Author: Robyn

Himself needed more salad, and I figured if I got a big-ass bag of salad (everything at Sam’s comes in Big-Ass size, you know), he’d be set for a while and I wouldn’t have to buy so much stuff at Publix on my way home. I found a bag of the Spring Mix we both like so much, and it appeared, to my eye anyway, to be about twice the size of the bags we get at Publix every week, and it cost $3.49 for the whole big-ass bag. One little bag at Publix is $2.99, so obviously the Sam’s salad was quite a bargain. It was a good-looking salad, too, appearing to be very fresh, and I didn’t see any of the gross limp stuff you get when bags of prepared salad have sat around for too long. And then the next morning, I was informed by Fred that there wasn’t TWICE as much in the Sam’s salad as in the Publix salad, but rather there was more than THREE times as much salad. For only 50 cents more than the little bag of Publix salad! I believe we’ll be buying our salad at Sam’s from now on. The only thing that really ticks me off about Sam’s is that EVERY time I go there, I make sure to check for cinnamon Altoids because I go through two tins a week (and if you’d like an empty Altoids tin, just let me know!) and they have every single kind of Altoid EXCEPT for the cinnamon flavor, which happens to be the only flavor I care for (for which I care, to be grammatically correct). It’s a conspiracy to keep me from cinnamon-y fresh breath, it really is. Damn that Sam’s. Good salad but no cinnamon Altoids. Where are their priorities, I ask you? I know I have some technically savvy readers out there (pardon me while I kiss reader ass), and I’m sure someone can help me with this. Remember the .mpg I made back in December of Bobby from "The Practice", yelling "You drove him CRRRAZY!"? Sure you do, it’s this one. Well, what I would DEARLY love is to have a .wav of Bobby yelling just the "CRRRAZY!" part, because I’d LOVE to hear that every time I got mail. It would just rock my world, it really would. The only thing is, I have no idea how to convert part of an .mpg to a .wav, which is where y’all come in. If someone out there could help me out, I’d be eternally grateful and hey – I’ll even link to you, if you’d like! Actually, I wouldn’t mind also having a .wav of him yelling the whole "You drove him CRRRAZY!" Hop to it, now! Did y’all watch the Grammys the other night? I didn’t, except for the few times when Fred flipped channels during commercials. Am I interested in the Grammys? HELL no. Am I interested in seeing Eminem perform with Elton John? Not in THIS lifetime. I understand why people are up in arms about Eminem and his doofy lyrics, I really do, but that kid just bores the ever-lovin’ shit out of me. Yeah I know little boy, you’ve had such a rough little white boy’s life, such a sad thing it is. Fuckin’ yawnsville. Hey, remember when Axl Rose of Guns ‘n Roses had those songs with anti-gay lyrics? And remember when Elton John performed on the Freddy Mercury Tribute Concert with Axl and they sang "Bohemian Rhapsody"? Remember that, the whole irony of anti-gay Axl and ultra-gay Elton performing together, oh couldn’t you have just cut the irony with a knife? Hey, I wonder what Axl’s up to, anyone seen him lately? No? Gosh, I wonder why. ]]>

The View, godhelpme, and then the last fifteen minutes of You’ve Got Mail. So, it’s been many weeks since I put my New Year’s resolutions on my page for the world to see. Let’s see how I did, shall we?: Robyn’s Resolutions for 2001 1. I will shave my legs once a week. Har de har. As if. In fact, I’ve only shaved my legs TWICE this year. Shaving my legs is just such an incredibly boring thing to do that I can only force myself to do it when the hair on my legs is about long enough to braid (attractive, yes?). Perhaps when it’s summertime and I wear shorts in public more often I’ll be able to get them shaved on a more frequent basis. Don’t hold your breath, though. 2. I will grow my hair out, because my husband likes it when I have long hair. Yep, still growing. Kinda hard to fuck that one up. 3. I will keep my purse in a more organized manner. Pshaw. Another "as if". I simply don’t have it in myself to stand there at the store after receiving my change and receipt and neatly putting everything back where it belongs while the person standing in line behind me is breathing down my neck. I did get a bigger purse, though, so I could fit a paperback in one of the side pockets in case I get caught standing or sitting in line unexpectedly. That counts for something, surely? 4. I will keep to my downstairs-on-Wednesday, upstairs-on-Thursday cleaning schedule. Um, no. In fact, I came up with a complex cleaning system, where I perform a few certain chores each day (Monday: Vacuum upstairs, clean bathrooms. Tuesday: Vacuum stairs and entire basement, etc.), but it’s not quite working the way I’d hoped. I didn’t dust yesterday as I was scheduled to, and I didn’t clean the kitchen today (my knee, you know). 5. I will have my eyebrows waxed and plucked by a professional at least once. No, I still haven’t done this yet, either, but the year’s still young. I hope to get this one accomplished before the end of the year. 6. I will get my ass in gear, reorganize my site, and move it all over to robynanderson.com. By Valentine’s Day. Nope. Haven’t even started on the reorganizing I’d planned. I hope to buckle down and get some serious work done on it by the first. But who knows? So that’s what, one resolution upheld out of 6? Hey, tons better than my usual record… —–]]>

