Author: Robyn

Black Hawk Down. That night after Fred went to bed, I watched Vanilla Sky (and freakily, Nance was watching it that very same night! I didn’t hate the movie as much as she did, though. Possibly because I dozed through part of it. Heh.), and last night I watched Kate and Leopold. Tonight, I’ll be watching Monster’s Ball. Y’all, don’t email me and tell me if it sucks, because I’m going to watch it anyway. I mean, I get to see Billy Bob having hot monkey sex! Does it get any better? That was a joke. I actually find Billy Bob a tad creepy. Okay, a lot creepy. And he and Angelina Jolie together is just something I can’t bear to think about. Meg Ryan, if you didn’t know, is in Kate and Leopold, and while it was a cute enough movie – entertaining, yet doesn’t tax the brain – I have to ask one little question. What the FUCK is going on with Meg Ryan’s hair?! After When Harry Met Sally, her hairstyle choices have just gone to shit, and I don’t get it. Who is advising the woman on how to do her hair, and how is it that they still have a job? Does Meg not have eyeballs? Can she not see how hideous she looks? Her ‘do in Kate and Leopold made her look ten years older, and it makes me want to track her down and shake some sense into her. Of course, with Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber on the screen, who the hell was looking at Meg Ryan?

* * * A survey: 1. What time do you wake up in the morning? I try to be up before 8, but the last two mornings I’ve slept until after 8:30, probably because I stayed up late the night before watching movies. 2. If you could eat lunch with one famous person, who would it be? Stephen King, probably, although I’d be an idiot and would just stare adoringly at him and say stupid things like “You write good books.” 3. Gold or silver? I’m not much of a jewelry person, but most of what I have is gold. 4. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? I saw 20 minutes of Attack of the Clones last weekend before the suckiness drove us out of the theater. Before that, I went to see Panic Room with my mother and the spud, which I really liked. 5. Favourite tv show? Friends. It will always be my favorite, no matter how much everyone else think it sucks. 6. What do you have for breakfast? I don’t usually eat breakfast (although I did several times while my parents were here), but if I’m really hungry I’ll make eggs and toast. 7. What would you hate to be left in a room with? A skunk. Or Fred after he’s had beans. 8. Can you touch your nose with your tongue? No, but I can wiggle my ears, roll my tongue, and raise my left eyebrow. 9. Who inspires you? I’m sure there are tons of people who inspire me, but no one comes to mind at the moment. 10. What’s your middle name? Leslie. 11. Beach or city? Beach! 12. Summer or winter? Summer, as long as we have air conditioning. 13. Favourite ice cream? Applebees has a great vanilla bean ice cream that I really like. 14. Buttered, plain or salted popcorn? Popcorn (like coffee) is one of those things that always smells better than it tastes, but if I had to choose, I’d say salted popcorn is the best. Well, except for cheese popcorn, and then you’re moving into a whole new realm. 15. Favourite color? Yellow, of course. You knew that. 16. Favourite car? A yellow Volkswagen Beetle. 17. Favourite sandwich? This reminds me of the Friends episode where the answer to “What is Joey’s favorite food?” was “Sandwiches.” I would say that my favorite home made sandwich is egg salad, and my favorite Subway sandwich (a sub is a sandwich, in my opinion) is the BMT. 18. True love? Well, duh. 19. What characteristics do you despise? Condescension and people who think they’re smarter than they are. 20. Favourite flower? Daffodils or gladiolus. I also like carnations and roses. 21. If you had a big win on the lottery, how long before you told people? I’d wait until right after I claimed it, because I’d be afraid someone would clonk me upside the head and steal my ticket. 22. Fizzy or still water as a drink? Still. A gallon a day, by the way. 23. What color is your bathroom? The walls are a warm cream color – like the rest of the house – and the towels and rug are a smoky gray. 24. How many keys on your key ring? Two – one for the Jeep, one for the post office box. The key to the house is somewhere at the bottom of my purse. 25. Where would you retire to? A cottage on the coast of Maine, but I doubt I could ever convince Fred. 26. Can you juggle, if yes how many? Nope, I’m not that coordinated. 27. Favourite day of the week? Friday. 28. Red or white wine? Gag. Wine’s another of those things I don’t understand. I can’t stand the taste of it. 29. What did you do for your last birthday? Not a lot – but the rest of the world celebrated. 30. Do you hold a donor card? What kind of donor card? Yes, an organ donor card. ]]>

Fred has his own version of this event) ]]>

Go hither and make your own. Link stolen from… well, everyone’s doing it! And while we’re talking about cartoons, I have to say that Hawthorne from the Sherman’s Lagoon strip is the cartoon character I’m most like.

