Beware of Schwees Bearing Gifts

When you have a Schwee, things are never boring. You have to get accustomed to walking around at DEFCON 3, ready to run, laugh, or apologize at any moment. Schwees are not easy to be with, but they make the world a better place.

Most of the time, people just don’t get Boyfriend Extraordinaire. They hear his comments and questions without realizing he’s making fun of someone or something, and they just continue talking to him. Meanwhile, I am usually on the other side of the room laughing, because only I seem to understand his humor.

Also, you cannot get a straight answer out of him to save your life. This used to bother me and I would almost lose my mind trying to get him to be logical and stop joking around. We once had a half-hour battle (totally my fault because I let it continue) over the concept of whether his eyes were a part of his head, or if they were independent of it. He’s actually rubbed off on me and now I cannot answer his questions without turning it into a joke.

On the way up to Michigan, he offered me one of his curly fries from Hardee’s as we sat at a picnic table and dined on lunch, which we were sharing with the seagulls. I refused the curly fry and we had the following ridiculous conversation.

Me: No! I don’t eat curly fries. It’s totally inhumane what they do to potatoes to get curly fries.

B.E.: What are you talking about?

Me: Well, they force it to grow around a steel pole in the ground. It’s unnatural!

B.E.: No they don’t! They have these things that cut the potato in the curled shapes.

Me: No, that’s what they WANT you to think. They torture the potato, pushing it and twisting it around this pole all its life!

B.E.: Okay, fine, but they don’t hurt the potato. It’s an HONOR to be a curly fry. Only special potatoes are chosen to grow up this way and have the distinction of being curly.

Me: No way being contorted like that isn’t agony! Michael Moore did a documentary on it. I know what really goes on with making curly fries! I will not eat them.

So, we torment each other with our crazy conversations.

On the way home from the trip, we passed Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and given that B.E. had taken years of French in school and has frequently translated for me in the past, I asked him what it meant.

B.E.: Well, Lac means lake. And obviously Fond du means fondue. So, it’s a big, fondue lake over there.

Me: We ARE in Wisconsin. It’s probably a big, melted cheese lake then.

B.E.: That’s right. In Wisconsin, of course they have a town named after a big, melted cheese lake. Fond du Lac. Fondue Lake. You gotta love Wisconsin.

If for one second I believed anything he said, imagine how stupid I’d look to others if I tried to repeat any of what he tells me.

Perhaps the one area of our relationship that causes me the most unease is that moment when he says he has a present for me. I fear his gifts, not because they’re dangerous, but because I just have no idea how to react to them. Let me show you.

B.E.: I got you a present!

Me: Oh no. You didn’t. Schwee, you don’t have to bring me presents. I keep telling you.

B.E.: I know, but I like to give you things. And this is going to be perfect.

Me: But Schwee! Oh god, this scares the shit out of me.

B.E. (laughing): NO, you’re going to like this one! It’s perfect for you!

Me: Like the Pooh overalls? Both pairs? Or the salt and pepper shakers you gave my mom? Oh man, Schwee, you REALLY don’t have to give me presents!

B.E.: Shush! Close your eyes and hold out your hand.

I felt him fastening something enormous and heavy on my wrist. My stomach dropped.

Dammit, it’s some kind of jewelry. How the heck am I going to pretend to be flattered and grateful when it weighs this much?

I opened my eyes and found this fastened to my wrist.



He calls it a bling watch. He says that the girl who orders street lit for the library should have a bling watch. It has a spinner hubcap on it, with fake jewels.


And it actually spins.


You can open up the wheel cover to see the time beneath. It isn’t just for looks. This piece of crap actually keeps time.


What the hell do you say to this? I mean, I’m not sure if he got this for me at the flea market as a gag gift or as a serious gift. He never laughed when I was gawking at the watch, unable to bend my hand because of how huge the watch is, and unable to lift my arm because of the weight of it. He was so proud of this gift, and I seriously don’t know if he was proud of coming up with such a hilarious gift, or if he truly thought it was the best gift ever. I’m leaning toward the hilariousness of it, but I can’t be sure.

I don’t know if you have a Schwee in your life, but if you do, consider yourself pretty damn lucky.

