Upon beginning this entry, I realize that I’m in need of a banner for January. Anyone feeling creative?
Happy New Year, one and all!
I hope you didn’t party too much last night. We made a run to Wal-Mart after Fred got home from work to get some something-or-other that makes it so we get local channels in high definition (I cannot tell you how much the very thought thrills me. Mostly I cannot tell you that because it’d be a lie. I don’t give that much of a shit about high definition TV really. Shh, don’t tell Fred!). He hooked it up, I did Snackin’! Time!, we ate leftovers (chicken and rice casserole, sweet potato casserole, hash brown casserole. Are we sensing a casserole theme here?), I puttered around the house and then online, we watched TV, I picked pecans out of the shell, we went to bed. Well, he went to bed, I stayed up a little while to read, then it was lights out by 10:15.
We live the high life, indeed.
So, the pecans. Fred’s been picking up pecans for the last few months. We didn’t really get many pecans last year, but this year it’s been a pecan-bonanza, and after checking things out, Fred decided that the pecans the tree in the old chicken yard are putting out are the really good ones, so he’s only picking up those pecans. After he’d gotten two and a half buckets of pecans, we took them to the co-op to have them cracked, and last weekend we picked them up. Now, since Fred picked them up off the ground, it’s my job to shell them.
I can’t describe to you the sheer and utter thrill of shelling pecans. Because it would be a lie, and it’s messy and it’s dirty, but I have to say – those are some fine fucking pecans. We have one more bucket to pick up this weekend, and the pecans are pretty much off the trees, so once I get these three and a half buckets done, I’ll be done for a while.
And no, I’m not selling them. I’m sticking them in the freezer for future use. Next year’s sweet potato casserole will be particularly fine with our own pecans sprinkled across the top!
Yesterday I left the house mid-morning to take the recyclables to the recycling center, get groceries, stop by L0we’s to use a couple of coupons my sister’d given me, go to the bank, and then swing by the post office.
You ever feel like when all you want to do is get your shit done and get home ’cause you’ve got things to do (laundry, vacuuming, spending time with the kittens, cleaning the kitchen), everyone’s conspiring against you? The lady ahead of me at the grocery store had to write a check AND OF COURSE YOU CANNOT BEGIN WRITING THE CHECK UNTIL YOU KNOW THE TOTAL, I BELIEVE WE’VE DISCUSSED MY FEELINGS ON THIS MATTER, and then she had to conversate with the cashier about clementines and how her granddaughter loves them so and I swear to god when I am in the watchtower shooting down random strangers, I will be screaming “SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET OUT OF MY WAY!!!!!!!!”
This might sound like a lie, but I swear to god that I don’t usually have a problem with slow people, or people being chatty, but I didn’t particularly want to be out running errands, I just wanted to get the fuck home, and thus I approached stroke-having territory at the utter glacial movements of the cashier once his BFF the clementine lady was on her way.
Then one of the managers came to bag my groceries (let me take a moment to thank god that Publix had many lanes open instead of the one lane Porkkly Dorkkly regularly had open, even on the days when they were super busy) because they were short on baggers, and he and the cashier had to yukk it up that a manager was bagging.
At least he didn’t give me a hard time about letting me carry my own bags out to my car. Why, some of these young whippersnappers are downright INSISTENT on helping me out to the car when I have, like, two bags. I AM NOT AS FRAIL AND DODDERING AS I LOOK, PEOPLE.
Then I headed to Lowe’s to use the coupons Debbie had given me, since they expired yesterday. Both were for $10 off a $25 (or more) purchase. On my first trip in, I bought a new weather station, since the one I bought at LL Bean’s a few years ago has died and I can’t seem to resuscitate it. I took that out to the car, then went back inside and bought some storage containers – one to use as a litter box in the foster kitten room, since all the cats in the house seem to use the damn thing and Spanky (and, I suspect, other cats) are what I term “high pee-ers” and require a high litter box.
When I was walking around Lowe’s, I looked in my purse to look for the note I’d written regarding what size storage container I thought I needed (specifically, how tall), and realized I had forgotten to stop at the bank on my way by.
So after I left Lowe’s, I went to the bank, and as I pulled up to the drive-thru, I was pleased to see that for once it wasn’t packed – just one car in each lane – so I pulled up into the closest lane, and I sat there for several minutes and THEN the douchebag in front of me finished filling out his goddamn deposit slip or whatever the fuck he was doing and put the container in the thingy to send his paperwork into the bank and I rolled my eyes and groaned and moaned, and turned and looked to see if I could back out and pull into one of the other now-empty lanes, but someone was behind me, so I was stuck.
Which is when I wished I carry golf clubs around with me so I could go Nicholson on his ass. But I didn’t – the most lethal item in my car was the package of frozen spinach – so I decided to just relax, since this was the (almost) last item on my list of errands.
Note to myself: trips to the bank would probably go a lot faster if I just parked and walked my ass inside. It certainly can’t go any SLOWER.
I managed to forget to stop at the post office, but it was no big deal – just a Netflix movie I wanted to send back – and then I got home and spent the rest of the day puttering around the house.
Today, I think I’ll get my Christmas decorations taken down and put away. This will take very little time, because I didn’t do much decorating this year. Mostly I just put out a few Santa figurines, hung some ornaments through the house, and put some fake poinsettias on the front porch and a wreath on the door. Maybe next year I’ll figure out a way to hang some Christmas lights inside – the lights have always been my favorite part of Christmas.
Tomorrow, Delmar and Lem are going to the pet store. (Marion and Claudette are staying here a while longer for some extra attention.) Hopefully they’ll be snatched up right away and be in their new homes tomorrow night. I’m not counting on it, but a girl can be helpful, right?
I was pretty surprised that they reacted to my sister and nephew’s visit by hiding from them – in fact, Delmar and Claudette spent most of their time for the first few days hiding under the covers on my bed. After a few days, they started coming out – Lem, especially – so hopefully they’ll adjust quickly to being in a cage at the pet store.
They’re both such good kitties – I can’t decide whether it’s Delmar who’s my favorite, or Lem – that they’ll make really good cats. Y’all keep your fingers crossed that they get adopted quickly, won’t you?
This is going to be hard – it always is – but I have to trust that they’ll end up in fantastic homes with people who spoil them as rotten as we do.
More pics over at Love & Hisses.
She loves her Tommy. No – she LOVES her Tommy. And you better not come too close, because he is HER Tommy. Not yours. HERS.
Previously
2008: It’s amazing how well I sleep without cats around to wake me up.
2007: Happy New Year!
2006: No entry.
2005: Happy New Year!
2004: Happy New Year!
2003: Happy New Year!
2002: Happy New Year!
2001: No entry.
2000: Happy New Year.