The “interwebz” can do some strange things. It’s almost as if the damn thing has taken on a life of its own, which I suppose kinda makes old Al Gore a “Doctor Frahnkensteen” of sorts. (Okay, okay, I know… Gore’s quote was taken way out of context, but the joke worked… gimme a break. I’m actually writing this way early in the A.M. and my caffeine system isn’t up to snuff just yet…)

Anywho, the thing here is this – there are just some places on the internet that seem to have become a multi-headed monster doing whatever it damn well pleases. Social networking sites for instance. In this particular instance, Facebook.

There I was, ditzing about on FB, taking care of my necessary social networking marketing schtuff. E K was at her desk behind me, fiddling about with her own FB page, updating the world on her adventures in grocery shopping and slapping a coat of polyurethane on the O-spring’s chest of drawers.

Yeah, truly exciting stuff there… (Hey, sometimes it’s good to be boring…)

So, anyway, I did a quick refresh of my page to see what was going on and the screen went all willy nilly, flashed a bit, sent some gibberish scrolling around, then settled back into my “Facebook Wall.” Everything looked relatively normal except for one minor – well, actually major, IMHO – detail.

Now, just by looking at the picture on the left you might not see the problem. In reality, it looks pretty normal. In fact, it looks extremely normal. And, if it weren’t for the fact that I happen to use a link that generally resides in that box, I might not have noticed the problem myself. However, on the night in question, after perusing my wall I was going to go have a look at someone else’s wall. Namely, the halo wearing half of The Evil Redhead.

Yeah… I was going to go look at Kat’s page, and the easiest way for me to get there is to click on the link under relationship status, because normally it looks like the picture on the right.

But, it didn’t… It looked like the one above.

According to Facebook, I was still married, but to whom was the question. I checked my info tab and it claimed I was married, but my spouse was a mystery.

Figuring this was just some bizarre glitch, I hit the search box, looked up Kat’s profile – which ostensibly was still there – and clicked on the link. My screen flashed, went blank, then my FB newsfeed appeared. I cocked an eyebrow, grumbled, then tried it again. Same thing.

“Hey legs,” I called over my shoulder. “Did you unfriend me on Facebook or something?”

“No,” she replied.

“Did you block me?” I asked.

“No. Why?”

I grumbled a bit more as FB repeated the redirection each time I clicked, then I answered her. “I can’t get to your page.”

“Hmm,” she said. “I don’t know what that’s all about. I didn’t change anything.”

“Let me try something,” I mused aloud.

I went down the line, clicking on several of our mutual friends. Each time I did so, either I was redirected to my newsfeed or told that this person’s page was no longer available.

Grumbling even more I mentioned this to E K. Of course, she promptly began to click on those links herself.

“I can get to Johnathan’s page just fine,” she announced. “And Tracy’s…” A few more clicks sounded. “And Anastasia’s…”

“But I can’t,” I said, perplexed. “Are you sure you didn’t accidentally add me to your block list or something?”

“I’m sure,” she replied.

Just to be thorough I clicked on some of my other friend’s pages who were not mutual between The Evil Redhead and me. No problem at all. Surfed right to them without so much as a brief pause. I cleared my cache just to make sure it wasn’t a phantom page. They still worked.

I logged out of FB, shut down Firefox, restarted it, cleared cache again, logged back into FB, and checked my page. Nothing at all had changed. No matter what I clicked I was no longer married to my wife, nor could I get to mutual friend pages.

“Well,” I sighed a lament. “It would seem that Facebook has divorced us and you got to keep all of our friends.”

E K giggled, of course.

By now it was pushing midnight and well past my bedtime, yet I was still clicking about on my page because I had no intention of signing the divorce papers, virtual or not.

E K clicked off her monitors (she has two, being the multi-tasker she is) and pushed back from her desk. As she rose to head for the bedroom she said, “I think you should just give up for the night.”

“But, it says I’m not married to you anymore.”

“Get some sleep,” she told me. “Maybe you’ll be married to me tomorrow.”

I guess I’ll have to start checking the calendar on the fridge in the kitchen to see which days I’m married and which days I’m single.

Better yet, maybe I’ll just check Facebook…

More to come…

Murv

I think that will probably depend on how well I follow instructions from here on out. The dance thing, I mean.

You see, messages come in all forms and from many sources. In fact, depending on your belief system, you may even be convinced that you receive messages from beyond the veil between the worlds. And, sometimes those messages come along with a set of instructions that need following.

I suppose at this point you are wondering what messages from the great beyond have to do with the picture of Evil Kat’s shapely gams over here on the right. Well, to be honest, both everything and nothing. You see I’m not actually going to go on about being contacted by the dead. I am, however, going to go on about messages. In particular a message I received just the other day, and it just so happens that it has quite a bit to do with E Kay’s shoes.

