Happy Valentine's Day

As a rule, I have always believed Valentine's Day to be an artificial and money-grubbing farce of a holiday, and I still do.  Yet this year, I really wanted to write something for Gary.

We have now been together for five and a half years.  During that time, we have had only rare and scattered moments of absolute peace, since Gary finding real love with a real woman after Ala decided her family wasn't worth fighting for did not sit well with a raging failure from his past.  Evidentally, the logic appears to go, behaving like a massive bitch will surely make him regret getting back up and moving on to a better woman...yeah, how is that working out?

Through it all, we manage to find ways to bring our world back down to just the two of us.  He has joked with me that I am crazy for staying for the loony ride, but the bottom line is, my love for Gary will always be stronger than any hate thrown at him and me by weak people. 

Gary is one of the few genuinely good people I know, someone who sincerely cares for other people and will do what is right, not what is popular or easy.  His kindness has been abused by others, but that is purely a reflection on their own tainted soul, not his.  I hope it never stops him from being exactly who he is: kind, gentle, caring, and loving.

Gary is also the only person I know who can infuriate me completely and totally, yet also leave me simultaneously trying hard not to laugh at whatever he is doing or saying at the moment.  He is quick with smartass comments, and if he discovers he is plucking my nerve, he will latch on like a bulldog and not let it go until I am practically foaming at the mouth and start calling him by his full name through grit teeth (which is when he knows he is in trouble, yet this fact simply encourages him to keep at it!)

My favorite moments with him are walking around garden centers, hand-in-hand; laying in bed on a lazy morning; going for walks; exchanging rapid-fire jokes until I can barely talk from laughing; listening to his made-up songs; and watching him get into character as he plays Barbie or superheroes with the kids. 

I love the sound of his laugh, loud and booming, unmistakable.  I love his voice on the phone when I have to travel for work.  I love the funny texts he sends me throughout the day.  I love the way he scolds me for not wearing a coat on a cold morning.  I love his back rubs and the way he strokes my hair when we are sitting together.  I love listening to him watch football, which is something you simply must experience to understand exactly what I am talking about!

I am glad he is in my life, and I am grateful we share a future with so much left to do and to look forward to together.  Happy Valentine's Day!

Sylvester and the Killer Duck

I often find myself defending my ball-of-fluff cat, Sylvester, who is frequently accused of being brain-dead, evil, the spawn of Satan, mentally deranged, flat crazy, or all of the above at the same time, usually by Gary.  Every time Sylvester barrels wildly into the room, chasing the thin air, leaps up to slap his massive paws on the wall, or manages to tangle himself in the window blinds and then act like we did it, I get a knowing look from Gary, who has launched multiple campaigns to find a good home in a padded cell for Sylvester.

Sylvester doesn't make it easy for me.  It is obvious he acts first and thinks later, if he ever thinks at all.

While doing laundry the other day, Gary left the kids' collapsible hamper, which is shaped like a bright yellow duck, in the bedroom.  Sylvester took the opportunity to stalk his delectable, new prey and take it down with a deft swipe of claws, wrestling the oversized duck hamper into submission. 

Gary sighed impatiently, asked him, "Why do you always have to do that?", and put the hamper back in the closet.

The duck may have smugly assumed himself to be safe in there.  He would have been wrong.

Later, sitting on the sofa together, Gary and I heard a thunk in one of the bedrooms, and then the bedroom door swung shut.  What the...?

We jumped up and flipped on the bedroom light.  Sylvester had managed to pry open the closet door and drag out the unsuspecting duck hamper, and a mighty WWE wrestling match ensued.  It appears the duck got the upper hand (or wing), because when we walked into the mayhem, Sylvester was sprawled helplessly on the floor, the handles at the top of the duck hamper wrapped around his large, fluffy behind, successfully tackling him and preventing him from standing back up.

In short, the duck hamper had put my cat into a serious chokehold...on his ass end.

Sylvester, wrapped up tight in the duck hamper's ferocious grip, looked up at us from his sprawled position and sat perfectly still, as if we wouldn't notice the large, yellow duck attached to his rear end if he just didn't move.

