Author: Robyn

Friday Five – on time! Woohoo!:

1.What did you want to be when you grew up? When I was little, I wanted to be a vet, until I realized how much schooling was required. When I was in high school, I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon (this was right after I had the tumor removed from my knee), until I realized how much schooling was required for that. These days, I want to be Queen of the Universe. Or a fairy princess. One or the other.

2. Do you have any nicknames? Fred calls me Bessie, and the spud calls me "Muh-muh."

3. If you could change something about yourself what would it be? I would less of a flighty, ditzy airhead.

4. Have you ever bought anything from an infomercial? Hell yeah. Let me think – we bought that stupid rotisserie thing where you put an entire chicken inside and "set it and forget it!" (it worked okay, but was such a pain in the ass to haul out and then clean afterward that it didn’t last long in our house), I’ve bought numerous cds – most recently, an Olivia Newton-John collection (shaddup) – we bought the "Phil Up and Go" system, and never so much as took it out of the box, the Citrus Express (which worked pretty well), Epil-Stop (didn’t work worth a crap), the George Foreman Grill (which we use about once a week, but I’d prefer a real grill), the Time Life History of Country Music cd set, Oxi-Clean (which the Hag mentioned in passing as working well on pet blood stains, and the cat barf stains I’ve tried it on have come up extremely well), Banned from Television tapes (don’t get Fred started on the Train Lady), some stupid set of Magic Tricks tapes (Fred ordered those), and a set of funny tapes from England (I can’t remember the name of ’em). We are total suckers, and have to avoid the infomercials or risk bankruptcy.

5. How do you plan to spend your weekend? I think I’ll be getting the rest of the Christmas packages ready to be mailed out on Monday, do some vacuuming and straightening up of the house, since I think Fred’s parents will be coming over to watch a movie with us Saturday night, and hopefully I’ll get the last of my daffodil bulbs planted, depending on the weather.

Many, MANY thanks to the Bitter One, who sent me a surprise package in the mail (well, there was something for Fred, too, but it was mostly for ME) – and I think we all know how much I love the surprise mail! – consisting of a cool little hand massager thingy, and some Healing Gardens Jasminetherapy lotion and shower gel. And great minds think alike, for I believe it was less than three days ago that I was sniffing appreciatively at that VERY SAME SCENT while Christmas shopping.

Also, many MANY thanks to reader Lisa in Ohio, who purchased for me Bridget Jones’s Guide to Life, from my veryown wish list.

Last, but CERTAINLY not least, thanks to reader Robbie, who sent me the cutest little ornament, Quackers:

who is sitting atop my monitor at the moment. I may have to move him, though, because a certain portly cat’s wide ass keeps knocking him off. Looks like Quackers is waving at the camera, doesn’t it?

While I’m sharing pictures, here’s what the room we call the library (because that’s where all the books are, y’see) looked like at 11 pm last night (is "11 pm last night" redundant? I fear it may be. Perhaps it should be "11 pm yesterday"?) after I’d spent about an hour wrapping presents for the spud’s grandparents and aunt and great-grandparents on her father’s side. One of these days, I’m going to start making the child wrap her own presents. Anyway, click on the picture for the full-sized version:

  

Trust me, it was far more horrifying-looking in person. It looks a little better today because I packed up the presents going to three different places and mailed ’em, and also sorted through all those bags in the first picture, and separated them out into gifts going out and stocking stuffers for the spud, Fred, and I.

That’s right. I bought the majority of my own stocking stuffers, since I was out and about anyway, and I usually know what I like. I have to admit, it was pretty fun.

I don’t know that it’s all going to fit into the stocking, though!

We finally decided on what to get the spud for her big Christmas gift. A new TV. She has an ancient and crappy TV and VCR in her bedroom (we limit her TV viewing, so hush), and the TV has crappy volume control, probably because it’s a cheap piece of crap. The VCR is probably 8 years old, so Fred went out today and bought her a new TV/VCR combo. I think she’ll be surprised and like it.

I’m still curious as to whether the ex is going to get her the Playstation 2 she wants. I hope her heart isn’t set on it, because I really do think he thought she meant she wanted a Color Gameboy, which she got from him for her birthday. I suppose he could surprise me, though.

Speaking of the ex, I spent a long time (as mentioned above) wrapping presents for his side of the family, from the spud. She made soap for everyone this year, made little beaded ornaments, and they’re each getting one of her school pictures. After I was done wrapping, I hauled it all into the library, and separated it all out in piles according what was going to whom, and then looked at the sad little pile going to the ex’s side of the family compared to the pile going to my side of the family. Of course, my side of the family’s pile is going to be bigger because there are presents there from Fred and I as well, but I still felt a little guilty.

I always want EVERYONE to have LOTS of presents, y’know. Ah well.

I took my brother Randy off of my Christmas list this year. That’s right, just CROSSED HIM RIGHT OFF, and the world didn’t stop. It’s not that we don’t get along or anything – we get along just fine for the 2 hours I see him every year – but I’ve been sending him presents and cards for the last 10 years at least, for Christmas AND his birthday, and they’ve always and forever gone unacknowledged. I don’t require a reciprocal gift, because I really do enjoy the giving, but it’d be nice to know that whatever I give is being appreciated, even once.

So OFF he goes. I doubt he’ll even notice.

The weather outside? Frightful. The fire? SO delightful.

Hee!

