Apostrophe Atrocity

A new pizza parlor opened up on my side of town.  It's called Blaze Pizza, and it serves the best personal pan pizzas around.  I love it.  I am bothered, though, that their promotional materials all advertised "Fast Fire'd Pizza."  Why is there an apostrophe in "Fire'd"?  It really bothers me.  It shouldn't be there.  This weekend I asked some employees about it, but they didn't have a solution.  I decided to write to corporate and see what they had to say.  Here is the e-mail I sent this afternoon:

Hello,

I'm writing because I have a question about your marketing materials.  I notice that they all say that your pizza is "fast fire'd."  I'm confused by the presence of the potentially superfluous apostrophe.  The word "fired" is usually spelled without an apostrophe, so I'm wondering why one is utilized in this case.

You're probably thinking to yourself, "Why does this girl have nothing better to do than question our apostrophes?  Why doesn't she just shut up and enjoy our wonderful 'fast fire'd' pizza in peace?"  I do, Blaze. I do.  I love your pizza.  I'll patronize your restaurant with or without erroneous punctuation.  Your pizza is too delicious to miss.  My conscience forces me to ask, though, because I'm an English teacher.  I'm always telling my students to be on the lookout for spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes.  Errors lurk in every corner of our society.  I would be hypocritical if wasn't on the lookout as well.  

The way I see it, grammar and punctuation are huge issues in the American mainstream population.  Due to various educational failures, many citizens walk the streets without any knowledge of proper English.  It's appalling.  Therefore the main request of this e-mail is an educational one.  If the apostrophe has a legitimate grammatical reason for appearing in your promotional materials, please explain it to me so that I can be more knowledgeable in instructing my children about punctuation.  If it's not supposed to be there, can you please remove it so that we are not perpetuating apostrophe misuse to our impressionable youth?

I asked the staff at my local Blaze pizza about this issue, and none of them were able to help me.  One of them is a college-level English student, and she too was perplexed.  Please help me solve the mystery, and I will pass my answer along to the employees at my local store as well.  Thank you!

Christine Webb

I don't know how far I'm willing to go with this grammar crusade.  After all, Krispie Kreme has horrific spelling, yet I still eat their doughnuts.  For some reason, punctuation errors seem worse than spelling ones.  Especially since the spelling error at Krispie Kreme is obviously intentional.  The error at Blaze is baffling.  I wish they would fix it... it hurts my eyes.  I will have to update later with a response if I get one!

Curtain Conundrum

It's weird to move.  Your old home isn't your home anymore, but your new home doesn't really feel like home yet.  You're an aimless drifter with no real place in the world, even though the name on the deed says the house is yours.  Home is where you feel comfortable, where you know what to expect, and where you spend most of your time. Unfortunately, my current home isn't my old rental house, and it isn't my beautiful new house either.  My home right now is the curtain aisle.

Which curtain aisle, you may ask?  Oh, any one really.  Kohls, Wal-Mart, Meijer, Target, Hobby Lobby...you name it.  If the store has a curtain aisle, I've been living in it.  I've spent probably around $500-$600 (and way too many hours) on curtains in the past week.  Keep in mind that I've gotten most of the money back because I keep returning every curtain I buy, but my life is basically a revolving door of go-buy-more-curtains and no-wait-I-hate-them-take-them-back.  I don't know why I can't just find some curtains that I like, but I can't.  I keep looking for better ones.  None of them feel "right."  If you ask me how a "right" feeling curtain feels, I can't tell you that.  I can only tell you that I'm hoping I'll know when I feel it.

My curtain aisle home is great.  No matter which store I visit, they're all the same.  Every aisle has the suave sample curtains to touch and inspect - are they too thin?  Too thick?  Too wild?  Too bland?  Then, when you think you might have found "the one," you have to rummage through all of the packs of curtains on the walls to find the one that matches the sample you like.  Back when I was a curtain rookie, this was a difficult task.  Now that I'm a seasoned pro, I understand that the curtain I want might be halfway across the aisle from the corresponding sample.  I've developed an eagle eye for matching curtains to samples, just not for matching curtains to a living room.  Do I want cheap curtains or expensive ones that insulate my room by giving "thermal protection"?  Do I want light blocking curtains or breezy sheer ones?  I don't know!  I need help!

