I recently had to remind a married friend of mine that one should not ask questions of their spouse that they do not want to hear the truth about and I'm afraid that tonight I was forced to eat my words. I made the innocent observation that Garren was very lucky to have gotten out of a local park at night for bird watching without being raped or killed (seriously, don't go to that park at night, ya'll) and the following conversation ensued:
Garren: Well, it's like with bears. If you're with a group of people you just have to be faster than the slowest person running away from the rapist.
Me: Well, yeah if you're with a bunch of people you don't know.
Garren: I don't think that matters.
Me: Well, if it was my short-legged ass you wouldn't just run away...
Garren: (silence)
Me: I SAID... if it was me you wouldn't run away, right?
Garren: Well... probably not no.
Me: PROBABLY? I'm going to need a more definite answer than that...
Garren: Well, I mean I would probably end up using you-
Me: USING ME?! AS WHAT?!
Garren: Well, like... distraction.
Me: YOU WOULD USE ME AS BAIT?!
Garren: NO!
Me: What is using me to distract a bear called?
Garren: I would be APPEASING the bear... not BAITING it...
Me: ....
Garren: What?
Me: I'm just going to be bear appeasement?
Garren: In the very unlikely scenario that we are in the woods together, yeah
(reference the fishing-on-our-anniversary post)
Garren: Anyway, you shouldn't run from a bear, you have to fight the bear.
Me: That's cougars, idiot.
Garren: NO! It's cougars AND bears... bears can run 30 miles an hour.
Me: They might ROLL 30 miles an hour - they don't run 30 damn miles an hour
Garren: Yes they do!
Me: Don't play me for an idiot! I have seen how bears are built, they ain't runnin' for SHIT!
Garren: I'm serious!
Me: I'm sure you are! But the last time I heard you talking about fending off predatory wildlife you were telling me that you were going to lure Big Foot with beef jerky and then kick him in the nuts.
Garren: I STILL INTEND TO!
Then there was the inevitable scenario:
Garren: Well, if it was like, you, me and a fishing buddy I would just take out the guy's kneecap and we could run away.
Me: Well first of all, that's terrible. Second of all, I would hope you would value my life more than your damn fishing buddy.
Garren: (feeling like he's won) Yeah. I would.
Me: Since you got yourself into this shit and started the "whole running away from the bear" situation, you get to answer this horrible no-win question! What if it was me, you and your MOM. Who would you sacrifice.
Garren: Oh, you could outrun my mom.
Me: Wow... You wouldn't sacrifice yourself for me AND your mother? I see where we rate...
I explained to him the following issue in this instance: he could have lied to me and I would never have to know. The answer that I was looking for, of course, was "I would lag behind on the off chance that the bear caught up and I would allow myself to be eaten so that you could be safe." Of course, in practice, this would likely not happen. In all truth and honesty, he probably would use me as bait in order to "buy time so I can find a really big stick! Quit looking at me like that!" BUT. In that case I would only spend the last 30 seconds of my doomed life knowing that my boyfriend is a careless asshole. Instead, I now get to live out the rest of my life knowing that my boyfriend is a careless asshole.
This is, of course, mostly hyperbole. Garren is a loving and wonderful person (as evidenced in most previous posts) but today he learned an important lesson about white lies and relationship happiness. If I never have to know about it in any practical or theoretical sense, lie. Just lie. Instead of going home to write about you on my blog I could instead share with absolutely no one the fact that you would sacrifice yourself to a bear for me... because no one wants to hear that shit... that would be incredibly corny. I think if someone told me that their boyfriend ever admitted to that, I would blink at them awkwardly until they walked away.
And this is why and how men should learn to lie to women. Do it so no one else has to have this argument while screaming at each other with the window down in front of a restaurant with outdoor seating. Where people are wondering what the hell is wrong with you. And why you are both laughing while screaming at each other about bears.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Saturday, August 6, 2011
I'll Make An Awful Wife Someday
My boyfriend, Garren, is a saint among men. Luckily for me he had done shockingly little dating at the time that I met him for being as good looking as he is; he was slowly and carefully conditioned to believe that my unique combination of high maintenance slovenly-ness was actually somewhat normal. If he ever finds out that some women actually cook, clean and do laundry I will be operating on my looks alone.
