Author: Robyn

know I made him show me so that I could get pictures with which to entertain my readers. We located Jesus moving slowly down the road across the street from a tiny mall consisting of a travel agency, candle shop, and chiropractor’s office. At the earliest opportunity, we did a u-turn and parked in the parking lot of the credit union Jesus was slowly approaching. That cross must have been heavy, because Jesus was not doing any power walking, believe you me. As he approached, I snapped a closeup. Since I wasn’t struck down by lightning or anything, I took a chance and snapped another. Um, what’s up with the wheel on the end of your cross, Jesus? They didn’t let you get away with that the first time around, did they? And the baseball cap keeping wind, sun and rain out of your face, what’s up with that? And the shorts, t-shirt, hiking boots and backpack? Were the Romans okay with that fashion statement? Are you sure you’re Jesus? At least he’s a happy Jesus instead of the Suffering Jesus you usually see when he’s portrayed carrying the cross, as you can see by the grin on his face. In fact, for the several minutes we watched him (being good little heathens) he grinned continually. Of course, first time around he didn’t get wheels on the end of his cross, so perhaps he’s not suffering as much this go-round. We didn’t beep at him, though, unlike other Madison-ians, who are surely going straight to hell. And here’s Jesus hauling his cross across the intersection, still grinning like a happy fool. I guess he kept on toward Golgotha, but I had to get my butt home and check out my pictures. ]]>

Miz Poo wandered in and vomited on the rug. I cleaned it up, but within about ten minutes, she did it three more times. I was a little concerned, thinking that she was dealing with a particularly troublesome hairball – though I don’t think I’ve ever once seen her hock up a hairball – and kept exercising. When I was done and went out to the computer room to suit up for my outside walk, I saw that she’d vomited twice more. I got my shoes and outside clothes on (trust me, the world’s not ready for my inside exercise clothes) and decided to run upstairs to check on her, hoping she felt a little better. She was laying by the couch, Tubby and Spanky laying on either side of her, watching her with interest, and she was panting very roughly and loudly. After a quick phone consultation with Fred, I called the Vet’s office and they told me to bring her right in. In the car, she made her usual unearthly sounds, which gave me hope that whatever was ailing her hadn’t hurt her too badly. The vet arrived a few minutes after we got there, looked her over thoroughly (and in homage to her father, she shot a hard little turd at him when he lifted her tail) and declared that she was having an allergic reaction to something. Since she’d been outside earlier, we determined that she probably got ahold of a bee or wasp, which made her sick. He shot her up with benadryl, cortisone, and an anti-emetic, then kept her for a few hours for observation. I picked her up sometime after eleven, and she’s okay, if a tad needy and whiny. For the first few hours, she wouldn’t let me out of her sight for one second, but as of this moment she’s upstairs supervising the spud’s dishwashing methods. I really do love all my kitties, but it’s no secret that she’s my favorite. I think I’ll need to be hospitalized when it’s her turn to go. And since we’re talking about feces (see the shooting turd a few paragraphs up), Fred and I decided that last week must have been Feces Week on the reality shows. First of all, one of the girls on Boot Camp spent a few minutes talking about how the DIs gave them 45 seconds to go to the bathroom, but she didn’t care if she got in trouble, ’cause at least her butt would be clean. Then, on Eco-Challenge, one of the guys (I don’t recall which) discussed how his bowel movements were the best they’d ever been. Lastly, on Survivor, it was a total shit-o-rama, between the shots of everyone going up over the hill to use the latrine, and Nick’s comment that if he didn’t clean his butt, the whole tent would "smell like ass" that night. Speaking of Eco-Challenge, who the hell won, anyone know? Like the dumbass I am, I didn’t realize that the last night was two hours long, and so I only taped the first hours. Damnit. And I was really getting into it, too! So if you caught the end of it, let me know who won, wouldya, along with whether or not the team that was trying to make it into the top 10 (2 women, 2 men, but damned if I can remember the team name) did it or not. Thanks. ]]>

