Cellularus Mortus Est.

It's been a while, hasn't it?   I've got no blogging mojo. I don't know if I can bring BMB back to its former glory. I want to, I just... I don't know. Sure, there's stuff to talk about. And most of it's funny. Even the stuff that's kinda sad becomes at least a little bit funny on here. And the stuff that's already funny becomes fucking hysterical.

I haven't forgotten that my last post gave the teaser of Dumpster Diving With The Inlaws. There was a bit of concern about whether or not I'd be able to do the post justice. Which brings me to a sad tangent.

My red LG Shine - my constant companion for the last two and a half years, the always-dependable little snark buddy I carried in my pocket who snagged such classic PK photos as these:

Has gone to Cell Phone Heaven. Just up and died. I can't tell if it makes me feel better or worse to know I didn't do anything wrong, like put it in the washer (which I did with my Nokia, twice). Just one day, right after I hung up with R, the display screen went all wonky, and then blank.

And she took a whole lot of my pics with her, because, like a dummy, I didn't think to put them all on the memory card. I was devastated. R tried to fix her, and it was a valiant effort, but ultimately unsuccessful. I literally wept as she was unceremoniously tossed into the trash. Even now, it's sitting in a trash bag in my bedroom because I didn't have the heart to put it out by the curb today.

I'm not ready to let go. I haven't bonded with my new phone, the Samsung Mythic, yet. It's technologically superior in every way (including a WAY better camera), and I'll get used to it, but my Shine, well, it was like my favorite pair of jeans. Scuffed, stained, beat up, not the most fashion-forward, but a perfect fit.

I feel the same sense of loss as I did when I wrecked the Mazda a few years ago. You really should click the link to that story. It was mangled, the driver's side window didn't roll down and the kids were getting way too big to cram in the back seat, but we'd been through so much together. I hated leaving it in the parking lot to die.  Part of me wanted to say a few words, perhaps sing a hymn or two, and then bury it in the backyard.

But that's just silly.

The action, I mean; not the feeling. The feeling's not at all silly to me, because when pictures are gone and you can't get them back, it's sad, isn't it? Pictures of Tito's first day of kindergarten, my dream date with Cam Janssen, vacations, random moments of deliciously evil humor, gone forever. I know the best pictures are here on the blog and on Facebook, and it wasn't like I scrolled through the pictures on my phone very often, but I knew they were there, and now they're not.

I'm in mourning.

And there's an added dimension to why I was so upset by this. We're coming up on Pie's last day of Second Grade. I don't remember if I wrote about it at the beginning of the school year or not, but I know I felt it then as I do now. Pie is now the age that our beloved and dearly missed friend Jack was when he died. From this point on, every milestone in Pie's life will be something that Jack never got to experience. And the last day Beeb and I saw Jack? The last day of Second Grade.

What if I was Jack's mom and all of those pictures on my phone were suddenly gone? What if something happened to one of my kids, or my friends, or my parents, or R tomorrow? I would be absolutely destroyed. Like a picture of a house ripped off of its foundation and torn to matchsticks by a tornado. That'd be me.

I've spent this whole school year with a constant awareness of the last year of Jack's life - the year that we were lucky enough to know him. Beeb's turning thirteen in July. It breaks my heart that Jack never got to be thirteen. Or even ten. It kills me to think of all the things that he never got to do. God, I miss that kid. So yeah, that's a big part of why the loss of a bunch of pictures was so devastating to me.

But, my friends, like the little boy who survived the crash that killed every other passenger on the plane, there is a small bit of good news amidst the devastation. Somehow, I had the uncharacteristic presence of mind to forward the pictures of Dumpster Diving With The Inlaws to myself so I could upload them for this post. So the pictures you are about to see are among the last ever taken with my LG Shine.

Easter Sunday we went out to the Inlaws, as we usually do. But this time it was Large Trash Disposal week in their little town, which means people could take their old furniture and appliances and stuff to the end of a gravel road and drop it off, leaving a giant parking lot full of crap, free for the taking. The Aldis were in Hog muthahfuggin Heaven.

So after a yummy lunch and a bit of quality entertainment when Aldigirl (age 11) intentionally bit her younger brother (age 5), and the Reverend scolded her by saying she was going to be "labeled" as a biter, and did she reeeally want that (shit, she's probably already labeled as a buck-toothed, slack-jawed, skinny-as-a-rail, whiney-ass brat - why not throw Biter in the mix?), we went Dumpster Diving.  With my Inlaws.

The guy in the purple shirt is The Reverend. They ended up with a headboard for Aldiboy's room and I think a bed frame and some other random crap.






We got some director's chairs, a carpet steamer, and...

A KEGERATOR.




That's it from the bottom. I thought I had a pic of it from the front, but I guess I don't.

Anyway, we took it home to see if it worked, and it turned on, but didn't cool properly. R looked up the model number on it to see if he could find a manual on it and he discovered that at the time it was new, this thing was state of the art. Even now, a few years old, it retails for over a thousand dollars.

We figured that we'd get it checked out, see what it would cost to fix, and weigh out whether or not we wanted to make the investment. R has a friend whose dad is a retired refrigerator repairman, and he offered to take a look at it.

He got it to work! Total out of pocket? FIFTY BUCKS.
Now we have to figure out where to put it in our basement.

And just think, if I hadn't wrecked the Mazda, we wouldn't have been able to take it home because it wouldn't fit in the trunk.  

Isn't Serendipity beautiful?