Also, if you do, let’s get together and sell some of our insane gifts.

I Did It!

Finally! I've been working all weekend on this and it's finally done!

If you're interested in reading about our adventures on the trip, you can click the picture below to read my travel blog.



Or, if you're not really into reading all the silly stories about our goofy antics, feel free to visit the following Tabblo pages of just photos.

And, now I can finally get a good night of sleep again. Whew!

Vacation Blues

It's 11 am and I'm on vacation, sitting in my motel room and eating my English muffin, waiting for Boyfriend Extraordinaire to wake up and the rain to stop. Despite the fact that the sky is gray for as far as the eye can see, I'm guessing the rain will stop sooner than my Schwee will wake. To give him some credit, he hasn't slept well. I was smart enough to pop in some ear plugs when I went to sleep, but they worked so well, I didn't hear the alarm go off for a full half-hour. He tried to ignore the blaring alarm, but I'm sure he didn't sleep a wink. Why he didn't wake me up to tell me to shut it off or shut it off himself, I'm not sure. I suppose he deserves that sleep deprivation. However, he did not deserve the early risers in the rooms next to us and below us, who all seemed to congregate in front of our room to laugh, chat and plan their day, loudly, at 7 am. Who the hell gets up and is out the door by 7 am when they're on vacation? Maniacs. I'm sharing the Upper Peninsula with maniacs this weekend.

My other conundrum is that my hair is blue and it's raining out. My last vacation led me to lose my favorite raincoat and I never replaced it, so unless I want blue streaks dripping down my neck and back, staining my clothes and skin, I cannot go out and play until the rain stops. (All that prepping and I didn't bring anything hooded, either.) I have consulted weather.com and noaa.gov, and they both are in agreement that there is no rain here and it should be sunny and 50 degrees outside. Clearly they are smoking crack. Big, boulders of cracky crack. And yet, I'm no less stuck in my motel room. Maybe the local Dollar Store has one of those garbage-bag parkas I could buy for, well, a dollar. Marina suggested a plastic bag, and I'm not sure if I should be offended that my friend suggested I put a plastic bag over my head. Probably. But I am considering it, still. The drawback is that other tourists (including B.E.) would likely be shooting pics of the garbage bag lady at various locations. "Here's the garbage bag lady at Miners Castle, and here's garbage bag lady at the city dock." Do I want to be Garbage Bag Lady? Not really.



The colors here are fantabulous! I could not have timed this trip better, but that was all luck on my part. Now if only the sun would come out, my luck would be complete.

Oh, and if Boyfriend Extraordinaire would wake up. Maybe it's time to check for a pulse.

Cymbalic

What would you do if you had flippers coming out the front of your chest, about the size and shape of the head of a tennis racquet? How might you use these flippers if you could?

These are some of the thoughts I had as my boobs were squished beneath a piece of plexiglass, flattened and stretched beyond recognition, making them appear alien and surreal. Unfortunately, they haven’t any muscles or bones with which to move them around, otherwise, I might have had two interesting rudders coming out of my chest.

Boobs kind of feel like water balloons to me, and water balloons are a bit fragile, so for the last two weeks I’ve been having nightmares that the mammogram would rupture my girlies. I envisioned my nipple and areola ripping off and shooting across the room, essentially springing a leak, and booby water pouring out until it was completely drained and flaccid. It’s rather weird that somewhat the opposite happened. Instead, they seemed to inflate. I had no idea that when you press them that thin, they’d keep expanding like dough and turn into something from a sci-fi movie.

I asked Boyfriend Extraordinaire which direction he would prefer my squished boobs to be: horizontal or vertical. He voted for vertical. I thought that was interesting, but then I realized it was more practical. With two fleshy cymbals coming out of my chest, I could clap or press them together. If they were horizontal, they’d just flap up and down independently. From a man’s perspective, I can see his point.





(Boyfriend Extraordinaire suggests that these doodles should be submitted to Boob Overload, which was a joke and a parody of Cute Overload so I didn't think it existed, but evidently it does.)

