All Or Nothing

For You

I won't watch a single episode of LOST without him.  Not one minute, not one trailer, not one preview.  So that makes 69 episodes we've watched together, sprawled out on the couch, debating just how evil Juliette really is - at about 44 minutes per episode we just racked up 3,036 minutes.   Together.

Trips to Lowe's are generally the same.  I pretty much don't go in there without him, and he usually wants me to come along as his sidekick as well.  I'm not sure what it is about Lowe's, besides the fact that (to borrow a phrase from Erin) upon entering the building a giant spinning vortex opens up and sucks at least three hundred dollars out of our bank account.   Maybe that sort of parallel universe is best traversed with a partner, I don't know.  Either way, I can't even begin to tell you exactly how much time we've spent in the Home Improvement Superstore, but my approximation would be about 90 minutes per week for the last 2.5 years.  That's 195 hours, or 17,700 minutes spent.  Together.

In fact, we just generally prefer one another's company to just about anyone else's.  Given the choice, and a few hours of free time, he's gonna call me to see what I'm doing, and whether or not I can slip away from work for the afternoon.  And given the chance, I'm certainly doing some slipping away.  I can't count the number of times we met for a mid-workday lunch only to finish our meal, look at each other, and have one of us say, "you know what would be really fun?" and the other one finish the sentence with "a movie!".  Then we're off to the theater, to see whatever the winner of paper/rock/scissor chooses.  I said I can't count the number of times its happened, but if I had to guess, I'd say at least 20.  And that means 20 lunches, 20 after-lunch-deliberations, and 20 afternoon movie dates.  By my estimation that's 5,400 minutes.  Spent together.

And then there's the sleeping.  We're both champion sleepers.  Nappers, sleeping-in-ers, hit-the-rack-early-ers, we can do them all.  And of course we prefer to spend our sleeping time curled up right next to each other.  As the past few years have gone by, we've added a few more bodies to the bed in the form of two cats and a big ol' German Shepherd, but the sleeping still happens with beautiful regularity and consumes incredible chunks of time.  Hard to guess how many minutes we've spent sleeping together.  Let's just go with 525,600.  Together, naturally.

When we moved back to East Texas, we did it together.  This house?  We built it together.  When we discovered that the blossoming business we had purchased from some not-so-trustworthy people was NOT actually blossoming, we discovered it together.  When we had to sue those awful people, we did it together, and when the lawsuit drug on for nearly two years, we waited together.  When his first job here took a turn for the unexpected, we hung in there together.  And when he started his own practice, in the midst of the turmoil of a lawsuit and with a wife who brought home no appreciable income of her own, we did it together.  When the lawsuit finally ended with a big fat (and well-deserved) victory, we celebrated together.  And when he jogged through the first-year marker of his practice with flying colors, well, we celebrated that as well.  Together.

There's been house-building, job-losing, financial near-disaster-having, cat-raising, dog-picking, marathon-running, vacation-taking, movie-watching, kitchen-experimenting, wedding-guesting, funeral-attending, and baby-birthing.  And we've done it all together.

It's only been three years, and I love him more right now than I ever knew was possible.  He totally understands me, he totally accepts me, and he somehow manages to find my Crazy Moments endearing. 

Considering all that we've done in the 1,576,800 minutes we've spent together thus far, I can only imagine what's yet to come.  Hopefully it includes a big boat, long stretches of uninterrupted time, and no fishing spiders.

Happy anniversary, Cody.  I love you.

For All Of Posterity

At the request of several emails (and some were strongly worded, too!) I am putting up another post to move those fishing spider links down the page a bit.  You people have made Cody feel so much better.  Neither he nor I had any idea that there were so many other terrified (and expressive) spider haters out there.  Well, maybe we both knew, actually.  Who doesn't hate spiders?  Especially big, hairy, gray ones, with legs that spread out into a circumference bigger than your hand and rows and rows of weird, spidery eyeballs....

Ok, ok.  Sidenote: if I were ever to try and write a horror novel, that's about what it would sound like.  Crappy descriptions of spiders, with their googly eyes...oooh!  Horrifying.

Cody and I went out to the lake this Saturday to celebrate our upcoming (three year - I mean START OF OUR FOURTH YEAR) anniversary.  We wanted to bring Lydah out there so she could practice her dock-diving, which actually consists of her looking at the ball in the water, whining, and then kind of squirming off the edge of the dock, banging her doggy shins and hips against the wood on the way down.  It's REALLY athletic.  She's a total shoo-in for those agility shows.

We also took the boat out, which required us to go into the Closet of Life-jackets and Doom, the closet formerly haunted by the Scary Spider Family.  I did keep my eyes peeled for any strange, eight-legged movement, but all my vigilance was rewarded with was a couple of inconsequential encounters with some Daddy-Long-Legs.  We brought Lydah out on the boat with us and, as could be expected, she loved it.  She stayed on the floor of the boat for a while, and then blah blah, am I actually writing about how my DOG felt about riding on the boat?  Y'all better hope I never have kids.  The potential for totally inane Mommy Blogging is obviously here.

