What I've Learned From Romance Novels

It's funny how having your circumstances change suddenly without your control can put you in situations to which you'd never previously have agreed.  Think about you; how many times have you witnessed a behavior from someone removed from your social circle and thought, "How does that person even have time for that?"  Something like, oh I don't know, collecting plants, buying scratch-offs, or figure skating.  Something decidedly very "not you".

Then something catastrophic happens, like... a car accident three blocks from your house that totals all involved vehicles -including yours- and before you know it, you're spending more time in the hospital than in the gym and more money on co-pays than bar tabs.  The horror.

I keep telling people I'm OK, but am I really?  I started reading romance novels.  I'd even go as far as to defend them and say no no, not the ones .25 yard sale ones that boast a bare-chested Fabio with wind blowing through his unbuttoned shirt and a Disney-princess looking type woman clinging to him with her whole soul, definitely not those.  I'd probably be lying; I'm sure I've read an e-book and just spared myself that horrifying reality of having to sit in public with that inappropriately desperate cover begging for attention while its reader tries just as desperately to not attract unwanted attention.

It started with Fifty Shades of Grey.  I read it and found the mixture of romance (a word I find ironic to describe these types of books; please see my discussion herein) and suspense alluring.  I blame recent trauma.  I believe I started reading to stop the feeling of hopeless sadness in my own life and get lost in someone else's -- all while in the privacy of my own home.  I read the other two in the trilogy.  I didn't even know it was a trilogy.  Then I read the Crossfire trilogy.  Gabriel's Inferno trilogy.  Some JoJo Moyes mixed in for sanity.  Finally, I was oddly encapsulated in Colleen Hoover's tales of young adult heartache. Why?? I guess heartache loves company.

Back to the why:  People do things and enjoy situations and relationships because there is a degree of being able to relate it back to oneself, right?  There's obviously something I'm getting out of these books to keep putting myself through the worn and predictably torturous storylines.  In some regard I feel like if you've read one romance novel, you've read them all.  The names and situations are interchangeable but the same truths about what love and life is and how it is acquired (as written, mind you, 98% of the time from a women's point of view) apply, just the source of the drama changes.

1.  Women apparently love when men watch them sleep.  Especially if the men take secret pleasures in snapping photos of them mid-slumber.  Bonus points for displaying it on the wall.  Extra bonus points if she goes through your phone only to be surprised to find albums full of photos of her sleeping.  Awe!

2.  Mercurial.  Look it up, because every man in every romance novel is described with that word.  And it's apparently very attractive to become obsessed with Dr. Jeckyl AND Mr. Hyde.  If one beats you, and one loves you, the love side wins.  Bruises heal. Love is for-eeeverrrrrr.

3.  He has TONS of money, but he loves you because you're not attracted to his money, you're attracted to him and his lifestyle.  Which is only possible because of his money.  Then he falls in love with you and makes you spend it against your will.  First. World. Problems.

4. He stalks you to protect you.  Privacy be damned, if you're flying to Los Angeles, he's on the ground waiting for you with a private car, despite the fact he was in New York with you two hours ago.  Private jets travel faster than commercial planes, duh.

5.  More push-pull than the doors at Walmart.  Love him, leave him, love him, leave him.  Whatever you do, don't have a consistent week or the book gets to be a total snoozefest.

6. Don't talk to the help.  Seriously.  What are you even thinking.

Telltale Signs You're Dating a Tool

A "tool" is a social characteristic that is easily recognized, difficult to discern, and even more difficult to explain. They are communicable blood-sucking zombies of the social world; let them in your head and you're likely to turn into one yourself, or at least be perceived that way. Additionally put, if life were a video game in which the goal was to achieve self-respect and high standing among your peers, tools would be the deceptors who used an initially-compelling charm to join your team and then slowly began to pick-pocket your cool points.

Now, everybody knows what a douchebag is. However, tools are a bit more deceptive. Unlike douchebags, tools are not as easy to identify from a distance and, in fact, you may not know this person is a social detriment until you begin to ask yourself why this person can't quite follow through on all of the 'awesome' they're promising you. Whereas douchebags lack status, pieces of ass, and money but still behave in such a manner that they do possess these "items", tools are able to acquire these things but lack any admirable sense of modesty. Akin to douchebags, tools are helplessly unaware of their social standing. Much like how one finds out about another's venereal disease, one's "tool-hood" is strictly word-of-mouth and discussed openly solely in that person's absence. In fact, they are their own biggest-kept secret.

