Huh

I kind of suck at this blogging thing.

Whispers

I think my air conditioning can tell on me.

Where have I been, you ask?  Oh, losing a job, finishing a novel, experiencing the numb faces of dentistry... Basically, life happened and it sort of caught me off guard.  But that's not why I am writing today.

I am writing because my A/C is a tattle-tale.

As far as I knew, my air conditioning and I were getting along just fine.  Sure, there was a little rattling sometimes.  And yeah, it's definitely been hotter than I'd like in my apartment of late.  But overall, I thought our relationship was pretty good.  If not good, definitely functional.

Apparently I was wrong.  While I was slumbering the morning away, peacefully and deeply, my air conditioner must have been complaining to a higher power.  I know it was telling on me, because I was awakened fifteen minutes before my alarm was set to go off by some fairly persistent pounding on my front door.

By the time the pounding finally broke through my dreams and propelled me out of bed, my cats were extremely curious about my visitors.  I lured them away from the door before cracking it open.  Outside were two guys with toolboxes.

"Hi there," they greet me, and the one closest to me clearly has a laugh in his voice.  I can't really blame him.  I was wearing penguin pajamas.

Squinting in the spring sunlight, I clear my throat and say something like, "Hi.  Can I help you?"

LaughingGuy squints back at me.  "Yeah, we're here to fix the air conditioner."  He says it with authority.  I frown in confusion.  "What's it doing?" he asks me, all solicitation and concern.

I make some hems and some haws.

"Nothing, huh?" he laughs.  He seems to like to do that.

"Nothing that I know of," I agree.  After a moment of hesitation, I figure these guys look pretty legit.  "Come on in," I offer, and open the door.

The next few minutes saw me trying to get my cats into a different room (they were quite uncooperative), and saw the toolbox guys taking apart my air conditioner (they were quite unconcerned about my cats).  But they needed a tool from the truck, so while they went to get that, I got my cats into my room and changed into regular clothing.  Well, as regular as ever, anyway.

And then five minutes later, they had fixed whatever I didn't know was wrong.

LaughingGuy wipes his hands on his jeans.  "You keep an eye on your filter, huh?"

I just repeat that last word back, "Huh?"

"Your filter.  It's really clean."

"Oh, yeah."  I don't know anything about that filter.  The fact that it was clean was pure dumb luck.

LaughingGuy nods in approval.  "Most of these people don't even know they have a filter."

Little does he know that I am one such "most people."

"It's kind of scary."  LaughingGuy jokes around with OtherGuy as they leave, and then they are out the door.  My morning interruption is over before my alarm has even gone off.

Vaguely, I wonder if they made up the thing about the A/C and the loose connection just to get a look at what they can steal later, but then I remember that they've seen my vicious guard cats, so they probably won't try anything.

I suppose it is possible it was making some kind of ungodly racket that only my neighbors could hear.
Still, though, I don't know how they knew to come.  Unless Big Brother's name is Lee.

I'm going to be a lot more guarded with my air conditioner now that I know it's got a big mouth.  And a filter.

Monstroffity

I have finally figured out what I should do with my life!

I have discovered a product with huge potential, as yet overlooked by most marketing agencies.  There are a few independent chains, mostly headed up by moms, but in the market at large, it remains quite obscure.  This product is going to sweep the parental demographic.  This product is going to make me millions!

This product was invented by my grandmother.

When I was a child, I was relentlessly pursued and harrassed by a veritable phalanx of monsters.  These monsters were masters of disguise, friends of darkness.  They hid in my closets, under my bed, in my drawers, under my pillow, in the faucet of the kitchen sink, beneath the living room carpet... everywhere.

Thankfully, these monsters had one weakness, that I knew of: light.  Sleeping with a night-light on left me completely unplagued by the photophobic creatures.  Also, I could make shadow puppets on the wall to protect me.  I had bodyguards of the llama, dog, butterfly, and giraffe variety, but no monster was a match for my shadow brachiosaurus.

This was all very well and good when I was at home, but on the rare occasion that I would spend the night with my grandmother, I had no choice but to sleep without a night-light.  I did my best to be brave.  I had a habit of growling softly until I fell asleep, and then growling some more anytime I happened to wake up for a few minutes during the night.  I thought that would be at least a little intimidating for any potential attackers.

