Author: Robyn

The Little Drummer Boy. Man, it just gets me right there when they sing "I played my drum for him … I played my best for him". I was driving along sobbing half-hysterically, barely able to see the road, and trying to sing along. That was quite a sight, I’m sure. The other song that makes me tear up is "O Holy Night." I once saw Lorrie Morgan’s (shut up) Christmas concert – in fact, I skipped out on a fairly important class to attend – and when she sang that song I got goosebumps. She followed it up with "Ave Maria", and I was a puddle on the floor. Anyway, I got back to work and read about a 9 year-old boy who went to school every day and shopped for food at a nearby market, while his mother lay dead on their living room floor. He didn’t tell anyone because he was afraid they’d put him in an orphanage. Doesn’t that just break your heart? The thought of that poor child doing his best to take care of himself, going to school faithfully, and every day going home to sit in an apartment with his mother’s body just made me feel incredibly sad and lonely for him. *Warning* – If you’re eating and/or you have a weak stomach, you may want to skip the rest of this entry. We were sitting around the table eating dinner tonight, and Fred told me that Fancypants was by the kitchen entryway trying to cover something up. Whenever Fancypants comes across something that should be in the litterbox, he tries to cover it up, even if it’s sitting on the carpet or bare floor. Occasionally, we come across a big yakked-up furball with lines around it where he dragged his paw across the carpet in a vain attempt to cover it up. Fancypants knows his place, and he knows that if Alpha Bitchypoo Mommy sees something like a nasty, messy furball that she has to drag the Resolve Carpet Cleaner out for, she is very much not happy, so he attempts to cover it up. Or so I’d like to think. Anyway, I got up from the table to check it out, and where he’d been scratching a few moments earlier was a poop spot. One of the cats had used the litterbox and not gotten completely clean, it appeared. (We tried teaching them to use toilet paper, but it was an all-around failure) I glanced about four feet to my right, and found another spot. And another, and another. Altogether, I found five or six such spots, including a nice nasty one right in front of the couch. As I stood in the living room swearing, Fred suggested that it might be the work of the kitten. I picked her up and checked her out, but she was perfectly clean. I checked Spot, and Fred checked Tubby and Spanky. All clean. Finally, Fred chased down Fancypants, and found a huge amount of poo hanging off of his furry black bloomers (the cat’s bloomers, that is. heh). We cornered him in the bathroom, and Fred held him while I tried to pull the stuff from his fur with a big wad of paper towels. God, the smell. I’m sure you can imagine. Fred and I stumbled about the bathroom, gagging loudly, he hanging his head inside the shower in case dinner came back up, and I hovering over the bathtub. He got tickled by the situation and giggled madly between the gagging. The paper towels weren’t doing any great job, so we decided to trim what we could of his bloomers. I held him while Fred cut, and to say the least Fancypants didn’t care for it. He growled and cried and bit the hell out of my shirt. Suffice it to say that a great deal of poo-covered black kitty hair went into the toilet, and Fancypants now feels violated and abused. Obviously, we need to have him professionally groomed and trimmed. And, as I told Fred, new rule for the future: No more long-haired cats! ]]>

dulce vanilla cologne, too, because it looks a lot like the bottle of dark vanilla I have, and I really like that. Oh, and a Love’s Baby Soft gift set – for myself, of course – because I wore it all through middle school and the very smell brings me back to my ill-spent youth. The problem with me is that I go shopping for presents for others, and end up buying just as much stuff for myself. Then I went to work and spent an hour online doing more Christmas shopping, and by God I’m about done. All I have to do is buy a bunch of little presents for the spud’s stocking, and Fred’s stocking. Oh, and presents for the kitties, of course, but I think they’ll take one look at our tree and consider that present enough. Last year once the Boys were done with the tree, half the lights were on the floor and the other half were twisted around the highest branches. We grew accustomed to hearing the nightyly bong-bong-bong-bong sound of ornaments bouncing down the stairs with the help of kitty paws. Which reminds me, for some reason, of when Spanky was about six months old. This was around Easter; he was walking along minding his own business, and I happened to glance down at him. He had three inches of Easter grass sticking out of his butt. "Fred!" I yelled, because have I mentioned how useless I am in a crisis? Fred came, assessed (get it? ASSessed? Heh) the situation, and grabbed the end of the grass. Spanky began walking away, then – apparently feeling the pull of the grass coming out – stopped and looked back at Fred as if to say, "What the hell are you doing?" He walked a bit further, then stopped and looked back again, puzzled. The wheels turned in his head as he thought to himself, "But they’re over there, and my butt’s over here. They can’t be doing that…" He walked a bit further, and the other end of the Easter grass came out. We put it back in the spud’s Easter basket and went about our business. Just kidding, of course. Don’t email me and tell me what a horrid mother I am. Also don’t email me and tell me how dangerous cellophane Easter grass is to cats, ’cause I already know. We only buy paper Easter grass now. I spent the day at work telling myself "I really need to pay those bills…Oh, just one more game of Snood!" Kymm was not kidding in the slightest when she spoke of it’s instantly addictive powers. I played, and played, and played. And want to know something lame? I was playing on the "easy" level! I tried "medium", but immediately ran away with my tail between my legs. Oh, how lame I am. ]]>

