Author: Robyn

So, Fred and I watched Arlington Road last night since everything was in reruns. It was pretty damn good. Tim Robbins does creepy better than I’d expected, but if Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins had switched roles, I think the movie would have been just as good. By the time the movie was over, it was past our usual bedtime, and we lay in bed talking for another half hour or so before Fred stumbled, half-asleep, off to bed. I tossed and turned most of the night, but felt fairly perky this morning when I rolled out of bed at 5:45. And the sun didn’t shine in my eyes on my way to work! Well, the sun wasn’t really out, but I could see the outline of it behind the clouds, and it was too high to shine in my eyes if it had been. Last week at work, Fred discovered the greatest thing. You know those incredibly annoying pop-up ads on Geocities and Tripod and the banner ads on other pages? Well, you can filter them out with the "Proxomitron." I downloaded it at work, and it works really well. And it’s free! Go here to download it and try it out for yourself.

In the "bathroom wars" news: Well, I haven’t done anything I’d planned to, yet. But today, someone peed all over the rim of the toilet in the bathroom I prefer to frequent, and it wasn’t me. Can penii really be that difficult to maneuver? There’s a huge hole (the toilet), you whip it out, you aim, you pee. Where’s the problem, boys? That’s okay; I figure next time I have my period I’ll leave a big old drop of blood on the seat and watch the bastards run away screaming. On the upside, the cleaners cleaned over the weekend, and got rid of the bloody booger-type thing on the tank.

Such appetizing topics, eh?

I’m really quite excited at the moment. I got my statement in the mail, and saw that — try to remain calm, people — I earned thirteen cents on my savings account last quarter. I think a month-long trip to the Bahamas will put a little dent in that windfall, yessiree.

I was listening to country music on the radio this morning, and at one point I got up and walked to the kitchen to wash my cereal bowl. As I walked down the hall back to my office, I heard a high-pitched "Woo! Woo! Woo!" coming from my office. "What the–?" I wondered out loud. Was one of my morally bankrupt bosses boinking someone in my office? Perhaps someone was plucking their eyebrows using the mirror on the back of my door? Turns out it was Shania Twain singing her "Man, I feel like a woman" song. "Woo! Woo!" indeed.

I found a url Fred sent me from a few weeks ago. This article talks about Gulf War Syndrome, and how the antidote Gulf War veterans were given could conceivably be the cause of the widespread illnesses among veterans. The following excerpt from my IRC conversation with Fred pretty much sums up my opinion on the subject:

Robyn_ : (quoting from the article) "Officials at the Pentagon, which commissioned the study, stressed that the findings are not conclusive. "

Robyn_ : And they’ll never be conclusive.

Fredster: 🙂

Robyn_ : Because God forbid our government ever take responsibility for anything it does.

Robyn_ : In 75 years, president Chelsea Clinton will be handing out miniscule payments to descendants of Gulf War Veterans and apologizing.

I guess that would be more of a one-sided mini-rant than a conversation.

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Happy Halloween to all, and Happy Anniversary to Fred! Yes, this time last year I’d only been married for about two hours. My wedding day, such a happy memory… True to form, Fred was nervous about getting married up until the very day we got married, and I wasn’t at all until that day. All day long last October 31st, I said "We don’t have to get married. We could just wait ’til next year. Shouldn’t we get married on the anniversary of the day we met? That would be more romantic!" Lucky for me, he just smiled and kept on driving (yes, I was even trying to get out of it as we drove to the chapel). Not that I didn’t want to be his wife, but what was the big hurry? I would’ve been just as happy to put it off for another year or so. Of course, if he had wanted to put it off for another year, I’m quite certain I would have thrown a temper tantrum and run sobbing to the bathroom, snarling to myself what a bastard he was.

That’s just the kind of gal I am.

Anyway, things certainly turned out for the best. We did not, as I’m sure you’re wondering, get married in costume. We talked about dressing up as Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, but in the end he wore a nice shirt and shorts, and I wore a nice sweater and slacks. The spud was more dressed up than either of us. We got married in the "Madison Wedding Chapel", which is a tiny building about five miles from where we live. The minister was a sweet woman, and her assistant had taken care of ordering our wedding cake. The cake was incredibly good. After the ceremony, we came home, ate a small piece of cake, and then Fred took the spud trick-or-treating.

Simple. That’s the way we like things.