Seriously, we’ve been having some crap-ass weather ’round these parts. I think it’s been overcast and rainy for at least the past 10 days, and while it’s not raining today, it’s mighty cloudy. And I have about 30 daffodil bulbs I need to get into the ground. I think perhaps I’ll wrangle Fred into digging me a hole when he gets home from work today. Maybe. Depends on how nice he’s feeling, I s’pose. The sucky thing, anyway, is that it’s been pretty warm the last few days – 55 – 60 degrees – but it’s been raining so hard that we can’t enjoy it.

I was sound asleep this morning when Fred poked me and told me to cover my head. I did, and he told me later that Tubby and Miz Poo had been facing off over some dark object on the floor, with Tubby growling in his annoying Tubby way, so Fred turned on the light, and found that the dark object was (my guess that it was the sock filled with catnip – the GOOD catnip – and tied in a knot, but I was wrong) a little frog. Fred carried it outside and put it in the grass (and closed the door so the cats couldn’t get at it), and the cats spent the next hour sniffing at the spot on the rug where the frog had been sitting.

The mailman. It’s been a while since I bitched about him, hasn’t it? If I haven’t mentioned it – and I probably have, repeatedly – my monitor is set up so that as I sit in front of the computer, if someone is driving down our cul-de-sac, their vehicle catches my eye, and I usually glance out to see who it is.

I’m practically my own little Neighborhood Watch program all by myself.

Anyway, nine times out of ten, I’m sitting in front of the computer when the mailman comes. One day last week, I was surfing or emailing or something – who knows? – and the mailman drove up to our mailbox. He put his vehicle in park, which always means we have a package. So I sat and watched him get the package out and walk toward our front door.

Obviously, he didn’t know I was sitting there watching him.

Why do I say "obviously", you ask? Why, because as he walked across our front yard, he took the package – a small one, it was a book from Amazon – and FLUNG it up in the FUCKING AIR, and then reached out to try to catch it on it’s way down. Except that it caught some air, and flew halfway across the fucking yard before it landed on the lawn.

Nice, huh? The fucking mailman tossing my fucking package in the air. Asshole.

Then yesterday, as he brought another package to the door (in the pouring rain), I opened the door to take it from him. As he handed it to me, he suggested that we get a bigger mailbox. I half-laughed in agreement, like "Yeah, no kidding", and he insisted that we really should because, as he put it, "It would make MY job a lot easier!"

Because that’s what it’s all about, really. Making it so that his job is easier.

No, actually, we probably will get a bigger mailbox, because who wants to piss off the mailman? And I’m sure it’s annoying to him that we get 45,000 small packages every day that won’t quite fit into the mailbox. Because FUCKING AMAZON looks at where I clicked "Mail all items together please, you idiots", and decides to mail each and fucking every one of them separately. I placed an order for 10 different items near the beginning of December, and every damn one of ’em arrived in separate packages – several of them on the same day. Friggin’ Amazon.

And hell, while I’m bitching? Remind me next time we want to buy a house (which should be in about a year, if past behavior gives any indication) NOT to apply for a mortgage through a fly-by-night bank that doesn’t even HAVE it’s own mortgage department and is named "The B@nk". Because what happens is that we end up with a fly-by-night mortgage provider (I’m sure there’s another name for them), who fucking SELLS our mortgage to fucking Wells Fargo after one single, solitary month. And what happens when Wells Fucking Fargo has your mortgage? Well, apparently what happens is that Wells Fucking Fargo doesn’t make what they feel is ENOUGH from the interest you pay on your mortgage, and so every time you get a statement from them? Why, they have a CONVENIENT little form that you can sign, where they’ll AUTOMATICALLY transfer half of your mortgage payment every two weeks, and MY GOODNESS! LOOK AT OUR PIE CHART SHOWING HOW MUCH MONEY YOU WILL SAVE in the long run! Aren’t we just the MOST wonderful bank EVER, to offer such a wondrous service, aren’t we, huh?!

And waaaaaay down at the very bottom on the back of this magical form, in teeny-tiny, bitty letters, there is an itty-bitty statement telling you that this is not in FACT a free service, but something you will have to pay $7.95 per month to Wells Fucking Fargo to do. And then, under THAT, in even bittier letters, it admits that yes, PERHAPS you could do this verysame thing by, uh, writing a check for half the amount of your mortgage every two weeks and sending it to the lovely, helpful people at Wells Fargo, yes, they SUPPOSE that would work, but really, if you’re going to QUIBBLE over $7.95 per month, which would line the gold pockets of those blood-suckers at the top of the Wells Fargo food chain, perhaps you’re really Not Our Kind, Darling. Honestly. $7.95. You’re going to split hairs over that? Hard to believe. Some people can be so petty. Are you sure you can afford that house? Honestly. Be that way, then. $7.95. Look at your ass. I bet you eat $7.95 more food than you should every single day, and you’re being all picky-like because we want to make a little extra pocket change, $7.95 a month?

Amsouth, who held the mortgage on the old house never ONCE sent us ANY kind of bullshit like that, and not only are we getting this sort of stuff from Wells Fucking Fargo with the mortgage, but we’re also getting it in BETWEEN mortgage statements.

Bastards.

 

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You know what I wonder? I wonder how on earth it is that people can make it through this life without the slightest scintilla of a sense of humor. And what’s more, I wonder how those without the slightest scintilla of a sense of humor make it through life taking themselves that seriously, with an inflated sense of self-importance.

And even more, I wonder how it is that those with not the tiniest sense of irony or fun, manage to unerringly make it to my web page, repeatedly. And then email me to tell me that they TRIED to read what I write, but I’m so HOSTILE that they just couldn’t force themselves to read me, despite many attempts, and so they email me to make sure that I understand this.

