Author: Robyn

that the truth. The majority of her chores come after dinner, when she is required to: put the dishes in the dishwasher away, put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, start the dishwasher, wipe down the counters and table, feed the cats, and take the trash out. When she’s motivated – ie, "As soon as you get your chores done, we’ll go swimming/ get ice cream/ watch a movie" – she can finish in ten minutes or less. On the average night, though, it takes her at least an hour to do everything. Poor overworked, abused child… Speaking of the spud, she called last night from DC. Getting her to actually make conversation on the phone is like pulling teeth. "Are you having fun?" "Yes." "Are you obeying Michelle?" "Yes." "Will you be glad to get home Friday?" "Yes." "What did you visit today?" "The White House. The Wall." "See anyone famous?" "No." And so forth. The kitten is obsessed with Coke. Every time I open a can, she’s right there, sniffing at it. I don’t know if it’s the smell, or the sound of the carbonated bubbles that obsesses her so, but she’s always sticking her little moist nose in the hole on the top of my Coke cans. This morning, I took the plate that held my blueberry pop-tarts until I ate them, and poured a little Coke onto it, offering it to her. She sniffed around it for a good, long time before trying a couple of slurps and sneezing. I guess she’s undecided about the whole Coke experience. After being surprised in the shower by the cleaning lady last week, I got up when Fred left for work shortly after 6 am, and rushed around to make the house presentable. No, this is not "cleaning for the cleaning lady", it’s picking up so that the cleaning lady can clean without piles of junk in her way. If it weren’t for the fact that I have to pick up before the cleaning lady gets here, there’d be piles and piles of books, papers, and god knows what else all over the place. Robyn, you’re saying. Why is it that you still have the cleaning lady come every week when you’re no longer working, and could perfectly well clean the house your own lazy ass self? That’s an excellent question. Because I’m the laziest gal in the whole USA, and if it were left up to me to keep the house clean, it would fall into squalor and disrepair faster than you could look up "squalor" on the merriam-webster site to make sure you spelled it correctly (definition of squalor: the quality or state of being squalid. Ah yes, that clears it up). Lordy, I need a nap. Only 8 hours of sleep last night. And the cleaning lady is here, so I need to go stay out of her way.
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American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis) and False Memory (Dean Koontz). I actually bought American Psycho when it first came out in print, because I wanted to know what all the brouhaha was about. As I recall, I got ten or fifteen pages in, yawned, and stuck it at the back of the bookcase. Now that the movie’s come out, and I’m sure I’ll want to see Christian Bale running around half-naked, I decided to give it another shot because I prefer to always read the book before I see the movie. I’m something like twenty pages in, and I can barely contain the constant stream of yawns. Fred checked ahead for some murder scenes and said that the one he came across was incredibly graphic, so I guess I’ll stick with it. Ih. The Koontz book, on the other hand, is shaping up to be pretty good. I’m only about 1/4 of the way in, but it’s creepy as all get-out. I was actually creeped out before I started reading the book, because I read the cover, which said that one of the main characters suffers from autophobia – fear of one’s self. Could you imagine what it would be like to be afraid of yourself, scared to look in the mirror? The only way to get away from yourself is to commit suicide, and that only gets you away from your physical self. Well, as I read the book, I discovered that the main character isn’t afraid of herself in that way; rather, she’s afraid she’ll do harm to her loved ones. Last night I dreamed I was running through the house throwing anything with a sharp edge out the back door into the pool. I went to Garden Cove this morning. Being that it’s Wednesday, it was far less crowded than last Tuesday, but there was also far less of a selection (their truck full of fresh produce comes in on Tuesday morning). I still managed to buy $18 worth of fruit and veggies, not to mention some organic shredded hash browns. I also managed to end up in line behind a woman who had bought 24 of something and was charged 79 cents each instead of 59 cents, and the cashier was having a hell of a time figuring out how to credit the woman’s account. I stood there for 10 minutes – no exaggeration – before it was my turn to be rung through. While I was patiently standing there waiting for it to be my turn, the lady in front of me said "I notice you’re buying a lot of vegetables." I smiled and nodded, resisting the Nothing gets by you, huh, Einstein? comeback (now, you know and I know that I’d never ever say such a thing to a stranger). "Are you following the Hallelujah eating plan?" she went on to ask. "Uh," I mumbled. "No." She smiled, looked me over, and went back to overseeing the cashier. I can only imagine what the Hallelujah eating plan must entail – a shouted "Hallelujah!" before each bite, perhaps? So, I finally got around to watching last week’s ER. What a great damn show. When that little girl said "Sometimes Daddy likes to play a game" I teared right up. Ditto Mark waking up to see his father laying still. I repeat: DAMN good show. Hm, have I covered everything? Food, books, TV – yep, that’s it. Y’all have a good day!
