All Or Nothing

This One's For You, Baby

First of all, I have been admonished to publicly apologize for something I (allegedly) did.  So let me get that out of the way:

Cody, I am sorry for serving you pliers in your cereal bowl this morning instead of actual cereal.  I thought that perhaps I would do something to better help you SEE the pliers, since they have been lying smack in the middle of the breakfast table for the past five days and I thought that perhaps your eyesight was failing you.  Or that you maybe you thought a little fairy followed you around to pick up such items that you haphazardly leave around the house.  And you know, I don't know if we've ever actually talked about it, so I don't know if you realize that there is no fairy.  Sad!  But true.  And I can't hold you responsible for information you don't have.   So I put the pliers there in good faith.  However, I can see now that the pliers truly WERE invisible in Cody-Vision, and that it ISN'T your fault you can't see them, and that it wasn't a big deal ANYWAY, and that if I see them laying there I should just put them up myself, GEEZ.  Also that your cereal tasted like pliers, and that you don't appreciate it.  All points well taken!

Moving on.

But not moving on to subjects other than Cody.

The other day, Cody lost his keys.  This is not an abnormal occurrence altogether, but it was (as these things usually are) an inconvenience.  Luckily, we (me) in the Carter household are prepared for such events and carry extra keys just in case.  I've had to drive to sandwich shops in the middle of a workday, Cody's office in the middle of the night, and Cody's parents house in the middle of a nap, all to retrieve and/or deposit the correct keys to Cody.  I don't mind.  I have this annoying little habit of not checking the mailbox for a week and then dragging all the bills out that are due in, like, 15 minutes and throwing them all at Cody and running away with my hands over my ears.  It's really endearing.  So I can handle a little key-lossage every once in a while.

So anyway, Cody's lost his keys again.  We had seriously just come into the house from eating lunch or something, and he had been driving, using the keys.  We walked outside to get the dog, and then, less than five minutes later, Cody was scrambling around, claiming that he had lost his keys, and could I please help him find them instead of just throwing the ball for the dog?  I don't remember where he had to go, but it was urgent and immediate and important that he not be late.  And I needed my car for something, and so I told him to just use the extra set of keys.  Which was when he informed me that he didn't know where they were, because he had used them just the week before when he lost his keys (in a separate and totally unrelated losing incident), but then he found his keys and put the spare somewhere and couldn't remember exactly where.

That's when I (helpfully!) suggested that he couldn't have lost his keys; that it was completely impossible for anyone to lose something in such a short amount of time.  All he had to do was think back on exactly what he had done since stepping out of the car, and in one of those steps, he would find his keys.  This technique is referred to in our household as the Jedi Mind Trick.  I'm not sure how this moniker came about except that it had something to do with me telling Cody that tracing your steps backwards is a widely used device for finding lost items, and him saying something like "Who can remember crap like that?  I'm not a Jedi Knight."

So, we were Jedi Mind Tricking it.  Which wasn't too daunting, given that we had been outside the car (which had been driven with The Keys) for all of five minutes.  We traced back all the steps, and what was really awesome about the whole exercise was how Cody kept reminding me that A) the Jedi Mind Trick never works and B) he was really late, could I please just give him my keys?   Which I would have happily done, not being some kind of hateful shrew, but I really did have things I needed to do that afternoon and they weren't the kind of things that I could accomplish on a bicycle.  If I even had a bicycle.  Which I do not.

Eventually time won out (doesn't it always) and I had to relinquish my keys.  I was more than a little concerned that I would never see them again and that I might be trapped in my house forever, given the fact that Cody had just beaten all previously existing records and become the World Champion of Losing Everything.   I spent the rest of the afternoon (read: about 30 minutes) looking for his keys, treasuring the thought that maybe my day wouldn't be a total waste if I could only find the keys and then gloat later about how he just hadn't looked hard enough.  But I couldn't find those suckers anywhere.

I was truly amazed.  All he had done was walk from the car to the backyard, stand on the porch for a couple of minutes, and mess with the newly painted screen door.  And then freak out about how his keys had disappeared.  I usually scoff at Cody's absentmindedness, but this time I had sympathize.  I had looked everywhere, really carefully, and had come up with absolutely nothing.  The keys were gone.

We eventually gave up, and made copies of all the keys (again) and moved on with life.  A couple of weeks later I called Cody from work to tell him that I was stuck with a customer and would be a little later than expected.  He responded with this:

"Well, when you get home, you are not going to believe what I found.  Seriously, it is so incredible, you will not believe it."