So!  Here's what I was actually writing about.  Cody bought me a hard-disk camcorder for our anniversary.  A camcorder!  That films!  I think it's a pretty good camera, too, but honestly Cody could have given me a camcorder with a little wind-up crank on the side that I had to turn while filming and I would have been totally impressed.  Anyway, this is The Best Anniversary Present Ever (said while avoiding the evil-eye from the cat Cody bought me last anniversary - sorry, Sophie!).  I have wanted a camcorder for ages.  I still watch the videos taken of me and my brothers when we were kids; forcing anyone in arms length to sit and endure the grainy home-video goodness whether they want to or not. 

If not for the fact that I am still working out a couple of Apple compatibility issues (oh MacBook, how I love thee, and how you betray me on a regular basis) I would show you some video right now!  And it's RIVETING, let me tell you.  So far I have taken video of Lydah walking around, Lydah chasing Sophia, Jill hissing while sitting on the windowsill and then attacking my arm (she is SO pleasant), Cody making a series of increasingly entertaining faces, and a LOT of lake footage.  And as interesting as that was to read about, just imagine watching it.  Just imagine!

Anyway, I am obsessed with my camcorder.  I want to video everything, and have it with me at all possible moments.  I think I am beginning to understand how some people feel about their digital cameras.  I've always wondered what it was that drew people to take photo after photo of a flower, or a field.  But now that I've got my camcorder, I can't help but grab it, press record, and point it straight down at the tile, all to document that right at this very moment, I think I might be standing in dog pee.  Is it pee?  I think it's pee.

Eight Things, Including Several Helpful Warnings

Well, hello.  A cursory glance at the calendar has informed me that it's August.  I don't believe it, but it seems like everyone else does, so I figured a post was probably in order.

Also!  The lovely and talented and absolutely pee-your-pants funny Erin, from Out of Character, tagged me!  That's right, ME.  Ha!  Allow me to gloat for a few moments here.

Erin tagged me, because she thinks I am also hilarious and lovely and talented, etc., so on and so forth.  Erin tagged ME because she likes me, she really likes me!  Erin tagged ME ME ME because...well, because tagging sometimes can be annoying and she had already tagged everyone she could think of and still was lacking on the tag number requirements so she remembered one of my eighty-zillion comments on her site and thought, oh good, maybe this will assuage her.  Or at least make her stop stalking me.  Geez.

Ha!  It didn't, Erin!  I'm still going to leave another eighty or ninety zillion comments on your site, all about how I looooove you and how you made me LOL and ROLF.  Well, not that, because I just can't ever bring myself to use those acronyms, even when they are (as they usually are NOT) true, and I truly am Laughing Out Loud.  I always feel disingenuous, and like I'd better expound upon the nature of my laughter, what exactly it was that made me laugh.  And there is the cornerstone of why so many of you who know me in real life tune me out.  I feel the need to expound.  Maybe I should just leave it at that.  Elise: Feels The Need To Expound.

So, on with the tag.  That Erin gave me.  Erin!  From Out of Character!

The Eight Things Meme (Now, you can use the word "meme" or the word "survey", depending on whether you want to be Internet Superiority Word-User or Normal Person Who Uses Normal Words.  Your choice! [That was for you, Kyle]):

"Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog."

1.  Cody and I were hanging out with some friends of ours the other night, and the conversation turned in the direction of super scary, awful spiders.  Actually, the conversation made it over to super scary and awful spiders after we had exhausted a discussion on horrible and disgusting bugs.  So, I guess fact number one is that I don't like bugs at all, nor do I particularly enjoy spiders, but if we're hanging out, I'll be real excited to talk about them.  For like, an hour.  And Google them!  Look at what used to live in my husband's parents boathouse!

2.  Also, those spiders can freaking swim, y'all.  I know that's not technically a fact about me, but listen to this story anyway.  A long time ago, my husband and his brother were in the boathouse mentioned above.  They were doing some sort of boathousey things, probably getting life-jackets out or dropping important things down the boat slip and then diving down to find them, and they happened upon one of these hairy monsters.  Being the red-blooded males they are, and not some sort of spider-loving freaks, they immediately set forth to kill the giant spider.  Clint (Cody's brother) took the swing-wildly-with-a-life-jacket approach, and from what I hear, Cody took the hide-behind-the-boat-and-scream approach.  Just kidding babe.  I know you probably didn't actually scream.  While you were hiding back there.  Anyway!  Clint eventually landed one of his blows, and the spider fell off the wall, scrambled to the edge of the water, fell in, sucked all of its legs together, and sunk like a rock.  Victory!  Or so the boys thought.  Until the other night, when through some rampant Googling we discovered that those freaking spiders, called Fishing Spiders, can SWIM, and the way they do it is described as such:

"Probably the largest spider of Central and Northern Europe is Dolomedes fimbriatus, the Raft Spider. Sometimes its also called Fishing Spider. In fact, Dolomedes is able to catch small fishes, tadpoles and frogs. Females reach more than 20 mm in length. The spiders need water in their habitats (e.g. small brooks or lakes, ponds) and in spite of their large size they are able to run over the water surface. If Dolomedes feels threatened, it is also able to submerge under water for minutes, by pulling its legs together and "diving" straight down."

