Semi-Precious Love

Our love is semi precious, diamonds schmimonds, those things are expensive, and hard and what's the point?
Our wedding rings cost 15 dollars each, well, the second ones did. The first ones, the really cool copper bands we bought in Arizona for the grand total of 3 dollars, and I think that was for both of them, the ones we wore even though our fingers turned green and they squished and dented because copper was soft and eventually starting breaking, the ones we wore before we were even married, ohhhhhhh, living in sin people, just had to be replaced.
When they broke, our hearts did a little too because they were our first rings but we traded up, tucking the pretty, tarnished, turning greenish bands of half broken copper away and picked out the ultra cool celtic-esque bands we wear now.
We're doubly married, not because these are our second rings but because we wear one on each hand and it looks really cool. And when we are together, which is always, and people comment on the rings and query as to their significance we smile and say it means we're doubly married and they turn pale and start thinking about polygamy. But then they get brave and ask what doubly married means and we just smile, and gesture elegantly with our hands so that the store's fluorescent lighting glints on them and we try to look mysterious, which is a little hard to do in toe shoes, and we gather our grocery bags in our hands and float out of the store like royalty.
Our wedding cost 250 dollars. And it rocked. 60 dollars for the marriage license stuff, 75 dollars for 3 seafood meals, and 100 dollars fr the dress.
I didn't need a fancy dress but my husband steered me to the poofy section of the Macy's store and I gulped and we had a fine time together as I tried on every dress they had. I am pretty sure it was the prom section. But it was our wedding, and we had fun. Most people say they remember walking down the aisle, I remember the time spent modeling dresses for my husband. He liked the strapless, sizzling black dress with sequins. I liked the penguin colored dress that I figured could double as a vampire costume in the future. I am thrifty that way.
I am pretty sure I saw at least one eyebrow raise because I chose a predominantly black wedding dress.
I am pretty sure that I saw two eyebrows raise because I wore Halloween socks with my sandals. Dirt cheap sandals I bought at a Longs Drug store the year before, big black rubber soles and velcro straps, the perfect place to tuck one teeny tiny Canadian flag pin. They showed off my Halloween socks like nobody's business.
In my wedding photos, that we took ourselves with the camera on self timer, trespassing, literally trespassing, in somebody's Orange Grove show us as a deliriously happy, and damn swanky looking couple. My husband sporting a tie that made his blue eyes pop, me in my penguin coloured ball gown-esque dress...and no body knows but me that under the layers of floor length tulle and faux satin that my feet are adorned with Halloween socks and beach sandals. Well except for the double eye brow raiser, my husband and the world because of course I was so proud of my feet that I took a photo. (Incidentally I am pretty sure I have worn crazy socks to most of the momentous occasions in my life. At least momentous as defined by laws and society, my high school graduation, INS appointments and marriage. Cool.)
We celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary not long ago. And just like when a birthday, his or mine, rolls around we haul out the calculators and do the math. Because we can not remember not being together, and assigning a number makes it seem weird. How can it only be 7 years of marriage????? ONLY 7?
And then we grin because we can remember when we hadn't even met in person yet but were engaged, though I suspect there was more eye rolling by folks unnamed back then, and the moment comes back with a harsh crystal clarity that makes my face flush because it was all such an accidental meeting online. So random, that it scares me. What if I hadn't messaged him? Right out of the blue, a complete stranger, just to chat, like the hundreds of other people I'd messaged and chatted to every day? But he laughs because he doesn't believe we couldn't have met. If it hadn't been that it would have been something else. We're like magnets, though I do not believe we are opposites, only magnetic in that if you shook us up in this giant world full of people the pull would eventually draw us together.
Snap.
We spend more time together than I suspect people married twice, or even 3 times as long as us have. We are together 24 hours a day with the incredibly rare exception when he has a business meeting and for the hell of it I hang out at a store while he business-izes.
We finally bought 2 cell phones, the cheapest ones they had because during the second last business meeting, he couldn't find me at the mall. The cell phone we had which we hadn't used in a year had apparently died and we didn't have 2 because why would we? We're always together. But he was clever and played Rockford and staked out the most likely place I'd eventually show up. The book store. He's ingenious that way, and he showed me the note he left in the Nora Robert's book inside in case I came in the store from a different side and we laughed because I had already bought the book. But not the one with the note, darn.
So we got 2 cell phones.
We celebrated our anniversary with style. One bottle of port, a loaf of crusty homemade kalamta olive sour dough bread, 7 kinds of cheese, smoked salmon and the new Jim Butcher
book. We took turns reading chapters.
We thought about going out but why would we? The best place in the world is at home.
I really do think our love is semi precious, I have always thought it weird that diamonds are associated with love. Because they're *rare*? That's sad. Made under pressure? Weird. Cold, clear and expensive? That is not my love.
Our love is colorful, plentiful and in some ways cheap. Puffed out chest with pride, cheap, because love doesn't cost anything and should be easily available to everyone.