His mother, however, is about to blow my cover. She called me the other day to ask me what I was bringing to their family's annual summer party. The following conversation ensued:
Kathy: "So... don't get mad at me..."
Me: "OK."
Kathy: "You promise you won't hate me?"
Me: "I promise."
Kathy: "I'm going to make you actually cook something..."
Me: "...Oh! Uh. OK."
This poor woman knows first hand the story of how I almost burnt down our apartment. As someone who has literally screwed up Easy Mac in front of an 8 year old (and unsuccessfully tried to trick her into thinking it was mac and cheese soup) I can tell you that what I was doing hadn't even gotten to what could be called "cooking" yet. I tried to pre-heat the oven to bake pre-made frozen crab rangoons and didn't think to check the oven beforehand to make sure there was nothing in it. Long story short, it ended in me making a frantic call to the fire department while fanning my smoke detector and calling Garren sobbing and screaming "WHO KEEPS PLASTIC IN THE OVEN?!?!"
Once the fire department had cleared out, I had accounted for all my cats and had flopped onto the couch to indulge in a loud cry, Garren's family could be seen out my window running hell-bent for election across my parking lot to save me from what Garren had led them to believe was an all-consuming inferno. They found me in Garren's basketball shorts, a sports bra and mismatched flip flops and it was likely at that moment they knew that I would be dependent on their son forever if I was going to spare myself nearly impossible death from domestic ineptitude. They dutifully cleared out my kitchen and comforted my psycho dog while his Dad finally worked up the courage to ask "So... what were you trying to do in here?"
Against all odds, I am actually pretty good at cleaning but dishes are not my strong suit. My house remains fairly clean most of the time but since Garren and I both hate doing dishes, we constantly have a stack of dirty dishes in the sink. My mother has an adorable pre-diagnosable case of OCD and she loves nothing more than cleaning, so, growing up there was not much left to make chores of, especially dishes. My mother doing dishes or toothbrush-cleaning a sink induces in her a happiness akin to the animals at the end of Splash Mountain. It would be like poaching Brer Rabbit to take those kinds of tasks away from her, though I have never dared test the theory. I have let dishes sit long enough to algae because I am really only half sure that I'm doing it right. I never washed a dish until I moved out of the house, much to the chagrin of my college roommate. She walked in on me putting hand soap on a plate and just running it under water and waiting for the chunks of food to disappear as soon as the water got hot enough. "Where is your sponge?" she asked, taking the plate from me as though helping a house cat out of pants. "This is so awkward, I cannot look at you anymore."
I was rather proud of myself the other day for picking up a rather extensive "dog accident" all by myself. Usually, when these sorts of things happen, I generally pretend to be asleep on the couch when he gets home and when he asks me why I didn't pick it up I say "He must have done that while I was sleeping!" prompting the obvious question of "Why is it cold, then?!" which is when I generally pretend to be asleep again. This instance was unavoidable - it was right inside the front door. I wouldn't have been able to miss it on my way in and I had very clearly dragged the door through it. I was sunk. That and he wouldn't be home for hours and I couldn't confine myself to the back of the house to avoid the smell until he got home - I would have to microwave a corndog eventually and I would have to pass by it again and feel the awful sting of disgust with myself (for leaving the dog shit there, not for eating a corn dog.) I did manage to clean it up; Garren could have done it with three paper towels and a Lysol wipe but it took me an entire roll of paper towels, two trash bags and thirteen Lysol wipes. But. The job got done and isn't that what's important?
If you think the corndogs are bad, you will be disgusted to hear what I usually eat. Garren likes to cook and is very good at it, but I have never really tried. Thus, when he is not home, I eat like a 12 year old boy with the house to himself:
Typical meal when Garren is home: meat/couscous/steamed vegetable or dining out.
Typical meal when I am home alone: PB&J (two bites eaten before it's determined that the ratio was off), deviled eggs, stale tortilla chips, Red Vines and Sprite.
My coworker found out about this the other day and challenged me to cook for a week and I laughed.
Me: "No one actually does that."
Stephanie: "Everyone does that!"
Me: "Well... yeah but..."
Stephanie: "NO MORE STALE TORTILLA CHIPS!"
I am fairly good at laundry but I only had to start doing it myself because Garren made the near-fatal decision of machine washing a silk shirt. I think he may have sacrificed that shirt so he wouldn't have to keep doing my laundry, but I've never confirmed that.
