Frogger

My sister ran over a frog the other day. She said:

I saw a frog jump in front of the road while I was driving.  I thought that I was totally going to miss it, but then I heard a crunch noise. 

I guess this was an actual frog playing the game Frogger...and he lost. 

I Don't Read Chinese

I know that I have an Asian name. But it's always funny to me when I get junk mail IN CHINESE. Funny that Peter never gets mail in Italian. They're never like, "Oh, he's Italian, so he's not going to know that the McDonald's is now offering a Delicious Coffee Drink unless we send him that coupon in Italiano."

The thing is, I don't know how to read Chinese. Well, except for some of the three hundred words I can still remember from my one year of Mandarin class senior year of college. The Chinese class for non-native speakers my Chinese friends referred to as "The White Man's Chinese Class."

When I visited Taiwan one summer, I had to explain to almost every restaurant waitress that I can speak, but am illiterate, so they would have to read me the menu and they were all, "Huh? Didn't you go to school?"

And I was all, "I'm in college!"

And they were all, "WHAT?" 

I appreciate the coupons, but one of the plus sides of being married to a vegetarian is that you don't really visit fast food chains that often. 

Sometimes I Think Cops Are Not Smart

Today I saw the most heart-wrenching story on TV. A yellow lab was hit by a car on the Major Deegan Expressway and her companion dog, who I found out later was her son, barked at and shepherded the oncoming traffic around her so she wouldn't get hurt. There's a link to it on youtube here.

The footage is so sad, mostly because that yellow lab clearly couldn't get up and the pavement was smeared with her blood. I kept thinking about my own yellow lab and how helpless dogs are now that they depend on people for everything. 

I've heard this story reported on in many news programs today, but it really irks me that no one mentions the policemen who almost botched the whole rescue operation. First of all, they seemed afraid of the barking dog and couldn't get to the injured dog for about 15 minutes. 

They should have tried to grab the healthy dog first so that he wouldn't get hit by another car, but they just stood around staring at him. I mean, how many cops does it take to catch a dog. Form a human chain and close in, for crying out loud! Do I have to be in charge of EVERYTHING?

Then, when the policemen were trying to get the injured dog through the left passenger side of the car, one of the them opened the door on the right side and just walked away. Although injured, there was a small chance that she would have tried to make a run for it--I was so frustrated to see how these guys were bungling this whole thing up.

Then, as they rescue the injured dog, the healthy dog runs off and is running around in traffic. 

These are the people who are supposed to protect us? 

All the news programs were commending these clowns. 

My Broken Pedometer

Now that we weather is nicer, Peter and I have been taking the dogs for walks. I fished out my pedometer from the glass jar it has been sitting in the past few months and we walked down the main street in our town. 

My grandpa used to walk around with the very first pedometers when I was a young girl and it's pretty funny to me now how popular they have become. At the time, I thought my grandpa was a bit anal and nerdy. He used to have this special belt strap that he hooked a pedometer, a box of really hideous-tasting silver mint balls, and a pocket English-Japanese/Japanese-English dictionary. 

The dictionary he only carried with him when I was around because many times during a conversation I would say something like, "Do you want to go to the place-with-a-lot-of-books-that-is-not-a-bookstore-because-you-don't-buy-them-you-borrow-them later?" I mean, my parents never taught me the Taiwanese word for "library." That's when he would reach down on flip open the plastic pouch on his belt and whip out the dictionary for me to flip through and point to the word. 

During the day of the walk, Peter and I were in agreement was that we were going to walk one mile and head on back home. Peter's ride to work is about 4.25 miles away and he wanted to try to see how long it would take him to walk that distance. So, we figured, we would multiply the time it took us to walk two miles and extrapolate. 

So we leashed up the dogs and took off down Main Street. It was so nice to be outside and to not be wearing flannel mom-jeans. I love this time of year, right before the horrible NY face-melting summers. 

Periodically, I kept checking the pedometer. After what seemed to us like a huge distance and we approached the next town over, the pedometer said we had only walked half-a-mile. Peter was all, "I don't THINK so. That thing is BROKEN."

I didn't think that it was broken because I had counted out some steps the pedometer was accurately counting my steps. Also, I wanted to hit that 10,000 paces mark, which Peter and I have NEVER approached during a walk. It's the magic per-day number of paces that scientists say a person should walk for optimal health. So I kept encouraging him to keep on walking farther and farther. 

"We'll walk until it says one mile and we'll go back home," I said. 

About 2 HOURS later, we were on our way home and Scout just stopped walking and refused to move. She's going to be ten years old in a month and must be getting on in years, because she used to have the crazy boundless energy, and in all these years, she's never once stopped in the middle of a walk. During this whole walk, Peter would point out random landmarks and say, "Now, I KNOW that this (fill-in-the-blank-post office/ dry cleaner/ fire station) is AT LEAST (1, 1.5, 2) miles away from home."

Peter looked at me and said, "If I have to carry this 60-pound dog home, it's going to be all your fault." 

At that point, we could almost see our apartment building, so we urged Scout to keep walking. We are all super-tired and my feet were threatening to go on strike. My shoes hurt my feel terribly, but I didn't feel like I had a right to complain, since I was the one who kept pushing everyone onward. 

When we got home, I Mapquested the route we walked and discovered that we had almost covered 5 miles! 

"Throw that pedometer AWAY," Peter said. 

"Hey, look at the bright side," I said. "We conquered the 10,000 paces! Scientists want us to spend two hours walking a day. Although walking to work is going to set your commute back two hours in the morning."

Acela Express Train Straight to HELL

The other day, Peter was at his mother's house when his sister called--keep in mind, this is the sister he no longer calls because the last time he called her she shrieked at him to NEVER call her house after 8pm or he'll WAKE THE BABY!!!!!