Today was just a stinky, stinky day. To start off, I boiled some eggs this morning, and made myself an egg salad sandwich for lunch. Of course once the eggs were peeled and mashed up, the entire upstairs – and downstairs too – reeked of that nasty eggfart smell. So I bagged up my lunch and Fred’s and headed off to work, and halfway there I realized I was carrying the stinky eggfart smell with me, which means of course that those damn little sandwich bags aren’t nearly as airtight as I had hoped they were. I had to stop at FoodWorld for milk and cereal, and of course when I hopped back into the truck, there was that lovely, farty smell to greet me. I carried the smell with me into work, and became concerned that everyone would think it was me, so I made sure to tell Fred it was my egg salad sandwich, and for good measure put a sign on the refrigerator door.

Due to an egg salad sandwich, the refrigerator and kitchen

area will smell like a giant fart for the duration of the day.

Thank you for your patience.

And it tasted excellent, of course, which made the eggfart stenchiness more than worth it.

Tonight, we had jambalaya for dinner. Usually I make the jambalaya with kielbasa and chicken, but Fred suggested I try substituting shrimp for the chicken this time. So I had to defrost the shrimp, then peel it, and the more I peeled, the shrimpier-smelling the kitchen got. The kitten was losing her mind, and tried more than once to climb my leg to get to that good-smelling stuff. Once I cooked the shrimp, the kitchen smelled even shrimpier, but my didn’t the jambalaya kick ass. What’s better, there’s enough left over for both Fred and I to take for lunch tomorrow. I’m sure once Tex gets whiff (so to speak) of the fact that our lunches contain shrimp, he’ll claim the whole office stinks from that.

So, Patrick Naughton’s lawyers have come up with the lamest defense ever. You remember Patrick Naughton – the Infoseek guy who intended to meet a 13 year-old and was thwarted because she wasn’t actually a 13 year-old girl, she was an FBI agent. Well, the brilliant defense his attorneys came up with was (drum roll) he didn’t expect her to really be 13; he assumed she was an adult and all their conversations were role-playing, because in chat rooms no one is who they claim to be. I told Fred they should put me on the jury. I’ll have the other jurors chanting "Hang him! Hang him!" in no time.

Here’s the house, all decked out in it’s holiday finery:

Impressive, eh? That Fred does a pretty good job, doesn’t he?

Okay, go join my notify list.

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Oh my God. Someone shoot me and put me out of my fucking misery, won’t you? I am a completely cranky, irritable bitch today, and I can’t stand me for another moment. All I want is to crawl into bed with my stack of magazines and a big-ass tin of Christie’s chocolate chip cookies, and a 6-pack of ice-cold Coke (in the 20 ounce bottle) and not come out for a week. That’s all I want.

Is that so wrong?

I’d blame my mood on pms, but Fred claims I always blame my bad moods on pms, so I won’t. Even though it’s the right time of the month for it, I’m not saying it’s pms. Not at all.

Work today was… well, it was work.

Not that I do anything all day, anyway.

So, I’ve been looking through my Nedstat stats, and have only this to say: join the freakin’ notify list, ’cause you’re inflating my stats when you check back several times through the day, and I get all excited and do a happy dance until I realize the same person checked back several times.

I’m just saying. You want me to be happy, don’t you?

