Avoiding Crisis

So apparently, this is what I look like animated.  Kinda cool, huh?  It was actually really fun to do.  Check out Meez if you want to see what your animated self looks like.  But I feel that it is my responsibility to tell you that it’s kinda addicting and rather time consuming.  You’ve been warned.  So don’t go blaming me when you spend 2 hours of your precious time making yourself into a cartoon character. 

So my husband doesn’t think that animated me looks anything like real me. Is he blind? Can’t he see the striking resemblance? Okay, damn it, he’s right.  It doesn’t look like me.  It’s more like a skinnier, younger, more hip version of me.  Though I do dress just like this on a daily basis and I really am the proud owner of a pair of bright orange rubber clogs. (Oh, how I love my Crocs.)  So what if animated me looks like a teenager? 

Anyhoo, I’m off to create an animated version of my husband so that animated me and animated him can have an animated affair.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m a fraternal twin.  My twin is a boy, which makes him my brother – duh!  Being identified as a twin is important to me, it has always been important.  I even have the kanji symbols for twin tattooed on the inside of my right ankle.  And no, before you ask, my brother doesn’t have the same tattoo.   

My brother and I have kinda grown apart in recent years.  I know this.  He knows it.   Neither one of us actually talks about it.  It’s just how it is.  It kinda sucks really.  There’s this one person that you think will always be your closest friend and then one day you wake up to realize that you don’t even know that much about them anymore.  How does that happen?  Life, I guess, just gets in the way.  Neither one of us is to blame and yet we are both to blame. It’s not how I ever imagined things between us, but things happen.  We both, I guess, have gotten caught up in our own lives.         

Obviously my brother and I turn 30 on the same day -  actually he’ll turn 30 a whole 13 minutes before me, but who’s counting?   Soon after I started this blog I remember asking him if he was bothered by the prospect of turning 30.  He said that he really hadn’t thought much about it but that he didn’t think it would be an issue for him.  Why does he react one way and I another to the same life event?   And then, it hit me, like a ton of bricks, of course turning 30 wouldn’t bother him.  He’s doing exactly what he thought he’d be doing by the age of 30.

For as long as I can remember my brother wanted to be a politician.  And if my memory serves me, his dream has always been to be a United States Senator one day.  That’s a pretty lofty goal for a kid.  When we were younger I used to laugh at him when he would say this and never for a minute thought that it was possible.  I know, it was totally wrong and completely unsupportive of me.  Give me a break, I was like 16 years old!  And besides,  he used to call me a dog and once threw a hammer at my head.

My brother moved out to Colorado a few years back.  Colorado has been good for him.  He loves it there.  Says he’s never coming back East.  (Not like I’m one to judge, I don’t even live in the same hemisphere.)  He will run for office in Colorado some day, I’m sure of that.  As for now, he works for the State by day, and is “super Democrat boy” by night. 

I never realized just how involved and how dedicated my brother (whose first name is Mark) is to achieving his life long goal until I came across the following in a blog post on DemNotes. 

Let me stop and say a couple of words about Mark. …Mark is easily one of the most under-rated folks in the State Party structure. Quietly, he’s been walking door-to-door with candidates across Colorado — doing everything he can to elect Democrats whereever he can. He does all of this in addition to his normal job duties as Treasurer, which are incredibly taxing (no pun intended). Here’s my point: I sure hope that the folks on the State Central Committee keep Mark — he is a HUGE asset to our Party.

Wow. 

There’s a lot I don’t know about my brother.  Even still, I’m one proud twin sister. 

I’m not going to talk about the Oscars, which, by the way, were carried by TNT in English without Spanish overdubbing.  The first time in 4 years that I’ve been able to watch them in English, plain old English.  Ahhh….the mother tongue.  I actually wouldn’t have minded one bit if they were in Spanish but I just can’t do the whole English with real-time Spanish translation.  Ends up sounding like a whole new language to me.     

So the fact that the Oscars were in English this year caused me watch a lot more of it then I had planned.  Needless to say, since they didn’t start 10pm Argentina time and lasted 4 hours (though I called it a night after enduring just under 3 hours of the broadcast)  I woke up a very tired and somewhat cranky individual this morning.  Though the cranky part may have something to do with my lack of coffee intake.

Our coffee maker broke the other day.  Okay, 5 days ago to be exact.  But who’s counting?  I have very bad karma when it comes to coffee makers.  Since I’ve been married, I have been the proud owner of 5 different coffee machines.  That would be approximately a coffee machine per year of marriage.  So the fact that this particular machine broke is of no real surprise – it was long over due seeing that we’ve owned it now for almost 18 months.  Aren’t these things suppose to last longer than a year? 

This time, probably because it’s on the more expensive end as far as coffee makers go and because i’m just sick and tired of buying new coffee makers, I wasn’t about to give up that easily.  After a bit of research I was able to identify the problem – the one way valve in the bottom of the unit was clogged - and fix it.  As of 10PM this evening our coffee maker works!  Hallelujah!    

And all thanks to my new found expertise of being able to fix small appliances.  Remind me sometime and I’ll tell you the story about how I fixed our portable DVD player.    

The regular featured Blog will not be posted this evening due to prempting by the Oscars which will, of course, be accompanied by a huge bowl of vanilla ice cream.

I’ll be sure to fill you in tomorrow on what it’s like to watch the Oscars as they are simultaneously dubbed in Spanish.

My husband went to Blockbuster last night and returned with 3 movies – 2 for us and 1 for the kids.  Among them was Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center.  I’ve never had a desire to watch this film, or any other film about the events of 9-11.  I know my own limitations and reliving the events of that day is something I’m not ready to do.  Something I maybe never be ready to do.  Still, it seemed important to him that we watch it; that he watch it. 

He lost a friend that day.  We rarely talk about it.  We should.     

Fifteen minutes into the film, my husband turns to me and asks me to shut it off.  He didn’t have to ask twice.  The urgency in his voice to put an end to the emotional rollercoaster that he was on was apparent.  

I was reminded that my husband is not super human and that under the stoic exterior he shows the world there is a sensitive and vulnerable person.  I was reminded of why I fell in love with him in the first place.

I fumbled for any remote I could reach and just started pressing buttons trying to erase the images from our minds as quickly as possible.  The images remained.  These are not images that will go away just because I shut the television off.  These are not images from a movie set but are own memories burned into our consciousness that will not go away no matter how hard we try.      

We sat in silence for a bit.  I crawled over to where he was sitting and just wrapped my arms around him holding on as tight as I could.     

He watched the entire movie this afternoon while I was attending a birthday party with my daughter.  He needed to get through it.  He needed to grieve.  He needed to remember. 

If I could only be that strong.