Author: Robyn

How damn excited am I about Survivor tonight?! Pretty damn excited, that’s for sure. I SO hope that tonight is when they break up the two tribes into three, and I canNOT wait to see the looks on Silas and Lindsey’s faces when they find out.

I’ve not found anyone that I particularly like on that show, but I’ve found plenty of people to HATE!

Here we see that Fred is where he belongs.

So yes, we got a doghouse for the dog. I was at Petsmart (where I’m never going to shop again due to ungodly high prices), and saw a doghouse. $129 it was.

"That ridiculous!" Fred said. "The same thing at blahblahblah is only $90! Wait on that, and I’ll stop at Lowe’s on the way home." So he stopped at Lowe’s and got practically the same thing for $80.

And then today at Sam’s, I saw the exact same model for $65. Figures.

Robyn, you’re saying. Unless you’re saying Bitchypoo, that is. Robyn, why are there no pictures of the dog – whose name has been decreed Sadie, by the way – on your site tonight?

Because, dear reader, she’s such a hyper-spaz that every time I go out to take her picture, she wiggles and jiggles and jumps and pants and doesn’t hold still, so I can’t take her damn picture.

I’ve got plenty of pictures of her tail, though.

See something on the floor, sit on it.

The cats continue to be terrified of the big slobbering thing living outside. I keep telling Fred we should toss Fancypants out into the back yard and slam the door shut.

Close your email client RIGHT NOW, we’d never do such a thing. At least not to Fancypants. Tubby is another story.

Miz Poo enjoys sitting and watching the panting, drooling thing out back run back and forth and play with it’s toys and flop down on the patio and then run back and forth some more, but the one time I tried taking her out back, she lost her mind and went running down my back with her tail fluffed out.

Poor Sadie. She’d looooove to play with one of those fluffy little things…

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Thanks, y’all – I am absolutely overwhelmed with suggestions for dog names, and emails about the dog. I won’t respond to each of them, because that would take forever, just take this as a blanket "thank you".

Apparently my readers like suggesting names. As I said (typed) to Athena earlier, I can only imagine what would happen if I were pregnant and asked for name suggestions (I’m not – pregnant or asking, that is. Besides, we picked out the names of our future children before we ever even met in person. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ll mention it again – Molly Jayne, and Seth Forrest).

I really like the name Sally for the dog, but Fred is partial to Sadie and, well, she IS his dog, so I guess he gets final say in the matter, though he hasn’t decided for sure. At least, I don’t think he has.

I went to PetSmart this morning and got a couple of bowls – for water and food – a leash, and a couple of toys. $61. I’m a damn idiot for buying pet supplies at a pet store, when Target was RIGHT THERE. I mean, I’m a damn idiot in general, but that’s one specific description of my idiocy. Just so you know. I need to buy a container to keep her food in, but the ones at PetSmart were $36 – that was the least expensive one – and since I can get a covered trash can for less than $10, and that’s what we keep the cat’s food in and it works for us, I believe I’ll be buying the same thing for the dog food.

Which reminds me – Fred opened the bag of dog food last night and offered each of the cats a piece, and Tubby ate his and begged for more. We put the bag in the kitchen closet, and Tubby spent half the evening sniffing at the bottom of the door and trying to figure out how to get in there.

The dog is doing well. She spent last night outside on a comforter (shhhh, I’m still working on Fred about the outside part…) with one of my stuffed animals by her side. This morning she bounded back and forth across the yard, and we heard her bark for the first time. She has a deceptively deep bark for a little skinny thing. Luckily she doesn’t do it much.

I went out after I lifted weights this morning and sat in one of the chairs we have out there, and she settled right in against my legs and seemed happy. I left the back door open, and Spot stood and stared at her for a long time. She spotted (hee!) him and walked toward the door, and he arched his back and backed up in horror. She hasn’t really tried to get inside, and she obviously understands what "no" means.