The look he gets on his little crab face right before he pinches someone never fails to crack me up. Reader Dawn became my Favorite Person o’ the Moment on Friday, when she sent me the (now defunct) link to disable the Comet Cursor download prompt. Have I mentioned that I hate those damn things? I thought so. Thanks, Dawn! Is it goofy that I’m concerned about Coleen Rowley‘s career in the long run? That I’m afraid that once the brouhaha has calmed down and everyone’s forgotten her name except in passing, that it may have negative consequences for her career, and very probably will? Go read Dana’s Rules O’ Driving. Go on, now. Unlike Dana, I’m not an excellent driver. I’m an okay driver, sometimes I’m a little too slow and careful, but usually the knowledge that I’m just a so-so driver makes me more vigilant, more aware of my surroundings, and so being aware that I’m not an excellent driver is probably the best thing for us all. And I’d never turn from a non-turn lane. I’d probably be a better driver if I was driving a car, though. Speaking of driving slow and careful – when my parents were here, my father drove through our subdivision at 12 miles per hour. Every time. It was like watching hair grow, riding with the man. And every time I said “You need to get in the right lane, Dad.”, he would respond with “No I don’t. It’s on the left.”, and I would say “No, it ISN’T, it’s on the right”, and I would always be proven right. Who’s going to know where the International House of Pancakes is located, I ask you? Someone who LIVES here and drives by it at least twice a week, or someone who hasn’t been in the area for three years, which is before it was built? That’s what I thought. So, a couple of weeks ago someone somewhere fucked up badly – personally, I blame my former webhosts, hispeed – and people would search on and find the site bulpyong.com, only when they hit bulpyong.com, they would see my site. The fine, useless people at hispeed hemmed and hawed and then determined it was a “dns crossover” that would “propogate out” over time, but here, two weeks later, I’m still getting hits from the Korean google site. You see, bulpyong.com is a Korean site. So Koreans were searching on something that bulpyong offers, and instead of seeing what they wanted, they were seeing the journal of a fat white chick. And when they couldn’t figure out WHAT the hell was going on, they were emailing me. And emailing me. And emailing the motherloving shit out of me. And trying to send me viruses. And emailing me. It was, you can imagine, quite a thrill. And what the hell was I supposed to do? I don’t speak Korean, so they could have been proposing to me, excoriating me, or just asking “What the fuck is going on?” Who knows? It’s a mystery. Now that my ip address has changed because I’ve switched hosts, hopefully that will stop, because nothing chaps my ass faster than getting a bunch of email, getting all excited (“I just got a bunch of email! Whee!”), and then finding you can’t read it or it’s a bunch of attempted virii. Grrrr. ]]>