EWWWWW!

3.  I like hangout sessions that end up with semi-inebriated Googling and laughing hysterically at people's childhood insect stories.  Give me a plate of cookies, a beer, and a story about how your best friend in second grade had a house absolutely chock-full of water bugs any day.  I'll take your Jimmy Choos, Chloe mini-dress, and trendy bar and raise you some flip-flops, a tee-shirt, and a good giant mosquito story.  I win.

4.  I'm totally and completely obsessed with my dog.  In fact, I have been struggling through this MEME/SURVEY to not make the entire eight points about my dog.  What she eats, what she doesn't eat, what she likes to do, the really cute thing she did just a minute ago....but it seems that I've only made it to number four.  I can't help it.  She's freakishly awesome.  See for yourself:

One more?  Ok, ok. 

5.   I am also obsessed with sharks.  Did you know that RIGHT NOW, this very minute, it's Shark Week on the Discovery Channel?  Did you?  Because if you did, then why are you reading anything on the internet at all?  You could be watching one show about the Five Deadliest Attacks Caught On Camera and then right after, watch a documentary about how People Don't Understand Sharks; They Aren't Killing Machines; Let's Blame The Media.  It's glorious!

6.  If you give me a bag of Tostitos Hint of Lime chips, no matter the size, I will eat it.  By myself.  Probably in under an hour.  Sorry!  Hope no one else wanted any.  Of the family sized bag. 

7.  I'm a total moron.  That may sound overly broad, but trust me, it's not.  For example, yesterday I stopped at the grocery store on the way home from work.  I needed about 87 more bags of Tostitos Hint of Lime, because someone had eaten them all.  Anyway, it was raining (that should be fact number 7, that I live in a rainforest. This is a fact none of us knew, including me, until this summer. But I digress) and I was trying to get the trunk open.  I should also mention that I was driving my old high-school ride, the Green Camaro, and I haven't driven it in quite some time.  I'll get to that later.  Anyway, I was standing in the rain, the bag-carrying guy beside me, trying frantically to get my key to turn and open the trunk.  I finally did, but then I couldn't get the key back OUT of the lock.  "Umm, just go ahead and load those," I said to the bag-guy, as casually as a rain-soaked, frantic, crazy girl could sound.  "I haven't driven this car in forever.  Ha!  HAHAHA!" I breezily laughed, as I YANKED THE KEY to no avail.  The bag-guy didn't cooperate; instead he just stood there, bemusedly watching me struggle and listening to my incoherent and largely embarrassing babble.  "Oh, stupid key, I don't know why it's stuck, YOU CAN JUST PUT THOSE CHIPS IN THE TRUNK, AND STOP WATCHING ME, I mean, if you want to....."  Finally, bag-guy took pity upon me and said, "here, let me try".  He turned the key 90 degrees to the left, and pulled it straight out.  Huh.  Turns out you have to have the key facing in the right direction.  Who knew?  Oh that's right, EVERYONE.

8.  Speaking of the Green Camaro, Cody and I have been trying to sell that piece for over a year now.  The first time around, we had a few takers initially, but everyone backed out when they saw the fender was all messed up due to a parking lot incident I had while in the 12th grade.  Turns out when you try and pull between two parked cars through the one empty spot between them, you have to be pointing really, really straight.  Otherwise, you rip some of your fender off!  Interesting.  Anyway, we got the fender thing fixed, which only took about 8 months because it was some favor of a friend of a friend and anyway, now we have the car back, and are trying to sell it.  I am driving it because (well, this is only some of the story) any time Cody even LOOKS at the Green Camaro he immediately becomes so incensed with anger that he can hardly see straight.  And then he starts spitting blood.  He feels that no car should be so difficult to sell, and the fact that Green Camaro has not yet sold probably means that it is an Evil car, and is somehow personally out to get him. 
Cody has a similar theory about those people who call your cell phone and their number shows up as 000-000-0000.  He thinks they are little phone demons calling, and if you answer one of the 000 calls, the little phone demon will fly right into your ear.  I'm not sure what the phone demon does once in your ear, but I'm guessing they don't take up residence in your brain to helpfully organize your To-Do list, or improve your vocabulary or anything.  Rather, I bet the phone demons come from the same place as the Can't-Sell-Your-Car demons, and have similar evil intentions.  And if that's true, then it's a good thing I'm driving Green Camaro.  I answer those 000 calls all the time.