The thinking is, I believe, that since the world does, in fact, revolve around THEM, not around ME (silly, stupid, misguided Robyn. How could you not know that the world revolves around THEM? Did you not get the memo?), that it’s terribly important that I know their feelings.

Without the tiniest scintilla of a sense of humor, taking themselves and everyone around them serious unto death, they would probably be apoplectic to know that when I get such an email, I snicker, read it aloud to Fred with the appropriate snarky remarks, snicker some more, and delete it. I don’t, in fact, frame it and read it every night, holding it close to my heart and memorizing every word. I’ve got better things to do, after all.

Because, I mean, let’s be honest. Of course my world revolves around me and the people I care about. And yours revolves around you. Except when it revolves around me.

Like, duh.

I spent hours and hours Christmas shopping today. It was surprisingly less stressful than I had expected, even though I WENT TO THE MALL. Before that, I hit the grocery store, the post office (I mailed out 115 Christmas cards, and have about another 50 to go – I’m still taking names ’til Saturday, so follow the instructions at the bottom if you want one!), and the movie store. I ran home and put the groceries away, then left again (poor Miz Poo had no clue what was going on, with me running in and then right back out) to go to Target, where I needed boxes and bows, ’cause I’m thinking about actually wrapping Christmas presents sometime soon, here.

While I was there, I went to grab a couple of Designer Whey bars – the chocolate mint flavor – and found that all but one of them was open on the end, with chocolate dripping out. Like the machines fucked up when sealing the wrappers, though for all I knew someone had steamed open the bars, inserted a some tasty anthrax and tried to seal them shut again. I was ticked, because the only place I can find Designer Whey bars in this area is at Target, and it’s a pain in the ass to get to, so I wanted to stock up on them and not have to go back in two days. Bastards. Designer Whey bars are the only ones that are high in protein that I can stand these days.

After I picked up a pair of headphones for Fred to use with his Walkman, I left Target.

Then I went to the mall. That’s right, the mall. Two weeks before Christmas, and I was GOING TO THE MALL.

It wasn’t so bad. I knew there was no way in hell I would be parking anywhere near the mall, so I simply parked in the first parking spot I saw, wayyyy in the back. I wandered through the mall, stopping at the bathroom, eyeballing the Godiva stand, checking out the Disney store, browsing in Hallmark, buying a few things along the way. I went into Lane Bryant and bought a sweater for Christmas, and then headed to the destination I’d been heading for all along: Bath and Body Shop. God. MAN. I just love that store to death. Thank god it’s in the mall, and it has been decreed that I can only step into the mall twice a year, or I’d spend us into the poorhouse at that store.

And apparently everyone else in Huntsville felt that very same way. Damn it was crowded in there. People milling about with a basket on their arm, trying to duck the way-too-helpful salesgirlies who would chirp "Buy three, get one free!" while spraying you with the only scent in the store you don’t like. I filled up the basket (literally)(thank god for that coupon) and stood in line for twenty minutes, but it just smelled so damn good that I really couldn’t be impatient.

Besides, I had my cheesy romance-type novel to keep me occupied.

When it was my turn to be rung up, the cashier – with frighteningly perfect blond curls piled perfectly atop her perfectly made-up face (I suspect she was actually, like, a robot or something) – informed me of all the bargains I was missing. "These are 4 for $14!" she said, waving the single bottle of something-or-other around.

What I thought, but did not say, was "If I WANTED four of them, would I not have PUT four of them in the basket, ya think, huh?" Instead, I smiled and shook my head. "I don’t think so."

Oh, poor cashier lady. Her face fell, her heart broke, and I think I saw her surreptitiously wipe away a tear. It’s a rough, tough little life in Bath and Body Works-land, and there I was heartlessly turning down her offer to HELP me save money by buying stuff I neither wanted nor needed.

"Oh!" She waved a bar of soap at me. "THESE are buy three, get one free!"

I smiled frostily. "No thanks."

I don’t remember what happened next, I think she went into hysterics and had to be carted away. All I know is that I had two heavy-ass bags to haul out to the Jeep, and the trip from the mall to the Jeep seemed a lot longer than the trip from the Jeep to the mall.

Once home, I ate lunch (I missed meal #2, with all that running around. I am fading away to nothing, I tell you), and started opening the TWELVE Christmas cards that had been waiting for me at the post office earlier.

You guys just rock, you know that? I’ve gotten in the area of 35 cards so far, and the door between the foyer and the kitchen is almost covered. Thank you!

Oh, speaking of cards. The spud got a card from her aunt – the ex’s sister – who signed the card "Derek and Cindy." The aunt’s name is Cindy, but as the spud asked, "Who’s Derek?"

Fuck if I know. Her boyfriend, I guess. But my question is this – why’d she sign his name first? Obviously I DO need to write a book about the subtle rules of a civilized society, because the card-signing rules go like this:

If I’m sending a card to someone on my side of the family, I sign it "Robyn, Fred, and the spud."

If the card’s going to Fred’s side of the family, I sign it thusly: "Fred, Robyn, and the spud."

And the Christmas cards I’m sending out to y’all are signed: "Robyn, Fred, and the spud", because you requested them from me, not Fred, even though you might like him better.

Got it? Good. Mwah!

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Okay, as regards Friday’s entry, wherein I said that the five celebrities I’d have a fling with were David Morse, Don@l Logue, Matthew Perry, Viggo Mortensen and Tim Roth, I need to edit that list.

The official list is now as follows: Don@l Logue, Matthew Perry, Tim Roth, Zach Ward, and Alan Tudyk (but only if he retains the red hair he had in A Knight’s Tale; as an alternate, I choose Paul Bettany from that same movie). God. Could you imagine being all famous and google-ing yourself to find that some fat chick in Alabama has you on her List?

