Thugs 0, Marching band 2

This is awesome. A 17-year-old girl made the local paper for defending herself against two would-be muggers.

The article states that the teenager was walking to school when – suddenly – she was grabbed from behind by two men who demanded her money. (Now, why they thought a high school girl in a middle-class neighborhood would walk around with a bunch of cash is beyond me.)

So this girl, ever the quick thinker, hit the first guy with a quick strike to the nose, and kicked the second guy in the crotch. Oh, and did I mention she was in the marching band? Yes, she then proceeded to beat them with her baton until they backed off. She ran away and escaped her assailants unharmed. The thugs, however, were not so lucky as one had a severe nosebleed and the other… well… you can guess how he felt.

The police put out an APB for the thugs. The description concluded with, “one of them is probably holding his nose and the other one is limping after being kicked in the groin area.”

The story's headline read, "Thugs 0, Marching band 2."

Trick my Truck

A little over a year ago, my husband and I purchased a Ford F-350, King Ranch edition. It takes diesel fuel, has leather interior, and can haul 15,000 pounds down the freeway at 80 miles an hour. It also comes with a handy catalogue where I can buy (were I so inclined) pricey furniture in the form of cow hide sofas and antler chandeliers.

My husband has been dreaming up ways to improve the thing since about 2 days before we even signed the purchasing paperwork.

The latest project is a lift kit. For months, he has been asking my opinion on various rims and tires and lift heights. And while I appreciate being an integral part of the decision-making process, it all kind of looks the same to me. Like, for example, if we decided to paint the kitchen walls a cream color and I asked him, “Honey, which do you like better… the eggshell, the ivory, or the alabaster?”

But I did have one request, namely that I did not want the final product to look as if we were ready to enter a monster truck rally.

So he picked out some very reasonable tires and found a 4 ½ inch lift that he liked.



Once the conversion was complete, he drove our taller, tougher-looking truck over to our friend’s house so everyone could admire the finished product. Someone wanted to know how he had convinced me to agree to the lift. “Oh, she likes it,” he replied, “she just doesn’t know it yet!”

I do like it, actually. But I can’t get too excited or he might get more ideas. He’s already moved on to air bag suspension systems…

BEFORE


AFTER

The cat is on a diet

My cat is fat. Although, personally, I prefer to call it "extra fluffy."

Anyway, because my sweet little baby has a belly that wobbles back and forth as she runs, she has been on a diet... for a year. And she has not lost any weight. I believe this is primarily because she is lazy. It doesn't matter if you only eat a quarter cup of food a day if all you do is sleep and lick yourself.



Recently I had to take her to the vet for her annual vaccinations. We had the following conversation.

Vet: You have a beautiful cat.
Me: Thank you.

(Little did I know, but the compliment was just a lead-in for what comes next...)

Vet: You know, she could stand to lose a little weight.
Me: But I only feed her a quarter cup of food a day! She's on a diet.
Vet: Have you considered exercise?
Me: Hey, I go to the gym three times a week!
Vet: For the cat.
Me: Really? How do you get a cat to exercise?
Vet: Does she respond to a laser pointer?
Me: Not really. She's quite lazy.
Vet: Well, um, try to get her to run around a little. It might help.

Yeah, right. She'll run to the food dish but that's about the only time that cat moves faster than a stroll.

Twinkle, Twinkle

Last night we decided to leave the windows open and take advantage of the mild spring weather.
With the lights off in the house, we had a nice view of the yard and sky outside. Gazing out across the night sky, I remarked to Chris, "Look, honey, you can see the stars! That one right there is especially bright. Maybe it's a planet."

Chris, ever the disbeliever, remarked, "yeah, a planet... OR, an airplane. Or a streetlight."

"Hey," I exclaimed, "I am not RETARDED!"

I was pretty sure I could tell the difference between the stars and the streetlights.

Chris looked out the window. "It's an airplane. It's blinking."

Self-assured, I replied, "It's blinking because of the gasses in the atmosphere... of course, planets don't blink quite as much as stars, but..."

"Yeah, it's a planet -- planet Southwest Airlines!"

