An acidic and hostile place: since 1999
Creepy picture! Damn you, Jane!
(click on the picture to see the full-sized version)
It’s tough work, being a Bean.
Fred’s really enjoying getting right up in the cats’ faces lately.
* * *
Remember this creepy-ass picture from October? Reader Amy sent me another FUCKING creepy picture, a picture that just gives me the heebie-jeebies when I even think about it.
::shudder::
I think I’m starting to like little gray kitties almost as much as I like little orange kitties!
The Bean is in fine form today, picking exclusively on Miz Poo.
It might look like the Bean is getting the best of Miz Poo, but it ain’t so. (And that garbage bag is full of paper from the shredder – we don’t usually toss our garbage in the corner of the library. Really!)
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talking to the reporter at C B S about being on “The E@rly Sh0w”, the reporter offered up the idea that I could be part of the segment. “Uh, I don’t think so,” Fred said. “She was pretty adamant about not wanting to be on TV again.” “Well, can I try to sweet-talk her?” the reporter asked. “Maybe I can convince her!” After Fred wiped away the tears of laughter caused by the thought of someone being able to “sweet-talk” me into doing something I really don’t want to do, he said “Okay, I’ll ask her if it’s okay for you to call her.” “Um, no,” I told Fred when he asked. “And not only no, but HELL no, and I’ll be out of the house whenever they come to interview you and tape you exercising and all that goofy-ass shit.” When Fred reported my “HELL no”, the reporter was amazed that there’s someone in existence who’s completely uninterested in being on a national TV show. Well, that would be me – I couldn’t be less interested. Life’s too short to spend time doing things that stress me out for days beforehand not to mention the actual filming. The Bullshit! taping was an interesting experience, but once it was done, I knew for sure that any life where I was required to be filmed on a regular basis is no life for me. I’m perfectly happy being the invisible woman behind the man (and as Nance said, kicking his ass all the way. Heh.). (And by the way, there are two – MAYBE three – people who can change my mind and convince me to do something I’m dead-set against doing. None of them are C B S reporters, and none of them are you. Just in case you thought you could convince me otherwise. 🙂
The Bean, in attack mode.
The Bean, in cute mode.
This looks like trouble in the making…
I sure do love this cat.
Spot loves it when we turn the fire on.
Ami) THREE THINGS I DON’T UNDERSTAND 1. How computers work (don’t really want to know, either). 2. How it is that I can actually see words going in one ear and out the other when I’m talking to Fred or the spud. 3. How you let the things you did get so out of hand/ You’d have managed better if you’d had a plan/ why’d you choose such a backward time in such a strange land? If you’d come today, you could have reached the whole nation/ Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication/ I only wanna know/ I only wanna know now/ I only wanna know/ I only WANNA know/ Jesus Christ, Superstar, do you think you’re who they say you are? (Done from memory, thank you) THREE THINGS THAT SCARE ME 1. Any kind of bug that moves really fast, especially in my direction. And especially when they have more than four legs. 2. Big dogs that come toward me growling while wagging their big tails. 3. Being old and having to eat dog food to survive. THREE THINGS I’D LIKE TO LEARN 1. How to stay organized (I can get organized, I just can’t stay there). 2. What the hell I’ve done to fuck up our company accounts so that our accounts payable shows that we’re owed $1,000+ that we are certainly not owed. I fear I may have to go back and rebuild the books from the very beginning – on the up side, that’s only about four months of rebuilding and would most likely only take the better part of a weekend if I were truly motivated. 3. How to edit the movies I put up here so that they don’t look so thrown-together and crappy. Actually I don’t want to learn that; I want to already know it. THREE THINGS I AM WEARING RIGHT NOW 1. This shirt, in red. (I know it’s horrifying that I’m wearing a cheap fleece shirt from Lane Bryant, but until I looked at the tag, I thought it was a more expensive shirt from Silhouettes or Ulla Popken) 2. Gray cotton Just My Size pants. 3. Moccasin-style slippers (dark green) from LL Bean. THREE THINGS ON MY DESK 1. Miz Poo 2. The Bean. 3. 63,000 different instruction books for my new cell phone. THREE THINGS I WANT TO DO BEFORE I DIE 1. Sky dive. 2. Hike the Appalachian Trail (shhh, don’t tell Fred!). 3. Be on Survivor 45: South Central LA. THREE GOOD THINGS ABOUT MY PERSONALITY 1. I am occasionally amusing. 2. I’m generally accepting of the freakish idiosyncrasies and beliefs of others. 3. I don’t hold a grudge for longer than 10 or 15 years. THREE BAD THINGS ABOUT MY PERSONALITY 1. I’m a grumpy bitch. 2. I’m impatient. 3. I like peace and quiet and get grouchy when it’s too noisy for too long. THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE 1. Cherokee 2. Scottish 3. English (I think) THREE THINGS I LIKE ABOUT MY BODY 1. My calves. 2. My eyes. 3. My hair (sometimes). THREE THINGS I DON’T LIKE ABOUT MY BODY I’m going to skip this one; I couldn’t possibly limit it to three. THREE THINGS MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW ABOUT ME I honestly can’t think of anything on this one. THREE THINGS I SAY THE MOST 1. Fuck them. 2. Fuck you. 3. What the fuck? THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO 1. Alaska. 2. Australia. 3. Scotland. THREE NAMES THAT YOU GO BY 1. Robyn. 2. Bessie. 3. Rob. THREE SCREEN NAMES YOU HAVE OR HAD 1. Nybor. 2. Bitchypoo. 3. BessieLou.