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Fancyman is losing his shit, because there’s a mourning dove on the front lawn about three feet from the window, and he can’t get to it. He’s going back and forth between the two windows in the computer room, crouching, moaning, his eyes all dark, banging his tail back and forth. On the lawn, the dove is blinking calmly at Fancypants, wondering what the problem is. So, the problem I was having last night with my Internet Explorer? I attempted to deal with it by uninstalling and reinstalling IE three or four times. Every time, the bar at the top looked odd, with everything stuffed into one line. I could NOT get it to look right, no matter how many times I uninstalled and reinstalled. Finally, desperate, I asked Fred to come down and look at it. He fixed it. How? By un-maximizing and re-maximizing it. Blewp, blewp, and it was fixed. Grrr. Oh, I took some good pictures this weekend. Let me see if I can find them… The kitten, in the throes of ecstacy as I rub her belly. She’s laying on her pillow on my desk.
And here she is laying beside me on my arm, snoozing. The happier she is, the darker rose her nose turns.
Fred took this fairly cool picture of the sun Saturday afternoon.
Spot and Tubby just before Spot put the smack down on Tubs. "I’m telling you, man, get your tail off of me!" It’s so sad that I had to think for a minute to remember that Tubby’s real name is Snoopy when I was looking to link to his page. Fred and I took a short roadtrip to a small seafood store about half an hour away yesterday, and loaded up on raw oysters and shrimp. The oysters rocked – though after about 5 of them Fred got grossed out on them and gave the rest of his to me (WOOHOO!) – but the shrimp just wasn’t quite right. After I was done eating the shrimp, I had a fairly nasty metallic taste in my mouth, and I was more than a little afraid I’d end up being sick in the night, but I’m feeling fine. A disappointing seafood experience, though. Fred told me last night he’d be just as happy to never have seafood again. GREAT. At this rate, I’ll NEVER talk him into going to Florida. Poor, poor pitiful me. We went swimming again last night, and this time it was 86, which was even MORE perfect than 84. There was a pretty strong breeze, though, so it was much warmer in the water than out. It’s supposed to get up to 90 on Friday (the air, not the pool – though you never know), which means there’ll be some more good swimming. It looks like it’s going to storm any minute now, though, so there may be no swimming tonight. When we’re in the pool and there’s a slight breeze blowing, I can smell honeysuckle in the air, though I can’t tell where it’s coming from. There was once a honeysuckle bush in the woods behind us, until they knocked down everything to put up a couple of houses. Speaking of the houses behind us, Fred is sure I gave the people directly behind us quite a show yesterday, because I took my bathing suit off while in the pool (the people in the house behind us can’t see us while we’re actually swimming in the pool) and when I got out, I hunched over and ran a few steps to where my towel was laying. Fred thought it was the funniest thing, because if anyone in the house behind us had been sitting in any of the windows on their top floor, they would have seen me. It’s my opinion, however, that if they were sitting there spying on us, they deserved to be scared like that. —–]]>

Slim Twin ST For Women with Aloe.

