Random Facts

Mamakat's prompts: 1.) Last week I opened the opportunity to write an open letter to men with a  word of advice, an issue you’d like to address, or a solution to a problem. This week? Hand over the reigns and let your husband write his OWN open letter to women.
2.) 5 Random facts about you and your family. (inspired by Nice Girl Notes)


I picked up my husband from his school, and we started  heading toward home, which is 23 miles away.  Plenty of time for conversation, right?   Our usual routine involves monosyllabic mumbles while we decompress, followed by short, simple sentences.  By the time we pick up our son, we are usually coherent.  I had something different in mind.

"What advice do you have to offer women?"   I'm a rip-the-band-aid-off-quickly kind of woman, but I tried to sound nonchalant. 

"What?!?"  I had surprised my husband by asking him a question instead of just my usual mumbling. 

"Mamakat said that husbands could write an open letter offering advice for women.  You know, since last week we got to give men some advice."   

Larry wasn't buying it.  He even laughed out loud.

"I am smart enough to know that any advice that I could think of would be immediately discounted because I am a man."

The man had a point, but I had a blog post to write, so I went with Plan B.  

"What are some random facts about our family?"

"Just the fact that you're asking me that is pretty random..."

The rest of the car ride went downhill from there, although Larry did come up with a couple of ideas.

1.  We have more Lego bricks inside our house than real bricks on our house.  The boys in this house love them some Legos.  Zane and his daddy sit hunched over the kitchen table, looking at the diagram in the little booklets, locating the correct pieces, and putting them together.  Larry is a little more into it than Zane, because 5 year old attention spans are notoriously short, but the Lego sets have provided opportunities for some sterling father-son bonding.  Larry is still working on not losing his mind when Zane wants to actually play with the Lego sets, but he's made good progress.  The last time Helms Deep was completely decimated by Count Dooku and his horde, Larry only whimpered for a hour.

2.  We are actively looking for Bigfoot.   After every episode of Finding Bigfoot, we have a map out, and we are locating the state where the episode took place, and where that state is in relation to our house.  When the team went to Australia, we did the same thing, and we discussed that Australia is a different country and how things there might be different from here. On one episode, there was a visually impaired woman and her guide dog, so we talked about why she needed to have a dog helper. All these opportunities to talk about travel, culture, diversity...We love that stuff. Plus, if we do find Bigfoot, Zane will be the coolest kid on the planet for at least a day.

3.  We are into soccer.  I know, I know--coming from two of the most sedentary people on the planet, that's just plain crazy talk.  Except that our son is very...energetic.  He likes to run.  So we let him, and we put a ball in front of him.  Being nerds/geeks, however, we don't just let Zane play soccer.  We joined him in his enthusiasm.  My husband joined the board governing our particular soccer league, so that we would have some say in how our son learned his skills.  Larry then became a commissioner, setting up the teams, finding coaches, calling parents, etc.  Larry also decided that he wanted to coach, so he went and obtained his 'D' license, whatever that is. In addition to all that, we watch soccer on television and try to keep up with the English Premiere League. 

4.  We own more books than the population of Liechtenstein.  I made that up.  Maybe not Liechtenstein...how about the population of Monaco?  No?  The point is that we have a lot of books.  We have bookcases that go from floor to ceiling.  We have books on the floor, books in boxes in the closet, books underneath the bed, books in the bathroom, books in the garage...you get the idea.  Anyplace that we can stuff more books, we have.  If it weren't for the kindle, the house would be bursting at the seams with books.  We just love books, and once that attachment has formed, we can't let our favorites go.   

5.  We offered amnesty to our cats, trying to get them to reform.  Pounce is insane.  I love her, but she still won't acknowledge or accept Zane being here, and he's been here for five years.  I have warned her that she will go before Zane, but does she listen?  Zena is our little serial killer, often showing up at the door with various critters  that she has found.  All they have to do is move, and she's on them, stabbing them with a claw and flinging them about  in the cat version of Unforgiven.  We've tried keeping her indoors, but she is faster than us.

How about you?   What are some random facts about your family?

Batman Saves The Day

I was an all-or-nothing child. Things were either perfect or horribly defective. There was no in-between. There were no shades of gray. My worldview was formed by a need to survive. We moved often, and every time I made friends, I had to leave them and make new ones. My little ego had to form some sort of outer shell to confront the world, because rejection of some form was always just around the corner. If I was perfect, then all would be right with the world. If someone hurt me, I cut them out of my life completely. This does not make for a great social life.

I found solace in books. Lots and lots of books. I read until my head hurt. It was safer to escape in a book like Half Magic or The Secret Garden than to try to make new friends. After I had read every single book in the kid's section of the library on base, my parents started buying me comic books to read. Those were cheaper, my mother said, and I didn't seem to mind reading them over and over.

That's where I found Batman. I adored the Dark Knight from the very first issue I read. He was the only superhero I knew at the time who didn't actually have any superpowers. By sheer will, Bruce Wayne made himself into a hero, the World's Greatest Detective. He was intelligent, but in a way that I had never considered before--he was street smart. Bruce Wayne understood the heart of darkness that is in all of us because it was in his heart as well. He IS the heart of darkness. Batman knew what was out there, and he was ready for it.

Batman isn't really an all-or-nothing type of character, except that he never intentionally kills anyone. He doesn't always do the right thing. Sometimes he is willing to break laws to catch the criminals. He scares the bejeebers out of people on purpose. Technically he IS a criminal, a vigilante. Batman takes the law into his own hands on a regular basis, if it suits his purposes. For Batman, right is relative; the world is full of shades of gray. The ends, getting criminals off the streets, justify the means.

Batman wasn't perfect, but he was still a hero. He certainly changed my perspective. Maybe the world isn't black and white, I realized. All-or-nothing people don't live long in this world. Those comics inspired me: what was I doing hiding in my room? Just because someone I thought was my friend hurt me today didn't mean that they would do the same thing tomorrow. I needed to be out there. I needed to experience the world, learning as much as I could, so I could be ready for anything.

Like Batman. Except for the cape. I don't do capes.