Of course this piqued my curiosity and after fruitlessly begging him to just tell me what he'd found over the phone, I hurried home.  I found Cody in the backyard, where he took one look at me, said nothing, and held out his hand.  This is what he'd found (click to enlarge):

As you've probably guessed, those are The Keys, wrapped up in a ball of painter's tape, found in the deepest recesses of the woods behind our house.  Apparently, as Cody was talking to me on the screen porch for those two minutes, he had peeled tape off the screen door, balled up the tape in the same hand as he held the keys, and thrown the whole thing into the woods.  All without noticing the keys.  In his hand.

I've got to hand it to the guy.  That is impressive.  I don't think many of us could aspire to be that absentminded, even if we spent the rest of our lives trying.

At First You Think I Need A Segue, But Then You Remember The Bit About Mike Tyson

This weekend was Cody's birthday.  Everyone: Yay, happy birthday, Cody!  Anyway, it was a wonderful weekend.  Full of nothing, nothing, and more nothing.

Actually, that's not quite true, although doing nothing is what stands out as the best part (surprising? not really).  Friday night we rented a couple of movies and went out to dinner, and Saturday I went in to work for a bit and then we spent the rest of the day at my parent's abandoned (for the weekend) house, swimming with Lydah (read: coaxing and pleading with her to come near the edge of the pool, which resulted in frantic barking and terrified pacing - RANDOM LITTLE GIRL WHO THREW MY DOG INTO THE POOL, I BLAME YOU), and downloading (then subsequently playing) old NES games on the Wii. 

Now this, the NES downloading, is a post-worthy subject.   First and foremost, do you have a Wii?  If you said no, well, I still love you, but you probably should go on and get one here pretty quickly.  If you said yes?  Well, you know I loved you before, but now I'll probably not be able to contain myself.  Because playing Super Mario Brothers on a big screen with nothing more than a simple point and click?  IS AWESOME.  No jerry-rigging the old NES console by propping the gigantic power supply up with a book so that it doesn't burn a hole in the wood floor.  No ejecting and re-inserting the game cartridge, all while intermittently blowing the "dust" out of the innards of the cartridge and praying that the game might actually work.  No reset button carousel.  Just point and click, baby, point and click.  We downloaded Punch Out!!, formerly known as Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! but apparently changed to protect either the profit margins of the boxer or the reputation of the game.  Probably the latter.  You can only bite off so many ears before people start pretending their alliances with you never really existed.  But it does seem rather cold, removing Tyson's name in 2007 from a game that originated sometime in the mid 1980's.   Plus, the new Tyson, the fighter you're trying to get to the entire game?  Is named Mr. Dream.  I think they surely could have come up with something more impressive than that.

We also got Excitebike and Mario Kart 64, which is possibly the Best Game Ever, and certainly the only game I Could Definitely Beat You At.  No, REALLY.  I can.  Yes, you too.  Yes, even if you played every single day of your college career for 8 hours per day.  No, it doesn't matter if you won some online tournament.  I CAN BEAT YOU.  It is my one true talent, Mario Kart 64.  We also got Ninja Gaiden, a game which I have never played and have no interest in whatsoever.  Stupid Cody, filling up his Wii memory with games I don't even like.  And on his birthday, too.  Geez.

After all that strenuous downloading (can you imagine that it only takes, like, 8 SECONDS to download the entire Super Mario Brothers game??  Seriously?), we went to eat dinner with some friends, then to our house for some drinks and cake, and then to see Ocean's Thirteen.  Which, at the risk of sounding like every single other person who has seen and offered some review of the move, was better than Ocean's Twelve and worse than Ocean's Eleven.  So there you go!  Some continuity in your movie reviews.  It is hard to care about the technical merits of a movie, however, when every Ocean's is completely full of exceptionally handsome and suave men who are scripted to be so confident and cool in their every line that they absolutely ooze sex appeal.  I wish someone would write me a script like that to go by, just for a day.  And then someone else could follow me around with a camera, just to catch all my interactee's looks of awe and amazement.

After that was over, we adjourned to the movie theater parking lot, discussing various aspects of the movie (yes, that Brody nose DID play!), and encountered a man who seemed to be drunkenly stumbling around.  He fell down, and since we were still a ways off, we couldn't tell if a drunken friend had jokingly pushed him, if he had just tripped over his own feet, or something else.  It turns out it was definitely Something Else.  As we drew nearer to Drunk, we noticed that he had definitely been pushed, and not at all jokingly, by a drunk female who was sitting in a parked car.  He rushed back at her (as quickly as a drunk can rush) and PUNCHED HER IN THE FACE.  What? 