That’s how we spent our anniversary: simply. We woke up around 6:30, lazed around and talked, had breakfast, watched the "RE/MAX Tour of Homes" show, and then pretty much puttered around the house for the rest of the day. Fred watched a movie with the spud and tried to take a nap. I cleaned up the kitchen, read some magazines, took a nap. We ordered dinner from Allen’s, a fairly new restaurant in the area (not the greatest food). It was nice. I liked it.

And without getting too sappy, I must say that marrying Fred was probably one of the smartest moves I’ve made. We actually — can you believe it?– talk to each other. We argue sometimes, and we’ve had a fight or two. But the most amazing thing is that we communicate with each other. If there’s a problem, we talk it out. He makes me laugh, and I make him laugh, sometimes even on purpose. Best of all, he puts up with me. PMS, headache, just general hostility at the world, and he puts up with all of it from me.

Could I be any luckier?

Alright, enough of the hearts and flowers. I see you rolling your eyes out there.

The spud got a pretty good haul last night. She and Fred were gone for about an hour, and covered a good part of the neighborhood. She came back with her plastic pumpkin stuffed full of candy and other stuff. One person even gave her a full-size container of playdough. We had plenty of kids come to the house, too. I actually got rid of about 2/3 of the candy I bought yesterday morning at Wal-Mart — did I mention I went nuts buying candy, because we weren’t sure how much we’d need? Better to have too much than not enough, is my philosophy.

That’s probably obvious.

There’s not a lot more to report. Fred and I are going to go watch Arlington Road here in a little while, since everything on TV is in rerun in preparation for November sweeps. Here’s a pic I took of Spanky this afternoon. Is it obvious that he’s secretly (or probably not so secretly) my favorite? That’s ’cause he’s the only one we’ve had since he was a tiny little baby.

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So even though it’s not Halloween, the area kiddies are doing the trick-or-treat thang tonight. We live in a fairly large subdivision with a bunch of kids, and until this year, they had a deal where all the kids gather at the subdivision office and then go trick-or-treating in a big group, with the parents. It’s safer that way, I guess, and you don’t have to keep jumping up to answer the doorbell and hand out candy; they come and go in one group. This year, due to lack of interest, they didn’t do it. So Fred took the spud out around the neigborhood, and I sat on the tailgate of my truck in the garage doorway and handed out candy.

I was lucky when I was growing up; we lived on base, and everyone in base housing has kids, so everyone hands out candy. I recall being 8 or 9 and going out with my sister and a few friends, and getting tons of candy. Then we went home, dropped off our bags, and went back out. Between the four kids in my family, we probably could have provided a third-world country with a year’s worth of candy.

I know my Mom snuck into our rooms while we were at school and stole the good Halloween candy. I’m sure I’ll do the same with the spud. It’s only right to keep up the tradition, you know.

We watched "Never Been Kissed" this afternoon. Cute movie, but it was really hard to watch the scenes where everyone picked on Josie (the Drew Barrymore character). Not that I can relate to that; I wasn’t a geek in high school. I wasn’t popular either. I was just one of those kids who no one really bothers, and I am so glad in retrospect for that. We didn’t have popular girls like the ones in the movie. I mean, we had popular girls, they just weren’t those dimwitted, all-surface, super-c*nt types from the movie. One of the most popular girls who springs to mind, Joan Foster, was not only pretty, she was nice and extremely smart. The other two who spring to mind were nice enough to the behemoth, socially unskilled me, but we weren’t friends or anything. It probably helped that I didn’t give much of a shit about what other people thought of me. If they wanted to pick on me, they didn’t get much of a reaction other than a snarl and a shrug. I also never had a yen to be popular, so that probably also helped my high school experience to be the joy it was.

I’m sure I’m supressing some horrid events, but for the life of me, aside from one of Tory Ricker’s friends grabbing my ass as I was walking down the hallway when I was a sophomore, nothing springs to mind. (Side note: I did nothing, and that just pisses me off. I wish I could go back and smack the shit out of that jerk. I hope his life is hellish).

Anyway, while we were watching the movie, one of the airhead popular bitches says to Drew Barrymore, "Who do you like better, Betty or Veronica?" Fred said (to me, not Drew–he knows she can’t hear him, or at least she pretends she can’t) "I always liked Veronica." Immediately, I snarled "That’s because she’s a whore!" Whoa. Even I didn’t expect that. I had no idea I felt such hostility toward the cartoon, but as I think about it she sure did play games with poor Archie, didn’t she? The spoiled rotten rich bitch.

