The War at Home

Michael and I went on our weekend getaway this past weekend.  It was ah-mazing.  There are pictures on my camera, but I don't have the cord necessary to upload them and show them to you.  So, sorry about your luck.

Anyway, we were all compatible and lovey-dovey and pretty sickening and annoyingly in love.  So, I forgot that sometimes we do not love the same things.  Suffice it to say, my guard was down.

For a bit of background, you should know, our movie neutral ground is comedies and action films.  That's what we can safely watch together without one of us resenting the other one for a week and plotting revenge with a movie the other will hate.  The treacherous, land-mine-covered, non-neutral movie ground is chick flicks (my choice) and anything that will give me nightmares (his choice).  

This is going to make you respect me less, but so be it.  Lifetime-type movies fall in the category of crap that gives me nightmares.  They're always so twisted and horrible and gut-wrenching, and I hate them every, single time.  The trick is that they come packaged as chick flicks, and I sometimes fall for it.  My tip-off last night should have been that the lead character was played by Sally Field. 

After we put Silas to bed, we got on Netflix, and I asked to watch Eat, Pray, Love or some documentary about some lost tapes of George Harrison that turned up.  He innocently suggested I might like An Eye for an Eye instead because it's a vigilante justice movie (also in the vein of crap I like) and a chick flick (and he would rather be punched repeatedly in the face than watch Eat, Pray, Love).  

He had already seen An Eye for an Eye before and failed to mention that I would be crying/horrified within the first 10 minutes of the movie (no, seriously, sobbing-and-checking-on-my-child-50-times horrified).  

He tricked me y'all.  He tricked me into watching the most creepy, twisted movie I've seen in a while by selling it to me as a chick flick (and on the heels of our "I-love-you-so-much-let's-make-the-rest-of-the-world-vomit-at-out-sweetness" weekend).

I had to stay up past my bedtime and watch a Trailer Park Boys movie just so I could sleep.  Now I'm at work chugging coffee and doing Google searches for "girliest movie ever."

This means war.

My buddy and me, revised

I have a confession.  Last week, I started writing a post about my friend who is playfully hateful to me for being such a "boy" (for lack of a better way to express it) all the time.  Since I told him I was going to put him on blast on my blog,  he has asked me every day whether/when I'm going to do it.  He's worked himself up into a frenzy, and now I'm just kind of torturing him.

Without further ado, here is what you've been so worried about, friend:

Do you have a gay male friend who talks bad about your eyebrows and tells you that you're butch and informs you that you need to take a Tide pen to your shoes and constantly "shh's" you because you're so loud?  I do.  I think he even called me frumpy once.

Don't get me wrong, he has his good points.  He's a wealth of information about decorating and dressing myself, but all the information he imparts seems to be bouncing off of me and hitting the floor.  

I think he's monumentally disappointed that I conduct myself in a manner befitting a character from In the Middle rather than one from Will and Grace. He's probably secretly resenting me for being in no way, shape or form "fabulous." 

Frankly, he can take a number and get in line. 

The truth is, that if he was really my Will and I was really his Grace, he'd realize that I'm hopeless when left to my own devices and just stage an intervention already. 

Update: He also plays mind games and makes you think you've hurt his feelings for posting things about him on your blog and causes you to delete your posts and write him hand-written apologies in near tears only to then laugh in your face for believing his feelings were ever really hurt.  Evil genius.

My elevator rant

Wanna know something else I don't like?  (Clearly because this blog is full of things that annoy me.)

Elevators.  

There are so many things to loathe about them.  Like they're gross and claustrophobic and always smell weird and sometimes people talk on their cell phones in them when they're crowded - and worse - sometimes people make awkward elevator small talk with me (I hate all awkward small talk).

One of my biggest pet peeves is being trapped on an elevator with several other people and their perfumes and their take out food and their cell phones and their awkward small talk for any longer than ten seconds. 

I have to take two separate elevators to get from my car to my office when I drive myself to work, so I also take issue with whoever designed this building.  Do better if you design buildings for a living or if you ride elevators ever at all.  Hang up your phone, wear less perfume and quit talking to me about the weather.