So, yesterday morning, I awoke before 6 am. Not to get up and get going or anything – ha ha! silly readers! To think hat I would get up and get going before 6 am! – but to pee, because I drink a lot of water in the course of the day and therefore am a peeing fool. As I rounded the end of the bed on my way to the bathroom, I looked down and saw a dark shape. “Oh, that fucking bastard Fancypants!” I growled to myself. “It’s not bad enough that he has to poo on the floor outside the laundry room (where the litter box is kept), but to poo in my room! At the end of my very own bed! I’m going to kick his fancy little bastard ass from one end of the house to the other!”, and then I stopped and peered closer at the small dark shape. “What,” I wondered aloud. “Has he been EATING?” For while it was a relatively small dark shape, it was far larger than an average cat poo. And I clean out the litter box every day, so I know whereof I speak when it comes to cat poo. Unfortunately. Not wearing either my glasses or my contacts, and so fairly blind – and the room still being pretty dark – I held my breath so as not to inhale any of the assumed poo stink, and leaned down to get a closer look at the dark shape. It was a bird. A dead bird. A dead bird laying on the floor at the end of my bed. You can imagine how pleased I was. I am NOT picking that up, I thought definitely. “Freeeeeeeeeeeed!” I yelled down the stairs, certain it was late enough for him to be awake and either on his computer or snoozing on the couch. When he came upstairs at my bidding (“What?” he said. “Did Fancypants shit on the floor?” “Oh, better than that,” I replied. “Just come see.”), he was surprised. Miz Poo and Tubby were the only cats in the room, and they were fascinated not only by the dead bird, but also by the large spray of feathers across the bedroom floor. It appeared rather obvious that not only had someone caught a bird, but the bird had been at least half alive when brought into MY FUCKING BEDROOM, and had tried to run for it’s poor little life before being killed and laid on the floor at the end of my bed as an expression of deep and abiding love. While Fred picked up the bird and took it downstairs – after pointing out to me that it was a robin – I got out the vacuum cleaner and vacuumed up the trail of feathers. After sticking the vacuum cleaner in the hallway, I got back into bed and Miz Poo settled down beside me, wanting belly rubs and to purr wildly at me after all the excitement. I dozed off again, and at some point, Fred came back upstairs to take a bath. He was cold from running around in his underwear in an air-conditioned house and was taking a bath to warm up. And because he’s a froufy girly-man. Sometime after 7, he stepped out of the tub, dried off, and headed for the stairs. “Bessie,” he called, stopping before he went downstairs. “Come here.” I groaned, rolled over, grabbed my glasses, and put my nightgown on. At the landing at the top of the stairs lay another dead robin, with another violent spray of feathers. Apparently while Fred bathed and I snoozed, Fancypants (let’s be honest – Fancypants is one aggressive bastard, and none of the other cats has the nerve to actually go after a bird, so it had to be him) captured another robin, carried it inside, killed it, and left it for Fred and I to find. So once again Fred disposed of the bird and I vacuumed up the feathers. “I think Fancypants is sending me a message,” I said. “What?” Fred laughed. “That you’re next?” “Well,” I pointed out. “They ARE dead ROBINS.” If I disappear, I think you’ll know who to blame. Exhausted, after a hard day of murdering small animals.]]>

* * * I was reading Entertainment Weekly last night during the commercials (we watched the MTV Movie Awards – the first hour, anyway, and taped the rest, because I want to see Kelly Osbourne singing), and came across this letter in the Letters to the Editor section: The kid can read the word “ass” and doesn’t know what it means? That’s a way-too-sheltered kid, right there. That letter’s an example of someone making up a problem where one doesn’t exist. If my kid said “Mommy, what does ass mean?”, I would say “It’s a word grownups use to mean your butt. You’re not allowed to use it.” Problem solved. Of course, the spud would never say “What does ass mean?”, because not only does she know what ass means, she could probably give you 10 good, solid uses of the word “fuck.” Any child of mine who spends more than an hour total in the car with me on a pms-ing day is going to know most every curse word and how to use it. It’s a skill that can come in handy.

* * * I’ll tell you what. If you plan to register a domain name, DO NOT REGISTER THROUGH NETWORK SOLUTIONS. I’ve been trying to get them to switch the ip address for bitchypoo.com for almost a week now, with no luck. I couldn’t connect to their “manage account” option for several days – I think it’s my computer, actually, because I was able to connect on Fred’s computer – so I called their customer service number. The woman I spoke to supposedly filled the form out and said it would be emailed to me for verification, and I never saw any such email. Fred tried doing it from work, but Network Solutions said there was some kind of error, so I tried doing it from his computer here at home. Never got the email to confirm. So I just now tried again for the zillionth time, and FINALLY got the fucking email to confirm. This is getting very, very old. So in short, if you’re going to register a domain name, I highly recommend register.com. It took all of two minutes to change the isp for robynanderson.com. If you register through Network Solutions, I swear I’ll hunt you down and bitch-slap you. Don’t test me. Have you noticed I’m feeling rather bitchy today? I think it’s because I’m pms-ing, but not only am I pms-ing, I’m pms-ing bigtime, because I used my birth control to skip my last period – since I didn’t want to be having my period while we were in Gatlinburg, due to all the hot monkey sex that occurs when Himself is around water – and that always makes the pms worse the next time around. Too much information? No such thing. Earlier, while I was searching for links for my rant on Julia Roberts, I happened across one of those fucking pages that has those Comet Cursors installed, and which attempt to install those fucking Comet Cursors on your computer. I clicked “NO, you fucking piece of shit, do NOT install!”, and ever since, every five minutes, I get a popup. “Would you like to install Comet Cursor?” Grrr. I hate those fucking things. * * * Have a good weekend, y’all. ]]>