As I bought my seventh set of curtains today (!!!), I realized that this is a problem.  I gave myself a mental newsflash: No one even cares about curtains!  It's not like someone is going to come into my home and say, "Wow, Christine, you have such a beautiful house!  It's just lovely!  It's simply....oh.....uh....sorry, those heinous curtains ruined the whole thing.  I hate it now."  I don't recall ever judging someone based on their curtains.  Come to think of it, I couldn't tell you what the curtains look like in any of my friends' houses.  I don't even remember what the curtains looked like at my parents' house when I was growing up.  Why am I wasting so much time and energy on a veritably invisible home good?!?

I need an intervention.  Is there rehab for this?  A support group?  "Hi, I'm Christine, and I can't stop buying curtains."

"Hi, Christine."

A few days ago I finally found curtains for my dining room that I really liked.  I thought, "YES! Finally!  A curtain dilemma has gone my way!"  Then when Rex got home, I pointed out our new curtains.  He raised his eyebrows and said the worst thing ever: "Those ones? Are you sure those are the ones you actually want?"

*cue immediate spiral into self-doubt and curtainy insecurity*

Ahhhh!  I immediately started to do the natural girly dumb thing to do: "You hate them.  Why do you hate them?  What's wrong with them?  I like them!"  Rex quickly backtracked and assured me that he doesn't hate the curtains, he just wanted to make sure that I liked them.  Hmmmm...I secretly think that he might hate them, but you know what?  I'm still juggling five sets of curtains that are sitting in my living room.  I don't have time to do this for my dining room too.  The curtains are staying unless Rex makes a formal complaint.  The truth of the matter is that I don't think Rex will really notice them anyway.  I could probably put Sponge Bob curtains in our bedroom, and he wouldn't notice unless I (misguidedly) asked him for his opinion.  Note to all men: when women ask your design advice on something you don't actually care about, just tell her that whatever she's asking your advice about looks AWESOME!  She's asking you because she needs to hear those words.  She probably asked the dog earlier and interpreted his tail wagging as tacit approval, but she really needs it verbalized.

Not that I actually asked the dog about the curtains.

Because that would be ridiculous.

Right?

*nervous laughter*

It's like I took all of the anxiety I had over buying a house, and I've now channeled it into finding the perfect curtains.  This is seriously messed up.  Am I stressed about wall art? Tablecloths? Furniture?  Of course not.  But curtains?  AHHHH!  I shall never find the right ones!

That's it, I'm buying Sponge Bob curtains and calling it a day.

Locked Out

Moving can be stressful.  There are a million things to unpack, and on top of all that there are a bunch of things you have to do such as setting up your water and sewer service, calling for trash pickup, getting internet service, etc.  I called Consumer's Energy to get our energy service set up, and that turned out to be a disaster.

In order for Consumer's to set up gas and electric in my name, I had to get a reading from our current meter.  Luckily I knew right where that was because of the electrical inspection I had done a few weeks ago.  It's on the side of our house by the chimney.  The person on the phone asked me to go read it, and I said sure.  I opened the door to run outside, and at the last second I grabbed my thin fall coat.  It is December, after all, and I didn't want to go outside in just my t-shirt even if it was only for a minute.  I was in my slippers and sweatpants, but I didn't care.  I was only going to be outside for a quick minute...or so I thought.

I read the meter numbers to the Consumer's lady, and after I finished that call I walked back up to my front door to let myself inside.  Well...it wouldn't open.  I was shocked that an older house had automatically locking doors - I definitely hadn't locked the door behind me when I went outside.  I walked over to our breezeway door, and that was locked too.  So was the back door.  Rex was at work and wasn't scheduled to be home for another seven hours.  I walked around the house trying to find a way to get in, but it was fruitless.  Also, we didn't know any of the neighbors yet, so I was definitely worried about one of them calling the police if they saw me trying to break into the house.  I had a vision of myself calling Rex from jail to please come prove to these officers that I do, in fact, own the house into which I was breaking and entering.  That didn't sound very fun, even if it would have made a fantastic blog post.