I refused to look at Gary, but I could hear him choking back laughter as we bent over to assist Sylvester in freeing himself of the duck hamper's death grip.  When his furry butt was released, Sylvester leaped up and darted out of the room to find new and inventive ways to get into trouble.

I expected an unrelenting barrage of taunting, but when I finally looked at Gary, he was just slowly shaking his head.  He really didn't have to say anything.

Come now...is it really that unusual to have to rescue your cat from a near-death experience with a duck-shaped hamper?

Ahhhhh....

Dear New Gel Bike Seat,

Thank you.  Thank you for your cushion-y goodness.  Whoever invented you deserved a medal, an award, some sort of worldwide accolade for the much-needed and well-deserved relief you selflessly provided to my hiney last night during Spinning class. 

Why bike seats aren't automatically created with you built in is beyond me...perhaps we are supposed to burn more calories by shifting about, standing up, sliding from one butt cheek to the other, all in a vain but irresistable attempt to find a less painful way to sit on the death trap torture device otherwise known as a bike seat for a full sweaty hour.

Not hobbling about clutching my bruised and battered butt cheeks after class last night was a delightful change of routine.  I shall never take you for granted, oh wondrous gel bike seat.

Forever grateful,
The Smirking Cat

Doctor Death

Dove marched into the living room recently, her new toy doctor bag in hand, and asked sternly, "Who is feeling sick in here?"

Gary naively offered himself up by telling her, "I don't feel so good, doctor."

Dove wandered closer to him, gave him a quick once-over, and announced, "You need fourteen shots."

Gary of course protested, but Dr. Dove would hear none of it.  She climbed authoritatively onto his lap with her doctor bag, pulled out the toy needle, and stabbed it swiftly into his arm (the fact that the needle is a toy and will not, in fact, actually penetrate human flesh is a tiny matter that has been lost on her).

Thinking quickly, Gary grabbed one of the kids' toy cell phones, pretended to call me, and begged me to come save him from the crazy doctor forcing him to take shots against his will.  When I arrived to save the day, demanding to know what was going on, Dr. Dove turned wordlessly to me, reached out, and pretended her own toy cell phone was a taser...and tased me.

What else could I do?  I fell onto the floor into a crumpled heap, wondering what the medical world has come to.

Later, when I recovered and was now sitting in the examining room (also known as our sofa), Dr. Dove told me, "You have black stuff in your ears."

"How do I get rid of it?"

"You need fourteen shots."

That remedy sounded familiar.  I told her I wanted a second opinion.

Good Heart

Watching Gary last week after the car accident, watching him tend to everyone and make sure everyone was okay as best as he could, I thought about how it was far from the first time I saw Gary immediately help someone without stopping to think about it.  Gary is one of the few people I know who has a genuinely good heart, and is loving and giving without expecting anything in return.

I also thought about what would have happened if it had been Ala or her father driving by that night of the wreck instead of us.  It's laughable to imagine they would have even considered stopping to help.  What for?  What was in it for them?

No, Ala and her father would have been part of the soulless, self-absorbed assholes driving right by, irritated they had to slow down for the carnage, or at best, nearly popping their eyeballs out of their sockets, hoping to spot some blood to fake-sob to their cronies about later, pulling as much attention to themselves as possible.  Because unless that woman's death served some purpose to them, she would have been completely worthless to them. 

It is precisely the same mentality Ala and her parents apply to the children each day. 

The insults, ridicules, and put-downs that Ala and her parents sling at Gary are even more ironic after watching Gary help a bleeding man get out of his smashed truck and sit down to wait for an ambulance.  Or rush to the arriving ambulance to help them find the woman who could not speak for herself.  Or after watching him cover a dying woman with a sheet so she could have dignity and peace and, hopefully, comfort. 

Perhaps a middle-aged woman still living with her parents should take a long, soul-searching gaze in the mirror before opening her lying, hateful mouth about Gary. 

Perhaps a woman whose biological and adoptive mother shudder away from claiming her as a daughter should spend more time examining her own behavior instead of fabricating insults about someone else. 

Maybe a woman whose father has to bribe a desperate ogre of a spineless man to even think about dating her should focus on improving her own integrity and worth instead of pointing ugly fingers at anyone else. 