Following thoughts to their natural conclusions......

...even if those conclusions are at the end of a twisted path of darkness strewn with piles of mental weirdness.

On the rare occasion I have to..well....do in a bug.

Now I have to insert the zillion and a half disclaimers before I can get to my point.

• 1. I don't like killing anything.
• 2. I go to great lengths, incredibly convoluted and most likely comical to watch lengths, to safely remove an uninvited guest from our home, depositing them back out into the wild aka the patio. I do the same for bugs as I do for Aunt Frieda.
• 3. We even leave spiders in the corners if they've made a web there because spiders eat little bugs and then that's just the circle of life and me not having to worry about the fate of one less bug.
• 4. We have a dedicated bug catching jar. If you've ever ran for a glass and a piece of cardboard or what ever during a visit by a bug you wish to evict you know how un-nerving it is on every one to be shrieking at ear blasting decibels as you frantically look for proper eviction materials all the while keeping one eye on the bug that is MOVING, and not staying in one damn spot and patiently waiting for it's free ride out the door. Having a dedicated bug catching jar means when we spy a bug, say a moth that is trying to drive our cats insane by having the audacity to flit about in their field of view, we can quickly launch into Plan A:BUG-BE-GONE-BYEBYE and have that moth safely out the door. Before the cats start climbing the blinds whilst yowling and desperately swiping at their desired prey...the moth. Cats, go figure. (That's how you know house cats really are domesticated. Ya don't see the National Geographic people filming a pack of wild lions swatting at butterflies for an afternoon snack now do ya?)
• 5. We have rules, a sort of truce with the spiders. Should they obey the rules of said truce, we leave em be. Stay the heck off the kitchen counters, the sofa, the bed and the cats and we will stay off of them. Now that seems pretty fair, there's been a time or two I saw a spider scuttling along Mission Impossible style in the hallway along the baseboards. I turned a blind eye.

BUT...there are times we have to do the unthinkable and resort to drastic measures. There is much mumblings of "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorrrrrrry" as the deed is done and done quickly. Yecccccck.

So I got to thinking about the taking of a life, albeit itty btty creepy crawly ones.
And I got to thinking about how people say they've seen their dead Grandmothers and Uncles and what not after those relatives have passed over. And how some people, like the Medium/Clairvoyants you see on television say that those passed over spirits are often with us.
So I wondered, are the dead bugs with us too?
And suddenly, when I had that thought I could easily envision a dark cloud of little transparent bugglies hovering about me like a grey aura as I skip through life.
And I wonder, when people say their homes are haunted, why would Great Aunt Bertha be knocking on your walls? Wouldn't the victims, the squashed ones, the dead spiders and ants and icky creepy earwigs have more of a reason to come floating about wreaking havoc than Great Aunt Bertha?
And then I started thinking about how even though I take great pains to not have to *do in* any bugs, that if you added up all the bugs I have *done in* over the years that it's one hell of a lot. And since I'm married and my husband and I share everything I have to add his buggy victims to the pile as well. And the shroud of creepy crawly ghosties expands even further in my imagination.
In fact, I wonder if the whole world, if we could see bug ghosties, would be thick with them. That there'd be not an ounce of free space left, that we're swimming through the souls of all the critters we *done in* and when I thought that I got a shiver up my spine.
It crawled like creepy fingers over my skin until my flesh had erupted into goosebumps and my eyes, which had already stopped blinking 5 minutes ago when I first started my ghoulish thoughts, were watering with the effort to prevent them from drying out. My arms itched, in fact the right one itched the most and I looked down, gasping in disgust at the ant that had mysteriously made it's way through various obstacles like the windows and doors and what have you and before I could even say poltergeist my left hand reflexively slapped down on the little bugger and.....
Poof, one more bug ghost to haunt me.
Great.
One more thought, ants are probably going to be the majority of my bug ghost populace for a very long time. But Black Widows are running a close second. I can't decide which is worse, Black Widows stringing their webs across the foot of the stairs we have to go up and down every day or Black Widow ghosts, most likely very very angry black widow ghosts hanging about my head doing what ever nasty thing black widow spider ghosts do.
HEY! Let's end on a bright note. Maybe the Black Widow spider ghosts are eating all the ant ones. Sweet!