Miz Poo loves to hang out on top of the bookcase. If the Bean tries to approach, she can swat him down with one little paw.
* * * Did I mention that I finally went out and bought a bunch of stocking stuffers for the spud? One of the things I bought was a mini bottle of Chantilly (shut up, I like it). When I took it out of the package this morning to put in the bag o’ stocking stuffers with all the other stuff I’d gotten, the top came off the bottle and half an ounce of it spilled down my arm. As a result, I’ve spent the day smelling like one of those people who don’t seem to realize they’re wearing too much perfume. I’m also getting mighty sick of the smell of Chantilly, I’ll tell you that. With the stocking stuffers bought and the packages mailed out, I am ALL SET for Christmas. I’m especially excited this year because Fred’s surprising me with a non-wishlist gift, and I love to be surprised, so I can’t wait to see what it is.
Gizmo and Dulcinea do their best to prevent any laundry from being done. Are these girls gorgeous, or what?
Plain Janie-Jane, I read this little tidbit: Influenza is an upper respiratory disease. If you are having bowel rumblings, or throwing up, I’m sorry for you, and here’s some Pepto, but homies, you have a stomach virus, NOT INFLUENZA. Seriously? I did NOT know that! When I was in kindergarten (ugh. THIRTY years ago, that was!), I was out of school for a few days due to what my mother told me was the flu. When I got back to school, one of my classmates (a boy. I don’t recall his name, but I do remember that he was a twin! Also, I believe my teacher’s name was Mrs. Radecki. How can I possibly have retained this information?) said “Why were you gone for two days?” And I said “I had the flu.” The boy said “Did you have diarrhea?” Aghast and horrified that he would ask such a personal question, I said “NO!” “Well,” he said, all smug and certain of his facts. “If you didn’t have DIARRHEA, then it was NOT the flu! It’s just a cold!” Thus ever since, all these many years, I have thought “Do I have diarrhea? Why, no. I have just a nasty cough that is laying me out flat. Must be a cold.” It’s true. You DO learn something new every day. That Jane is quite educational, even if she does mock my misuse of it’s. (I mean, seriously. Until otherwise informed by Fred earlier this year, I thought an apostrophe followed by an s shows possession. And it does, but it is one of those fucking exceptions. Fucking it. So if it’s cannot be replaced by it is or it was in your sentence, there should be no damn apostrophe. Fucking apostrophe. Fucking possession. Fucking lax public school English teachers. (Or, more likely, fucking me, for not paying attention when that was covered.) This has been your educational lesson for the day. Perhaps we’ll cover the site vs. sight distinction another day.) Also regarding Jane, here’s another reason to laugh at me. I thought Jane CREATED the word metrosexual. Seriously, because she’s the first one I heard it from. And then I started reading it everywhere and I thought “Damn but that Jane has some serious social influence!” Duh. Of course, for many years I also thought my brother Tracy created the word “fart”, because I can CLEARLY remember the four of us (my two brothers, Debbie, and I) standing in the basement in base housing in Kinchl0e AFB in Michigan with Tracy saying “It’s called a FART.” No doubt my mother had been teaching us to say “I passed gas!” for the majority of our formative years like she did with the spud and Brian. Apparently I’ve always been a bit clueless.
Tubs, hanging out.
No doubt looking for the perfect place to pee. Bastard.