Even as a child, I had extremely vivid, realistic dreams.  I remember them very clearly, and there are even some dreams that have repeated themselves since I was a child, popping up every now and then.  Trying to run away from wolves/coyotes is one such dream.  Another is getting a glass of water, only to realize that your return path to your room is littered with red-eyed crocodiles.  I also have a strange tendency to dream about post-apocalyptic worlds.

But when I was little, my dreams were simpler.  They were brighter.  They were scarier.

I remember one night, in particular, when I was staying with Grandmother.  We had both gone to bed early, and I had been sick not long before, so my rest came in fits and spurts.  After one such fit, I woke from a nightmare, thinking I was about to be devoured by some heinous creature.

I ran screaming for Grandmother, who was of course more than a match for any monster merely because she was too awesome for words.  Obviously.

This was not the first time I had panicked.  Grandmother had lots of experience calming me down and keeping monsters at bay.  But on this particular evening, for some reason, she decided I should sleep in my own bed.  So, she got out of the bed, slipped her feet into her blue houseshoes, and went to the kitchen.

She returned with a spray can.  Showing it to me, she told me she was getting tired of all the monsters in her house.  The last time I had been there, she said, she realized what a big problem it was.  So she had gone out and gotten some 'Monster-Spray.'

Awed, I listened as she explained that this Monster-Spray would chase away all the monsters, ghouls, ghosts, creatures, and thingamajigs in the whole house.  Not one evil thing could withstand the spray's deadly aerosol formula.

I padded around behind my grandmother as she sprayed every nook and cranny in her house.  We must have been monster-proofing for at least an hour or two, but Grandmother was very thorough.  She even let me spray it sometimes.  And after we were done, I drifted off into blissful sleep, confident that the only non-human creature still present in the house was my Grandmother's cat, Shasta, whom Grandmother assured me was immune to Monster-Spray.

I have invented my own brand, based off of that experience.  It is sure to be a hit with all the little children facing similar problems to those of my young days.

Castle in Ireland, here I come!

Thanks, Grandmother.

Dig

When I was six years old, I told my grandmother I was going to be an archaeologist.  For at least two years before that, I had been set on being a paleontologist.  But after a trip to Arizona, during which we visited the great Mesa Verde ruins, I was now convinced that I liked Native Americans way more than dinosaurs.

The movie Jurassic Park had inspired my initial interest in dinosaurs.  The first time I tried to watch the movie, I admittedly couldn't make it past the T-Rex escaping and terrorizing the Jeeps.  But my grandmother insisted I would love the movie, and as a four-year old, I trusted my grandmother completely.

We watched it again.  I covered my eyes during the scary scenes, and sat fascinated for the rest.  The brachiosauri, the triceratops, the gallimimus, and even the dilophosaurus caught my imagination, and although I was quite terrified of the tyrannosaur, I thought he was pretty awesome too.

We won't talk about the velociraptors.

From then on, I became that nerdy kid.  I was the kid with the dinosaur books, and not the fun ones where some little boy has a dinosaur as a pet, but boring ones with hardly any pictures.  At five years of age, I could discourse intelligently on several different theories of the dinosaurs' sudden extinction.  When I was in kindergarten, the second grade teacher asked me to come in and teach the lesson about dinosaurs.

I knew all the most common dinosaurs, what periods they would have lived in, what they ate, their social behaviors... I was a dinosaur encyclopedia in miniature, fun-sized for your convenience.  I maintain much of this knowledge even today -- I can't begin to tell you my dismay when they announced that the brontosaurus was a hoax.

Pluto isn't a planet.  Tomatoes aren't a vegetable.  Indigo isn't a color.  And brontosauri never existed.  Our modern world is a killjoy.

You can imagine, since I displayed such devotion to my paleontological pursuits, that the experience I had at Mesa Verde was quite powerful.  It caused me to rethink my life plan.  Whereas most little six-year-old girls wanted to be princesses or supermodels or the first female president, I was now absolutely certain I would be an archaeologist.

