Blank Checks

I was doing a bit of surfing the other day, and came across this notice from the guys on the Time Bandit, from Deadliest Catch.  I know what I’m doing when I get some money!  I’m getting some Alaskan King crab delivered to my door, fresh off the boat! 

I think this totally rocks and wanted to pass the word along. 

 

The Official Website of the F/V Time Bandit

Breaking News!

Captains Johnathan & Andy Hillstrand have teamed-up with FishEx Seafood Company to arrange nationwide home delivery of their catch. Treat yourself to succulent, fresh-caught Alaska crab from the very same boat and crew that you’ve watched on TV!.

This is your chance to enjoy succulent, fresh-caught crab legs- shipped overnight directly to your home or business.  Melt plenty of butter, invite good friends, and feast on the bounty brought to you by your favorite fishermen!  Guaranteed to be the best crab you’ve ever had.

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~

Have you ever had one of those moments where you reach for a word and it’s just not there?  I had such a moment the other day.  *sigh*

Darc and I were watching a show, and the lead actor is Australian, speaks with an American accent for the show, but uses his Australian one for the announcements during commercial breaks.  The “We’ll be right back,” kind of thing.

Darc said, “Can’t keep the Aussie under wraps.”  I remembered that Christian Bale used his American voice for all his Batman promotions, even though he’s from Wales.  So I mentioned that, that Bale did it, kept his accent under wraps.

“Well, he’s not Australian,” quipped Darc.
”Oh I know, he’s … [blank] … [blinking] … Walesian.”  My brain went on vacation and forgot to tell me.

Darc busted up laughing.  “You mean Welsh?  I’m sure you meant Welsh.  Because there’s no such thing as ‘Walesian’.  I hope to God you know that!”

