Barding it

Hello, everyone! I hope you all have great weekends--I am off to Cedar City for the Utah Shakespearean Festival, because it has simply been too long since I've watched men prance around in tights.

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All parents are not created equal

Today a mom noticed that her toddler had located a little kids magazine and was beginning the "I'm going to rip this magazine because I am in awe of my strong ripping powers!" process. She rushed over to stop him but got there about a second too late. So she took the magazine away, informed him that we do not rip things, and found him a very sturdy book to read. She then brought the magazine over to me, told me what happened, and asked if she needed to pay for it.

I told her not to worry about it, that it looked like something I could easily fix with a bit of tape, and thanked her for bringing it over. Then we shared a laugh about toddlers and their Destructo ways.

This mommy is one of the good ones and I will always think of her this way unless something drastic should happen, like if I find her changing her baby's diaper in the middle of the children's section, using pages from a library book as wipes. Something like that.

Last night, the other kind of mother was here. She wasn't paying attention to her two little ones and they were running around like crazy loud dervishes. Crazy barefoot loud dervishes. One of the librarians went over and told her that her children needed to wear shoes in the library.

Mom: "Well, they chose not to wear shoes today."

Librarian, probably doing a massive internal eyeroll: "Well, if you choose to come to the library they need to have shoes on."

The mom proceeded to talk about how every time they come here someone ruins her children's library experience by saying things like "your kids need to wear shoes." And how we are making the library "not fun." And she wants to come back and speak with the director about how not-fun-making we are.

I wish I'd been there. My response would have been simple:

"Ma'am, sick people cough and spit on our floors, teens have thumbtack wars in the children's area, and a couple of weeks ago we found poop on the carpet. Still think your kids should be barefoot in here?"

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Oh . . . karma. But with a surprise happy ending!

So remember that one time when I talked about how yay and happy I was on account of we just paid off my student loan and how I'm fer shure going to get us living off one income and maybe the Obama administration should call me to get my budgeting advice because I'm Just. That. Awesome at it?

Yeah.

As my dear superstitious GH would say, it's like you're just giving karma the chance to come after you.

Our first month of just-living-on-one-paycheck-except-for-the-part-where-we-treated-ourselves-to-an-anniversary-getaway also turned out to be the month where:

#1. Our electric bill went from $40 to $100, thanks to the freaking A/C that we probably don't even NEED because the pioneers didn't have it and they were fine.

#2. I went over on our cell phone minutes for the first time in EVER, resulting in a bill that was $50 higher than normal. Awesome.

#3. The annual Tivo bill arrived. (See "things we don't need because the pioneers don't have them." Note how I only use this argument on the things I don't care about.)

#4. We drove a whole lot, doubling our gas expenses.

#5. GH's car broke.

This last one was the best. The power window on GH's 1992 Honda Accord has been on the blink a while, causing the window to work its way down until we could force it back up. It decided last week to break down completely, leaving the window stuck in a half-opened position, just begging the many car thieves and smash & grabbers in our area to come take a look.

(Before I continue this story, I have pretty much decided that power windows are of the Devil and are just an excuse to put one more thing into your car that can break and have to be expensively fixed. Cuz really, it's not like much could go wrong with the manual kind. And when you inevitably roll off the road and land in a river and are supposed to swim out through the window because you can't get the door open, are you really sure those power windows are going to work underwater? Yeah. Thanks for letting me just drown there with my hypothetical babies, power windows.)

So we take the car to our usual place and they say the necessary part will need to be ordered and should cost between $110 and $130. And then the labor will cost about $150. Great. Perfect. Except that night GH caught me online while I was at work to have this conversation with me:

GH: pep boys just called, they say that because it's an american car they can only find the piece they need from the dealer and that because of that the total is going to be 600 dollars!!!
me: blink. blink blink.

And that's when my brain completely imploded. This, for a car that is maybe worth $1500.

He asked if he should call them back and tell them to go ahead and I said NONONOnonononono, wait until we could talk about it. Two hours later, he got back online for this conversation

GH: you there?
me: Yep, what's up?
GH: hey I think I just found the part i needed on ebay for forty dollars.
me: Are you for sure serious?
GH: I called the website and he said it was what I needed... then I called pepboys to see if they'd install it if I brought the part in and they say yeah... there just wouldn't be a warranty.
me: Wow. When I get home, [very specific promise that I won't repeat here].

So yeah. He totally found the right part. It arrived in a few days, we drove it over, they installed it, it works, and the peasants rejoiced. And we paid about $100 less than we would have if they'd just found the part initially for the price they first gave us. (Big note to self: Always try this online thing it is awesome.) And now I'm not even so upset about the way our budget went all to crap this month since we dodged such a huge bullet.

I've been telling everyone who will listen about the genius I married. Then GH confessed to me that the only reason he even thought to look online was because he desperately did not want to experience what I would be like if we actually had to dump $600 into his car over a window.

I think that is what is called Being a Good Team.