You know what our adoption of this dog means, don’t you? It means that we’ve transformed from crazy cat people to "those weird people next door with ten thousand animals." Because it was bad enough having FIVE cats, but now we have FIVE cats and a dog. And next, we’ll of COURSE have to get a dog to keep this one company, dogs being social creatures and all, so we’ll have FIVE cats and TWO large-ish dogs, and then the spud will want a parakeet, and an iguana while she’s at it, and how about a couple of fish, and the next thing you know, the health department will be breaking down the door, where they’ll find me dead on the floor, having inhaled more cat hair, dog hair, parakeet feathers, fish goo, and iguana scales (?) than my body can process at one time.

Anyway.

So, we had to drop Fred’s Jeep off yesterday to be worked on, because it was doing all sorts of weird little things that needed taking care of, besides which it needed it’s 50,000 mile tune-up (or whatever the hell they do), and the nice car guy called Fred mid-morning to tell him the many, many things that were wrong with the Jeep – and there were MANY little things wrong with it – and how much it would cost.

$1200.

Gah. I just KNOW that it’s more than likely that all these little things, or at least some of them, were caused by that damn accident he was in a few months ago.

His Jeep wasn’t ready until this afternoon, so I went to pick him up at work, and I was sitting at a red light. Ahead of me was a middle-aged guy in a red convertible, and there was someone trying to get out of the parking lot we were sitting next to. So he waved her out, letting her go in front of him, and she crossed the lane to our left, to get to the left-most lane. Then he waved to the car behind her, to let THEM go as well since our light was still red. She, car #2, also needed to cross the lane to our left, to get to the lane on the other side of that one, and a car was pulling up slowly in that lane, and Mr. Convertible held up his hand to order them to stop. Which they did, since they were stopping to let her go anyway, but Mr. Convertible was FAR too pleased with his traffic-commanding self, and he smiled to himself and checked his three hairs in the rearview mirror.

I briefly considered making a citizen’s arrest. I could have charged him with impersonating a traffic cop. And then I would have left him, cuffed, on the side of the road as I took off in his convertible, which I would have needed to seize as evidence.

Just doing my job as a concerned citizen, ma’am. Nothing to see, move it along…

 

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So, yeah, we seem to have gotten ourselves a dog. It was a sneak attack – I went to pick up Fred at work, since his Jeep is in the shop, and he suggested that we "just go look" at the animal shelter, to which I agreed, with the idea firmly in mind that we’d be bringing no dogs home tonight.

You see how well that worked.

We went in and looked, and there were many 3 month black labs who had all come from the same place, where they were apparently being abused. There was an ultra-friendly guy who yipped and barked and jumped about like a mexican jumping bean. And then there was a dog they’d named "Prance":

She was very sweet and friendly, and took to me right away, jumping up to put her front paws on my chest to be petted. She’s not a large dog – I’d call her medium – and according to the guys at the shelter, she’s 7 months old and not likely to get any bigger.

Fred kept saying "Well? Well? What do you think?" Since our only point of contention in the dog discussion is that he thinks a dog would be fine living out back and I think that that’s cruel, I told him that if the guy answering questions agreed that it was fine to leave a dog outside all the time, I would agree as well.

Expecting, of course, that the guy would be all kinds of horrified at the thought of leaving a dog OUTSIDE.

Instead, when the question was posed to him, he looked at me as if I were perhaps mentally deficient.

"Well, yeah," he said. "She’s a DOG. As long as she has a doghouse and a pillow and plenty of attention, she’ll be fine."

Hmph.

She’s awfully sweet, though, and enjoyed running around the back yard and snacking on things the cats had left out there.

I’ve already had to put a moratorium on discussions of her eating any kind of poo, because Fred and the spud will just talk that sort of thing to death, especially at dinner.

According to the guys at the shelter – it was actually the Humane Society – she’s part shepherd, part lab, and may have some collie in her. When she gets to running (Fred was out throwing a ball around with her), she actually bounds, and it’s awfully cute.

Now she needs a name, which is where y’all come in. It’s got to be a name that starts with "s", since all the cats have names that start with s. Of course, if a non-s alternative is presented that is just perfect for her, we’d probably go with that – the "s" thing isn’t written in stone. So, send me your suggestions, would you?