Yes.  I know that.    *smack*

Lesson of the day: Don’t ever do drugs in high school, it’ll come back to bite you in the ass later on … years later on.  The gift that keeps on giving. 

~~~~~~~~~~

And I think my brain is still on some kind of vacation, because I’m pretty blank! 

Tell me about one of your brain blank moments, please, so I don’t feel like such an idiot.  Seriously, Walesian?  I have no idea WTH I was thinking.  It kinda sounds cool, though, right?  Right?

This Writer’s Wife

Some time ago, when I was bemoaning my lack of blog fodder, Darc suggested I write a post about what it’s like being a writer’s wife.  I’ve been stewing on this for a while now, and I’m not sure I have an answer.  I can tell you I feel like I belong to an exclusive club, you know, like Tabitha King.  But I don’t know what I do exactly that helps him write.  The storytelling, the creativity, that’s all his own God-given talent and has nothing to do with me.  Not really.  I enable him as best I can, and encourage him when he seems discouraged … but I don’t think I really do anything.  And as I write this I realize that it really has nothing to do with being married to a writer, but is simply about being married.  It wouldn’t matter if he was a writer, an artist, a cop, a lawyer, or a CEO.  I support him – that’s what I do.

A long time ago I read an article in a magazine about an old married couple.  They were asked what made their marriage work so well for so long.  The old man offered that they always went to the opera every month.  “Oh, you must love the opera,” the author said.  “Oh no, I hate the opera,” replied the old man.  The author was puzzled until the old man explained, “She loves the opera, and I love her, and I love the look on her face when she watches it.”  I cried when I read it, because that’s the kind of marriage I wanted.  It is enough to say my ex was not that kind of husband.  That old man’s words struck a chord though. 

For the record, I don’t hate writing.  For a long time I wanted to be a writer, until I realized I lacked that nameless something that writer’s have.  Good writing is an art.  The best line I ever wrote was when I was around 15 or 16. 

She was sitting on the bench when he saw her.  He walked up to her and asked, “What’s your name?”
”Kanance, with a K,” she replied, “What’s yours?”
”Mike, with an M.”

See, I wasn’t kidding when I said I don’t have it.  What I do have is a desire to encourage my husband, so I learn what I can about writing because this is something he loves, and loves to talk about.  How can we have any kind of meaningful conversation if I know nothing of what he’s talking about?  How can I give him feedback if I don’t know what he’s referring to when he asks me such things as, “Is this too much tell and not enough show?  Is this too passive?”  So I read all the writing books we have and learn what I can, so I can know enough to at least not sound like an idiot when we talk.   

I am simply a sounding board.  When he gets an idea, he’ll think out loud to me.  I’m sure I’m a party-pooper sometimes because I’ll say things like, “Oh, that would never work.”  Other times though, he hits a gold mine.  If someone were to ask me, “Oh, my spouse wants to be a writer, what can I do to help them?” I can really only say: Listen.  Don’t offer feedback unless asked, don’t interrupt when they’re thinking – because even though it might look like they’re just sitting there doing nothing, they’re writing in their head.  Be supportive above all.  Writers, like any artist, seem to be in need of lots of encouragement so don’t be stingy.  Read everything they write and when they ask for your opinion, give it honestly but with love.  If they really want to be a better writer, they will only get there with helpful – truthful – feedback.  If they’re not ready or willing to hear what’s wrong with their work, they’re not ready to really be a writer.  And that’s okay too, because we all have different talents and if writing’s not it – like in my case – something else will be.  Better to let go of something you’re not suited to, than to keep pushing against your own grain and trying to force it.  Build your strengths, and your weaknesses will follow.

I’ll leave you with mine and Darc’s latest theme song.   

 

(In case the video doesn’t load – Evil Love)

Reading, Writing, and Husbands

So I played book roulette at the library the other day.  I’ve told you about that before, right?  Where I grab a book off the “new fiction” shelf (which isn’t always new, btw), checking out nothing more than the title and the blurb on the back.  Sometimes I find something good, other times not so much.  This last time I found a book called Ghostwriter by a guy named Travis Thrasher.  I was intrigued by a book about a horror writer whose wife had died.  Being married to a horror writer, it’s no surprise why I’d be interested in a book like that.    What was most creepy to me was finding out that the character’s wife’s middle name was Nessa.  THAT sent a chill down my spine!  It was actually a pretty good book and I’m trying to get Darc to read it, just to get an idea of the competition he has out there.  Turns out the author also lives in Chicagoland.  The town he wrote about, I have been in many times so the “scenery” was familiar and that added a sense of surrealism for me.  The author is a decent writer and I can recommend his book and I might check to see if my library has anything else by him. 