So, in a move usually characteristic of late-December/early-January, I have decided to start actually cooking, doing all the laundry and keeping the house clean. Today I cooked the first thing I have tried to cook since the crab-rangoon-inlaw-rescue: fruit pizza. I basically only made one large Pillsbury sugar cookie, softened some cream cheese and arranged some fruit. When Garren got home and assumed that he would have to hold my hand while I crashed dishes around until he took over a recipe for me, heactually found the pizza already done and in the fridge and he looked at me hopefully. His eyes seemed to say "...But I'm going to have to do the fucking dishes, aren't I?"
His mother, however, is about to blow my cover. She called me the other day to ask me what I was bringing to their family's annual summer party. The following conversation ensued:
Kathy: "So... don't get mad at me..."
Me: "OK."
Kathy: "You promise you won't hate me?"
Me: "I promise."
Kathy: "I'm going to make you actually cook something..."
Me: "...Oh! Uh. OK."
This poor woman knows first hand the story of how I almost burnt down our apartment. As someone who has literally screwed up Easy Mac in front of an 8 year old (and unsuccessfully tried to trick her into thinking it was mac and cheese soup) I can tell you that what I was doing hadn't even gotten to what could be called "cooking" yet. I tried to pre-heat the oven to bake pre-made frozen crab rangoons and didn't think to check the oven beforehand to make sure there was nothing in it. Long story short, it ended in me making a frantic call to the fire department while fanning my smoke detector and calling Garren sobbing and screaming "WHO KEEPS PLASTIC IN THE OVEN?!?!"
Once the fire department had cleared out, I had accounted for all my cats and had flopped onto the couch to indulge in a loud cry, Garren's family could be seen out my window running hell-bent for election across my parking lot to save me from what Garren had led them to believe was an all-consuming inferno. They found me in Garren's basketball shorts, a sports bra and mismatched flip flops and it was likely at that moment they knew that I would be dependent on their son forever if I was going to spare myself nearly impossible death from domestic ineptitude. They dutifully cleared out my kitchen and comforted my psycho dog while his Dad finally worked up the courage to ask "So... what were you trying to do in here?"
Against all odds, I am actually pretty good at cleaning but dishes are not my strong suit. My house remains fairly clean most of the time but since Garren and I both hate doing dishes, we constantly have a stack of dirty dishes in the sink. My mother has an adorable pre-diagnosable case of OCD and she loves nothing more than cleaning, so, growing up there was not much left to make chores of, especially dishes. My mother doing dishes or toothbrush-cleaning a sink induces in her a happiness akin to the animals at the end of Splash Mountain. It would be like poaching Brer Rabbit to take those kinds of tasks away from her, though I have never dared test the theory. I have let dishes sit long enough to algae because I am really only half sure that I'm doing it right. I never washed a dish until I moved out of the house, much to the chagrin of my college roommate. She walked in on me putting hand soap on a plate and just running it under water and waiting for the chunks of food to disappear as soon as the water got hot enough. "Where is your sponge?" she asked, taking the plate from me as though helping a house cat out of pants. "This is so awkward, I cannot look at you anymore."
I was rather proud of myself the other day for picking up a rather extensive "dog accident" all by myself. Usually, when these sorts of things happen, I generally pretend to be asleep on the couch when he gets home and when he asks me why I didn't pick it up I say "He must have done that while I was sleeping!" prompting the obvious question of "Why is it cold, then?!" which is when I generally pretend to be asleep again. This instance was unavoidable - it was right inside the front door. I wouldn't have been able to miss it on my way in and I had very clearly dragged the door through it. I was sunk. That and he wouldn't be home for hours and I couldn't confine myself to the back of the house to avoid the smell until he got home - I would have to microwave a corndog eventually and I would have to pass by it again and feel the awful sting of disgust with myself (for leaving the dog shit there, not for eating a corn dog.) I did manage to clean it up; Garren could have done it with three paper towels and a Lysol wipe but it took me an entire roll of paper towels, two trash bags and thirteen Lysol wipes. But. The job got done and isn't that what's important?
If you think the corndogs are bad, you will be disgusted to hear what I usually eat. Garren likes to cook and is very good at it, but I have never really tried. Thus, when he is not home, I eat like a 12 year old boy with the house to himself:
Typical meal when Garren is home: meat/couscous/steamed vegetable or dining out.