I tag Amy, Cupcake, Nathan, Janet, Kyle, Adam, Fist City, and Katy.

Have A Glass Of Wine For Me Today

That title should be a song.  Is it a song?  It just sounds kind of melodic.  Somebody get on that.

Today I am celebrating, because it is the anniversary of the store.  Of store ownership.  Of business ownership.  Of not going completely bankrupt or completely insane (although some may disagree with the latter, but to them I say it was inevitable; perhaps the store brought it on sooner, perhaps not).

Anyway!

Today marks the start of our third year in business.  Cody insists that to mark it as such, I am not being completely forthcoming with myself.  He says it is the store's two year anniversary.  I think that since this is my third July, and will be my third holiday season coming up shortly, it is a glaring shame to not mention the word THREE in there somewhere.  To say TWO, it sounds so much less, like I've hardly done anything really, just two years of all this work.  When no, this is the third time around for all these things! 

And yet, I can't say it is our three year anniversary.  So I have to say vague things like "We're celebrating the start of our third year!" or "Our third year starts today!"

Cody wonders why I can't say the words TWO or SECOND in relation to the event.  I tried to explain it to him using this as an example.  He immediately understood.  Or, at least, he understood that he doesn't understand, but he knows what happens in instances like these, when I am grasping at the last remaining shreds of mental stability, and he insists that I behave rationally.

Because, you see, the thing I didn't explain in that story linked to above was this:  After I completely destroyed my hair with the always-disastrous home hair coloring kit, and after I stared at my hair for what seemed like hours in the mirror, mumbling incoherently, and AFTER I tied my hair up in a scarf to go to sleep, just so that I wouldn't have to look at it anymore and could therefore pretend that it hadn't happened, Cody tried to rationalize with me.

"Why are you sleeping in that scarf?" he asked.

"Because.  I have to.  Don't talk to me about it.  I can't look at my hair," I responded.

"But you'll be sleeping,"  he reasoned.

"I CAN'T!  DON'T MAKE ME TAKE IT OFF!  I CANNOT TAKE IT OFF!"  I screamed, as an insane woman might.

"Ummm....ok.  Why don't we take a deep breath and count to ten?" Cody suggested.

"No!  No....please don't make me count to ten," I begged. 

For some reason, when I get really upset, my brain puts every bit of normal conversation into the "demand" category.  I always end up pleading with people not to make me do whatever it is that they might have just randomly said.  For example, you might say, Elise, I'm hungry.  I think I'll make a sandwich.  And I would respond with something reasonable like Nooooo!  Don't make me eat.  Please don't make me eat a sandwich.  It's lovely.  Wanna hang out sometime?

"Well, let's just count to ten.  Ok?  We're gonna count to ten.  Ready?"  Clearly, we hadn't been married long at this point.

"No!" deep breath "No!!  Noooo.  Ok.  Okaaay..."  I tried to harness my completely out of control brain.

"Good, here we go!  One.....two... count, Elise."

"Threee......f-f-ouuuurr...." at this point I broke down into tears.

"Umm....ok!  That's enough counting!  Uh, Elise?"  Cody had not ever seen me cry, to this point.  And I'm crying about my hair, of all things.  And counting to ten.

So, when I reminded Cody about the hair story, known around these parts as "Remember When You Made Me Count To Ten" he let up on the whole THREE YEAR vs. TWO YEAR thing.  He's gonna let me have it.  And I'm taking the word, and making it mine.  Three.  Third!  Thrice! 

It's much better than two.

So celebrate for me tonight!  Have three drinks.  Or three desserts.  Three of something, anyway.  We all deserve it.

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?

Tales From the Cody Vault

It's time for a story about everyone's favorite guy!  He's lovable, he's absentminded, he's an all-around good-hearted doofus....he's the Code!

This week we'll revisit an episode from the past.  Imagine that it's Christmas time, will you?  There are presents under the tree, it's cold outside, the evenings are dark and lend themselves to staying indoors and cuddling near crackling fires.  You're probably getting sick of all the radio stations being co-opted by Christmas music.  Some of you might be about to go on a holiday vacation.  Cody is actually preparing for a holiday trip himself.  You see, Cody's lovely wife and in-laws have an uncle who lives (!) in the Cayman Islands.  This uncle has very graciously extended an open invite to the family, and so for the past 6 months, Cody has been excitedly awaiting the Christmas trip to Grand Cayman.  He's talked about what he'll do, read up on what ocean life can be found in the Cayman coral reefs, and determined at least five different species of fish he will consume.  The day approaches, slowly but surely.  Finally, after 24 weeks, the vacation day is here!  Cody will leave the very next day, early in the morning, to drive to the airport and begin the vacation he's been waiting on for over 168 days. 