I was supposed to get the groceries on the way home tonight, but I had no desire to run the Publix bagger gauntlet, and my lame suggestions that Fred should be responsible for getting the groceries sometimes were met with a blank stare and a change of the subject. So I didn’t stop and get groceries, and when I got home Fred all but ran to greet me at the door to show off his "Who Wants to be a Millionaire!" game that came in the mail today. I admired his game-playing skills for a few minutes, then went upstairs and fed the kitten. Today was her first day to not be locked in the bathroom, and I was relieved to find her alive, since Fancypants was chasing her around this morning, and when I spoke sharply to her for chewing on the cord to the lamp, he reached out and rolled her over onto her back. I had visions of her limping down the stairs with an eye dangling out and missing big patches of fur. Instead, she came toward me howling to let me know she was starving to death, and I’d best get my ass up those stairs and feed her pronto.

Then she snuggled on me for a long time, stretching and demanding I rub her tummy, then snoozing on and off while we watched Wild Wild West, which arrived in the mail today from Amazon. It was enjoyable enough, but I read magazines through about half of it, and hardly remember anything about the half I did see. Fred told me even he has no desire to see any of it again, but I just know next time his parents are over to watch a movie, he’ll suggest that as one of the choices.

As promised, here are some more office pics:

That’s my truck out the window.

This is my office, from the doorway looking in, and from the corner looking toward the side of the room where the door is located. It’s not this messy anymore – I got some cleaning and straightening done today – and aren’t the walls a lovely color? The bulletin board is hung up, and so is the gigantic Cartman poster with it’s back to the camera behind the E:Cargo box. I plan to bring in a couple of plants to liven up the place. See my nifty metal bookcase? All the stuff on that bookcase used to be scattered around my office in random piles. And you’ll notice, on the top shelf, the 3-ring binders wherein are stored all our 1999 receipts. Impressive, innit?

Tomorrow, I’ll put up a picture of the front of our house, with all Christmas decorations and all.

 

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So we ended up watching Arlington Road last night. It was still pretty good the second time around, but I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. In fact, I started to doze off several times, but was so horrified at the thought that I’d start snoring, that I would jerk awake and force my eyes open. The kitten, that traitor-bitch, sniffed around Fred’s parents for a good twenty minutes (they have three cats – two female, one male) then settled smugly in Fred’s stepmother’s lap for most of the movie. She stared smugly at me as if to say "See? Yours is not the only lap in town, bitch."

I spent a good deal of time online yesterday (I bet you’re surprised, eh?) doing some Christmas shopping. I ordered music, books, videos, and an alarm clock from Amazon, and a gift certificate from TJ Maxx. Most of the purchasing I did was for Debbie and Brian. Fred was ordering movies last week, so I had him add a few movies on for my parents. I’m also getting my mom an Eloise book, and I want to get them both a gift certificate, but I have no idea for where to get it – maybe The Olive Garden. I haven’t got a clue what to get for my grandmother, no one ever buys anything for my uncle, my brother Randy will probably get a picture of the spud and a spud-made ornament, my ex’s family will all get pictures of the spud and spud-made ornaments, my brother Tracy will most likely get an Amazon gift certificate, and I haven’t got a clue what to get Tracy’s kids. (Yes, I’m aware that that’s one long damn sentence)

Hell, I’m practically done with my Christmas shopping, aren’t I?

Speaking of movies – kinda – we watched Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me Thursday night, and to my surprise I thought it was pretty damn funny. I particularly liked the part where Austin and Felicity were driving around what was supposed to be the English countryside, and he said (this is paraphrased, of course) "The amazing thing is how much England looks nothing at all like southern California." The other part I liked was when Fat Bastard started singing the "Chili’s baby back ribs" jingle. Of course, that part wasn’t nearly as funny the second time we watched the scene. And, of course, we had to watch both of the "That looks like a giant.." "Willie! Could you sign an autograph for me?" scenes with Fred’s parents last night. I love it when famous people pop up unexpectedly in cameos like that. After all the bad reviews I heard and read about the movie, it was better than I expected.

I slept until 8:40 this morning. 8:40. I don’t think I’ve slept that late since I’ve moved to Alabama. Fred, I don’t think I’ve mentioned, is a serious morning person, so by default I’ve become a morning person also. I was a night owl in my high school days, and continued to stay up until about 11 every night (I know! How incredibly wild and crazy of me!) until I got my first computer almost 4 years ago. When I figured how to use the piece o’ crap to get onto IRC, I would stay up until 4:20 every morning, when my ISP kicked me off to do some sort of administrative something. Then I’d give it up and go to bed, and dream about IRC. That lasted until I got a job and met Fred, which seems to have happened simultaneously, and since then I’ve considered sleeping until 7 to be a total waste of the day. —–+63310

1111111111111111 NM2MQWWWWWWA

The above is a secret message to you from Scrappy. I’m sure it says something like, "Let’s kill the Mommy bitch and eat all the canned cat food in the house, then lay around and lick the litter out from between our toes."