That being said, I felt something was again confirmed for me, and that is how truly great a writer my husband is.  Now, when I tell him this, he basically accuses me of “blowing sunshine up his ass” because I’m his wife and what else am I going to say?  While I always try to be supportive of him, I like to think that if I thought something he wrote was truly bad, I would tell him in the nicest way possible.  I can only point to my lack of support for something he wrote a few years ago.  The story had potential but there were a lot of things wrong with it, and I didn’t have the knowledge about writing then that I have now and couldn’t quite express what I felt was wrong with the book.  He wanted to self-publish and I kept discouraging him.  “Ummm, I know you’ll publish books one day … but I don’t think this is going to be the book to start you off.”  No, I never said, “This is crap!”  Perhaps I should have just to give myself more credibility with him, but that’s not my style.  Looking back at that piece, he loathes it, and is glad I was so resistant to him trying to publish it, and now I’m better educated at telling him what’s weak and what’s strong in his writing.  I’ve read every writing book he has to familiarize myself with the craft, as well as a lot of stuff online.  Plus, I have always been a fairly avid reader and my eyes have passed over millions of printed words and I like to think that I can tell the jewels from the garbage.  So, if you haven’t already, go check out his fiction stuff and see what I mean.  You won’t be sorry.    (If you don’t like horror, you can check out his childhood memoirs – but please trust me on this – the horror is not what you think – he hates gore too.)

I don’t think I went online at all this weekend – we spent most of the time playing computer games – so now I have a lot of catching up to do!  Please be patient with me!  I’m still sharing a computer and Darc has a lot of things he needs to get done during the daytime hours, so I’ll be around late tonight to check out your blogs and comments.  Have I told you lately how much I love that?  Well, I’m telling you now, I do.   

And how was your weekend?

Modern day time travel

Take a trip down memory lane with me, won’t you?  Darc and I stayed up the other night having giggle fits over songs from  our childhood.  Yes, the grand ol’ ‘70’s.    I cracked up over Darc’s confession that he didn’t know the singer from the band Wild Cherry was white – you know, the “Play That Funky Music White Boy” song.  He didn’t watch Midnight Special like I did so he missed that one.  There was one song, “Love Rollercoaster,” that was huge because the rumor going around was that the screams in the song were “accidently captured” and were actually “the screams of a girl being murdered in the next studio.”  I kid you not!  The big thing was to keep calling radio stations and ask them to play it again, so you could hear the poor girl’s dying cries.  Yeah, file that one under urban legends of the ‘70’s! 

Dreams was a big one, as was Go Your Own Way, both by Fleetwood Mac.  I confess I was a little miffed that Dreams won the #1 spot of the top 100 songs of the year on my local radio station, beating out the Bay City Rollers Saturday Night.  Just please don’t tell anyone!  I was only 12!  Which reminds me; remember You Light Up My Life?  Did you see the movie??  Yeah, me too.  I remember my friends and I sitting in the theater wondering how Didi Conn managed to belt out that song with her breathy little voice.  We didn’t quite get the concept of “voice over-dubbing.”  Yep, she was also Frenchie in Grease. 

How did this conversation get started, you ask?  Well, when I came out of the smoking room, Darc asked, “Were you whistling in there?”
”Umm, yeah, sorry … I was listening to my iPod.”
”What in the world were you listening to?”
”I was Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay.”

I think, for me, that is one of the defining songs of my childhood.  I’ve been on those docks, lived not terribly far from them, and I can see them when I close my eyes while listening to this song.  I can smell the salty air and see the sea lions playing.  I can feel the sand in my toes and the cold water washing over my feet.  Dock Of The Bay was played often on the radio station I listened to, and learning how to whistle like Otis Redding was considered an accomplishment.    This song isn’t simply a song I listen to, it’s a place I go. 

This video – Top 30 Best rock songs of the 70’s – has a nice compilation of some 70’s songs – I’m sure it’ll bring back some memories. 

On a hot streak!