Here’s the spud, from tonight:

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Oh, glorious Friday! Why can’t every other day be Friday? No work for two more days, and I couldn’t be happier.

I will be so glad when we turn our clocks back this Sunday (not that we’re going to get up at 2 am and do it, you understand). Every morning as I drive into work the sun is at the perfect level to shine right into my eyes, trying it’s damnedest to burn holes in my retinas. Sunglasses don’t help, and the visor doesn’t hang low enough to block the sun. The only solution I’ve come up with is to stare down at the bumper of the person in front of me rather than directly into the sun.

The worst part is when I’m sitting at the red light to turn left to go down the street our office building is on. The sun is to the left of the light. I have to take quick little peeks every few seconds to check the light color, and by the time the light turns green, I have tiny dark spots in the middle of my vision, which makes me panic that I’m about to go blind.

And going blind would just suck.

From the "Holy Cow" files: Al from Nova Notes linked to me! I was checking out my brand new shiny nedstat page, and saw the referral. I was so excited, I ran up to Fred’s office and danced around as I told him about it. Pretty exciting stuff, that.

The spud is going to be a vampire for Halloween (hey, she’s only 11, she’s got a few years before she’s too old!). Luckily, she chose an easy costume. Black turtleneck, black leggings, cape, slicked-back hair, black lips, fake blood, fake teeth, and she’s all set. I guess Fred is going to accompany her door to door, and I’ll sit at home and run up and down the stairs to dole out the candy. Which I haven’t bought yet, so tomorrow it will be an early-morning trip to (can you guess?) Wal-Mart for the spud and I.

Speaking of the spud — and Wal-Mart, actually — she informed us late yesterday afternoon that in lieu of a Halloween party at school today, they would have a "hoe-down" party, and everyone should dress farmer-like. Oh, she knew about this for days beforehand, but didn’t bother telling me about it until the very last moment. Sadly, we didn’t really have anything farmer-like around the old homestead, and so Fred took her to Wal-Mart. It’s my policy that if she waits until the night before to let me know she needs something that requires a special trip, she’s pretty much shit out of luck. I don’t "do" the last-minute dash to Wal-Mart at 9pm. Yes, I am a horrible bitch of a mother, but she knows the rules. Fred, however, is a big softy. They went out and bought a flannel shirt, a couple of red bandanas, and a way-too-big pair of jeans (Fred didn’t know the spud’s size, and consequently purchased a size 14 when a 10 probably would have done).

This is what she ended up looking like:

She looks mighty pink in this picture, but I swear, aside from the freckles she put on with a brown marker, she’s not wearing makeup. If you look over her right shoulder, you’ll see the Titanic picture Fred won on Ebay. An online friend had a friend who took Leo out of the pictures and put his (Fred’s friend) picture in it’s place. I think Fred ended up bidding around $12 for it. It’s pretty funny, and I’ll think about taking a closeup picture of it sometime soon. It’s hanging over Fred’s computer, which is located directly across the room from mine. We’re a three-computer family, and that’s the way we like it.

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I’m narrow-minded? I don’t see you and your wife having an open marriage." To which Fred replied, "Having an open marriage just means that you don’t love your wife enough to commit to her alone." This just apparently struck a big nerve, because Dorkus told Fred to (this is a direct quote) "Fuck off and IDE!" and then left IRC. As far as I’m concerned, to each his own. If Dorkus and his wife want an open marriage, they should go to it. But if Dorkus is going to brag all over the place about how cool he is because his wife lets him fuck whomever he wants, he’s got to be prepared for people who think it’s bullshit to tell him it’s bullshit. The funniest thing is that Fred only said it to annoy Dorkus; he didn’t expect to hit that nerve. I suspect that either Dorkus or his wife is not as into the whole open marriage thing as they’d like to believe. So I was minding my own business this morning, web-surfing, paying bills, the usual, when Fred directed me to this (link removed) site. I love that the models’ reasons for selling their eggs range "from “to not be dependent on a man,” to “I want to help others.”." Oh, you want to help others? Gosh, I don’tsee you giving your eggs to unfortunate, infertile couples or offering to give the money you’ll be making to charity. I don’t see that anywhere. And just who the Hell is bidding on these eggs? Ron Harris claims to have a valid offer of $42,000. Who out there is saying to themselves "Ooooh, I want a pretty, vapid child!"? Yeah, I know, low blow, but I’ve never seen a model who didn’t strike me as all surface, no substance. I mean, did you see Fair Game, for crying out loud? And Cindy Crawford’s supposed to be the talented model. Anyway, back to the models selling their eggs. The quote that just got all over me* is: Harris, who has three children from four marriages, said its natural for parents to want attractive children. He said that each time his wife was pregnant he hoped for a cute baby. On the third try, he said, he got one. “My third child is beautiful,” he said, adding that he didn’t favor that child over the others. I wonder how the other two feel about that. I know that if my father told the world "Yeah, I hoped for cute children. My daughter Debbie is good-looking. The others could scare paint off a wall, though", I’d probably be on the phone, asking the Menendez Brothers for advice (which, obviously, I wouldn’t take, since they got caught and all). Okay, rant over. Y’all have a good night, now! (*"got all over me" is a phrase i picked up from fred. whether it’s a southern phrase or a fred original, i’m not sure. it means "really pissed me off.") —–]]>