 

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In lieu of, y’know, a REAL entry today, I’m going to toss up a bunch of pictures I took Saturday when we drove up into Tennessee to drive about and gawk at the Amish people, and call it good enough.

We passed this really cool field where there were hayrolls (is that what they’re called?) as far as the eye could see. This picture doesn’t really do it justice.

The Amish house where we stopped so Fred could get popcorn. A HUGE container for $2. Whattabahgain.

More Amish houses.

Some colorful foliage (for the most part, we seem to have missed the changing of the leaves)

We happened upon a convenience store with 10 or 15 cats and kittens in the parking lot. Apparently, this is where they live, because the owners of the store feed them and provide litter boxes. This orange kitten was attempting to nurse, and mama wasn’t being terribly accomodating.

There were boxes for the cats to sleep in, but this little guy is the only one who was actually sleeping.

These guys were pretty scared. The tabby in the back actually hissed at me (is there anything cuter than a hissing kitten? I think not), and the others let me pet them, but they didn’t like it much. Have I mentioned how much I adore orange cats?

This cutie was really friendly. I called to him, and he came running, and followed me around for the 10 minutes or so that we were there, begging to be petted. Damn, I wanted to load all the cats up in the car and bring them home with us.

Another really friendly one.

More scared little kitties, and the friendly kitten was checking them out. I’m fairly certain there were two different litters and two different mothers.

 
Man, all I wanted was to just pet his little head, but he was so scared I couldn’t get near him.

After we (I) played with the kitties, we drove around the Amish colony some more, and then went to David Crockett State Park, where we ate lunch, and then Fred and the spud went on the swings.

They went on the merry-go-round, too. For that matter, so did I.

The lake at the state park.

Shoal Creek, running alongside the park. I got this picture on the way out of the park.

On the way out of Alabama, we passed "The Fiero Factory", which is surrounded by old Fieros. I don’t know about y’all, but when I was 17, there was nothing more in this world I wanted than a Fiero; I just thought they were the coolest cars ever. Even my Dad’s insistence that they were gas-guzzlers couldn’t sway me. Now, I just think they’re funny-looking ’80s throwbacks.

 

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I was in the shower this morning minding my own business when the FUCKING detachable shower head took it upon itself to DETACH, and it came flying at me before I realized what was going on, and hit me smack between the eyes. Holy FUCK did it hurt, which if you were there (and if you were in the bathroom while I was taking a shower this morning, I have bigger problems than being attacked by the shower head) you might have realized from my screamed "WHAT THE FUCK! OUCH! GODDAMN IT!"

Is it just me, or do you get pissed off when you’re the victim of unexpected pain?

I swore for a few more minutes until I started thinking about how it must have looked, with me just standing there, lathering up my hair, when the shower head flooped down to smack me, and then I started laughing, dried off, and went to call Fred and make him laugh as well. I have a sore, slightly red and swollen, spot between my eyes. I guess I’m lucky it didn’t hit lower and break my nose or hit the top of my head and knock me out.

I was reading an old entry of Kathy’s, and the note from her kid made me think of the time not long before we moved to Alabama when the spud wrote in one of her notebooks, "Momma is dum. Daddy is dum. The cat is not dum." God, that makes me laugh almost as much as when she was mad at me for some reason after we moved to Alabama and she wrote "I hat you mommy" on a piece of paper and left it in the hall outside her doorway.

Fred and I have to been known to say "I hat you" to each other from time to time, just to giggle over it.

And Fred just reminded me of the time she made up a report card and gave herself an "A", and Fred an "A", and what did I get? An "F".

I think that means I’m doing something right.

I went back to Petsmart today to get a smaller collar for the pencil-neck geek of the house, and there was a woman walking around with the cutest damn puppy. I think he was a Jack Russell Terrier (but then, I tend to think that any small dog that’s brown and white is a Jack Russell, so no doubt I’m wrong – but then again, after looking at a picture of one, I think I may be right), and I stopped to pet him, and he jumped up on me, and GOD was he adorable. Fred’s been bugging me to get a dog lately, but I think he’s just being difficult, because he wants to get a dog, and then leave it outside all the time. What’s the point of GETTING a dog if you’re going to leave him outside, I ask? He always responds with "They’re DOGS. They’re SUPPOSED to stay outside. It’s not like they’ll freeze or anything!" Hmph.