26 things you may not know about me (and some that you do) 1. In the middle of my right palm, I have a single, solitary freckle: 2. On that thing dividing my nostrils (the septum? I think that’s what it’s called), I have another single, solitary freckle. My sister likes to point it out to people sometimes. 3. Sometimes I hate my freckles. And sometimes I think they give me character. 4. I wish I had dark-blue eyes, instead of eyes that look bluish sometimes and greenish sometimes, depending on what I’m wearing. 5. I’m a zit-popper. If there’s a zit somewhere on my body, I’ll squeeze it whether it’s ready to pop or not. I spend a lot of time checking myself for zits. Unfortunately, I’ve never been terribly prone to acne, which is why I like popping them so much, I guess. 6. I really like to go out to eat, even if it’s for Mexican food, which I don’t really care for. 7. My favorite kind of food is Chinese, followed closely by seafood. I can hardly ever convince Fred to go out for Chinese, though. Which may be why I’m always craving it. 8. I’m a total sucker for weight loss before and after pictures. I could sit and look at before and after pictures for days – and I don’t care how the person who lost the weight did so. “I ate two crackers and half an apple six days a week and fasted on the seventh”? Great! Let’s see the before and after pictures! The more startling the difference, the more I like seeing them. “I lost 7,695 pounds!” Great! Let’s see the pictures! 9. I think people who publish books about having lost weight without including a LOT of before and after pictures should be tortured to death. 10. I grind my teeth in my sleep. 11. Although I’ve been married for most of my adult life, I can completely relate to this entry of Kymm’s. There were times, during the dead last five years of my first marriage, when I thought “I will spend the rest of my life alone, without someone to love. I will never be held and loved and kissed.” And I believed that, and I was okay with that. For years. I was more alone in a bed with my first husband than I ever was by myself. But then things changed. 12. Miz Poo is my favorite cat (duh!), followed at a distance by Spanky, who makes me laugh awfully hard with his doofy skittishness. I would like Fancypants, except I have a hard time feeling affection for anyone who SHITS ON THE CARPET OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM DOOR. And Tubby drives me nuts. Thank god he gets love from the spud (and long-distance love from Nance). I like Spot, but he’s not the kind of cat you can pick up and cuddle, so it’s a respectful stand-across-the-room-and-talk-to-him kind of affection. 13. Sometimes, when I get a really long email from a stranger that I don’t know how to respond to, I let it sit in my inbox for a long, long time, and every time I see it, I feel guilty, until the time comes that I say “Oh my GOD, I have GOT to respond to this!”, and then I do my best to whip off a response, but I always feel like I’ve done a half-assed job of it. And sometimes, if it’s been long enough, I think “They probably don’t expect a response anyway!”, and quicklikeabunny I delete it before I can change my mind. 14. I have a hard time not responding to email even if it obviously requires no response. If you send me an email thanking me for something, I will often thank you for thanking me, and we will send a volley back and forth until you give up. 15. I’ve been caught up on my email for almost two weeks now. That’s as long as I’ve ever been caught up on email, and I’m hoping like hell I can keep it up. 16. I’m not caught up on my journal reading, though. I’m about a week behind. 17. Sometimes, right after I upload an entry, I think “Oh, shit! I meant to talk about (whatever)!”, and so I open up Dreamweaver and start an entry for the next day. Hell, sometimes I have most of an entry written for the next day by 6 pm the night before. Is that cheating? Who cares? 18. When Fred first started his (now defunct) journal, I was pissy and annoyed and felt like he was stepping on my toes. I’d bet dollar to donuts that he never knew I felt that way, though. 19. In the few weeks two years ago after Fred started losing weight and I got my shit together, I thought I was going to lose my mind, because eating and exercising was ALL he ever talked about. 20. Sometimes I want to bitch-slap Fred for being at his goal weight while I still have 80-something pounds to lose. But he’s so cute that I can’t quite bring myself to do it. The bastard. 21. If I didn’t open the blinds downstairs every morning, Fred and the spud would leave them closed and live happily in a cold, dark house all the days of their lives. 22. The medicine/ supplements I take on a daily basis: birth control pill, thyroid pill (synthroid), evening primrose oil, calcium, magnesium, and glucosamine/ chondroitin. 23. At least twice a week, I choke on the magnesium pill (it’s not coated) and throw it and a big mouthful of water back up into the sink. Yes, I barf it back up. I am a true pleasure to be around when I’m taking pills. Small pills, like my synthroid and birth control pill occasionally get stuck to the roof of my mouth, and I have to dig it off with my tongue. Ladylike gentility, thy name is Robyn. 24. I haven’t had fingernail polish on my nails in about ten years. I also haven’t filed my nails in at least that long. When my nails get long enough to be annoying, I chop them off with the fingernail clipper, and most days I don’t even glance at my nails. Or my ragged cuticles. 25. I am not a girly-girl. Have I mentioned? I put makeup on maybe three times a year. Though I have started using moisturizer sporadically. Does that count? 26. Movie trailers always make me tear up and want to lay my head down on the back of the seat in front of me and sob wildly, but only when I see them in the movie theater. Even if they don’t look that great. And even if they’re comedies (see: Men in Black 2). This is possibly because I know that chances are excellent that the movie can never live up to the trailer. Which makes me sad, because I WANT the movie to live up to the trailer, damnit. That’s all that comes to mind. Don’t you feel enlightened?]]>