Okay, you all know I’m not a funny person, but I’m on a humor roll lately!  Seriously, for 3 years in a row now I’ve made at least 1 funny crack that’s made my husband laugh out loud.  It’s a streak!  First I got him with the “whopperhole” comment a couple of years ago.  Then last year I had him in stitches over the “Rockwell with a twist of King” reference.  And the other night I had him with a new word I made up. 

He’d asked me to read over one of his posts before he published it, and I was cracking up while reading it.  Have you ever had it happen that you read something incorrectly?  He’d written, “Anyway, I doubt any of you need me to tell you what the movie is about.”  I read, “Anyway, I doubt think any of you …”  So I said, “Oops, there’s a typo here.” 

He leaned down to see the monitor, an edge of panic in his voice, “Where?” 

I pointed to the screen and as I did, I saw that there really wasn’t a typo but that I’d misread it.  Trying to cover my own butt I said, “Oh wait, it’s not a typo after all … it’s an … eye-po.”  Anything to avoid saying, ‘I was wrong’! 

He started laughing – and believe me when I tell you – that’s NO easy feat for me!  “Did you read that in one of your tweets?” he asked.

“No … “

“You mean you just made that up?  Really?  All by yourself?  That’s pretty good!  You should tweet that.”  High praise from Caesar.  *snort*

So that’s my new word, eye-po, use it with love and think of me.  I’m still on my funny streak and boy, I’m heating things up.  Lord knows what I’ll come up with next year!  Think I can get a gig in Vegas? 

~~Ness~~ 

Silver Linings

This is a difficult time in our lives, as some of you know.  Some of you don’t, and that’s okay, this isn’t about sympathy.  Frankly, I’m not sure I’d know what to do with that anyway.  What it is about is those bright moments that it seems only the dark times can bring.

For instance, being unemployed is scary.  But not having to get up for work is fun.  So fun that the nights Darc and I end up talking all night happen more often, rather than get excluded to weekends.  I call them our slumber parties, because we end up laying in bed talking all night and giggling like a couple of school kids, and sometimes – gasp! – even sneaking chips in bed.    And let’s face it, getting to spend all day with your beloved is priceless. 

There’s almost nothing we haven’t talked about: Bible stuff (naturally), anthropology, paleontology, science, TV shows, food, memories, hopes, scary stories, history, geology … the list really is endless.  These aren’t planned things either, either the talks or the topics.  We somehow just get started and before we know it, it’s 6 AM and the sun has risen.  I mean c’mon, that’s fun!  Who didn’t love slumber parties and midnight fridge raids when they were a kid? 

The other night we were lamenting the loss of the foods of our childhoods.  We both grew up in the same area (how we ended up finding each other 30 years and 2500 miles later can only be a miracle) so we have a lot of memories in common.  We decided that those who weren’t kids in the 70’s missed out on a LOT.  We didn’t pay tax on food, and you could buy a bag full of candy for less than a buck.  Candy bars then were the size of “king” sized ones now.  And we had awesome candy!  Hostess brand treats were made with real sugar, not that high-fructose corn syrup crap and were moist and delicious.  Soda pop was better – real sugar again!  The pizza we grew up on was loaded with cheese and didn’t give us heartburn because of an over-abundance of sauce.  Cereal aisles in grocery stores were loaded with more kinds than you could shake a stick at, and so was the chips aisle.  There were dozens of kinds of salad dressing – not the 6 we seem to be limited to today.  There was no such thing as “diet pop” until Tab came around, and for a long time that was the only diet pop.  Pork was really pork and not “the other white meat.”  McDonald’s didn’t have a Happy Meal either, and yes I kind of think that’s a good thing.  I’m sure most parents with buckets full of Happy Meal toys would agree.   

We spent hours trying to remember all our favorite candies and cereals, all the good stuff we used to eat.  If I started singing an old jingle, Darc could finish it.  The night was a chorus of, “Do you remember,” and “Did you ever try,” kinds of questions.  Oh the fun we had trippin’ down memory lane! 

Sure, the 70’s had a lot of things NOT worth remembering – polyester suits anyone?  I, for one and the only one I’m sure, loved platform shoes, mini-skirts, and bell bottoms and couldn’t wait until I was old enough to wear them.  They were the epitome of cool to me back then and I so envied my older sister.  Not so much the pouffed up hair thing – which I just saw the other day, those hair things are being marketed again!  Can you believe it?  Ha!  I hated folk music though, and still do – that’s one 70’s thing I can do without.

Just to give you a little taste, here’s some 70’s commercials for you to enjoy, along with a site that lists lots of other things 70’s.  (They also have 80’s and 90’s stuff too.)  Enjoy the trip!   

• In The 70’s – a place for many things from the decade

 

