Author: Robyn

letter in support of Martha Stewart. (Link found over at Aimee‘s) I’m neither a fan or a critic of Martha Stewart – I’m pretty neutral on her – but I think it’s ridiculous that she’s looking at so much jail time.

* * * If you… 1. …owned a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve? As long as I don’t have to do any of the cooking (because that’s a restaurant that would go out of business mighty damn quickly), I’d love to have a restaurant that offered healthy, yet tasty foods. In normal sized servings, everything using natural ingredients, and nutritional information on the menu. When I used to work at Fred’s company, I always thought it would be a cool idea to have a delivery-only restaurant that delivered salads, soups, and sandwiches. Yet I have no desire to ever work in a restaurant again, thanks. Oh, wait! Or I’d have a seafood restaurant. Seafood every day. Yum! 2. …owned a small store, what kind of merchandise would you sell? It’d be a book store/ cafe. And you bet your ass I’d have one or two store cats. 3. …wrote a book, what genre would it be? Chick lit, with an edge. Also, lots of swearing. Heh. 4. …ran a school, what would you teach? I couldn’t possibly teach, I’d have to run the office. 5. …recorded an album, what kind of music would be on it? Country, and I would entitle it “Robyn Sings Country (for the Tone-Deaf).” * * * Confidential to Joanna – Miz Poo says that anyone who owns cats and would go out and buy leather furniture is asking for it, because leather furniture feels so very good on kitty toes that kitties have to thank the leather furniture by sharpening their claws. Also, nothing makes claws sharper than leather. Miz Poo offers that you can buy kits to patch up leather furniture, and according to the infomercials that she watches late at night while we’re asleep, you can’t even tell where the leather has been patched. Good investment, thinks Miz Poo, two paws up! * * * After getting up to 84 this past weekend (whoo!), I woke up and came downstairs this morning to find that it was 33� out, and isn’t supposed to get any warmer than 50 today. Brrr! I know that your hearts are breaking for me, especially those of you who had snow recently. * * * The spud has this week off from spring break and she’s already started the “Are you going anywhere tomorrow? How about the next day? The day after?” dance. Tomorrow I’m taking her to take the test for her learner’s permit, god save us. She came downstairs while I was sitting on the couch reading yesterday and said “Sean (her friend from school) said that he passed the test for the learner’s permit and didn’t study at all.” She said this in a tone that conveyed the message “He didn’t study, so you shouldn’t keep telling ME to study, either.” I put down my book and turned to her. “But you didn’t pass the test the first time you took it,” I said slowly. “So clearly YOU do need to study.” She stood and let it sink in, then turned and flounced off. What the fuck? At dinner, we were talking about how Fred is going to be in charge of teaching the spud to drive (when I told my father that back in December, he scoffed and said “But I thought women were supposed to have more patience!” Patience? What the hell does that have to do with it? I just don’t want to die!), and the spud said “Auntie Debbie showed me how to drive in the parking lot thingy.” PARKING LOT THINGY. AGH! I snapped “‘Parking lot’ would have sufficed!”, and she stared at me blankly. * * * It amazes me that when left to my own devices, I’ll sleep for 9 hours. But when I have a hard time to getting to sleep at night and then have to get up early the next morning, thus netting me only about 5 hours of sleep, I don’t have a problem waking up, and once I’m up I don’t really feel tired during the day. Odd, no? I had a hell of a time getting to sleep last night, first because I started reading Passing for Thin and didn’t want to put it down, and then Fred came into the room around 11:00 and told me he couldn’t get to sleep and was going to go work out. When I looked at the clock and realized it was almost midnight and he hadn’t come upstairs yet, I went downstairs to make sure he hadn’t been crushed under a falling weight (he hadn’t; he was just sitting in front of the computer ’til he cooled down). Miz Poo, who was snoozing on the pillow on my desk woke up and realized it was bedtime, and followed me back upstairs. I turned off the light and rolled over, and thus began the three-act play “How Loud Can I Lick My Ass?”, with Miz Pooty J. And3rson in the starring role. Act 1: LicklicklickSLURP, lick. Bed shakes. Momma lifts her head and glares. “Miz Poo, do you fucking MIND?” LicklicklickSLURPSLURP bed shakes and shakes. Momma grabs Miz Poo and pushes her off the bed. (2 minute intermission) Act 2: Miz Poo jumps up on the bed and springboards across Momma. Momma, who was close to drifting off yells “argh!” Miz Poo settles on her usual pillow. Is quiet for a few minutes to lull Momma into a false sense of security. When Momma is relaxed and thinks she might actually be able to go to sleep, Miz hoists the leg over her head and begins. LicklicklickSLURP. SLURP! SLURP! SLURP! Momma touches Miz Poo gently on the back. “Don’t make me hurt you, goddamnit,” she says gently, but Miz Poo will not be deterred from her ass. SLURP! SLURP! SLURP!, and Momma has decided This Is Enough, grabs Miz Poo, and pushes her over the side of the bed. (8 minute intermission) Act 3: Momma has actually begun drifting off to sleep when the Poo jumps up and shakes the bed. She springboards across Momma, digging her back claws in while jumping, and Momma suspects this is on purpose. “Ow, DAMNIT!” Momma yells, but Miz Poo cares not. She settles on the pillow next to Momma, curls up, and sighs contentedly. Momma shifts around, trying to sleep. Momma is actually asleep when the licking and slurping and shaking begins. “Oh please YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!” Momma yells, but Miz Poo ignores licking the fur on her side. Lick, lick. Shake, shake. Lick, lick, lick. The bed shakes, the Momma cries, the Spanky sleeps in his pillow without moving. Momma grabs Miz Poo and deposits her none-too-gently on the floor. When Miz Poo makes as if to jump back up on the bed, Momma makes a loud, scary hissing noise that scares Miz Poo, who runs under the bed. Miz Poo does not jump up onto the bed for hours and hours, until Momma is sound asleep and cannot feel the bed shaking, or hear the licking and slurping. All are happy. Curtains. Applause. * * * He must’ve just smelled something really good, ’cause his mouth’s hanging open. Goofy cat. ]]>