Knology truck stop at our mailbox. "Hey, I can give him my package!" Fred said excitedly, and ran over to the stairs. I looked closer at the truck. Fred ran to the stairs and snatched up his package – only HIS package, scattering my packages to the floor. "HEY!" I yelled after him as he sprinted out the door. "That’s not the mailman…" How did I know? ‘Cause, um, first of all I can READ, and I was pretty sure the US Post Office would frown on their mail carriers driving vehicles with advertising on the side. And secondly, I’d already gotten the mail when I’d gotten home from running my errands an hour earlier. I’d love to be able to report that Fred ran down the Knology guy and then found to his embarrassment that it wasn’t the mail guy, but by the time he got to the street, the truck was too far away for him to catch up to it. You’d better believe I gave him hell for only grabbing his own package, though. ]]>

‘Tis, which had been sitting on my bookshelf for about a year, perhaps longer. I have so many books sitting impatiently, waiting for me to read them, that my head spins when it comes time to pick out a new book. I end up closing my eyes and doing the whole "Eenie-meenie-miney-mo" thing. The current plan is to read a book I’ve had for a long time before I can read one of the ones I got for Christmas or my birthday. Old – new – old – new. It would work well, except that I finish a book and get sidetracked by magazines, and then can’t remember whether I read an old one or a new one. I also keep a book in the downstairs bathroom (what, like you don’t read in the bathroom?). I recently read Rebecca, which I had amazingly enough never had to read in high school (I liked it a lot; it holds up well all these years later) and this morning I finished off a Harlequin Romance. Shaddup, I like a good Harlequin from time to time. My "bathroom books", as I call them, come from a different pile of books entirely. They come from the two shelves in the library that hold the books I brought with me from Rhode Island 4 1/2 years ago. I brought them with me because I hadn’t read them yet. And a lot of them are Harlequins. I wouldn’t want a steady diet of Harlequins, but reading one every few months is enjoyable. They’re like total mind candy, and you can always count on a happy ending. It appears I’ve gone a bit astray from where I meant to go… Anyway, I kind of liked ‘Tis, although I was a little leery of it since Pamie ended up throwing it across the room when she read it (go further down the page and read her review of Hannibal; it’s dead-on). What bugged me the most, though, is that he spends a great majority of ‘Tis talking about one woman and how much he loved her at first, and then after several years he married her (why, Frank? You don’t sound like you love her; WHY DID YOU MARRY HER?), and some years later they divorced and yadda yadda yadda. The book ends in Ireland, as he and his brothers are scattering their mother’s ashes (thus we come full circle to Angela’s ashes), and we never hear a single word about the woman he’s currently married to, the woman to whom the book is dedicated. I wanted to hear about her, wanted to learn their love story, and he never wrote one single word about her. Maybe he was just setting me up for book number three. —–]]>

Did I see Spot before I left? I don’t remember… "Is it the fence?" I called, hoping it was that and not a dead cat which had put that tone in his voice. "No, just come look…" I went upstairs, and our back yard looked like it had been hit by a bomb. The table and chairs, previously near the back of the house, had been thrown to the other side of the pool – and some of the chairs were resting atop the pool cover. The Rubbermaid storage closet, which had been reinforced by wire when Fred put it together, and had been resting against the back of the house, was in pieces near the table and chairs. The huge faux-clay planter (thermolite? is that what that stuff’s called?) had broken into several pieces, which were laying in various spots around the back yard. If we hadn’t had a fence, no doubt we’d be needing to buy a whole new supply of backyard items. A tornado never did touch down in the area (at least, not yet), and after the weather calmed down some, Fred and I went for a drive, exclaiming over the downed trees all over the place. We were lucky enough to have not lost any of our shingles or shutters, or – thankfully – any cats (Spot was hiding under the bed with Mr. Fancypants). A year ago yesterday, I said this in my journal: You know, in Maine we never had to worry about tornadoes coming from out of nowhere and snatching up our houses and cars. The worst I recall dealing with in Maine were the occasional ice storms. Ice storms don’t whisk your home away, you know. Ain’t that the truth. —–]]>