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Ruminations upon the subject of library parents

Rumination #1: When I politely inform you that your child is too young to be left alone in the children's section, the right thing to do is to log out of your Facebook page and go read with said child. A lesser option would be to make the child sit at the computer with you while she wonders aloud what bad thing she did for the librarian to banish her from the children's area.

Rumination #2: You just now realized we have a summer reading program, 4 days before school starts? And you want to enroll your kids?

Rumination #3: I really don't think your 6-year-old actually wants the book Twilight as his summer read prize. But way to make him pick that one anyway.

Rumination #4: Why would someone pay big bucks to adopt a tiny spicy exotic baby if she was just planning to take him to the library in a few years and then ignore him while he runs out the door and into traffic? Because really, it seems like there are other ways to blow your money.

Just, you know, things I get to ponder.

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Goodbye

To the remaining readers of this blog, I have moved to greener pastures. You can locate me at http://lingnemesis.wordpress.com/.

I hope to slit you there swoon. =D

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Commemorating One Year of the Thermostat War

So it's kind of hard for me to believe it, but the Gentleman Husband and I passed our 1st wedding anniversary on Sunday.

To celebrate we went up to L**** for a little getaway, which was relaxing and lovely and full of good foods, as any self-respecting getaway must be. More to come on that.

A lot of people's first year of marriage, while great, grand, and wonderful, is also a very difficult one. This makes sense because if you think about it, it's kind of a big year.

It's the year you learn to live with this other person who, as it turns out, believes that the inside of the toilet bowl is really only a loose sort of goal rather than an ironclad, electric-current-bordered target. (Seriously, can someone please make an electrified toilet rim? And maybe do the floor, too? I would appreciate it. You know, for a friend of mine. Who you don't know.)

In turn, they learn how to deal with the fact that sometimes you're just going to cry and be a rage beast for no (real) reason, and how to navigate that without losing an arm or other valuable body part.

It's the year you begin learning to balance loyalty and responsibility to each other and your own new family with all of the events, traditions, and expectations of the families you grew up in. (Note: Good luck with that.)

You're learning how to have a good physical relationship, which comes with a significant learning curve and the potential for unrealistic expectations, frustration, and hurt feelings.

If one or both of you are moving to a new town or starting new jobs, there's the stress of those transitions.

You have to deal with things like January. And February. You know--awful, awful cold things.

So yeah. When I think about this, it's not hard to understand why someone would say that their first year of marriage was the hardest. And when I report that for us this has not so much been the case, I am fully aware that this is because it's going to be some other year--maybe even this coming one, that will deliver the real pimp slaps.

But as far as this year goes, it really has been great and fast and surprisingly smooth. GH has been more patient and understanding and kitchen-cleany than I expected or deserve. I like to believe that I have been more silly and less the Enemy of Fun that he was prepared for. (I mean hi, I played Rock Band last night. And I ruled at it.) Our families have been great as we've tried to get our act together and balance our time between them. Rather than pestering us about when we are going to reproduce, our ward members have for the most part ignored us. (Except I will say that whoever reported that they home-taught us for the last two months is going DOWN, because no way is that true. Ignore us all you want but don't pretend otherwise, friend.)

And now this is the part where you can look away because I am going to thank GH for what has been the best year so far of my life. And that's INCLUDING that one time when I lived in England. So, you know, this is serious.

But now I'd like to hear from you, gentle readers. If you are married, what has been your hardest year so far? Which transitions have been the most difficult--and was it something you could have foreseen or did it come as a complete suckerpunch? If you're not married (or you just don't want to talk about your own relationship because you have standards like that), feel free to pass on what you've heard or observed, because I know you know stuff too.

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Now I am a movie critic too, because I can do pretty much whatever I want

And today I wish to discuss the movie 500 Days of Summer.


I do realize it's already been reviewed by both Handsome Gentlemen and cool Jet-setters. But I want to chime in too, dangit. Because it was wonderful.

Like the awesome-voiced narrator tells us in the very beginning, "This is not a love story. This is a story about love." It follows Tom, played by the surprisingly n adorable and charming Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Tom is a 20-something young pup who studied architecture in college but now has a job creating copy for greeting cards. He believes in destiny, fate, soaking it up in a hot tub with his soul mate, all of it. He meets new receptionist Summer (GH's GF Zooey Deschanel) and, on the basis of her attractiveness and their similar taste in music, decides that she's The One. Unfortunately, although she likes Tom, Summer does not actually believe in love, or marriage, or soul mates. Tom is so infatuated with her, however, that he . . . chooses to kind of ignore this. Until she breaks up with him and he falls completely apart and is determined to win her back.

First off, I would like to say kudos to a movie that actually casts two people in their 20s as romantic partners, with the kinds of jobs and friends that people that age would actually have. This instead of pairing 29-year-old Zooey Deschanel with, oh, I dunno, 47-year-old Jim Carrey and then pretending like the 20-year age difference doesn't even exist. Way to suck, Hollywood.