* * * Oh my god, best thing EVER. If strong language offends you (in which case, why on EARTH would you be here?), give this a miss, but it’s excellent. EXCELLENT, I SAY! Go see your favorite stars swearing up a storm. If that link doesn’t work, try this one. Not work safe at ALL. Link ripped off from those crazy kids at Fractious Times.

* * * Pretty, no? Unfortunately Bradford Pear trees, when in bloom, have the foulest rotting-body odor I’ve ever had the misfortune to smell. Seriously, last year I thought there was something dead and rotting in the ditch behind our fence until someone clued us in that that’s just how those damn trees smell in the Spring. GAG. Oddly, the spud said yesterday, “Have you noticed that it kind of smells like chinese food outside?” CHINESE FOOD! Bwah! If that’s what chinese food smells like to her, I’m wondering why on god’s green earth it’s her favorite food. Perhaps what she meant was “Have you noticed that it smells like the bodies of fifteen [gentlemen of Chinese descent] laying in a pile in the ditch, rotting?” * * * No, that’s okay Miz Poo. You just sit there directly in front of my monitor, that’s just FINE. Just sit there and stare off into space, it’s not like I need to SEE the monitor or anything, nope! Confidential to Amy and Sharon: Miz Poo says they purr so loud in the middle of the night while laying as close to your head as possible to prove that they love you, and also that you are mean, unappreciative people who do not deserve the love of a good (or even bad) cat. (Of course, she only thinks that because she doesn’t know what I’ve been saying about her. Ha! I’ll be in trouble if she learns to read, I suppose…) * * * They’re still talking about sending either Fred or his partner to Bagdad (is that spelled right? Isn’t there an “h” in there somewhere?) to set up a new floopy-floop, Fred and his partner apparently being the only two on earth who can floop this particular floopy-floop. They’re the floopiest floopers who ever did floop! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get technical on you. You’ll just have to follow along and act as though you know what I’m talking about. Anyway, don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind to grab Fred and the spud and defect to Canada if they don’t stop talking about it… Watch out, Canoodlians! * * * Warning: if you’re looking at buying a wireless router thingy (technical term), don’t go for the cheapest one. And if you DO go for the cheapest one, opt for the extended coverage they always try to cram down your throat at the store. Our wireless router thingy shit the bed today, and I’m typing up this entry on Fred’s computer, because his is the only one close enough to plug directly into the modem, and I’m not fond of Fred’s keyboard. He’ll be stopping at the store on his way home to buy a new, expensive wireless router thingy that will hopefully work for longer than four months before it craps out. Damn computers. Why they gotta be such a pain in the ass? * * * “Hey Dad, whatcha doin’, huh?” (That’s Spanky, by the way)]]>

