Men are dumb.

"Don't forget your laundry." It was piled high on a chair.

The Guy nodded, absorbed in his laptop. I climbed over him to head towards the stairs. "I'll remember my laundry," he said.

I have been married for two years now. I have been living with The Guy for five. One does not live with a man for that long without learning a few things about him. "Don't forget to put away your laundry," I said sharply.

He started to swear.

I brushed my teeth, changed my clothes, and headed to the bedroom to find the Guy already ensconced in the bed. It is a rule in our household that the last person into bed is responsible for turning off the lights. Despite the fact that this is, really, one of the most unbelievably trivial chores imaginable, the Guy will go to inordinate lengths to avoid doing it. He will spot me approaching and dive into bed with his street clothes on, then thrash about in the covers in an attempt to change without getting up. He will bring his toothbrush with him and stare up at the ceiling, triumphantly In Bed First without considering the consequences of going to bed with your mouth full of bristles and toothpaste. He will attempt to lock me out of the bedroom so he can finish his nightly rituals first and burrow under the sheets before I can get there.

He was already reading by nightlight. I climbed into the bed and glanced at the dresser, aware that something was ... off. The second drawer from the bottom was sticking out. Of course. It would've been difficult to close, piled two drawers high with folded clothes: the tower of his clean laundry, perfectly preserved. He'd put them away, all right. I hadn't told him to put them into individual drawers and close them.

"What's this?" I demanded, and pointed at the mess. "What the hell is this?"

The Guy didn't even bother looking at it. "Al fresco?"

There was a small silence.

The Guy kept reading. It was a sham. Even in profile he looked insufferably smug.

Men.

Kronos

I just found one of my old college friends. He is now in the Kronos Quartet.

http://www.kronosquartet.org/info/zeigler.html

HI, JEFF!

How awesome is that? He was fantastically talented, and there you go. He continued in music, rose in the world, and did what he trained to do! I have this urge to reach through the screen and stick a shiny gold star on his head.

Me? I've lost my cat.

Gosh.

Method acting

It seems to me that I haven't been updating as often as I ought.

Um. Sorry.

By way of apology, I will share with you another stupid waterfall death story from my sister. It seems, (says Sako) that there was a small group of drunk young men swimming in a pool at the top of a waterfall. There is no possible combination of words in this story that bodes any good: 'drunk young men,' for instance, doesn't need the 'drunk' qualifier to give you chills of foreboding; 'young men' standing by itself already has a knell of doom quality to it. Nonetheless, drunk young men, swimming in a pool at the top of a waterfall.

One of them, being very clever, decides he would like his friend to take a picture of him. "Hey," he says. (We must go by witness accounts, as -- well, it's a Sako story, so you're pretty much guaranteed something bad is going to happen to him.) At any rate. "Hey," he says, and climbs up onto the rocks at the edge of the pool. "Take a picture of me pretending to go over the edge."

And he leans back so that he'll look unbalanced.

I refer you to adjective 'drunk,' used above. It seems the young man was a method actor. He went over.

On the bright side, his buddy apparently got a great photograph.

Cannibalism

"That has to be the test for mountain climbers," the Guy said at dinner the other night. "Whether they're willing to eat another human being if they're stranded."

We have strange conversations.

"I'm a rock climber," Sako said. "I'm not a mountain climber."

The Guy plowed on, inattentive. "'Will you eat another person? No? Go climb rocks. Will you? Yes? There's Mt. Rainier. Go for it.'"

"I climb rocks."

"Someday," the Guy announced, "You might have to eat your boyfriend."

"I'd eat John." There was no hesitation. None. Sako grinned.

My family. I'm so lucky.