As my fascination with history grew, I spread a wide net.  I took in American history, world history, prehistoric theories, myths and legends of prominent cultures.  But my real passion was for Native Americans, particularly those of the nomadic and puebloan southwest.

Very soon after declaring my archaeological ambitions, I developed a healthy fascination for a southwestern Native American symbol: Kokopelli.  His legend permeates most of the western region of the United States, and goes as far south as the Mayans in Central America.  Legend has it that an actual, wandering flute player travelled around the region's trade routes, playing his wooden flute and trading trinkets (mostly jewelry and precious materials like turquoise, obsidian, and shells).  This paragraph actually has nothing to do with anything -- I just wanted to tell you about Kokopelli.

My family and friends were all very supportive of my career choice.  When I was in middle school, my mother even enrolled me in an archaeology program at the Belle Meade plantation.  I was thrilled.  Over the span of two summers, I spent about a month digging stuff up.

I learned how to grid a dig area, how to dig by level, how you ought to sift the dirt to make sure you aren't missing anything.  I got pretty frustrated with the number of buttons and nails we uncovered our first summer, when we dug at the site of an old tool shed.  But even more frustrating was when we found a complete hinge, rusted through, and had to continue to dig by level around it, rather than simply pulling it out triumphantly.

I learned (with less enthusiasm), how to catalogue, label, and describe each and every item you unearthed, no matter how modern or boring or small some of those items happened to be.  In my second summer, I bagged and recorded everything from pig bones to a bottle cap from an old school, 20-oz. glass bottle of Coca-Cola.

I learned how to research your area in relation to your finds, so as to form an educated and plausible theory about what you have uncovered.  We were fortunate when we dug at the tool shed to already have historical records indicating its location on the plantation.  We were less fortunate with our information during the second summer, when we were the first to dig on newly reacquired land.

We knew the land had once belonged to the plantation, that it had been sold sometime in the early 1900s, and that it had been mostly farm and pastureland.  So you can imagine our surprise when we dug to only Level 3 (not very deep at all) and uncovered a layer of rocks, clearly man-made.

We speculated about its usage, trying to justify it with the smaller artifacts we had already gathered.  Nails, bones, and bottlecaps aside, there wasn't much to give us clues.  Perhaps a farm road, or the foundation of a small cabin?  But afer much speculation and digging an entire four-square grid of next-to-nothing, we found our answer in the photographical archives of the plantation -- a barbecue pit.  It was invigorating.  (I'm sure that longwinded explanation wasn't boring for you at all).

I remained glued to my dreams of working in the dirt all the way until my freshman year of college.  As it often does with people far more motivated than myself, college changed me.  I realized I had a penchant for languages, and a serious weakness about homework.

I quickly understood that an anthropology major would be a lot of hard work, and also kind of awful.  My first and only anthropology class was taught by a professor who officially turned me off to the entire department.  Within a month, she had informed us that we knew nothing about Scotland, and we were stupid if we thought we did.  She also succeeded in teaching me that, according to gender stereotypes, I should have been a guy.  I loathed that class, and all its stereotypes.

So I changed my tune.  Yet I still found myself connected to certain quirks I had developed as a budding archaeologist.  Two, in particular, stick with me even now.

1- Trash.  I have a thing about trash.  Maybe that's why I am so fascinated by litter on the roads, or by what my apartment neighbors throw out.  You can learn a lot about people from their trash.  Thousands of years from now, when our civilization is just dust, future archaeologists will be conducting major digs in our land fills.

2- Journals.  Although they can be rather unreliable, journals are a huge historical resource.  They are often very informative without even intending to be.  Because of this conviction, I decided that I ought to keep journals myself, for the benefit of the future historians and archaeologists.  My journals are completely wacky, but I do throw in tidbits about the news of the day sometimes.  If you can sift through the crazy, you'll find some historical gems, I think.

Similarly, I wrote letters during college, since many records can be traced back to an exchange of letters.  This has faded over time, but I still wish that snail mail was the most common communication method.  I like it way better than email, and infinitely more than the phone.  But it's not, so this paragraph is a moot point.  I'm just full of useless paragraphs today.

