So it seems they found the remains of the little girl who was taken from her house, which is not far from our neighborhood, nearly a month ago. By all appearances, their pedophilic neighbor was the one who took and killed her. If this is true - and while he hasn't been convicted yet, the evidence against him is pretty definitive - he should be fed alive to starving pigs, the bastard.

But what about the parents? I was listening to local talk radio yesterday after work, and was amazed at the vitriol and disgust being lobbed at D@mon and Brend@ V@n D@m due to the rumors that they were having a "swing party" in their garage at the time their child was apparently taken from their home. One host is all but lobbying for Child Protective Services to go in and take their other two children from them because of their supposed negligence and perversity. I'm troubled by all this self-righteous condemnation.

Even if these prurient little rumors are true - that the wife partied at the local pub on a "Girls Night Out", then brought some people home for, uh, adult entertainment - I can't see that being sufficient reason for blaming these folks for the abduction/murder of their child. Yeah, they were in the garage with the door locked; but how many other parents have had friends at their houses after their children are asleep, and have moved to another part of the house, or maybe outside in their backyard, where they won't wake up the kids, and thus are not in the best position to monitor them? How many have consumed alcohol when doing this? I've known plenty of great parents who have done exactly the same thing when I've been at their home. My own parents did, on occasion. For that matter, how many parents have rooms in different parts of the house - maybe even different floors - from their children, and lock the door of their own room when they're he'n and she'n? Are they being particularly vigilant when they're getting busy? Do they always get up afterward and do one last check of the house, or do they go to sleep, reasonably sure that things are the way they left them and their kids are just fine? 99.5% of the time, aren't they right? Sure, it's not perfect parenting; but I don't think it's necessarily criminal negligence either. The children were healthy and napping out at 10 pm, tucked away in their own beds in a quiet, upscale neighborhood, just like a thousand other nights of their life. They had at least one parent home all night. Regardless of what the parents were doing to entertain themselves in the wee hours that violated the public's sense of morality - and there are only rumors about this so far, no facts - they were in their home and being relatively discreet, and there's just no way they could have predicted that someone would dare to enter their house that night and take their child from her very bed. Whether they were drinking Cokes and playing darts in that garage, or drinking tequila and playing with each other is, I think, somewhat irrelevant. Yeah, maybe the guy somehow knew what they were up to and knew they'd be distracted; maybe intoxication and other distractions meant they weren't as vigilant as they should've been - I still don't believe that makes them culpable for his invasion of their house and his abduction and murder of their child. And what if the guy did come in before the mother even got home, while the father was there sleeping? In that case, how would the situation differ from any other parents'?

That's not to say that nothing about their reported behavior that night is troubling to me. If they did in fact notice the intrusion alarm blinking, indicating someone had come in, and noted an open outside door, I'd question why they didn't take a moment to check on their kids at that point, if for no other purpose than to make sure one of them hadn't gone outside for some reason. If they were lucid enough to notice the alarm, they should've been lucid enough to decide to check their kids. Maybe if they'd raised the alarm earlier, within a couple of hours of the abduction, there could have been a slightly better chance of catching the guy before he got too far and did what he did. He had an entire long night to do his evil undetected; if a search had been initiated in the pre-dawn hours, who knows what may have happened differently?

But that's all easy to say in hindsight. It's easy to condemn them for the things they did or did not do; but any one of us can look at times in our life where we dismissed or ignored or explained away an apparent warning sign - or made a big deal out of it, only to find that nothing was really wrong. In a perfect world, we'd always be able to act soberly, respond appropriately, be vigilant against even the most unlikely of dangers, and never make an assumption that results in misfortune. The V@n D@ms were fallible, but so are a lot of us; I'm sure they will be tormented for the rest of their lives about what they should have done, what they wish they had or had not done, that night. They made decisions and assumptions that allowed a predator to sneak by them, and they lost their little girl. That's punishment enough. Leave them alone.

Thought I'd share a Jabber conversation I had with my pal Eric recently... (Hi, Eric! Hi! Don't whine - I told you I needed content!)

(Note: Lunchtime. I'd just bought a box of Thin Mints from the Coworker with the Kid in Girl Scouts - there's one in every cubefarm. Eric's cleaning his desk).

