. I was, perhaps, a little more excited than the occasion warranted when I heard Dan say “These are fractious times”, but what can I say? It doesn’t take much to excite me. * * * I was going to scrub the bathroom and dust and vacuum the rest of the upstairs this morning. I ended up just vacuuming the upstairs. It’s not like anyone will notice if I don’t clean; I cleaned the upstairs last week, after all. I do need to clean the downstairs and mop the floors, because Fred will probably have his parents over while I’m in Hawaii, and I don’t want them to know what a pig I am. The spud and I fed the cats at the pet store this morning (pictures up tomorrow), then we came home so I could shower and vacuum and do some laundry, then we left to go to Sam’s (where I bought out the entire store, I swear to god) and Target for some last-minute stuff to take to Hawaii. Did you know that they make travel size cans of shaving cream? Hey, anything to save a little room in my suitcase – I’ll need plenty of room for books, after all. And I need to take shaving cream, since I’ll be prancing around in shorts (gasp!) and need to keep my legs shaved more than the usual once a week. I’m leaving for Hawaii in two days! Whee! I know that at least two of you are going to be in Hawaii at the same time I am. If you happen to spot me, please come up and say hi – but ixnay on the ournaljay, especially if you happen to see a 60ish clean-freak type nearby. “Robyn? Hi! I’m (insert name) – I emailed you about (insert cat name of your choice) a while back!” will work well as a code, I think, and cut down on the necessity of explaining what an online journal is (“And I bitch about you ALL the time, Mom!”) to my mother. * * * I have come to the conclusion that I don’t really care for the word “lady”. I came to this conclusion this morning when I read a site wherein the site owner said that he was on the lookout for “a special lady to share my life with.” Now, I’m sure he’s a nice guy and everything but the words “special” and “lady”, when put together just ooze cheese, don’t they? You just can’t use the word “lady” and not sound like a cheeseball. “Heyyyyy, sexy lady!”, “This is my lady friend…”, “My lady and I…”, “My special lady says…” See? Totally cheesy. Anything on earth would sound better. “My bitch says…” see? Better. The only time I can hear “lady” and not have a knee-jerk “Ugh!” reaction is when my friend Liz calls. She always says “Hey, lady!”, which harkens back to when we were 18 and cruising around the seamier side of Lewiston. I was sitting with my head out the window (it was the middle of summer and hot as hell), and we passed a gaggle of about 6 teenage boys. “Hey, lady!” one of them yelled. “Hey… man!” was my brilliant response. Ever since, Liz greets me with “Hey, lady!” From anyone else, though? Totally cheeseball. * * * There, there, Musty.]]>

This is the sort of shit that just pisses me off to no end and want to move to a CIVILIZED country. You can bet your Aunt Fucking Fannie that the first time my pharmacist refused to fill my birth control prescription would be the last time I ever shopped at that store. There needs to be a central web page that women can consult so that they know what pharmacies and doctors to avoid. In fact, there needs to be a list of pharmacies and doctors so that women know who to BOYCOTT. Have I mentioned that this shit just pisses me off?