Yesterday was the Spud’s birthday. She turned 11! When I hugged her before she left for school, I mock-sobbed and said "My babyyyyyyyyyyy’s growing up!". She laughed.

We took her out to eat at Landry’s Seafood Restaurant, in Huntsville, for dinner. For her last two birthdays, she had sleepover birthday parties, and I’ve always ended up pissed as Hell because when you get a bunch of 10 year-old (or 9 year-old) girls together in a room, they simply will not shut their big mouths and go to sleep. Last year, Fred spent the night in a hotel so he wouldn’t have to be around for the big event. At 2 am, the girls (who were sleeping in the basement) were still going at it, chattering and shrieking and laughing. I stood at the top of the stairs and bellowed "You girls had better be quiet, or I’m going to start calling your parents!" This, you understand, was after telling them every five minutes for the previous three hours to keep it down.

Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t care if they went to sleep. Hell, as far as I was concerned, they could stay up all night. We have an alarm system, and there was no way they were going to be sneaking outside or anything. I just wanted to be able to go to sleep myself, and even through the earplugs I wore I could hear their chatterings and shriekings and laughing.

So last year at 2 am, after I yelled that I was going to start calling parents if the girls didn’t start being quiet, I picked up the phone and dialed Fred at his hotel. What I didn’t realize until the next morning is, they thought I was calling their parents! I should have thought of it hours before.

Anyway, we went to Landry’s last night for dinner, which kind of sucked. We all love seafood, but the Landry’s dishes leave something to be desired, though their oysters are damn good. Kind of hard to screw up raw oysters, I’m guessing.

After Landry’s, we went home and did the cake thing, then she opened her presents. May I say that the child gets an UNGODLY amount of presents. My parents go nuts buying her presents, as does her father, and Fred and I kind of do too, I guess. I was lucky if I got a third of what she gets, when I was her age. She has too much damn stuff, too. There’s not enough space in her room for all the toys she has, and she rarely plays with any of it. She doesn’t appreciate all the stuff she has, either, not a bit of it.

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We’re expanding our offices here at work (where I’m updating from today. hi.), and my head is pounding. My office, luckily, is next to the space where they’re using cement nailguns and other noisy tools to put down metal strips. They stapled a sheet of black plastic across the gaping doorway which, you know, really does a heck of a job cutting the noise level. Not. Now someone’s back there hacking up a lung, and it’s not the sort of environment conducive to my working hard.

Actually, I have done some work this morning; I paid about fifteen bills, updated an ultra-ugly excel spreadsheet (which I did not design, thankyouverymuch. my excel spreadsheets are visions of loveliness), listened to Fred and a co-worker discuss what the bloody, gross-looking thing on the back of the toilet is, checked out the bloody, gross-looking thing for myself, and had a breakfast of Raisin Nut Bran. I think the bloody, gross-looking thing is a bloody booger, personally, but the co-worker prefers to think it’s from the feces family. None of us have bothered to wipe it off, you’ll note. (It’s not on the seat, it’s on the side of the tank by the flushing handle) All I know is that I was not responsible for it’s existence.

 

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Okay, kiddies, it’s way past my bedtime, so tonight it’s gonna be short and sweet.

It was a busier day at work than I expected. Usually Mondays are pretty slow, and I sit around and surf for most of the day. Today, though, I had to get a "new hire" kit together, because we (can you guess?) hired someone new. It was a matter of getting together all the paperwork, and then realizing we were low on all the forms (W-4, I-9, A-4), and panicking, trying to remember where I’d gotten them in the first place (hey, gimme a break, it was 3 years ago), and searching the web for forms I could download and print out. You know, the usual thrills.