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The kitten is feeling tons better these days. She’s like a whole new kitten – she plays, runs around, sticks her nose into everything, and tolerates being sniffed by the Boys. It’s only now that I realize how much she wasn’t acting like a kitten. She must have been feeling pretty rotten those first few days, ’cause all she did was lay around and allow me to pet her. Now, it’s amazing if I can get her to stay still long enough to be petted and kissed. My baby’s growing up!

Yesterday, I was petting and talking to her, and I thought to myself, why am I lisping at her? I mean, there’s baby talk – and you know you baby talk your pets too, so don’t look so smug – but why the hell am I going the "Ith a good baby? Ith a baby hunnnngy? Oh, yeth. Oh, yeth. Thuch a good kitty! Yeth it ith! Yeth it ith!" route? How is it that Fred and the spud can listen to me lisping like a big idiot at the kitten and not clock me over the head with a cast-iron skillet?

I could eat you in two bites

Speaking of weird quirks o’ mine, I noticed another one on my way into work yesterday. On the drive into work, there are about six traffic lights I have to negotiate before I pull into the DI parking lot. There are days when I hit every red light, and there are days when every light I approach is green, and of course there are days with some greens and some reds. The odd little quirk I noticed comes into play when I’m approaching an "old" green light. If I’m afraid it will turn yellow before I get close enough to safely get through, I avoid looking directly at the light. I mean, I can still see it in my peripheral vision, but I have this vague fear that if I look directly at the light it will certainly turn yellow and I’ll be stuck there forever, waiting for it to turn green again.

I’ve never failed to make the light stay green using the Bitchypoo Method.

Of course, I use this method when avoiding the people wanting money outside of Wal-Mart, but there it never works. "Would you like to contribute to the Mothers Against Drunk Driving?" they chirp, running over to me and making eye contact whether I like it or not. Well, what am I going to say, "No, I think mothers should keep their damn nose out of drunk drivers’ business, damnit!" Instead, I dig around in my wallet for a buck or two so they’ll go away and let me continue on in peace. At least they don’t try to get your name and address. Once upon a time – at least five years ago, I’m guessing – I got an envelope full of address labels and a "Won’t you help our blind, paralyzed, brain-damaged, divorced, wife-beating veterans? They made these address labels just for you!" letter. Being a softy, I sent them five bucks. Five dollars. FIVE DOLLARS. And for the rest of my life, I will never be free of these people. They took my five dollars and spent it making forty bazillion more address labels, which they send to me at regular intervals with letters begging for more money. Through three moves and a name change, they’ve managed to keep up with me, sending address labels all the way. The solution, I’ve decided (although it’s not a solution for the address label people; I don’t think there’s any way to get rid of them), is that when you give your money away, you have to do it anonymously. Pay with a money order, give them a fake address. Once they get your address, it’s all over, ’cause you know they sell your address to other charities looking for money, and pretty soon all you ever get in the mail are solicitations for money, address labels, and let’s not forget the packs of free greeting cards. I always save the cheesey greeting cards, but I’d never send them out to anyone. Well, not anyone I liked.

Last night, for the first time in a few months, instead of ordering pizza from Domino’s or Papa John’s, Fred made homemade pizza. His homemade pizza kicks serious ass, even when it’s just pepperoni and sausage pizza like we had this time. Sometimes he makes pizza with sausage, pepperoni, black olives, green olives and onion that is just to die for. Have I mentioned what a great cook he is? Somehow, I feel that that’s come up before.

i am weak from hunger…mother? i can’t see you…

Fred’s dad and stepmother are coming over to watch a movie with us tonight. I’m not sure what movie we’ll be watching, but it will be one I’ve seen before. I’m not a big fan of watching movies over and over, unless I like them a lot. When Harry Met Sally…, Sleepless in Seattle, Flashdance, Fame – any of those I’ll stop to watch when I’m flipping channels. Our choices tonight will be The Mummy, Big Daddy, or Arlington Road. Out of the three, I guess I wouldn’t mind seeing Arlington Road again, but none of them really cranks my tractor. Fred just loooooves to watch the same movies a thousand times in a row though, and as a result we’ve watched the same three or four scenes from The Matrix about six times now.