Typical meal when I am home alone: PB&J (two bites eaten before it's determined that the ratio was off), deviled eggs, stale tortilla chips, Red Vines and Sprite.
My coworker found out about this the other day and challenged me to cook for a week and I laughed.
Me: "No one actually does that."
Stephanie: "Everyone does that!"
Me: "Well... yeah but..."
Stephanie: "NO MORE STALE TORTILLA CHIPS!"
I am fairly good at laundry but I only had to start doing it myself because Garren made the near-fatal decision of machine washing a silk shirt. I think he may have sacrificed that shirt so he wouldn't have to keep doing my laundry, but I've never confirmed that.
So, in a move usually characteristic of late-December/early-January, I have decided to start actually cooking, doing all the laundry and keeping the house clean. Today I cooked the first thing I have tried to cook since the crab-rangoon-inlaw-rescue: fruit pizza. I basically only made one large Pillsbury sugar cookie, softened some cream cheese and arranged some fruit. When Garren got home and assumed that he would have to hold my hand while I crashed dishes around until he took over a recipe for me, heactually found the pizza already done and in the fridge and he looked at me hopefully. His eyes seemed to say "...But I'm going to have to do the fucking dishes, aren't I?"
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
My Phone Is A Piece Of Shit
Am I turning into my grandfather? If so, I blame my phone.
How do I always end up getting suckered into this shit? Seriously? I suppose that starts with me doing what I am genetically dispositioned to do, paternally speaking: buying the shittiest model of whatever I can find and trying to pass it off as a "vintage" or "fiscally smart" decision. My father can now laugh all the way to the bank because if I could unearth my first pre-flip-phone 2002 Nokia from my mother's house I would gladly do it. I would use it right in front of my current phone and then make my current phone take pictures of it.
I hate every single thing about my phone. Everything. "Everything?" you ask. "Surely you exaggerate, there must be some distinguishing feature on your phone that you can find value in." No. Also, this is my blog, don't you back sass me. This isn't your mother's dinner table.
Let me take you through a normal day between myself and my phone. Every morning I wake up and if I have forgotten to plug it in the night before it will be dead. I shouldn't say completely, it will turn on long enough to open up a graphic saying "WELCOME TO TMOBILE!" and then immediately afterward "GOODBYE". This is one of many examples of things that it likes to do purely to piss me the hell off. THEN as I type these words it has randomly turned itself off for no reason and now back on. This prompts it to run an app called "I Left My Phone At Home" which eats up 2 minutes of boot up time all by itself. I don't really remember why I downloaded it because I intentionally leave this thing at home all the time, like you would leave an insolent child at home while everyone else goes to get ice cream.
Then... god forbid I'm getting a text message. And even worse, if I am responding to a text message as someone else is trying to write me something. This guarantees me two full minutes of frozen phone that can only be remedied by taking out it's fucking battery and putting it back in and then it only takes about 7 minutes. I save myself 3 minutes but also, usually, break a nail.
Let me take you through a few features that sound awesome but I can assure you are not. I have maybe two apps on this thing because there are not that many available for the system that I use.
1) Internet explorer. Who the hell uses internet explorer anymore?
2) Google Maps. Featuring text almost large enough for you to tell that it is intending to make words. This is really helpful when driving.
3) The music feature! I still have not figured out how this shit works. Usually, after clicking and dragging and saving and cursing I end up with half the songs I intended to transfer and I just call it a draw.
4) Games - I have many full length games based largely upon TV shows my grandfather likes to watch but the only one worth a damn (Tetris) is demo length (letting you only get far enough to level up and then cutting out.)
5)It came with Transformers on it but with all cases of watching anything on this phone, all you can see (if you're lucky enough not to find glare) is every finger print you have ever put on it ever that refuses to wipe itself from the damn face of the thing. If Gary Ridgeway would have touched my phone, rubbed it off vigorously and soaked it in bleach, they STILL would have caught him.
6) Then there is of course the flashlight app - helpful, right? WRONG. You turn it on and there is a delay. It is always juuuuust long enough that I think to myself "Is this thing broken?", flip it over and do so just in time for the thing to BLIND ME.