A tool, by definition, is "a person manipulated by another for the latter's own end" which leads me to believe that 'tool' is truncated from 'tooler' which is what these people are. They are manipulators for a sole purpose: making them not appear as the self-loving narcissists they truly are.

Nobody wants to be one, and nobody wants to date one.

1. Tools are cunning conversation manipulators. Does the exchange with this person feel very one-sided? Well, it is. Their questions are just statements in disguise. They will lead you into conversations they want to have, and do a lot of telling you about themselves. Did you ask? No- you don't have a chance to. If they ask you if you've ever been to Australia, it's not because they care - it's so they can tell you about their trip there last summer. If you come away from these interactions feeling cheated, as if you've reluctantly performed a pro bono service by listening -- you might be dating a tool. They would suck their own dicks if they could; they don't need you.

2. Tools lack curiosity. This is primarily because nothing is going to ever be quite as interesting as they are. Unless you are dead inside, meeting someone new and the ensuing getting-to-know-you process is quite exciting. For the next few days, your obsessive mind is filled with the Facebook stalking, the Googling, and the scouring the mutual friend pool in any attempt to unearth more information about your potential new object of interest. Their sense of adventure is non-existent; tools not only do not but are not interested in digging any deeper than the surface and make no attempt to question you further on your interests, desires, or needs. Mind you, they expect that you've checked up on them, and they'll have a convincing excuse why they know nothing about you. The unsaid expectation is that you will become a fan instead of a partner with an opinion, and assimilate his generic interests (see #6). He will often tell you how high his standards are, how he's obsessively picky, and how special you are for him having chosen to spend time with you. The keyword here is "surface" as in, he's trying to hide the fact that there is nothing below it.

3. Tools love to tell you how badass and awesome they are. Their cleverly-spun, self-obsessed stories cast them in the limelight as the hero that did something so funny homeless people laughed, or how they walked by the city's best restaurant ever and they knew like half of the people in it. They'll mention that they are fun, that they are smart, that they are a 'good catch', or that they have a great personality -- anything to keep you from having to come to the conclusion yourself. The concept of show-don't-tell escapes this guy, and the only person talking about him is, well, him...and maybe his 19-year-old ex-girlfriend who doesn't know any better. Likewise, if you are actually embarrased for the guy in social situations due to his anemic self-awareness, he's a tool. If, within a couple weeks of knowing the guy, you can predict his every response, he's a tool. As a close friend of mine pointed out: if you have to tell someone how awesome you are, you're probably lying.

4. Tools refer to themselves in the third person. Seriously. Some of us do it as a joke, in a high-pitched voice as homage to self-deprecation. Tools do it as a change-up from having to start every sentence with "I". Even more groan-worthy are those who, in adulthood, still refer to their penis in third "person" in casual conversation. Some time back in college, you should have learned to become one with your penis' desires. Innuendo is funny, talking plainly about what Mr. Squiggles did this morning is not. Moreover, we only need to hear that you have a big dick one time. One time. Trust me, no one forgets. If you have to step back from him and think, "Is he serious?" and you come to find that yes, he is serious -- he's a tool.

5. Tools give themselves their own nicknames. They are usually mind-blowingly clever, too. Minus some letters, tack on an '-o', '-s', '-y', 'Mc-'or '-ski' and there you have it! Instant tool-name generator. Don't expect this to stop with names, though. There are so many things in the immediate environment that you can add '-ski' to, and it's SO FUNNY. Let's get some brewskis, brah!

6. Tools are self-proclaimed artists. And, "if you're lucky" they'll play, draw, write about, or speak their poetry to you. You will be able to recognize one of these self-proclaimed artist types because they will drop as many hints as fucking possible without coming straight out and divulging their "secret". The painfully feigned sense of mystery includes: leaving guitar picks out on every table in the house, tacking guitar tabs to the fridge, purposely placed amp in middle of the floor, guitar straps hanging from the door, pretentious music collection, etc. Very much like a child playing an ostrich-like game of hide-and-seek, you still feel a responsibility to humor this person until your brain cannot possibly stand being patronized any longer. Be ready for the theatrical debut of coyness when you finally ask the question, "So, you play guitar?"