The wind was blustery and harsh, and my fall coat (which has holes in it, by the way) was not cut out for that type of cold.  I sat down on my front stoop, folded my arms into my chest, and started shivering.  My toes were cold too, as my slippers were getting all wet from the sidewalk.  I pulled out my phone and called Rex, but he was with a patient and wouldn't have a break to come let me in for a few hours.  I tried calling everyone in my family to perhaps go get the key from Rex and bring it to me, but none of them answered.  I sighed, put my phone back in my pocket, and kept shivering and feeling sorry for myself.  I looked warily in my window at the Yankee Candle Company jar candle burning on my table.  I mentally ordered my cat not to get up on the table and knock it over.  I'd be in real trouble if she did.

I looked around at the other houses in the neighborhood and considered walking up to one of them and asking if I could wait in there for someone to rescue me.  I tried to decide which house might have the nicest people inside, but you obviously can't tell that from looking at the outside of houses.  I eventually nixed that plan, because even if the people were nice enough to let me come inside (which was not a sure thing), I didn't want word to spread around the neighborhood that "the new neighbor in the blue house is a complete moron."  After all, I locked myself out of my own house, and I was standing outside in slippers.  It wasn't exactly my finest hour.

Finally I decided to get up and go for a walk, both because walking would warm me up and because feeling sorry for myself was getting boring.  I walked out to West Main St, and I decided to explore my new surroundings.  After all, if I couldn't work on unpacking my house, then at least I could find an adventure, right?  I began by going to the Marathon station about a block down the main road.  I went inside and walked around, but I didn't have money to buy anything.  I was relieved to be in the warmth, but the sinister looking Indian man at the counter was watching me suspiciously.   I tried to look enthralled by a pack of beef jerky and then truly perplexed by which variety of Laffy Taffy I might choose, but there's only so much convenience store food you can look at before you're officially loitering.  I eventually gave up and went back outside into the biting December wind.

Another block down there was a cute restaurant called Nina's Cafe.  I really wanted to go inside and order some hot chocolate, but once again I didn't have any money.  I pictured myself sitting inside the cafe, sipping hot chocolate and people watching in the warmth until someone from my family would come help me.  It sounded great.  Without money, though, it was only a dream.  I considered going inside, describing my plight, and promising that Rex would pay for my cocoa when he came to get me.  I doubted that they would believe me, seeing as I had unbrushed hair, slippered feet, and a ratty old coat.  I didn't look like an upstanding, home-owning citizen.  I looked like a homeless lady.  I was scared that I would be rejected and sent back out into the street like a societal outcast.

I was about to take my chances with Nina's Cafe when I saw a small sign up on a hill off of the main road next to a small building.  It said "Kazoo Books."  I literally gasped aloud when I saw this.  A bookshop?  A bookshop within walking distance of my house?  I had driven this road dozens of times and never noticed this bookshop before.  I wanted to cry for joy - I knew I could wait in a bookshop until rescue came.  I could spend hours in a bookshop.  I ran up the hill towards the shop, mentally willing it to be open.  It was.  I did a little jump of happiness - it was as if I'd been traveling in a foreign country and finally found a group of people who spoke English.  These were my people.  Book people.  I was going to be okay.

I pushed open the door and heard the tinkle of the bell announcing my arrival.  The bookshop was exactly how all bookshops should be: rooms upon rooms of floor to ceiling books.  They even had the ladders to help you reach books on the top shelves.  Antique looking overstuffed chairs and couches were stowed in every available space, allowing book lovers like myself to curl up and read.  A giant cat tree sat in the front window, which allowed the two shop cats to sit and watch the world go by (when they weren't curled up on some reader's lap).  I took a deep breath and inhaled the musty scent of old books.  New books are my number one favorite smell in the world, but old books are definitely in my top five.  I ran my fingertips lovingly along the spines of the books on one of the dozens of shelves - I couldn't believe I had found this oasis.  Now I really didn't care if Rex came to rescue me until the end of his shift.  I would be fine for the whole day.