* * * After sitting and worrying about it for a little while yesterday, I finally up and called Expedia and expressed my concern about the fact that in July on my way to Hawaii I’m supposed to be able to haul my cookies from one gate to another in less than 25 minutes, assuming that the plane lands on time. And I think we ALL know that when you have to haul ass from one gate to another, barely making it (if indeed you make it at all), there’s no way on god’s green earth your luggage will make it onto that plane. So I threw myself on the mercy of the Expedia customer service chick, and she was appalled, not because I was throwing myself upon her mercy, but because it is sheer insanity to expect a fat woman from Alabama and her meandering-in-the-fastest-of-times child to haul ass in such a short period of time. I sat on hold for a long, long time, and then she came back to tell me that there was another flight she could put me on, but I’d end up flying into Honolulu at 10:19 at night instead of 7:30ish, and I said that was fine, and so now I have plenty of time to get from one gate to the other, and am flying not through San Francisco but Los Angeles. I’m hugely relieved, because running as fast as I can from one gate to the other (which, granted, ain’t so very fast) and then having my luggage lost in the ether is not a way I want to start my vacation. And hey – maybe we’ll see someone famous during our LA layover! Brad and Jen! Dahlinks! Let’s do lunch!

* * * My PMS is over, thankyajeezus. At one point yesterday afternoon, when the PMS bitchiness had pretty much disappeared and I was sitting on the couch reading, I remembered that Fred had wanted me to email him a document from the laptop so I went upstairs and turned the motherfucker darling thing on, then went off to start laundry and talk to the cats or whatever the fuck I was doing. When I got back to the laptop I found to my chagrin that ZoneAlarm was having a tizzy – “Do you want to allow this to access the internet? What about this? This! What about this?”, and I had to click “yes you fucking piece of shit” 43 times before I could begin to do anything else. I opened Pegasus and created the email to Fred with the document attached, but when I clicked on send queued mail, I was informed that the program couldn’t access Kn0logy and something was unplugged somewhere, and don’t look at me, I don’t give a shit, lady, and a Gallic snort of disdain and a cloud of smoke in my face and a tsk before the motherfucker darling laptop sneered at me and (figuratively) turned away. Then Zonealarm did its thing, dancing around like a four year-old with a full bladder and no potty in sight “Do you want to allow this program to access the internet? That one? The other? What about this one, I don’t like the looks of this!”, and I clicked the “yes didn’t I already say yes and click on the “remember this answer” box, you motherfucking piece of shit?” button, then turned my attention back to the main screen, where the IE icon and the Trillian icon and the My Documents icon were clustered, looking at me and giggling their high-pitched giggles. So I tried to call Fred. And tried again. And yet again. And a fourth time. And a thirteenth time. And a twentieth time. And his answering machine answered, playing that SAME GODDAMN message I adore so much until I turned off the phone and yelled “ARGGGGGGGGGGH!”, and the cats scattered. Then I had an idea – I could save the document to a floppy and then bring it downstairs and email THAT to Fred! Good idea, go to it! ::clapclapclap:: I hauled my ass downstairs and searched for a floppy disk – which are in short supply around here ever since we gave the spud our old camera which writes pictures to floppies and she has felt the need to immortalize her nostrils in a series of pictures we like to call “Those big-ass nostrils must have come from your daddy, oh I guess you’re right, everyone looks like they have