7. Tools love to hide behind the facade of gender inequality. Sometimes, late at night when you're watching an inane show on a cable channel and a Taco Bell commercial comes on wherein the punchline is inevitably that the girl doesn't understand that the guy just wants a taco because she's too stupid and the only way guys can assert their dominance is to love tacos more than women-- somewhere a tool is laughing, because, in a tool's mind: tacos > women. It's not only a fact, it's a way of life. These kinds of commercials are marketed to tools. They believe that drinking a beer that is more expensive than Bud Light will, in fact, make them cooler people. They identify with the stereotypical humor in situational comedies, because they find comfort in predictability. They are scared of the word 'feminism' because they only see it as a threat to being a 'real man'. He believes all lesbians should be traditionally attractive. He believes it is his man duty to ogle and talk in graphic detail about members of the opposite sex. He subscribes to Maxim Magazine, and not the truth that Mariah Carey's hips were Photoshopped. He talks shit about his girlfriend when she isn't around. If you receive an e-card that reads, "My Balls Aren't Going to Lick Themselves" from your date, he might be a tool.

8. Tools have no sense of humor. Ok, that's a stretch. Everyone has a "sense" of humor, even if it really, really sucks. A learned person could explain the intricacies and complexity of the human nature to respond to humorous stimuli, however, I tend to categorize people by those that appreciate conceptual irony and those who are wholly unaware of it. They lack the sense of comfortability it takes to make a joke about oneself, so they defer to simplicities like farts, laughing at fat people, and Adam Sandler movies.  If this post has made you laugh, you are safe.

9. Tools will read this post and still not realize they're tools. No one who is truly a tool will embrace or admit it; in fact, one of the defining characteristics of being a tool is the vehement denial of being a tool. In other words, they piss where they drink.

Please heed the following:
1.  Guilt by Association is real.
2.  Run Away.

How to Win at Life (or Pretty Much Anything Else)

And I won't even charge you monthly installments or make you read my book.  I can pretty much tell you how to win at life in a paragraph.  Now - whether or not you want to actually commit to it is up to you.

Life is merely a tangled web of complicated  (and not-so-complicated) systems.  One of the first lessons we learn in school is about how our body is a complex system.  The next lesson we learn is called aging, in which we learn how those systems continually fuck us over until we die.  There is hope.  Until death, anyway.

Without further ado, here it is - the secret to how to win at life:

1.  Identify the system
2.  Learn the system
3.  Beat the system

It should be further noted that this does not apply to every system in life but I'm going to gauge that save for perhaps 'dating women' this plan is pretty solid.  I know what you are thinking - how can it be that easy?  Well, my friends, sometimes there is a little elbow grease between steps 1 and 3 and that is where we lose people.  The above steps are inherently the recipe for any scheme you will ever encounter.  You have the power to do all of these things on your own.

Everyone is really good at identifying the system.  This is the thing that you want and do not have.  Yet.  Enter our favorite defense mechanism:  excuses.

"Well she's just really lucky."
"She's just always been skinny."
"That stuff is way too complicated for me."

Yeah, you've heard these kind of comments before I'm sure.  They are normally uttered from people I like to call haters.

Haters haven't progressed to step 2 wherein they learn the system, e.g., 'she' is really skinny because she spends 7 hours every week at the gym.  Or, 'she' is really lucky because she plays the lottery every day, and you don't.

Now, maybe you're not a hater.  Maybe you just want in on some of that sweet lucky action.  Three words. Learn.  The.  System.  Find out who is benefits from said system and start stalking them.  Find out what actions they are taking to ensure their success.  More importantly, find out what actions they are not taking to solidify that success.  Find the loophole.  Lo and behold you are likely to learn that luck has very little to do with success.

In my experience, a lot of people like to claim that they try really hard to do things and just aren't successful. However, if you look back at what actions have really been taken in their 'trying hard' arsenal, often it's pretty empty.  If you want to win the lottery, playing once and deeming yourself unlucky is not really trying that hard.  I call bullshit.  Playing every day for three years and still not winning anything might be unlucky.  Let's call it what it is.

Beating the system might entail you getting into some kind of routine.  Maybe it means you go to the gym two more times a week.  Maybe it means you spend an hour entering internet contests.  Chances are, you are going to need to employ some sort of brain power and some sort of strategy.  The fruits of your labor may be a better self-confidence, a more healthy body, or in my case $4,000 worth of prizes in six months and a trip to NYC.