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told him I loved him, which served to do nothing so much as freak him out. That didn’t stop me, though. I wrote him love poems and followed him around school gazing adoringly at him. He was the worst kisser, ever, and I say that out of honesty, not because I hate the way he treated the 16 year-old me (though of course I do hate the way he treated me, as well as the fact that I took being treated shabbily with no qualms whatsoever). He’d come at me with his mouth wide open and his tongue at the ready. No slow, gentle kisses to start us off; his tongue was down my throat no matter where we were. He was a senior, and he was under the impression that the other senior boys considered him a big stud when he backed me up against my locker and tickled my tonsils with his big nasty tongue. He was mistaken. On Halloween night, at a party we were attending, he told me he thought we should see other people. I agreed calmly, instead of bursting into tears – which is what he obviously expected – and went back to the party. Peeved, he left. The next day at school, in the hallway, he broke up with me. Nice guy, huh? In tears, I called my mother, who came and picked me up at school. Once home, I climbed into bed, wrote amazingly bad poetry about my broken heart, and cried a lot. Two hours later, I climbed out of bed, got dressed, and went back to school. I am obviously not one to wallow. It took about a week to get completely over the three-month relationship, and once I was over him, I was only mortified that I’d ever thought myself in love with such an ass. Though, to be fair, he wasn’t as much of an ass as he could have been. I’m betting I would have put up with pretty much anything back then, just to have a boyfriend, just to have someone to hug and kiss and call my own. Pretty pathetic, eh? I’m not nearly so much a doormat these days. I’m sure you find that hard to believe!]]>

I was awakened at 4:10 this morning by a couple of loud, scary, thudding noises. I sat straight up in bed and immediately began calling "Little kitty? Little kitty?!" I peered around the room until I saw her a foot or so from the side of the bed in a pile of Fred’s clothes, under a big, heavy hardcover book. She’d apparently tried to jump up on the bookcase near the bed, and hit the one double-stacked shelf near the top and knocked a few heavy books onto the floor, including the one that landed on her. She was just laying there quietly, which scared me. I picked her up and checked her out – her heart was pounding a mile a minute, but otherwise she seemed fine. After a few minutes, she starting purring.

Speaking of the kitten (and it seems I always am, doesn’t it?), she’s apparently feeling much better, and today for the first time since we got her, she was playing. I bought a laser light at Office Depot today and she chased that around for a while. Now she’s playing with a toy mouse. She’s been eating like a pig since yesterday, and she’s developed a round little tummy.

I’m feeling incredibly lazy today (like that’s something new). At work, instead of straightening up my office so it would look like an office and not a room with piles of crap everywhere, I spent most of the day web-surfing. I made Fred make dinner tonight – he made shrimp sauteed with onions and garlic in olive oil, with angel hair and parmesan. Have I mentioned that he’s truly a kick-ass cook? Never fails to impress me. As further proof, I’m not going to move my November entry links over to the archives page tonight, even though I should, because I’m just that slothful.

The lady who owns the company in charge of cleaning our office dropped by today. As I’ve mentioned, our office space grew by three offices and a conference room, so she was going to check out the new office space and give us a new weekly price. She’s only charging us $5 more per week, can you believe that?

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I woke this morning at 2:30ish, feeling something wasn’t quite right. I thought about it for a few minutes before I realized that the kitten wasn’t on my face (where she is wont to lay), arm, or back. I got up and looked for her in the bathroom and closet, and then checked the living room, kitchen, and dining room. Finally, since I wasn’t hearing yowls of kittenish rage to notify me that she was being eaten alive by one of the Boys, I went back to bed. "She’s exploring," I told myself. "She’ll be back when she’s done being nosy." I lay down, flung the covers over my legs, and looked down to see a half-asleep kitty rolling across the bed. When she came to a stop, she sat up and swayed back and forth, blinking sleepily up at me. I tucked her under my chin, and we both went back to sleep.

Today was quite uneventful at work, but busy nonetheless. I continued to organize – my cheap four-shelf metal bookcase arrived via Office Depot, providing space for me to pile the tons of 3-ring binders I have cluttering up my office. One of my bright ideas, at the beginning of this year, was to assign each receipt category a number, and put each receipt in a binder, labelled with it’s assigned number. So, category 1 is Checking, and receipt # 1/1 is the first deposit receipt of 1999, 1/2 is the second, and so on. What I failed to take into account is that we accumulate a shitload of receipts each year, so I have 3-ring binders all over the place, and my office ain’t that big. Maybe next year, I can talk the bosses into purchasing a scanner, so I can scan in each receipt, then toss the receipt itself. That sounds like I’m just begging for trouble, doesn’t it?

