Empathy and lack thereof

4-23-10

I am a happy girl this morning since it is Friday. I don’t have gobs of meeting this morning, which means I can stay at my desk today as opposed to running all over the place. Yesterday I was dying. My meeting at 10 was an hour and we only ended it to go to the company meeting which lasted an exhausting hour and a half in a cold warehouse covering boring information. Yawn. The worst part was how bad I had to pee!!

On the plus side, I ended up having an extremely mellow evening. I got home and didn’t even have to clean since Ken had spent the day scrubbing the house. I ended up hanging out in the back yard with the dogs since the boys decided they wanted to chat it up with the neighbor. It was an impressive conversation since they actually may have out talked our super talkative neighbor. LOL!

The boys went to bed on time, which allowed us to watch the rest of American Idol (less unfortunately the results since Tivo did not record the whole show since it went over the time. We looked it up and my beloved “Disney Show” was voted off. Sadness.) and Glee. Have I mentioned how fucking great that show is???? I seriously hurt when I am done watching because of how much laughing I do. And thank goodness we watch it on Tivo since on more than one occasion we have to rewind it because we are laughing so loud that we missed the next line. So happy making is the Glee.

I cracked open the balloon weight from one of my anniversary balloons to find that the plastic star contained a giant shiny metal star with a couple of holes in it. I promptly asked Ken if we had any kind of chain thinking I could string it through the weight to make a necklace. Instead, Ken took a nicer chain and attached the star nicely and made me my wonderful chunky star necklace I am sporting today. Hee!

I am looking forward to sleeping in a little tomorrow. I still have to get up at a reasonable hour since we are heading out to see Grammie. I think the plan is lunch, but I will find out more this afternoon when I go to my folks’. Grammie doesn’t have gobs of toys and stuff there, so I am thinking of going through the boys’ toy bins tonight to dig out some items that they probably didn’t even know existed, and bring them along and put them at her house. That way when we come out, they have stuff to play with. It will give me a nice excuse to go through the bins anyway. I think I also need to go to Target and get another one of those slide under the bed boxes so I can put all the costumes in there.

We are supposed to go to the park when we go to my parents’ house today. The boys had mentioned wanting to go, so we figure this evening we can walk down there. I am going to take their bikes so they can ride those, which will be nice.

On the way home, I have another Galleria free gift card coming to me, so I think I need to go pick that up. I may see if Ken wants to come with us today so he can go to the park with us, and maybe then we can get dinner at the mall. The only real problem with this is Matt seems to pick fights, so we will see.

I ordered a skirt and a tank top from Old Navy. I was going to get this one cute pair of shorts, but I had misread the price. I thought they were $15, but they were really $25. I know, still not much, but I will wait till next payday for those. I want to order some shorts and capris for Ohio.

Ralph is back on the air this morning and he gave a small recap of what took place. He was talking about all the emails and gifts and outpouring of love and support her received over the last few weeks. At one point, this man broke down. I lost it. The pain in his voice told it all. This is a man who can laugh at everything. He seems like a pillar of strength and yet this tiny child brought him to his knees. My heart cried out for him. Tears have been streaming down my face as I quickly wrote him a third email of support. What a unique position to be in to have so many people love him despite not being even “friends” with him on Facebook. What a comfort to have so many people supporting you.

Ken posted that he wasn’t as moved as I am. In all fairness, I break down crying over someone eating by themselves in the mall. Ken, who is truly dead inside on so many issues, just doesn’t get choked up like that. I have seen my husband cry perhaps 8 times in the 20 years I have known him. No joke. Ken on the other hand has seen me cry 8 times in a day. LOL!!! The things that move him are not what you would always expect. He wept openly when Smackie died. I wasn’t as surprised by this one, but I was shocked when he cried while watching Braveheart. Seriously, even I didn’t cry in Braveheart. Of course, I seem to laugh at all movies in which there are people in blue face.

I have seen him cry about his ex wife. I think there are two instances of that. Bobby caused him tears once. In fact, the incident in question caused him to cry once while hugging a very confused baby, and once while on the phone with his sister trying to come to terms with his guilt on what happened. What was crazy about it is that it is something that he would normally get that upset about. No one was hurt, and if anything, in hind sight, it is pretty funny.

I just wish that he could feel that empathy for other people. I understand not getting all upset at fictional characters, but with this Ralph thing, dude, not only is this not a story, this is a guy we have met several times. This is a tragic father thing that he should be able to relate to. I wonder why he can’t.

I feel like this is the episode of Friends where Chandler can’t cry. Note to my friends, if Ken doesn’t cry when I die, kick him in the shins.

I just talked to my poor empathy deprived husband and informed him of the shin kicking. He assured me that he isn’t as bad as I make him out to be. I tried to reason that even though he had never experienced this kind of loss that he could try to imagine how sad he would be if his own children died. He pointed out that when the boys were born, it took him a couple weeks to really feel that genuine love and affection towards them. Bonding took a while, so he couldn’t comprehend the sadness after only knowing his son for 10 days. He then said that if they died now, he would probably cry. I of course called his ass out on the “probably” part. Sigh. He agreed that he lacked empathy for other people, and I said he had zero. He said that wasn’t fair, so we both agreed he had about .1.

He was amused at my blue face bias. But let’s face it. When Mel Gibson runs around half blue, he looks ridiculous. Avatar folk, sure look kind of cool, but ultimately, kind of lame. Smurfs? Don’t get me started. The Blue Man Group are exceptions, but they don’t make you cry, they make you laugh. Blue face has to represent funny, not, well, blue.

My boss likes to come in and greet me with the generic question of, “What’s Happening?” Our game usually revolves around my wacky answers. I wasn’t as inspired this morning, but I did manage to get a laugh when I said that flights were resuming to Europe.

So I am embarking on a funky fad diet come next week. It is only 3 days but I am becoming quite nervous about it. MaryAnn gave me my breakdown of how much I owed (which is only $10) and we started talking about how excited the other 4 members of my diet girls group are about the program. I, on the other hand, am sure I will starve. Maryann continued to ensure me that there is lots of food and if anything, she wasn’t able to finish most of it last time. I pointed out that the quantity of food is daunting because of how much of it is food I DON”T eat normally. Thankfully Brandy helped me by having me try some asparagus. Esther also gave me some cooking tips on it, so I may be in the clear for that cup and a half of veggies I need for the 3 day duration. Esther is also making the salmon for lunch, and the dressing for the salad, so all I need to provide is the greens, which I think I can choke down pretty easily. The breakfast is the one meal I am totally ok with. Eggs and oatmeal rule, so I should be good on that.

So much for this morning being relaxing! I have been swamped. The good news is my day has flown by. Woo hoo!! Only a few more hours and I am free. Have a good weekend, kids!