Now that I've dropped out of college and started paying off my Exorbitant Money-Sucking Loans, I find myself coming full circle.  I still want to be an archaeologist.  That childhood dream is not dead.  It's fitting, in a way.  When I declared a Russian major, I considered my archaeological aspirations to be ancient history, and here I am discovering them all over again.

I guess what I'm saying is, we have to chase our dreams while we're still young.  Responsible Adult Limbo sucks in so, so many ways, but the only way out is up.  We're allowed to use this time to figure out what we're doing.  We can make mistakes, we can learn, we can still be growing up.  This is the time for adventures.

My adventure started in a barbecue pit.  Who knows where that road will take me?

Frazzled

Sometimes, I randomly get overwhelmingly nervous about:

• the overpass collapsing on my car.
• whether the bug I am investigating might be poisonous.
• the fact that the GPS in my phone is making me a magnet for government conspiracies.
• trees falling on my house (worst case scenario: it's also raining).
• the fact that I don't know how the internet works, but I use it all the time anyway.
• how I legitimately cannot stop biting my nails.
• the possibility that I might inadvertently alienate all my loved ones and end up alone.
• being forced to give up sugar and meat (my dentist told me I had to stop drinking Dr Pepper-- he doesn't understand that it's literally ALL I drink).
• whether the world really is ending.
• losing my job.
• never losing my job.
• animals escaping from the zoo.
• the fact that it will be winter again at some point.
• the possibility that I don't own every recorded piece of music by Kate Nash and/or Parachute Musical.
• brain aneurysms.
• nuclear war.
• a bird pooping on me.
• whether or not the people in the car next to me can hear me singing.
• rabid dogs.
• whether blue eyes can see into my soul.
• the existence of chupacabras.
• spontaneous combustion.
• wearing shoes too much (worst case scenario: my feet shrivel up from lack of oxygen/blood and I never walk again).
• whether turtles bite.
• self-destructive word vomit.
• the fact that I will be donating blood at some point in the next three years.
• the sun never coming out again.
• the inevitable literacy issues of the next generation/the degeneration of the English language.
• whether people are keeping huge secrets from me.
• whether the meat I'm cooking has gone bad.
• losing my ability to smell.
• time and relativity theories.
• whether my freckles are multiplying.
• talking on the phone.
• crashing my computer on accident (not unprecedented).
• America becoming a dictatorship.
• time travel paradoxes affecting my reality (for this one, I blame GreenFriend).
• going to jail on trumped-up charges.
• whether the guy in front of me in the grocery line is packing heat.
• where I left my iPod.
• the fact that I am responsible for two feline lives.
• becoming my CrazyAunt.
• what would happen if McDonald's went out of business.
• someone actually succeeding in a world domination plot.
• dying by suffocation.
• when my pen runs out of ink.
• sitting on something gross.
• how I don't burp.
• the fact that I don't own pepper spray.
• coming into contact with acid.
• losing all my Word documents.
• not remembering things.
• how I am pregnant (despite the fact that it is physically impossible).
• my toes cramping and then getting stuck that way.
• the possibility of crying in front of other people.
• sneezing (worst case scenario: when your heart stops, it doesn't start working again)
• whether the road kill is still slightly alive.
• being attacked by a vulture or a goose.
• bedbugs.
• my complete inability to believe I might get a happy ending.
• what it would feel like to pierce your ear with a staple remover.
• other people reading combinations of words that were written by me.
• if I have something in my teeth.
• what I look like when I've been injected with Novocaine.
• whether an important person in any given situation can read my mind.
• what fashion will be like when I'm old.
• how animals don't use toilet paper.
• experiencing impale-ment, directly or only as a witness.
• whether there are actually situations in which it is acceptable to end a sentence in a preposition.
• how I can't veto males from my friends' lives.
• being a disappointment.
• if inanimate objects have feelings.
• leaving my curtains/windows open at night (worst case scenario: the ability to see a glimpse of my apartment entices home invaders to climb in).
• misspelling things.
• being the only person available to respond to [insert crisis/emergency here].
• being annoying.
• being forgotten.
• ever being in a situation in which I require an IV.
• losing my hair.
• offending someone by double-dipping a chip.
• how camels and deer walk with backwards knees (it just makes me really uncomfortable).
• coming in contact with my arch-allergen for the first time, causing anaphylactic shock/instant death.
• what to do with leftovers.
• what I would do with three wishes.
• being trampled by/crushed in a crowd.
• never amounting to anything.
• being this nervous forever.
• everything I'm nervous about coming true.

