Wednesday, April 15, 2009

No, Really... He's Normal

My husband just came screaming up the stairs only moments after he gave me the requisite nose kiss and was off to work.

"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!"

"What's the matter Sweetie?????"

"I forgot my pants."

And so is life in the Maxwell Schmidt household.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Brain Banage

Watching the news of late and the fear mongering emanating from such far right brainiacs as Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity regarding the heretofore imaginary gun ban, as well as the YouTube videos being made by paranoid gun owners urging other paranoids to purchase guns and ammo "before Obama takes away your rights and bans firearms," it suddenly dawned on me that an awful lot of people who own guns are apparently just too damn stupid to own guns. I propose we do away with background checks prior to gun ownership and instead institute an IQ test. Problem solved. Now, how to stop those who aren't smart enough to be parents from procreating... at least we'd end up with a well-armed society in every possible aspect.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Nancy Grace-Less on HLN (or "A Special Comment")

Nancy? We know Caley is dead. It's no longer breaking news.
Nancy? We know Haleigh is missing. It's no longer breaking news.
Nancy? We know you had twins. It never was breaking news. It never was *news.*
HLN? We know Nancy is obnoxious, irritating and unbearably repetitive. Granted, she's better than Glenn Beck (who wouldn't be?), but really... is this the best you can do? Really truly? You don't have a test screen you could display for that hour or sumthin'?

Keith? You *so* rock.
Nancy? Thank you... for inspiring me to change the channel.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

The Saga of the Bunny Smile

Many years ago I worked as a professional geek for Easter Seals. I had decided working in more "glamorous" tech writer jobs just wasn't for me if all I was doing was putting money in some CEO's pocket and kissing ass, neither of which appealed to me in the least. Thus, I took the tech writer/tech support position at Easter Seals and finally loved my job. Unfortunately, I also proceeded to starve to death.

This was where I met my eventual hubby, Richard. Mike Thomas, my Easter Seals cohort in crime, hired him to wire our network and that's how we met. Never underestimate the power of a magnetic poetry set stuck to a file cabinet when it comes to starting a conversation with a geek.

Over the course of the next several months I realized that my propensity for check writing (for anyone younger than 20, checks are what we used before debit cards) and a decisively smaller paycheck meant I had to do something else besides work for Easter Seals if I was going to keep a large array of bankers happy. Eventually I discovered eBay and my financial situation improved significantly.

Richard and I would get up early on the weekends and drag ourselves to the assorted estate and garage sales we felt were worthy of our time, where we would dig through piles and piles of crap looking for the rare Nippon treasure that would make eBay bidders scream with glee, or something that would make Richard scream with glee (like the cordless Bosch drill he got for $20). On one of these trips, for some unknown reason, I bought the most adorable stuffed bunny adorned in a red velvet dress for something like 25 cents. I really don't know why I bought her, glassware was my thing... Murano, Bohemian, or just about any cut lead crystal with a "name." Certainly *not* stuffed bunnies. But I bought her nonetheless. I listed her. I sold her. Never gave it a second thought.

It just so happened to be that it was Richard's job to pack what I sold. As he was about to place the red velvet bunny into a freshly-assembled USPS Priority Mail box, he held her in his lap, looked at me, and then said, "You know, she has your smile! You know, that cute little smile you do. It's your bunny smile!"

OH YES HE DID ladies!!!! Can you believe anyone could be THAT friggin' heartless???? And yes, I am fully aware my male readers are so not gettin' it and are all simultaneously saying, "Huh? What?"

All of a sudden this bunny was given *phenomenal* significance. You can't sit on the floor all cute and shit and compare my smile to that on an adorable stuffed animal and then shove her in a box and send her off to someone else!!!! That bunny has just become a HUGE part of our relationship! That is now a very important bunny! OUR bunny! She's the symbol of *us*, an icon of our passion, the bunny of LOVE!!! And now I HAD to send her off to some stupid woman who was going to give her to some stupid kid to drool on, and if I didn't I was going to get dreaded NEGATIVE EBAY FEEDBACK! ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!! How can anyone be so friggin' CRUEL?????

Bunny went in the box. I wasn't about to let on with more than a superficial whine that this was now killing me. Devastaing me. I had suddenly become suicidal as MY bunny with MY smile was tucked into a red, white and blue cardboard box with a stupid friggin' eagle on it. And off she went, whisked away to the woman who paid me $4 for the first significant symbol of my sweetie's and my relationship, and her smelly, whiney, drooly kid.

Five minutes passed. Richard forgot all about Bunny. Months passed. I continued to be obsessed with Bunny. You of course understand that I *had* to act.

It started with the occasional tease about how he "Let me send away my bunny after he said she had my smile." Then it quickly escalated to email. I would routinely send Richard messages at work with the eBay photo I had taken of Bunny enlarged to a huge size stuck right in the middle of them, with captions underneath like "You sent away your sweetie's bunny smile!" I'm sorry, it simply had to be done, you just don't do that to a gurl.

When I changed the Windows wallpaper on his 'puter to the pic of Bunny he began to crumble. When I sent him a link to the results of an eBay search for "red velvet bunny" with a desperate plea to "Fiiiiiiind herrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!" it was the clincher.

On Christmas morning, there beneath the tree, sat an unwrapped Priority Mail box. It was the very last I was given to open. I am told he had to search through many, many auctions before he found the bunny with the perfect smile >=o}