To this day, he has never called her house again, so that baby sure is VERY well-rested. 

When Peter's sister found out that he was there, she asked to speak to him--and during the phone conversation, she could not stop shit from falling out of the asshole she calls her mouth. 

Of course, there's the obligatory, "It's really great that you go visit her (meaning their mother)."

I asked Peter what he said to that, he's a much better person than me, because I would be all, "Coming to visit her more than once a year wouldn't kill you, y'know."

But he's not as confrontational as I am so he replied, "Well, she IS my MOTHER." 

And then, later on in the conversation, his sister casually mentioned that her son had his First Communion last week. For those of you who are not Catholic, the First Communion is one of the rites of passage which is traditionally a HUGE family event and although it is a big relief that his sister didn't make a big deal out of it and make us all go, I did feel terrible for his mother, who was a bit shocked and, I'm sure, very upset not to be invited--it's almost on par with you calling up your mother and telling her that her grandchild had gotten married last week and she wasn't invited. 

After he hung up the phone, Peter's mom started to talk about the First Communion, but he really couldn't take another, "Your sister treats me so terribly after I've given her EVERYTHING" conversation. It wasn't that long ago that his sister purposefully snuck out of the house to get to Christmas Mass so she wouldn't have to take her mother. Remember?

The way she has shown favoritism to her daughter really sickens me, especially after she gave Peter's sister the money his grandmother left him (by the way, Peter's sister pulls in $10K per week, so she really doesn't need the dough) during a time we were really struggling after we bought our first house. 

Peter was the one driving his mother to visit his grandmother every week and towards the end, every day, and his grandmother wanted to give him the only money she had left as a token of her appreciation. Peter's grandmother gave the money to his mother and Peter's mother kept it in her own account for years (and used it to buy really expensive gifts for Peter's sister and her family) before putting it in a trust for Peter's nephew and niece. By the way, his sister didn't even attend this grandmother's funeral even though she was in town that day. Don't even get me started on THAT.

I'm always asking Peter how he can still have the relationship he does with his mother and visit her every week. I mean, I'm sure people have turned their backs on their mothers for much less. He always replies by saying, "I know she's not a good person, but she's still my mother. I don't like her very much, and she makes it very difficult to even deal with her on any level. But I'm the kind of person who sees things through. And she's one of those things."

I've gotten mad at my mom for wanting to go to the mall with my sister instead of me. This is one of the many things Peter teaches me every day. He does try to live his life with integrity. Suffice it to say, he is very different from a lot of other guys. 

I asked my friend Andrew about the importance of the First Communion. He is the person I turn to for all things Catholic--and he was HORRIFIED that Peter's mother wasn't invited to the First Communion. 

"Mothers are such a HUGE part of First Communion," he said. "In fact, at my church, the First Communion is always held on Mother's Day, to honor all the mothers and grandmothers. What did Peter's mother do?"

"Well," I said, "She quickly sent her daughter a check as a gift, which I think is totally wrong, because it just reinforces the idea to Peter's sister that she didn't do anything wrong."

"She doesn't deserve a CHECK! She deserves a ticket on the Acela Express Train Straight to HELL!"

That Poor Guy!

Yesterday I went to the movies with my sister and mother. We ended up going to a showing of Valentino, which was really interesting. But before we had made up our minds, I was thinking of taking Judy to go see Wolverine. My mother asked me what that movie was about and I couldn't really come up with a decent explanation so I asked my sister if she could help me out and she said:

It's about this guy. He starts out a normal human and one day a scientist kidnapped him and implanted metal into his hands. 

Hearing this, my mother says, "Oh, that poor guy!"

Phenominal

Peter has a friend on facebook who is always posting these things about her kids, which to someone with no kids, can be the eensy-weensiest bit annoying. I know this is impolite to say, but we really don't care what your four-year-old did at 4pm yesterday, even though it might have been totally great. 

Yeah, we're jerks. 

We barely want to know what YOU did at 4pm yesterday unless it's INTERESTING. 

What's happening with facebook is that people aren't differentiating between interesting and boring anymore. 

So the other day, Peter gets a message on his Blackberry and he shows it to me. This friend has written:

"Just saw Grey Gardens and it was phenominal! What great clothes and such a great life!"

I turned to Peter and said, "Uhm...Great LIFE? Did she SEE THE SAME MOVIE we did? Did she see the part where they were abandoned by everyone in their entire family and living with cat feces under the bed? If that's her idea of a great life, she's more crazy than those old bats!"

Peter said, "The lady spells phenomenal with an "i"--can we really trust her judgement on anything?"

Queer Eye For the Straight First Lady

I was talking to my friend Andrew last night and I was telling him about my horrible Easter Sunday experience and how my brother-in-law is so unhappy that Obama was elected he took it out on us for voting for him. 

So we got to talking about Michelle Obama and what a great job she was doing, especially in getting attention to little-known clothing designers. I love that whenever they talk about Jason Wu they're always bringing up the fact that he's Taiwanese. 

Andrew doesn't think that her outfits are that great. 

"Okay," I said. "I know that she really loves J. Crew, but I think enough is enough. It's okay for her and the daughters to wear something that isn't off-the-rack. I mean, the other day I was watching a show and a woman was talking about how she was going to wear the same dress that Michelle Obama wore for the cover of some magazine. It's a little weird. Women want to dress EXACTLY like her and it's sort of freaky. To combat this weirdness, she should wear things that are one-of-a-kind."

"Personally," Andrew said, "I think she needs a little bit of a Queer Eye for the Straight First Lady."