"No, I'm pretty sure it's a planet... or a star," I insisted.

"Look," he said, "you can see it moving. And... wait... there it goes... and it's gone. I can't even see it any more."

"Oh."

Chris just looked at me, and we both started laughing. In between chuckles, he got out, "You're 'not retarded,' huh?"

Right and Wrong

The past few months, we've gotten lots of helpful advice from well-wishers wanting us to have a long and happy marriage. Three of the most common were:

1. Don't go to bed angry.
2. Learn to compromise.
3. Apologize when you're wrong (and sometimes even when you're right).

A few months ago, my lovely husband and I had been discussing the current state of the lawn. I mentioned that we should probably try and get the dog to pee on the dirt, because it was turning the lawn brown in one corner. Chris looked at me like I was crazy.

"Dog pee does not turn the grass brown."

I looked back at him like he was just as crazy. "Of course it does. Everybody knows that. How do you not know that?"

He continued to profess his disbelief and I marched into the house to get the computer. He followed me inside.

"You're looking it up on the internet, aren't you?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, pointing to an article on the screen, "you see? I'm not wrong about this."

To which he said the internet was full of myths and lies and he would certainly know if dog pee turned the grass brown.

Yesterday, my husband came home with an admission. "I have something to tell you... I was talking with one of my buddies about his lawn... and, well, he started complaining about the dog peeing on it. I asked why and he said, 'Dude, dog pee turns the grass brown. You didn't know that?'"

My husband looks at me and says, "So, you were right. I just wanted to tell you that."

Gotta love a guy who's man enough to admit when he's wrong.

Ya Mon, No Problem

In reality, we were very lucky that it didn't rain on our wedding day. Not that there's anything we could have done about it anyway... as a wise local cab driver once said to us, "There is no special time for the rain." For us, that "special time" was exactly twenty-four hours after our wedding. Had we been married at the same time on the following day, there would have been a downpour during the ceremony. Any disappointment I had harbored about the moderately overcast sky during our ceremony was instantly wiped out at the realization of how easily it could have rained instead. A few clouds were nothing.

Jamaicans, in case you didn't know, run on their own time schedule. "Five minutes" can be five minutes or five hours, depending on the mood of the person, their opinion of you, the weather, how much ganja they may or may not have smoked, whether they get attacked by feral cats on their way, etc, etc. Anytime we requested something the response was always, "Ya mon, no problem."

"Ya mon, no problem," I have decided, is the perfect answer to every question. Basically, it's a "yes, of course... just give me five minutes. Five Jamaican minutes."

You may never get whatever it is you've asked for, but it's not their fault. They were totally going to get around to it. Eventually.

One of the other nice things about Jamaica was the fact that my blackberry did not receive internet data. No emails. For 9 days I was blissfully unaware of any and all electronic communications from work. And then, on that last day, we boarded the plane home. I got one last, beautiful, parting view of Jamaica:

About two hours later, we touched down in Miami. I pulled my blackberry out of my purse and looked at it in dread. Here it comes. A week and a half's worth of work emails. I half expected my phone to spontaneously combust from the effort of trying to simultaneously download all the emails that were sure to be waiting in internet limbo.

I turned on the blackberry. It was quiet for a minute. And then: pingpingpingpingpingping... I turned it to vibrate and put it back in my purse, letting it do its thing.

83 emails later, it was finally done uploading. Of those 83 emails, only two were spam and one was personal. The other 81 were all about work. We need this, can you send us that, please explain this, please submit that...

Now, if only I could use my newly found life philosophy. It would go something like this:

Work: We have received your ten-page analysis on the need for a new procedure X. However, we would like to have further detail. Please submit a twenty-page report with this additional detail.
Me: Ya mon, no problem.

Work: We have not yet received your twenty-page report. This is needed to approve the implementation of procedure X.
Me: Ya mon, no problem.

Work: We are still awaiting your report. Please tell us when we can expect to receive it.
Me: Ya mon, no problem.

And so on and so forth until I get fired or at least lose all credibility regarding my ability to meet a deadline. Bummer. Would have made answering those 83 emails a lot easier.