Grand Canyon-sized nostrils from two inches away”. I found a floppy and ran back upstairs, the cats running behind me, wondering what the hell was going on, and why does she keep running? I’ve never seen her RUN before, and it’s a bit frightening. The laptop. Oh, the motherfucking laptop. The laptop, my nemesis, it HAS no floppy drive. NO FLOPPY DRIVE. What the? How the? Where the? Why? How’m I gonna? Brilliant inspiration struck and I double-checked to be sure the motherfucker had a cd/ dvd drive, and it did (and then I remembered that I had watched Beyond the Behind the Near the Around the Below the Inside the Past the Under the Tuscan Sun on the laptop, so of COURSE – and here that ASSHOLE paperclip man (oh paperclip man, how I loathe you and your perpetual need to help me WHEN I REQUIRE NO HELP, THANKS! YES! YES THAT’S A LETTER, AND I KNOW HOW TO WRITE A LETTER, I’M THIRTY-SIX YEARS OLD RIGHT NOW YOU BASTARD, SO SHUT UP AND GO AWAY!) laughed out loud at me before he did his “now we print out paper!” dance for no particular reason. Back down the stairs I went, a coterie of cats hard on my heels, and I found the stack of rewritable cds, and I turned around and went back UP the stairs and I don’t mind telling you that I was breathing MIGHTY hard by then, but I was triumphant, because I was going to overcome the yeah, something’s unplugged somewhere or something, whatever laptop and the bastardly paperclip man, and I would be the boss of that motherfucking laptop! Laptops the world over would shiver in fear of me! So I put the cd in the cd drive, and I clicked on the Word document and I chose “save as”, and I chose the D drive and I clicked “save”. I’m sorry, you don’t have permission to access the D drive. CLEARLY a mistake. Obviously I read that wrong. Clickclickclick. I’m sorry, you don’t have permission to access the D drive. SUCKAH! Which is when I knew that I had to step away from the laptop immediately, or I would put my fucking foot right through the motherfucker, and I stood up and took a deep breath and chose the option to shut the motherfucker down, and then I stood for several minutes waiting for it to actually SHUT DOWN, WHY does it take 45 minutes for computers to shut down anymore, WHY? Finally I lost my patience, and I struggled with myself, wanting so very desperately to put my foot through the motherfucker, but I remained calm and in control, and instead of putting my foot through the motherfucker, I lean forward so that my face was half an inch from the screen, and I bellowed at the very top of my lungs – and when I say that that is very loud indeed, you have NO idea, folks. Fred thinks he’s heard me at my loudest, but he has never ever heard me this loud, I guarantee you, this is the volume you reach when someone is coming after you with a knife and you have to scream for your life (poet! knowit!) – “ANY FUCKING DAY NOW!” I bellowed, going immediately lightheaded from the effort and the volume. And the motherfucker shut down that very instant. Who’s the boss now, huh? That’s right, you motherfucker. I am the boss of YOU, and don’t you FORGET IT. But I sure am glad I’m over that whole PMS thing. Whew. Bring on the sore boobs! * * * We have to go to some meeting for the parents of 9th graders – an orientation they’re calling it – because the spud will be going to the big high school next year. It’s tonight at 7 because they ALWAYS schedule this shit on Thursday nights so as to interfere with our Survivor watching, but stymied! Survivor was on last night, not tonight. Ha! * * * Miz Pooty, I understand that cleaniness is, in fact, next to godliness and that cleaning yourself incessantly is the way you worship the God o’ Cats, BUT WHY MUST YOU DO IT TWO INCHES FROM MY EAR AND WHY MUST YOU GRUNT LOUDLY WHILE YOU ARE CLEANING YOUR ASS? * * * Perhaps the PMS is not so much gone, but rather just kind of laying dormant. * * * Tiptoeing guiltily through the daffodils.]]>