I've been published

Finally, someone has recognized the genius of my work and published me. 

Update:  It did not occur to me that someone may think I was talking about myself.  No, I'm not Melissa.  I'm not trying to cleverly communicate anything to you other than the fact that UrbanDictionary.com allowed me to define a word that my friends and I started using while I was pregnant with Silas. 

For the gamer in my life

My husband is a gamer.  There, I said it.  I married a gamer.

Anyway, he's always trying to get me to play different video games with him, but I grew up with Nintendo consoles, and (this is not a slam to Nintendo at all - they will always be my #1) Nintendo games are usually far less complex than PlayStation games.

For instance, when I play Call of Duty (which for anyone who has not been blessed to live with a gamer is a game that basically entails hiding behind burned-out cars and shooting people), I inevitably wind up getting shot 436 times while I'm trying to figure out how to point my gun at whoever is shooting me (but I'm pulling the trigger, so I'm shooting walls and the ground and random passers-by and sometimes I end up waking the baby for venting my frustration at the game).

So, since I have clearly failed at playing his favorite game, Michael has been on the hunt to find a video game we can play together.  

This week, I have watched trailers and played demos like it's my job, but I have not been able to help but notice that none of what has been created for Sony's PlayStation takes me back to my childhood love of Mario and Luigi.
  

Until....

that creepy little doll walked in and won my heart and caused me to deem the creator of Little Big Planet (2 - Little Big Planet 2 was actually what I played) a genius.  

If you live with a gamer and you are video-game-playing-challenged but want to reach out to your gamer, YouTube Little Big Planet or Google it or just go buy it.  Not one time did I find myself trapped in a bombed-out building shooting a gun at a ceiling.  Not once.

My nemesis

Since about 7 o'clock Sunday evening, I have wanted nothing but my sweats and my bed and a cold rag and a Sprite.  I'll spare you the details, but it hasn't exactly been pretty at my house.  The good news is that I'm starting to feel better.

Because I have a job with a sort of "quota", I have chugged Pepto and come to work for the last two days (although I did leave early yesterday).  I've decided that this is also something a grown up would do and that I get to say I have completed step 4.

I gave myself bonus points because - can you imagine having to deal with this:

every time you try to print a document?  I know it will happen at least once, but most of the time it will be three times (and sometimes more).

All those red dots?  Places where paper has lodged itself into the tiny crevices of that machine.  Then, once all the paper is removed, the freaking covers must be closed in just the right order (like a combination lock) to get the damn thing to stop flashing and resume printing.

Before you ask, yes, there is somewhere else I can print.  It's just incredibly inconvenient, especially when I'm in a hurry, and now that the printer on my side of the office is the devil incarnate, the entire office is printing over there, which is a special little cluster unto itself.

We all on board?  I get step 4?  I thought so.

My day in pictures

Felt like doing this to a particularly cantankerous copy machine at work:

Felt like doing this to a co-worker:

Had a lunch date:

All better.

A good day

Yesterday was weird and not fantastic and all I wanted to do was curl up in bed and sleep it off.  Life has been exceedingly stressful of late (few of us are digging this economy, right?), and I was about one more sitting-on-the-side-of-the-road-waiting-for-my-car-to-relent-and-take-me-home kind of day away from a total breakdown.

When I finally did make it home, I unloaded all of my emotional baggage into Michael's lap and made him listen as I tore through the list of each and every thing that was weighing on me.

This morning, as he drove me to work, he remarked, "I think you're going to have a better day today."

Mostly because he knew that he was on his way to arrange these:

to arrive in my office some time before lunch with a giant card announcing a surprise getaway to a bed and breakfast.

Michael and I have never been on a trip together. We've started plans for trips many times, but other stuff always intervenes causing us to forego the trip and handle more pressing business.