(Fred: "Happens to me all the time…")

Starr, your emails are bouncing back to me. I don’t think ls.net likes me…

Thanks to reader Anne, who bought Nickel and Dimed for me off my wish list. Anne rocks!

The cats’ food and water dishes, I don’t think I’ve mentioned, are kept in the master bathroom. We originally kept them in the laundry room with the litter box, but since our cats are some litter-flingin’ fools, they were always getting litter in the water, and while it didn’t seem to bother them, it grossed me out. So we moved the dishes to the bathroom, where they sit against the wall next to the bathtub, and near the toilet (note to self: start working on that house tour sometime soon…), on a blue plastic mat with a lip designed to catch the food pieces that fall out of the cats’ mouths.

Unfortunately, they are also some food-slinging fools, and if it’s been more than two days since I vacuumed in the bathroom, you’re apt to find a fragment or two of cat food stuck to the bottom of your foot upon leaving the shower.

Anyway, once we moved the food dishes into the bathroom, Miz Poo developed the habit – nay, compulsion – to go running to the food bowls and chow down whenever I’m in there taking care of business.

I think she doesn’t want me to be lonely.

But when you have one food and one water dish and five cats, there are times when one cat wants to eat, and another (most probably the forever-eating Tubby) is already there.

So we head into the bathroom, Miz Poo and I, and I go about sitting down and taking care of business (too much information? You do it too, don’t deny it), and Tubby sees Miz Poo coming, and he moves out of her way, because he’s learned that to get between Miz Poo and her food is to invite a smackdown of the highest order.

The fun part comes when it’s one of the other cats, especially Spot. Miz Poo comes up to the food bowl and sees to her horror that another cat is in her place, eating out of HER food bowl, and she cannot believe the utter gall and nerve of this cat.

Meanwhile, Spot continues contentedly munching.

Miz Poo leans forward and aggressively sniffs Spot’s tail. Spot, being the don’t-touch-me! sort turns to see who’s sniffing at him. He sees that it’s Miz Poo and stares at her. She stares back. The scary music begins in the background. And quicker than the nekkid eye can see, Miz Poo reaches out with one paw and SMACKS Spot in the head, so hard that you can (if you’re paying attention) hear the thump. Spot rears back, ears laid back along his head, blinking furiously and trying to figure out what just happened.

And then Miz Poo SMACKS him again.

Whereupon Spot runs out of the bathroom as fast as his legs can carry him, and then hides under the bed with his tail sticking out ("If I can’t see them, they can’t see ME!" goes his reasoning), and there he pouts for quite some time.

Rarely, Miz Poo has decided to be patient – perhaps she’s just not that hungry – and she’ll sit and watch Spot eat. This is when I encourage her evil ways. "Miz Poo! What the hell does he think he’s doing?! He’s eating your food! Smack him, Poo! Smack him!"

And she almost always does, unless my tone has frightened Spot.

Makes me laugh my ass off, every time.

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Thanks to all the explanations of what exactly the bling-bling is – I now feel so hip it hurts. For the uninformed, bling-bling is money and style – which is often represented by big, shiny jewelry. I knew y’all were a hip and happenin’ bunch of readers!

Thanks also to Miz Freak Magnet, who knew the poem I mentioned yesterday, and sent me the link to set my mind at ease.

Several of y’all had read it, I had many suggestions that it was a James Patterson book, and someone thought it might be by Mary Higgins Clark, but Himself did some looking around and informed me that the book I referred to yesterday is John Sanford’s Mind Prey, and he’s right! What’s sad is that we have the damn book on the shelf and if I’d just glanced through them, I would have found it. When I’m done with my magazines, I think I’m going to re-read it. I love me some Lucas Davenport.

With all my questions answered, I can rest easy now!

Did I mention that Fred is putting a computer together for my dad? He ordered all the pieces, expecting that they would get here sometime next week, and hopefully my dad would have his new computer (the old one is ass-achingly old and slow. When I was up there this summer, I would start up his computer and it would take for-fucking-ever, and then it would take forever for web pages to load, and I’d inevitably give up in a huff) by Christmas. Well, the parts all arrived yesterday, and it’s put together, needing only to be formatted and stuff like that. When Fred emailed my dad to tell him, my dad sent back an exclamation point-laden email. He’s reallyquite excited. The computer Fred’s putting together for him is costing in the area of $700 – including shipping from here to Maine – and a comparable system from Compaq would cost almost $1000. Guess who’s his favorite son-in-law right now?

Friday Five – on time this week!:

1. If you were to go to a movie this weekend, which one would you pick? Probably Harry Potter. Ocean’s 11 sounds good, and I do want to see Shallow Hal (so I can rant about it some more, don’tchaknow), but it’s a moot point, ’cause we never go to the movies.

2. What movie would you like to rent this weekend? I rented Pearl Harbor and American Outlaws, but what I really want to see is Made, which was out at the movie store when I went on Tuesday. I love me some Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau.

3. What one TV show do you always try to watch? Survivor – we always watch, or at least tape it!

4. If you (and your S.O.) were cool with it, what five celebrities (at the most) would it be ‘ok’ for you to have a fling with? Lordy, this is a tough one. David Morse, Donal Logue, Matthew Perry, Viggo Mortensen, Tim Roth. Hee! Fred loathes Tim Roth and thinks he’s the ugliest thing in the world, but I think he’s a hot little muffin.

5. How do you plan to spend your weekend? Oh, I think I’ll try something new and exciting and, say, sit on my ass reading for the entire weekend.