In particular, her Mary Janes.

(BTW, I’d have put the whole picture up there, however if you have seen the revamped cover of Perfect Trust, for which this was one of many shots taken to create the final collage, you know things were far less pretty above the waist… Not gory or anything… You’ll just have to read the book if you don’t understand what I’m getting at… But, yeah, E K was one of the models… How cool is that?)

And, back to our regularly scheduled blog…

So, E K has several pairs of Mary Jane styled pumps. Dress up, work, leather, patent leather,  canvas, heels, flats, wedges, brown, black, and so on…

You get the idea.

I couldn’t begin to tell you about the fashion statement surrounding these, primarily because I have absolutely no fashion sense at all. I will pair stripes and plaids in a heartbeat, so I am definitely NOT the go-to guy where this sort of stuff is concerned. However, as shoes go these seem to work for the Evil One, and I am perfectly willing to admit that I think she looks pretty damn good in them. This latter fact may have something to do with one of those childhood memories, that being the little blonde-haired girl next door when I was growing up. We were all of about 7 and I was crushing on her pretty hard. Being the style of the 60’s she always wore frilly dresses and patent leather Mary Janes. They say you never forget your first love. Well, I wouldn’t call this playmate from my childhood a “love,” so I guess that old saying applies to crushes too.

So, there you go. Nothing sick or twisted, just Id, ego, and superego colliding to stir fond puppy love memories in my heart whenever I see the evil redhead in her Mary Janes.

Okay, enough with psychoanalyzing the Murv…

Now, the thing about E Kay’s shoes is that while most of them reside in her evil shoe closet, there are a few pairs that occupy strategic locations around the house – i.e. wherever she happened to take them off. Of course, her evilness is still more conscientious about her shoe placement than the O-spring. If you go stumbling through the dark in the middle of the night around our house, while traversing the living room you will trip over every pair of shoes the child owns. E K, however, does place hers pretty much out of the way. One such “out of the way” location where her feet become un-shod – and the aforementioned shods remain – is the general vicinity of her desk in our shared office.

And yes, Virginia (No, not you Doc… No, not the state either… I mean the metaphorical and collective Virginia) this is from whence I received a message. I just didn’t know it at the time. See below…

If you look closely at the left shoe you will notice a piece of paper lounged out on the insole as if it belongs there…

You see, the other day I rolled back from my desk on a mission to put something in the cabinets on the other side of the room. Since our office is relatively small our desks are against opposite walls. When I stood up to make the 4 steps to the cabinets I had to step around the shoes. When I looked down I noticed this bit of paper occupying the insole.

I didn’t really think much of it at first. Her shoes were sitting next to the paper recycling bin and since she is a shredding maniac I figured that in a frenzy of potential paper-mâché production the previous evening a scrap had escaped her evil clutches in a daring attempt at freedom. Unfortunately for the scrap, however, it plummeted into her shoe where it was overcome by odoriferous fumes and expired before it could get away.

Do NOT tell her I said that…

I continued about my task, tucking some papers into a cabinet, then returned to my desk. once again stepping around the pair of Mary Janes. This time, however, I noticed that there appeared to be writing upon the bit of paper. Again, I didn’t really think much of it until several seconds had passed and I was seated back at my desk. Some manner of subliminal trigger clicked, clanked, or whatever it is they do and I stopped everything I was doing. The image of the paper with the writing on it flashed through my gourd and I screwed up my face in thought as I wondered, “Did that really say what I think it said?”

Now I was curious. So, what else could I do? I rolled back, turned around in my chair, then leaned over to look at the scrap in the shoe (all while holding my nose, of course…) And, much to my surprise, it did in fact say what I thought it said.

“Leave Treat”

I’d heard “trick or treat” before, but never “leave treat,” although it definitely sounded like a pretty clear instruction to me. For a minute I started wondering if she was trying to get in touch with her Dutch roots and thought it was Christmas or something. But I came to my senses and remembered she is primarily Welsh and Irish, not Dutch.

Then for another brief moment I considered stuffing a banana into the shoe just to see what would happen when her evilness came home. However, since I wasn’t sure if that would spark some sort of Freudian dilemma or not, and I didn’t have any Vodka or Scotch miniatures on hand, I elected to simply laugh and snap a picture or two, because it was obvious to me at that juncture that this would be blog material.

Unfortunately, I get the impression that maybe I should have put some individually wrapped Dove chocolates in there or something.

Why?

Well, what you can’t see here is the knobby tread this pair of shoes has on the sole. The reason that is important is that I am now sporting a mirror image of it all over my face. All I know is that E K was doing a lot of unintelligible screaming while she was dancing on my head, but I did manage to catch a little snippet about her shoes being empty when she arrived home and when was I going to learn to follow instructions?

More to come…

Murv