Well, now there is a trip.  Booked.  And my fantastic mom/Silas' fantastic Nana will be keeping Silas.  And I have requested a day off work.  And I'm buying a new dress.  And I'm going to feel pretty in it, dammit.

He spent the morning ordering the flowers and having the card made and the rest of the day taking care of my car so that I don't have to have anymore sitting-on-the-side-of-the-road-waiting-for-my-car-to-relent-and-take-me-home kind of days.

Michael never just hears the words. He always listens for what they mean, pinpoints what I need and makes it happen. That is just one of the many reasons I adore him and would marry him a thousand more times if I could. 

Because I've seen at least a hundred people bitch about posting pictures of flowers on Facebook, I decided to dedicate a whole blog entry to my flowers and my card and my husband for sending them and booking the trip that made my day and may have possibly pulled me back from the brink of insanity.

Thank you, Michael, for all that you do as a husband and father, and thank you, God, for allowing me to find a man who goes out of his way to make sure that the good days in my life most certainly outnumber the bad ones.

I fell off the wagon

Today, Google (via healthline.com) has diagnosed me as having one of the following:

• Migraine (ruled it out because I have migraines occasionally, and this ain't no migraine)
• Heart attack
• Meningitis
• Poliomyelitis
• Subarachnoid Hemorrhage
• Aneurysm in the brain

And I had been doing such a fantastic job of avoiding self-diagnosis of deadly diseases.

My memory is worse than I thought

It has come to my attention that I am mis-remembering my early-20's, which isn't very surprising after the twenty minute conversation Michael and I had about my horrible memory yesterday.  It is now apparent to me that I have always lacked the ability to dress myself.  Please see the photograph below for evidence of this fact.

This outfit is what I wore to an awards ceremony my former law school threw at the end of a summer program it sponsors.  I had to speak at that ceremony.  The earrings speak volumes, don't they?  Also, that inch of stomach on display.  Classy touch.  

A friend of mine posted the picture on Facebook, and I could not stop staring at those earrings.  No wonder I quit accessorizing.  I was doing it very poorly.

All better

While I may not always be Silas' go-to-gal, he has certainly learned that mommy has the magical power of "kissing it better."  

Michael called me after I got to work and had me on speaker phone (because his phone has been broken since about a month after he got it) talking to me about some video game.  In the background, I hear "mommy! waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah."  So, I asked Michael what was wrong with Silas.  He informed me that Silas had injured himself and was running toward the phone holding his hand out. "He wants you to kiss it better."

So, I had to kiss Silas' boo boo better over the phone while Michael was cracking up in the background "he's holding his hand right up to the phone!" and I'm saying, "muuuuuuah!" and here goes Michael "no, it's a bad one, he wants you to do it again, bahahahahaha!" Me even louder this time "MUUUUUAH! Is it all better yet?"  

Immediately after I finished my question, I heard a throat clear down the hall in a you're-making-me-uncomfortable-by-talking-like-a-baby-and-making-kissing-noises-at-work kind of way.  So, I tried to hurry off the phone.

Apparently, phone kisses combined with comfort food worked wonders.  This is the last report I got from home:

Conserving Energy

Let's assume that God made us and said something like, "you have 1 billion units of energy (or however energy is measured, I'm not a scientist) to last you your entire lifetime." 

Well, we waste a lot of it doing really pointless crap as children, and we laugh at adults who say things like, "I wish I had some of your energy" because, as children, we think we'll feel that tireless forever.

Last night, I watched Silas expend an exorbitant amount of energy climbing up onto the furniture, then immediately climbing back down, then climbing back up, dropping his sippy, exclaiming "uh oh!", climbing back down (repeat x 50). 

If my above assumption were true, and my son were any indication, it would stand to reason that we clearly use up about 500 million units (I'll even do the math for you - that's half) of our energy by the time we reach our 25th  birthdays between the pointless kid stuff (spinning in circles for an hour) and the all-nighters in our early 20's.

I'm nearing 30, and I'm certain I've already used half of my allotted energy for my lifetime.  And that is why I should be allowed to take a nap every day.  Energy conservation.