And last week’s Friday Five:

1. What did you have for dinner last night? Oven-baked boneless, skinless chicken breasts, brown rice, cooked carrots. Sounds better than it is. Really!

2. Do you ever get up for a midnight snack? Nope, never. Once I brush my teeth, that’s it – I don’t want to have to brush them again. Actually, once I finish my snack at 7, that’s it for the night, but it’s really the idea of having to brush my teeth again that keeps me away from the midnight snacking.

3. What’s your favorite dessert? At this moment, I’m craving Applebee’s Chimicheesecakes. DAMN they’re good. I don’t really have an all-time favorite, though. It all depends on what I’m craving, and what time of the year it is (ie, in the Fall I like the occasional slice o’ pumpkin pie). You can never go wrong with ice cream, though.

4. Tell us something about you that would surprise us. I cannot, for the life of me, think of one single, solitary thing. Except that I was born a man. A Kennedy. Yeah, that’s the ticket. I was born Teddy Kennedy’s son, and had a sex-change operation when I was 19, and the whole family is horrified and they disowned me. Amazing that we’ve kept the secret so long, ain’t it?

5. How do you plan to spend your weekend? Hm. This is a tough one. I think there was much ass-sitting, reading, tv-watching, a little online Christmas shopping, and a lot of snoozing on the couch.

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Thanks for all your emails about yesterday’s entry. I’m not going to respond to them, because I’m already a week behind in my emailing, and I don’t want to get further behind. So consider this a blanket "thanks", and know that I appreciate each and every one of them!

Y’all seem like a hip and happenin’ crowd. Explain to me what a "man with the bling-bling" would have, exactly? Is that a sex thing? Inquiring minds need to know…

And while you’re helping me out, sometime in the past 5 years I read a book – fiction – where a mother and her two children were kidnapped, possibly from a school parking lot, and locked in a room in the kidnapper’s basement. The man periodically raped the mother, and at one point took the youngest daughter off, claiming he would release her, but he didn’t. Is this striking a chord with any of y’all? For some reason I’m wanting to read it again. I’m fairly certain it’s a detective novel, but can’t think of which detective or what novel, and it’s driving me buggy. Help?

Okay, one more plea for help. When I was taking a Lit class about eight years ago, I read a poem written from the perspective of the frog who turned into a prince when the princess kissed him, and it was about his longing for the pond from whence he came. Come on, help me out, here – it’s driving me nuts. I’m dying to read it again.

Amazon is driving me NUTS with the freakin’ pop-up ads. I hit that fucking site 15 times a day to check out a book or movie, or to find out the status on an order I’ve placed, and every damn time they hit me with a pop-up ad. I HATE THOSE THINGS. If anything were to make me switch loyalties from Amazon to some other online book store, it’d be those ads. Do you hear me, Jeff Bezos?

I stood in line for more than 20 minutes at the post office this morning. I got there 10 minutes after it opened, and there were only 4 people in line ahead of me, and one verrrry slow postal worker behind the counter. One woman got so annoyed that she stormed out with her package, yelling "This is ridiculous!" Which doesn’t solve the fact that she needed to mail her package – she’s going to have to go back sooner or later – but I’m sure was quite satisfying in the short run.

I was perfectly fine waiting in line though, because I had a cheesy romance-type novel to keep me busy. I carry a paperback in my purse at all times just in case of such a wait, and I highly recommend cheesy romance-type novels with simple plots that you can get right back in to even if it’s been weeks since you last picked up the book.

So, I was reading yet another US last night, and I ran across this picture:

And I don’t know about y’all, but all I could think was "What the fuck?" What the fuck was going through her head when she left the house dressed like that? Did she look herself over in the full-length mirror and say "Yeahhhhh, man, I’m lookin’ fine!" ? Did she notice that she wasn’t apparently wearing any pants? Or is she – who the hell can tell? And to top it off with the hat and the stiletto boots – did she even look at herself before leaving the house, or did she let someone’s blind grandmother dress her?

Ah, the mysteries of the world.

So I got the new scanner hooked up last night, and immediately had to scan the spud’s face, because that’s the kind of abusive mom I am.

And she went along with it ’cause that’s the kind of easygoing spud she is. Looks kinda cool, doesn’t it? Perhaps next time I’ll have her not smush her face down quite so hard.

I can’t get "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" out of my head. Make it stop, mommy…

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So, I’m currently reading my backlog of magazines, and last night I was reading the December 10th edition of US (why do they even bother to put dates on the stupid things, I wonder – how can there be a magazine out for a date that hasn’t occurred yet?), and US must be reaching, because this particular issue’s cover story was Women of the Year – Courage, Love, Tears, Compassion.

I get to page 46 and see that Nicole Kidman is the first Woman of the Year they’re listing. Why is Nicole Kidman Woman of the Year, you wonder? Because she sang and danced and played opposite Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge? Because she got to kiss (I assume; I haven’t actually seen the movie yet) Ewan McGregor? Because she solved that whole pesky world-peace issue? No, none of these. Nicole Kidman is a Woman of the Year because, and I’ll quote the headline, "For making it on her own."

Tom Cruise (and I think we all know how I feel about HIM) leaves her high and dry, stunning her and us (and most importantly ME), doesn’t seem to give a shit when she miscarries his child, she doesn’t roll over and die, and that makes Nicole Kidman a Woman of the Year.