Shiiiit. I don’t have any aloe! No one mentioned I’d have to have aloe to use these razors… I meant to pick up the razors for Women with Big Asses. That, I have. But seriously, folks, how much must these razors suck if the company couldn’t afford to hire someone to keep an eye out for those kinds of foul-ups? So, the spud is in Washington, DC this week. Actually, they haven’t made it as far as Washington; they stopped in Williamsburg, VA last night, and are doing the Colonial Williamsburg tour, amongst other things. She called this morning just after 6, just as I’d gotten back to sleep after Fred left for work. She sounded like she was in good spirits, thank god. She got a seat on the bus next to Michelle, who lives in the house behind us and whose daughter, Ella, is friends with the spud. the spud is rooming with Ella, Michelle, and Ella’s friend Anna. I’m hoping it will be like a big slumber party for her – Michelle is good with kids, I think, and the spud knows and feels comfortable with her. They’ll be back early Friday morning, and no doubt she’ll get off the bus all grouchy from travelling all Thursday night. Question: What is the absolute perfect pool temp to go swimming in when it’s a clear, sunny day with a fairly strong breeze? Answer: Here in Alabama, the answer is 84 degrees. 84 perfect, warm, lovely degrees. We went swimming after dinner yesterday, and it was like stepping into a semi-warm bath. I could have stayed in the pool for hours, but Fred got frisky and we got out of the pool and went inside, and I’ll stop there – y’all can thank me later. I finally got around to ordering Mother’s Day gifts for my mother, Fred’s mother, and Fred’s stepmother, Jean. I ordered bath products for Fred’s mother, garden bucks at garden.com for Jean, and a box of Godiva for my mom. As usual, I waited ’til the last possible moment to order everything, and had to pay extra for shipping so everything would get there in time. Some day, I’m going to get my shit together. I’ve known for a month when Mother’s Day was, and still I didn’t just go right ahead and order everything. I hate it that I’m such a procrastinator. But I’ll tell you about that later (ba-dum-BUM!). I’m suddenly having big problems with my fucking piece of crap Internet Explorer, and I’m about to put my fist through the monitor, so if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to cut this short. —–]]>

Who Wants to be a Millionaire? went seven minutes over last night? I was hugely peeved; enraged, even. We intended to go to bed as soon as it was over, and tape ER. Only we couldn’t tape ER, because ER was on channel 5, and Millionaire was on channel 12, and the tv had to be tuned in to channel 5 to tape channel 5. Finally, I grabbed the tape out of the VCR in the living room and ran into the bedroom and threw it in the VCR there, and got it taping. Oh, I was so furious. It’s just so fucking rude and presumptuous to assume "Oh, we can go a few minutes over, it’s not like there’s anything else they want to watch!" Like they couldn’t have cut 7 minutes worth of Regis’ yammering, or Ray Romano making smartass comments? I think they could have if they’d wanted. I told Fred that I am never, NEVER watching that fucking show again. He doesn’t believe me, but I’m dead serious. Grrrrr. I have taken up shaving my legs in the shower. Until now, I’ve always sat on the edge of the bathtub upstairs and shaved my legs, but it’s such a pain in the ass that I decided I’d just do it in the shower from now on. This morning, I failed to put my contacts in before I took my shower, so that was fun, standing there squinting down at my leg trying to figure where I’d left off. I also cut the fuck out of my leg. And not on the delicate, difficult ankle portion, but the flat, straight just below my knee portion. It bled like a motherfucker after I got out of the shower, and when I’d decided it had stopped, I used a damp tissue to wipe up the dried blood, which only pissed off the cut, it appears, because there’s another big dry patch of blood there now. Spanky is howling his fool head off, and I’m afraid I may have to throw something at him. Oh, now he’s in the bathroom, telling his woes to the toilet seat. He’s the biggest damn howling-for-no-reason momma’s boy I’ve ever seen. When I was but a wee child, I asked my mother if the people in soap operas were really kissing each other, or if they used trick photography to make it look like they were kissing. She informed me that they were really kissing ("For god’s sake, how would they do TRICK PHOTOGRAPHY?") and I was less than pleased. It freaked me out that people who weren’t involved with each other were kissing each other like that. I don’t know why that memory popped into my mind; maybe because I spent a good part of the morning watching the last two week’s worth of The Bold and the Beautiful, and they really go at it on that show. The TV is now on MTV, and Christina Aguilera and some of her bimbo friends are talking about her favorite videos. God, please tell me when I was 19 I didn’t sound that much like an airhead… Okay, enough rambling from me. Happy Cinco de Mayo! ]]>