Coyote Complex....

(Photo courtesy of me, cause I took it last year. I am thinking just by examining the details of the coyote's posture that this is feller I heard outside...)

A dog began barking at 4:07 in the morning from a distance of a few hundred feet of the house. Oh do not worry this is not going to disintegrate into a "shaddduupp" ya dang dog type post. First of all being the revolving schedule type people that we are, we were wide awake and about to make some fabu garlic fries.
Second of all he probably had a reason for barking, even if it was a silly reason it was his reason. Like he'd like to go for a walk now, or have some extra crunchy food or voice his opinion on the neighborhood rabbits.
Bark, bark bark, he went.
"That dog sounds really close." I say to my husband in that way a person does when they are unable to stop themselves from stating the obvious.
Sucked into the conversation pit of obvious-icity my husband looks up from his computer, cocks his head to the side and listens, answers, "Yep, close."
Then, as if things couldn't get any more exciting the barking dissolves into the mournful, goosebumps raising, ear piercing wail of a coyote.
"Ohhh, it's a coyote." I say (see obviousness is a disease. Treatable but pretty hard to shake)
Alan agrees, "Yes, it really sounded like a dog but it's a coyote." The circle of obviousness continues and we wallow in the pit of boring words that surrounds us.
But the coyote, he keeps howling, and barking.
Which is nothing new, gangs of coyotes run through the area on a nightly basis, serenading us with their eerie songs and scaring the beejesus out of us during scary vampire movie scenes when the victim is jusssssst about to get their throat sucked and the silence is complete as the vampire shuffles closer and then..... "Awooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo".
Chorus of coyote howls, which sound suspiciously like a pack of crazed lunatics on the loose, whooping it up California style, let loose so close to the house it actually sounds like they're on the sofa next to me. Which is saying something because our sofa is a love seat, and the coyotes would have to be in my lap to be on it with us.
Can I get a breathless "ohhh, yeah that's closssse." from the crowd?
Thanks.
But this night in particular the solo voice of the coyote seems mournful, sad and desperate.
This isn't just any coyote I realize, as I rise from my computer chair, half frozen with indecision and an instinctive need to right what ever wrong is causing this coyote such emotional pain that he's out there all by his lonesome in the dark crying.
This coyote is obviously separated from the pack and is crying out, his voice the only coyote voice on the damp night air, bouncing off the hills around and echoing back at him in a cruel mockery of his aloneness, perhaps tricking him for just a second, one second, that he's not alone that there are other coyotes out there also calling the same sad wail of his own, looking for company.
I stand.
Something needs to be done.
Some sort of chemical reaction has happened in my brain. I can almost see the bubbling beaker of frontal lobe potion being poured into the parietal lobe test tube of calm rationale and causing a frenetic explosion of a super-hero-wanna-be complex that froths through my nervous system like a 4th grade baking soda volcano's lava flow.
"Alan that coyote, he's alone. ALONE!" I say this to my husband with all the intensity as I would if I saw a brush fire, or a car jacker or ice cream on sale at the grocery store.
My tone alerts him, his auto pilot for stressed wife situation kicks in and he rises from his computer, fingers blindly hitting Command S, (saving what ever work he's working on) and turns to gather his wide eyed wife into his arms as we both listen to the lone coyote cries.
"Well it's NOT like you can go out there and do anything." He says in that calm, "everything is A-OK " way he has. The same voice he'd use if he saw the moon exploding, or a nuclear bomb about to crash on our heads, calm and collected his voice is the base to my acid frothed brain that is insisting I go help that coyote.
He emphasizes the "Not" in that way he does, with just the slightest firming of the word that I'm sure no one else would notice, but I do, because I can hear all the things he says even when he's not actually saying them.
I hear, in that slightly deeper, gently amused "NOT" that a coyote is a wild animal, not a dog. They could have rabies and at the very least sharp claws and teeth. That it's not our place to go out and interfere with the emotional needs of a wild animal and that I'm inferring a helluva lot into one lone coyote's noise. I also hear, as the "t" sound from the "Not" rolls off his tongue that he can practically see me in my super hero outfit that I really oughtta make some day to go with this complex I have. Popping up at strange noises outside, on alert, ready and willing to run out and fight on the side of justice and scared coyotes.
I sigh, deflated.
And suddenly, another coyote starts yipping from the other side of the house. It's voice joining the first.
No Disney movie music started swelling into a triumphant crescendo indicating dramatic and life changing, happy ever after events were taking place now, in case you blinked and missed it with your eyes...but it should have.
I gasped.
"HE'S FOUND!!!!!!"
Alan laughs, the coyotes do indeed sound like they're talking to each other and is that a hint of relief I hear in the first coyote's barks? Or is that relief just in my own head?
"The second coyote is telling the first one he thought they were supposed to meet over by the old road and that's why he's late." Alan says, because he can translate coyote and can hear what I'm hearing.
We barely have time to grin foolishly at each other, still hugging, still standing in the middle of the living room, a human part in the coyote soap opera of the night when the 2 coyote voices become what sound like dozens.
It's a coyote party, a reunion!
Everything is going to be o.k, oooookaaaaaaaay.
We separate and head back to our computers, the coyote party drifts away until their voices no longer are carried to us on the night air.
Having a wacky schedule means more than garlic french fries at 4:07 in the morning. It means getting to be part of the secret, dramatic life of the neighborhood coyotes.
I'm sure the coyotes could care less.

