Why Mr. Freeze Was a Bad Name

I'm not sure if you remember the 1997 cinematic masterpiece Batman & Robin, but if you do, I'm sure you recall the evil villain Mr. Freeze, played by none other than our former Governator. Now as far as all movie villains go, Mr. Freeze is quite a badass. He freezes people solid with his cold gun. He has superhuman strength and awesome bluish skin. He delivers such memorable punny lines as "Let's kick some ice." But the one weakness Mr. Freeze has, which is never mentioned in any of the Batman movies or TV shows, is that he actually doesn't always stay frozen. Sometimes, Mr. Freeze melts.

I don't know for certain if Batman possesses the capabilities to melt and destroy Mr. Freeze, but my former neighbor Nick sure does.

Growing up, Nick and Alli lived in the house behind ours, and they were definitely my sisters' and my best friends. (An important note is that when referring to Nick and Alli, you generally just considered them to be one entity, pronounced, Nick-n-alli. Just so you know.) Manders, Moose and I spent so much time at Nick and Alli's house, and vice versa, that they were practically considered family. Even so, the first night that my parents left my sisters and I home alone to attend a party up the street, the specifically forbid us from letting anyone, including the neighbors, inside. "Manders, we're expecting you to be responsible, so that means keep the doors locked and stay inside," my parents lectured. "We'll be back in a few hours, so don't get into trouble."

And we didn't get into any trouble, really. We ate our favorite dinner of mac 'n' cheese with chicken nuggets (i.e. the only dinner my sisters and I could make on our own), watched some Nickelodeon, and enjoyed an evening without our parents. But then, maybe 2 hours after my parents left, we heard frantic knocking on our front door. We peered through the glass and saw it was Nick-n-alli. "Let us in!" they shouted. "Out house is on fire!"

For the next 30 seconds, Manders, Moose and I looked at each other and shrugged, the contemplation probably visible on our faces as we silently debated what to do. On the one hand, our mom and dad specifically told us we were not allowed to let anyone into the house, including our neighbors. On the other hand, their house was effing on fire. 

Manders made the executive decision that a burning house trumps parental rules, so we let Nick and Alli into our house. 

Nick then told us what happened. He was playing with his Mr. Freeze action figure in the afternoon, when his mom called their family to dinner. Not paying attention, he tossed the Mr. Freeze back behind him and ran to the dining room, not noticing that Mr. Freeze had landed in the top of a standing lamp, right on top of the hot light bulb. While the family was eating their lovely dinner, the Mr. Freeze action figure was getting hotter and hotter, ultimately melting into a molten goo of scorched plastic. Meanwhile, the family had no idea what's happening ... until they noticed a burning smell coming from one of the bedrooms... and then smoke alarm went off.... and then Nick-n-Alli's mom send the kids running to our house as she called 911. 

As it turned out, the house wasn't actually on fire; Nick's room was just full of smoke from the molten plastic that used to be Mr. Freeze. But that didn't stop 3 firetrucks from being dispatched to the neighbor's house. Or the panic my mother surely felt when Manders called her cell phone to say "Hi Mom, we're fine, but there's 3 firetrucks on our street..."

How to Fail at Being a Criminal

So an unfortunate thing happened at work recently: my boss's company credit card was stolen. Three fraudulent purchases to some coffee of the month club were made with the card before the boss found out and contacted her credit card company. Not a huge deal, just a minor inconvenience.

Except it wasn't really an inconvenience at all. In fact, I'd say the card being stolen was actually quite a fortunate thing. The reason for this is that the coffee purchases that the credit card thief had made were delivered to none other that our office. Yes. That is right. Someone stole a company credit card, bought coffee with it, and had the coffee delivered to our work.

And it wasn't just coffee either. We are now the owners of a brand new top-of-the-line coffee maker. As the person who makes coffee for the office often enough, and a self-proclaimed coffee connoisseur, I'd say the new coffee pot is just superb. And we had a fancy-schmancy single-cup coffee maker delivered a few days later. (Although the boss's boss said we had to return that one. Meanie.)