Carcinogens

THINGS THAT CAUSE CANCER

(And Whether or Not I Agree)

1.) Air Pollution
I am inclined to agree with this one.  Air pollution certainly causes respiratory problems.  And I find that a large part of cancer is the build-up of gunk in places it shouldn't be.  When you breathe in the gunk, there's not many places it can go...

2.) Global Warming
Since I am one of those people who believes in cycles (as I've said before), I don't believe that global warming or climate change is something that humans are affecting.  It seems to me that humans are alarmists, in general, and now that we're taking records of everything in the universe (literally), we're scared we're somehow negatively affecting the planet that routinely kicks our butts with natural disasters.  Ergo, I do not believe that global warming causes cancer.

3.) Pesticides
This one seems quite plausible.  I am far more likely to subscribe to a general belief in man-made cancer causes.  This one has been linked to many sicknesses, cancer only one among them, and I have to say it probably did have a hand in a few cases of cancer.  Once again, the gunk where it doesn't belong...

4.) Toothpaste
The toothpaste they mean is the kind with fluoride or bleach (the same things that make our tap water murderous).  I disagree with this one entirely.  I think a little fluoride is good for you.  A lot of it isn't, I'll grant you that.  But that's easy to avoid -- just don't swallow a whole tube of toothpaste, m'kay?

5.) Tobacco
Yes.  Cigarettes and chewing tobacco most certainly cause cancer.  That is a lot of gunk in a lot of places where it just really shouldn't ever be.  Honestly, who in their right mind thinks it's a good idea to draw smoke into your lungs?

6.) French Fries
Sorry, McDonald's.  I mean, I don't think they cause cancer.  But adding cancer to a long list of other reasons that fast food is unhealthy... well, that sucks for you.  Good thing I'll always be a loyal customer (multiple blockages, here I come)!

7.) Bottled Water
Tap water kills us, and bottled water causes cancer.  Water destroys us all.  Dr Pepper inherits the earth!

8.) Cooked Foods
We're doomed.

9.) Aspartame
That nasty sugar substitute they put in diet drinks definitely causes cancer.  I whole-heartedly agree.  I've also heard, however, that drinking anything out of an aluminum can leads to cancer.  That is patently untrue (if it were true, I would have been dead long ago).

10.) Dairy
As the milkman's (legitimate) daughter, I must take issue with this one.  Sure, lactose intolerance sucks, but dairy cause cancer?  Come on, now.  I don't think so.  Milk makes you big and strong.  I know 'cause my daddy told me so.

11.) Pet Birds
Having seen the living state of some pet birds, I am willing to believe they carry/cause diseases in humans.  So I'll agree with this one.

12.) Chewing Gum
Every cheerleader on the face of the earth would drop dead of cancer if that were true.  I highly doubt chewing gum causes cancer.

13.) Winter
Winter definitely causes cancer.  I agree fully.  Winter will kill me, one of these days.

14.) Toasters
Despite men's tendency to cover up anything important when activating toasters, microwaves, ovens, etc., I really don't think that electric heat causes cancer.  Sorry, guys.

15.) Celery
Ha!  It causes cancer!  I do not have to eat it!  Take that, veggies!

16.) Left-Handedness
You would think that in a world that has created the iPad, we would be past the archaic bias against the left hand, which is born out of customs we abolished when we invented toilet paper.  Being left-handed has absolutely no effect on your health.  Left-handers have rights too!

17.) Peanuts
Have you seen some of the bars where they have peanuts in open containers?  Yuck.  Maybe peanuts themselves don't cause cancer, but I think those places just might.

18.) Gingerbread
Maybe an ulcer.  Definitely cavities.  But cancer?  You're not gonna sell me on that one.

19.) Hair Dyes
Having been the victim of permanent hair dye myself, and having seen permanent hair dye cause hair to literally break off, I have to say this one isn't totally unfounded.  The things we do for beauty... or rebellion.

