Dateline NBC

Rex and I had a pretty fun Halloween Friday.  We both had the day off, which rarely happens.  He almost always works Saturdays, and on Sundays we're rushing off to church and then spending time with family.  We don't get those lazy mornings we used to have when we were first married and both on "normal" work schedules.  Yesterday morning, we decided to make the most of the opportunity.

One thing you should know about Rex and me - we love food.  LOVE it.  I'm actually surprised that we're not fatties.  We must have good genes or something.  Anyway, yesterday morning we decided to have a "Breakfast Feast."  We had an awesome time cooking together.  I made waffles, Rex made stuffed omelettes, we had yogurt with homemade granola, etc.  It was so delicious!  It made me wish we had mornings off together more often.  After a lazy morning, we ran some errands together, which is always more fun when you're with someone than when you're alone.  Then we had to help my parents move into their new house, and as we were doing that the first snow flurries of the year stared swirling down on us.  Hooray!  That means Christmas is just around the corner!

That evening, Rex and I decided to eat a pizza for dinner and watch "something spooky" on the internet (which we project on our wall to look like a big screen).  We had a bowl of candy for trick-or-treaters, but we may have eaten about as much as we handed out.  Oops.  As we were munching our candy and pizza, we decided to watch Dateline NBC.  Have you seen it?  It's a bunch of true crime mystery stories.  *cue Twighlight Zone music*  If you're into that kind of thing, just google "Dateline NBC full episodes," and kiss the next few hours of your life goodbye.  After a few episodes of that, I'm now pretty sure that everyone's a murderer.  Ha ha.  I even had creepy dreams with the dateline guy narrating them.  Apparently my subconscious isn't very creative, because in my dream the dateline guy said, "Next on Dateline: INSURANCE FRAUD!"  And then I had this whole dream about insurance fraud.  So there's that.  I think it may have been because I had to fill out a bazillion health insurance papers this week, and I was really paranoid that I might accidentally fill in one of the boxes wrong and get accused of fraud (even though I was really trying to fill them out right).  It's not my fault that there are miles of papers all written in legal-ese.

One episode of Dateline really freaked me out, because I'm still convinced the guy didn't even do it!  This girl's husband got accused of killing her, and there was hardly any evidence.  Actually, there was pretty good evidence that she died of a heart condition called Long-QT, which coroners almost never check for.  I have a student with this condition, though, so I know a decent amount about it.  This poor guy ended up getting convicted, which is awful because now he has to deal with losing his new wife (they had only been married three months) AND spending his life in jail.  What's up with that?  I realize that a lot of times the crazy spouse is the culprit, but this time I think they got it wrong.

THEREFORE, I feel compelled to put the following on this public forum:

If I ever turn up dead under suspicious circumstances, REX DIDN'T DO IT!  Don't convict the poor guy - he's probably already bumming about the fact that his wife is gone.  Don't make it worse.  Rex is basically the best husband on earth.  I have been with him for eight years, and he's never shown the slightest bit of violence.  He doesn't even yell at me - ever - even if I'm being really obnoxious and probably deserve it.  SO, you can move along and stop suspecting him...  I don't care what kind of evidence you have.  He didn't do it.  I promise.  I don't really believe in ghosts and haunting and such, but if I die and that stuff turns out to be true, then I will hunt you down and haunt you if you convict my rock star husband.

There - phew! - got that off my chest.  Now no one can convict Rex and put him in the same position as that other dude.

I see you looking incredulously at your screen and thinking that I'm nuts.  Fine.  Maybe I've seen too many Datelines.  Probably true.  The thing is that they ALWAYS say, "I never thought this would happen in our community!  Things like that only happen on TV!"  Clearly they do happen sometimes.  I'm like a girl scout - always prepared.