Of course, as soon as I found a place to settle down, my sister called me back.  She agreed to go get the key from Rex and bring it to me.  While I waited, I chose a book about the history of the English language and settled into a particularly fluffy looking couch to read.  The coffee table in front of the couch was shaped like a giant stack of books.  When I pulled the bookmark of one of the books, a drawer pulled out.  It was the most magnificent coffee table I have ever seen.

By the time my sister arrived, I was completely calm - quite the opposite of the panic I felt when I realized I was locked out of my house  She took me home, I finally blew out that pesky candle that had been worrying me, and all was well.  I'm actually a little bit glad that I got locked out, because now I know about Kazoo Books.  I'm sure I will clock a lot of hours there over the next few years.

Now that I'm finished telling you about my adventure, I have to get back to unpacking.  Step 1 on errands I need to run today: go make a spare key.

Home for the Holidays

It's Christmas Eve, and I have approximately 986,234,726 things to do before tomorrow.  In all the hurry, I have to take a second to pause to tell you some really exciting news:  Rex and I bought a house.

I'm sitting in my new living room watching the dog chase the cat and staring at my absolutely beautiful wall of bookshelves.

I am so thankful for the blessing of this house.  I'm blown away by the fact that all of this is mine, and that God saw fit to provide Rex and I with great jobs AND a beautiful house in the town that we love.  I know we don't deserve it, and I am incredibly thankful.

What I am more thankful for, however, is the fact that we have been blessed by such amazing friends.  There's nothing like moving to show you how many real friends you have.  Let's be honest: moving isn't fun.  It's just not.  So the fact that people were willing to give up their valuable time, especially this close to Christmas, completely blows me away.  And I'm not just talking about one or two friends who showed up and carried a box or two.  We had a veritable army of people helping us.  I am so humbled and grateful for their generosity.  If we didn't have them, I'd still be moving in the cold instead of sitting here watching Elvis give up on chasing Elsie because he wants to settle down to chew a bone by the Christmas tree.

At the risk of sounding like an Oscar acceptance speech, I need to give some shout outs to the people who made this move so amazingly easy:

1. My mom and dad.  My mom probably put in more hours than anyone else,  She came over two evenings last week to help me pack, and then she came over for a good chunk of the day on Saturday to help us move stuff.  I realize you're probably thinking, "Yeah, well that's your mom - she had to help."  Actually, she didn't.  She and my dad just moved into a new house themselves, so they had plenty of stuff they had to do.  Instead, they helped me.  Whoa.  My dad has a bad back, and he still came for a few hours and helped as much as he could.  He kept joking that he needed "girly" jobs.  He ended up doing a lot of work!

2. Sarah and Will - My friend Sarah is one of those friends who will be there for you no matter what.  You can just count on her, you know?  So even though she blew out her knee a few hours before she was supposed to come help move, she came anyway.  She carried light stuff, and she commissioned her ex-military husband Will to carry the heavy stuff.  (By the way, I hardly know Will...he just showed up because he's a really good guy).  She also gave up an evening last week to help me pack, even though she's been working mandatory overtime at work for the past two weeks straight.  So, in her few precious hours of relaxation time, she decided to help me.  What?  Who does that?!  Sarah, that's who.

3.  My school friends - Two teachers from my school, Beth and Katie, gave up their first morning of Christmas break to help us move.  Their first morning to sleep in, their first morning without whiny kids, and they used it to help ME.  What a gift!  Also, my friend Lauren came at the same time as Beth and Katie.  She's working in retail right now, which is super busy during Christmas, and she gave up one of her few mornings off to come help.

4. Siblings - My sister and Rex's brothers both gave some time to help.  Rex's brother Jake was especially helpful - he stayed until 1 AM helping us get everything over!  His girlfriend Stephanie stayed until 11 PM helping me unpack my new (and awesome) kitchen.  I mean, she didn't have any obligation to be there.  She's not related to me, I hardly ever get to hang out with her, and yet she gave up an entire evening of her Christmas break to help.  What a generous person!  Jake should probably marry her.