Here is where I sound like a sheltered, privileged little snot: while I have, in the past, lived in places where this sort of behavior, while NEVER condoned, would at least not come as a total shock, the place I live right now is not one of them.  Like, at all.  The place I live right now is one of those horribly annoying places where the only decision you'll make while car shopping is which BMW is the right size for your lifestyle RIGHT NOW.  You can always trade up later!  Where people send you nasty notes if your lawn is not pristine within a month of your moving in.  Where high-end boutiques flourish and thrive (ummm.....yeah).

Not that I harbor any idealistic views that the types of people who live in Upper Middle Class America are any more happy or less dysfunctional than anyone else.  Hardly.   However, around here, you usually see these dysfunctions manifest themselves in the form of spending as much of your soon to be ex-husband's money as fast as you can, or cheating on your wife, getting caught, and then buying her a lakehouse complete with a $200,000 budget specifically designated for her "decorating needs".  It's just not that common to see a really drunk guy beating the absolute hell out of his girl in the parking lot.

Of course Cody and his brother and friend all ran over to the guy and asked him if he wouldn't mind, to maybe please stop slamming his wife/girlfriend's legs in the door, over and over.  They asked just like that, too.  I promise.   The guy immediately stopped with the leg-mangling, but didn't stop with his verbal abuse at all.  Minutes later, the police pulled up, summoned by a concerned passerby before we even saw the scene, and they stepped in and separated the two drunks.  The girl, with a quickly-swelling black eye and a pretty obvious limp, stepped to the side with one officer, while a few others attended to the original Drunk.  Since the officer with the girl happened to be standing relatively near me, I could hear bits and pieces of their conversation.

Officer:  So, these witnesses are telling me he was hitting you.  And I see your black eye there.  Was he hitting you?

Girl:  No, he was NOT.  I don't know why they told you that, either.  He wasn't hitting me at all.

Officer:  Well, how did you get that swollen eye, then?  I can see it swelling, right now.

Girl:  I fell, or something, I guess.  But he didn't hit me.  He's just too drunk to drive, that's all.  I don't know why they keep telling you he hit me.

Officer:  Are you sure?  There are about 10 witnesses there, and they all said that.  Also we heard that he slammed your legs in your car door.  That's assault.  Let's think about pressing charges, ok?

Girl:  I already told you, he didn't do anything!  He's just too drunk to drive.  Let me drive him home.  He didn't touch me.

I stood, in awe and disappointment, as the girl lied in the most obvious and transparent way about the fact that her boyfriend/husband IS an abuser.  And the police, they can't do anything about it if she won't press charges.  We stood there, all 10 of us or so, and watched in amazement as the girl continued to deny him even touching her at all.  We watched in horror as Drunk continued to yell at his girl, screaming at her to tell the police to let him go, mouthing threats and curses to her every time she turned around to see him in handcuffs.  And she defended him.

We eventually left, after telling the cops again that YES, he was most certainly hitting her, and that YES, we would be happy to cooperate in any way whatsoever if any charges were filed.  And after, of course, we were painfully certain that no charges WOULD be filed, and that all the guy was going to have to deal with was one night in jail for public intoxication.

As I sat in the car, trying to reconcile my thoughts on the altercation, I was faced once again with my lack of compassion.  Who do you feel sorry for in a situation like that?  Certainly not the guy, although it's easy to assume that both he and the girl must have had some pretty awful upbringings to end up dealing with problems in such a way.  I really couldn't feel sorry for the girl, either.  I felt incredible sympathy, and more than that, a righteous anger for her when I thought she was an unwilling victim.  But to defend a man like that?  To insist, to the contrary of every other person out there and obvious physical signs, that he DID NOT TOUCH HER?  She is not a victim.  She is an enabler, and for whatever reason, she is content to allow herself to be treated like the most mistreated of dogs.  She is kicked by her man, and instead of fighting back or even turning tail and running, she puts her tail between her legs and comes crawling back for more, swatting away any helpful hand extended to her in her misery. 

How do you feel sorry for someone like that?

Obviously I don't see both sides of the issue.  I was brought up in the most ideal of circumstances, with two parents who loved me and taught me self-respect and how to live in moderation and all sorts of other helpful things.  Obviously I am missing something.  I don't WANT to have no compassion towards women who are battered and beaten and broken.  But when they allow it?  When they turn away, hatefully, from all help to extricate themselves from the poisonous grip of an abuser?  How can you possibly help someone who doesn't want to be helped? 

Maybe This Should Be A Repeating Feature

Tell me if I need to go to anger management classes or not:

Yesterday, on the way out to the lake, Cody and I stopped at Lowe's (because that is where we prefer to spend EVERY CENT we earn) to buy a couple of sawhorses for his dad.  It's Father's Day, after all!  Well, next week it is, anyway.  And we were celebrating it last night.  So, sawhorses.  We knew right where they were, and that is ALL we were going in to get.  Because of the convenience of the trip (Lowe's is on the way to the lakehouse) and the duration of the trip (nearly guaranteed not to take longer than 5-7 minutes) we brought our dog along.  She, much like her fellow canines, loves the lake.  And I like to take her everywhere I think she might like.  Also, I've been informed, I've turned into one of those people.  The Dog People.  To that I say, whatever, dude.  Your dog is obviously not as perfect as mine.