20.) Brooms
Apparently, some people believe sweeping causes nose cancer, because of the particles you kick up during the process.  Those are the same people that believe drinking from aluminum cans screws up your mouth. I'm going with a no on that one.

21.) Baby Food
As much as I would like to say Gerber isn't laying the groundwork for horrific disease, that nasty pudding-like perversion of solid food is chock full of preservatives and chemicals.  Gunk.

22.) Wallpaper
I am not sure how people think this is possible.  Maybe if you stared at it long enough you could get eye cancer... but no, not even then, I don't think.

23.) Flying
I can sort of see how one might think that changing altitudes so rapidly, repeatedly over a span of time, might cause some problems.  I am not sold on the idea that it causes cancer, but inner ear problems?  Circulation issues?  Nosebleeds?  Yeah, it causes problems sometimes..

24.) Exercise
Wait.  I thought I was supposed to exercise.  Now if I exercise, I'm risking cancer?  Sorry, but I just don't buy it.  Not when those endorphins are telling me otherwise?  Endorphins don't lie -- that's why chocolate should be its own food group.

25.) The Sun
I hate that this one is undeniably a factor in some cases of skin cancer.

The fact of the matter is, we live in a world where everything causes cancer.  I have come to believe that the main cause of cancer is The Fear of Getting Cancer.  Therefore, I choose to live it up, avoid as much gunk as possible, and believe with all my heart that I am going to be the crotchety old lady handing out candy to my favorite little kids.  I defy cancer to happen to me.  Let's see if my theory is right.

Modus Operandi: Part 2

(Director has now eaten breakfast and has been forced to change out of her pajamas.  But she is now ready to continue the story.)  Ken bursts into Barbie's house.

KEN: Kelly!  Kelly, where are you?!

He doesn't really look for Kelly, though.  He heads straight for the kitchen and the telephone.  (Director makes all appropriate noises).

POLICEMAN: (also Greg, in a lesser role) 9-1-1.  What's going on?

KEN: My girlfriend just got kidnapped.

POLICEMAN: (gasps) I'll send someone out there immediately!

KEN: Thank you!

Ken hangs up.  Now that he has called the police, he feels free to look for Kelly in earnest.

KEN: Kelly!  Kelly, where are you?!  Your sister's been kidnapped!  We have to help her!

Ken is louder than Barbie, but Kelly still can't hear him in the incredibly high attic.  She continues to play.  Ken also thinks that Kelly is too short to get into the attic, so he looks everywhere but where she actually is.

Meanwhile, two policemen arrive (played by Greg and Ariel, without her fin) and knock on the door.  Ken opens the door, harried and nervous.

KEN: Thank goodness!

POLICEMAN: What's the deal here, sir?

POLICEWOMAN: We heard someone got kidnapped?

KEN: Yes, my girlfriend, Barbie.  And I can't find her sister, either.  They might have kidnapped her too!

POLICEMAN: Did you see who did it?

KEN: Yeah, some guy dressed in black.  He grabbed her and put her in his van.

POLICEWOMAN: Where did he go?

KEN: He went that way.

(Director grunts with the effort of making Ken point.  His right arm is sticky because of that one time when she played Barbies while she ate her peanut butter and jelly sandwich).

POLICEWOMAN: Thanks, we're on it.

KEN: Wait!  Who did this?

POLICEMAN: Well, we can't be sure, but we think it was probably Larry Ferguson.

(One of Director's classmates has the last name Ferguson.  They don't get along).

KEN: But, Larry Ferguson is Barbie's stepfather!

POLICEWOMAN: Yeah, but what nobody knows is he's her evil stepfather.  We've been trying to catch him for weeks.

POLICEMAN: He's really smart and sneaky.  So if you're going to try to rescue her, be careful.

KEN: Oh, I will.  Thank you.

POLICEMAN: Keep looking for Kelly.  Tell us if you find her.

POLICEWOMAN: We'll go after Ferguson.  We'll let you know when he's in jail for good.

KEN: Thanks.

The policemen leave.  Ken sits down on the front porch and drops his head into his hands to think.