And an old man who has lived a life of lies to cover the truth about his mentally-disturbed, incompetent, and sad excuse of a daughter should turn his attention to repairing his wrongs and facing his deceptions instead of creating more lies simply to save face about his dismal failure as a parent that resulted in a failure of a daughter and, in turn, of a mother.

Then again, it is likely Gary's good heart and honesty that make him an easy target for spiteful, shallow nothings of human beings like Ala and her parents.  They know he will not retaliate in the same fashion, because he is a far better person than they are.  He is thankfully not capable of slithering as low as they do. 

Putting him down does not elevate them to a higher status, except maybe in their own deranged heads.  It simply illustrates and emphasizes their pathetic existence, their dependency on Gary to have a semblance of a life, and their abject failure as human beings.

Watching Gary once again step in to help someone else, people he didn't even know, simply because it was the right thing to do, made me immeasurably proud of him, proud to be with him, proud to have him in my life.  I love him for so many reasons.  His heart, his strength, and his love for others are just part of them.

As heart-wrenching as the other night was, I am glad we were there.  I am glad Gary stopped to help.  Ultimately, after seeing what happens to people when they only care about themselves, I am glad both of us still care about people and are willing to help as much as we can. 

The Woman in the Car

I don't know how to describe what happened last night. 

After we dropped the kids off, Gary and I were driving back home, talking about the weekend and hashing out plans for dinner, when the headlights picked up a scene that took a moment for my sleepy brain to piece together.  The smoke and steam still billowing from a twisted semi truck in the median were lit up from headlights of cars on the opposite side of the highway. 

Gary pulled over and called 911.  He told me later he asked me to stay in the car, since I was wearing black and it was dark, but I honestly didn't hear him.  He ran across the highway to check on the driver of the semi truck. I grabbed the keys from the ignition, locked the car, and waited for traffic to pass so I could run into the median.

By the time I got to the semi truck, Gary had already checked on that driver and was running over to a smashed-in pick-up truck spun around backward on the other side of the highway, facing the wrong way.  I was cursing the sandals I wore in the wet, muddy median.  A man walked up to me, and I asked him if he was okay.  He was not one of the drivers of the wrecked cars but had stopped because he witnessed the accident.  He walked with me further up the median, because in the dark and the smoke and the occasional headlights, we could see more cars up the road.

I could barely see.  There was another car, I think, besides the pick-up truck.  Other people were walking around who had seen the crash, and in piecing together their stories, there was obviously one car not accounted for.  Gary asked where the other car was, but no one seemed to know.

It was dark, confusing, chaotic.  A man said, "I think there is a car down there."  Gary ran where he pointed, and I could barely see what he was after until headlights from a passing car picked up gray smoke from a dark-colored car tucked tightly into the dip of the median further up the road from us.

I heard Gary shouting for a flashlight, and I turned to run back to the car for ours when I saw a few people heading his way with lit flashlights.  I have a first aid kit with gloves, a flashlight, and a blanket in the trunk of the car, but there I was, running through the mud in the median without any of them, feeling next to worthless with the mess around me. 

When I got to the dark car, I couldn't even tell at first if the woman was in the front seat or the back seat.  The side of the car had been sheared off and was crumpled against the guardrail on the other side of the highway.  What remained of her car was unrecognizable as any kind of vehicle.  The woman was twisted in her seat with her back to the opening, one arm jutting above her head. 

The dumbest things went through my mind.  Maybe I was panicking.  Maybe I was just being human. But in the violent twisting and turning of the wreck, the woman's shirt had pulled up, and her back was exposed.  I impulsively wanted to go to her pull it back down for her. 

Headlights glanced dimly over her with every passing car.  A group of 3 or 4 people stood near her, not assisting or calling for help, just looking at her like she was a sideshow, a display for their amusement.  I could hear Gary on the phone reporting this last car so the ambulance could find her.  He had walked around the car with the flashlight, looking for anyone else in the car, but she was alone. 

A woman wearing a white shirt pressed her fingers against the wrist of the woman's arm sticking up above her head.  She said the woman had a faint pulse.

I looked around and felt my heart drop when I didn't see any police lights or ambulance lights.  I found out later that even though several cars had already stopped and people were milling about before Gary and I got there, Gary was the first one to call 911.  No one else had bothered.

