Gooooooaall!

Tessa, 


How angry was I that the US vs Algeria game wasn't on broadcast TV?  Very angry, with a hint of still-sleepiness.  I can understand not wanting to bump some prime time So You Think You Can Needle-Point or whatever, but it was like 9:30 in the morning.  ABC put The View on instead.  No one likes that show.  We play it for terrorists to get them to talk, and when we do, they beg to be water-boarded instead.  "No! Not Joy Bahar; anything but Joy Bahar!  Osama's at a Motel 6 in Cleveland, just please make it stop!"

So, instead of watching the game I find myself reading second-to-second text updates on ESPN.com.  I turn the radio on to get the full effect of what life was like before television saved us.  We win the game in epic fashion, but reading the action off a website really neuters the moment.  To make matters worse, I found out that you can watch the game online, I was just at the wrong page.  Lame.

I Heart You 

Forts & The World's Worst Psychic

Tessa, 

I should be packing things away in boxes, but I am never so full of key-stroking impetus as when I should be doing something else.  In fact, virtually every letter you will read here came at the expense of something else I was supposed be doing.  As a kid, I always thought you just outgrew your desire to drop everything and make a fort in the living room out of the couch cushions.  Now, with nearly a decade of adulthood under my belt, I see the truth: we never outgrow, we only tame the beast.  Those who do not tame remain children, in cognito.  They'll never be able to stroll through Wickes' Furniture without imagining a Chateau d'If  made entirely from cushions.

Speaking of refusing to face reality, check this out: a Connecticut woman, claiming to be a psychic, was charged with lying to police after she filed a report accusing "rival psychics" of beating her up.  Let's unpack this.  First, I gotta believe that the biggest perk to being a psychic -- aside from the flowing gypsy robes -- is seeing the future.  Ideally, a psychic should be the last person to be surprised by an attack.

Second, wouldn't the rival psychics know this, and maybe have a better way of getting to her than the very non-psychic route of beating her up?  Replace her crystal ball with a regular glass one, maybe?  The 'ol Pins-In-The-Voodoo-Doll trick?  And gangs of rival psychics? Are these a problem in Connecticut?  Do they have gang colors, and specified gang territories.  Are there drive-by palm readings, after which they all meet back at the circled caravan of wagons?  So many questions.

Finally, she ends up getting arrested.  Shocker.  One would think that an average person, entirely not gifted with magical powers, would be able to deduce that repeatedly lying to police is likely to put you behind bars.  I guess psychics are like drug dealers; the first rule is you never use the product your selling.

I Heart You

Air Conditioners & Panda Bears

Tessa, 

My mind is blank today, but I hadn't written in you in over a week, so here I am...  It's not like we haven't seen each other in a week.  I saw you this morning.  You were sleeping, and I was four inches from your face, staring at you and humming an E flat minor.  "Ohmmmmmmnnmn...".  But that type of thing doesn't count as quality communication, so here goes.

I helped the lady downstairs install 2 air conditioners yesterday.  She's on the heftier side of the spectrum, and can't stand for more than a minute or two without resting.  She has cancer, and she brought it up a lot.  A lot.  And I don't know what to say, because I'm sympathetic (Or do I mean empathetic here?  Whichever one means I know cancer sucks, but not from personal experience), but I'm also holding a sixty-five pound window unit.  The metal corner is digging into my hip, I think I'm bleeding, but I'm furrowing my brow and nodding to the story she's telling me.

It's strange to see people's homes when you don't really know them.  No matter how clean a place is, some item always reveals more than polite sensibilities desire.  Foot lotion, now with anti-fungal support.  Old paperback romance novels, with some Civil War belle staring pensively out of a plantation window, her face clearly pleading "Come back to me, Jamison Beauregard III, so we can do the grown-up hug in the smoke house again."  In public, people get the chance to present themselves as they seem fit.  If you want to know about their weird side, you have to Facebook them.  But once your in their home, there's simply no way they can hide their freakish love of panda bears.

Okay, off to the gym, and then to do more Censifying.

I Heart You