What a Day

Yesterday I came home from a long and boring day at work. Jordan was frustrated and told me that he was having a bad day 'cause his computer broke and we don't have any Mt. Dew.  Which, by the way, is Jordan's life blood.

I said, ok let's go to the store and get you some Dew, and we still needed to get a few other random groceries including candy for the off chance that we actually get trick or treaters.

So we go to Winco, which I'm not much of a fan of.  We're checking out and Jordan swipes his card. . . . it's declined.  I said use the debit card, and the cashier tells us then that they don't accept credit cards, and that's why it was declined.  Good to know.  So he uses the debit card and that's declined too.  Which is weird 'cause I know for a fact that we have money in the account, but for some reason I hadn't been able to use my debit card for a week either.  So the debit cards appear to be broken.  I have a checkbook in the car, and I have to run out and get it.  It's pretty embarrassing to have two cards declined and I felt like people were looking at us like poor people who couldn't afford their soda and candy.  Awesome.

We're ready to just shake it all off and get home and put that annoying situation behind us.  We get in the car . . .  and the car won't start.

This is where we lose it.  Jordan goes off on a tirade about how everything is broken; his computer, his debit card, and his car.  He then tells me that the cable wasn't working, and that Netflix wasn't working either 'cause it said there was something wrong with the internet connection.  No wonder he was frustrated when I came home.  I just start laughing, hard.  Like a crazy lady.

We call every family member we know within a couple mile radius to see if they can come jump us and oddly enough they all have things tying them up.  I suggest that we ask one of the many other customers coming and going around us, but they were all incredibly creepy.  Incredibly creepy.  One particular man parks right in front of us in an old LeBaron convertible, has a long smoke while staring at us, finishes his cigarette and drives away.

I was able to get a hold of my bestie, Maggie, and without hesitation she says she'll be right over.  And sure enough she shows up and gets us running again.  What a good friend.  How lucky I am to have such a dependable friend.  THANK YOU MAGGIE!

We get home and we're trying to work it out so we take all our groceries inside in one trip and don't have to make another trip to the car.  I'm holding a bottle of laundry detergent, but tell Jordan to hand me the Palmolive and I'll figure out a way to carry it.  Our conversation goes as follows:

Bre: "Hand me that Palmolive."

Jordan: "Can you palm it?"

Bre: "Olive let you know if I can't"

Jordan: "As olive and breathe."

(We walk to the door in silence)

Jordan: "You're trying to think of another one, aren't you?"

I actually wasn't, I was trying to concentrate on not dropping the palmolive, 'cause it was hanging with only my pinky through the handle.  We get inside and I'm 82% certain that the weight of the bottle has broken my pinky, and it was slipping.  I panic and try to tell Jordan to take it from me before it drops and falls on one of the puppies circling around us.  Instead of calmly telling him that, this is what I say:

Bre: "Palmolive!  GET IT!  GET IT!"

Jordan: "I don't get it."

At this point I'm 94% confident my pinky is broken past any chance of repair and I'm not sure why Jordan hasn't grabbed the bottle from me.  My panic level increases.

Bre: "GET IT!  PALMOLIVE!  GET IT!"

Jordan: "I don't get it!"

The bottle drops, thankfully, and not on a creature, thankfully, and my panic has been alleviated, thankfully.

Bre: "Why didn't you get the bottle from me?  It was falling."

Jordan: "Oh, I thought you were saying another joke, 'palmolive- get it?', and I didn't get it, so I thought you were trying to repeat the joke and ask me if I got the joke."

Jordan then goes into the bathroom and comes back out saying: "The toilet seat broke. Everything in our entire lives has broken, everything.  Name something."

Bre: "The t-"

Jordan: "It's broke!"

Here's to hoping today is better.  The good news is everything is already broken, so there should be no where to go but up.  Right?

RIGHT?!

A Followup Study

So much for letting Jordan sleep peacefully on the couch.  Saturday night I decided to just have fun with it, and stood over Jordan making the scariest face I could muster.  I breathed heavy and tried to be as creepy as possible and waited for him to wake up, which wasn't long thanks to my stalker breathing.  He rolled his eyes, rolled over and my dissapointment rolled in.  How could I get nothing out of that?

So, I sighed, kissed him on the cheek and said, "C'mon, let's go to bed."

"Don't, don't!"

I just can't win.

Waking Up Jordan

Holy poo-fart-nugget, I just realized it's Friday!  I may have just peed a little. (my dog has the same problem)

Lately Jordan has been falling asleep on the couch a lot.  One night he was snoring so badly that I was concerned he wasn't actually getting enough air.  To help him breathe a little easier, and to perform experiments on the best way to keep him from snoring in the future I began to rotate his head from left to right, hoping to find the key position that would help him breath/stop the onslaught of snores.

Left to right didn't help so I tried moving his head up and down, and started to see more preferred results.  Tilting his head back was working fabulously, but I couldn't quite get it back far enough to achieve maximum breathing capability, so I was ever so gently tugging the pillow out from under his head when he woke up.  And saw me standing over him.  And brought his hands up to his throat and screamed like a woman little girl.

The next night he fell asleep I was a little more careful.  It was getting late, and I wanted to wake him so he could go to bed.  But I didn't want to wake and scare him again, and I didn't want to leave him to sleep on the couch, and I'm sure if I just left him there he'd wake up in the middle of the night and ask me why I never woke him.