Public Service Announcement: You know, I have a cell phone, and as much as I hate other people with cell phones, I’ll admit that I do some of the things you’re not supposed to do. Every once in a while when I have a burning question, I’ll call Fred while I’m driving down the road. If the phone rings while I’m driving down the road, I’ll answer it. Sometimes I need to call Fred from the grocery store to find out whether I need to pick up more salad, or to ask exactly what kind of ham or turkey he wanted. I’ll admit it – I’m one of those annoying people with cell phones, wandering down the aisle while chatting away about nothing important. But – and this is key, folks – I never lose track of the fact that there are people all around me. If I’m in the grocery store, I don’t wander down the middle of the fucking aisle at a snail’s pace so that no one can get past me. I move my ass over to the side, out of the way, and if I see that someone is hovering as if I’m in front of the very item they need to look at, I move my ass and my cart the fuck out of the way. If I’m driving down the road, talking on the phone, I make a point of getting into the right lane and slowing down so that there’s a lot of space between the front of my vehicle and the ass-end of the vehicle in front of me. And I keep the conversation as short as possible rather than being chatty. It’s just common courtesy, is what it is, and I try to annoy those around me with my cell phone conversations as little as possible. I was at the grocery store yesterday stocking up on the essentials – salad, sliced ham, Skinny Cows – and when it was time to check out, I chose the only lane open. In front of me was an older woman, who had just put all her items on the conveyer belt. As the cashier began ringing up her items, the woman turned to look at the TicTacs�, pondering slowly over which flavors might excite her palate. Just then, we all heard the toodle-toodle-toodle of a cell phone ringing, and the woman grabbed her purse and dug out her phone. (I knew it wasn’t my phone ringing, because mine plays the Flintstones theme song) The woman, chatting casually on her phone (“Oh nothing, I’m in the grocery store”), turned back to peruse the TicTacs. I didn’t pay much attention to what she was talking about (though I’ll admit that I often eavesdrop on people talking on their cell phones, because that’s just how nosy I am) and turned to look at the magazine rack. The grocery store we frequent does this odd thing where they cover the front of certain magazines so that you can only read the title of the magazine. After some research, I’ve determined that they’re not covering the magazines with the half-naked models on the front, but rather they cover any magazine with words like “sex” or “orgasm” on the front (“16 ways to your BEST ORGASM EVER!”). Suffice it to say that Cosmo is usually covered. “Ma’am?” the cashier said to me, politely. “This is all yours, right?” She indicated my pile of groceries. “Yes, that’s mine,” I said, and turned to look at Madam TicTac, who was gesturing animatedly as she chatted, waving a pack of TicTacs in the air. She turned around and put her TicTacs down, in and amongst my groceries. The cashier looked at me and gave me a rueful smile. “Those are hers,” I stage-whispered, and the cashier grinned, rang them up, and added them to the woman’s order. And then we got to stand around while the woman, clearly not the sort who can walk and chew gum at the same time, fumbled with her credit card, NEVER ONCE PAUSING IN HER INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT CONVERSATION. “Is that what she said? But what are you going to do? Uh huh. The red or the green? I think green would be okay, but it’s three months away, so you probably… I mean, if she cares that much, let her do it, you know? I know. Right. Uh huh. Nooooo…. ::giggle:: When, though? I KNOW! She can be so ignorant, sometimes.” (Pot. Kettle. Black. Bitch.) The cashier, the bagger and I stood around waiting for Madam TicTacs to run her credit card through the machine and then sign the credit slip. There was so much eye-rolling going on I’m surprised we didn’t all get dizzy and pass out. And then, leaning on the little counter located next to the credit/ debit machine, the woman loitered there and continued her conversation. “Oh, I know, I couldn’t believe it. But then – what? No, really? She did? When? I asked her and she said NO! Why would she – ? REALLY? But when? Oh, please, she is not. She always says that and everyone jumps to help her out, and then it never happens. I can’t believe she said that, can’t she just give it a rest? I can’t stand it when she does that…” The cashier looked at the woman, and then at me. I looked at the woman and then the cashier. Time passed slowly by as we stood around, unsure of what to do. Clearly the “What to do if the customer won’t get her ass out of the way” section had been missing from the employee handbook. Finally, with a mental shrug, I moved so that I was in the woman’s space. I don’t like getting in peoples’ space, and in fact I loathe it when people get in my space, but desperate times call for desperate measures. And it worked! The woman looked up to see me rightthere, and moved away. Then she saw a grocery cart full of groceries in bags and an impatient bagger standing nearby, and apparently a chord struck in the distant reaches of what passed for her brain. Finally, STILL talking on the phone, she left the store. Checking over her shoulder to be sure she was really gone, the cashier turned and began ringing up my items. “I think that is SO rude!” she said. “Me too!” I said, and we bonded for a moment about the rudeness of SOME PEOPLE. Here’s the thing, folks. You are not – you will NEVER BE – so very important that it’s impossible for you complete a task such as checking out without making those around you wait and wait and wait while you act like an idiot. I understand that you MIGHT think to yourself “My god, I am SO important, I MUST show these peons how VERY important I am, by continuing my INCREDIBLY important conversation. THEY are certainly NOWHERE near as important as I, and thus they do NOT mind waiting for ME!” In actuality, rather than being impressed by how amazingly important you are and how stunningly interesting your conversation is, and thinking to themselves “My GOD, I wish I were that important, TOO!”, what they are thinking to themselves is “What a tool. I wonder if there’s a security camera on me right now? I sure would like to deliver a swift kick to this idiot’s knee and break it. That sure would make me feel better!” “But Robyn!” you are saying to me. “But the phone, it rang! And I cannot let a phone ring and not answer it! What if it’s an EMERGENCY!!!!” Read this, memorize it, tattoo it on your ass if need be, but live by these simple rules, people. If the PHONE rings while you’re standing in line, and you fear that it might be a very important phone call, an EMERGENCY, then you should ANSWER the phone, and when you hear that it is your spouse or your mother or someone else just calling to chat, you should say these very simple words: “Hi, let me call you right back, okay?” And if the caller responds by saying “No, but wait, I just wanted to ask you…”, then say, very clearly “I am STANDING in the CHECKOUT LINE, and I WILL CALL YOU BACK, because only self-important TOOLS stand in the CHECKOUT LINE while talking on their cell phone!”, and then hang up. Or you could say “Hey, hold on just a minute while I check out”, and then put the phone down and check out. I mean, how hard is that? I understand that your world revolves around you (except when it revolves around me), but if every once in a while you thought about how what you do (talking on the phone while trying to check out) affects those of us around you (the cashier, the bagger, the other people who want to check out and get on with their day), the world would probably be a tad less annoying and stressful. Thank you for your time, and have a nice day.