Fancypants with muddy feet decides to jump up on the wall at the top of the stairs and leaves big red muddy footprints on the wall, it stops being so beautifully glowingly clean and white. And white walls in high traffic areas, where everyone runs their hands along the walls as they go down the stairs? Not so white and clean. Grimy, in fact. And those painted white cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms? Peeling, of course, because they’re no longer under warranty. It took me fifteen minutes to scrape the grease and dust, which had bonded together like an ugly superglue, off the top of the cabinets over the stove. And the DOORS, god help me people, the doors attract dirt like, well, like something that attracts something else in a big way. The big window over the front door? It’s still dirty, ’cause I can’t reach it to clean it, not to mention the fact that it needs a shade or curtain, because I’m being kept from wandering around the house nekkid by the knowledge that the neighbors could see me, and none of us want that. On the upside, I did get rid of an assload of stuff (and with MY ass, that’s a lot of stuff! Oh, I slay me…). From the master bedroom closet alone, I got rid of SIX garbage bags full of clothes. There was part of a sweater box in there from when Miz Poo was a kitten, and it was our bright idea to cut a little kitten hole in the side of the sweater box and put it over her food so that Tubby‘s fat ass couldn’t get in there to eat all her food when my back was turned. There was a bag of kitten chow, from the same period of time. There was a small calendar I’d put up on the shelf that I’d intended to put in the spud’s christmas stocking and forgot about. From Christmas 1999. In one of my dresser drawers, I found a receipt from Christmas 1998. So what I’m saying is that it had been a while since I’d last done any serious cleaning. I ended up with three loads of stuff to take to the dumpster that benefits a battered women and children’s shelter. I ended up with a pile of stuff to give away to you, my beloved readers. I still need to sort through that pile and take pictures, though, so it’ll be a few days before that entry gets put up. As I told Fred more than once, I’m done with my spring cleaning for another three years. I know I owe a lot of emails to y’all. I plan (hope) to get to them later today and finish up tomorrow. A girl can always dream, anyway… ]]>

Okay, I give up. It’s never NEVER going to get warm, the warm temperatures we had this time last year are but a faint memory, and it’s going to be 38 degrees and drizzling for the REST OF MY FUCKING LIFE.

That’s just FINE, I can deal with it.

But y’know what sucks? Having lost 102 pounds, I’ve also lost that layer of insulating fat that kept me warm last winter. I wander around constantly freezing my ass off, and even though the thermostat upstairs reads 76 degrees, I’m still bundled up in a pair of sweatpants, a sweatshirt over a t-shirt, and my big fluffy yellow slippers, and half the time I need a heavy quilt over me while I’m on the couch reading or watching TV. Even getting up off my ass and doing something like vacuuming or something similarly strenuous only warms me up for about 5 minutes.

When I’m so cold I just can’t stand it, I go downstairs into the little bathroom near the washer and dryer, which is invariably 10 degrees warmer than the rest of the house, and soak up the heat. The only times I’m not cold are during the night, when we turn the heat down to 69 degrees, but I have a heavy comforter and a lotta love to keep me warm, when I’m in the shower, and (I’m sorry) directly after sex. Even in the mornings while I’m out walking my ass off (literally, I hope), I’m a tad chilled from the freakin’ wind and drizzling rain.

I have to wonder, what the hell do all you skinny people do? Why aren’t you all bundled up in heavy fur jackets in the middle of the summer? What the fuck am I going to do when I drop the last 110 pounds?

For now, I’m going to buy my ass an electric blanket and put it on the bed (the blanket, not my ass), so when I just can’t stand the cold any longer, I’ll turn that baby up on high and slide between the sheets to get all toasty warm. At least, I will if I can find a decently priced electric blanket online. The one kind of electric blanket Wal-mart carries is out of stock in all sizes, Sears apparently doesn’t carry electric blankets, JC Penney said Duh? What’s an electric blanket? I don’t understand. Duh. when I did a search on their site, and Target threw everything and the kitchen sink at me. Maybe I’ll check ebay.

Okay, enough about that. Because next week is the first week of April, I have dubbed it Spring Cleaning Week here in BitchyLand, and intend to go through the house room by room and scrub it to within an inch of it’s life (if rooms had lives), and get rid of all the stuff that’s laying around that we don’t use/ don’t need anymore. The bad side to this is that I won’t be updating next week. The good side is that when I’m done with spring cleaning, I’ll have all kinds of stuff to give away! One Bitchypoo’s trash is another’s treasure, I always say.

I will, of course, be checking my email, and I’ll miss you every second of every day, really I will…

Have a good weekend, and don’t be the butt of any jokes on Sunday, April Fool’s Day. Oh, and don’t forget to turn your clocks ahead an hour before you go to bed Saturday night.

Don’t cry, Mommy will be back soon…

—–]]>

So, Gwyneth Paltrow is set to star in a movie called Shallow Hal, co-starring Jack Black. It’s a movie about a guy (Hal, I presume), who as a child made a deathbed promise to his father to only date beautiful women. Dear Gwyneth plays a 300 or 400 pound woman, whose inner beauty he falls in love with.

Well, duh. Of COURSE he falls in love with her inner beauty, because EVERYONE knows that fat women don’t have any of that OUTER beauty, for crying out loud.