Okay, since I haven’t done this in the last few weeks, how ’bout some Friday Five:

1. Do you eat breakfast? What did you have today? I do eat breakfast every day, which is a switch from how I used to eat. These days I usually have a protein shake after I lift weights or do cardio, and then have a spinach and onion omelet with a pan-fried potato a few hours later. But today was my free day, so I had a sausage mcmuffin and hash brown (and large diet coke!) from McDonald’s.

2. What beverages do you usually have in a typical day? 4 – 6 liters of water, a protein shake in the morning, a protein/ carb shake in the evening, and 2 (sometimes 3) 12-ounce cans of Diet Coke. As you can imagine, I make 45,000 trips to the bathroom every day.

3. White bread or wheat bread? Wheat, although I had to be dragged over to the wheat side kicking and screaming. For two years after I moved to Alabama, we bought white bread for me and wheat for Fred, but I finally gave in last year and started eating wheat, mostly for the fiber. I’ve gotten used to the taste, though.

4. What’s your favorite kind (potato/tortilla/corn) and flavor of chip? Plain Pringles, though I haven’t had chips in about a month, and was never really much of a chip person.

5. How do you plan to spend your weekend? I think we’re going to drive up to Lawrenceburg, Tennessee (about an hour away), drive around to gawk like fools at the Amish people there, then pick up sandwiches at Subway and go to Davey Crockett State Park for a picnic and to see if they have a suitable playground for Fred to play on. I’m married to a five year-old.

Y’all have a good weekend!

 

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God, what a dumbass I am. I forgot the truly most important item on the relationship list yesterday, and that is:

8. Friendship. Actually, putting up with each other isn’t the most important thing. Our friendship is. He’s my best friend, and if something interesting or funny or even slightly noteworthy happens, he’s the one I want to tell, immediately. I can tell him absolutely everything, and (I think) I have, and I know that he’ll continue to love me unconditionally, no matter what. In return, he’s told me all his dark, dirty secrets, and I only love him more.

In fact, I’m going to go back and add that to yesterday’s list right now…

Okay, y’all, help me out, here. We have this flight of stairs, see, and on this flight of stairs is carpet, and on this carpet is tons upon tons of cat hair, and vacuuming won’t get the damn stuff up completely, and it’s nasty and I hate it.

I don’t want to hate the carpet on my stairs.

In the old house, we had hardwooded stairs, but due to the "DAMN that’s expensive" factor, we won’t be hardwooding these stairs, and so I must come up with a decent way to get the damn cat hair up, or forever gnash my teeth every time I catch sight of the nasty stairs. I remember reading once, long ago, in a journal I can’t recall, that there’s such a thing as a carpet rake, which will loosen the cat hair and thus you can vacuum it up, but a google search brought me nothing.

Help? Suggestions, links, anything would be very much appreciated.

While I was looking for a new picture to put on the front page, I came across this one of the spud from (I think) ’95:

No, I’m not sure what she was trying to do, but it made me laugh out loud when I saw it.

I was reading the latest US Magazine the other night while half-heartedly watching TV, and then I saw something in the pages of said magazine that made me almost swallow my gum. So I scanned it, of course, because what fun is guffawing over how US apparently needs better proofreaders alone?

Who can tell me what three things are wrong with this? Anyone? Bueller? Well, look it over, and see if you’re right.

1. It’s Billy Bob Thornton, not Billie Bob Thorton (thanks to reader Fitchypoo, who pointed out that his last name was misspelled as well as his first!).
2. Billy Bob Thornton isn’t IN The Last Castle.
3. "Directed By Name Here". Name Here? Is he Indian? Anyway, The Last Castle was directed by Rod Lurie.
It took me, like, ten seconds to notice all of that. Perhaps I need to get a life, ya think?