The Bean talks to the birds out at the feeders. The birds do not seem impressed.
this (I followed the link from Mimi), and you know what sucks? I’m such a freakin’ sap that all I had to do was read No, and to top it off you murdered Haley Joel Osment and made me cry for ten minutes. and I TEARED UP. I’m such a friggin’ sap now that all I need to do is see someone mentioning themselves or someone else crying about something, and I TEAR UP IN SYMPATHY. Fred thinks it’s the funniest damn thing that I get all teary-eyed if someone cries on TV, but I can’t help it! I don’t care if it’s a stupid, cheesy storyline, if I think it’s the most idiotic movie or show in the world, if someone on the screen cries, I’m ready to cry right along with them. No one cries alone when I’m around, I always say.
Gah.
Miz Poo: “Um, Mom? I was here FIRST.”
Bean: “This is MY bed. MINE. MINE. MINE.”
Miz Poo: “Get OUT of here, you little turd!”
Bean: “MY BED.”
Miz Poo: “I am NOT moving!”
Bean: “I AM NOT MOVING EITHER. MY BED.”
Bean: “Lord, how long must I suffer, laying here next to the cleaningest cat in the whole wide world? How long? In MY bed?”
Miz Poo: LickLickLick
Bean: “Zzzzzzzzzzz”
Miz Poo: “I was unable to drive him away through my annoying 3-hour-long grooming session. WHAT am I going to do NOW?”
Bean: “Zzzzzzzz”
Bean: “I sense that she’s still there. But I won’t look at her. If I don’t look at her, she’s not really there. MY BED. MINE.”
But sleep overcame them both.
Will they become friends? Perhaps even lovers? Will they spend all their time grooming each other and telling secrets and giggling?
Probably not – Miz Poo’s growling and hissing was a notch above her usual hysteria this morning, perhaps caused by the embarrassment of knowing that she had spent hours snuggling with the Bean, whom she’s claimed (perhaps a little too vociferously) to hate lo these past few months – but a mother can dream, can’t she?
* * * Oh, and speaking of the cats, I finally got around to putting up a cast page not only for the Bean, but also for Dulcinea and Gizmo, cousins to our kitties. Next, I need to get some pictures of Debbie’s cats so I can make a page for them as well! Is it sad that each of the cats in our house have their very own page, but all the humans only get a blurb on the cast page?
Sex-say!
Sleep-pay!
This cat will sleep anywhere, in any position, without feeling the slightest bit of discomfort. He cracks me up.
you, the heat from the gas fireplace doesn’t go around corners!). The neighbors apparently got a new computer recently, and they left the box out for the trash guys to pick up. In today’s wind, the box got tossed around, and instead of ending up in my miniscule front yard, which is what usually happens, the wind tossed it in their front porch, where it appears it’ll stay. I never got my daffodil and lily bulbs planted, and now I think it’s probably too late in the year, since the bulbs are supposed to hibernate in the ground for some certain amount of time. Of course, I suppose I could plant them anyway and see what happens. If we have a somewhat nice day this week, I just may do that. Or I could force them. But if they really take 12 weeks to bloom, that would be close to March, and about time for them to start blooming outside, for real. I ordered a calendar of pictures of all my parents’ grandkids for them for Christmas, I think I mentioned. This calendar I ordered through Shutterfly, and I have to say that I think it came out nicer than the calendar I made for the spud over at Cafepress.
All the Boys on one bed. And all sound asleep, too!
Cute….
…yet bitchy.