The Dangers of Losing Weight, or, How I Lost My Wedding Ring

/ Shane / 8 Comments

So, as you are probably already aware if you had any contact with me in the past week (virtual or otherwise) that I lost my wedding ring.

The funny thing about your wedding ring, is that you never really notice it. And yet, you always *constantly* notice it. I wasn’t really aware of this until I lost my ring, but I unconsciously touch it or rub it a million times a day, like a touch-stone. Now that it’s gone, when I unconsciously touch my finger I have a millisecond of panic, where my mind just registers, “Something is wrong!” before I have time to think, “Oh yeah, my ring is gone.”

So it is hard to say where exactly I lost my ring. I know for sure that I had it the night before. Normally I probably wouldn’t have known that, but I was working in the garden pulling out tomato plants, and my ring flew off. I noticed right away, and I picked it up and thought, “Huh, that’s weird.” The next time I noticed my ring (or should I said didn’t notice my ring) was at work the next day.

Of course, since the last time I had it, I was in the garden, at home, at daycare, at school, and at work (and of course I’ve checked all of those places as thoroughly as I possibly can). It seems to me that it was most likely lost at work, since that is where I noticed I was missing it. Even though I don’t generally notice my ring, I have a feeling that I would have noticed it pretty quickly after I lost it. However, I wanted no stone left unturned, up to and including jumping in the dumpster at home and re-opening a poopy diaper I had changed. Those would have been totally worth it if I had found the ring, but I didn’t, so they really sucked.

As for how I lost it, I’m not really sure. You take your ring off for one second, and some hobbit is trying to throw it into Mount Doom. Just kidding, I never, ever take my ring off. (But I still don’t trust hobbits. Tricksy they are, tricksy.) It has always been a tiny bit on the big side, but if it has ever fallen off before, I noticed it immediately. I have been losing some weight for a while now, so maybe that’s why it slipped off, or maybe it was that in conjunction with the colder weather. As my co-worker pointed out: “You’re supposed to get fatter the longer you’re married. Your wife shouldn’t be feeding you healthy food.” In other words, this is all. Sara’s. Fault.

I’ve been pretty bummed about the whole thing. First off, taking the sentimentality out of it, it’s definitely the most expensive thing I’ve ever misplaced. Second off, I really hate losing anything. It just drives me crazy until I find it. I’ve been walking around staring at the ground everywhere I go, even if the ring couldn’t possibly be there (like if I go somewhere I didn’t go that day). I just can’t stop thinking about it, and thinking of more places to check, even if the places get more and more absurd.

But finally, you can’t take the sentimentality out of it. That’s my wedding ring! That’s the symbol of my marriage. I could get another ring, but it will never be THE ring. It’s not just any old ring. This has come up before, in the discussion of “upgrading” your ring. Some people get a new, better ring on some particular anniversary, such as adding diamonds, etc. The theory, I guess, is that you’re older and you have more money, so you can get a better ring now that you could have back when you got engaged. (Either that, or maybe it’s like, “Well, I guess it’s going to last after all, so I guess you ARE worth spending money on. Either way.) I have always adamantly been against this. I don’t care what kind of ring I would have bought now…it’s the one that I did buy that’s special. That’s the one that reminds me of where we were at at that point in our lives, even if we were young (perhaps BECAUSE we were young).

I don’t know, I’m just depressed about losing it. Now that it has been a week, I’m not holding out much hope of finding it.

My precioussssssss.

We’re off to see the turkey

/ Shane / Leave a comment

This year for Halloween, the entire family went as Wizard of Oz characters (making good use of that birthday present). Evie and Oliver were Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion, respectively:

Sara was the Scarecrow:

And I was the Tin Woodsman (by process of elimination):

Okay, so my costume was a little uninspired.

Oliver was as excited as we’ve ever seen him, running around the house like a crazy man. But I’m not sure why, since he had no idea what Halloween or Trick or Treating was. We had practiced a little bit with him, but he only really liked the part where he said, “Knock knock!”. I guess maybe he just caught the mood from his big sister.

Oliver caught on pretty quickly, wandering from house to house and yelling, “More candy! More candy!” But then again, he didn’t actually *eat* any candy; he preferred to sit in the stroller and eat cheese and apples. We tried to skip some of the houses with him, but he was not having it. If Evie went to a house, he had to go to the house too.

Unlike Evie when she was little, Oliver was not afraid of anything. People in scary costumes, skeletons hanging from trees, moving blow-up cats, spiders dropping on people, nothing. He wasn’t even afraid of the giant turkey.

Yes, I said giant turkey.

You see, the street we go to for trick-or-treating is a little crazy around Halloween time. They usually have some sort of giant, scary structure in the middle of the road, and this year happened to be a giant turkey. This thing flaps it’s wings, moves its feet and mouth, and has some sort of speaker system that plays music and occasionally squawks. When I say giant, I mean giant: there is maybe a haunted house inside or something? We’re talking like 20 feet tall. Oliver thought it was fascinating.