cat because they are nice and fat. 5. If I were a cat, I would be fancy because I like to be fancy. I bet her teacher was wondering about that "fancy" part. (We refer to Mr. Fancypants as "being fancy" when he prances across the room with his long hairs blowing in the breeze. He’s also "fancy" when he rolls onto his back and curls his front paws under his chin, asking for a belly rub.) God. Remind me to never go to Wal-Mart after 8 am ever EVER again. I had a list of stuff to pick up for the spud’s trip to DC, and I figured since it was 10 in the morning there wouldn’t be many people there, ’cause HEY it’s a WORK day, right? Wrooooooong. The place was packed, and I couldn’t go two feet without having to stop and wait for someone to get the hell out of my way. While I was looking at the shampoo, a lady and her four year old son were nearby. The kid was asking questions incessantly, and she diligently answered every one of his questions. Finally, she snapped. "BECAUSE YOU’RE HOLDING THE COUPONS UNTIL I NEED THEM!" she snarled in his surprised little face. Then she realized there were people nearby, and she added a hasty, honey-covered "Sweet pea!" to the end of her sentence. I wanted to smirk and say nice try, lady, but I remember those days only too well. Last week, I think they were… I was just getting out of the shower when the cleaning lady showed up this morning – it wasn’t even 8:00, so she startled the hell out of me. No, she didn’t walk in on me or anything. I could hear her calling "Helloooooo" from upstairs when I was drying myself off, so I peeked out the door and yelled "Hi!" I put my nightgown on (I usually go back upstairs to get dressed, since that’s where my clothes are) and settled in at the computer while she cleaned. The kitten was all over me, meowing and purring and rubbing her head on me, so I think she noticed it’s unusual for me to be here while the cleaning lady is here. I guess I can call her "Carolyn" instead of "the cleaning lady", since that’s her name. Every time Carolyn would come down the stairs, the kitten, who was napping on the pillow on my desk, would flatten herself down as far as she could, and peer over the edge of her pillow, her pupils getting all big and dark, as if she were about to attack. She never actually did attack, but she sure put on a show – it was adorable. We were flipping channels last night – I guess I should say FRED was flipping channels – and came across a news show about Mary Kay Letourneau. As usual when it comes to this sort of thing, I knew far more about the case than Fred (can you believe he has no recollection whatsoever of the Pam Smart case?) and so I was hitting the highlights of it for him. The spud was sitting right there listening to my entire explanation, and when Fred went to answer the door a few minutes later, she started asking questions. I think her main problem was in understanding that women can be sexual predators, a concept she had to really wrestle with. It wasn’t until I said "I think she’s messed up in the head" that something clicked for her. Later in bed, Fred asked me if I thought it impossible that Mary Kay could have really fallen in love with Vili Fualaau; they said on TV that she still wants to marry him someday. I’m sure in her own way, she really does love him, but does that negate the fact that it’s wrong? She’s a woman in her thirties, and he was a 12 year-old boy. How fucked up do you have to be, to be in your thirties and be sexually attracted to a child? You really have to have something wired wrong for that to happen, I think. Fred went on to point out that there was a time when it wouldn’t have been uncommon for a man his age to marry a 12 or 13 year old. "Not that I’m saying it’s right," he went on to say. I think people have an unfortunate tendency to think that old ways were simpler, and therefore right. But we’re evolving, at least I hope we are, not devolving, and just because that’s the way things used to be doesn’t mean that that’s the way they should be. While I was looking for a Mary Kay Letourneau link, I came across someone who said, in essence, "People fall in love. It’s beyond the mind." No, I’m sorry, that’s bullshit. It’s not "beyond the mind", and along those lines it’s not a defense to say "The heart wants what it wants" (where did I read that, anyone know? I can’t seem to pin it down). Sleeping with a child is wrong, and if your heart leads you to do so, your heart is wrong. It’s wrong. Can I say it plainer than that?
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happened? Why all of a sudden is her big scary clown face all over the place talking about it? She was on the cover of Redbook or some other magazine of it’s ilk (they all blend together; maybe it was Ladies’ Home Journal) with the quote "Sometimes when you can’t forgive your husband, you have to forgive your children’s father" under the picture of her and her two funny-looking kids (I’m sorry, it’s true. Cody’d never get any kind of acting job if his mother weren’t Kathie Lee. You know it and I know it). Now she and Frank are going to be on Dateline 20 Minutes or one of those newsmagazine shows, and whatcha s’pose they’re going to be talking about? Why, Frank’s infidelity and how much pain it caused Kathie Lee, of course. Get over it, Kathie Lee; we sure have. And don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way to obscurity. Buh-bye. Do you suppose it’s her way of getting her revenge? Just keep bringing it up, like her goal is to talk about it and "We can help other couples who are going through this very thing, Frank! Of course, other husbands might choose someone other than a not-very-good-looking bleached blonde bimbo ho to fuck, but – what? I’m just saying…" So Fred and I watched most of Dogma last night, and the rest of it this afternoon. I liked it a lot – that Jay is one rude motherfucker – but then, I don’t carry all that Catholic angst around with me, either. Matt Damon was surprisingly funny, and it was good to see the actors who played Dante and Randall in Clerks again. Today, my errand-running consisted of going to Bruno’s Pharmacy to pick up my birth control refill, and