* * * I hate my house. I hate the way all the doors are white and need to be scrubbed down because weird little stains develop at knee level and below and there’s just nothing in this world I want to do less than scrub DOORS, I hate the way if you think about brushing up against the wall a mark develops, I loathe the carpet on the stairs and the assholes who looked at this house before we bought it and tromped up the stairs and got mud on the carpet on the stairs in odd places, mud stains that I have been unable to get out lo these 2 1/2 years, I hate the way dust bunnies generate themselves in the corners of rooms and hallways, and then instantly regenerate, taunting me as they wave gently in the breeze, hate the spiders who create webs and then abandon them with shells of bodies still caught in the webs, and if I find a spider who has abandoned his crappy-looking web, I will smush without a second thought, I hate the way I manage to pile crap everywhere so that the house looks all cluttered, I hate the way three days after I’ve mopped the downstairs there are kitty paw prints on every exposed inch of the library floor. HATE. I hate my hair because I have to go to the friggin’ hair place every six weeks and have it colored and cut, otherwise I walk around with half-gray, half-colored hair that gets in my face, and I can’t stand that, and the chick who cuts my hair is perfectly nice but I hate the whole hair-coloring process because I hate sitting there in the chair for hours at a time with stinky shit on my head, trying to read my book, but wanting to fall asleep. Why is it that I always get so friggin’ tired when I have my hair done? I hate the spud’s school because their web site sucks and all I want to know is where the fuck I’m supposed to go for the parents-of-9th-graders orientation Thursday night, and there’s nothing anywhere about that, and it pisses me off. I hate my neighbors because why on earth would it not OCCUR to a grown man that running his damn sander in his garage WITH THE DOOR WIDE OPEN might wake people up who prefer not to be awake at 11:30 pm? And it pisses me off that it relieved us that when Fred went to talk to him the other night, the guy was both nice and apologetic. You’re goddamned right he should be apologetic, he should beg forgiveness! HATE. And damn that spud and her eyeballs which get more nearsighted every year, requiring new glasses and DAMN the eyeglass place where it still cost ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY NINE DOLLARS to get new lenses in the same frames. ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY NINE DOLLARS, what the fucking fuck is up with that? Do little kids in sweat factories have to create the lenses with their teeth and nails, or what? Are they made of GOLD? JAYZUS.

* * * But I love my Jeep, at least for the moment, because the stereo plays mp3s, and I can listen to hundreds of songs that I love. I’m going to burn Stand By Your Man 150 times in a row and listen to it over and over, bellowing it at the top of my lungs in the neighbor’s driveway at 3:30 in the morning. Because I can. * * * The mighty hunter stops to chomp on a healthy snack of green weeds, keeping his coat shiny and his eyes bright. ]]>

Ellen from last week that I had DVR’d. They’re reruns, but I hadn’t seen them, so I’m kind of catching up. Leah Remini was a guest on one of the shows, and she was funny as hell. I had no idea she was that funny. It almost – but not quite – makes me want to watch The King of Queens.

* * * Watching Taken has made me the tiniest bit paranoid, I think. I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a couple of bottles of salad dressing for Fred (our regular grocery store doesn’t carry this particular salad dressing – Kraft Light Done Right 3-Cheese Ranch dressing, so I had to make a special trip to another grocery store). As I walked out of the store, I saw a man bent down in front of his car, SUPPOSEDLY looking up under it. I just KNEW that he was a bad guy and was going to come grab me and push me in his car, then cart me away to the super-secret headquarters of a super-secret goverment agency, where they’d poke and prod at me and do all kinds of nasty tests to study my mind. (Bwahaha! That’d be the shortest study in the history of mankind, eh?) I made the fist with keys sticking out between my fingers, ready to punch him in the face with my key fist if he came close to me. He straightened up as I approached and looked at me. Perhaps he changed his mind about approaching me because he saw my key fist, or maybe he just knew that I could kick his ass. In any case, he got in his nondescript government-issue-type car and started the engine. As I pulled out of the parking lot I looked in my rearview mirror, and who the hell do you suppose was behind me? That’s right, the bad guy! I managed to lose him with a few quick left turns, but you better believe I’m keeping an eye on the street. I see any nondescript government-issue cars, I’m grabbing Miz Poo and the Bean and hauling ass. (Spot and Spanky can fend for themselves) * * * According to a few Australian readers who emailed me overnight, there was a bit on a show called Media Watch about the whole Fred/ Frank thing. Curiosity brought me to the archives of The Australian and an article by Sally Jackson entitled “Aussie Makeover Too Extreme”, wherein is this little gem: (For the record, Australian Men’s Health editor Bruce Ritchie says that the Frank/Fred change was “a little white lie” while the local version of the column gets off the ground and that genuine Australians should feature from next month’s issue. He also says the mag’s content is predominantly local and that in some articles sourced from the US edition terminology is changed when it is deemed necessary.) “A little white lie”? I call it shoddy, lazy journalism and find Bruce Ritchie’s lack of remorse, his “Oh, we’ll just a change a few things and no one will ever know. And if they do, who cares?” attitude appalling. Asshole. * * * Pet store kitty pics are hither. * * * ]]>