• 70’s Fritos Corn Chips Commercial – just to prove to my husband that the Scoops size were not the 1st, neener
• 1970’s Sexy Joey Heatherton Serta TV Commercial – her little “WOO!” at the end always cracked me up
• 70’s Snickers – check out the size of the candy bar in relation to the man’s hand
• commercial – Tang – every kid drank Tang.  The astronauts did, you know! 
• Dr. Pepper – "I’m a Pepper" TV Commercial 70’s – everyone sang this one – it was cool to be a Pepper 

~~Ness~~ 

 

 

Bits and pieces

As is pretty typical, it was an uneventful weekend here at The Darc House.  Ran a couple of errands, watched a few movies, talked a lot.  That’s what Darc and I do, we talk.  We basically never shut up.  Amazing how after all these years together we still don’t run out of things to say.  What’s kind of interesting – to me anyway – is that we mostly agree with each other.  I used to hear that in a marriage, you wanted a spouse who disagreed with you on lots of things, so that you’d always have something to “talk” about.  I found that kind of talk mostly leads to arguments and eventually divorce.  So if I were handing out advice, and when am I not? I’d tell people, “Find someone who agrees with you about almost everything.  You will always have an ally.”  That’s my 2¢.

Anyway, Darc was watching some program on what would happen to the earth if there were no longer any people on it while I was going through my Reader.  Out of the corner of my ear, I heard the narrator say, “And the eighty thousand miles of roads in Texas could circle the globe five times!”  Something short-circuited in my brain and I said, “Wait a minute …”

Darc responded, “Wait … that’s not right!”

And then we were off and running about how stupid must a show be to think that 80k miles of roads could go around the earth 5 times.  Then we got off on a tangent about “Environmentalists” and actually came up with a game show I just might propose to ABC.   

Later on, we caught part of a show on “ghostly places” or something to that effect.  Someone on that show made the comment about how ghosts are attached to old places.  That spurred Darc to ponder, “At what age does a building become eligible for a ghost resident?  Is there like a minimum age requirement and does it need ID?  And what do they mean by “attached"?  Is the ghost screaming, ‘I’m stuck!  I’m stuck!  Guys, you go on without me, this building’s like quicksand!  Save yourselves!’” 

After that I wandered around the house for maybe an hour muttering, “I’m stuck!” and holding my sides in from laughing so hard.  Seriously, I almost did a spit-take the 1st time he said it.  About spewed my coffee everywhere. 

Today we return some movies to the library.  I have to tell you, those of you who like Depp, don’t EVER rent his Dead Man movie.  It sucked. 

And how was your weekend?

A picture of our place ended up on lolcats – not sure how that happened … 

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

 

~~Ness~~

Adventures in shopping

I don’t know, I think I’ve been in a mood lately.  More snarky somehow.  I live with a pathological smart-ass and tend to just keep my mouth shut most of the time since I’m not really very witty in the moment.  Given enough time I might be able to come up with something.  Maybe.  I’ve often warned my husband not to sharpen his wit on me, because I know I’m thin skinned – I just don’t take it well.  But lately … I feel things abrewin’.  What that means is anyone’s guess – probably nothing – but I’m feeling it just the same. 

What’s it like to live with such a smart-ass?  Case in point: yesterday at the grocery store, I mused out loud that if I had some yeast, I could make fresh bread.  His response?  “Yeah, and if frogs had wings they wouldn’t have to drag their asses on the ground.”  Yes, I smacked him.  I was expecting something more like, “Oh Babe, fresh bread would be awesome!”  But no, not from MY Beloved.  *rolling my eyes*  His “ouch!” was very fulfilling. 

No, I didn’t get any yeast.  See if I EVER make him fresh bread now. 

I can only imagine what the security cameras catch of us as we walk through the grocery store.  We’re so regular there half the time I wonder if they note us coming through the door.  “Oh no!  It’s THAT family again, the one with the guy who gropes his wife in the aisles when no one’s looking.”  I don’t know why grocery shopping has that effect on my husband, but it makes the trip fun.    And I swear, we never, I mean ever, shut up.  We are always talking and we never seem to run out of things to say.  (We’d be okay in a movie theater though, just in case WIGSF ever wants to go to the movies with us, but no one should ever watch a movie with us at home.  We don’t hold back with the comments at home.)  We wander the aisles and chatter like magpies.  Sometimes I see other couples shopping and I notice the husbands looking bored or frayed, getting frustrated if their wife asks them if they want to buy this product or that one.  They act like they don’t have an opinion on anything and that being asked for one is just too much pressure.  My husband is so not like that!  He’s the exact opposite – it’s the holding back that gives him heartburn.   When he’s around me, if he thinks it, he says it. 