then taking the pictures I gave to Fred as presents for his birthday last year to be framed. The framing of those pictures is his birthday present this year. I intended to go to a framing store across from Bruno’s, but I arrived in the little strip mall to find that where it had previously been is now a martial arts center. I drove around Madison, searching in vain at all the strip malls on Highway 72 for frame stores, and finally called Fred and asked him to look in the phone book to see if there were any frame stores anywhere in Madison. We finally located one, and I headed there. Once there, I discovered that I’d only brought three of the five pictures with me, so after I picked frames for the ones I’d brought, I ran home (figuratively speaking) and got the other two and brought them back to the framing store. Just like yesterday, it was almost 1:30 before I got around to eating anything, and by then I was STARVED. As I was settling down with a cheeseburger and fries from Burger King (yes, VERY BAD Robyn, buying junky fast food instead of eating something homemade!) the kitten walked through my little bowl of ketchup with her big fat back foot, leaving litter pieces behind, which made me gag, the very thought of it, and I couldn’t finish my meal. Anyway. The spud is going to Washington, DC with a bunch of other 5th graders, some 5th grade teachers, and parent-chaperones next week. They leave at 4:30 am Sunday morning, and will be back Friday morning at 8 am. I kind of wish I’d known I wouldn’t be working anymore last Fall, when I signed her up to go, ’cause I wouldn’t mind going to DC myself. I was there once with Fred – the weekend we met, as a matter of fact – but it’s all a sleep-deprived blur, except for the incredible lemonade in Union Station (is that right, Union Station? I think it is) and the fact that I walked around for a good ten minutes with crumbs all over the front of my blouse from the pizza I had with that lemonade before I realized they were there and brushed them off. To this day, I give Fred hell for not telling me they were there. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that we go to Destin later this month. Fred doesn’t like to talk every detail to death like I do, damn him, so I haven’t been bringing up the subject. He said the other day "What I’d like to do is not think about it, and then just do it when the time comes." So I’ve been VERY good about not bringing it up compulsively like I WANT to. Of course, this whole paragraph is completely passive-aggressive, because he reads my journal every day or every few days, so this way I’m making sure he knows I still want to go. Hey, at least I admit it. —–]]>

Dogma with Fred, and then watch Millionaire with Fred and the spud. I know y’all are jealous of my life of excitement! (Every entry won’t be a laundry list of my day, I promise. This not-working thing is still new to me!)
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tour, Spanky was taking his turn, sticking his nose under the bag and trying to crawl under there. "How cute," I thought to myself. "Maybe I’ll take a picture of him doing that when I come back down." So I was upstairs in the bedroom taking pictures, when I heard a pounding sound, and then a rustling sound. I looked up to see a plastic bag come tumbling through the door and then head for the bathroom. Assuming, for some reason, that Fred had thrown a bag at me, I stood there and watched the bag go by, thinking to myself "How did he get it to keep going like that?" The bag flew through the bathroom and into the closet, and turned around, and only then could I tell that it was the bag from downstairs, with Spanky’s neck stuck through one of the carry-holes. When Spanky realized there was no sanctuary from the plastic bag in the closet, he flew back out through the bathroom, towards me, with his ears laid flat back against his head and an insane gleam in his eye. Naturally, I screamed in terror (hey, he ran across my face once when he was scared, and it’s scarred me mentally for life) not once, but twice. Who knew what sort of insane kitty-running-from-the-bag thing he would do? Well, what he did is run under the bed, which was the only safe place his freaked-out kitty mind could come up with. Fred came into the room and shut the door so Spanky couldn’t continue to run pell-mell through the house. As I danced around, laughing so hard I could barely stand, he reached under the bed and took the bag off of Spanky. Spanky stayed under the bed, despite our coaxing, from then until about 8:00 this morning, and he only stayed out from under the bed for about two hours before taking refuge again. Obviously it’s safer under the bed, amongst the tons and tons of cat hair and hundreds of stray earplugs. The pool temp hit close enough to 75 yesterday that I finally went swimming. Well, Fred claimed it was 73 1/2, but I found out later that he’d only been lying to get me in the pool, and it was only 73. The bastard! He came up with the greatest idea, though. While he was at Toys R Us, he passed the sale rack, and saw a 5-foot inflatable child’s swimming pool, so he brought it home, blew it up, and we put it IN the big pool, and took turns floating around the pool in it! I could easily imagine taking a nap while floating around in it sometime. It was great! We all went swimming when the spud got home from school today, and though the pool temp was 74, the sun wasn’t out, so it didn’t feel as warm as yesterday. It’s only a matter of time before it’s warm enough that we can go skinny-dipping at night after the spud’s gone to bed…
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