Amy sent me a picture frame filled with pictures of Tubby, and I liked it so much that I put it up on the wall to the side of my monitor, so that any time I want to see Tubby, I can just cut my eyes to the right. A lovely side effect of hanging the frame where I did, is that I can use it almost as a mirror, so if Fred’s trying to sneak up on me, I can see him, know that he’s there, and thus am unafraid. Also, if Fred is sitting at his computer and I am sitting at mine, and the SPUD, who has suddenly become the most nosy person on god’s green earth, wants to stand in the kitchen and eavesdrop, I CAN SEE HER. But I realized this morning that as I was sitting in front of my computer and something in the picture frame/ mirror caught my eye and I looked into the frame to see what it was (it was the Bean, stalking across the top of the bar on his way to stick his face in the sink of water wherein chicken is defrosting, and DO NOT EMAIL ME TO TELL ME that thawing chicken in a sink of water is a one-way ticket to salmonellaville, I know that, and I care not. I’ve gotta die someday, it might as well be from salmonella. Do people die from salmonella?), and I realized that anyone watching me would think that I was, well, staring intently at the wall. So I think that cats use walls as mirrors in ways that mere mortals such as you and I cannot quite comprehend. The next time you see your cat staring intently at the wall, wave at him. He’s probably trying to figure out what the hell you’re doing.

* * * Friday night around 9:30 (I know! Late for us, but we had to stay up and watch an episode of Taken, and then we watched the Joan of Arcadia we’d DVR’d earlier. Big times, late nights, whoo!) Fred said “Are you ready for bed?” “Yeah, if you are,” I said. “Bring a book.” “A book?” “Yeah, a book. I think I’d like to read for a while before we shut the lights off.” I stared at him. “You’re telling me to bring a book.” “Yes, Bessie,” he said with exaggerated patience. “A BOOK, so we can read.” “You’re telling me especially to bring a book, because if you didn’t, I wouldn’t bring a book with me.” “I want you to have something to read,” he said kindly, perhaps worried that if I didn’t have a book to read, I’d just lay and stare creepily at the wonder that is Fredrick And3rson. “So you’re telling me to bring a book with me, because if you didn’t, I’d have nothing to read,” I said again. “Yes,” he said, sighing in that long-suffering way that should be grounds for murder. (“He sighed at me, your honor, and then I had to kill him.” “Case dismissed!”) “So it has escaped you that every single night for the past seven and a half years, the majority of which we’ve gone into the bedroom together, that I never ever go to the bedroom at night without taking a book with me?” I said slowly. “Don’t forget your book!” he said, and high-tailed it up the stairs. * * * 1. What was the last song you heard? Hey Jesus, by the Indigo Girls. 2. What were the last two movies you saw? Uh. Matchstick Men and Schindler’s List. 3. What were the last three things you purchased? A grilled California Cobb salad from McDonald’s, tickets to Hawaii, and bird seed. 4. What four things do you need to do this weekend? Find a hotel for when the spud and I are in Hawaii, do the backup-reformat-reinstall dance for my computer, vacuum the entire house, balance the checkbook. (And I did ’em all!) 5. Who are the last five people you talked to? Fred, the spud, my mother, my father, and the chick at McDonald’s (when I bought my salad). * * * I bought our tickets to Hawaii last night, and Expedia offered me a deal for a room for the entire time we’re there that I just couldn’t resist. Online reviews for the hotel are pretty good and it’s only about 3/4 mile from my father’s hotel, so I went for it. (Fred encouraged me to just go for it so I’d stop yapping about it. Awwww!) Originally the spud and I were going July 10th through the 17th and my sister and Brian were going to visit the week after, because there’s just the one hotel room that my parents will be staying in, and while 4 people can cram into one hotel room, 6 people makes it miserable and crowded. Once I saw the deal Expedia was offering with the hotel room, I changed the date of the tickets so that we’d be in Hawaii for the same dates as Debbie and Brian. Did you know that flying in and out of Hawaii on the weekend adds $150 to the price of your ticket? Good lord! So, the spud and I will be flying in on the 14th and out on the 21st, both Wednesdays, and we’ll have all day Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, and most of the day Wednesday (since our flight doesn’t leave ’til 9:30 pm!) with Debbie, Brian, and my parents. Well, except that my father will be working during the days. But, Hawaii! We’re going for sure! Even if my father’s trip were to suddenly fall through, the spud and I have a place to stay, so we’re going one way or the other. Whoo! Also, instead of only connecting once, in Atlanta, I chose the flight that would let us connect in Dallas and in San Francisco, since that breaks it up often enough so we won’t be sitting on the plane for 9 hours at a time. The longest flight we’ll be on is from San Francisco to Hawaii, which will be just over 5 hours. Of course, I just looked at our itinerary and found that we only have 25 minutes to get from one plane to the other in San Francisco. Fun! * * * Really not the most flattering angle.]]>

Survivor entry with spoilers. It looks a bit fucked up over there now, but you should be able to read the entry and leave comments if you want. I have no fucking clue what’s going on with that site. Grrrr.