Saundra‘s journal entries, I went out a few weeks ago and purchased The Works Tub and Shower Cleaner. This stuff works just awesomely well – you spray it on, come back a few minutes later and rinse it off, and everything’s shiny clean. The only part that sucks is that I have to actually stand inside the shower to spray the inside of the shower doors, and thus I end up inhaling at least some of the stuff that’s flying around in the air while I’m spraying. Therefore, every time I take a guzzle of water, it tastes a tad bit chemical. I hope I’m not doing serious damage to myself, but if you saw how clean the showers get, you’d know how much it’s worth it. If you’re a fan of Bath and Body Works, as y’all know full well that I am, and you’re suffering from dry and itchy wintertime skin – again, as I am – have I got a product for you! It’s called a Sea Salt Rub, it comes in a jar, and it’s just heavenly. This morning (well, afternoon actually, since I spent ALL morning cleaning, as I’ve mentioned) in the shower, after washing off with my usual Dove soap, I used the salt scrub on myself, and the salt scrub isn’t just salt, oh no, it’s salt combined with a lovely scented (coconut, in my case) oil, and even now, hours after my shower, I still feel soft and smooth. I’m sure I’ll be happy ’til tomorrow morning when I wake up with big zits all over me ’cause the oil blocked my pores. Even then I’ll be happy, ’cause I am just a zit-poppin’ fool. But, that’s a discussion for another day. ]]>

here. I apologize if I passed it on to any of you, and rest assured that I’ll have McAfee running all the time from now on… Lordy, I feel like I spent all day walking and cleaning. By the time I was done with my daily unending Walk of Death and cleaning the downstairs, it was almost noon. I guess that would be because I lolled about in bed for half an hour or so instead of getting up when the alarm went off at 6:45. It’s just so damn hard to drag my ass out of bed when it’s as gray and rainy as it’s been here lately. I don’t remember the last time I saw the sun (okay, slight exaggeration. I’m sure I’ve seen the sun at least once this year…), and there’s no end in sight, according to weather.com. Upon checking that link, I find that I’m a big fat liar. The rain’s supposed to end Friday and the next week or so will be partly cloudy. But the temperature’s going to drop from the mid-sixties, where it is now, to the fifties. Brrrr. Could this get any more exciting, talking about the weather? I rented and watched The Philadelphia Story this weekend, and enjoyed it a lot – hard to believe I’d never seen it, isn’t it? The only thing that really annoyed me is when Tracy Lord’s (Katharine Hepburn) father told her that the reason he was philandering is because he didn’t have an adoring young lady at home who thought the sun rose and set on his ass (maybe not in those exact words, but you get the idea). He was blaming his screwing around on his daughter! What an asshole. But, as Fred pointed out, it was made in 1940. One would hope that these days Tracy Lord would laugh in his face. Katharine Hepburn was just luminously gorgeous, wasn’t she? Well no one can be ugly in black and white – it’s a rule, I believe – but she really was pretty. Back in the day, six years or so ago, I worked as an order entry operator at LL Bean. The word was that Katharine Hepburn would call from time to time to place an order for (I believe) fatwood, and she was a colossal pain in the ass, not wanting to give out her name or credit card number. I never took a call from anyone famous – not that I know of, anyway – but my sister was sitting next to someone who took an order from Christine McVee, she of Fleetwood Mac fame. The funny thing is that we were very sternly warned, during training, that if we got someone famous on the line, we were NOT to act starstruck, but to calmly take the order in a professional manner. And yet, if you DID take a call from someone famous, you could fill out a little form describing the call, and they’d either tack it up on the wall or put it in a binder (I don’t recall which). I also remember hearing that someone took an order from Burt Reynolds, and they spent something like an hour helping him out, and at the very end of the call, he got pissed because something wasn’t in stock and canceled a huge order. Burt Reynolds an asshole? Who’d’ve thought it?! (I am NOT a Burt Reynolds fan, ’cause he was such a flaming asshole when he and Loni broke up. Not that I’m a Loni Anderson fan, either, but couldn’t he have acted with the slightest bit of dignity and tact? Hell no, he was flogging his story to the tabloids in three seconds flat. Asshole.) At the time I was working at Bean’s, I spent the entire time combing through the database trying to come up with a home address or phone number for Mike Mills of REM, due to the Mike Mills obsession I was then going through. Yeah, I was a truly productive employee… Oh, the other thing I saw recently was an anti-smoking commercial. In said commercial, a boy offers a girl a cigarette. She declines because she knows that smoking won’t help her win the karate (or judo, or whatever) tournament they’ll be competing in soon. At the end of the commercial, we see that she’s kicked his ass and won the ribbon. I have no problem with any of that; hell, I’m all for non-smoking commercials. What I have a BIG problem with is this: as the ribbon (or medal or whatever) is put around her neck, she looks at the boy, the one who offered her the cigarette, and what does she do? SHE MOUTHS "SORRY!" AT HIM. Why? WHY? Why should she be sorry? I mean, I know it wouldn’t be sportsmanlike to do a little "I kicked your ass" dance in front of him, but why in god’s green earth would she APOLOGIZE for NOT smoking and therefore having the breath to wipe the floor with his ass? Oh, that’s right. Maybe ’cause she’s the GIRL, and she’s not supposed to win. Silly me, it all makes sense NOW, it wouldn’t be LADYLIKE to win the medal and not APOLOGIZE. Now I get it! On a side note, it used to infuriate me when my mother would say to me "That’s not very laaaaaaadylike!" I always responded with "Who the hell wants to be a LADY??" Okay, I never said "hell" to my mother, at least not until I was out of the house, but I certainly thought it. Who the hell, indeed. "Sorry!" Did y’all have a happy Valentine’s Day? Fred and I agreed that we would only swap cards this year, and I stuck to my side of the bargain, but Fred surprised me with a candle and a little bendy heart with arms and legs. Mighty cute it was, and a nice surprise. Next year, I told him, we’re going out to dinner or something. Happy Valentine’s Day if you like, or Happy Wednesday otherwise! —–]]>