So, it's 12:30am.  We will leave for Dallas (and its requisite international airport) in precisely three hours.  Cody decides that right now is probably a good time to start locating his birth certificate. 
You see, a birth certificate used to be acceptable documentation for international travel if you were only going so far as Mexico, the Caribbean, or Canada.  Not so anymore.  Now everyone must have a passport.  And they take like, forever to get.  So, if you want to travel anywhere internationally in the next year or  so, GET ONE NOW.  Trust me on this. 
Anyway, at the time of our story, a birth certificate would still suffice.  And Cody, at 12:30am, the night (or early-morning, depending on how you see it....kinda like glass half-full, half-empty, right?) before we are set to leave for Grand Cayman, is sauntering over to our file cabinet to retrieve his birth certificate.  I am all packed up and dozing on the couch, not subscribing to the travel theory that goes something like "If You're Going To Be Leaving Really Early Anyway, Then Just Don't Go To Bed At All The Night Before Because Then It Won't Be So Hard To Wake Up. Besides, You Can Just Sleep On The Plane".  I hate that theory.  It only makes you more tired.  And who can sleep on planes?  I never can, unless I decide that I don't care if the stranger next to me sees me drooling down the side window.  And I never decide that.

Anyway.

I am sleeping.  Cody is locating his birth certificate in the file cabinet.  Only he isn't, because the birth certificate is not IN the file cabinet.  He looks in the planning desk.  Not there.  He looks in my underwear drawer, because that is where I tend to hide things that I know I'll need and don't want Cody to lose.  Not there, either.  At this point, Cody decides to wake me up.  "I can't find my birth certificate," he says.  "I've looked everywhere."  I groan to an awake stance, and look at him incredulously.  "You WHAT?"  I say.  "You've got to be kidding me.  You didn't already have it, ready to go?"  At this point, Cody is more than likely regretting waking me up at all.  As I'm being so, you know.  Helpful.

"No.  I didn't have it ready to go.  Now help me find it.  It's 1:30."  Now I'm really awake.  1:30?!?  We have to leave in like, an hour and a half.  Holy crap.  A major search ensues.  I might mention here, as an aside, that during the Christmas season we were housing our good friends and their two year-old daughter.  Who is an incredibly light sleeper.  Or, her parents THINK she is.  One of those.  Anyway, we were having to frantically tear the house apart AND fight all in super-silent whispers. 

"How could you dooooo thisssssss?"  I hiss, in a whisper.

"I don't knoooow!  It was supposssssed to be in the file cabinet - where did YOU put it?"  Cody whisper-yells back.

"Where did I put it????  Are you kiddinggggg?  Who, between usssss, loossssesssss EVERYTHINGGGG?  Where did YOU put it?  Think!"  I respond, whisperishly.

This line of questioning, by the way, never works.  I always try to make Cody think back on where he was, what he was doing the last time he had the Lost Item.   I do this because this is how I find things when I have lost them.  I can't find my chapstick?  Well, let's see, the last time I used it was when I was in the kitchen on the phone with Amy, and we were talking about how ceiling fans dry our throats out and I thought, wow, my throat and lips are dry NOW, and then I grabbed the chapstick out of my purse, used it and set it down....in the candy tray!  It's in the candy tray!  It's like a fun game.  But not to Cody.

"I don't KNOW where I had it lasssst!  Who uses a birth certificate?  It sssssshould be right here.  But it's not.  Where did you put it?" 

This goes on for the next hour.  The house is now a disaster, Cody is still only half-packed, and what does it matter, really, because he isn't going to be able to go anywhere without his birth certificate anyway.  We have two more chances at success.  The BC could be at his office, or at my store.  Why it would be at either of those places I have no idea, but at 2:30am, anything sounds reasonable.  We load up our luggage, pray to the travel gods, and set out.  BC is MIA in both places of business.  Obviously.

It's now 3:15am.  We have already called my parents and told them to go ahead without us; we will follow in our own car.  We sit in the parking lot of the shopping center that houses my store, and stare straight ahead, blankly. 

"Do you think the marriage certificate will work?"

"No."

"Me either."

"If we don't leave now, we'll miss the flight completely."

"Yeah."

We sit like this for maybe 5 minutes.  And then start driving to Dallas.  The drive is....unpleasant, to say the least.  I'll let you imagine what it might be like.  And it probably was just like that.  Maybe worse.

Arriving at the airport, we are frantic to get to the ticket counter.  We've wasted so much time looking for the elusive BC that we are about to miss the checked-luggage cutoff.  We explain the situation to the bored-looking ticket agent.  We beg for mercy.  We show the marriage license.  We show Cody's expired passport.  I swear that Cody is, in fact, a US citizen.  I'll even write a statement, attesting to that, I offer.  We ask that she take pity on our souls and please, please allow Cody to board the flight.  She responds with this gem:

"You know, after January 6, you won't even be able to travel with a birth certificate.  You'll have to have a passport."