Un-phonie.

(rock station, place where the cell phone charges.)

I talk on the phone about 3 to 5 times a year. *gasp* Half my audience just fainted and the other 3 of you are clutching your chests in horror. Because I don't have a cell phone glued to my ear? Because I don't consider conversation via actual.....VOICE as necessary to my day as good coffee and oxygen?
Apparently that's so.
The ones who fainted are most likely slowly coming around now and are thrusting trembling fingers at me in accusatory points and are stuttering out "B-b-b-but your mama? You only talk to your Mama once or twice a year on the phone?"
Yep.
O.k., you quit your eye rolling right now, there's this thing. Called the internet? Might have heard of it? I am almost positive I can type as fast as I can talk, well...maybe. And there's this other thing called messenger that makes life so much fun. I probably talk to my Mama more often than those phone caller types do to theirs. And also if we're typing a conversation I can do sporadic bursts of ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, WHILE she's typing too. If I do that on the phone she'd be forced to stop talking until her loon daughter caught her breath.
Now don't get me wrong, I do not think phones are evil nor do I fear them nor do I suspect the American government might think I'm a Canadian spy and are listening to my every "The weather's warm down here EH, How's everything going EH, how much snow have y'all got now...EH?" that falls from my lips during my semi annual actual voice telephone call.
Perhaps it's not that I dislike phones, because I don't, but it's that I love the internet sooooooooooooo much. The internet makes the telephone seem like the sad little hunch back member of the family that no one wants to make eye contact with but you feel like you should give the obligatory hug to anyways. The internet lets you type out your words and then immediately hit delete, delete, delete, delete until you come across as a person who swears a helluva a lot less than you actually do....
Not to mention it lets you simultaneously watch a video, chat to multiple people at the same time, email photos and look up the definition of the word you couldn't unscramble from the damn game that keeps defiantly not letting you beat your own high score because you're prettttty darn sure it's lowered itself to inventing words just to mess with your head. Maybe the game designers decided to ignore a major glitch like the computer will blow up if you get past 14962 points so instead of acknowledging your superior intellect and word un-scrambling abilities it just cheats and says that mystery word was ghsuuiz ( a word you'd never guess) and that it's a disease of a horse's joint. (That's not the actual name of the *so called* horse joint disease but I can't be going and remembering words like that when I have so many phone numbers to keep track of...hee hee caught me huh? All right I lied I don't wanna remember joint diseases for horses because I want to save lots of grey matter room for more important things like the release dates for all future movies that involve any kind of super hero.)
Despite my apparent ill will towards the internet word unscrambling game who shall remain nameless because to utter it's title would give it more power than it deserves, seeing as how that mind numbing little sucker has caused much dual gasping and annoyed "no way, that's not a fricking word" from my husband and I as we play on our computers, the same game mind you....Is that cheating? If so do not tell my Mother as we have racked up that magical 14962 score and she is till only at 6721. Muaahhhh ahhh ahhh. But despite that bit of ill will I love the internet.
It makes my phone look like an archaic piece of plastic that I only leave plugged in because I am pretty sure it's not a number 1 or number 2 plastic that I can recycle and I have not as yet come up with a nifty craft made from phones and so it's just as easy to leave it plugged in and make fun of the telemarketers who occasionally call and leave messages on our machine.
One could say I am unfairly biased for the internet since I met my husband through it, on it? Under it? I met my husband via that wonderful magical sticky web that is weaving ever tighter every day, invisible strands of data that I'm sure if we could see would be glistening, sparkling vibrating threads that cover the world in a breath taking blanket of information. If you could see this blanket of interwoven communication threads you might see that the blanket's tightest, strongest, prettiest weave is the bit that connects Nova Scotia, Canada to California. As obviously that bit is the part of the web's history that was my husband and I meeting quite by chance via Yahoo messenger and then chatting back and forth every day for months until we met in person and he whisked me away from the icy cold that is a February in N.S. to the brilliantly warm, palm tree speckled land that is California.