The good news is that the mammogram revealed that the nodule had nothing concerning in it, so they did an ultrasound, which revealed that the nodule had some kind of membrane, but was composed of the same tissue that the rest of the area is made from. What does this mean? Well, after an hour of people squeezing, stretching, flopping, and rubbing lubricant on my boob and armpit, they decided that whatever it is, it’s not a tumor and I should go home and be grateful. Given the amount of pain that this little nodule causes, I was not pleased with this outcome. Pain is an indicator of something being wrong. Now I have to figure out where to go with this lack of information.

I’m wondering something, too. Why is it when something goes wrong with our health, the tests and treatments are always painful and humiliating? Why is it no one gets sick and the cure is to eat lots of dessert while getting a foot massage, your hair washed, and your ears Q-tipped? No, that’s never going to cure anything. You’re going to have to strip naked and wear a wrap dress made of cheap napkins. Then you have to flash private parts at people who will treat your exposed areas as if they are some kind of scientific experiment. (Why can’t someone just say, “Hey, nice rack!” and make me feel a little better?) Then you have to take medications that will give you symptoms of other problems. All the while it will cost you a fortune in medical bills for office visits, tests and medications. You don’t want me to remind you of all that I had to go through with my hemorrhagic periods, poly-cystic ovaries, and the ovarian tumor, because that set of humiliations was simply horrific. Nothing involving illness ever ends up making you feel good about yourself or your situation. Medicine sucks.

Speaking of which, my wonderful, brilliant rheumatologist wants to do what the very bad rheumatologist I used to have wanted to do, which is start me on a chemotherapy medication to shut off my immune system. Long-term use of this medication can actually cause cancer, specifically lymphomas, in addition to making the user dangerously susceptible to all infections around due to the lack of immune defense. I have the prescription in my purse, but I can’t bring myself to fill it. Tomorrow I’ll give her a call and see if she will change my therapy. I just can’t do this to myself, particularly with some kind of growth in my breast that no one can identify. Cells mutate, fact of life, I know. I don’t want to be the perfect environment for them to grow into big, healthy tumors, like some kind of human Petri dish to incubate monsters. Why I feel guilty about this, I don’t know. It’s as if I feel compelled to obey my doctor, to be a compliant patient who does what she’s told and doesn’t question those who are more knowledgeable. But I’m not going to take that medication, and I don’t care if that makes me a bad patient.

Particularly because I have something in my booby! When you have something in your booby, it changes things.

Maybe it’s a creature.

Maybe it’s some kind of alien tracking device.

Maybe I’m growing a third boob. Maybe I’ll grow boobs all around my ribcage! I’ll have a veritable hoop of boobage going all the way around me! Excellent! Then I can get mammograms on all of them so that they get squeezed into vertical cymbals and I’ll clap them all together and sound like an applauding audience all by myself.

DUDE! Imagine the possibilities if I did porn! I could make a bloody fortune! With six or eight boobs, I’d be like the female version of Ron Jeremy.

Someone get me an agent! Someone get me a manager!

Someone get me a seamstress.

Opportune Opposum

I just had to share this story because, to me, it’s heartwarming. To you, probably not so much.

You may recall the story of Boyfriend Extraordinaire’s patio-dwelling pets, Possum Schwee, and Baby Possum Schwee. It proved to be a bit of a controversial post, but frankly, I don’t give a shit what people think about the possum situation, and look forward to daily possum updates.

Not all that long ago, Possum Schwee started spending more time away from the patio, and lately hasn’t been seen around. (The photos below were taken by Boyfriend Extraordinaire, while Possum Schwee was still living on the patio with Baby Possum Schwee.) We assumed s/he moved on to a new home, while Baby Possum Schwee continued living on B.E.’s patio, sharing the space with Kitty Schwee. Apparently, cats and possums get along in the wild, so those of you who were concerned about the possum hurting the cat, rest assured that they are both happy hanging out together.

About a month ago, Kitty Schwee’s owner, the man next door to B.E., reported one of the funniest updates so far about the Possum & Kitty Schwee adventures. Evidently this foolish man not only lets his housecat out all day long, where Kitty Schwee becomes so flea-bitten that he gets sick and sometimes has to be hospitalized for his anemic condition, but this man still leaves his back door open (not unlocked, but open) so that Kitty Schwee can come and go as he pleases. He’s a real winner.