You know what? Bobby Sue in Kansas, whose husband left HER high and dry with their three kids, ages 5, 7 and 9, so he could run off with the local skank ho, and so Bobby Sue has to work three jobs just to make ends meet and pay the rent on their one-bedroom apartment, and has no health or life insurance, and worries the entire time she’s working at the diner that her 9 year-old will burn down the apartment trying to heat up some fucking SPAGHETTI-OS for his siblings, and can only come home for ten minutes between the end of her shift at the diner and the beginning of her shift at the hospital, to hug her kids and make sure they’re all alive and try to talk to them for a few moments and tell them that she loves them and beg them to stay in the apartment and don’t answer the door if anyone knocks, and you have my number at work, right? Call me before you go to sleep, and prays to god that no one calls the fucking DHS, and won’t be home until midnight until her kids are (pleasegod) sound asleep, and the five year-old continually asks where daddy is and has started to wet the bed at night, and the 7 year-old is such a good kid that she just gets lost in the shuffle, in fact, they’re all good kids and she knows that this life is a disservice to them, and sometimes she’d like to curl up in a ball and just give up, but she CAN’T, because you CANNOT DO THAT, you don’t just curl up in a ball and give up when you have three children to raise, and so Bobby Sue WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHERE HER FUCKING WOMAN OF THE YEAR AWARD IS, AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DOES IT COME WITH ANY MONEY, OR MAYBE A PART-TIME NANNY?

Jesus Christ. Women – and men – from one end of this country to the other are left every fucking day, and they don’t throw up their hands and die. They go on because there is no choice, because that’s what life is about, taking the shit you’re dealt and going on. And some of them have good support structures and some of them do not, and yet they still go on. And they don’t have millions, and they don’t have fame, they don’t have magazines to slaver over every detail of their fabulous I-managed-to-go-on life, and they struggle, and they go on. No awards. No magazine covers. No millions of dollars – and please, for the love of god, do not DARE email me and tell me that your heart breaks the same whether you’re a millionaire or have 29 cents in your pocket until payday in two weeks – it is INFINITELY fucking easier to get through life with money behind you, and anyone who whines the opposite should shut the fuck up and send me their entire fortune this very second. When you have money, you have the time to give your broken heart the attention and care it needs instead of working 60 hours a week and worrying endlessly about your children and how you’re going to survive from paycheck to paycheck.

And when you think of the thousands of people who will be going through this holiday season without the spouses, children, siblings, and friends killed in one fell swoop by unexpected acts of terrorism, the fact that Nicole Kidman is actually "making it on her own" is not so terribly worthy of a Woman of the Year award.

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Attention @home users who are on the notify list – please re-subscribe under whatever email address you’re currently using, because I got a ton of bounces last night, and I need to remove the bouncing addresses from the notify list for the sake of my sanity. Are y’all ready to take an axe to @home, or what? That whole situation has to suck.

My poor notify list. I always ALWAYS send out my notifies with the email addresses suppressed, only last night I was in a hurry to go watch Boston Public, and wasn’t paying attention, and I accidentally put the email nickname in BOTH the "To:" AND the "BCC:" fields, and so not only did my poor notify-ees get a notify email with 250 email addresses listed, but they got TWO of them. And then I spammed them by emailing and apologizing!

I swear I’ll be more careful next time…

Many thanks to reader Cynthia, who bought Waltzing the Cat for me off of my wish list. Y’all know how much I love the unexpected mail!

Speaking of mail – as far as the Giveaway goes, I’ve gotten everything that could fit in a padded envelope mailed, and everything else aside from the stereo will be going out tomorrow. For once, I’m way ahead of (self-imposed) schedule.

That picture on the front page, by the way, is of the front of our house with all the christmas stuff turned on. It’s darker than I’d like, but the one I took when it was lighter out was too light, so I had to pick one.

When I look out the front door, there’s a house directly in my line of sight that has done the unthinkable. That’s right, they’ve mixed the colors of their christmas lights, and it drives me nuts. Two trees are covered with PINK lights, there are strings of multicolored lights down the side of their driveway, a bush or two covered in blue lights, and white lights on the front of their house. I hate it, it looks horrible to me. Fred thinks I’m insane and that I pulled the "don’t mix the colors of lights" rule out of my ass. Obviously he has no idea of the subtle rules of a civilized society.

The house I like the most is to our left, and it has red and white lights across the top of the house, and lighted wreaths on several windows. Tasteful, pretty, and not an eyesore.

I guess I should add here that if you MUST mix light colors, you might as well go all the way and have one of those houses where every item in the yard is covered with lights, and moving lighted reindeer structures in the yard, a huge Santa on the roof. You get the idea. Those kinds of houses, I like. It appeals to the white trash in me.

I ought to take a walk around the neighborhood with the camera for a future entry.

So, the realtor we bought our house from? Who lives two houses away? He came over yesterday asking Fred for help with his DVD player. When they were back at his house, Fred was talking about something, and mentioned me by name.

"Who’s Robyn?" said the realtor. Apparently, he’d forgotten my name. Bastard.

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So, since we’ve moved into this house, the only real complaint I’ve had is that there’s nowhere for me to just sit and read, unless I want to sit in the living room – where sooner or later someone else turns on the TV, ’cause they’ve never heard of sitting quietly and just READING – or on the bed. No chairs set off where I could just sit quietly and read, and snuggle with the cats. For the last few months, I’ve been saving up money, and finally I had enough to drag Fred and the spud out shopping for a chair to put in the corner of the bedroom, where I can sit and read to my heart’s content.