Ummm, ok.  That was, possibly, the very least helpful thing in to say.  We don't HAVE a birth certificate, much less a passport, and informing us to the ins and outs of future travel laws is, at best, irrelevant.  At worst, it's just plain robotic and hateful.  We say something in this vein, and she responds:

"Sir, I've already told you, you're going to need a new passport or a birth certificate to travel.  Ma'am, if you want to get on the plane, you're going to have to go now.  The plane is boarding and if I don't check you in now, you won't be able to go either."

This leaves me with the decision I just knew I was going to have.  Stay in Dallas with my sadly misinformed and unprepared husband and miss the trip, or leave my husband behind and go.  Given the state of mind I was in at the time, you might think the decision would be easy, but still.  It's Christmas, and that's my husband.  I do love the guy, after all.  Fortunately, the decision was made for me, as Cody all but pushed me into the electronic screening line and ran away, yelling over his shoulder that he'd figure something out and catch the next flight, not to worry, and to go.  Also, he threatened to kill me if I stayed.  So, I went.   And, unbeknownst to me, I took the only set of keys to the car with me, effectively leaving Cody stranded in the Dallas airport.

The best part of boarding the plane without Cody was looking at my Dad's face, because if you don't know my Dad, I'll tell you - he doesn't make mistakes.  Therefore, he doesn't understand it when other people do.  It's kind of like how normal people might look at a hopeless crack-addict.  "Where did that poor person go wrong?" we wonder.  "How could they let something like that happen to them?"  That's how my Dad is when ANYTHING goes wrong.

Cody missed the first two days of the four day vacation.  He arrived at the Grand Cayman airport at 11:30pm on a Tuesday night, bedraggled and telling tales of taxi rides to small-town courthouses, struggles with government employees who wanted to be home celebrating the holidays, birth certificates obtained, taxi rides back to the airport, unhelpful ticketing agents, and lines the length of football fields.  He actually got ticketed on a flight the morning after we all arrived, but MISSED that flight when he showed up at the airport well before the two-hours-prior suggested time, and found the longest lines he had ever seen before, due to the fact that American had canceled over 600 flights coming and going from the East Coast.  He could have done self check-in if he would have had a passport, but since he had a birth certificate only, he had to wait in the ticketing line and have it looked at personally by an agent.  You see, passports come with a handy barcode for electronic scanning.  Birth certificates, apparently, do not.

I'll bet the best part of missing the SECOND flight was when Cody had to call me and hear my voice when he told me what happened.  I don't know if you know my Dad, but I take after him.

You'd think that after something like that, your first priority once you arrived home would be to, I don't know.  Obtain a passport?  Sadly, Cody did not, and we nearly were not able to go on our upcoming trip (knock on wood, I know...we haven't gotten there yet) because Cody still had not done anything towards getting his passport.  He actually had to drive to Houston and jump through about a thousand hoops in order to get the passport office to guarantee his passport would arrive in time for us to leave on our non-refundable plane ride to our non-refundable resort.  This Saturday.  Yesterday the passport arrived in our mailbox.  Wednesday. 

So, three days.  That's not cutting it too close at all.  Not in Cody-world.

Moisture-Starved And Crazier Than Ever

Lydah (the dog) is doing fabulously.  The crate-training works like a charm and she no longer yips through the night.  Now she busies herself finding the ONE thing left on the floor that she's not supposed to chew, and, well.  Chews it.  I think we got ourselves one special dog, because her extrasensory perception about what we DON'T want her to do is pretty amazing.

What?  I can't chew the desk either?  This place is crazy with the rules.

Anyway, on to other subjects.  We're building a screen porch on the back of our house.  Want to see it, halfway done?  Ok!  I'm happy to oblige.

That's what we've got done so far.  And by "we", I mean "Cody".  And by "got done" I mean "I'm from East Texas, y'aaaaal".  All I've done is help hold some boards and caulk.  Oh, caulking.  It might very well be the bane of my existence.  When we built the house, almost all the caulking duties fell to me.  I'm not sure if it's because everyone just really hates me, or because I am woefully inadequate in doing...well...anything else.  But either way, I had to caulk EVERYTHING.  Do you know how much caulk is in your current residence?  Do you know how many tedious, excruciating man-hours it takes to GET that much caulk in your current residence?  I DO.

So, the screen porch.  It falls to me to get the thing caulked.  Actually, the day before, I was instructed to make a run to Lowe's and buy the caulk, along with some other items we were running short on.  This is never a good plan, sending me to Lowe's with a really non-specific instruction such as "buy some caulk.  Make sure it's weatherproof".  Have you been to Lowe's and looked at the caulk aisle?  The possibilities are endless.

After perusing the caulk aisle for, I don't know, 10 hours?  It felt like it - I found some polyurethane caulk.  It was in the Specialty Caulk section, and spoke to me in large red print, guaranteeing me that it would be weatherproof, waterproof, stain-proof, tear-proof, crack-proof - basically, the Most Indestructible Caulk Available.  I figured there couldn't be anything better (and I am nothing if not a Maximizer), so I bought it.

