My lateral occipital complex thingy is probably broken.

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Side note – WordPress is acting all funky today, so spacing is strange and it looks like I forgot how to make paragraphs.  Whatever.

I am all about context. If my husband tells me a story, then I want details. I need to know the who, where, what everyone was wearing, and the facial expressions of those involved. Without that info, I don’t have the whole picture. Context is also my worst enemy in writing. I always, always give too much back story. I think that, like me, everyone needs to know the gory details. As a result, I end up shoving context down your throat.

Oh well.

So, this morning I read with great interest an article in Science Daily about recent research on where scene context occurs in the human brain. It’s an evolutionary trait that developed over hundreds of thousands of years. In our earliest days, it aided us in survival and helped identify danger. Now this ability helps us with daily tasks like driving, and thank your lucky stars it does, because most people don’t pay much attention to the road. This skill is what keeps us from crashing in to one another while barreling down the highway.

Machines, advanced as they are, still have no context. The example given in the article was that, if a human were told to look at a cluttered desk and asked to identify a computer mouse, they would instinctively look next to the keyboard. A machine would not automatically associate a mouse with a computer. Though it might be able to find the mouse, it could also identify something of similar shape and size, and classify it as a mouse incorrectly.

I’m sure teams of researchers all over the world are trying to teach context to machines at this very moment, and once they have, we can say hello to the Robot Revolution and goodbye to life as we know it.

Anyway.

I’ve written previously about how, sometimes, I completely misunderstand things. It’s usually something written, like this email, or maybe something I heard. So, after reading the article, I thought, Well there you have it. I mess things up when I don’t have visual cues.

Who am I kidding?  That’s not the only time I misinterpret situations. Even with the visual cues, I get things wrong. I can only assume the portion of my brain that identifies environmental and social context cues has devolved.

Yeah, I have no idea how this translated to unbuttoned shirt alert.

Yeah, I have no idea how this translated to an unbuttoned shirt alert.

Once, I walked out of my office at work, and down the hall the director of HR and head of IT were having a conversation. Both looked up at the same time, and the IT director put his hand under his chin, palm down, and wiggled his fingers at me.

Blood rushed to my face – I’m certain I turned the color of  a tomato, and I gasped. Both hands flew to the top of my shirt, and I looked down, expecting to find my top had come unbuttoned.  When I looked back up, both men had puzzled expressions.

“What are you doing?” asked the HR director.

“I thought he was telling me my shirt was unbuttoned.” I answered. The head of HR, who was also my boss, looked horrified. But the IT guy just laughed and said, “Haven’t you ever seen Little Rascals?”

Um, no. Obviously. 

I couldn’t tell you why I thought that gesture was his way of telling me my top was undone. All I know is, for the next several weeks I was greeted with the hand wiggle by pretty much everyone, and I never wore that blouse again.

I’ll never be a pool shark

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Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

All things considered, the trip to Texas went reasonably well. It would have been smoother had we been able to stretch our legs for longer periods of time, but Arizona and New Mexico were horribly hot and dusty, and the dogs couldn’t handle it. The trip back later this summer ought to be just peachy.

Anyway.

I am so damn sick of going to the hardware store. It’s a place filled with stuff that doesn’t interest me. Plus, when you think about it, usually a trip to the hardware store means something is wrong. Pretty much everything is wrong with our place. The former owners somehow managed to leave everything just on the brink of breaking. Last December we spent nearly three weeks cleaning the freaking hazmat zone they left behind, and fixing odds and ends. This trip is no different, except more things are broken, which is just awesome.

Our first journey to Home Depot was on Thursday night, right after we rolled into town and discovered one of the toilets was broken. I knew what we needed to fix it, but was in a tired daze, and didn’t buy the right thing. So we had to go back. Then, I got to fix the toilet. I won’t go into all the details, because that would be extremely boring. The long and short of it is, I did fix it, and it took forever because the plumbing is old. And because I’m not a freaking plumber.

And then? Since I’m a little bit of a perfectionist, I went in to make an adjustment after I was done, and completely fucked it up. As you can imagine, a great deal of profanity spewed forth – I’d even classify my reaction as a full on temper tantrum. So it’s still broken. I need a little time before I tackle that chore again.

Yesterday we decided to abandon our repairs and have some much needed fun. We met my dad, stepmom and grandma for some lunch, and afterward went on a little dive bar crawl and played some pool. If we’re peeps on Facebook or Twitter, then you already know that. What you don’t know is, I am the world’s worst pool player. Always have been.