There was one incident that I really regretted. There was a person kneeling by the sidewalk, unmoving, acting like a decoration and waiting to jump out and scare someone. I wasn’t 100% sure it was really a person, but I suspected, so I told Evie to go over and look under the hood. Well, Evie did NOT suspect it was a real person, and it didn’t occur to me to tell her, so you can imagine her surprise. Luckily they knew better than to really jump at her, but all they did was move their hand when Evie got close, and Evie lost her mind. She was so terrified that she couldn’t even run or scream, just sort of convulse in place like she had twenty thousand volts running through her. I grabbed her up immediately, but the damage had been done. She was absolutely terrified, and it took awhile for her to calm down. Why did I ask her to look under the hood? How could I not have foreseen that outcome?? Poor girl. The incident was quickly forgotten in all the excitement and didn’t ruin the night, but I felt pretty bad.

Everyone loved us being dressed up as a set. As we were walking around, so many people would say, “Oh look, there’d Dorothy. Oh, and the Lion. Oh, and here’s the Scarecrow! And the Tin Woodsman!” And yet, a surprising number of people got it wrong (“Is she the little girl from Little House on the Prairie?”). I kind of liked having a family theme though, so maybe we’ll have to remember that for future years.

Evie did not wear her Dorothy outfit to school. She went as a doctor: not a surgeon, but a “a doctor in the emergency room”. We were told that “characters” were not allowed at school, so we decided to play it safe and keep Dorothy out of it. But then, of course, there were two other Dorothy’s at school!

Evie: “I thought you couldn’t be a character?”
Teacher: “Well…we don’t want characters from t.v., but there’s a book for the Wizard of Oz, so that’s okay.”

Thanks a lot, mommy and daddy.

As we walked through our neighborhood on the way home, there were a few houses with their porch lights on. This is very unusual for our neighborhood. We have never seen anybody trick-or-treat (ever!) around there. So we decided to hit up those houses on the way home, to encourage the trend to continue.

At the first house, the porch light was on, but nobody was home. At the second house, someone came to the door, but it was clear that they didn’t expect anybody, and just happened to have some suckers since they had a little kid. The third house was for sale, but they had their porch light on and the gate was open, so it looked pretty inviting. Well, the only person that was there was someone working on the house, so he came to the door in his grubby clothes covered in paint and drywall dust. He insisted on busting out his wallet and giving a dollar to each of the kids, despite our objections.

Evie: “Why did that man give us a dollar, even though you both were saying, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no”?”

After that, we decided not to bother with any more houses on the street. But it wasn’t a total waste, since Evie later said that her favorite part of the evening was, “when I got the dollar.”

Quote Monday has a secret

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Overheard in a restaurant: “Well, what kind of shredded beef is it? Is it beef, or is it pork?”

Evie: “I said royal milk please, servants!”

Ask Oliver to tell you a secret. He’ll have you lean in close so he can whisper, “secret” in your ear.

::Evie, doing an “I’ve got a secret” dance::
Evie: “I have a secret, doo doo doo!”
Me: “What is it?”
Evie: “I’m not going to tell you. I’m going to show you!”
::Evie jumps around, pulls up her dress and moons me::

What you should have said

/ Shane / Leave a comment

One of easy mistakes people make when they’re first starting off writing, is to try to replace the word “said” with something more colorful. This is a mistake. In fact, it’s such an obvious mistake that I don’t know how anybody could ever do it. But a quick google search returns hundreds of pages telling you to substitute other dialog tags, and usually include a list of synonyms you could use. The fact is, the word “said” just disappears into the page, and you don’t notice it. Synonyms stand out, which is exactly why they should be used sparingly.

Pull any book off your book shelf and take a look at what tags they use in the dialog. For the most part, you’re going to see a lot of “said”s on the page. So why do people try to eliminate said? I’m guessing it comes from over-thinking things; after you’ve read your manuscript for the thousandth time and it’s still not selling, you just have to find the *one*magical*thing* that will fix it and make it publishable. You’re just in your head too much at that point (and an unpublishable story probably can’t be fixed up anyway, without starting over).

Anyway, the reason I’m thinking about this is because I started reading Pollyanna with Evie the other day. If there was ever a better example of the “you should have used ‘said'” principal, I don’t know it. Holy cow. Every sentence ends with a synonym for said, and it is so awful I can hardly read it. Absolutely painful.

You know things are getting bad, when someone “ejaculates” every other page or so. “You are the most extraordinary girl!” ejaculated Aunt Polly. Come on, ejaculated?? Do you know how hard it is to read that with a straight face? ::shudder:: No, some words should not be used in children’s literature.

So if you feel the need to substitute for the word said, just read a couple of pages of Pollyanna. If that doesn’t snap you out of it, nothing will!

New contestant on Dancing with the Stars?

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Times are tough for everyone, even superheros. Apparently, even superheros are looking to pick up a little extra cash whenever they can. Is this a top-secret, leaked audition tape?

You would expect a man with super-reflexes to be a pretty good dancer. And, as a side note, who doesn’t love the jazzed up Spiderman theme?

Link via Sylvain.