The next day, after my caulk purchase had been sufficiently praised (read: Cody looked at it and said Geez, I guess we won't have to worry about water coming in through the cracks....of the SCREEN PORCH), I set forth to caulk.  I got the caulking gun, prepared myself emotionally as best I could, and squeezed the trigger of the gun.  Nothing.  Maybe I didn't sufficiently poke through the plastic tip, I thought.  A search for longer and pointier things ensued.  I found an old sprinkler flag - you know, those extraordinarily dangerous objects you use to mark where your sprinkler heads are?  In case you've never seen one of these beauties, they consist of a little 3"x4" plastic flag attached to a 2' long sharp metal stick.  It could certainly, as we've all been warned about, poke your eye out.  Anyway.

The sprinkler flag worked beautifully.  It came out covered with Indestructible Caulk, and I walked back out to the porch.  I pulled the trigger again, and NOTHING came out.  "Cody, I think the gun's broken," I said.  "Here, why don't you try it."  This is famous Elise Speak for I don't really have that much interest in this project and on top of that it has presented me with a modicum of difficulty.  Why don't I quit and you do it instead.  Unfortunately, the longer Cody knows me the less susceptible he is to this tactic.  This time was no exception, and all he did was grab the gun from me, pull the trigger, and hand it back to me as shiny white caulk came curling from the tip, saying "Huh, looks fine to me.  Here ya go!". 

Unhappy with this result, I mustered my strength and tried again.  This time I pulled the trigger of the caulking gun as hard as I could, and to my dismay, a tiny, minuscule bit of caulk squeezed out.  As I sat back on my heels and surveyed an entire porch's worth of caulking, I began to realize just how fun this project was really going to be.  I also had my secretary cancel everything I had on tap for the next 6-8 weeks.

"This caulk is REALLY hard to squeeze," I informed Cody.  "I'm not sure what the problem is, but this is going to take FOREVER."

"I think it's because you got that crazy super caulk," Cody replied.  "Why did you get that crap?  It's like polyurethane or something.  Wasn't there anything different?"

Wasn't there anything different indeed.  Only about 100 different options, and of course I had to find, with my eagle eye of doom, the one kind that was not only Indestructible, but also Impossible To Work With.  Why don't they put THAT on the tube?  In big red print?

Well, it was too late for woebegone revelations at that point.  I had to soldier on.  Two hours later, my hands were 100% covered in polyurethane caulk, about half of the porch was weatherproofed, waterproofed, stain-proofed, etc., etc., ad nauseam, and I was going insane.  You might (and with good reason) think I was losing my mind because of the sheer monotony, the insipid tediousness of the caulking project.  I admit, the amount of actual caulking accomplished in the two hours I had been working was discouraging, at best.  But that is not why I was, in effect, coming unhinged.  No, that was because my hands were dry.

Did you get that?  My hands were dry.

It is a little-known fact about me that I go absolutely crazy if my hands aren't really, really moisturized, like, ALL THE TIME.  When we were building the house, and would spend hours and hours on the worksite dealing with sawdust, and grout, and concrete mix, and bricks, and all sorts of other substances that are, as a rule, incredibly DRY, I would have to have a large bottle of lotion on hand at all times.  Otherwise I would slowly spiral downward, out of control, and into a land where licking and spitting upon my own hands seemed a welcome respite.  No one wants to see me there, trust me.  So by the end of the house project, there were probably no short of 12 bottles of lotion, all dispersed strategically through the house, ready at the moment for me to dash inside, panicking, and pump the sweet, sweet moisture onto my hands.  I'm like a really sick crack addict, only with Jergens® Extra Dry®.

Some days I would get really moisture-obsessed, and would spread the most Extreme Lotion Ever, the kind that is made for like, Eskimos and People Afflicted with Cracked and Bleeding Skin, all over my hands and wrists, slap on some work gloves, and happily let my skin marinate all day long.   I cannot stand chalk, or chalkboards, or any kind of natural stone or brick that has any kind of dry and dusty feel.  I can't handle lumber, or concrete, or dirt or sand....ugh, even writing about these things is making my hands feel like they are curling up into shriveled claws and dying.

But you built a house, you say.  You live in the world, you point out, where things like dirt and chalkboards exist.  And to that I say, yes, you're right.  You're absolutely right.  And I have found ways to co-exist with these awful substances, these terrible blights on humanity.  I carry at least one bottle or tube of lotion with me at all times.  Need hand lotion with SPF?  I've got you covered.  A little aloe-vera for that sunburn?  Let me get my purse! 