Saturday, we left the house around 10:30, vowing (or perhaps that was just me) not to come home until a chair was found and purchased. Our first stop was the antiquey-basement-smelling Rhodes Furniture, where we found exactly one chair we liked, but it was more than I wanted to spend. We walked next door to the La-z-boy Gallery, and walked in the door to find, smiling up at us, three "Factory Special" chairs, all of which were well within the price range, and – according to the tags – could be covered with the fabric of your choice. So we sat and waited for a salesperson to happen by, or to see us and come over.

And waited and waited and waited.

After close to 10 minutes, Fred suggested we leave and go to the store where we bought the couch and loveseat and see if we could find anything there. We found one chair, and again we sat to wait for a salesperson. And there were salespeople aplenty, wandering by and ignoring us, standing around and chatting and ignoring us, and glancing at and ignoring us.

Fred suggested that we looked like we didn’t have any money. I agreed that it probably did look like we didn’t have any money, since the spud – did I mention that she was with us? – had taken it upon herself to wear shorts and a t-shirt for the rather cool day, and obviously we couldn’t afford to dress our child in warm clothes, so could also not afford the fine furnishings, and why should they waste their time?

Back to the La-z-boy Gallery we went, where we again sat down, waiting in vain as the salespeople clustered about the register, chatting and ignoring us. Finally, Fred went up and stood there, arms crossed, until one of them said "Can I help you, sir?" Fred smiled his asshole smile and said "I’d like to buy a chair if it’s not too much trouble."

I couldn’t see him from where I was, but he said they all froze as one, like deer caught in headlights. Finally, one woman came forward, all apologetic and ready to help. She came over and got the numbers off the tag and went back to check the price, and Fred asked various and sundry questions, and then we went back to look at fabric swatches and decide on the one we liked.

There was only one we liked, and the saleslady came back and said "Okay, let me check my chart and see if that affects the price."

Fred smiled his asshole smile and said "I bet it goes up."

Sure enough, it would have been an extra $110 to get the fabric we liked. Shocking, no?

"I can live with what it’s covered in if you can," I said to Fred. He stood and mentally weighed the satisfaction of storming out of there against having to listen to me whine about wanting a chair for the next several days, and decided on the lesser of two evils.

"We’ll take it," he said.

"Let me go see if we have any ready in the warehouse," said the saleslady.

Fred smiled his asshole smile and said "I bet they don’t."

The saleslady came back. "It seems that there are none in the warehouse, but you can take the one off the floor." Discussions ensued about how there had been strange asses sitting on that chair, and Fred wasn’t certain he wanted a chair strangers had been farting in in his house, and perhaps we should get a price break.

She didn’t go for that.

We decided – because of the evil cats and their propensity for barfing on the least desirable surfaces – that the chair needed to be Scotchguarded.

Fred smiled his asshole smile. "I bet you charge for shipping."

"Oh yes – that’s a $30 delivery charge," said the saleslady, who no doubt was growing tired of Fred’s asshole smile. "But you could fit it into the back of an SUV easily," she hastened to add, and also said that it could be picked up Sunday.

"I think I’ll pick it up Monday," Fred replied. "Between 3:30 and 4," so he could leave work and pick it up, and then come home.

So we left.

Oh! I forgot – when the lady was getting our information – name, address, all that – she asked for the phone number, and Fred gave her his work number, and then she politely said "May I have your home number?", and he said

with an asshole smile

"I’m sorry, you may not."

She handled it well, only pausing for a moment and jotting something down on her form – probably customer is asshole – and going on to fill out the rest of the form.

So Fred got in to work this morning to find a snotty, bitchy message from her, wondering if we still WANTED the chair, since we hadn’t BOTHERED to come pick it up yesterday. When he called back to give her hell, she claimed she’d been on pain medication due to some sort of surgery, and had been confused.

Likely story.

Anyway, long story short (too late!), Fred picked up the chair and brought it home with him this afternoon. We put it in a corner of the bedroom, and the cats are freaking out.

I can’t wait to snuggle up on that chair under a quilt with a good book and a bad kitty tonight! (By the way, the chair’s not nearly as close to the bed as it looks in that picture).

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But for now, I love it.

The mouse is one of those new-fangled ones without the ball inside to collect dust and other nastiness. As I said to Fred, "What will I do now that I don’t have to clean dust off my ball?" Oh, I slay me.

I also love, though have not yet laid hands upon it, our new scanner. No weird yellow and green stripes on the side of things I’ve scanned! It’s on it’s way from Alpharetta, Georgia, and will hopefully be here early next week. Kickass! I plan to do something along the lines of scan all the pictures I have on albums and put them on a cd, but that’s going to be some seriously time-consuming stuff. Maybe I’ll make it my New Year’s Resolution for next year.

So, how much did it suck to sit down all excited about the fact that Survivor was about to start and then find out it was a recap of everything that had happened up ’til now? SUCK. Man, I was pissed. What made it worse is that I had seen, not two hours earlier, a commercial for it that was nothing but A BIG FAT BLATANT LIE, about how Lex is on the hunt to find out who voted for him.

Lex is getting on my nerves.

At least Temptation Island was on, so I got my trash fix. Tony, of Genevieve and Tony, is about the most annoying man in the world to me right now, and I’m not sure why. I just canNOT stand him for some reason. My prediction thus far is that Catherine and Edmundo, and perhaps Thomas and Nikkole are the likeliest to break up at the end.

SOMEONE better break up, or I won’t be watching Temptation Island 3, that’s for sure.

Speaking of trash tv, on The Amazing Race, I can’t believe FUCKING Team Guido made it the other night. Those two have the most incredible damn luck, the bastards. And Drew and Kevin were pretty much my favorites – I didn’t like ’em at first, but they really grew on me. My favorite line of the night was when one of them – I don’t know which is which, to be honest – said "My testicle is rolling around the streets of Beijing!", followed closely by "Eat, you fat bastard!"