You’ve gotta check out this link, sent to me by reader Kim. If I had the time, you KNOW I’d be doing up a site like this for Miz Poo. Hee! The Vampire Beast series especially cracked me up.

The smell of Febreeze is very strong right now, and I know not why. Who the hell’s been spraying the Febreeze? Anyone? Bueller?…

So, the parents arrived all safe and sound and ten minutes early yesterday. For once, I was actually there waiting when they walked out through the security thing, which is unusual – usually they’re almost to baggage claim before I come wandering up to find them. I hadn’t been to the airport since last August, so I was surprised to see that you can’t park directly in front of the terminal anymore – you used to be able to – and there were several cops keeping watch from different posts by the doors. We couldn’t go to the gate to meet my parents as they came off the plane – without a ticket you can’t get past the security gate – but it was interesting to watch people go through security. I’m so used to seeing the security people all but taking a nap, that it was startling to see them not only awake, but aggressively eyeballing anyone who went through. Almost every man had to be wanded, because change in their pockets or their belt buckles set off the alarm.

And in fact, my mother was randomly selected at the gate in Atlanta for a going-over by the wand. Here’s where I’d insert a snarky remark about the likelihood of a doddering 60 year-old white lady being a terrorist threat, but you know? I won’t.

And here’s where I’d insert a snarky comment about the likelihood of the Huntsville/ Decatur airport being a terrorist target, but again I won’t. B’sides, Redstone Arsenal actually makes it possible that this area could be a target, so I’m not sending trouble an engraved invitation by making stupid comments, no sir I’m not.

Here’s the other Gatlinburg story I forgot to tell Tuesday. You’ll recall that I mentioned that we rode the Sky Lift to the top of the mountain and took 64,000 pictures of the purty view, yes? Well, as we were standing there taking pictures of the view, I said "Oh, I want a picture of the two of us!", and I ordered the spud to take a picture of Fred and I, and then Fred took ten thousand other pictures of the view, and then we were thinking that we’d spent enough time looking at and taking pictures of the view, there was nothing in the crappy, over-priced little gift shop, so we thought we’d head for the Sky Lift and go back to the bottom.

As we TURNED to walk out of the observation area, I heard Fred say "Oh my god," sotto voce.

You didn’t know I knew words like sotto voce, did you? I got the cul-chuh going on sometimes, mmm-hmm.