Leaving the back door open hadn’t posed a problem before, but one night the man heard noises in his kitchen, and thinking it was Kitty Schwee, wandered in to see what his cat was up to. What he found instead was a disaster. The big bag of dry cat food was broken into, leaving cat food all over the kitchen counter, floor, etc. On top of the microwave sat Baby Possum Schwee, munching away on the mess of cat food he’d spread about the room.

What a dream come true for little Baby Possum Schwee, right? I mean, the house probably smelled like his buddy, Kitty Schwee, and maybe Kitty Schwee even led him into the treasure trove of free food. Who knows? But what a huge jackpot for a little, hungry possum! Yummy food, more than he could eat by himself, free for the taking!



The man totally wigged out. He didn’t want to hurt the possum, but he was terrified of this toothy rodent being in his house, so he did one of the few smart things I’ve ever heard of him doing, and he trapped Baby Possum Schwee by putting an empty garbage can on top of him, securing the little guy on top of the microwave. It was late that night and the man decided to go to sleep and figure out what to do with the possum in the morning.

The next day, the man slid a plate under the garbage can, as he scooted it off the top of the microwave, and Baby Possum Schwee just kind of went along with the weird adventure. Somehow he flipped the garbage can over and secured a lid over top, then drove Baby Possum Schwee a few miles away to a field, where he hoped Baby Possum Schwee would live a long and happy life, away from all the free food he kept unsecured in his open kitchen.

It was a bittersweet story to us because while I would miss Baby Possum Schwee tremendously, Boyfriend Extraordinaire was a bit relieved not to have to worry about neighbors complaining to his landlord about the possum living on his patio. And, Baby Possum Schwee would likely be living in an environment more suited to a possum.

So, the man actually did a good thing, much as I hate to admit it.



Then, last night Boyfriend Extraordinaire discovered something surprising: Baby Possum Schwee is back living on his patio again!

I cannot deny that I’m a bit ecstatic to know that he’s back. I so look forward to Baby Possum Schwee stories, and I think Boyfriend Extraordinaire realizes that this possum is not a threat in any way. They are not aggressive animals, despite their show of fangs.



That's a yawn.

I just cannot get enough of how cool their little hands are. They have opposable thumbs and their fingers/toes are all spread out, like a human hand. How cute is that?! They also have these wild whiskers that stick out of their face all over the place. It’s fabulous! And add to that the fact that Baby Possum Schwee is a marsupial – just knowing he’s got a little pocket on his belly tickles me.

I want a baby possum!

I <3 Baby Possum Schwee!

What's Your Theme?

Not all that long ago, a portion of the Kool Kids were out, enjoying one another’s company and dining on restaurant food, which is quite a common scene for us.

At some point, a truly terrible song from the 80s started blaring from the bar area, and Ann began swaying and singing along. I shook my head in mock disbelief, as if horrified by her taste in music, and then she asked if any of us had a theme song.

Nope. None of us did. Long ago I did, but nothing in recent years.

This was when she gave us an assignment to find our personal theme song.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I’ve completely moved on from my old theme song, which was “Better Man” by Pearl Jam. I had identified so strongly with that song long ago, not with that abusive undertone of the subject, but just because I so often found myself in relationships that were not right, trying to convince myself it was love because I was more afraid to be alone than with the wrong guy. It was a dark period and I had to bottom out without an ounce of self-esteem left before I would move on and find that loneliness was often more devastating when you’re with someone you don’t love than when you’re actually alone. The song hit home, and even after I found my Schwee, it was still a reminder of who I once was, and made me appreciate him all the more. Before “Better Man” there was “Rescue Me” by Y&T, but those were my weird, teen years. But I still love Dave Meniketti!

However, that was a lifetime ago. And I needed a new theme song.

It could be fairly obvious that my favorite band is Shinedown and my favorite album of all time is Operation: Mindcrime, by Queensryche, but none of their songs have spoken to me as a theme song.

As more and more stressors and tragedies seem to be heaped upon me, with chronic suffering, death, dying and suicide being things constantly on my mind, I did discover not too long ago that one of my favorite songs was written for a brother who killed himself. Though it’s steeped in darkness, there is such hope to the song that I feel empowered by it. Thus, I have decided that the current theme song of my life is “Rise Above This” by Seether.