T: I don't think the cookies are helping my mood. Now I'm pissy and hyped up on sugar. Bad combo.
E: why pissy?
E: and, as a corollary to that... "You? Pissy? Never"
E: Or should I not goad you?
T: Very bad idea. Crampy and annoyed at my job. Beware.
T: Hence my diving headfirst into a bag of chocolate cookies...
E: Okay, the cleaning of the desk has had a paradoxic effect. Now the rest of the room seems by comparison unbearably messy and full of crap. What would I do if I had your amount of knick-knacks?
T: A lot of dusting, I would think. At least, that's what I do.
E: Toia and I were talking about your decor. Interesting that it came up independently on your blog.
T: What were you saying about it? Chock-fulla-crap Classic?
E: Mostly what we felt was that we could never pull it off- you have to get an empty horizontal space first, before you can put lovely tchotchkes on it....
T: Yeah, see, the tchotchkes prevent the accumulation of other crap. They're like crap bumps.

E: Are you lunching yet?
T: Cookies?
E: No, off the clock lunching.
T: I'm salaried - it's all relative. I have a Weight Watchers frozen lunch glaring at me from my bag, telling me to get my paws off the damn cookies and warm it up instead.
E: I'm warming up the leftover ribs from last night.
T: Chomp!
E: You DO know that WW dinners have carageenan- a known appetite stimulant, don't you?
T: Buh? Why would they do that?
E: Stimulate sales .. and business. Works like a charm.
T: I don't believe it. They CARE about my weight loss! Damn it, why must you topple my idols?
E: You know I'm kidding, right?
T: I'm going to eat the rest of the cookies now.
E: Mmm. Cookie.
T: The bowls do have carageenan in them, though - I just looked. What is that shit, anyway?
E: appetite stimulant.
E: heh heh heh.
T: =P
E: I knew you'd look.
T: It's a natural seaweed gelling agent that provides viscosity.
E: It's some sort of texturizer for food-- i see you've looked it up.
T: I have to know.
T: Got to go warm up my carrageenan bowl. Be right back.

T: You know, for all the "thickening agents" this stuff has in it - the seaweed, the xantham gum, etc. - it's terribly watery.
E: so solly for delay...
E: rib attack
T: Ieee!
E: Maybe your dinner needs some cookie crumbled into it
T: Now that would be a taste treat.
T: Teriyaki chicken and choc mint crumble.
E: with seaweed sauce!
E: although the asians have pioneered the whole "seaweed as everyfood" movement.
T: That's true. Reminds me of that scene from "Logan's Run".
E: ?
T: "…Plankton, sea greens, protein from the SEA!!"
E: ??
T: Didn't you ever see that movie? It's a classic, fer chrissakes.
E: nope
T: Uh-oh, the chicas are coming back with their lunches. Room volume will be increasing exponentially in...
T: 3-2-1...
T: Mira! Mi gusta!
E: y ella me dice que ....
T: No puedo comer más galletas.
No puedo comer más galletas.
No puedo comer más galletas.
No puedo comer más galletas.
No puedo comer más galletas.
T: LOL
T: I didn't mean to send that five times. But I like it.
E: sometimes mantras help
T: ROFL
E: mantras... don't come easy.
T: It has a ring to it, too. Rolls off the tongue. I think it will be my new mantra.
E: therapeutic, too
T: Truly. I will eat no more cookies forever.
E: ... after these boxes?
T: I will eat no cookies.
E: ...before their time?
T: That's what Orson Welles should've said... Screw the wine.
E: i don't think Orson spared the cookies, either...
T: Last word on his lips wasn't "Rosebud"... it was "Oreos, bud".

E: You should hear the noises coming out of my nasal cavity.
T: If only. Could you mpeg them for me?
E: if i had a scope to shove up there, i'd give you a direct video stream.
E: get it.. stream?
T: Glad I've already eaten my Bowl O' Additives.
E: New! From Kellogg! Mucus-O's! Freshly scraped from the linings of poor flu-infested souls! Guaranteed to boost immunity.
T: Muc-O's! Fortified with antibody-generating goodness!
E: Now with slime-enhancing carrageenan!
T: Mucus could be the next carrageenan. All-natural thickening agent.
E: barf!
T: Come on. It's good for you. Protein... from the nose!