So I sat there, for an hour, while I pondered on what to do.  I was in a lose-lose situation.  Finally I decided it had to be done, this man had to wake up here and now and go to bed simply so I could go to bed.  Without hovering over him, I gently shook him and quietly said his name.  Nothing.  A little harder, a little louder, and he woke up.  And screamed: "Don't, don't!"  Treating him like an injured and frightened animal I put my hands in the hair and said as calmly as I could "Come on Jordan, it's time to go to bed."

"Don't, DON'T!"

I'm not sure what sleepy dream-state Jordan thought I was going to do to him, but apparently my presence was no good so I deemed him awake enough to find his way to the bed and left him there.

The third night he fell asleep on the couch, I was going to approach this in a no-nonsense manner.  I woke him, told him it was time for bed, received my "Don't, don't" and left him there to sort out his confusion, come back to reality and make it to bed.

Next time, I think I'll just let him sleep on the couch and enjoy the extra room in the bed.

Bre Thinks

There are a lot of random thoughts that pass through my head throughout the day, and I usually keep them to myself since if I share people give me the look.  You know the one, where in a single glace you've just told the person that you have evaluated their mental state and it's not looking good.

Well, screw it. Here are a couple things I've thought about, and you can give me the look all you like . . . I actually won't see it.

--How did cats evolve webbed feet when they can't stand water?  Usually an animal evolves a certain feature that will help them in their life, but if they're never in the water, how did that come about?

--Sometimes when I barely miss out on a good parking space coming back from my lunch break I blame the person at the drive through for not going a little bit faster.

--Who would win a fight between a grizzly bear and a seagull?  A seagull, hands down.  They are gutsy little critters, and great aim, they would go for the eyes and the bear would be slowly pecked to death.  Seagull have little to no mercy.

--I don't really think my car looks nice, but I take pride in the fact that other people thinks it looks nice.

--I would like to know what happened between generations to make old ladies think their perfume smells good.

--Why are fortune cookies always so flattering?  I already bought the meal, there's no need to schmooze me.

--Why does no one say "goodbye" when ending a phone conversation on TV?  They just dramatically flip the phone closed.  I think it's rude.  I keep expecting the other person to stare at the phone and say "Oh no he didn't!"

--Why is there dust on fans?  You'd think the dust would be blown off.

--Because basic sentences have been changed in this day and age to include emoticons, I would like some clear rules regarding punctuation.  If I end my sentence in a smiley face ala colon and parenthesis, do I put the period before or after the smiley face?

The Vacuum

I've been called a lot of things in my day, but obsessed with my pets has not been one of them.  Which is surprising, right?  'Cause I kinda am.  I'm almost delusional enough to think they're my children, but since they don't look like me or Jordan and for the life of me I can't recall any sort of gestation period or delivery, I must assume they are not.

That was just a long way of saying this post is about my pets.  And the vacuum, that is.  Between you and I, I have a really hard time spelling that word, it seems like it should be vacume.  Are two u's really necessary?  Why not just slap three in there, vacuuum, makes no difference to me, it's still stupid.

Moving on. . .

I think it's funny that all animals are inherently afraid of the vacuum.  Brighton, for instance, will bark up and down next Tuesday (what does that even mean, Bre?) if someone walks by the window, but bring the vacuum out and he is not playing games.

I like to bring out the vacuum to specifically remind the pets that I control the evil beast, remind them who really has the power here.  Much like in Avatar, how that guy rode The Last Shadow, or whatever it was called.  You know what I mean.

I wonder if it helps my animals' notion that the vacuum is evil that I hum the Terminator theme song when I bring it out.

Because I was bored and had the time, I evaluated the methods my animals used to deal with the vacuum.

Brighton:

Brighton chose the higher ground, which is usually a smart move strategically speaking.  From up there he could keep an eye on the enemy, while still keeping his distance and laying on the comfortable armrest.  The armrest also gives him a little more height than the actual couch cushion.  Way to take the extra step to protect yourself, Boy.  Should Brighton decide to attack, he could leap from above with efficiency and accuracy.  I think he's put a lot of thought into his position.

Bella:

Bella also went for height, but in terms of security she took it to the max.  She chose the corner, a defensive stance that ensures that the vacuum could not come at her from behind.  Her position is not only secure, but as you can see, she's got her favorite monkey as a security blanket, or perhaps protection, and chose the soft Love Sac, blanket and pillow, so that she could ride out the vacuuming in extreme comfort.  Her monkey doubles as a lover should she get a hankering. I can't tell if she's squinting out of fear, pure loathing or just mid-blink.  You decide.

Kloe:

It's become obvious from past experiences that Kloe has no love for her legs, and is willing to sacrifice them willy nilly.  This really takes it to a whole new level.  However, I have to commend her on a few things, one being sheer pluck.  The couch sits mere inches off the ground, and the gall it took for her to think she could squeeze her mass of fur and saggy skin under there and to actually pull it off, well, it's impressive to say the least.  Second, I do have to give it to her that she is well protected from attacks coming from above.  But, I don't know if you know anything about vacuums, but they don't really come from above, and Kloe is now at eye level with the beast, and could potentially be blinded from it's one, albeit long, eye.  But again, pluck.  She chooses to ride out the vacuuming inches out of its reach.  Very brave.

Kea:

That tricky little ninja was nowhere to be found, which I think makes her the winner of this exercise.  However, for the sake of not leaving her out, here is a picture of Kea:

She's really good at taking naps.