Team Guido, I hate you.

Did you see when they were in the market, and Drew and Kevin were in front of the Guidos, and one said "Slow them down!", so the other was walking as slowly as possible to do so, and the Guido (hell, I don’t know which is which for them, either) got a pissed-off and disgusted and "This is so childish!" look on his face? Conveniently, he forgot about shoving Emily’s Mom at the airport so they’d miss their plane a few weeks ago.

Assholes.

Okay, moving on.

You know what? "Mmmm-hmmm" is NEVER an appropriate response when you’re in the service industry and your customer says "Thank you." NEVER. "Mmmm-hmmm" means "Yeah, whatever, asshole." THE APPROPRIATE RESPONSE would be either "Thank YOU!", or "You’re welcome! Have a nice evening!" I worked in the service industry, and we would have gotten our asses kicked for saying "Mmmm-hmmm" to a customer.

Damn Dairy Queen teenage worker. "Mmmm-hmmm" my ass.

Which is where that ice cream is heading as I speak.

 

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Her name is Brady James. She’s – I’m not positive exactly, but 27, 28, something like that. She grew up in a small town in mid-Maine, not far from Bangor. She’s medium height, medium weight, has a head of frizzy medium-brown hair, and dark-blue eyes.

She was never a great student – in fact, while other students were studying for finals and doing whatever it is most high school students do, she was the head of an elite little group intent on mainlining as much beer as possible without requiring medical attention.

She wasted the better part of a decade, leaving her hometown the day after graduation and hitching her way from Maine to California and points in between, supporting herself by waitressing in the shittiest dives imaginable. When she found herself celebrating her twenty-fifth birthday by inhaling a huge amount of whiskey and fucking the lead singer of a Journey cover band, she sensibly decided she was getting too old for shit like that.

Back in Maine – Portland, to be exact – she did a 9-month secretarial course and got her certificate. For a couple of years she worked temp jobs before deciding she needed some permanence and a steady paycheck, and she ended up at Decker and Baker, a company that sells and buys farm equipment.

The job, you can imagine, is both stimulating and mind-spinningly glamorous.

Her boss – who actually went to high school with her, only he went to college instead of wasting part of his life going whereever the wind took him – hates her. Haaaaates her, and she’s not sure why. She thinks he’s an asshole, but she’s strangely drawn to him. And repulsed by the very thought. Greg – her boss – is so asexual that she’s sure he doesn’t have any sexual organs, that he’s a Ken doll brought to life.

She lives in a trailer on the outskirts of Portland, on an acre of land that is the only thing she has left of her parents. She has two cousins, Janey and Jimmy. Brady’s, Janey’s, and Jimmy’s fathers were brothers, and they died together on Christmas Eve. They were all three dressed as Santa, and a botched bank robbery got the cops after them. They were more than a little drunk and decided not to go down without a fight.

They went down, all right.

Several years ago, Jimmy’s mom kidnapped the lead singer of a fairly big rock band – I won’t mention names – and there was, as they say, quite a fuckarow. But I won’t go into that. Let’s just say that no one died, no one got hurt, and leave it at that.

So Brady lives her ordinary life in her trailer, and it’s like she’s waiting for something to happen, waiting for life to begin, only maybe it’s passing her by. For a while she dated a criminal type – a petty thief, a burglar, a convenience store robber – and then he did something she couldn’t live with, and she ended that. She’s got a best friend who works at a law firm, one of THOSE law firms, you know? The ones where you see the ads on tv, the sweaty lawyer with the slicked-back hair who tries his damnedest to sound reassuring but only manages to be vaguely terrifying. Her best friend – I don’t know his name – loves to tell her stories about the idiotic lawsuits people try to bring, and the idiotic lawyer who agrees to help them out for a fee – always for a fee.

Brady’s not real – she’s a character who’s formed herself over several years, and who has appeared in a few of the short stories I used to write. But as time goes by, details of her life come to me, and sometimes things happen in my own life that I think would be interesting to show up in hers. For instance, I think one of her bosses (NOT the one she’s drawn to and yet repulsed by, because I think one day she’ll end up with him) could be a big loud asshole of a man who spent two days in Texas and thinks that makes him a Texan.

Longtime readers will know that I mean Tex.

Tex, being a big loud asshole, could make Brady’s work life very difficult, and that could be fun to write.

I haven’t written fiction in a long time. That sentence actually originally read I haven’t written in a long time, but I’ve written 5 times a week most weeks for more than two years, and one or two of those entries aren’t bad, and so I guess I can consider it real writing, even if I’m not pulling in millions (or hundreds) of dollars for what I write. But I don’t write for money – I write because I like it.

About ten years ago I was driving down the road, and a scene came to mind, a scene that interested me, and so I thought about it for two days before I wrote it down. I thought it was going to be a short story, but it ended up being an ungodly length. It took me eight months to write, and when I was done writing and editing, I was sick to death of it.

I glanced at it recently, and it made me cringe. Too much high drama, but not the worst thing I’ve ever read (I mean, I HAVE read We Were the Mulvaneys, after all). Not publishable by any stretch of the imagination, but not bad for the effort I put into it.

I don’t know why I don’t write fiction any more. I keep fairly busy, so maybe I can claim lack of time. Fred keeps pushing me to write a book so he can retire (only half joking). I’ve been thinking more and more often about Brady and her life, and it’s possible that I may reach the point where I feel the need to start writing her story.

It’s only been 7 years since I first met her, after all.

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