7) I do like the Next2Me App which uses GPS to tell me what accommodations are by me, but it always seems to think that I am in a part of town that I have never been to. It's a different unfamiliar place every time, but the things there look lovely. I'm pretty sure the app is not US made, however it's always helpful if I want to find, among other things: a "cinema", a "swimming", Wikipedia (like what, their fucking headquarters? Spoiler alert, it's somebody's mom's basement), "fire brigade", a monastery (there are none because the only place this phone doesn't think I am is Tibet), a mosque (there are 8!), a youth hostel or a "guesthouse" which just sounds like a horror move set up. See? This phone is trying to kill me.
I spent a not-modest amount of money on something that I intentionally leave at home because it's just too complicated and maddening for me and some days I just don't want to feel like my grandfather using a Comcast box... (spoiler alert number 2, it looks strangely similar to me using a Comcast box.)
How do I always end up getting suckered into this shit? Seriously? I suppose that starts with me doing what I am genetically dispositioned to do, paternally speaking: buying the shittiest model of whatever I can find and trying to pass it off as a "vintage" or "fiscally smart" decision. My father can now laugh all the way to the bank because if I could unearth my first pre-flip-phone 2002 Nokia from my mother's house I would gladly do it. I would use it right in front of my current phone and then make my current phone take pictures of it.
I hate every single thing about my phone. Everything. "Everything?" you ask. "Surely you exaggerate, there must be some distinguishing feature on your phone that you can find value in." No. Also, this is my blog, don't you back sass me. This isn't your mother's dinner table.
Let me take you through a normal day between myself and my phone. Every morning I wake up and if I have forgotten to plug it in the night before it will be dead. I shouldn't say completely, it will turn on long enough to open up a graphic saying "WELCOME TO TMOBILE!" and then immediately afterward "GOODBYE". This is one of many examples of things that it likes to do purely to piss me the hell off. THEN as I type these words it has randomly turned itself off for no reason and now back on. This prompts it to run an app called "I Left My Phone At Home" which eats up 2 minutes of boot up time all by itself. I don't really remember why I downloaded it because I intentionally leave this thing at home all the time, like you would leave an insolent child at home while everyone else goes to get ice cream.
Then... god forbid I'm getting a text message. And even worse, if I am responding to a text message as someone else is trying to write me something. This guarantees me two full minutes of frozen phone that can only be remedied by taking out it's fucking battery and putting it back in and then it only takes about 7 minutes. I save myself 3 minutes but also, usually, break a nail.
Let me take you through a few features that sound awesome but I can assure you are not. I have maybe two apps on this thing because there are not that many available for the system that I use.
1) Internet explorer. Who the hell uses internet explorer anymore?
2) Google Maps. Featuring text almost large enough for you to tell that it is intending to make words. This is really helpful when driving.
3) The music feature! I still have not figured out how this shit works. Usually, after clicking and dragging and saving and cursing I end up with half the songs I intended to transfer and I just call it a draw.
4) Games - I have many full length games based largely upon TV shows my grandfather likes to watch but the only one worth a damn (Tetris) is demo length (letting you only get far enough to level up and then cutting out.)
5)It came with Transformers on it but with all cases of watching anything on this phone, all you can see (if you're lucky enough not to find glare) is every finger print you have ever put on it ever that refuses to wipe itself from the damn face of the thing. If Gary Ridgeway would have touched my phone, rubbed it off vigorously and soaked it in bleach, they STILL would have caught him.
6) Then there is of course the flashlight app - helpful, right? WRONG. You turn it on and there is a delay. It is always juuuuust long enough that I think to myself "Is this thing broken?", flip it over and do so just in time for the thing to BLIND ME.
7) I do like the Next2Me App which uses GPS to tell me what accommodations are by me, but it always seems to think that I am in a part of town that I have never been to. It's a different unfamiliar place every time, but the things there look lovely. I'm pretty sure the app is not US made, however it's always helpful if I want to find, among other things: a "cinema", a "swimming", Wikipedia (like what, their fucking headquarters? Spoiler alert, it's somebody's mom's basement), "fire brigade", a monastery (there are none because the only place this phone doesn't think I am is Tibet), a mosque (there are 8!), a youth hostel or a "guesthouse" which just sounds like a horror move set up. See? This phone is trying to kill me.
I spent a not-modest amount of money on something that I intentionally leave at home because it's just too complicated and maddening for me and some days I just don't want to feel like my grandfather using a Comcast box... (spoiler alert number 2, it looks strangely similar to me using a Comcast box.)
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