5. Jake - Rex's brother is named Jake, but he also has a friend named Jake (that got a bit confusing, ha ha).  Friend Jake helped us move to Nevada and then back from Nevada on two of the most epic road trips of all time, so I told Rex we probably shouldn't ask him to help us this time.  After all, he's done his friend duty in helping us move more than once.  Rex agreed.  Imagine my surprise, then, when there was a knock on the door, and I opened it to see this:

Jake had driven an HOUR to come help us!  He even stayed the night and helped us the next day too!  Apparently he and Rex had concocted a plan where Jake was going to stand by the side of the road with that sign pretending to be a homeless person, then Rex was going to drive by with me and "find" him.  Jake got bored, though, so he came over early.  He was super helpful (as always), and I couldn't believe that he came over to help us move a third time.  His first order of business in the new house was to put this sign on the guest room door:

It's still there, ha ha.  It makes me smile whenever I see it, so I haven't taken it down.


6. Katie and Chris - Katie and Chris live in Ohio, and they too have already helped us move before (we've moved five times in the four years we've been married...hence why I'm so excited to actually own a house now).  They showed up and spent an entire afternoon of their time off to help us.  Katie works in journalism and gets basically no time off - not even Christmas! - so it was pretty crazy that she was willing to drive up to Michigan to help on her time off.

7. Kyle - When Rex and I lived in Lansing, we lived across from a couple named Kyle and Karl   Kyle was an interior design major in college, and she is fabulous at designing things.  She's a complete natural at it.  She somehow made their one bedroom apartment look like it should be on the Parade of Homes.  Now they have a beautiful house, and it actually should be on the Parade of Homes.  Anyway, she drove down FROM LANSING on the day after we moved specifically to help me set up my new place.  She told me where to put my furniture (I had it a certain way, but when she changed it around it looked a thousand times better).  Kyle and I went shopping for some decorative items, and I have gotten so many compliments on the things she picked.  She's an absolute genius, and I am so grateful that she helped me.

Can you even believe all of the friends who helped us?  Our bosses even helped - Rex's boss let us use his trailer, and my boss offered to come help move furniture (we ended up not needing him, but I was so grateful for the offer).  We basically have the best bosses ever.  Again - we're very blessed.  I'm completely blown away.

So now we're getting settled in our new house and getting ready for Christmas, and I'm feeling so loved by all of the people who gave their valuable time to come help.  I don't know how to thank them all!  I hope Santa is extra good to them this year - they definitely deserve it.

As I was leaving the old house yesterday after cleaning it, the sunset over it looked gorgeous.  Almost like beautiful closure to that chapter in our lives (I realize that's too symbolic and mushy, but hey - I'm an English teacher.  Give me a break).  I'm posting the picture here for you to see.  We don't live there any more, but it's still beautiful.  Goodbye, old adventures, hello to the new ones!

Making Friends

How did you meet your friends?

Here are some normal answers:
- We met in school
- We met at work
- We met at church
- We met through mutual friends

Here are some NOT normal answers:
- We met in an online hunting tips forum
- We met while shopping for raspberries in Meijer

Why is my husband such a weirdo?  He spent last weekend in northern Michigan with a guy that he met in an online forum while we were still in Nevada (you can read that story here).  They're now great friends.  If that wasn't weird enough for you, check out this story from around two weeks ago:

Rex and I were grocery shopping at Meijer, having a jolly good time.  Rex noticed that raspberries were on sale 2/$1.00  (can we just pause a moment and realize what an AWESOME deal that is?!  Fifty cents for a container of raspberries!?).  He said, "Hey Christine, look!  Raspberries are on sale!"  I told him to go ahead and grab some, and he said, "I will, as long as this guy doesn't take all of them!"  He was joking with the guy in front of him, who was stocking up on the aggressively-priced raspberries.  The guy turned around to laugh at Rex's joke, and he noticed that Rex was wearing a Kimber hat.

In case you don't get what that means (like 95% of the population wouldn't), Kimber is apparently some fancy brand of gun.  There.  Now you know. Raspberry man commented on it and said, "Cool hat, man.  Do you shoot around here?"  They started talking about guns, and I moseyed off to get some cilantro.  I started to walk back to the raspberries, but they were still talking.  Okay...so I went to get onions.  And then some cereal.  And then some candy, because...well...why not?  They were still talking.  Finally I just joined the conversation, because we had everything on our grocery list and I had already added enough random junk while waiting for Rex to be done talking.