Cut to Barbie, who is now blindfolded, gagged, and tied to a chair.  (Director tried to actually do all those things, but only succeeded in getting a ribbon over Barbie's eyes and making her sit in a chair.  Unfortunately, Director doesn't have any Barbie-sized furniture, so the chair is a full-sized one, and Greg has to walk around on the chair with her to talk).

GREG: Did you think you could get away, Barbie?  You know I have spies all over the place.

BARBIE: Mmph, grash asph sjqwmff.

Greg takes off her blindfold/gag.

BARBIE: (gasps) But... you're my stepfather!  How dare you?!

GREG: I know you know where the treasure is.  Your mom told you, didn't she?

(There's ALWAYS treasure involved).

BARBIE: I don't know what you're talking about.

GREG: Well, fine!

He stomps on her foot.

BARBIE: Oooooouch!

GREG: Do you know what I'm talking about now?

BARBIE: NO!

(Director spends an inordinate amount of time making Greg pace back and forth while she decides what to do next).

GREG: How about NOW?!

Greg pushes Barbie through the slats of the chair, where she falls the the ground and hurts hurself badly. (Thankfully, Director subscribes to the George of the Jungle method: "Nobody dies in this movie.  They just get really bad boo-boos.")  Barbie gets up and tries to limp away, still tied up (Director squeezes Barbie's hands together behind her back while she hops away, ignoring how Barbie's arms weren't made to do that).

Greg jumps nimbly down from the chair and lands in front of Barbie, cutting off her escape.

BARBIE: Let me go!  I don't know where it is!  Let me go!

GREG: We'll just see about that, Barbie.  We'll just see about that.

Cut back to Ken, formulating a plan on the front porch.  Suddenly, Sabrina appears. (Sabrina is actually a pretty scary doll, having been dumped in mud multiple times, and covered in marker from a recent makeover.  But boy, does Sabrina think she's pretty).  Sabrina poses in front of Ken.

SABRINA: What's wrong, Ken?

KEN: Sabrina!  Thank goodness you're here!  Do you know where Barbie's stepfather lives?

SABRINA: Of course.  But why do you want to go there?  We should just go to the mall.

KEN: I don't want to go to the mall.  Barbie's been kidnapped, and I have to find her!

SABRINA: Why would her stepfather kidnap her?

KEN: I don't know, but I'm going to find out!  Can you take me to her stepfather's house?

SABRINA: Yeah, whatever.

Ken follows Sabrina to the general vicinity of the chair, where Barbie and Greg still fight inaudibly.  They watch until Greg leaves Barbie, forcing her to do some kind of housework (probably clean the room.  Director hates cleaning her room.  Usually when her Barbies are forced to do menial labor, they have to clean the room or mop the floor).

Seizing the opportunity, Ken starts to climb through a window to get to Barbie, but Sabrina pulls him back down.  She holds his arms behind his back and marches him into the house to see Greg.

SABRINA: He was trying to rescue her.  Do you think he knows something?

GREG: Maybe.  Put him in the basement with Barbie.  We'll make them talk.

SABRINA: Yes, sir.

Sabrina marches Ken down the longest hallway ever at a snail's pace (so they can converse).

KEN: Why are you doing this?  I thought you liked me!

SABRINA: I do like you!  But you're in love with Barbie!  Why should I help you when you won't even go to the mall with me?

(For Director, the only good thing about the mall is the Hello Kitty store).

KEN: You should help me because you know that Larry is wrong!  He's treating his own stepdaughter like a slave just to get to some stupid treasure!

SABRINA: It's a lot of treasure!  We're gonna be rich!

KEN: You won't be rich if you can't find it.

SABRINA: What's that supposed to mean?  Do you know where it is?

KEN: Why should I tell you?

SABRINA: 'Cause if you don't, we'll kill you.

KEN: Then you'll have to kill me.

Sabrina pushes Ken into the basement with Barbie.  He tumbles down (invisible) stairs and hits his head when he lands.

SABRINA: You asked for it!

Sabrina walks away, cackling.  Barbie and Ken are reunited, but scared and uncertain how to get out.  They try to escape through the window, out a back door, and even try getting back through the house to the front door, but are always thwarted by Sabrina and/or Greg.