T: I think I should post excerpts from this chat onto MonkeyGumbo.
T: Not that anyone but you and Bill reads it, prolly.
T: Gnawing on ribs again, are we?
E: religiously.
E: reading, not the ribs.
T: Thanks for clarifying.
E: although ribs are quite the experience...
T: They're so primal, aren't they? Gnawing on bones like that. Very satisfying to the inner caveman.
E: grunt!
E: I'd probably make a killing by starting a religion based on ribs.
T: Yeah - Church of the Holy Rib. From the one Adam gave to make Eve right up to a tasty meal at Chucky's Tex-Mex BBQ... they're a very powerful symbol of life!
E: I got all my praying in already today. I've moved on.
T: Sorry, I'm still sticking to ribs.
T: And tickling my own ribs. But OK, I can get past it.
E: okay.. productivity must now ensue. Off to the post office and thence to target and thence back home to the mess.
T: Have fun. Organize or die.
E: buh-bye!
T: Right on. Catch ya spater, Expectorator.

Heh. I relish the nourishment of intellectual conversations like these...

Another weekend of unprecendented hospitality at Casa Del Tessenwee. On Friday night I had a girls' night at my house - lots of good food, and wine, and the standard dose of gossip. Then, on Saturday, we had two other couples over for dinner. We actually ate at the dining table, with placemats and cloth napkins; another major divergence from the household norm. Despite garlic mashed potatoes that came out with the consistency of vanilla pudding (the result of my too-clever decision to put extra milk in them to keep them from drying out in the oven while the chicken was grilled), and green beans that were also served past their peak state of steamy goodness, everyone bravely cleaned their plates and smiled, which I think was mighty generous of them.

The get-togethers went very well, which was a vast relief to me. Bill and rarely "entertain", so I'm still a little nervous when I go about attempting it. I've learned a lot about the care, feeding, and maintenance of guests from helping out at countless events at my in-laws' house; their home harbors an ever-flowing tide of birthday parties, holidays, and other group events. Still, I’m always convinced that, should the invitees actually show up (visions of having a party with no one there always haunt me until the first ring of the doorbell), I'll end up with a group of people floating around nervously in a stagnant puddle of silence. Luckily, however, and somewhat to my amazement, things went smoothly, and I honestly got the impression that everyone had a good time, which makes me glad to the point of giddiness.

People are generally complementary about the house as well, which I love. I suspect that many people are taken aback, when they first visit our house, at the fact that we have sort of a sense of décor. (I'm guessing that may be because neither of us are overly fashion-savvy in our personal appearance; Bill probably is more than I am, albeit kind of unintentionally… For instance, he has worn army cargo pants ever since I met him, so when they suddenly became trendy we were pretty amused - all of a sudden young fashionistas would be coming up to him and raving over his camos and asking him where he got them, and would about fall over when he said "$10 at the surplus store" when they'd paid $60 for their identical pair at the mall…). Anyway, albeit that it's not exactly picture-perfect, I like that our place kind of surprises most new visitors. The other comment I hear over and over about the house is that it's "homey", "cozy", or "comfortable". That can be taken many ways, but the way people say it is sort of with a wistfully enthused tone - as if they kind of wished their house had more of the same feeling. I think of the house as a projection of us - a little rough around the edges, but fairly pleasant and easy to spend time around. Bill would say it has way too many knicknacks - or "dustknacks", as Suzi and Pete call them - but I think that those are the things that give a house a personality. Of couse, sometimes that personality can come across as schizophrenic, or tasteless - but I hope ours says something nicer. I've always loved images of cluttered libraries filled with exotic treasures, so I think there's a little of that feel to my decorating. Couple this inclination with an English heritage, and the incidence of tchotchkes in any place I occupy is just bound to be high; that's something I've endeavored to help Wee understand when he gets alarmed by the volume of them. I like to think that taking him to my mother and sister's houses, and then to England, helped him better understand my genetic compulsion to react to an empty flat space by occupying it with something. Marriage is full of little compromises, no?