can, without warning, release a stink that burns off your nose hairs? Purring all the while? Damn, I love that picture. She looks so very content, laying there getting her wiry little cat hairs all over the spud’s sweater. We are being forced to go to a PTA meeting this evening, and Fred and I are both pissed off about it. How is it that we’re being forced to attend, you ask? Simple – they’re holding our child hostage until the end of the meeting, wherein she and the rest of the 6th-grade band will play three or four songs. Do I want to go sit through an eternal PTA meeting, listen to endless amounts of people babble endlessly? Um, no. Does Fred? Um, HELL no. If you have PTA-related information to share with me, send it home in the form of a newsletter; don’t FORCE me to attend by using my child as collateral. I’ve told Fred several times that this is the only way they’ll get people to show up for the fucking thing. No doubt I’ll end up sitting in the parking lot, reading by the overhead light, and checking the gym every fifteen minutes, so that I won’t miss seeing her play. I had to go get my driver’s license this morning, since it expired a month ago and I can only justify driving around illegally for just so long. If I were to go on tempting fate, I’d get zinged sooner or later, I figured, so I sucked it up and went to the grocery store (the DMV has offices in the Bruno’s around the corner). Because I actually had a book with me to pass the time while standing in line, there was no line at all, and it took me something like five minutes before I was on my way again. The picture came out about like you’d expect, but not as bad as my previous driver’s license picture. As I was out running errands, I started thinking about this goofy little thing that Fred and I do from time to time, and started laughing my ass off. Don’t you hate it when you’re driving along laughing so hard you’re practically crying and everyone driving around you is staring at you like you’ve recently been released from the loony bin, or is it just me? Anyway, the goofy little thing we occasionally do is that, out of nowhere, I’ll bust out, for no reason, with "Who let the Poo out?" (yes, very original, I know). Always, ALWAYS, with no lag time whatsoever, Fred responds with a "Meow! Myow-myow-myow!" to the tune of "Who let the dogs out". It invariably cracks me up. Maybe you just have to be there… ]]>

Body for Life" program. As a result, he’s developed muscles, and therefore cannot stop gazing lovingly at himself in the mirror. It was bad enough when he’d spend the entire day looking at his biceps, poking at them, tapping them, and then kissing them. I’m not kidding, people, he’d kiss his biceps from time to time. He claimed that he was only doing it to annoy me, but you really have to wonder, don’t you? The last thing I do before climbing into bed is to put on my nightgown and pee. This particular sequence of events has become rather difficult to complete, since he’s inevitably standing in front of the mirror, gazing at his muscular arms, his muscular chest and – heaven help me – the baby six pack he realized over the weekend that he’d developed. Twenty-six thousand times I have been the witness to his yanking up his shirt and looking at his stomach. After looking down at his stomach for a few minutes, he then counts the six bulging muscles. Onetwothreefourfivesix, yep still all there! He also likes to puff out his stomach so that he looks like he’s 6 months pregnant, then rub it while tightening it until his six pack is visible again. When following him from one room to another, I have to make sure there’s a good six feet of distance between us, since he enjoys stopping in his tracks, striking a pose, and looking down at the muscles which have developed on his calves and thighs. When we’re sitting in the living room, he’ll reach out and hook his foot under my knee, then lift my leg up. I thought it was a love-pat sort of thing, until he informed me that he was doing it because it made his muscles pop out, which he would then sit there and admire. My husband, Narcissus. I’m going to start sneaking pounds of lard into his food… ]]>