When I first heard that Gwyneth would be donning a fat suit, I was a tad annoyed, but understood it. I hadn’t heard anything about the movie, but assumed it would be an INSPIRATIONAL STORY ABOUT A FAT WOMAN WHO LOST TEN TONS OF WEIGHT AND FOUND HERSELF AND THE LOVE OF HER LIFE or something of it’s ilk. I mean, it’s a lot easier to slap a fat suit on the stick-like Gwyneth, then rip it off after to show a skinny Gwyneth than to find a talented fat actress, shoot the fat scenes, and then take a year or two off while she lost the weight, right? I mean, Tom Hanks has major box office power, so the gimmick of taking a year off for him to lose weight isn’t something that would backfire. At least this way you know what the skinny Gwyneth looks like, because that’s how she really looks all along. Right?

But that’s not what they’re doing at all. No, this movie will actually be about Jack Black – who’s no skinny minnie himself, and usually looks like he could use a hot shower – only dating thin, gorgeous women. This movie is about how he has himself hypnotized so that he can only see the inner beauty of others, and this movie is about how lucky Gwyneth is because once he sees her inner Gwyneth, Jack Black falls in love with her.

And what movie will be, really, while it may or may not try to masquerade as AN INSPIRING MOVIE ABOUT ONE MAN LOOKED PAST ONE WOMAN’S FACADE AND FELL IN LOVE WITH HER INNER BEAUTY, is a movie about how fucking funny fat people are. Gwyneth will waddle across the screen. Gwyneth will probably break a chair. Gwyneth will eat a lot of food, and she’ll eat it in front of other people, and she’ll eat constantly.

Hey! Wouldn’t it be REALLY FUNNY if Gwyneth and Jack were to have sex and she, like, SQUISHED him? Wouldn’t it be a gas if Gwyneth’s thighs rubbed together and started a little fire? Oh! Oh! Oh my god, and it would be SO HILARIOUS if she and Jack were on the bed and IT BROKE. God yes, better make sure that’s in the script!

And jeez, I hope Gwyneth’s got her dress picked out for next year’s Oscars, ’cause I’m sure this one will be a winner.

 

—–]]>

I’ve been waking earlier and earlier the last few weeks, because it’s getting light earlier, and I sleep about three feet from a window, and the brightness wakes me up. (For some reason, I’m recalling Christmas at Fred’s mom’s house, when Fred’s nephew said "The days have been gettin’ short or somethin’. I don’t know why…" in all seriousness, and it was all I could do not to laugh in his face)

Anyway, I woke around 5:30 this morning, and dozed on and off with the help of a cuddlesome Miz Poo until Fred left for work a little after 6:00. I decided to get up and get my exercising for the day done and over with, so went into the bathroom to pop in my contacts. As usual, I rinsed the lens for my right eye with saline solution, and popped it in.

It felt like there was battery acid in my eye.

"OWWWW!" I howled and reeled blindly around the bathroom, trying to steady my hand long enough to get the lens off my eyeball. I finally managed to get it off and stood there, blinking and swearing. Loudly. Loudly swearing, that is, since I’ve not mastered the art of blinking loudly.

I looked at my right eye up close and personal in my handheld mirror and saw that it was bright red. I washed my hands again, this time rinsing them extra well, and flushed the contact with saline, peering closely to make sure there were no cat hairs on it’s surface. There were none, and so I tried the contact again.

Pain.

"What the FUCK?!" I yelled, reeling blindly again. "What the fucking FUCK? Fuckin’ A, Jesus Christ, WHAT THE FUCK?!" Skilled with the words, I am.

"This saline solution has GONE BAD!" I informed myself, picked up the bottle of saline, and tossed it in the trash. I got out a fresh bottle of saline, flushed the contact, and tried it again.

"FUUUUUUUUUCK!" I bellowed. "FUCKETY FUCK!" I literally ran around in a tight circle, clutching my eyeball and swearing like a pissed-off, drunk sailor.

I decided to give up on the right contact for the moment and took the left out of the case. Flushed it with saline and popped it in my left eye.

Pain.

I stomped my feet and took the contact out, feeling my blood pressure rise. Tossing the two contacts in the toilet, I got my last pair of contacts out from under the sink and opened the left one. Flushed it with saline. Put it in my left eye.

"Owowowowowow," I whined, hand over my eye, and then stomped my foot in frustration.

So I gave up on the contacts, put them in fresh cleaning solution, put my glasses on, resisted the urge to go back to bed, and went into the kitchen to begin filling the 5 liters of water that would get me through the day (I pee roughly 65,936 times a day). As I stood there, I decided what I’d make for dinner tonight (baked chicken) and tried to remember what we’d had last night.