* * * The spud’s flight landed exactly on time and there were no problems at all. I do think she’s grown about six inches in the past five weeks, though. Right now she’s upstairs watching TV and doing her laundry and all is well in the world. * * * From my comments: There was a big article today on MSN about how Carmen Diaz (sp?) used compressed air to make her nipples hard during a porn type modeling shoot. Hmmm? Just wondering. SNORT. I had no idea what this was about, NANCE, until I realized I’d mentioned there’s a can of compressed air next to the bed. I would use it to make my nipples hard, except I have no nipples. No sexual organs, either. I am smooth like a Barbie doll, and as far as I’m concerned, everyone else in the world is lacking nipples and sexual organs. Yep. Speaking of people taking down websites without consulting other people. Where’d the tater go? Oh, that. Well, I tried to log into WordPress to put up an entry one day, and no matter what I tried I couldn’t log in. So I got pissed off and deleted the whole fucking site. Once I get back from Hawaii, I’ll put something else up – I signed up for couchtater at blogspot, but I’m not sure if I want to use that, or something on my own domain. We’ll see. Tiger has the same raspy cough. He gets it when he wakes up from a deep sleep, and then hunches over like he’s going to puke. He won’t quit until he clears (?) whatever it is an swallows, then he’s fine. We took him to the vet 3 different times for it, and they’ve tried all the same stuff, still with no results. They’re clueless as well, and since it didn’t seem to be life threatening, we’ve decided it’s just a part of him. It does sound scary though, first few times you hear it. I’d never known anyone else to have a cat that does that. Maybe we’ve stumbled upon a new cat ailment. Should we call it the Poo Cough? Or the Tiger Hack? I think the Tiger Poo Hacking Cough sounds much more formal. Heh. Of course, they’ll shorten it to TPHC. “Your cat appears to be suffering from TPHC.” “Oh my god, is it serious?!” “No, just annoying.” If you like Sedaris, you might like Augusten Burroughs. “Running with Scissors” was insanely good. I have that book! I haven’t read it yet, but I have it. Robyn – is there a good web site that lists all the books in a series? I always have a hard time finding this out. I don’t know if there’s a web site like that – and if anyone knows that there is, leave a comment, wouldya? – but if I’m trying to figure out all the books in a series, I go to Amazon, and do a search on the name of the series. Ie, “Left Behind Series” will bring up all the Left Behind books in the series, though not necessarily in order. “Andrew Vachss Burke Series” brings up all the books in the Burke series, and so on. Robyn – Have you seen Felicity Huffman’s newer show, “Out of Order”? I caught a few episodes one weekend a couple weeks ago and loved it. It’s a totally different role for her and I really got into it. Yeah, we watched the series when it was first on Showtime and liked it a lot. I had hoped that they’d do another season of it, but so far there’s been nothing. Never say never though, right? Have you ever gotten into Strangers with Candy (Amy Sedaris stars). Funniest show EVER! A SWC movie is due out sometime this year. I’ve never seen a single episode – HOWEVER, the show’s out on DVD, so I’ve added the first disk of season one to my Netflix queue so I can check it out. Good god, don’t they include the tiny tube of hootchie-numbing cream they used to with Monistat? From what I remember, that was the main selling point of it for me when I had delicate issues. This is regarding my issues with the Monistat last week. Yeah, they had the hootchie-numbing (hee!) cream, but it didn’t so much as “numb” the hootchie (I mean, if I HAD one and wasn’t smooth like a Barbie) as “cause even more itching.” Maybe my hootchie (if I had one) is numbing-resistant. Robyn, I bet you could get your hair to do that, but I don’t think you’ll want to. It will require PRODUCTS. I actually tried styling my hair like Dana from Sports Night (season 1) last week, and it took a ton of products, too much time with the blow dryer, and still didn’t look like anything to write home about. I think I’ll stick with my wash, comb, ignore method. Life’s too short to spend 20 minutes with the blow dryer. Bitch! I wanted Cold Mountain for this weekend, but Netflix says ‘Short Wait’ and sent me something else instead. So YOU’RE the one who got my copy! *evil glare* Mwahahah! That’s right, someone mentioned in my comments that she goes to her Netflix queue the day before something is released and makes it #1 in the queue. I gave it a try and it worked so well that I’m probably going to do it from now on. I probably didn’t get your copy, though. My distribution center’s in Birmingham and yours… is not. 