Fred went to Best Buy yesterday (Best Buy is to Fred what Wal-Mart is to me), and drooled over the computers. He came thisclose to buying two new computers, and then chickened out and came home. He told me about the computers he’d seen "They have blahblahblah hard drives, and blahblahblah processors, and blahblahblah!" he said excitedly.

"Computer fast?" I grunted, trying to translate it into my kind of terms,

"Yes!" he practically shrieked, masking his impatience with my dumbassness. "VERY fast!"

"Take credit card. Buy computer. Big monitor. Go fast. Go buy. Now."

So he left to go back to Best Buy, but by the time he got there, it was closed.

"I guess it’s a sign," he sighed.

"No, if you go tomorrow and they don’t have any, that will be a sign," I informed him.

Today, he went to Best Buy and purchased us two HP blahblahblah computers with blahblahblah and blahblahblah; one for him, one for me.

Me like.

(Updating may be a tad sporadic over the next few days, ’cause I have to back everything up to floppies, which makes my current piece o’ crap computer freeze up at random moments for no foreseeable reason whatsoever. After I do that, I have to hook up the new computer and download programs and blahblahblah. If you email me — and if you haven’t, you damn well should!– and I don’t get right back to you, rest assured that I’ll get back to you as soon as Robynly possible).

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Ya gotta love Sundays. I actually got to sleep in this morning ’til 7, if you can believe it. It was nice to wake up to a light bedroom; usually when I wake up in the morning my bedroom is still completely dark. Anyway, Fred woke me up by crawling into bed with me — we sleep in separate bedrooms — and we lay in bed and talked and, uh, did other things.

So, here’s the pumpkin the spud painted for Halloween:

It’s sitting at the top of our front steps, next to a pot of mostly-dead morning glories. Pretty cute, isn’t it? I think the blood dripping off the teeth is a pretty good touch. My daughter, the artiste.

And while I’m sharing pictures, here’s one of Spanky on my desk this afternoon, peeking out from behind my computer. My desk is a total shitheap, because I’m Robyn and I’m a slob.

Fred went shopping at Best Buy yesterday and purchased a new vacuum cleaner (Hoover WindTunnel), and an under-the-cupboard can opener. He then went to Office Depot and bought a new chair for his desk (Italian leather, horribly expensive, and very nice), and then he went to another store, and bought some new shirts, pants, and Joe Boxer shorts. How’s that for fair? I spend all day at the soccer fields, and he gets to do all kinds of shopping. Hmph.

When I arrived home from the second soccer game yesterday, I was in a horrid mood, which Fred tried to assuage by offering to give me money to buy clothes for myself. I just love that man, have I mentioned that?

After Fred and I were showered and dressed this morning, and after Fred had made the usual Sunday breakfast of pancakes for the spud, we sat and watched the "RE/Max Showcase of Homes" show on TV. Boy, were we drooling over some of them! Why are we looking at homes, for crying out loud; we’ve only been in this house for less than two years!

I spent the rest of the day lazing around, reading, napping, and watching the remake of Psycho. I’ve never seen the original, so I don’t have that to compare it to. I liked it, but it was weird the way everyone sounded like characters from a 1960 movie but there were ’90s touches (like Julianne Moore’s walkman). Vince Vaughn was a perfectly creepy Norman.