Anyway!  We left Lydah in the car.  We put down all the windows a nice amount, opened the sunroof up, and left her sitting in the seat with a chew toy for the entire 5-7 minute journey inside Lowe's to get the sawhorses.  The purchase actually ended up taking more like 3 minutes, and when we got back to the car, there was an annoyed woman standing right next to it. 

"Is this your car?"

"Yes," (as we are putting sawhorses into the trunk, I certainly HOPE it's ours)

"Well, why don't YOU try sitting in this car with the air conditioner off and see how YOU like it."

"Umm.  Errr....what?"

"Yes, why don't you put yourself in the place of this poor and defenseless dog, and try sitting in this heat in a car while other people run their errands."

"Ma'am, we were inside for less than 5 minutes.  Our dog is fine."

"Well, you try sitting here for 5 minutes and see if you're fine!"

"Uh, ok.  I'd be more than happy to.  You sit there in your car, and I'll sit in mine, for the next 5 minutes.  We'll see how we feel.  I'll write up a report for you!  THE DOG IS FINE."

All the while, the lady is getting into her car, avoiding eye-contact, basically doing that thing where she wants to judge and gripe but not actually have a CONVERSATION, because hey!  Then she might actually gain some knowledge about the situation instead of knowing nothing and assuming the worst.

She left just as Cody and I were getting riled up to the point of no return.

Of course we talked about it and her for the next 20 minutes or so.  But instead of getting more and more jokey and laughing at her ridiculousness, we just kept getting increasingly pissed.  At one point, I think I said that the only appropriate response to someone like that would be to just walk over and slap her.

What?

So, what do you say?  Is it anger management for me?   Or could this, somehow, qualify as a defensible reaction?

I've Always Wondered How Cheese Remained Such A Popular Choice

Want to know something I just realized?  When I finish writing anything, whether it's from here or elsewhere and I finish with the whole editing process (otherwise known as "running the spell-check"), I give it one final read-through.  And after that read, if I am happy with it, I usually think to myself, "yeah, this is good enough.  It seems like something I'd like to read".

And somehow it has only just now occurred to me that DUH, of course it sounds like something I'd like, because I FREAKING WROTE IT.  What kind of a litmus test is that? 

self to me:  Is this good? 

me to self:  Well, I like it...

self to me:  Great!  Then we're good to go.

Obviously I have the special ability to house everyone's tastes within my own.  Brilliant.

In other news, not everyone in the world is lactose intolerant, some people do seem to enjoy wearing high-waisted and tapered-leg jeans, and, in the biggest shocker of them all, the world does not, in fact, appear to revolve around me.

Weird.

Life To Elise: Suck It

I should have known it was going to be a bad day when the first thing I did this morning was step out of bed and into a pile of cat puke.  Things did not get better from there.

Don't you wish days like that had a reset button?  It would be so nice; your little video-game version of yourself could miss the green tube entirely and instead fall into the giant hole in the bricks and instead of losing a life, you could just hit RESET.  And you'd be perfect again.  Man I'm old.  I just used Super Mario Bros as my video-game reference.  Just ignore me if you're under the age of....say....20.  It's just that I honestly have no idea what sort of disaster would befall the video-game me in a game from 2007, rather than 1987.  Would I get lost in a space-time continuum and have to push some extremely complicated combination of buttons to get back to the present?  I tried to play some game called Super Smash Brothers not long ago...or maybe it was called Super Chaotic Confusing Melee, because all I could figure out was that at some point, I was supposed to be hitting everyone and everything over the head with a mallet.  I think.

In an ironic twist, I just had to re-write this entire post because somehow, I deleted it in the middle of the first go.  I have no idea how I did this; I have been using Typepad for several years and that has honestly never happened before.  I had written at least two more paragraphs, expounding upon how I feel about employees who don't show up for work, and my poor managerial skills, and what it feels like to be taken advantage of as a non-bitchy boss, and how that, in turn, turns me INTO a bitchy boss, and how I hate myself and everyone else.  But it got deleted.  And maybe that's for the best, because really, who wants to hear about that?

So refresh your browser a few times and tell me what you think of the new design.  I thought it was appropriate; as I feel that the frog and I have a lot in common.  Perhaps, if he can extricate himself sometime soon, he could join me for a drink.  Because I think that's all that's going to help me right now.