Rex introduced me to Eric (because apparently raspberry man has a name now).  It turns out that Eric's dad has 1,000 acres of hunting land in South Dakota, which makes Eric Rex's new best friend.  Rex was definitely dressed like a hunter with his Kimber hat, Carhartt jacket, camo shirt, and scruffy beard.  This part of the conversation cracked me up:

Eric:  So, what do you do for a living?
Rex: I'm a physical therapist.
Eric: *long pause*  Really?
Rex: Yeah.
Eric: I don't mean to be stereotypical or anything, but that is totally not what I was expecting you to say.

Bwahahahaha!  Yes, my man is a bit redneck and super country, but he is also super smart and has a doctorate.  I get the best of both worlds.  Wife win.  Eric's wife is a teacher, which is pretty cool.  Eric and Mrs. Eric are only a year older than Rex and me, and they've been married almost the exact same amount of time as us.  It turns out that we have a lot in common.  Eric, Rex, and I were having a good time chatting, and suddenly Eric said, "Hey, as a physical therapist, is it hard for you to get time off?"  My ears instantly perked up.  Was he about to ask what I thought he was going to ask?  Was he going to make Rex's day/month/year/life and ask him to go to South Dakota on a hunting trip?  Rex has always wanted to go to South Dakota.  Whenever I ask him, "If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?" his answer is, "On a really cool hunting trip to somewhere awesome, like South Dakota."  I kid you not.  That's what he says. Like South Dakota. And now, right here next to the raspberries, was a guy who could make that dream come true. I mentally willed him to invite Rex on a trip.  Come on, Eric!  Make it happen!

Sure enough, Eric said, "Well, I know this is really short notice, but I'm headed out to visit my dad on the 14th to hunt for a few days.  If you could get the time off, I'd love for you to go so I don't have to drive all that way by myself.  We could hunt deer in the morning and and night, and then hunt pheasants during the day.  We could stay with my dad, so really you would just need to pay for half of the gas and your licenses and that's it."  Let me put this in perspective for everyone who isn't like my weird-yet-awesome husband:  this is the equivalent of someone coming up to you and saying, "Hey, I have this extra ticket for a cruise around the world that I'm not using - do you want it?"

I literally almost gasped when he invited Rex on the trip.  I may have actually gasped... I can't be quite sure.  I couldn't believe this was actually happening.  Neither could Rex, really.  He and that guy exchanged numbers, set up some preliminary plans, and then we went to check out.  Rex had this shell-shocked look on his face like, "What just happened?  Is this real life?"

As I type these words, Rex is having the time of his life in South Dakota.  He's texted me pictures of the hunting grounds, and he says he's seen the biggest bucks he's seen in his whole life.  He hasn't gotten one in close enough to shoot yet, but hey - he's only been there for a day.  The point is, he's having a great time, and it's all because the raspberries were on sale.

And also because he steadfastly refuses to make any friends in any normal ways.

Work Party

Tonight was Rex's first work party since he started working at Spine PT.  I was...well...nervous, to say the least.  I was afraid to go hang out with all of the doctor's wives, because "doctor's wife" just sounds pretentious, doesn't it?  Like I was going to be walking onto the set of The Real Housewives of Kalamazoo or something.  I pictured them all walking around in high heels with glasses of chardonnay, swapping casserole recipes and talking about vacations to the Hamptons.

And yes, I realize that Rex is a specifically a doctor of physical therapy, which is different than a "regular" doctor.  He is always very particular about that.  He is super paranoid that someone is going to confuse him for a general physician or a surgeon or something.  As if people are going to be sitting in a restaurant when a guy chokes, and someone yells, "Hey!  That guy over there is a doctor!  Quick, Sir, we need you to perform an emergency tracheotomy with only a toothpick and a handful of cilantro!"  Um, not going to happen.  Still, Rex doesn't like being called a doctor.

So, even though they were doctors of physical therapy, they were still doctors.  And that made their wives doctors' wives.  And that made me intimidated.