One of my grandpas, who passed away a long time ago, owned a few bars in Houston. When I was a kid he used to take me with him to go open the places up in the afternoon, which I loved. I ran around and played, and my grandpa taught me how to get a free game out of the pinball machine (and how to steal quarters from it – probably not the best thing to teach a small child. He, however, thought it was hilarious. Grandpa was quite a character). Once I was tall enough to see over the side of the pool table, he also tried to teach me to play pool. Exactly once. I managed to put a scratch a mile long in the felt. My grandpa was horrified, and that was the end of that.

Aside from all the broken crap in our place, I am happy to be back in Texas. It’s beautiful here.

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Happy Monday y’all.

So this is happening.

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Look out Texas, momma’s coming home.

We’re leaving in an hour. By car. Two people, two dogs, for a twenty hour trip – should be fun.

In the past I’ve blogged about my husband’s unpredictable work schedule, so we can never plan things out ahead of time. Needless to say, this trip came together at the last minute, and we’ll be there for…a while-ish, which is to say the trip back will be equally last minute. Whatever, I’m just rolling with it.

I’ve only made the drive from Texas to California once, fifteen years ago when I moved here. It took forever, and I swore I would never do it again. My mom drove out with me, so it was an…interesting trip. I should really look and see if I’ve ever written about it, because that story definitely deserves its own post.

Anyway, the last few days have been an exciting flurry of preparation and working out logistics. You know what I’ve put the most thought into? Not what we’re going to do about the mail, who is going to water the plant, or what I need to bring for an extended trip. My main concern has been putting together a road trip mix. The longest journey by car we’ve ever done together was seven hours, this is nearly triple that, so I figure we need the perfect mix of music to keep our sanity.

Wish us luck.

PS – My husband just walked in with a grim expression, holding a set of keys in his hand. While looking for something else, he just so happened to come across the keys to our place, which neither of us thought about. It would have been just peachy to show up after two days of travel, only to discover we were locked out.

I don’t even want to think about what other important things we’re leaving behind.

This is why we shouldn’t have kids.

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Yesterday morning I took both dogs to the vet for their shots, and an exam for Stinky. When we arrived my heart sunk, because it was jam packed with people and animals, and my other dog is difficult. At home she’s a total sweetheart, but the moment she steps out the door, she becomes a bundle of nervous, anxious energy.

Because it was so busy, I had to wait a while, during which time my min-pin worked herself into a tizzy. She used to be fine with going to the vet, however, she suffered a broken leg a couple of years ago and they had to perform surgery to put it back together. Ever since she’s been scared. Not that I blame her.

They finally called in Stinko, but unfortunately the other dog’s appointment was with a vet tech, and they still weren’t ready for her. So I brought both of them into the room, and the vet was already examining Stinky when they came for my other dog. Now, just to be clear, I did ask the vet tech if he wanted me to muzzle her (the dog, not the vet tech), and he said no. She was NOT happy about being led away, and strained at her leash to stay in the room with me. Approximately two seconds after the door shut, I heard, “oh Spazzy” in an unhappy voice.

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What?

And then the barking began. It’s worth noting that Spazzy has the world’s loudest, most shrill and annoying bark.

When I opened the door to the exam room, I was greeted by the following:

Apparently, the moment the door closed, my lovely little dog shat all over the floor. I am not kidding when I say all over. Like, her body weight in poo. And as she was doing that, she somehow twisted herself out of her harness. Then she tore through the lobby in circles and barked a mile a minute, scaring the bejesus out of the twenty or so people waiting, and their dogs, cats, rabbits, and other assorted animals, all the while being chased by four vet techs.

I was horrified, to say the least. I also had Stinko in my arms, so when I joined in the chase she was bobbing all over the place, and was not happy about that at all. Anyway, it took a couple of minutes of her terrorizing everyone, but one of the techs finally cornered my dog. I turned around to find the entire room staring at me with accusatory glares. So, feeling like the world’s worst pet owner, I pretty much tucked my tail between my legs and meekly walked back to the exam room. You should have seen the look the vet tech tasked with cleaning all the poo gave me. Awesome.

When I relayed the story to my husband he laughed hysterically. I’m fairly certain that, were we to have children, we’d be the parents whose child shows up to preschool and then runs through the room screaming his head off while knocking down all the carefully constructed blocks and legos and whatnot that the well behaved children put together. Sigh.