This movie was pretty much perfect, I thought. It was funny and sad and real--oh my, was it ever real. In fact, there was one point in the movie where Tom stands up and makes an impassioned speech in front of his coworkers about three-fourths of the way in. That was the first time I ever thought, "Um, but would a person really DO that?" That's how I know that I was watching something that was 500 times better than your (sub)average recent romantic comedy. Because those movies expect you to suspend your disbelief before you even leave your dang house. In any other romantic comedy the impassioned speech would have come from Matthew McConaughy to an entire ballroom of people, during a wedding, and maybe he would be naked and holding a pillow over his bits, and then at the end of the speech everyone would be crying and clapping and curing cancer and adopting tiny spicy exotic babies left and right. In this movie there was none of that mess.

The filmmakers did some really clever things that I think worked extremely well. The narrative isn't linear but instead flips around, with title cards letting you know which day of the 500 Days you're on. It makes sense, though, and leads you through the story in a way that is really quite moving. And it also made me want to watch it again to see which little moments and call-backs I could catch better the second time around. One great visual involved a split-screen device that shows Tom's expectations of a reconciliation with Summer on the left and what actually happens on the right. Heartbreaking, but also very funny.

This movie also contains the most sublime moment I've seen on film all year, which occurs as Tom walks through LA after spending the night with Summer. I won't describe it to you, but I was giddy with delight. What happens is not based in reality at all, but the feeling it portrays most definitely is. And the soundtrack is great.

There were other scenes, however, that resonated in a different, slightly painful way. Because I have done some of the things Tom does here. I have been in relationships where I saw every insignificant little thing as further evidence that this guy and I were MFEO. I have been unwilling to recognize red flags. I was unwilling to actually listen to the words this person was saying and to realize that perhaps they did not bode well for our future together. I can laugh about it now, but at the time I was just setting myself up to be heartbroken.

A few days after seeing the movie, GH and I listened to a podcast featuring one of the film's two writers. He talked about how in test screenings, the people who loved this movie the most were men. And how men are, unfortunately, the least likely to be the ones running out to tell their guy friends that they have GOT to check out this new romantic comedy. Except GH did because he's secure (and hot) like that.

It's true, though. He laughed even harder than I did and there were moments during Tom's angst and dejection and misery where GH just nodded his head and said, "Yep." And then I'd lean over and stroke his arm and whisper, "I'm really, really sorry. Remember how I married you in the end, though?"

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Speaking of corn

On Saturday the Gentleman Husband and I were driving down to Provo for a BBQ with my family. On the way we listened to the songs on his iPod because he has attitude about the songs on mine.

A song by U2 started to play (I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking for) and I asked a question that has long puzzled me.

Me: So what's the King of Corn?

GH: The what?

Me: You know, in the song. Bono says he "believes in the King of Corn."

GH: I . . . don't think that's what he's saying. Wait, do you mean when he says "I believe in the Kingdom Come?"

Yeah. He pretty much has not stopped laughing over that one.

But speaking of "Corn is King," have you seen the new high-fructose corn syrup commercials put out by the Corn Refiner's Association? You need to watch this, and then watch the response put out in the next clip.

Heh.

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I don't sneer at GH enough

GH and I watched Twilight last night for the first time, courtesy of GH's little sister, whose copy we snagged last weekend.

One of the things I found fascinating was watching the way Bella and Edward meet and interact. Who even knew that falling in love is best portrayed in film through snorting, flinching, grimacing, and mouth-breathing? Call me crazy, but usually you do these things around people you don't like.

While watching Kristin Stewart's portrayal of Bella Swann something familiar kept nagging at me. There was the open mouth, the monotone voice, the sullen facial expressions, the staring . . . and then I remembered where I've seen those things before.

Clearly they are twins separated at birth. He got the brains, she got the looks.

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Clearly I missed the memo

There was one day last week wherein there must have been some sort of signal rising up from the library, Batman-beacon style, which telegraphed a message calling all crazies, drunks, over-tired children, and inattentive parents to the library.

"Tonight's the night! Come do your worst!"

This happens every now and then and we just deal with it in our various ways. My way involves locking myself in the janitor's closet with liquor. And also threatening to call the cops when a patron won't leave and wants to stand there defending his right to use the f-word to other patrons because if you look at the word's German origins it's really not that bad. I'm Day 1-ing it, dude. You do not want to dance with me, because nothing would give me more pleasure right now than to END YOU.

Anyway. Stuff like that happens. And I kill people and glory in the slaughter.

I don't think any of us, however, expected that night to find HUMAN POOP on the carpet in the children's section. Thankfully it was child-sized poop, although I suppose a perusal of this book could have helped us with identification. We found it in several different places, which was extra joyous. No one claimed responsibility. This was just after learning that an entire wall in the bathroom had been sprayed down with urine. It was all I could do not to stand up on a chair and bellow, "Which one of you let your child flipping CRAP ON THE FLOOR!!!" (Day 1, you remember. Not a safe time. For anyone.)

So, yeah. Apparently not only was it Bring on the Crazy Night, it was also National Library Defecation Day, and I didn't even realize it. If I had known, I could have put up a display or something.

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