"Wha-" I began, and then it was upon me. The second darkest, nastiest, most horrific stank I’ve ever experienced. It was a stank that coated the inside of my nostrils, and was so thick and noxious that I could actually TASTE it.

Some asshole had dropped a fart-bomb and then simply walked away from it, letting all in the area be blasted unexpectedly by the stench. Coughing, covering my mouth and nose, I half-ran from the area, hoping to outrun the odor. Fred, catching a glimpse from the couple standing a few feet away from us, did his best to disavow all knowledge.

"It wasn’t US," he promised. To which they responded by asking Fred if he’d take a picture of them, so perhaps they believed him.

But, man. How NASTY is that, to let something like that loose in a crowd? You could kill someone by doing that, you know. Gah.

That particular experience reminded me of the time Fred and I did some Christmas shopping in Boaz – it was probably almost 6 years ago, actually, because it was my first Christmas here – and we were wandering through some no-name toy store, looking for presents to buy the spud. We headed all unknowingly down an aisle of kids’ books, and walked face-first into a cloud of rankness that to this day makes me want to gag when I think about it. I honestly thought that perhaps someone had lost control of their bowels all over the floor, and I was watching where I was walking – and trying not to throw up – because god knows I didn’t want to step in anything.

Fred was as grossed out as I, and as we whispered to each other, a guilty-looking man with a half-smirk on his face walked by us. I couldn’t help myself – I glanced at the ass of his pants to see if there’d been a loss of bowel control, but saw no evidence of the sort.

You know what? If you’re going to drop a bomb like that in a public place, at least try to get AWAY from people, instead of doing it in the middle of a crowd or in the middle of a crowded store.

People are so nasty sometimes.

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Before I get to the interesting part of the entry, there are two things I need to let y’all know about. First off, once my parents and the spud have left to go to Maine next week, I’m going to switch hosts, so the site may be down for a day while that’s going on. I’m going to be sure to do it over the weekend, though, so it shouldn’t be too bad unless there’s some horrible problem I don’t know about. In any case, the notify list will always know what’s going on.

Secondly, much as I love and adore each and every one of you on the notify list and while it’s been a great deal of fun making fun of those not ON the notify list, I’m going to have to go back to having the list hosted elsewhere, because between the additions to the list and the bounces I’m getting, it’s taking up way too much time. I’m going to try out Notify List this time around, which doesn’t add advertisements to the messages like that horrible Topica, and it doesn’t require your first and last name, your bra size and your firstborn before it’ll let you be on a list, like Yahoo Groups (or whatever the hell they’re called these days). Of course, those already on the notify list already know this, because I informed them when I sent out today’s entry, but I suppose it bears repeating.

* * *

There are two Gatlinburg stories that need to be told, which I completely forgot to include in Tuesday’s entry. So I’ll tell y’all one today and one tomorrow, because I’m far too stressed to have to think up new entries between running around and doing last-minute cleaning, and visiting with the ‘rents, m’kay?

The first concerns our trip around the Arts and Crafts Community on Saturday. Our first stop was at a small general-type store, which was next door to a gallery. We parked in the gallery parking lot, since the other parking lot was full, and since it’s rude to park in a parking lot if you’re not going to visit the establishment it belongs to, we went into the gallery for a quick look around.

There were a lot of Gatlinburg scenery pictures, and Fred spent some time looking through the bin of $15 prints, showing me a couple that he really liked. At one point, he said to me, "Do you suppose that if you like one of the pictures that’s already framed with a frame you don’t like, you can get it without?" I told him I didn’t know, and we continued looking around. From the time we stepped into the gallery through most of the time we were there – less than ten minutes, I’d guess – there was a whole crowd of people asking questions of the woman running the place. As we headed for the door, they all seemed to simply evaporate into thin air. Fred turned to her as we were within arm’s reach of the door and said "Is it possible to get a picture without the frame?"

I don’t know what he was thinking.

She latched onto him like a burr, told him that it was, indeed, possible, and then asked if there was a particular picture he had in mind. Trapped, he looked around wild-eyed, and claimed that there was one he had really liked, but couldn’t remember where it was. Frantically, he began running back and forth, looking at pictures, ruminating out loud whether it was in this room or that, and she dogged his every step.