Did y’all get a lot of trick or treaters last night? I thought that perhaps we’d only get a few, but I’d guess we got 50 or so. The spud was in charge of handing out the candy – blow pops and skittles – which she really enjoyed for some reason. In fact, she’s already asked if she can hand out the candy next year. I thought she might go out herself this year – I know I went out when I was 13; I think I was in a ’60s costume, with my sister and cousin – but she never mentioned a costume until the night before, and there was no way I was going to go out looking for a last-minute costume. She didn’t seem too disappointed, in any case, since we let her keep some of the left-over candy.

I won’t even be stealing any of her candy this year, since I’m a fan of neither skittles nor blow-pops (I was in charge of getting the candy this year, and didn’t want little snickers sitting around calling my name).

While I was out getting that candy Tuesday, I picked up the other stuff on the grocery list, and as I was looking for toothpicks, I wandered a large section of disposable foam cups. Did you know that they make foam cups in espresso size? Something just cracks me up at the thought of a bunch of yuppie types standing around sipping espresso out of foam cups.

Which reminds me, speaking of disposable stuff. You know the really cheap Gladware containers – the ones you buy to use like Tupperware, but are 1/10 the price, so if you lose them, it’s no big deal? Well, I got a 4-pack of those at least five months ago, and they’re holding up better than the damn Tupperware is. We put them in the dishwasher, use them all the time, and they show no sign of needing to be tossed. A surprising bargain, those things. You can even freeze stuff in them! Two thumbs up from the Bitchypoo.

We just got back from Moose Bond Farm, where we picked up our supply of chickens. We were lucky this time around, because although we’d only put in an order for 5, he had extras, and since we’re new customers, he let us have them. The only thing that sucks is that they won’t have any more chickens until the spring, and we’ll have to suffer with the store-bought ones, which aren’t nearly as good.

The farm is located in Hartselle, and to get to it, we have to drive through downtown Hartselle, which is just the sweetest little town I’ve ever seen in my life. Every time we drive through there, I want to buy one of the big old houses and renovate it. And then we drive out into farm country, and all I want to do is buy a little farmhouse on 300 acres and become a cat farmer or something.

A cat per acre sounds about right to me…

 

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Oh, let me think… Three years ago from this very moment, I was probably trying my best to convince Fred that we should just wait and get married "sometime next year." That’s right, it’s our third anniversary.

And they said it’d never last.

In honor of our anniversary, I’m going to respond to a question reader Lisa asked back at the end of September. She said: Robyn, it seems like you and Fred have such a wonderful relationship and marriage! I would love to hear some advice, through your journal, on how you maintain your great relationship — and what makes your marriage work. I’m getting married in May, after dating my fiance for over three years, and any advice from ANYONE at this point is helpful. My parents have a lousy marriage, so I’m not asking them!!

That’s an excellent question, Lisa, and at first all I could think was "Well, how the hell should I know what makes it work? It just does!" And then I started to think (ow…), and I came up with a couple of suggestions I think might be helpful.

1. Communication. We talk a LOT, probably spend more time talking than Fred had ever dreamed possible before he met me. We talk during the day several times, email back and forth while he’s at work, when he gets home we usually go upstairs, lay down, and talk about our days. As we sit at our computers, we chat about various things from time to time (and sometimes we sit in his chat room together). After dinner, we always go upstairs to lay down and talk for ten minutes or so, we make snide comments about whatever we’re watching on TV that night, and we lay down once again and talk for half an hour before bed every night. We are talkin’ fools.

2. Space. There are times when all you want is to be alone, y’know? We both pretty much know when to give each other space. Fred will, every now and again, wander off to take an hour-long bath and read. Most nights he goes upstairs to read for an hour before bedtime, leaving me to watch whatever TV show I like and he doesn’t. So, as much time as we spend talking, we also get time to ourselves.