But I'm probably just lucky.

Phone Calls

I think things are always worse when you're dealing with extreme temperatures.  I guess that is not only physically sound but metaphorical as well.  Our air conditioning has been out at work for days (coming off of an earlier week of it being out at home) and the Galileo thermometer is sinking as far as it can, bearing the blatant reminder that it's well over 80 degrees in the office.  The expression 'sitting here stewing' comes to mind.  I'm not sure what it is about being subjected to extreme heat that has the ability to inflate every irritant within my soul but saying that I'm 'frustrated' only begins to encompass what I feel I'm going through.  The heat is just the accelerant.  My woes extend further than the need to feel comfortable in my own office.

I feel like I have been stuck in a web of frustration for some time now.  I have always had pride in my independence and even though I fiercely guard it, I relinquish bits and pieces as pawns in chess games of compromise.  I like to control my own life.  I like to make decisions on my own merit that benefit myself and those around me.  It has come to my attention over the past ten years that taking control of my own life is actually something of which to be proud, since I have seen several people just as eager to have an excuse for failure so that they don't have to be accountable for whatever they do or don't do.  I don't take hits to my independence very lightly and I feel as though I have been walking on eggshells for 'the greater good' for over a year.

We all know in our hearts what we feel is right and what is wrong, but the cold realization is that there is a price on both.  A settlement.  A trade-off.  A limitation of our resources that all of a sudden makes the wrong thing seem more right, due to the circumstances of course.  The wrong thing comes into focus as not as bad when we're not willing to, or have convinced ourselves we can't, fight any further for the right thing.  I guess it's kind of disgusting, and there also aren't any other answers.  People don't like feeling they've died without reason, so they search for acceptable reasons so death doesn't seem so empty.  When there aren't any answers we just make them up as we go.  Maybe we should just stop asking questions.

Don't Call Me Daughter

"But don't you want a child of your own?"

It's a question that I've been asked a lot lately.  Ever since my boyfriend and his young 3-year old daughter moved into my house, I have been playing half-time mom.  But it's not really mom because she already has a mother, and despite how good or bad of a mother she is, you always have to respect the mother.  It's not like she is my step-daughter, as he is already legally married to (yet separated from) her biological mom, and not to me.  She isn't my adopted daughter, as there is no legal paper stating that this is the case.  I can't claim her as a dependent on my taxes, even though she is quite dependent on me, and I can't really call her my roommate because, well, she doesn't really pay her share of rent.  When she is unruly, I have the authority to discipline her and when she wants to play a game, I am the first person she runs to.  I come out of the shower to find her delightfully plodding through the hallway in my shoes that are ten sizes too big for her, and when we go out anywhere she excitedly introduces me to everyone as if I am something awesome that needs to be shared.  When she remembers something I've told her weeks ago, I feel a fluttering of joy.  And, when she is cranky and doesn't want to give me a hug or kiss, I feel a pang of sadness.  We may not share the sacred biological bond, but how far does that go when raising your child?  She is as much mine as my own would be.

I catch myself so many times when I'm using titles to describe all of us.  I am guilty of using 'Mommy' and 'Daddy' when talking to my dog, so naturally having an actual human and calling myself by my own name seems awkward and foreign.  I can't tell you how many times someone else has been speaking to her in these terms and called me 'Mommy' by mistake and then clasped their hands over their mouths the same as if they had said an expletive, mouthing to me "I'm sorry".  People are so drawn to that nuclear family unit, it's almost an inconvenience that we're not 'Mommy & Daddy' to everyone else.


It is a difficult deviation from a traditional family unit to one where it seems as though people that love each other were just seemingly thrown together.  For all intents and purposes, and to anyone who were to observe us in our daily life, we are very much a family.  However, when people start asking questions things get difficult for me.

"Well, she lives with us but she's his child.  Well, 50% of the time.  What?  Oh, no we're not married just living together.  He's married to someone else.  Oh, but they're separated."  

Then the dreadful, "Oh, so you're not her mother."  Is this the same way that adopted parents feel when other peers learn of the adoption?  Oh, so you mean you just fill the mother role, but you're not the mother.  What's the difference?  Labor?  Chins that look similar?  A genetic predisposition for high blood pressure?

Oh wait, let me guess.  "You'll understand when you have children of your own".