Those that like to nit pick at such details as "your phone is left plugged in" are probably gasping again, most likely the same people who fainted earlier when I confessed the bit about not talking on the phone much. To calm their racing hearts before they give themselves palpitations let me quickly add that YES I do have a cell phone.
And, I'm quite proud to admit it's the cheapest cell phone out there and doesn't do anything but actually let you talk on the phone to another person if you so had a desire to do so. Which I don't unless its my husband and for that oddball once a year meeting he sometimes has to go have with clients and I tag along and browse around a mall near his meeting location. It's nice to be able to call each other and say "Hey, I'm loitering around the Barnes and Noble cooking section and people are starting to give me strange looks for drooling over the cookbook photos so come get me now and lets go have lunch." If you're doing the math than you have also just realized that at least one of my 3-5 phone calls a year is with my own husband. I bet you can't tell if you're appalled or jealous. I'm thinking jealous.
Not having a cellphone glued to my ear is probably increasing my life expectancy anyways, that and my ability to spot a UFO in the sky should one ever whiz down to do a fly by over the Starbucks near the grocery store we shop at.
I say it increases my life expectancy because since I AM paying attention when I walk out of the grocery store, I can SEE all the other people. And an alarming number of them are all apparently talking to themselves, until I realize they have their itty bitty phones glued to their ears and lest any one think they have no friends they feel the need to carry on that all important conversation as they walk the 30 feet from the grocery store to their car. Eyes glazed, hands full of purchases, narrowly avoiding the cars by the their rapidly fading luck alone.
I do not know how much luck each person in this world is assigned but them zombie-ish cell phone parking lot walkers have gotta be blasting through their share like there's no tomorrow. And I know they DO know there's a tomorrow because if you DID know there wasn't one would you spend your last day buying dish soap and diet soda? Lord I hope not. AND on top of all that the cars narrowly avoiding hitting them don't know their luck is rapidly depleting and is displaying a blinking warning symbol in violent red because they too are glued to their cell phones as they back up out of their spaces, narrowly missing the parking lot zombies as they also conduct their oh so important conversation that s worth risking their own lives, the parking lot zombie's lives and my sanity.
Because watching all these near misses with out the cushioning fog of a voice babbling in my ear is gonna crack my poor mind some day. Though I hope not because like I said, when I come out of the store I am not distracted and I can see the pretty pink flowers on the tree some clever person planted through out the parking lot, the paleness of the blue sky and the way the clouds look like the soft fur on the belly of my cat and how the air smells like something sweet, like sugar burning (which is actually a nice smell) and is most likely coming from the bakery next door.
See if I notice all that then I will most likely notice the UFO that hovers over the StarBucks and I will enjoy every minute of it. (Unless I forgot to take my digital camera, than I will be doing less enjoying and more of a tackling sort of thing as I wrestle some one's cellphone with a camera out of their hands so I can get a picture.)

6 things you learned about me throughout the course of this rambling post.

• 1. I rarely use the phone.
• 2. I'm Canadian eh, specifically from Nova Scotia.
• 3. I may be cheating at that word un-scramble game because my husband and I play it together.
• 4. I met my husband through Yahoo Messenger.
• 5. I have an interest in UFOs and coffee.
• 6. I like the smell of burnt sugar.

Why grab six random bits about me from my own blog post, am I just that repetitive and full of myself I think I warrant a list? Umm, yes but also Ms. Tumble Fish from Tumble Fish Studios *tagged* me and I wasn't able to run away fast enough. You remember playing tag as a kid and you'd run until you either hit a tree or fell over gasping for wind and your brothers would barrel into you gleefully shouting "You're it" in your ear, near deafening you and now leaving you with the responsibility of being "IT"? It's like that but with out the increased pulse rate.

• ***7. Here's one bit you didn't learn from this post but I'm tossing in as a freebie. (I'm a rebel that way, some one says 6 and I say 7.) I once emailed the local radio station from my hometown area to ask for information about the Christmas program featuring the Christmas pig that they aired every Holiday season and...they...NEVER...wrote back. I'm not saying I hold a grudge or have a list of wrong doings done by people but I am saying they NEVER wrote back.