* * * I sometimes have this really bad habit when I’m reading a book of imagining what I’d do if I were in the main character’s shoes. It doesn’t happen all the time – I didn’t, for instance, try to imagine what I’d do if I were Ethan Truman or Fric when I read The Face , though I did send mental “Don’t go in THERE!” screams at Fric – but if the character is a married woman I do tend to put myself in her fictional shoes. I’m currently reading Marriage: A Duet, which is a book comprised of two novellas. In the first, a woman who’s been married to her husband of 40+ years recalls the time he almost left her for a younger woman. I ended up imagining myself in her shoes, and ended up getting SO PISSED at Fred for having an affair with another woman and then asking me to wait while he tried to decide what he wanted to do, that I had to put the book down and walk away. BECAUSE FRED’S NEVER DONE ANY SUCH THING. Yet I was furious. Even while I was getting mad, I thought to myself “This has never happened to you, what’re you getting so pissed off about???”, and yet I had to put the book down for a while, or let myself get so mad I’d probably drive myself into stroke territory. I’m a total freak. * * * If you get to this journal by typing in “journal.bitchypoo.com”, you’ll note that things look a bit different around here. Movable Type, no matter how damn many times I rebuilt, would NOT rebuild the index page, and even Fred couldn’t figure it out, so he did some voodoo thing I don’t quite understand, where the calendar will update when I’ve updated, and I can edit the template in Dreamweaver. So if you’re used to going to that page and seeing the latest entry, you’ll have to click on the date on the calendar instead. I know it’s a bitch, sorry. But imagine how many calories you’ll burn by doing that extra click! ::snort:: You know, all these problems are making me long for the days when I just updated using Dreamweaver, even though it was a pain in the ass having to change all the before and after links by hand. * * * The spud and her class (possibly even the entire 9th grade, I’m not sure) went on a field trip to Montgomery yesterday, to visit the Shakespeare Festival. They left the school at 5:15 am, and were planning to stop for breakfast and then eat lunch at the mall. I gave the spud $30 (more than she would need, but it’s always better to have to much than too little, I’ve always thought) Wednesday night, and reminded her twice not to forget her money. When Fred and I were laying in bed Wednesday night, I said “Please make sure she has her money before you leave in the morning” and he said “Okay.” As Fred and the spud pulled out of the driveway a few minutes before 5, he said “Do you have your money?” and she said “Yes.” I’m sure you know where this is going. Apparently at the last moment the spud changed purses and forgot to put her money in the purse she actually took with her. And this is the child who is supposed to be behind the wheel of a car in the next few months? Eeek. Luckily one of her friends had enough money so that she could borrow some, or I’m thinking she would have been one hungry kid by the time she got home 12 hours later. * * * “I am the Queen of all that I survey…”]]>

* * * It’s apparently time to back up my computer, reformat and reinstall everything YET AGAIN. Although Adobe Acrobat Reader is installed on my system, whenever I try to see a .pdf file, my whole system locks up. Reinstalling doesn’t help, and Fred can’t figure out what the problem is. Also, opening Word is a ten-minute process, wherein I click on the Word icon, and it spends ten minutes opening. The Adobe Acrobat Reader wouldn’t be such a big problem except that we get our bank statements electronically now in – you guessed it – a .pdf file, and if I can’t see it, I can’t print it. If I can’t print it, I can’t balance the checking account. If I can’t balance the checking account, without a doubt there’ll be some huge-ass check that I forgot to enter in my checkbook and one day I’ll go to buy sushi with my debit card, and the debit card machine will say “You don’t have enough money, dumbass!”, and the cashier will give me a pitying (or annoyed) look and take my sushi away. And then I will have no sushi, and that can’t be anything but bad. Perhaps we should just start reformatting on the first of every month instead of waiting until something goes wrong. That sounds like a FUN way to start every month! OR MAYBE I JUST NEED A NEW COMPUTER.

