Y’all thought I was dead, didn’t you?  I’m not dead.

But we did just get a Wii.

(Which also explains why our clean laundry is literally waist-high.  Shit.)

We started with the same obligatory first-time Wii-ownership experience everyone has.  You know, playing all the lame Wii Sports games, feeling like a pair of jackasses while flapping our arms in the middle of the living room, creating our Miis, all that jazz.  Aaaahaha, how amusing are we?

That lasted maybe through the evening.  From there, we moved onto the ever-awesome Mario Kart, which taught me the importance of drifting, and that she who lives by the blue turtle shell dies by the blue turtle shell.  Oh, and that Kyle and I are waaaay too competitive to be allowed to play against each other.  (And that a Wii remote to the skull hurts, even when it’s in its protective rubber condom.)  And though I’ve never been a big video game person, I’m really getting hooked on the Kart of Mario.

But the game I’m absolutely addicted to is Super Mario Bros Wii.  That’s right, the old school, side-scroller , A-B-B-FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, JUMP!, Mario.  I can’t stop playing it.  And by, “can’t stop playing,” I mean, “Unless the couch is on fire, I won’t be blinking for the next two hours.”   Which is good, because currently, I am terrible at it.  (It’s those waddling mushrooms, is what it is.  Fuckers get me every time.  Also, I tend to fall off things.)  But despite the fact that it took me almost a week to get through the first two levels, I’m loving this game.

And it goes just beyond the fun of throwing fireballs at turtles and my love of the spinner-hat suit.  You see, my family never owned any kind of video game console when I was growing up.  I’m not sure if we weren’t allowed to have them or if my brother and I just never showed any interest so it never came up, but either way video games in any form were non-existent when I was a kid.  The first one I ever owned and played on a semi-regular basis was–get this–Guitar Hero, in college.  I’ve generally been very disdainful of a regular diet of video games, and generally considered them a waste of time and money.  Once in a while, sure, fine, but surely they shouldn’t hold any kind of important role in a person’s life.

Kyle, on the other hand, began playing Mario at the age of four.  For as long as he can remember, playing video games was something that he and his older brother, and later friends, shared.  Kyle had beat Mario3 by the time Kyle was 7.  If you flip through his family pictures, there’s one of their tv from the day that they beat Zelda.  He grew up with Mario the way I grew up with Sesame Street, and the game means a lot to him.

For Kyle, my inability to run and jump my way through the levels is both hilarious and mind-boggling.  To him, maneuvering his little red plumber is damn-near second nature, like tying his shoes, and he’s getting a huge kick out of coaching me through the levels.  And despite my previous dislike of  video games, I’m enjoying not only the game, but the experience.  In a way, it’s letting me experience what for many in my generation defined their childhood.  And more importantly, it’s letting me experience an important part of Kyle’s childhood, and enter into that special bond that he and those he played with have shared.

Up until now, I’ve generally considered video games to be a waste of time, something to be saved for the occasional Saturday nights with friends and beer.  But I consider the last week that I’ve spent on the couch to be an investment in my marriage, because it’s allowing me to share something with my husband that has held so much importance in his life.

Besides, as Kyle pointed out, Mario was here first.

To say that I’m a bit absent-minded wouldn’t be far from the truth.

As a kid and up through college, I was infamous for loosing things.  If it was vaguely important, I lost it.  Keys.  Shoes.  Gloves.  Pieces of any uniform.  Text books.  Homework.  Shit, I went through four retainers in about two years!  (The ironic part?  I still have the last one.)  I’m terrible about thoughtlessly putting things down, and later forgetting where I put said item.  As a result, sometimes bad things, (like not being able to find something right when I need it, loosing important pieces to an object or a set, loosing very valuable or meaningful objects,) tend to happen to me.

But sometimes, even when I’m not being careless or spacey, bad things still happen to me.  I call it serenfuckity.

Serendipity is what happens when you’re going about your business, and you happen upon something awesome.  Serenfuckity is what happens when you’re going about your business, and bad shit happens anyway.  And not just bad shit.  The worst possible shit that could happen.

Take last night.  Every solitary flat surface in our kitchen is full of dishes, including parts of the floor.  I’m tired, but I’m going to roll up my sleeves and dive in anyway.  Aren’t I responsible?  Before getting started though, I take off my wedding and engagement rings; don’t want to get soap and nasty food crap in my diamond.  Aren’t I responsible?  I place them where I always do, in a spoon rest on the back of the stove, out of the way.  Aren’t I responsible?

First thing I did was to attempt to move a giant pot of noodle-soaking water from the back burner of the stove.  As I did, the handle of the pot accidentally hit my spoon rest.  And flipped it.

Serenfuckity.

Okay, no need to panic.  I start picking through the dirty dishes.  They’ve probably just fallen down somewhere on the stove.  I find my wedding band fairly quickly, though it’s traveled farther than I suspected.  No sign of my engagement ring.  I keep searching.

Ten minutes go by.  I call my husband over to help me in my search.  We take each dish out of the sink individually and search the sink.  We take the stove top apart.  We sweep the floor on our hands and knees.  “Is there any chance it fell behind the stove?” Kyle asked.  “Honey, anything’s possible,” I responded.  We keep searching.

We pull the stove out and search behind it.  We find a gel pen, a guitar pick, and a suspicious amount of paper clips.  We get down on our hands and knees and run our fingers over every surface.  And finally, Kyle spots it.  It has fallen behind the stove and into the gap between the wall and the floor.  It is lying precariously on a bit of insulation inside the wall.  Oh, and did I mention that we live on the second floor?  It could not have fallen in a worse place.

Serenfuckity.

I run for a wire coat hanger, and breathes held, Kyle manages to fish it out.  It’s got a dust bunny clinging to it, but it’s none worse for the wear.  I’ve been extremely lucky, because all it took was a slip of the hanger and that thing was tumbling down into the wall one floor down.  And at that point, either we’re tearing the first floor wall apart, or it’s gone forever.

I was trying to be responsible.  My ring is the most beautiful, precious, and expensive object I’ve ever owned, (sentimental value aside,) and I was trying to take care of it, protect it.  And through an incredible bout of bad luck, I managed to loose it in the worst possible place, and came very close to loosing my most prized and precious possession.

Serenfuckity.

Why do my clothes sometimes come out of the washer covered in lint?

How long until they start saying “fuck” on tv before midnight?

Do deaf people “get” rhyming?

When will spell check acknowledge that ‘dumbass’ is a word?

Does anyone really enjoy eating the Freeze-Dried Astronaut Ice Cream that you get in the planetarium gift shop?  I mean, besides astronauts?

Why are 80’s fashions like cut off shoulders and legwarmers coming back in style?  Didn’t we learn from our mistakes the first time around?

Is my cat cognitive of the fact that she’s chasing her own tail?  Does she realize how silly what she’s doing is?

Why, for the love of god, why would a person get a Disney character tattooed on their body?

Does boondoggle define anyone else’s childhood summer camp experience?

Why does writing with a Sharpie feel so good, better than writing with a regular pen?

Does anyone ever ride in sidecars anymore?

If Chinese is a tonal language then how does singing work?  Do they just string words together and let the melody of the language dictate the melody of the song?  Or is like reading a MadLibs?

Does anyone actually write in all cursive?  I tried the other day, and it was awkward.

Why don’t fruit-flavored candies taste anything like the fruits they’re inspired by?  And who had the balls to think they could reinvent the flavor of fruits?

Once and for all, does cracking your joints cause arthritis?  Because if it does, I’m going to be crippled at 30.