stuff, and unless we get rid of it all or get a bigger house, I suspect we’ll continue eating at the kitchen table). For years now, he’s talked about how nice it would be if he could work while watching movies with the spud and I. He’s talked off and on about getting a laptop, but he really needs something with more power than a laptop could give him. Finally, he decided to put his computer upstairs behind the couch (the dining area is directly behind the living room), and with the monitor pushed to one side of his desk (which is actually a table), he could work and watch a movie all at the same time. We tried it out last night, he working while I watched Meet Joe Black. It worked fairly well – except for the fact that Meet Joe Black should be a ninety-minute movie and is in actuality three hours long – and then in bed last night he waffled about what he wanted to do. Did he want to leave his computer upstairs or take it back downstairs? Did he want to buy a second computer for downstairs, so he could work downstairs when I’m on my computer downstairs, too? He had decided on taking everything back downstairs, until this morning when he wandered out of his room and the computer was right there, and then he decided it was pretty nice having it that way. I’m going to get a laptop so that he won’t be lonely while working upstairs, and if he wants to work downstairs, he can use my computer. Or something like that. Before we went to bed last night, we started talking about creepy Stephen King stories, and I was getting truly creeped out, so I made him stop talking about creepy things. Stephen King can seriously creep me out sometimes, and I was afraid I’d have nightmares. Fred just laughed, but he’s actually the one who ended up having a nightmare. Which serves him right. While laying in bed last night, we also discussed something that happened about two years ago, when we still lived in the apartment. There’s this handyman-type guy, Mr. Stokes, whom you can pay to run errands or make a delivery or any other kind of errand-type things of which you can think. On one particular day, Fred had Mr. Stokes pick up a table we’d bought and had stained – it’s the table Fred has his computer on, now that I think of it – and deliver it to the apartment. While there, he decided to have Mr. Stokes take away a few items we were getting rid of. One of these items was a drafting table, which is what Fred previously used as a desk. Mr. Stokes followed Fred into the bedroom and stood there as Fred leaned over to the back of the computer, trying to figure out how to easily move everything off of the table. When he did so, he moved the mouse, which stopped the screensaver. At this time, I was out in the living room, blithely reading a book. From the bedroom, Fred called "Hey, Robyn!" I stopped reading and called back "Yeah?" Silence. "Yeah?" More silence. Then, finally, Fred said "That’s a nice picture you have on the desktop!" My heart stopped, my jaw dropped, and I whispered "Oh, shiiiiiiiiiiit!" You see, earlier that morning – having no idea that anyone would be going near the computer except for Fred and myself – I’d decided it would be funny to make a certain picture the wallpaper. A certain picture I’d recently taken with our then-new digital camera. A certain picture of a completely naked Fred stepping out of the shower. Fred had looked up to see Mr. Stokes grinning and staring at the monitor, and when he glanced over to see what was so funny, to his horror he saw an image of his naked self there, in all it’s glory. He slapped his hand over the monitor and fumbled around before finally getting it turned off. Say it with me, now: "Oh, shiiiiiiit!" I don’t know how the boy ever forgave me for that, though I felt so bad and grovelled with such hearfelt angst that it would have been pointless for him to be mad at me. Since that day, though, I’ve made sure to never be naked around him when he’s got the digital camera in hand. You can never be too careful, you know. Y’all keep your fingers crossed for me tomorrow morning at 8:30 (central time), ’cause that’s when they’re doing my ear. I’ll see ya in a couple of days! ]]>
02/27/2000