🙂 Robyn – I just found this site and immediately thought of you. That site reminds of this picture of Spanky: * * * Cat lovers – help C.C. out, won’t you? * * * We watched The Butterfly Effect last night. Skip to the next section if you haven’t seen it yet, because I’m going to mention how it ends. Not a bad movie, though the acting seemed to be uniformly wooden and Ashton Kutcher will probably never be anyone but Kelso to me, especially when he smiles. I was with the movie right up to the STUPIDEST FUCKING ENDING EVER. I mean, I’m sorry. He goes back in time and KILLS HIMSELF IN THE WOMB? What? Somehow – and this is just my opinion – I SUSPECT BABIES IN THE WOMB DON’T HAVE THE MANUAL DEXTERITY TO DO THAT SORT OF THING. Also, even 20 years ago, if there was a baby in distress like that, the doctors and nurses wouldn’t have been all standing around saying “Hmm. Baby in distress. Whatever shall we do? Sorry, lady. Sucks to be you.” They would have knocked her out and done a c-section immediately. Christ. We ended up seeing the director’s cut because I apparently put the dvd with the director’s cut in my Netflix queue rather than the theatrical version. Probably because it was the director’s cut, it seemed to take a while to really get going – Fred thought there was a little too much backstory. It was worth watching, despite the goofy-ass ending. * * * The Friday Foofah: 1. Are you viewing this on a computer running MacOS or Windows (or something else)? Windows 2000. 2. If money wasn’t an issue, what computer would you have on your desk? I kind of like the computer I have now. I’d like one that’s faster and more powerful (this one is, like, almost three years old!), but I’d probably leave it up to Fred to pick out what kind, since that’s his area. 3. When did you first get on the Internet? Good lord. NINE years ago as of mid-February. 4. What’s the #1 use you put your computer to? Porn. Ha! Just kidding. Slackery: journal reading, surfing, chatting. * * * ]]>

* * * Robyn’s book report: The Da Vinci Code: Liked it, though the last several pages kind of dragged. I can see why it made it onto the best seller list, though I’m not sure why it’s STILL on the best seller list. Click here for spoilers. Flirting with Pete: Good so far, though I’ve been finding myself a little impatient since Barbara Delinsky does like to go on and I want her to just get to the POINT already. A good, quick read – I’ll easily finish this book sometime today.

* * * The spud is going to be home later today; I’m picking her up at the (stalker alert!) airport this afternoon. These last five weeks just flew by. It’ll be good to have her home, since I always worry a little when she’s so far away. And this time next week? We’ll be stumbling around Hawaii in the throes of jet lag. Whee! We’re landing in Hawaii at 10:19 pm next Wednesday night, which will feel like 3:19 am to us. We’re going to be some tired motherfuckers, that’s for sure. I can never really sleep on planes, so I guess I’d better be sure I bring along a ton of books to read. Hey, maybe I’ll register them all with BookCrossing and leave them wherever I happen to be when I’m done reading them! Reminder to self: “Where’s George” vacation money before leaving. Response to self: What vacation money? We’re going to throw ourselves on the kindness of strangers. Response to self’s response to self: Oh. Right. * * * Speaking of Hawaii, I ordered a couple of very cheap red t-shirts to wear with my hid-e-ass board shorts to go into the water, and I’m pleased to announce that they’ll do nicely. I also ordered a ($5! Whoo! Love the clearance!) polo shirt that should fit me, but seems to be about three sizes too big. Seriously, it hangs all the way down to my knees, and while I know I should return it because oversized shirts on fat chicks are not so flattering, it’s the most comfortable shirt I’ve ever worn, and so I’m going to keep it and wear it. Although since it was $5, no doubt the first time I wash it, it’ll fall to pieces. * * * Still liking Firefox – especially the “open in tab” option, whoo! – but I went into Nance‘s chat room yesterday and every time someone said (typed) something, instead of showing up at the bottom of the screen, it would show up at the top of the screen. It freaked me out (yeah, obviously it doesn’t take a great deal to freak me out). It’s definitely a Firefox thing, though – I went back in in IE, and the chat room looked like it was supposed to. Also, I’m making it so that all my notify emails are going to my gmail account, but man! I sure belong to A FUCKING LOT of notify lists! Every time I think I’m all set, another notify shows up at the old address. Lordy. * * * The fucking cats have been stomping all the fuck over my nerves lately. I was up ’til almost midnight last night, and when I turned the light off and settled in to go to sleep, Miz Poo jumped up and settled in on the pillow next to me. Which is not a problem, because I love the Poo-pie! Yes I do! Except. Grrr. When she was operated on a few years ago (don’t even ask me what the operation was for, there’ve been so fucking many of them!), once she came home she developed some… something. I don’t know what the hell it is, but sometimes she starts breathing raspily, and it’s not that she can’t breathe, it’s that something seems to be stuck in her throat, and instead of just coughing it the fuck up like a normal person (yes, I know she’s not a person. Shut UP.) would, she just sits there and makes that noise for hours and hours and then suddenly she’ll cough and swallow, and all is fine. Yes, we took her to the vet. No, they don’t know what it is. Yes, we took her to more than one vet. No, none of them had anything helpful