I chose my outfit carefully.  I wanted to seem sophisticated, but not like I tried too hard.  I settled on some kicky jeans, brown boots (jeans over boots, not under), a brown sweater, and a tan scarf with brown swirls.  I also wore my off-white peacoat.  At the last minute I added some pearl drop earrings, because obviously pearls are sophisticated.  If there was a store called Sophisticated-R-Us, there would be an entire department of pearls.  They're practically the backbone of sophistication.
I had an internal debate about my purse choice.  I had a no-name brand brown purse that I got at a garage sale which would match well, or I had my Vera Bradley bag, which is designer but didn't really match.  I decided on Vera, partially to look like I was stylish and partially because I just really like that purse.  As a final touch, I put on my Ray-Ban knockoffs (they're good knockoffs, though, with the logo and everything.  You totally can't tell they're fake).  I realized I wouldn't wear sunglasses at the indoor party, but maybe someone would see them when I walked in and think, "Ah, yes.  She is one of us."  I am such a poser.  *hangs head in shame*

We arrived at the party, and I gave the hostess my offerings of homemade potato salad and pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.  Everyone knows that women judge each other by their cooking.  It's like how guys compare muscles or something.  If you can rock a homemade souffle, you're in.  If you bring store-bought cookies, scoff!  Women are judgmental like that.  It's pretty stupid (yet I still participate in this by trying super hard to make acceptable food...hmmm...).  For the record, if I ever throw a party - you are welcome to bring store-bought cookies.  Or a 2-liter of pop. Or napkins.  Or whatever you want.  I like when people bring anything at all.  Hand on heart - I won't judge you.

So I walked into the kitchen to proffer my gifts of food, and I immediately noticed that the decor was...fancier than my unsophisticated taste properly appreciates, I guess.  The wallpaper had roosters on it, but instead of feathers the roosters had exotic animal furs.  There was a zebra rooster, a leopard rooster, a tiger rooster, etc.  I really wanted to get out my phone and take a picture to show you, but that seemed quite rude.  So I didn't.  Instead, I complemented the hostess on the fact that her kitchen decor seemed "down-home, yet exotic."  True, it did.  It just took a bit of staring at it to get used to it.  She said "Thank you.  Exotic was exactly what I was thinking."  Phew!  Score one for me!

I stayed pretty quiet as Rex made his rounds and said hello to people.  I noticed one of the wives had a Vera Bradley bag (glad I chose that one!), but I also noticed that it was last season.  Then I felt like a TOTAL brat for even noticing that.  Who was acting all Real Housewives of Kalamazoo now?  Me, that's who!  So I mentally chided myself and told myself to stop freaking out about everyone's outfits and food offerings and statuses in the company.  These were real people.  I am a real person.  There is no reason why we can't be friends.  Our spouses all work together, so we all automatically have something in common.  There.  I had talked myself into it.  I was going to be social.

Rex introduced me to a few of the ladies there, and they were super nice.  They weren't uppity at all.  We talked about how lots of the hostess's decorations were so fun - she had a lot of Halloween/harvest themed things.  She even had centerpieces for the tables made out of wheat.  WHEAT.  You wouldn't think that would look cool, but it did.  She had yummy scented candles making the house smell great, and she had little pumpkins and ghosts hiding all over the place, so everywhere you looked you saw something else cute and festive.  Her house was basically a Pinterest board for "How to Throw a Harvest Party."

The food was really good (as it was destined to be with that many women trying to impress each other).  I got complimented on my potato salad, so that made me happy.  Rex and I sat with another therapist and his wife at dinner, and they were super cool.  We ended up talking to them for a lot of the night, and we found out we had a ton in common.  After a while some of the guys turned on a football game, some of the women started looking at photo albums, and it was basically a really fun night with really fun, totally normal people.  No wine, stilettos, or vacations to the Hamptons.  I can breathe a sigh of relief.   I was so apprehensive about this party, but now I hope that Rex's work has a Christmas party too, because those people are quite fun.  Now I feel dumb for freaking out so much.  Silly me.  Oh, well.  I will go toast to my successful evening with a leftover cupcake.  Mmmm.

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.