* * * Anyone who asked me to invite them to Orkut and didn’t get an invitation yesterday, let me know. I added each person as soon as I got their email, but I think some of the invites didn’t go through. If you’ve got a email spamcatcher, you might want to check that, too. * * * (Pictures taken by Fred) The daffodils are blooming! You have no idea how happy this makes me. I love this picture of the Bean. He’s actually in the process of yawning, but he looks like he’s bitching at someone.]]>

* * * I had the weirdest dream last night. I was visiting Amy at her home on the ocean (!). It was a weird house, on stilts, about thirty feet up. You had to climb really steep steps to get to the door, and there was a bit of fencing around the landing at the top. I remember quite clearly thinking “I hope Amy doesn’t let Quinn out on the landing by herself. She could really get hurt!” (I’m sure Amy never would, not for a moment) The house was tiny, just one room, and the spud and I had to sleep on the floor. We had a big bonfire gathering on the beach with tons of people there, including Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil walked off, and I followed him, just in time to see him kill a homeless man and dump his body at the bottom of a pond. However, I couldn’t tell on Dr. Phil, because I was his lawyer (I was on The Practice!) and was his defense lawyer. But I got into Dr. Phil’s car so we could drive to court, and he started getting threatening, so I jumped out of the car (ouch. We were going fast!) and ran away as fast as I could. This is what happens when I stay up past midnight reading a Dean Koontz book, I guess.

* * * Miz Poo, high on the kitty pot, shows the Daddy just who the boss is. Meanwhile, the Bean lays next to the stash and vigorously cleans himself. ]]>

* * * Big congratulations to Jessamyn and Geoff, parents to a gorgeous bouncing baby girl. Welcome to the world, Kathleen Matilda!

* * * Pet store kitty pics are here. * * * Ever since we adopted the Bean, we’ve been discussing when to open the cat door to the back yard so the cats could come and go at will. Fred has been adamant on one point: we would not, under any circumstances, keep the cat door open at night. They could go in and out all day long until bedtime, and then if they weren’t inside or couldn’t be coaxed inside, they’d be stuck in the back yard overnight. Saturday night, Spot felt the need to go outside. At 1:30 am he sat outside Fred’s bedroom door and scratched at the door, howling as loudly as his damanged little vocal chords would allow. Fred opened the door and swatted at him with a pillow (call the animal cruelty people!), and Spot ran off. A few hours later, Spot thought it was a good idea to pick a fight with Spanky right outside Fred’s bedroom door. Howling and hissing and growling and yowling ensued. Fred stomped out of his bedroom, went downstairs, and opened the back door. Spot was out like a shot. Fred shut the back door but then, knowing what a spaz Spot is, opened it back up and then went back to bed. Later that day, Himself decreed that we might as well open the cat door and leave it open all the time. “At least until they start bringing animals inside,” he hastily added. So we opened the cat door, and the cats gathered around. The Bean had never been through a cat door, so we shoved him through it a few times, and he quickly got the idea. The other cats sniffed at the door (and we shoved them through it so they could remember how the whole thing works), but showed no real interest in being outside. We’ve had it open since Sunday afternoon. I saw Spot go out a few times, but other than that, I don’t think the kitties much care about it. Maybe in a few months when there are mice and bugs to catch and BRING INSIDE there’ll be more interest. Let the great Possum Invasion begin! * * * So after some hemming and hawing and thinking and considering and procrastination, I installed WordPress (Fred did the actual installing; but then you knew that, right?) and began a TV/ Movie blog over here. I’m sure I’m not the first one to have thought of the name “Couch Potato” for a blog like that. Anyway, that’s where I’ll do the occasional TV/ Movie post. You can safely assume that there will be spoilers in each post so if’n you get spoiled, don’t blame me! That’s not the final design, but it’s probably pretty close to it. I like the ease of WordPress and while I don’t think I’m going to switch this journal over to WordPress, I may move OFB from Diaryland back to my own domain. We’ll see. * * * The Bean contemplates the eternal question. “If Miz Poo runs downstairs as fast as her big butt can go and I hide under the bottom stair like I always do, at what exact point do I need to reach out and grab her leg so that she’ll go flying into the wall?” ]]>