"Where was it, Bessie?" he asked, trying to draw me into the trap with him, so he could perhaps trip me and then run away, leaving me there for her to latch onto.

I, of course, had no fucking clue what he was talking about, and said "I only remember the two pictures in the bin." Now, you’ll keep in mind that the pictures in the bin were $15 each. The paintings and pictures on the wall were $200 and more.

"No…" he said, sinking further into the quagmire. "It was hanging on the wall."

"Well," I said, wanting to get the hell out of there, "I DON’T KNOW. You didn’t point it out to me." I flipped through the bin of pictures and held out the one he’d shown me earlier. "You liked this one, remember?" I was reduced to speaking to him like he was a brain damaged infant. Finally – FINALLY – he grasped at the straw I was offering.

"Well," he said, "Maybe it was one of those pictures. Which one do you like?" I chose one, we paid for it, and were the hell out of there.

The woman stared sadly after us, her dreams of a big commission going up in smoke. When we were out of sight, I turned to Fred and said "Have you LOST your mind? What the fuck was THAT all about?", to which he could only shrug and laugh weakly, giddy with the victory of slipping out of there without spending hundreds of dollars on a so-so painting.

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Is it wrong that this morning, while I had VH-1 on to listen to while I was cleaning, I heard "The queen has been on the throne for 50 years." and I giggled like a 12 year-old boy? On the throne for 50 years. Hee!

So yesterday, as the notify list already knows, I was in a bad, BAD mood all day. Probably because I spent all day doing things that did NOT include getting the house in decent shape before my parents get here. Once I sent out the notify, though, I went around and cleaned the inside of most of the downstairs windows, scrubbed the floorboards, and immediately felt better.

But DAMN were the windows nasty. BLACK stuff was coming off of them, and I don’t know why they were so gross. Maybe because this is the first time I’ve cleaned them since we moved in last August.

Oh, don’t give me that disapproving look.

The spud had an appointment for a haircut at 11, so we left here about twenty minutes before that, and I cooled my heels while she had her hair shampooed, cut, and blown dry. I didn’t get a picture of it, because the camera’s still smoking from all the pictures I took in Gatlinburg, but I will one of these days. Maybe. Don’t hold your breath. It looks cute, though. You’ll just have to believe me.

While we were on our way to the hair-cutting place (Please. "Beauty Salon" sounds so fucking pretentious. Of course, they charge pretentious prices, so maybe I should just go with it), I glanced over at the spud, and realized that apparently I rarely look directly at the child. She had a creeping crud type rash around her mouth.

"Did you WASH YOUR FACE today?" I demanded. I swear to god, if given her choice, she’d never bathe, never wash her hair, never brush her teeth, and would just be a big walking pile of stank. And some people think that girls are cleaner than boys. Ha! The spud told me she had, and when I asked what was wrong with her face (nice, huh?) she told me that the rash she’d had had gotten worse. So I called Fred and asked him to call and make a doctor’s appointment for her, the sooner the better.

She’s always had a problem with eczema, for which she uses Lidex ointment when it flares up, but I don’t recall it ever showing up around her mouth. Fred got her an appointment for 2:10 that same afternoon, and so after running home, eating lunch, and working on the Entry That Would Not End, I was back out the door. After a quick stop at the movie store to rent Harry Potter, we hit the doctor’s office.

After a relatively short visit there, it was determined that the spud’s eczema had yeast in it, and we were told to stop with the steroid ointment (okay, how stupid am I? I didn’t realize the stuff had steroids in it!) and start using Lamisil, and it should start clearing up in a few days.

Okay, the cats? Are freakin’ me out. The last two nights, wherever I am after Fred goes to bed, that’s where they are. Monday night, they all stayed in the bedroom with me. Tuesday night, I came down on the computer to balance the checkbook, and they all came down and snoozed in the computer room until I went upstairs, and then they followed me up. It’s creepy, because they never used to do that. It makes me wonder if I’m about to die, and they all know it, and want to be there to celebrate.

Fred laughed when I suggested the idea, and said that the only way I’d die is if Tubby decided to sit on my chest.

I’m keeping an eye on that one, believe you me.

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