to say. Yes, we tried antibiotics. No, it’s not asthma. No, there’s no rhyme nor reason to when it happens. No, it’s not allergies. Sometimes Fred will kind of perform the Heimlich on her and it helps. Sometimes it doesn’t. Anyway, last night on the pillow with her raspy-breathing self three inches from my face, even though I was wearing earplugs, it was loud and after two minutes it got really, really annoying. Now, perhaps I’ve mentioned, I LOVE the Poo-pie! Yes, I dooooooo! However, I love my sleep MORE, and if it comes down to a choice between the Poo and my sleep, there’s really no competition. So I pushed her off the pillow toward the edge of the bed. “Goodnight, Poo,” I said. She walked off the edge of the bed… onto the bedside table, where she turned around and sat down and stared at me. The raspy breathing was as clear through my earplugs as it had been when she was laying ten inches closer to me. And then suddenly Spanky began his infernal nightly howling. Spot began his infernal nightly ass-licking. Stumpy began his infernal night running around and “Brrr? Brrr! Brrr!” “Oh, come ON!!!” I bellowed, throwing myself across the bed. “Give me a fucking BREAK!” ::rasp::rasp::rasp:: ::mrowrrrrrrrr! mrowwwwwr! mrowrrrrrrrr!:: ::slurp::slurp::slurp:: ::bangbangbang::brrr! brrr? brrr!:: “Agh!” I yelled. “I hate you kitties! I hate you all!” And then brilliance struck. I sat up, grabbed the can of compressed air off the bedside table (not the table Miz Poo was on – the table on my side of the bed)(also, what? Where do you keep YOUR compressed air?) and sprayed it in the air in an arc. There was a mass stampede of cats hauling ass out of the room, Meester Boogers ::Brr!Brr?Brr!::ing all the way. They may have started it up again once they realized the can of air was no longer spraying, but by then I was thankfully sound asleep. Fucking cats. * * * For all you Spanky lovahs out there.]]>

* * * The web page for the school the spud will be attending this year is the singularly least helpful web page I’ve ever come across in my life. If I were in charge of that web page, I would put up information such as when the schedule pickup for the various grades is, and what the bus routes are for Madison. I have no clue where around here the spud can catch the bus, and it’s information I’d like to be able to look up on the web page. Yes, I KNOW that school doesn’t start for a month, but I’m a worrier. What can I say?

* * * I went and had my stitches removed today. It didn’t hurt until she started removing the scabs, but even that kind of felt good, since it’s been itching an awful lot back there. She told me that to lessen the scarring, I needed to be careful to use sunscreen when exposing that spot to the sun over the next year or so. I didn’t tell her that I think scars are badass and it can scar up all it wants. I also didn’t tell her that chances are really good that my back probably hasn’t seen the sun since I was running around in a pink bikini, and I don’t expect it to see the sun ever again in this lifetime. * * * Our cable internet service sucks so incredibly badly lately – every five minutes it goes down for a minute or longer – that if it doesn’t improve in the next few days (and this has been going on for a goddamn week if not longer) I’m probably going to sign up for fucking dial-up service. That is, if I don’t have a MOTHERFUCKING STROKE first. Knology. Don’t bother. * * * In our library/ dining room/ whatever you want to call it sits a secretary (a piece of furniture, that is, not a person. Though I sure could use a secretary to answer the email sitting in my inbox.). Over the weekend, one of the cats (Meester Boogers, I think) was laying on the floor looking under the secretary. I assumed he’d knocked something under there, so I got down on the floor to look. There were a ton of toy mice under there – which I guess answers the question “Where did all their toy mice go?!” I got a broom and pulled all the mice out from under the secretary, then counted them. Sixteen. There were SIXTEEN toy mice under the secretary. Is it possible our cats have too many toys? Nah. * * * They always look slightly guilty, as if they’d been doing something they shouldn’t. I suspect that when I’m not around, they snuggle up to each other.]]>

book the other day. There were a couple of parts that had me laughing so hard I could barely breathe – especially the line “I see you have a little swimming mouse”. My favorite stories are the ones that he writes about his family. After I finished the David Sedaris book, I started The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and as much as I wanted to like it – Fred enjoyed it a great deal when he read it – I realized around page 150 that I just didn’t care what happened to the characters and, y’know, life’s just too damn short. Yesterday morning I started The Da Vinci Code. I’m about 250 pages into it (I read in bed after Fred went to his room, and couldn’t put it down – thus the reason I was up past midnight last night), and enjoying it a great deal so far. We watched a bunch of movies this weekend, the best one being The Pianist. What a downer of a movie. Of course, now that I know the movie’s based on the book, I’ll have to be sure to add the book to my wish list.