Breaking The Engagement: 6 Months Later

When I tell people that I broke off my engagement, they usually tend to tell me that they have no idea how that feels, and they can't even imagine what I am going through.  Allow me to try to explain.

When I saw this Lamebook post the other day, I laughed right into the screen.  I laughed from both sides; the annoyed and the annoying, because I was once engaged and I uploaded a picture very similar to this onto Facebook to alert my friends and pseudo friends that hey, I've grown up now!  Someone is buying me sparkly things, check it out (especially you, people that blew your chances)!

Ugh.

Breaking off an engagement, especially when it isn't necessarily mutual is just traumatic.  It's not as traumatic as being hit by a semi and nearly plunging to your death into a shallow, icy river, but thinking back that would have been a lot quicker and maybe even less painful.  As if the break wasn't enough to grieve over, there are so many things that require un-doing in "It's Already Done" land.  

A lot of brides sign up for TheKnot.com right after engagement where you're supposed to talk to bitchy brides-to-be about how crazy you all fucking are and why it's so goddamned important to freak out if your bows are one shade too dark and by God if they don't match the flowers just so, a rampage is to ensue.  Can I tell my fiancee I don't like his Best Man?  Is it bad etiquette to say 'no children'?  My family is paying more than his family for wedding expenses!  Help!  BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH.  It does a fantastic job of overwhelming you to the point that you forget what is actually important about your wedding day.  The only great thing about TheKnot.com is that when you get married and the computer recognizes that your account is now days later than your earlier-entered projected wedding date, you get automatically graduated to TheNest.com.  TheNest.com is exactly like the Knot, except that now everyone talks about being newlyweds and when their husbands are gonna let them have babies.  Home decor dilemmas?  Say it isn't so.  He wants blue and you want lilac?  You should probably cry about it online to other paranoid and delusional people, I've heard that helps.  You know what really sucks though?  When you can't undo your account (and get too angry navigating the site to figure out how) and tell the damn site that you didn't get married at all and that you're not a Nestie, you're just alone.  Good old-fashioned alone.  Thanks Nest for reminding me.  Thanks for the follow up 'congratulations, hope you had fun on your honeymoon' e-mail you sent me, because that didn't make me cry at all.  Also, thanks for the awesome newsletters you send out that beg the real important questions like Are You Having Enough Sex?  Are You Ready for a Baby?  and other reminders that I can stop trying to 'hook a man' such as 6 Great Comfort Food Recipes and Great Date Nights Without Leaving The House.  I don't need Home Buying Help.  I only need help figuring out how the fuck to get OFF YOUR MAILING LIST BECAUSE I DON'T LIVE IN PRINCESS DREAM LAND ANYMORE.  

Another awesome thing about calling off an engagement is running into someone you haven't seen since they saw you last wherein you were engaged.  It's one of those anchor topics that they are sure to ask you about right off the bat.  "How was the wedding!" or "When is the wedding!"  It's almost-always good-natured, which makes the sympathetic recoil even worse when you explain that you didn't get married after all, and/or any time you use the term ex-fiancee.  This is generally followed by "What happened?" (then like 80 vodka sodas) or "Better now than five years down the road."  Thanks; I will keep reminding myself of that when I log in to my bank account and realize I spent all my money on down payments for futility and I can no longer afford to buy new pants or dog food.

Also, commercials for diamonds, engagement, or anything to do with weddings?  Not so much.  Never has anything in the history of things been able to sour a day like seeing two happy people getting fake-TV engaged after yours fell apart.  Nothing.  They can die of feigned happiness into a pit of rainbows for all I care.  And I don't.

Have you ever heard of wedding dress angst?  Well I just made that term up, but it exists.  This is a unique blend of wistfulness, sadness, and pure anger.  One of the saddest moments in my entire life was when I walked into the room after canceling my wedding, and saw my wedding dress just hanging there, still in protective cellophane.  It was just like seeing a garment woven with my own dreams, time lapsing right in front of me, collecting dust, waiting there until.... what?  When?  Maybe waiting for absolutely nothing at all; maybe it would never have the one moment for which it was specifically designed to have. And, even if it did get its moment, something meant to be so virginal and pristine and so sacred had already been tarnished by a past failure, and would forever.  I thought ahead to myself in five years, putting 'dust off the wedding dress' on my list of things to do for the day.  This is the springboard into the anger, in which the dress itself and what it is supposed to stand for is so beautiful that it must, too, be destroyed in the same fiery pit of pain and despair that I've been suffering through for months.  I can't even pass a wedding dress in a window without feeling like an angel just stabbed me in the heart.  It is an inconceivably difficult emotional situation, one that I can't even say with any certainty will get better.