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Why we don’t need another cat by Fred My wife is, in fact, right about the fact that we’ve crossed over the line of weirdness by having more than two cats. What she fails to see is the second line of demarcation, the “people who have more than four cats and whose house always smells of feline feces” line. That’s a line I don’t wish to cross. First, we’re far too young to have five cats; hasn’t she noticed that only old single women and lesbians have more than four cats? My wife is obviously not a lesbian, unless she’s been hiding something from me. If she is a lesbian, how come I’ve never been allowed to watch? But I digress. As far as single old women go, I plan neither to divorce nor die in the foreseeable future. Second, studies (I’ve seen them on TV) show that more than five cats exhibit a pack mentality. In fact, just the other night I saw a documentary on TV which showed (possibly in an “America’s Most Wanted”-style re-enactment) a group of angry cats attack a defenseless old woman (see previous paragraph) just for running out of milk and trying to substitute some non-dairy creamer mixed with water! Need I really say more about this point? Finally, Robyn fails to forget the persnickety nature of our existing furballs. Spot, for one, would have diarrhea for at LEAST two weeks, and probably three. Spanky wouldn’t be terribly affected, except that he’d continually be surprised, since he’d most likely forget there was a new cat from day to day. Stimpy would show his displeasure by befouling any spare piece of carpet with his feces (then trying to cover it, and producing some designs reminiscent of the more complex crop circles from a few years ago). Last but not least, there’s Snoopy, who would proceed to defecate and urinate on my bed with reckless abandon, as he does whenever there’s a serious change of lifestyle. Tell me I’m right. Fred Okay, first of all if anyone reading this is going to take offense at the “lesbians or old single women” line, you need to email Fred about it, not me. Besides, I’m fairly sure he’s kidding. Secondly, I still want a kitten, damnit! I. Want. A. Kitten. Damnit. The boys would just have to deal with it. Anyone have any orange tabby kittens to give away? (PS: If you didn’t get the joke in the second paragraph of Fred’s essay let me know, and I’ll clue you in.) I’ve been emailing back and forth with Audrey (who was kind enough to let me have her URL), and I’ve really been enjoying it! We seem to share the same opinions on certain things, and I really like reading her journal. Go read it. Go on, now. I’ll wait here. Wasn’t it great? I just love the tone of her entries; it seems like she writes the way she talks, (though I haven’t talked to her; it’s just a guess) and I look for that in a journal. Bookmark it, now, so you don’t get all frantic when you’re wanting to read some more of it. So today pretty much sucked. I had to get up at 5:45, because the crockpot beef stew recipe I wanted to make for dinner tonight had to cook for 10 to 12 hours. I threw everything in the crockpot and went back to bed, hoping to catch an hour of sleep from the jaws of Hell. This quest was made impossible by order of King Spanky, who insisted upon climbing on top of me and pressing his ice-cold, Tidy Cat-scented paw to my cheek. Repeatedly. That cat has the coldest damn paws I’ve ever had the privilege of feeling on my face. I gave up and rolled out of bed around 8 and took my shower, did some more laundry, ate a quick breakfast of strawberry Pop-Tarts Snack Sticks, and ran out the door with the spud, because she had a soccer game this morning (tournament games are this weekend and next). The game ended with a tied score, which meant there had to be a shoot-out (5 girls from each team line up and take turns trying to kick the ball into the goal; whoever ends the shoot-out with the highest number of goals wins the game. Or something. I wasn’t paying close attention, so I’m pretty much guessing.). The first shootout ended in a tie, which led to the second shootout, which also ended in a tie, and led to the third shootout. The other team won. When the spud got in the truck, I found out (to my horror, might I add), that she had another game at 2:00. Today. Oh, was I peeved. Did I know that I would be spending practically my entire day at the soccer field? Why no, thank you very much, I did not. And it’s all Fred’s fault. How?, you want to know. How can it possibly be the fault of that sweet man who made some very good points in his essay above? Well, I’ll tell you. Listen closely, my friends, and I will tell you. Last night, as I wandered weary into the house, tired from my long day of web-surfing, movie-watching, and grocery-getting, he waylaid me. Would you rather take her to her game tomorrow, or clean the house? he asked. And it was a difficult question for me to answer. It was his turn to take her to her game, but he was offering to clean the house, top to bottom, if I’d take her to her game. I hate sitting in the truck waiting for the spud’s interminable soccer games to end (don’t give me that disapproving look, reader. I can see the whole game from my truck, which I park right next to the soccer field, so shut the Hell up). But more than that, oh yes, eons more than that, I loathe cleaning the house. I hate it with a passion. So he suckered me in. I asked for the terms of the agreement (“You’ll clean the whole house? I don’t have to do anything? You promise?”) and then signed in blood. He was done with his cleaning by 9 am, and I spent hours and hours sitting in my truck, watching incredibly long, incredibly dull (yes, I love the spud with all my heart, but watching never-ending soccer games just makes me want to gouge my eyes out. the cuteness of seeing those little 10- and 11-year olds running around has long worn off) soccer games. He’s the devil, I tell you! To his credit, he did start cleaning at 5:45. But still. So after the second soccer game (they lost), I came home, lounged around for half an hour or so, and finished making dinner (which I thought was good but got 2 thumbs down from Princess Fred). An hour or so after dinner, Fred’s dad and stepmom came over to watch “The Blair Witch Project” with us. I saw it in the theater, and yesterday when he got home with the new dvd, Fred watched the ending, but neither Jim nor Jean had seen any of it. They weren’t impressed. I still like it. I think Fred liked it. After they left, I changed back into my crappy, faded old t-shirt and took my bra off. ]]>