Does anyone else have a theme song? It doesn’t matter how corny, how depressing, how popular, how obscure or how unlikely it might seem if it speaks your thoughts and emotions. If you have a theme song, or if you think about it and decide to declare one for yourself, please share it in the comments. I’d love to know.

A Learning Vacation

I learned some things while on vacation. Things I never would’ve guessed my vacation would reveal.

First of all, my name is Nikki and I am a restaurant addict. Even if I’m not hungry, I want to go to restaurants. I’m happy taking home so many doggie bags from the food I couldn’t eat at all the restaurants I insisted we go to, that our Styrofoam containers completely filled my fridge by the end of the week. I don’t WANT to go to restaurants. I NEED to go to restaurants. Boyfriend Extraordinaire is trying to get to the bottom of my love of restaurants, but we can’t get past my inability to stop grinning from ear to ear while sitting in a booth and having bottomless drinks brought to us. C’mon! What’s NOT to love about restaurants? Well, yeah, aside from the price.

Boyfriend Extraordinaire is worthy of his name. Let me count the ways. He fixed my hubcaps, which wouldn’t stay on my car and the dealership had no idea what to tell me. He fixed my garage door lock so that my home isn’t completely vulnerable with an unlockable garage door. He also fixed the lightswitch in my garage so that I don’t have to feel around in the pitch-black darkness for the floodlight that plugs in, because my flashlight broke. He bought me a new flashlight. The remote control that my dog ate had a missing chunk out of the circuit board, and B.E. not only found a soldering iron and solder in my myriad of a garage, but he soldered two wires to the circuit board and now my remote control works for the first time in three years. He bought me a treadmill. He bought me a wireless weather station so that I don’t have to spend the first moments after I wake up checking the Weather Channel and NOAA.gov for weather conditions, which I’m a tiny bit obsessed with. He made fun of me and told countless strangers in a loud, announcing fashion that I peed my pants (well, no, just my underwear, because when I finally got to the toilet, I got my shorts off at the last second but ended up sacrificing the undies) when we were out last week, after I drank four glasses of beverage and found myself in a public setting with no washrooms anywhere nearby. Hey, wait, that’s not nice! Scratch that! Okay, so he laughs at all my stupid jokes, like when I farted in bed and told him I was giving him butt-to-butt resuscitation. He cracks me up, too, in the embarrassing, uncontrollable way that makes me snort and choke and I have to beg for mercy. And above all else, he still yells out “Woo, woo!” when I change clothes in front of him. Truly, he’s extraordinary.

We watched television. We watched shows I didn’t know existed. I found a show called “Burn Notice” and I have one thing to ask. HOW the HELL did Bruce Campbell get to be so old?! OH! MY! FSM! He doesn’t look bad, but WHAT the FUCK? Is this some scary/funny trick by Sam Raimi? And why the hell did Jim Carrey become famous doing a bad impersonation of Bruce all these years, too? How did Bruce drop off my radar for so long that he looks like he could be his own dad? My head hurts.

Earplugs work well against noise like someone snoring a foot away, and an aggressive dog who barks at the garbage men, the lawn care guys, and any noise or movement that occurs in the house. Earplugs are great. But they can also guard your sensitive ears against the necessary blaring of your alarm clock, so be wary.

Planes make Schwee sick. Every time. Every flight. Cesspools!

My sunglasses broke – my favorite sunglasses – and shopping for sunglasses revealed something very bizarre about our society. We want the tiniest lenses for our eyeglasses so as not to be able to see clearly except for a pinprick straight ahead of us, without any peripheral vision or up and down. We seem to want to fall down stairs and hit our head on things. Fashion is stupid. YET! Yet, the trendy sunglasses look like Charles Nelson Reilly glasses. Last year it was Elton John, but it’s progressed to these unbelievable Harry Carry frames that need only some feathered hair, a tacky fur coat and Charlie perfume to make the ensemble complete. Why? Just why?

Work email should never ever be checked from home when you’re on vacation. I’ve said it before but I never take my own advice. I will in the future.