* * * Pet store kitty pics from yesterday are here. * * * So, Fred’s father has a small lemon tree. It’s planted in a big pot, and he keeps it outside for the summer, and then when the weather gets cold, he pulls the pot into his garage, where it stays for the winter. Ever since last summer, when Fred’s father gave Fred a lemon from the tree and Fred declared it the Best Lemon Ever, we’ve been looking for a lemon tree. We tried all the area nurseries, we looked online to see if we could order a lemon tree, we bitched and moaned about the lack of lemon trees in this area, and then we forgot about it for a little while, and made do with lemons from the grocery store (Fred likes fresh lemon juice in his iced tea). A few months back, when we were driving to Memphis with Fred’s mother, we somehow got on the subject of lemons and lemon trees. “We just can’t find one anywhere!” Fred said sadly. “And I would really like a lemon tree of my own.” We all sat in silence and mourned the lack of a lemon tree in our life. “Did you check the (something or other) Nursery?” Fred’s mother asked. “Yeah, we checked there,” Fred said. “And the (something) Nursery?” “Yeah.” Long, long silence. “Well,” Fred’s mother said tentatively. “You could always just plant some seeds from a lemon…” Fred and I glanced at her and then at each other. “Plant seeds from a lemon?” I said. “Yes, seeds from a lemon. To grow a lemon tree.” Fred quickly changed the subject. Later that night, while we were laying in bed talking, he brought it up. “Plant seeds from a lemon,” he said. “To grow a lemon tree.” “Can you really do that?” I asked. “The time the lemon spent in the refrigerator doesn’t ruin the seeds or something?” He shrugged. “Fuck if I know.” “Well, it won’t hurt to try, huh?” I said. “We have potting soil, and lemon seeds from your lemons. Let’s give it a try!” Some days later, I poked holes in the bottom of an empty, clean yogurt container, filled it with soil, and planted a couple of seeds from a lemon. Then I put the container on the front step and waited. “I don’t think anything’s going to happen,” I said two weeks later. “Surely it doesn’t take THIS long for a lemon seed to sprout.” Fred agreed. But since we are who we are, neither of us got around to moving the container off the front step, and a week later after I went out to get the mail, I glanced down and saw it. Our lemon seeds had sprouted! You can plant seeds from a lemon and eventually end up with a lemon tree. Who the fuck knew? (Yes, it’ll probably be 50 years before we actually GET a lemon off the lemon tree, but that’s not the POINT.) Next, we’re going to try our hand at growing a peach tree. By the time the spud has graduated from high school and we’ve found a house we like on many, many acres, both the lemon and peach trees should be ready to plant in the ground. Just call me Farmer Robyn. * * * Yesterday I finally downloaded and installed Firefox. Fred’s been using it for a couple of weeks now and really, really likes it a lot. I like it so far, too – especially the popup stopper extension you can install – but I’m having a problem with Eudora. Even though Firefox is set as my default browser, if I click on a link in an email, it comes up in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Fred tried to figure out what the problem was and couldn’t, so I threw myself on the mercy of Eudora support. Their response? It’s a Firefox problem. Smells like bullshit to me. So if I’m on your notify list and you see me leave, don’t worry. I’m switching all my notify email to a gmail account. Which doesn’t really solve the problem with Eudora, but 9/10 of the links I get are in notify emails, so it’ll be easier to deal with. Stupid Eudora. * * * Bath time!]]>

* * * We went to the quarry for a little while this morning. We only stayed for about 45 minutes, because more and more people were showing up, and the quarry’s only really cool when there’s no one else there. I gave my board shorts and coolmax shirt a test run. The shorts were fine, but the t-shirt was a tad too small – “too small” meaning “it fit the way it’s supposed to” – and I was uncomfortable. I may have to look into getting a cheap t-shirt to wear in the water while we’re in Hawaii. We’ll see. Have I mentioned that the board shorts are just as ugly as they could possibly be? They’re hideous. Which, oddly, makes me just like them that much more.