3. Laughter. We make each other laugh like hell. I mean, it’s not a constant yuk-fest around here or anything, but we know the inside jokes, and Fred has been known to make me laugh so hard I’ve come close to inhaling food and dying. Just thinking about the phrase "Your FORK" makes me laugh. And I’ve been known to make him laugh unexpectedly as well, for instance the "teapot?" incident of last week. I don’t think I could ever be with someone who wasn’t more than willing to laugh at stupid things.

4. Interests. We have common interests. We enjoy the same kind of books (well, except that Fred’s on a nonfiction (snorrrrrre) kick), we’re both doing that weight-lifting thang, and we’re cat freaks. A former coworker used to come into work on Monday and talk about how he spent the weekend in the garage working on a car, or hunting with his pals, and his wife would be off doing her own thing. What fun is that? Why marry someone if you don’t want to spend time with them laughing at the cats, making the cats run around after the laser, complaining about people you don’t like, and discussing what you’re going to read next?

5. Admiration. We both adore admiring and basking in the wonder that is Fred.

6. Sex. Well, duh. Of course sex is important – there was sex before we started losing weight, a LOT of sex, and there’s even more sex now. Sex, sex, sex. Daytime sex, nighttime sex, mid-afternoon sex, sex all the livelong day. We’re lucky in that our sex drives match up pretty well. That could change if we ever have a kid, of course, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

7. Most importantly, we put up with each other. I put up with his annoying (FARTING) habits, he puts up with (BITCHING) mine. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

8. Friendship. Actually, putting up with each other isn’t the most important thing. Our friendship is. He’s my best friend, and if something interesting or funny or even slightly noteworthy happens, he’s the one I want to tell, immediately. I can tell him absolutely everything, and (I think) I have, and I know that he’ll continue to love me unconditionally, no matter what. In return, he’s told me all his dark, dirty secrets, and I only love him more.

Happy anniversary, babe. I love you!

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God, I was about to go on break, and here she came. I could set my damn watch by her – every Tuesday morning like clockwork between 11:30 and 11:45, she comes walking through the door with that air of cluelessness and in the midst of an obvious bad-hair day. I predict she has to go back to get something she forgot at least twice. No, let’s make it interesting – at least three times. Her little post-it list is covered pretty heavily with scrawlings, so I’d say either they ran out of a bunch of stuff between Saturday and today, or they only made a half-assed list for Saturday’s run, when her husband comes.

Like always, she eyeballs the bakery, and the single slices of cake, takes a big, deep breath of the sugar-laden air, then practically has to force herself to head for the produce section.

These people eat more salad than anyone I’ve ever seen, swear to god. What’s worse is she always digs back to the back of the bags of salad so she’ll get the bags that have the later expiration date. I ask, what the hell’s the point of that? Her husband will be back in here on Saturday, buying several more bags. Produce Joe has tried sticking the about-to-expire bags of salad way in the back first thing Tuesday mornings, but she always looks at the expiration dates, I guess, ’cause it hasn’t worked yet.

STOP LOOKING AT THE EXPIRATION DATES, LADY. JUST TAKE WHAT YOU NEED AND KEEP IT MOVING ALONG.

Damn, no fruit for her today – that’s a first. She stops to eyeball the plants, checks the prices, thinks about it, and buys an elephant ear plant in an overpriced ceramic pumpkin planter. If she waited two days, it’d be marked down to half-price. Not that she cares, I guess. Damn yuppies with their damn big-ass SUVs.

Shit, she looked at me; I better pretend I’m dusting the shelf.

Down she goes, Aisle 1. She grabs a couple of cans and tosses them in the cart, then heads down Aisle 2, and 3.

Oh, wait, she’s gone back to Aisle 1. I don’t know what she’s looking for, but she’s not finding it, even though she stared down every damn can in the aisle. Is she going to ask me? Nope, big surprise. She never asks anyone where anything is. Maybe we just don’t carry what she wants, but I find that hard to believe. We’re the best damn grocery store in the area, if I may say so myself.

Back to Aisle 3, quick walks down Aisles 4 and 5, and there she goes! She’s going back to the front of the store to load up on Diet Coke. 2 12-packs for $5, ya just can’t beat that. She loads 4 12-packs into her cart and heads to the shampoo aisle.