Now I’m back in my usual schedule and trying desperately to adjust back to ordinary life. It sucks. I want to hang with my Schwee, visit animals, walk through the woods, take pictures, and eat at restaurants everyday. Dammit, why isn’t this possible?!

Pass the Pizza, Please

Lately, I’ve been trying to eat healthy and live a better life.

I’m very good about vegetables and fruit. They are a part of every meal and if I go without, I start craving things so intensely I’ve been known to run to Wendy’s in the middle of the night to get a salad and baked potato. But some of my other choices are not so good, and with summer here, I’m grilling burgers and hot dogs more often than I should. So, I’ve been making some changes.

First I started trying to eat fish, despite my fears of mercury and pollutants, and what I’m finding is that I just cannot consume food that smells like a yeast infection. Call me crazy. Every time hold my nose and scoop a bit of something fishy into my mouth, my gag reflex kicks in and I feel the need to wash my mouth out with Monistat. I think I’m done with fish.

Then I committed myself to whole grains, incorporating delectable grass seeds into usually bland and unfulfilling foods like spaghetti and meatballs and banana bread. Who knew all this time that couscous was the tasty flavor of mud that’s long been missing from my meatloaf recipe? Have you ever had quinoa? If you haven’t, you really should. It’s somewhere between hay and unsweetened, dry cereal, which is exactly what I want to replace 50% of the meat in my meatballs with. Add a little Parmesan, roll in flour, cook in a skillet and add to your spaghetti and suddenly you’ll find that one of your favorite dishes is now improved to taste like bird food. I wonder if you can grow grass in your tummy with the right conditions. Oh, and who likes sweet banana bread? That’s right: NO ONE! Put some whole grain flour in that recipe instead and you’ll find that the essence of banana added to a gritty yet moist cracker is just what you’re looking for. Trust me, whole grains are great! And if that wasn’t enough of a sermon to run out and fill your foods with barley and brown rice, consider how happy you’ll be when you have to poop 15 minutes after every meal thanks to all that fiber. Oh, your butt will thank you! Your butt will thank you to the tune of constant tenderness. You’ll love it! Trust me.

So, tomorrow is my last day of work until the 19th, and Boyfriend Extraordinaire is flying in tomorrow night so we can be on vacation together. For this week, we’re likely going to eat out most days, and I’m stepping back from grass seeds and vaginal-discharge-flavored meats. When he’s gone and I’m back at work, I’ll probably give it another try, but I get this week to eat pizza and fajitas again.

Oh, and I’ll enjoy the luxury of maybe cutting back to one bowel movement a day. And when you consider how much toilet paper and toilet flushes this will save, I think the earth will thank me.

Patio Friends for B.E.

Not too long ago, Boyfriend Extraordinaire told me a story that totally tickled me.

He keeps stuff on his patio that he either intends to sell or that he can’t bring himself to throw away; things like old computer cases that have been gutted of all working parts. With only a tarp for protection from the elements, the patio detritus is a veritable minefield of mysteries.

There is a neighborhood cat who we call Kitty Schwee.



He lives next door to Boyfriend Extraordinaire with a guy who lets him out all day long, so Kitty Schwee hangs out with my Schwee all day. For about a year, Kitty Schwee had fleas so bad that he frequently had to go to the vet for treatment, and even had to have his tail shaved. As soon as he received his treatment, things would start to improve for a few days, and then he’d be infested with fleas again. Something was re-infesting him.

Boyfriend Extraordinaire hangs out on the patio with Kitty Schwee daily, and he’s even dedicated a little area of his garden to growing plants Kitty Schwee likes to roll around in. The cat might sleep in a house next door, but this cat has chosen B.E. as his human.

On the patio, B.E. noticed that there were tons of fleas, so one day he chased off Kitty Schwee and set off a flea bomb on the patio to kill the fleas once and for all. After all the fleas had died, B.E. decided to clean the area of some of the extraneous junk, and he hauled a bunch of old computers to the dumpster behind his house. One felt a little heavy, but he didn’t think much of it.

Well, that computer wasn’t empty. It was someone’s house.

I introduce you to Possum Schwee.