Maybe it’s time I start to sharpen my own wit. 

Yeah, quit laughing!

~~Ness~~

Quick!

I need blog fodder!  Seriously, you have no idea. 

See, before my computer died, I had my beloved Windows Live Writer set up with about 200 drafts in the drafts folder.  It was one of the things that helped me get my posts set up so that I could “future post” all kinds of stuff – and not just for this blog but also for my political and faith blogs.  I could browse my drafts and get ideas.  Now that’s all gone and I’m lost!  Lost, I tells ya! 

Now I feel like I’m blogging on the fly and I don’t think I like it.  I’m a planner and organizer and doing things on the fly bugs me.  I try to plan out as much as possible – sure, call me a control freak – and not being able to plan for things, even blog posts, makes me feel sort of … naked somehow.  Plus, sharing my beloved husband’s computer, I’m resistant to putting any more stuff on his than necessary.  He’s been such a sweetheart to me, not complaining even once about sharing his computer.  I got the “what’s mine is yours” line and really, how awesome is that?  He dismisses it as being one of those “that’s what husband’s do” kind of things but I can tell you, it’s not standard husband behavior that I’ve seen in the past in other husbands, so I like to show my appreciation when I can.  He deserves that much at least. 

Also, having to share a computer means I have to be quick about it.  That is so not me.  I’m prone to opening up Live Writer and just leaving it up during the day and adding things as they occur to me.  Now I can’t do that as much.  I try to be conscious of the fact that he needs his computer more than I do and I can’t just take over the thing.  So when I blog I have to blog quickly, and to be truthful, I’m just not that good on the fly.  I’m not one of those “witty in the moment” kinds of people.  Give me a year or 2 and I might be able to come up with something but quick with the comebacks, I’m not. 

Now you know.  *sigh*

So if you have any blog ideas, PLEASE pass them along in the comments!  I’ll be your best friend if you do! 

~~Ness~~

Just another rant

I don’t know why, but my Beloved likes to watch UFO shows on TV.  I suspect it’s the mock factor that draws him.  Trust me, nobody can mock like my Love. 

So this weekend we watched yet another show on UFO’s and aliens – this one about the Roswell Incident.  Honestly, I’m really sick of the whole thing.  It seems like every year there’s another show on it – another “new facts” type of thing – only they all say the same thing over and over.  There aren’t any “new” facts, there are only the old facts, and I do not consider people’s “new memories” to be facts by any means.  Nor do I consider the “memories” of people 60 years after the fact, who were children at the time of the event, to be note-worthy.  Feelings and memories do NOT dictate reality, period.  I can’t stress this enough.  It really bugs me when people feel their feelings make something true or not.  There is truth, and untruth; and if something is untrue it is either a mistake or a lie – accidental or deliberate.

Sorry, I digress.  My point though, is this: It’s 1947, just after the end of the devastation of WWII.  It’s the start of the Cold War with Russia, and Roswell is just outside a highly classified military base where the top-secret manufacture of the A-bomb was completed.  Something unusual crashes in the desert and you think … aliens?  Not top-secret military experiment, nono, nothing like that, it must be aliens?  This makes sense to you somehow?  So much for that saying, “When you hear hoofbeats look for horses.”  Does no one else remember all the reports of UFO sightings that later turned out to be prototypes of the Stealth aircraft?

The whole alien and UFO thing just perplexes and amuses me.  I know the accusation against people like me is that we’re arrogant to think we’re the only intelligent life in the universe.  Maybe so, and know what?  I’m good with that.  I also counter that it’s far more arrogant to think there is other intelligent life out there and that it gives a crap about us.

/rant

PS – Coincidentally, I saw this in the news after I put up this post:  Footage in the Sky: The Truth Behind NASA’s UFO Videos

~~Ness~~

Marriage and money

I did something stupid.  Yeah, quit nodding your head and laughing, it doesn’t happen all that much. 

I’ve been trying to set up FireFox and other programs on my own profile that my Beloved set up for me on his computer.  You know I love my FF add-ons!  Well, they had a new one for something called Buxfer.  It’s a financial site that tracks all your finances.  You can set up bill reminders, bill payments, balance your account, do budget stuff – all kinds of neat things and I recommend it to those who are interested.  You can go to www.buxfer.com for the full site, and you can find the FF add-on here.  It wasn’t setting it up that was stupid – it was not discussing it first with my husband.