HOW LONG CAN IT TAKE TO PICK OUT A BOTTLE OF SHAMPOO, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD?

She picks up three different bottles of shampoo and puts them back before deciding on the Suave Strawberry. Smells good, and it’s only 79 cents, can’t beat that, either.

She goes by the seafood department, and just like every week, she slows down to stare at the sushi, like she can’t decide whether to buy some or not. Then, with a glance at the sushi chefs, she heads for the frozen-foods section.

Man, I guess I’m going to lose that bet. She’s only gone back twice so far…

Boca burgers and waffles go into her cart, and she stops to stare longingly at the Sara Lee cakes, but she doesn’t even take out a box and check the nutritional information this week. She doesn’t even glance at the ice cream, either – what’s up with that?

She heads for the checkout line – lucky for her, there aren’t any lines – and checks out her list one last time.

Yes! She heads back to Aisle 1 and grabs four cans of mushrooms!

I win again.

And off she goes, back to wherever she lives, to do whatever it is she does, until next Tuesday between 11:30 and 11:45.

Who tells stories about you?

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Friday night, Fred and the spud were watching some Jean-Claude Van Doofus movie, and apparently (I’m not completely clear on this point, because I was sitting in front of the computer, surprise surprise!) some model-looking chickypoo who was supposed to be a prostitute came on the screen, and Fred jeered and guffawed at the thought that such a clean, pretty thing would actually be a hooker, and so of course what do you suppose the spud asked?

"Well, what DO hookers look like?"

So Fred went to the St. Paul, Minnesota’s Prostitution page and printed out their Wanted! list so that the spud might see what real prostitutes really look like. You know, when you think about educating your children, that’s just not the sort of thing that immediately comes to mind.

(For the record, her verdict was that the real-life prostitutes were "creepy".)

I get to take Fancypants to the vet today since, we decided, if he’s going to be out roaming the damn neighborhood, he needs to be current on his shots. (Hee! I almost typed "shits" instead of "shots". Trust me, if the pile NEXT to the litter box this morning can be any indication, he’s QUITE current on his shits) I also bought him a collar and tag at PetSmart on Friday, but when the time came to put it on him, we found that it was way too big for him. Fancypants, being a rather skinny cat, has a corresponding skinny neck, and though we tried putting the collar on him on the last hole, it was still way too big for him. My fancy cat, the pencil-neck geek… Anyway, I guess it’s back to PetSmart for me, which is fine with me, ’cause I can get another bag of their ultra-potent organic catnip. I bought a bag Friday, and we emptied about half the bag into an old sock, and the cats have been going nuts over it ever since, taking turns wildly licking the sock and then falling into drug-induced dazes whereupon they use the sock as a pillow. Very fond of the sock, they are. When I visit PetSmart again, I’ll buy another bag of the stuff, put it in a tupperware container, and put their 98,249 toy mice in with the catnip, and let them marinate for a few weeks.

Ah, drug fun in the Anderson household.

How’s that time change treating you? I love the fact that it’s light earlier in the morning, but hate that it’s dark earlier in the evening. I mean, full-on dark at 5:00 just isn’t something I look forward to. Regardless of the temperature outside, the early darkness makes it seem wintry and cold. If it were light outside from, say, 5:30 am to 7 pm year-round, that’d be aces with me. And when I’m queen of the world, I’ll make it so. I don’t know HOW – maybe make the hours shorter, or less hours in the day? – but it’ll happen.

Never doubt Queen Bitchypoo.

 

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So, I don’t know that I’ve mentioned it before, but you know that big, expensive fence we had put around the backyard SPECIFICALLY so that the cats could go outside every day, and we wouldn’t have to worry about them running away? Well, everything was just fine until a few weeks ago when a neighborhood cat happened to hop over the fence and run across the yard to the back section of fence, which he also hopped over and took off for parts unknown. Seeing the cat hop over the fence like that apparently took the blinders from Fancypants’ eyes and it occurred to him that perhaps HE TOO could do something really awesome like hop the fence, and then the world would be his fancy little oyster. So he started hopping up on top of the fence, and when he’d hear the door shut, or see one of us come outside, he’d hop down like the BAD BAD BAD kitty he was, and he’d swish around and do his girly, high-pitched meow and we’d all get over it.