How much of a free-thinking badass you are in everyday life gives you absolutely no defense to the inordinate amount of failure you'll be feeling on your shoulders, imposed from yourself, their (and your) friends, the unrelenting media, and just life in general.  I was at a point where I couldn't even see two birds perched beside each other on the same branch without wanting to throw myself onto the ground and cry.  There is a dark month or two in which experiencing anything or anyone happy just conjures this deep, black anger from inside your soul.  I would get pissed off at the sun for shining, strangers for doing just about anything, and other shit that made no sense whatsoever.  I would walk past a child stacking blocks and feel a real need to kick them all over if for no other reason than that they made the kid happy, and fuck that kid for being happy, 'cause I'm not.  Because if I'm a good person and bad things happen to me, then only in fairness should they happen to all good people to make me feel better, right?  Because having a broken heart is complete justification for me being a self-absorbed dick for as long as I want, just so you know.  You aren't wearing a cast or a sling, and so no one walking by you on the street knows what sort of scarred emotional burden you are carrying.  You're 30 years old and you have a job, and no employer is going to give you cry breaks in 15-minute intervals so you can feel sorry for yourself and reflect back on your sad life.  Clients don't stop calling in because your heart hurts.  The obviousness of life continuing to go on around you is another cold reminder that yours does, too, whether you feel it should or not.

Eventually it does, and you get past your wedding-date-to-be with a cold shiver and a box of wine, there are no more e-mails to send canceling any other venues or services, you stop getting pissed off at birds, and you move on with the friends that didn't stop speaking to you out of loyalty to your ex.  Essentially you go through a transformation that you and everyone else convinces you is 'way better'.

And one day, you believe it.

There's a Mouse in the House

"Those, my dear, are mouse turds."

Phrases you don't want to hear after having eaten a handful of something before noticing soggy, bloated pellets in the other half of the handful of something that you know are mouse turds and yet do not want to believe are mouse turds thereby demanding a second opinion of said mouse turds to solidify that they are, in fact, mouse turds.  And you just ate food marinating in mouse turds.  Happy Mouse Turd Wednesday!

First note:  Mice like spaghetti.
Second note:  I no longer like spaghetti.

At this point in the story, I am in the kitchen anticipating a lovely dinner of handmade turkey meatballs and whole wheat spaghetti, standing by the boiling pot of spaghetti delicately plucking under-cooked strands out at one-minute intervals to ensure the utmost al dente for my family. Visions of beautiful steamy plates of intertwining noodles cradling perfectly-sized juicy meatballs swimming in spicy red sauce dance through my mind as the hot rush of steam warms my face upon straining the water from the noodles.  As I put the noodles back into the pot, I look back at the strainer.  I almost didn't.  Oh, God, I almost didn't.  My heart went from normal operation to one thick super-beat.  Whatthefuckisthat.  WHATTHEFUCKISTHAT!

There they were, lodged into the strain holes.  The things that should not be.  Bloated green pellets.  My mind raced.  Did I make spinach?  Did the dishwasher fail to thoroughly clean the dish from last use?  Or do I now need to come to terms with the fact that I just contracted mouse AIDS?

I already told you how this story ends.  Well, I mean, I already told you where it stands.  Where it ends is obviously in a crippling, inevitable fit of mouse AIDS.

What makes me the most angry about this experience is that I feel guilty for wanting to kill the mouse living intermittently in my pantry. Screw Tom & Jerry, Disney's American Tale, and Rescue Rangers for making me think mice are cute.  Mice are not cute.  Mice do not wear aviator hats and sing to the moon and go on rescue missions to make your life easier.  Nothing mice do end up in cheering and moral victory.  Mice shit in your food and your mouth and ruin spaghetti dinners and make nests out of your NASA pot holder that you got from Kennedy Space Center.

Also filed under 'improbable' is the fact that dogs and mice are best buds?  The question is not how my dog would react to a mouse upon discovering one, but rather, why the fuck has he not killed it yet?  I mean yes I got him for companionship and protection and he is super cute, but come on dog, do your fucking job and eat the damn turd-maker before he ruins another meal.  

Just don't scare any more shit out of it.