See, here’s the thing: we keep all our financial stuff separate.  It’s something we learned after going though our respective divorces.  It wasn’t a “prepare for the worst” type of thing, it was a protection type of thing.  Our past credit history was tied to our exes, and if anything either of our exes did messed up one of our credit histories, if we had anything in joint credit, it would mess it up for the other.  Boy that came out confused!  In a nutshell, if my ex got into financial trouble, since my credit past was tied to him, if Darc and I had joint credit on anything, something my ex might do could potentially affect Darc.  Make better sense now?  Keeping separate credit on everything is something I highly recommend to married couples.  No joint financial stuff – not even the house.  You can set up other legal documents in the event of death or divorce.  If one of you loses your job, then your spouse is safe, and you may need the safer credit to help rebuild your life.  It’s just a practical thing.  And that’s a long way to explain that our finances are separate, but now you understand why.  That being said, I’m the numbers person in the family, and while our financial stuff is separate, I do ALL the budgeting and bill paying.  Essentially I run Darc’s finances. 

So I set up his financial stuff on this Buxfer site and didn’t ask him first if he was okay with that.  He’s not big on keeping financial data online, for obvious reasons.  He was falling asleep and I didn’t want to bother him and frankly, since I’ve been doing all the financial stuff for over a decade now, I just didn’t think he’d have a problem with anything I did.  And after the meltdown of my computer this week – my computer that contained ALL our financial – I figured keeping that kind of stuff in an online-accessible place was a good idea. 

Well, Darc wasn’t happy with me, and told me so, in the nicest way possible you can tell somebody that you’re not happy with something they did.  I apologized, and he understands my reasons for doing what I did.  And I wouldn’t have even considered signing up on the site if they didn’t have a nice little delete button for those who change their minds about it.  Keeping financial stuff online is a risky venture.  Not keeping it online where you can get to it in the event of a computer failure is also a risky venture.  It’s all about picking  your poisons and knowing you’ll have to choke down one of them.  In a perfect world, my bank would have a FireFox add-on I could use.  In the meantime, we’re going to give Buxfer a try.  If for any reason one or the other of us gets uncomfortable with it, it’ll be deleted pronto.  Surely it can’t be any worse than when our bank got hacked into, right? 

Right??

~~Ness~~ 

Man

There are times my husband drives me batty.  Kreestee says she sometimes calls her husband Mr. Grumpypants, and there are times I think mine ought to be called Mr. Crank-a-butt.  I say her and I send the two of them off together someplace so they can irritate each other and not us.   What say you, Kree? 

Last weekend, for reasons I’ll never fathom, Darc decided that anything he could do that would annoy the crap out of me might be especially fun.  He mocked everything I did.  If I said one thing, he said the opposite.  When I jumped at a loud noise on a TV show, he teased me – told me I had “delayed reaction jumping syndrome” and deliberately made a loud sound himself just to see if I’d jump again.  Later, he sneezed loud enough to blow the walls out, and then laughed at me for jumping at that. 

I have a box of baking supplies I keep on the top shelf since I don’t bake as often as I’d like.  Being the shortie that I am, I keep the edge of the box extended just over the edge of the shelf it’s on so I can get my thumbs under it to get it down – otherwise, I have to get a ladder because I can’t reach it.  When Darc was helping me look for some ingredient I needed, he pulled the box out to look inside it, then pushed it back in.  “No, pull it back out please, just over the edge, or I can’t reach it when I need it.”

“The door won’t close if I do that,” he argued.

“Yes it will, just please pull it out a little so I can get leverage on it.”

“You mean … like this?” and he pushed the box all the way in the back of the cabinet as far as it would go. 

“Damn!  You’re such an ass!”

He laughed.  Then he pulled the box out so far it almost fell out of the cabinet while he mocked me.  “You want it all the way out, like this?”

“Cut it out!  Why are you being such a dick?  D. I. C. K.  Dick!  Knock it off!”

All. Weekend. Long.  If there was a chance to mock or tease me, he didn’t let it pass.  He was like the proverbial little boy who dips the little girl’s pigtails in the inkwell.  I’ve had to chase him with my backscratcher – see, it’s an old bamboo one, and it extends my reach by about 18”, and if we’re sitting at our desks I can reach him with it.  Smartypants leans his shoulder over to me when he sees me coming, mocking me smacking him, “Make sure you don’t miss now!”  Oooooh that man! 