Possum Schwee survived direct exposure to a flea bomb, living in a computer for who-knows-how-long, and seems to have been a good buddy of Kitty Schwee’s for quite some time. So, um, B.E. carried Possum Schwee to the dumpster inside his home, a computer, and never even knew it. On the next trip to the dumpster he saw this cute possum peeking out of the computer he’d just placed there and the reality of it hit him. I would be lying if I said it didn’t freak him out quite a bit. Possum Schwee climbed out and trotted off, accepting his eviction with dignity, newly de-flea’d and perhaps a little disoriented. B.E. fictitiously told stories of Possum Schwee living in a nearby field, but I always worried about him.



A month or so ago, B.E.’s roommate spotted a baby possum in the backyard and B.E. didn’t believe him for a few days until he saw the baby himself. I was convinced Possum Schwee was a girl and she’d had a baby, which she brought back to the patio where she’d lived with her friend Kitty Schwee.

B.E. wasn’t too keen on possums. He said they were not cute and had scary teeth, so I spent lots of time sending him pictures of cute possums. He, in turn, sent me pictures of evil possums with sharp teeth. Let’s just say it was a draw.

Today I received this collection of photos B.E. took on his patio tonight. How cute is this?!



Possum Schwee and Baby Possum Schwee!



And then there was this shot, which I think was a yawn, but it drove home how wildlife has a serious side to it that’s not all cute and fuzzy.



So, now he has a Possum Schwee Family on his patio. I hope they get along with Kitty Schwee.

What I don’t understand is that this is a man who comes all the way here to see wildlife because he doesn’t believe there is much near him, and he has a zoo on his patio.

...We'd All Have Old Bicycles

Boyfriend Extraordinaire had a bicycle that he was selling, and given that it’s a popular line of bikes and of the mountain bike genus, it’s fairly difficult to gauge how old it is. He guessed, based on wear and style, that the bike was about 4 years old. So, given what he knew and what he guessed at, he placed an ad for the bike, complete with photo and as many details as he could.

Right away, someone emailed him about the bike, only this was not an interested buyer, but a self-appointed fact-checker of the Internet. The guy, in a very hostile manner, demanded Boyfriend Extraordinaire change his ad, because this guy said he had a bike that looked identical to this one, which was at least 8 years ago, and he estimated the bike to be more like 20 years old.

At first, B.E. was a little concerned. Could it really be 20 years old? He started doing a little research about it and inconclusively decided that he wasn’t going to be able to find out the exact age of this bicycle, so he left the ad alone.

Not long after, he received another email from the hostile guy, who reiterated the age of the bike was wrong and told B.E. he had to change the ad.

By now, B.E. was getting irritated. How can anyone, who is also guessing at the age, demand that his guess is better and send such emails to a stranger? People have a lot of nerve what they ask of others in this world, under the false pretense that they are righter than anyone else. It’s another reason why Web 2.0 infuriates me so.

Don’t get me wrong. I love receiving the comments and feedback from my readers after I write a post, but have you ever read a news article online that has opened itself up to reader comments? Dear Spaghetti Monster, people are not only vicious, but they’re fucking stoopit!

There was a murder recently in my town, and it was in an area with low income renters of every possible nationality. One of the commenters said that the article needed to identify the race of the victim so that reader could know if he should care about the dead guy. This sparked a veritable war of comments where some claimed that you should be colorblind, and others insisted that race was a factor in whether or not the murder was worthy of their attention. Sadly, this was a claim made by people of multiple races. What a horrific end to this horrific story!

The same thing happens on the police blotter. If there is a police response of any kind that involves someone with a Hispanic-sounding last name, commenters go hog-wild insisting that this person be deported under the pretense than anyone with an Hispanic-sounding name is an illegal or unworthy of living in this country. Even if it was a speeding ticket listed in the blotter, people responded this way, or worse, when the Latino name was one of the victims. Absolutely no compassion.