(By this time in the game, Director is getting really tired of playing Barbies.  But not wanting to leave Ken and Barbie in such a perilous situation, she rushes through the rest of the story).

Greg and Sabrina torture Barbie and Ken by way of quicksand, trying to find out where the treasure is.  (The torture is always quicksand or water.  The quicksand is actually colored sand from a sand art kit Director got for her birthday a while back.  The water always comes from the bathroom sink).

GREG: Tell us where the treasure is and we'll pull you out.

BARBIE: Why should we believe you?

GREG: You don't have a choice!

KEN: I think you're gonna let us die either way!

SABRINA: You're dumb!  Shut up!

GREG: Tell us where the treasure is, now!  You have to!

BARBIE: No way!  We'll never tell you!

(Even though Barbie is the one always getting kidnapped, Director has a habit of making her the strongest character in the story.  Ken is usually just along for the ride.  This probably has some kind of deeper meaning to any psychologists reading out there).

GREG: Then the quicksand is gonna eat you and I'm not doing anything about it!

KELLY: (appearing out of nowhere with the policemen) Hi-ya! (kicks Greg)

GREG: WAUGH! (falls into the quicksand)

SABRINA: Hey, you can't do that!

KELLY: Yes I can!  Hi-ya! (kicks Sabrina repeatedly)

SABRINA: Quit it!  Stop!  I'll help you!

KELLY: (stops kicking) Good.  Hold me down to Ken and Barbie.

SABRINA: Okay.

Sabrina holds Kelly down over the quicksand, pulling Ken and Barbie to safety.  All watch in horror as Greg sinks beneath the surface.

KEN: Phew!  Glad that's over.

BARBIE: Kelly, where were you this morning?!  How did you know where to find us?!

KELLY: I was in the attic playing with Great-Great's dresses.  Then I got hungry and came down for lunch, and everybody was gone.  So I called the police and they told me where you were.  I came to get you.

POLICEWOMAN: And she did a great job rescuing you.

POLICEMAN: (with some colored sand still in his hair) Yep.

POLICEWOMAN: Miss, you're gonna have to come with me. (arrests Sabrina)

SABRINA: But I helped!

POLICEWOMAN: Sure you did, after you kidnapped Ken and put two innocent people in quicksand.  You're gonna be in jail for a long time.

POLICEMAN: Let's go.

The policemen take Sabrina to jail, where they also take Larry Ferguson, after they un-bury him.  Ken, Barbie, and Kelly return home, where Barbie makes a delicious lunch of sandwiches for them all.  And then of course, Barbie and Ken share a dramatic kiss (Director hates it when their noses bump together.  She wants them to kiss right -- no eskimo kisses will do!  So she squeezes some of the air out of their heads.  That makes it possible for their heads to cock, so they can get a good angle on the kiss).  Finally, Barbie and Ken are safe!

Later on, Kelly will go to the bank, where the treasure is hidden (Director kept Cheerios in one of her dresser drawers, since she thought that's what treasure was, thanks to Michael of Disney's Peter Pan).  Once she has the treasure, they live happily ever after.

THE END

Since that was one of the milder adventures, you can imagine the traumatic events my Barbies often lived through.  Sometimes they would go on adventures with me throughout the whole house!  And those adventures were nothing compared to what would sometimes happen during my bathtimes.  Those Barbies were excellent swimmers, which was a good thing, since shipwrecks were so common back then.

Later, I passed those Barbies and all their remaining effects on to another cousin, who undoubtedly was much kinder to them than I.  But I like to think that maybe those Barbies enjoyed their wild adventures with me.  They always got a happy ending, after all.  Even Sabrina and Greg sometimes ended up living happily ever after, instead of serving life sentences behind bars.

I hereby dedicate this post to Barbie -- that acrobatic, hardy doll -- who put up with all my ridiculous games.  Even though when you left me, your hair was matted and you had only a fraction of your original wardrobe, you still survived with that perfect smile on your face.

To Barbie, Ken, Kelly, Sabrina, and Greg: Thank you.  My childhood would not have been the same without you.