So just to get even, when he saw this over on Blame it on the Voices and asked me if it was worth watching, I said, “Yeah.  It was interesting.”  I feigned nonchalance.  (Heheh, pretend I said that with a British accent!)  [Kreestee, you might want to suggest that link to Mr. Grumpypants.  ]

Then I laughed my butt off when his head hit the ceiling.   

~~Ness~~ 

 

Beige

When Darc and I were dating, oh those many light years ago, he told me a joke.

How can you tell the difference between a prostitute, a girlfriend, and a wife?

During sex, the prostitute says, “Ya done yet?”

The girlfriend says, “Aw, is it over so soon?”

And the wife says, “Beige … I think I’ll paint the ceiling beige.”

It has become one of our own “in-house” type of jokes since then, for instance, when we’re watching a movie that turns out to be a snore fest and one of us asks, “Do you want to keep watching?” the other will respond, “Beige … I think I’ll paint the ceiling beige.” 

So you can imagine my guffaws when I saw this LOLCats in my Reader the other day.   

more animals

Interesting? Not so much

I asked my husband for blog fodder.  He’s a writer, he’s got imagination, he should have some ideas, right?  Not.  “Blog about your life, people seem to like that,” was his response. 

There isn’t much to my life.  I’m a wife and mother.  I raise my kids, homeschool my son, do household chores, play Sims, watch TV, and read blogs.  I have come to learn that “interesting” doesn’t happen so much in the big things, but in the little things – the day to day living stuff.  Interesting is spontaneous – you can’t really make it happen, it just does.  And I’ve also come to realize that the things I find interesting, most other people probably wouldn’t.  And as my husband says, “What the **** would you know about ‘interesting?’”  Oh, that man does like to tease!  I live with him – I know lots about interesting! 

Like tonight, my husband and I went to the smoking room to indulge – doesn’t that make it sound like we live in this big mansion?  Smoking room – say it with an English accent – sounds rich, no?  It’s just a bathroom.  A small one, at that.  Anyway, I was done before my husband, and when I came into the living room, my son and daughter were playing some game in which my son was wrapped up head to toe in a blanket and my daughter was giggling as little girls do.  I snuck up behind my son and started tickling him and he shrieked like a banshee.  That caused my husband to come charging out of the smoking room, growling, “What the hell is going on out here?  It’s almost midnight!”  I felt chastised and I’m the mom!  I didn’t think the boy would scream like that, I was just trying to make him laugh, for goodness sake!  So that was an interesting moment in the Darc House.  Interesting and amusing to me, anyway. 

That’s why I search the web looking for interesting things to blog about.  My life just isn’t one of them.  Now you know. 

~~Ness~~

Writerly Misconduct

“Read it!” he ordered, tossing the book onto the bed. 

“I’m not gonna read it, YOU read it.”  Who does this husband of mine think he is anyway, bossing me around like that?  Hmph. 

Seriously, he was joking.  He would never dream of really giving me orders like that.  “I have read it – that’s why I’d like you to read it … tell me if my writing sucks as bad as this guy’s does.”

It’s sort of like when you find food that’s going bad in your refrigerator and you ask someone else to smell it.  “Hey, there’s a terrible odor here, you come smell it too.”  That’s how Darc and I are with books and I fear we’re becoming literary snobs about the whole thing.  The book in question really did stink.  I read it cover to cover, and with the knowledge I’ve gained in the past year, I can tell you it was more tell than show, a staggering mass of “info dump,” populated with characters it was difficult to care about, and an ending that had about as much climax as watching grass grow.  Every writerly “don’t” the guy did, and it was almost painful to chew through.  The dialogue was meh; where he could have added lots of tension, he skipped over it; he even included a magical character to fix everything at the end.  To top it off, the writer was touted as being, “The Next Stephen King!” and “Winner of a Bram Stoker Award!”  I felt cheated. 

And I sort of felt insulted my husband thought his writing might be anywhere near as bad as this guy’s.  Go, check it out yourself and tell me if it’s not some of the best fiction you’ve read in a long time.  J. Dane Tyler’s Fiction Blog

Fortunately, we made it to the library this weekend.  I tell you, the yellow pages were starting to look mighty appealing!  I’ve been wanting to re-read “The Good Earth” by Pearl S. Buck so I grabbed that one and do you know what I found out?  “The Good Earth” is but the 1st in a trilogy!  And joy of joys, my library had all 3 books!  I also picked up another Amy Tan that – so far – is awesome.  I think it’s called, “The Hundred Secret Senses.”  When I’m done with it I’ll try to write up a review over on The Writer’s Nesst.   

And how was your weekend?