However (and back to the original story), the polyurethane weatherproof waterproof blah blah caulk that was covering my hands was not allowing ANY moisture through.  It had promised me, back in the Specialty Caulks section at Lowe's, that it wouldn't break ranks for water in any form and it wasn't about to lose face now just to pander to my obsessive compulsiveness.  I ended up pouring about 2/3 of a can of paint thinner all over my hands in quick, successive sessions, scrubbing my skin with a wire-tipped brush, and screaming for mercy, for someone, please, to have mercy on my tortured soul.

The caulk is gone, but I think I lost a little bit of myself along with it.

Oh, How This Post Has Changed

It was meant to be a short little description, followed by a few pictures, and concluded with a question.  That I was hoping would then be answered by you guys. 

Instead, it has turned into something entirely different.  And not good different, or even interesting different.  SUCKY different.  I can't find the cord to attach my camera to my computer.  Well, first, I couldn't even find batteries for the camera.  Have I mentioned before how my camera takes approximately three pictures and then promptly runs out of batteries?  Because it does.

So, I stole batteries out of the thermostat.  Ingenious, really.  And then I set forth to take the pictures I needed so desperately, and then ran into the next room to hurriedly post them to my computer before the batteries ran out.  I had taken at least two pictures, and I knew I didn't have much time at all.  However, upon reaching my computer and grasping inside my camera case for the trusty grey cord of connectivity, I found that the cord was GONE.  Ugh.

I HATE losing things.  Not that I believe anyone really likes to lose things, or chooses to do so, but I really, really hate it.  Cody can attest to this.  He knows when I've lost something, because it always results in a phone call to him with me on the other end of the line sighing dramatically and rolling my eyes so furiously he somehow receives "ANNOYED" through the phone line without me even speaking a word.  This, friends, is a joy of marriage.

Anyway, I rarely lose things.  And when I do lose things, I somehow convince myself that I NEVER lose things.  Therefore, I am always looking to place the blame upon anyone else who might have possibly come in contact with the lost item, at any point in time.  No one is safe from my lightning-quick accusations, not even the cats, or house guests who have moved on many months before.

Poor Cody, he tries to help.  He offers what might seem to any reasonable human to be helpful suggestions, but to me are just tiny barbs of annoyance, all wrapped up in patronization. 

"Have you looked in the closet?  You know, where all those cords are" 

"Um, YES, I have, and the camera cord would NEVER be there unless YOU put it there because I don't just haphazardly throw cords THAT I KNOW I NEED into piles in a CLOSET.  Next?"

"Well, there are a lot of cords up in the theater room, you know by the surround sound, all those cords on the ground?"

"AAARRGGGHHH, I already TOLD YOU, I don't just see a cord and say 'ooh, a cord, I'll just put it where I've seen other cords', I always put the cord back in the CAMERA CASE when I'm done!  Where is it?"

"Look, I really don't see why you're calling me at all.  I already told you I haven't seen the cord; I never use the cord, and now that I am trying to help, all you're doing is getting pissed."

"I DIDN'T LOSE THE CORD.  Did you say I lost the cord?  I didn't lose it!  Maybe (enter name of random friend) took it."

"Have they even BEEN to our house?"

"Well, it was here, and now it's not.  I don't know what ELSE could have happened."

"Here's my new policy, Elise.  When you call me telling me YOU'VE lost something, I'm not going to help at all.  I'm just going to say good luck and hang up the phone"

"Yeah, well, that won't be any less helpful than this conversation has been.  Plus, why do you always make policies?  Anytime you don't like something, you make some new policy about it.  That's annoying."

"Good luck!"  Click.

I actually do think I've lost the stupid cord.  And it's even more annoying, because what should have taken 2 minutes (take a picture, post it to the site) has now taken the better part of an hour and a half.  Luckily, right in the middle of writing this (hand to God, it's true, I really am THIS dumb) I remembered that I have a MacBook, which means I have iSight, which means HA HA, stupid camera cord, I have won.

And here are the pictures:

Now obviously I'll be doing some different seat cushions on the chairs.  The current ones are, well...let's be honest here, they're just plain awful.  But!  That's like the easiest fix ever, and I love buying fabric.  So, fun all around.  However, the finish and stain on the chairs doesn't EXACTLY match the finish and stain of the table.  And I don't really like that, plus, I really DO like dining room sets where the chairs are completely different from the table.  In that vein, I believe we are going to paint the chairs, and the color we are considering is a creamy white with lots of varnish.

But - and here comes the question - do you think that painting is the right choice?  Cody always wants to paint wood; if he doesn't like the color of wood even a tiny bit, his ready solution is to paint.  I am what you might call more of a wood purist.  I'll always opt to stain or refinish (unfortunately not really an option on these chairs, as they already have a pretty heavy finish on the existing stain) rather than go for the full-fledged paint job, because unless it's really necessary or you're REALLY FREAKING sure that's what you want, once it's painted, it's painted.  Done.  Finito.  Better like the white varnished chairs, because your only option now is another color varnished chair, and if I can't even decide for sure on white then how will I pick ANOTHER color if I hate it, and oh no, am I making a mistake?

Help.