Oh, and might I add that the first batch of coffee that was delivered to us was absolutely disgusting. I like coffee a lot, and I like a lot of types of coffee. So it's pretty difficult to serve me coffee that I find hard to stomach. This coffee though, was just that. But hey, free coffee is free coffee, so I'll take what I can get. And the next batch of delivered coffee was quite tasty, so it more than makes up for the yucky coffee, in my opinion.

But seriously. Who steals a credit card and orders something for the people that the card was stole from? I have no intentions of ever stealing anyone's credit card, but you can bet that if I suddenly have kleptomanic tendencies and start snatching up credit cards, I'm gonna be keeping every purchase I make. But maybe that's just me. Maybe not all criminals possess common sense. This one clearly did not.

Or maybe the thief is someone who works in our office and is dissatisfied with our current coffee standards. In which case, I plead the fifth.

Why I'm a Great Sister

Growing up, Manders was the boss. Being the oldest sister, she made the rules. If Manders said run down the hall, you ran down the hall. If Manders told you to give her your candy, you gave it to her. If she told you that you were a vampire, then you'd better believe you were a vampire.

Which is exactly what happened.

As the middle sister, I was low enough on the totem pole to do whatever Manders said, but since I wasn't the youngest I wasn't the subject of her torments. That honor was reserved for Moose, the youngest sister. One day, Manders decided that dressing up in scraps of cloth leftover from my mom's sewing projects wasn't enough fun, so we needed to convince Moose that she was a vampire. I happily obliged.

Moose didn't need much convincing. Manders pretty much just said "Hey Moose. You're actually a vampire," and she believed her. "It's true," I told her. "You sometimes come out in the middle of the night and try to bite us." (I may have confused vampires with werewolves, but that's neither here nor there.)

Moose was terrified when she found out the bad news. I mean, how would you feel if you suddenly discovered you were a bloodsucking monster? But being the supportive big sisters that Manders and I were, we comforted her by telling her all the things she needed to do to transform back to a human. "Go mush up 10 snails in the front yard." "Don't eat any more chocolate, give it all to us." "Go play by yourself in your room. That will help you transform back."

The next day, we told Moose that she had successfully become a human girl again. "Good thing you had us to help you."

So what makes me a great sister?
          a) I will go along with your crazy scheme to mess with your little sister.
          b) If you're a vampire, I will help you transform back to a human.

Why I Had to Kill a Spider

I was taking a shower this morning when I met an unexpected visitor: a daddy long legs spider. Normally, I am terrified of spiders. I hate their quick little legs, all eight of them, scurrying around to try and catch me. I have a theory that all spiders are plotting together to kill me, so naturally I try to kill them first. This is true for all kinds of spiders except, of course, for the daddy long legs.

I'm not sure why daddy long legs spiders don't scare me as much as other spiders. Maybe it's because they move their long legs so slowly, so I feel pretty confident I can outrun them. Maybe it's because they look a bit silly, so I assume their awkward looks have left them feeling lonely and in need friends. Maybe it's because they have "daddy" in the name, and who can hate something that's a daddy? In any case, I don't really mind daddy long legs. When I see one in my house, I'll just leave it be.

My non-hatred of daddy long legs spiders aside, I really don't want them too close to me. In my personal space. Touching me. Which brings us to this morning. I'm in the shower, singing like a diva and washing my hair, when I turn around and see a daddy long leg on the tile above me. It's about 2 feet over my head, just chilling on the tile wall. Being the nice (and one hundred percent completely sane) person that I am, I start to talk to the spider. "Whoa there. I didn't see you. But I'm not going to kill you. You can just stay up there on the wall and I'll leave you alone."

I'm not sure if the spider didn't hear me or what, because he then proceeds to start walking down the wall.

"Stop it. Don't come any lower." (Good thing no one else was home, because I'm not sure what anyone would think to hear me talking out loud while I'm in the shower.)

The daddy long legs keeps crawling down.

"Spider, stop. Don't keep climbing down here. Climb back up. Please. If you come down here, I'm going to have to kill you. I don't want to kill you, but if you keep getting close to me I'm going to have to do it."

Still climbing down.

"Dang it, Daddy Long Legs! I'm sorry."

I cupped my hands, filled them with water, and flushed that poor spider down the drain.

And that's why, dear spider friends, if you step foot into my personal space while I'm taking a shower, I will kill you.