Oh yeah. Chili. With jalapenos. Jalapenos I’d chopped myself. Jalapenos which contain capsaicin, which – I think – is the main ingredient in pepper spray. Capsaicin, which – according to Karawynn – you can cut by using a salt and water paste on your hands when the choppin’ is done. Which I did. Which didn’t work.

Which I guess explains it.

Damn that Karawynn and her delicious chili recipe. It’s all her fault!

Ow.

 

—–]]>

Damn, is it only Tuesday? It feels like this week has been 15 days long already, and it’s still fairly new. The last week before Weigh Day always drags, and every day is harder and harder to stay off the scale. I’m remaining strong, though, and haven’t stepped on it yet.

The hamsters are gone, taken back to the store from whence they came, lickety-split. The spud has been having an awful time dealing with all the noise they make during the night (being nocturnal creatures and all), and had taken to putting them in the bathroom before she went to bed. Only, she then started putting them in the bathroom hours before bedtime, because all their running on the wheel and fighting while chattering in a pissed-off manner at each other was really bothering her. Fred pointed out that living in a cage in the bathtub in the dark was no kind of fun for a hamster, and that she needed to keep them in her room until bedtime. She did so for a few nights and then asked if we could take the hamsters back to the store. Fred and I discussed it, Fred called the pet store to talk to them about it, and then we packed ’em up and took ’em back. The entire way there, the mother hamster ranranran on her wheel, and the babies stood in various spots in the cage and looked around in confusion.

Once at the pet store, Fred took the cage in and spoke to the manager, who was impressed that so many of the babies had survived – according to him, a rate of 50% or higher is just incredible, and our rate was 100% – and he was also impressed at how docile the hamsters were when he started picking them up and checking them out, especially the mother. Mothers tend to be a lot less docile than this one.

And then, guess what?

The mother is fucking PREGNANT again. When Fred told me, I did a godthat’snasty shiver, but – again, according to the store manager – they can get pregnant again the very day they give birth. I don’t know whether I believe that or not, but I do feel like we dodged a bullet. Another few weeks, and we would have had a nasty surprise.

The spud slept like a baby (though she told me this morning that a few times she thought she heard the sound of the hamsters running on the wheel. Perhaps we’re haunted?), and there are no longer shavings littering the floor between her bedroom and the bathroom – they stuck to her feet and then got dragged out into the hallway, and sometimes made it across the living room. But I miss those damn hamsters, ’cause they were a riot to watch.

While we were on the way to the movie store this afternoon, she turned to me and said "For my birthday" which is in October, by the way, "Can I get another kind of pet?"

Um. NO.

—–]]>

Since the spud has spring break this week, and I don’t have to wait for her to get on the bus before I go outside to walk, I got up a few minutes after 6 this morning and did all my exercising, and was done well before 9, although to my disappointment none of the doggies I usually stop to pet were out that early. Then I spent three, yes THREE hours responding to the emails I’ve been letting pile up for the last several days, and now I’m all caught up on emails. If you’ve sent one and I didn’t respond to it today, you may want to write to me again, ’cause I either didn’t get it or accidentally deleted it.

Did everyone watch the Oscars last night? I was under the mistaken impression that they started at 7 Central Time, not realizing that it was necessary to sit through half an hour of red carpet action before they started, which I thought was rather odd. As you can probably tell, I’m not too terribly into the Oscars – in fact, I usually can’t remember from one year to the next who’s won and who hasn’t. We watched until 9, when we had to go to bed or Fred would melt or something, so I taped the rest. I don’t know why I bothered taping it; god knows I probably won’t watch it. I watched the Barbara Walters special beforehand, too, because I like Ben Stiller, Faith Hill, and John Travolta and Kelly Preston.

I hate to admit it, but John Travolta and Kelly Preston make a pretty cute couple. While we were watching it, Fred wondered if Kelly is ever wandering around the house, bored, and makes John Travolta sing something from Grease. I know I would.

Was it just me, or did Faith Hill come across as a total ditz in her interview? Maybe she was just nervous, but I dunno. I like most everything she sings, and I would probably have been happier without seeing that interview.

I also spent a good part of the morning, while I was returning myriad emails, downloading stuff from Napster and rebuilding my collection. I was thrilled to discover Cartman singing Sailing since I hadn’t heard it before, and Faith No More singing Easy.

Napster rocks. The only thing that drives me nuts is when someone gives a song the wrong title and other people download it, and then you do a search and there are 45,000 copies of the song with the wrong fucking title. For instance, the title of the song is Loving This Way, but ten tons of dumbasses had it as I’m Tired of Loving This Way. That sort of thing really drives me nuts.

It’s just the little things that get to me, y’know?

 

—–]]>