* * * We were flipping channels the other night, and flipped by VH-1 Country (yes, there’s a VH-1 Country! Who the hell knew?). Loretta Lynn was singing, so I made Fred stop so we could watch the video. After a few minutes I realized that Jack White (and I only know what he looks like because I saw Cold Mountain) was playing guitar. I had no opinion on Jack White one way or the other before I saw the video, but that he was playing backup for Loretta Lynn gave him instant cool credits as far as I’m concerned. The song, “Miss Being Mrs”, is sad as hell, by the way. * * * Okay, it’s time to clear out my picture queue. And, not surprisingly, I have about ten thousand pictures of Meester Boogers yawning. The yawn and stretch. This one particularly cracks me up. The stretch, but no yawn. The distracted yawn. He’s a yawning motherfucker, that’s right.]]>

You’re Australia!
You’re easy-going, relaxed, and yet somewhat tough and hardy all at the same time.  You can appreciate culture, scuba diving, and even safaris.  This makes you pretty interesting and intriguing to others, though also really unpredictable and even wild.  Your knowledge of nature is unthinkable to most of those around you, even though your respect for it is sometimes less than perfect.  People really like your accent.
Take the Country Quiz Hmm. Sounds just like me. They forgot “You’re a badass!”, though.

* * * While we watched Cold Mountain last night – while I watched Cold Mountain, I should say, and Fred yammered through the entire fucking movie until right before the sex scene I turned to him and said “Are you planning on ever shutting up SO I CAN HEAR THE FUCKING MOVIE??” and then he quieted for a few minutes before resuming his smartass comments – I had to, at various times, turn away. Usually it was when I saw a knife or sword and knew it was about to be used. I am, if I’ve never mentioned it, squeamish as a prissy little girl. I guess I should more accurately say that I’m selectively squeamish. Things like cleaning out the litter box or cleaning up a line of barf left as a present by one or more of the cats are things I can deal with without much batting an eye (unless the barf is still warm and it soaks through the paper towel, and then all bets are off). Poopy diapers don’t much bother me – well, that’s a lie, they’d probably bother me nowadays, but back in the day when I was dealing with the spud’s atomic neck-to-knee shits I just considered them something to be dealt with and didn’t make a big deal over it. Which is not to say that I didn’t foist diaper changes on whoever else was standing around whenever humanly possible. Just because they didn’t bother me doesn’t mean I went out of my way to come face-to-face with shitty diapers. But I digress. It’s mostly the blood-and-guts stuff that makes my toes curl and want to squeal and run away. When we watch Nip/ Tuck, those fuckers always show at least one surgery in loving detail and I have to turn my head and tell Fred to let me know when it’s over. He sits and gazes with shiny eyes at the screen, getting so caught up that oftentimes he forgets to let me know it’s over. When we were watching Cold Mountain and someone got stabbed in the gut with a knife or sword, it made me cringe. I’ve never in my entire life been stabbed in the gut – or anywhere else, for that matter – but I have enough of an imagination that I could swear I know just what it feels like to have cold steel stabbing past your skin and into your intestines and whateverthehell other organs are laying in the path of the knife or sword. (Ooh! Ooh! Digression! For some reason, I’m reminded of the time years and years ago that I read a novel. In the novel, a bad guy was kidnapping and killing young boys. Near the end of the novel, he had kidnapped yet another young boy, who made a break for it and ended up in the basement, where there was a huge pile of garbage bags. The boy runs through the garbage bags and some of them break open to reveal the decomposing bodies of the boys the bad guy has killed. The author goes into some detail about the smell, and later after I’d put the book down for the night (or maybe finished it), I was laying in bed thinking about the fact that I was dead certain that I knew exactly what it