She had dark brown, somewhat curly hair just past her shoulders.  I couldn't see her face.  Gary and the woman in a white shirt and another man holding a flashlight had already checked on her, so I didn't see a point to invading her last moments by strolling around the wreckage that used to be her car.  I stood further away, far enough I couldn't hear the chatter of the small group watching her from the sidelines. 

Gary called for a sheet or a blanket.  Someone brought him a sheet, and he spread it over the opening of the woman's car, covering her from gawking passersby and the stares of the group waiting beside her car.

A man near me in the darkness of the median saw the sheet spread over the car and said, "Oh, man" and looked ready to cry. 

When the ambulance arrived, Gary ran to meet them and direct them to the woman in the car.  But another man on the scene who self-appointed himself as God told the paramedics, "She's dead already," and instructed them not to bother.  So they didn't.

But someone had already said she had a pulse. 

The paramedics tended to the drivers and passengers who were up, walking around, talking, no obvious life-threatening injury, while the woman in the car waited.  Gary walked up to me and told me the paramedics were assuming she was dead without even so much as flashing a light in her direction.

I watched the paramedics across the median, talking with the driver Gary had helped to sit down on the guard rail.  I turned and saw the dark brown hair of the woman twisted sideways in her car, and for the first time I felt like crying.  I had hoped, until then, that she could live. 

When police cars finally pulled up, Gary flagged an officer down and managed to convince one to finally come over to the woman in the car.  As the police officer pulled the sheet back and asked for light, a man nearby held up his cell phone to offer the light from the phone until flashlights were brought over.  Thinking he was taping or taking pictures, the police officer shouted at him to put the phone away.

The police officers asked everyone to leave who hadn't been involved in or wasn't a witness to the accident.  Since Gary and I came onto it just after it had happened, we turned to walk back to our car.  I didn't look again at the woman in her car.  I reached out for Gary's hand, and we crossed the highway together.

I read this morning that she died.  I wasn't surprised, yet I still cried.  I wanted her to be that miracle story of someone who walks away from a death-defying wreck and smiles on the front page of the newspaper the next day.  I wanted her to not die that way.  I wanted for someone to not get that phone call last night that their mother, sister, or daughter was gone. 

I can't explain the way I feel about it.  It wasn't the shock of the mangled cars or even fear from watching her die, if she wasn't dead already when we found her.  It wasn't an inability to stare tragedy in the face, though I won't even pretend that last night's images did not disturb me.  It was wanting to bring some comfort to someone and not being able to do it.  It was wanting with all my heart for someone to make it through something she couldn't.  It was sadness at a human being treated like a freak show and a worthless, hopeless cause without so much as looking at her.

The worst part of last night was not fear, or shock, or panic.  The worst part was the people who were still alive and acting like she didn't matter.  The worst part was the cars speeding by like the wreck was an irritant to their day.  The worst part was the casual dismissal of her life.  The worst part was feeling like there were less of us who cared than those who didn't.

That is what I can't get out of my head today.

Not Last...Yet

After losing seven games in a row, the Tampa Bay Lightning managed to finally yank out a victory Tuesday night against Boston (I imagine the Bruins really felt like crap after losing that one).  It's hard to celebrate much, though, after being disappointed again...and again...and again.

I couldn't say it better than Jeff Briscoe on Yahoo! Sports:  "So many factors are misfiring for the Lightning, it is impossible to pin these multiple losses on any one failure. Injuries, sub-par goal-tending, age at the blue line, lack of physicality, and weakness on lower offensive lines have all contributed to the disappointing 2011-12 season."

Tampa now sits at #26 in the league, with only four unfortunate, miserable teams ranked beneath them in the entire NHL.  All I can say is, I'm glad I haven't actually paid to watch any of these jokers play this season. 

Compared to You...

While my stalker was deep-throating my blog over the weekend, frantically salivating through the archives of my blog, digging desperately through posts from last year, and bingeing on old comments she has read over and over...

...I was out of town, enjoying a relaxing and fun weekend with Gary, not thinking about my blog, my stalker, or anything else but the great time that Gary and I were having together.

Hmmm.  I believe that comparison speaks clearly and completely for itself, eh?