Then he progressed from sitting atop the fence to jumping over into the neighbors’ backyard, but again – if he heard us calling or heard the door shut, he’d come running, because I believe in the very back of his tiny, fancy mind he knows how good he’s got it here. And then it started taking longer for him to mosey his ass home. Sometimes it would be a good half hour or so before we could see his face at the window, or hear him meowing. But he always showed up.

It occurred to us to just stop opening the door in the morning, to make all the cats stay inside but first off, the entire REASON we got the damn fence is so the cats could go outside, and secondly, ALL the cats like going out to bask in the sunshine and pee in the grass, and should the others be punished because of one fancy little bastard? I think not.

Last night, Fred went out at dusk to wrangle all the cats inside. There was no one out there but Miz Poo, whom he picked up and carried inside. It was an hour or so before we realized that Fancypants wasn’t inside – you know, with five cats, you tend not to notice at first if one isn’t around – and Fred said "You know, I don’t remember seeing him when I got home this afternoon, either." I thought about it and realized that I hadn’t seen him since I shut the door that morning around 10. And I was home all day except for about a 20 minute period, so if he’d been wanting inside, I would have seen or heard him.

We started watching Survivor, and took turns going outside and calling for him during commercials. By the end of Survivor, we were starting to get concerned. We went out and drove along the road on the other side of the back part of our fence (we can’t get to the other side of the fence without going around the neighborhood, because there’s a fence around the entire perimeter of the subdivision). We were happy to see no dead black cats by the side of the road, and so we came home again to call for him. Fred even got out the big guns – the treat container – and shook it loudly, but still no Fancypants.

We discussed the various and sundry things that could be keeping him from home, and then decided to not worry about it, sure that he’d eventually make his way back home.

The problem, at least in my mind, is that he’s a fairly aggressive cat, and when there’s a cat fight in the house, he’s involved 99.873% of the time. If he was out prowling the neighborhood and ran into another cat, chances were good that he’d attack, and since he’s a fairly skinny cat and has no front claws, that could be a problem. I was also worried that he’d been hit by a car and taken to a vet, and since he wasn’t wearing a collar (shaddup) they wouldn’t know who to call. And then, of course, there was always the possibility that someone had called Animal Control on him.

On the other hand, I suggested, perhaps someone saw him, thought he was a pretty cat (instead of the shitting-outside-the-litter-box bastard he really is) and taken him inside their house to love and adore him.

Anyway, Fred went upstairs to harass the spud and read at 8:00, and I stayed downstairs surfing the web, and getting up every twenty minutes or so to see if the wayward son had returned. He hadn’t by 9:00, and so I went upstairs to lay down and talk with Fred until he went off to bed NO LATER THAN 9:42, and then I came back downstairs to watch the episodes of Friends and ER I’d taped. (Side note on ER: Not sure if I much care for Susan Lewis this time ’round, but it’s too early to be sure. And did you see the previews for next week? Are Lewis and Carter going to get together? I just think of her as being way too old for him, though I don’t suppose she really is).

And then, let me quote from my email to Moira, which I sent off before I went to bed around 11:30:

Well, the little bastard is home again. I was on the couch watching Friends, and I glanced over at the door, and Miz Poo was staring out the window, and there on the other side was Mr. Fancypants, untouched and unharmed. I opened the door and said “NICE TO SEE YOU, Fancypants!”, and he swished in, his big fancy tail a-fluttering.

I think I’m going to get his ass a collar with a nametag on it just in case this happens again. I’d hate it if something happened to him and no one knew he has a home.

And so I did. I stopped at the brand-spanking-new Petco (which they built near the brand-spanking-new Target) and got him a collar and tag, along with a nice bag of organic catnip for all the kitties. Tonight, after cake and ice cream and presents, perhaps we’ll gather all the kitties around, sprinkle catnip on the floor, and laugh our asses off.

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