It’s not just racism. I have seen with my own eyes that when someone posts a picture of him/herself online, it’s like half the globe thinks this is an invitation to pretend like you’ve lost 100 IQ points and are now part of some radio shock jock challenge to come up with the most creative insult. Even on seemingly peaceful photo sites, I’ve read comments by people who will rip others to shreds for posting a character picture of a homeless guy, or even a kid with crooked teeth. On YouTube, it’s as if every 12-year-old with security issues and bad spelling skilz has made it their mission to find every video uploaded and leave a shitty comment about it. I uploaded a video of some birds squawking, and I misidentified them as plovers when they were actually killdeers. JEEBUS, you’d have thought I deemed them “Yo mamma!” People left me the nastiest corrections in my comments. And one was not enough. Even when three or four people had pointed out that the bird was wrong, others would still add to it in their own shitty way. What the hell? I had to go through and delete the comments, and then more showed up! Finally, I turned off the comments altogether. The more I deal with people, the more certain I am that not only is there no god, but if I was a god, I’d be ashamed to call the human race my creation.

I am really starting to hate the Internet.

B.E. gets comments like this about ads he places all the time. Everyone feels like their opinion should count for something, but frankly, it doesn’t. He’s wise beyond his years and doesn’t respond to it unless it’s racist garbage, and then he does something else, like put up an ad that makes fun of racists. He doesn’t respond directly to people. He doesn’t email them his opinion and state it as fact. He gets it. He really gets that by and large, people suck, and sometimes you have to be above it.

This was tested when he received his third email from this jamoke, who was now so livid that the ad hadn’t changed to reflect his own guess at the age of the bike, that he was accusing B.E. of intentionally defrauding the potential buyers (and he was not a potential buyer, but a nosy ad reader). Well, B.E. could take no more. We talked about what a retard this guy was, but we also sat down and invested some real time in researching this line of bikes. Guess what. It only began 12 years ago, so there was no way the bike chould be 20 years old. Also, the design hadn’t changed one iota in those 12 years, so this bike might be as old as 12, but given the condition and lack of wear and tear, it was just as good as a bike that was 4 years old.

I asked B.E. what he was going to do. I sincerely expected him to bombard the asshat with corrected information about this particular bike, proving the guy wrong and calling him a bunch of names in between the facts. That’s what I would’ve done, which is likely why of late I've been suffering with anxiety, insomnia and high blood pressure.

B.E. is much more civilized. He said he was not going to respond directly to this guy, wasn’t going to address him in any way, but he was going to place the ad again and change the age of the bike in the ad to say that it was 400 years old. No sincere buyer would ever believe it was 400 years old, and B.E. could laugh it off and say it was a typo, which should’ve read that it was about 4 years old instead of 400.

I was still angry and I didn’t think it was enough. I thought the moron should be made to suffer the words of an eloquent and scathing response, which surely would’ve created an email war of epic proportions. At some point, I’d report the guy as spam and be done with him. This concept of trying to poke fun at the guy by making the bike so old that it was not to be believed seemed too, I don’t know, subtle, or too suave. This was not something that needed a delicate hand. This was something that needed a brutal, cerebral blow!

Once again, I was wrong.

The ad for the 400-year-old bike was a success on all fronts. Not only did B.E. swiftly sell the bike for the asking price without so much as a comment from the buyer about the typo in the ad, but the dickhead who sent him three emails demanding the age be altered actually sent him another email, and this time he said that the ad was funny and he apologized for his previous emails.

WHAT THE FUCK?

People don’t back down. People don’t apologize. People don’t realize they were shitheads. What’s this? What’s this anomaly? What is this event that has caused a black hole in my image of society and driven doubt and optimism into a chasm that was happily chock-full of pessimism and misanthropy? What the fuck?

And so, this week I’ve learned that some of the meanest, most imposing personalities can actually respond well to a slight nudge rather than being beat about the head with more insults, the likes of which probably made them into what they are. And I’d like to add that I am likely one of the mean, imposing personalities of which I speak, but I don’t step into other people’s lives to deliver my worthless opinions about whatever it is that sparks me up. Nope, I blog about it and use my words to purge myself of my fury. But that doesn’t solve problems and it just makes others defensive. Now I get it. A 400-year-old bike makes a good argument for taking a step back, coasting for a while, and not taking things too personally. No one’s perfect, not even close, and I’m doing myself more harm than good by being ready to pounce on people when they piss me off, which they do constantly. I need a 400-year-old bike. For my own well-being.

And so, that’s what I’m going to do. Coast for a little while on my ageless bike.