At any rate, it was fun to play host and have it all turn out OK. Sunday was a well-earned and thoroughly enjoyed day o' slack. Now it's back for another five days of office-induced tedium…

We had a fun and surprisingly social weekend. Our brother-in-law Zac came down and, along with our friend Burt, Wee, Z and I played paintball on Saturday. Z and Burt hadn't played before - we're kind of evangelical about getting others to experience the joys of paint-laden combat. I always wondered how badly it would hurt to get shot in the boob, but now I am wondering no longer. It fucking stings, thank you! Next time I'm seriously considering sticking athletic cups in my bra… Or perhaps I'll go full Viking-maiden and get one of those metal corsets they wore. Of course, the outfit would be incomplete unless I glued a set of horns to my mask, and I'm afraid they'd stick up too far and get me tagged… so maybe not. I also suffered the indignity of having my gun - oh sorry, my marker - jam on me mid-game, requiring a full dismantling and cleaning before the next round. I think I've finally watched Bill do it enough so that I can disassemble/clean/reassemble the marker myself. Color me foolish for wanting to assume a task that I could so easily just keep foisting off on my hubby, but it's kind of a point of pride to me to be able to know how to do it instead of relying on Bill to do it for me. After all, a real paintgrrrl should be able to maintain her own equipment.

I think that, mentally, I must be about 1/3 boy, 2/3 girl (let us be clear, I mean in my head - on the outside I’m 100% pure chica, baby). I like boy stuff - one of the first things that Bill and I bonded over was our mutual love of movies like "Aliens" and "Star Wars". In high school, most of the books I read were either science fiction or espionage thrillers. I did (and will) read any book involving a submarine or a spaceship. People at work do double-takes when they see me wear a skirt; I buy a significant portion of my wardrobe from the men's section. I would much sooner go camping or shooting or to play paintball than go to the beauty salon or shopping. Danielle Steel books make me ill, and I have never, as far as I can recall, watched the Lifetime channel. I could care less which lipstick color, handbag, or eyebrow shape is fashionable to have this season, or if "orange is the new pink". I would wear camoflage every day before I'd wear pink. Lace pisses me off.

Hanging with the boys can put me in dutch sometimes with my female in-laws, who don't understand how I get away with crashing the rusty-boy circle, nor why I would want to (mind you, sometimes I do like to hang out with the girls - I just want the right to choose one way or the other without getting shit for it). Sadly, every so often one of the guys will also offer up a knee-jerk "no girls allowed" complaint, on sheer principle. I've come to understand that nothing I can say nor do will change their prejudice in such cases. These same guys, I've found, often tend to have distinctly adversarial relationships with their girlfriends and wives; they're the types who relish opportunities to "get away" from their partners, and to whom it would just not occur to refer to their wife as their friend, instead expecting them to fill a combination mother/maid/hooker role in their lives and leave them the hell alone the rest of the time. (Of course, any woman who chooses to stay with someone like that gets little sympathy from me…). Still, I’m lucky in that the guys I know whose opinions matter most to me are cool with me tagging along on their reindeer games, and for that I'm grateful and glad. Most guys at paintball are surprisingly cool about having a chick in the ranks as long as plays her best and doesn't whine about getting dirty or bruised.

Anyway, back to the weekend… In the evening we went to go see "Lord of the Rings", since Zac hadn't seen it yet and Bill and I had had to watch it from the second row of the theater last time, making it hard to get the scope of the action. We bought our tickets hours ahead of time, went to eat dinner and have a couple of cocktails, then came back 20 minutes before show time, in what we thought was plenty of time to claim seats - and found the theater was packed full. We ended up in the second row again. I couldn't believe the movie was still playing to packed-full theaters nearly nearly three months after its release. So we were a little disappointed, but I was still glad to see it again and catch some of the stuff I missed last time.

On Sunday we lazed around, tired from our exertions the day before and decidedly inclined toward entropy. In the evening we got a supercool soo-prise - Eric and Toia decided to take a last-minute road trip to San Dog to see their friend Josh and also drop in on us and tour our swanky digs. On Friday Wee and I had been tag- teaming Eric on Jabber, trying to coax him into visiting us - so Bill was convinced that their call and request to come over was a hoax to get us back for pestering him to visit; he figured Josh was really in Phoenix and they were using his cell phone so the 619 area code would show on caller ID. Mind you, it wouldn't be the first time Eric has employed the services of a pal to pull a merry prank on yours truly (Mark Mazurkiewicz and the "Froggy Outside Muh Door" - that's all I’m saying), but I was about 80/20 convinced that they would actually show, and they did - so my heart was duly warmed. E, you and the little missus come on back soon nah, y'hear?