smelled like in that basement. Which made me start wondering how the holy fuck I knew what a decomposing body smelled like. What the hell? Had I once smelled (been RESPONSIBLE FOR) a decomposing body and repressed the memory? Had I, in fact, ONCE KILLED SOMEONE and the memory was trying to break free into my conscious mind? I swear to god, people, this bothered me so much that I couldn’t sleep that night. It wasn’t until the middle of the next day that I realized that the smell I was recalling was the smell of the rotting garbage in the garbage bin when I worked at McDonald’s. It might not have contained any decomposing bodies, but if you spend a little time in a small building that contains nothing but a dumpster filled with week-old McDonald’s garbage, I can almost guarantee you that you know what decomposing bodies smell like. Gag.) (Digression #2: I once had an extremely realistic dream that I was leaving a bar late at night, got into an argument with a stranger over what kind of car I was driving (it wasn’t American-made, which pissed him off). I got into my car, backed out, and hit him (an accident, I swear!). When I got out to see if he was okay, I was pretty sure he was dead, though I didn’t, y’know, check for a PULSE or anything. I picked him up, stuffed him in my trunk, and drove up 95N toward home. It being late at night, there wasn’t much traffic, so I pulled over and opened my trunk to toss him over the side of a ravine (conveniently located right next to the highway). When I started to pull him out of the trunk, he began flailing and moaning, and I freaked out and pushed him over the side of the ravine. He landed at the bottom (and it was a deep ravine) and I could still hear him moaning and there was this bloody, gurgling sound underlying the moan. I shut the trunk and took off, feeling incredibly guilty, but also as if I had no choice, and woke with my heart in my mouth. I had to actually sit and wonder if it was something that had really happened that I had – sound familiar? – repressed and was trying to fight it’s way back to my conscious mind. Can you tell that I was really big into the idea of repressed memories when I was younger?) (Also, Stephen King once said that when he was young, he thought that sanity was something very fragile – like you could be walking down the street, one moment sane, the next insane – something I thought as well. I also thought that you could flip back and forth from sanity to insanity like flipping a switch (though involuntarily), and also that if you were insane, you knew it. Thus, I’d every once in a while check in with my sanity. “Am I crazy?” “Nope, not today.” “‘k, just checking!”) I can watch someone get shot and it doesn’t bother me too terribly much – maybe because I haven’t read a detailed description of what it’s like to be shot – but watching a stabbing or strangling or someone having their throat slit is something I have a really hard time watching. Either I’m too empathetic, or I’m just a big baby. Still a badass, though. A cringing, whiny, “Oh, I can’t watch the fake operation, it’s too groooooooss” badass, but a badass just the same. * * * For the record, say what you will about Cold Mountain, I loved it. In fact, I put it on my wish list. Fred thought it moved too slowly, but I didn’t think it did at all. I’m not a big Renee Zellweger fan, but I thought she was amazing in the part of Ruby. Hm. I loved her as Bridget Jones, too. Maybe I’m more of a fan than I thought I was… * * * Five minutes ago, I was packing a box of books to send to my sister. Once I’d gotten the box packed, I wasn’t sure whether to send it to my parents’ house – my sister is house- and dog-sitting while my parents are in Hawaii – or to my sister’s apartment. ::beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep:: (I dialed my parents’ phone number) Behind me, Fred was listening to music. Me: Can you turn that down a little? Fred: ::turns it down a very little:: Spud (answering the phone): Hello? Me: Hey. Fred: (sounding annoyed) Hey. Me: What are you doing? Spud: I just (rest of sentence drowned out by:) Fred: (sounding even more annoyed) Reading Dooce, like you told me to! Me: I’m ON THE PHONE! Fred: Oh. Maybe you just had to be there. * * * Bath time! ]]>