So after work, I had to get groceries instead of rushing home to be with my beloved Scrappy-doodle. I’ve been going to Bruno’s lately, because it’s half a mile from home, and it’s a pretty nice store. Their frozen vegetable selection just sucks, though. They never have brussels sprouts or asparagus; instead, they seem to have an entire aisle of chopped onions and green peppers. What’s up with that? Today, I went to Publix, which is a lot further away, but it’s worth the drive. Well-stocked shelves and the people who work there are so friendly it’s frightening. I was able to find everything on my list with no problem at all. There was a Bill Gates clone intent on buying up every single shrimp in the seafood section, and I didn’t feel like waiting around, so I guess I’ll be picking up my shrimp elsewhere this week. George Stephanopolous bagged my groceries, though, so that was a big plus. It was "look-alike day" at Publix today – the cashier looked an awful lot like Shelley.

The only thing I don’t like about Publix is that they insist on taking your groceries out to your car for you. I just hate that, from the stilted conversation I feel compelled to make with the bagger; to the stupid "Oh, this is me" I blurt out, pointing to my truck; to the way the bagger stands there trying to figure out whether to put the groceries in the cab, or in the back of the truck; to the way I flap my hands around and say "Oh, just put them in the back"; to the way I stand there, trying to figure out whether I’m supposed to help; to the way there’s only one bag left to be put in the back of the truck when I decide I should help, and the bagger and I grab it at the same time; to the way the bagger says "have a nice day!" while walking away, and obviously thinking to himself "what a freak."

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I got pretty much moved into my office today. I really like the color I chose; it’s a light lavendar blue. I’ll try to remember to take pictures tomorrow. It’s nice to be in my own office again. I spent the majority of the day straightening stuff up, ordering a bookcase for my office, and paying a huge stack of bills. I left about 1:30, because it was the kitten’s first day alone all day (I locked her in the master bathroom), and I was missing her. I half-expected to get home and find that the Boys had figured out a way to knock down the bathroom door and eat her. But she was safe and sound, and sitting on the carpet in the closet half-asleep when I opened the door. She did her princessy little meow, and immediately began purring as soon as I picked her up, so I’m guessing she’s not too pissed at me.

I had to take her to the vet again today, because her eye wasn’t looking so hot. She’s been sneezing since we got her, and the vet checked her out Friday and said it could be because of the litter or the change in her environment, but he didn’t think she had a cold. She sneezed all weekend long – usually in my face – and this afternoon her left eye was draining, and she was holding it at half-mast. The doctor diagnosed a cold (durrrr) and gave me two kinds of medicine for her – one in liquid form, one in pill form. Fred managed to get the liquid down her throat, but come Hell or high water we can’t get her to take the pill. She flails all over the place when we try to stick it in her mouth, and when Fred wrapped it in cream cheese (at the Dr’s suggestion), she licked up some cream cheese, and ignored the pill. Next, we’re going to try mashing it up in turkey baby food. She yowled all the way to the vet’s, and all the way home again. I suspect she’s noticed that every time she gets in that carrier, someone sticks something up her butt (the thermometer, that is).

It’s really cooled off around here. It was about 40 this morning, I discovered when I stopped on my way to work to return movies. Because I park my truck in the garage, I hadn’t realized how cool it was outside, and not only was I wearing a short-sleeved shirt, but I wasn’t wearing a jacket. Of course, even if I’d parked in the driveway I still wouldn’t have been wearing a jacket, since I don’t own one. I had a crappy $25 jacket last winter, one I ordered out of a Lane Bryant catalog, but I left it in Maine when I flew up for the weekend last February, and Liz never got around to sending it back to me. Doesn’t really matter, I guess, since I was outside maybe 2 minutes all day. You sure can’t get away with running around without a coat in November in Maine, that’s for sure, and I have to admit that’s something I don’t really miss about Maine. I guess I’ll be looking through the myriad Lane Bryant and Roaman’s catalogs cluttering up the house. I’m sure I can find another $25 piece of crap!

On one of Fred’s many trips to Lowe’s this past weekend, he purchased a music box which plays small records. The spud is completely enthralled by it, and for the past two evenings has spent an eternity each night playing record after record. It’s sweet and all that she’s getting into the Christmas spirit – they’re all Christmas songs – but it sure is mind-numbing after about the tenth song. They all tend to sound alike, you see, and hearing basically the same sound over and over ain’t the thrill at 31 that it is at 11.

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