Here's another (and less tongue-in-cheek) innovation I just thought of that would be good… Some sort of electronic Personal Verification Service. This would be an organization to whom you could send all of your important personal documents - everything from your birth certificate to your college degree to the title on your house - and they would verify the authenticity of each and keep them in safe protective storage for you (and also scan them and keep secured electronic copies). Then they would provide verification to anyone to whom you'd usually need to submit those documents, like employers, loan officers, the DMV, etc. Your permission would be required to authorize the verification, so no one could get your personal info without your permission - but it could all be done online over secure channels.

Wouldn't that be a much better solution than having to keep all your precious and easily damaged/lost/destroyed documents in a safe deposit box, and dragging them out and toting them around every time you need to provide proof of something-or-another? Of course, the verification service organization would need buy-in from the entities requiring the verification - banks, government offices, etc. There would have to be a ton of safeguards to prevent forgery or fraud, hacking, etc. But I think it's feasible, and would be an extraordinarily handy service, especially for those of us who are not, shall we say, extraordinarily good at keeping track of documentation.

Anyway, I think it would be a very cool business (and potentially very lucrative one, if the company in question charged a yearly subscription, either per document or a flat fee for unlimited documents). Note: I've just published this idea in the public domain, so if anyone takes it from me and develops it, I expect royalties!! =)

I've thought up a breakthrough invention waiting to happen. I think Wee and I should develop it and get a patent. Envision, if you will: charcoal filtered underpants.

Charcoal, as I'm sure you know, is very effective at trapping and eliminating odor-causing particles. The briefs would simply feature a pocket in the rear, suitable for insertion of a thin, comfortable charcoal filter liner. For those unfortunate individuals afflicted with the heartbreak of excessive flatulence, and/or a prediliction for eating meatball subs, these undies could be a social lifesaver.

One could offer combo pants as well, with a changeable scented sheath going over the filter pad, allowing the emission of a lovely alternate odor, like lilacs, or Old Spice.

I could eventually offer a whole line of charcoal filter products for personal use, such as seatcovers, chair pads, and t-shirts (handy filter pockets under the arms, you see). I could contract with airlines to outfit airplane seats with the filters (ever been stuck behind a gassy someone on a plane? Then you can see the potential here).

Yessir, charcoal pants. This could the start of something big.

Have you ever wished you could go back and see yourself as a child? I had a dream last night that I went back to our old house on Lincoln St. - apparently shortly after we moved in, because I was still a toddler. I somehow ended up babysitting my baby self. The weirdest part was sniffing my baby Tess head and thinking about how I smelled like - well, like me. Then I put us both up in front of a mirror, cheek to cheek, and compared our faces. As I figured, the nose hadn't changed a bit between age 2 and age 30.

Happily, I also got to see young-Mom, and our dog, Nails. Suzi and her kids made an appearance - like me, they were coming back in time as their 2001 selves. Mom knew we were the grown kids, but wasn't freaked out by it. She gave us a nostalgia tour of the house, although - as in all my dreams of the house - it was much bigger and more Winchester-house-of-mystery like than the real one, with weird back-stairwells and lots of floors and little rooms and balconies.

I love those kinds of dreams. Sometimes I have them about my old schools, or Crater Lake. Exploring strange places is fun. In the back of my mind, I've always wanted to join one of those clubs of people - like this one - who break into old abandoned subways and public works facilities type places and poke around. I'm too chicken, of course, but a girl can dream..

So Bill and I were driving to the grocery store to pick up some items for dinner yesterday... my brain wasn't functioning at full capacity on Sunday afternoon (never mind why). We had the car windows open, and I was trying to tell him that I wanted to pick up some corn; he wasn't hearing me right, and kept saying, "What, cord?"

"Corn!"

"Cord? What kind of cord do you need?"

"CORN!!!"

Finally, I realized the verbal effort was futile, so I grabbed my pen and my grocery list, and painstakingly drew a piece of corn. Corn is not the easiest vegetable to draw, especially while in a moving car and nursing a raging - um, headache. But in a concerted quest for clarity, I finished it and held it up to him.

"Oh, CORN," he said. Pause. "Why didn't you just write the word 'corn'?"

The funny part was that he knew that I wasn't trying to be clever by drawing it - but rather that writing the actual word had simply NOT occured to me until he said it.

Lordy. I really need to stop killing off brain cells. One only gets so many, and I think that cumulatively I may have passed some crucial tolerance past which the higher functions start to slip...

(That was a darned fun birthday party for Valarie, though. Happy Birthday, V-Lo! Viva la 'Shitey Bollocks'! Quick-quick-stop!)