Posts Tagged ‘wife’

So Ben Jones of Absolute Radio in the UK was going to interview Jon Bon Jovi about the upcoming Bon Jovi album "The Circle," and he asked fans to submit questions. And Teresa did, first a list of 8 or so and then a few more individual ones.

The interview is being broadcast tomorrow, but you can download the interview now as a podcast from iTunes. And when they got to the fan question part at 20:55, she was the first one up:

This is from Teresa Bridges, who I think must have sent about 5,000 questions, she would much rather be standing here than me, but this is the question: "Help us out, for all of us who are battling our obsession with you: give us a fault or two of yours."

Didn't get a conclusive answer from him to that question (although she did finally learn a new personal fact about Jon that she probably could have done without, and which she realized has been used as the promo for the show for the last few days) but as it turned out, out of the four fan questions Jones asked, two of them were actually from Teres because he mistakenly asked another of hers and attributed it instead to a fan from Edinburgh. Now she's conflicted about how excited to be, and feeling a bit bad for the fan who's real question didn't get used.

(Well, not too conflicted. She's still psyched. Hell, she's been bouncing off the walls for days ever since she got the e-mail response that her question was chosen and "Jon says hi.")

Personally, I think that if two of her questions were chosen out of the hundreds or thousands Jones received, she should get a crack at interviewing Jon herself. Well? Entertainment Weekly? Rolling Stone? Hello?

Note: the podcast may not be the entire interview, we don't know yet. There were a few places where it was edited, and it's supposed to run in four parts from Monday to Thursday, so it's entirely possible there are more questions than just the four. Still seriously cool, though.

Thanks to maru1221, I (and everyone else) can now see my wife Teresa at the Bon Jovi concert at the TD BankNorth Garden arena, July 10. She keeps a camera in front of her face during her screentime, but if you look closely, starting around 1:46,  you can see her trying to focus past Richie Sambora (12 feet away from her) to get a better picture of Jon (way the hell across the stage). She does have her preferences, my Teresa. Also, that piercing fangirl scream? That's her.

Friday was an interesting day. And I use the word "interesting" with loaded meaning (couldn't find the right smilie to indicate that, so here we are).

High point: finding out with an hour to spare that I would get to do a phone interview with Joss Whedon. All I really remember was that I was focusing on not sounding like a doofus, my painful discovery that it's a big, big mistake to pound down a large Sprite to calm your nerves when you're afraid to leave the phone long enough to pee, and that when he did call and we talked I sounded like a doofus.

With luck it'll appear online Tuesday and in the paper later in the week. Only really new thing in it that I haven't seen anywhere else: the Dr. Horrible episodes will appear on drhorrible.com pretty close to 12:01 am on their launch dates. Didn't get if it was PST, I'm hoping to hear back about that. My favorite quote was when I was asking about his knack for attracting obsessive fans:

"That’s what I am, that’s what I grew up as. The things I love, I love very hard."

Low point: immediately thereafter, when my car blew a head gasket on the way home and my brother-in-law and I spent four fun-filled hours next to Beville Road trying Bars Head Gasket Fix in the desperate hope that mine had blown in just the right way for this to work and save me many hundreds or thousands of dollars that I don't, strictly speaking, have.

Results: I have an interview which I have now transcribed and will tomorrow edit, modulate, and possibly remaster until I sound like David Attenborough, am now working on my article. Car is running well if not smoothly, the oil has been changed, and we'll see how that goes.

All in all, best thing about the weekend? Watching the little videos Teres took of the concert with our camera, where her fangirl shrieks can plainly be heard over the din. She's been blushing nonstop, I'm working on making one of them my Windows startup noise.

Teresa has decided to become a full-time groupie.

Not just the type who gushes about her band online, pins posters around her room and writes "Mrs. Bon Jovi" on her notebooks, although she does that too (not the Mrs. part, she said she has no interest in leaving our marriage or breaking his; I believe she has in mind more of a sophisticated arrangement, like a time-share). No, she plans to be the one who follows her band, concert to concert, city to city, country to country, becoming friends and confidant to the road crew. The fact that we're broke has no bearing on this. You can't deny your calling. She has already begun looking into which countries allow you to sell your children.

Yesterday, on an extended and carefully planned last minute whim, she flew to Boston to see Bon Jovi in concert. She's even now in the air on her way back, possibly without waiting for the plane. With her are the well-wishes, advice, and (in some cases) open envy of the other ladies on the Bon Jovi forum she frequents. They have kept up on her doings from other forum members at the concert who are calling in song-by-song updates, and from me, as I've been hearing from Teresa and posting on her behalf with her account. (I am, apparently, "Mr. Teresa.")

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Teres is curled across the top of the bed, surfing the web on the laptop. I come in and lie down perpendicular, with my head touching hers. She's lying with her head on her right arm; her hand is now in front of my stomach. She tickles it, and this happens:

"I do believe I was just tickled."
"Did you get a good look at the culprit?"
"I'm still waiting for the field team to finish their work, but I'm pretty sure that it was… you!"
"No, I'm sure you were mistaken. It was a wooly worm."

I grab the offending finger and hold it (carefully) up.

"You are a wooly worm? A four-foot-eleven wooly worm?"
She pouts. "All the other wooly worms made fun of me. They wouldn't let me join their wooly worm gam–"

Now we are both giggling, trying to get our words out.

"You're remarkably woolyless, for a wooly worm."
"I thought you'd prefer it if I shaved."
"That's very thoughtful."
"Thank you."
"So you're like, what, the Godzilla of wooly worms?"
"It's a lonely existence."
"So there should be a young Japanese wooly worm that will become your friend, and then be the only one who can stop you."
"Why would I want someone to stop me?"
"Good point. If a wooly worm comes up to you and speaks Japanese, gish him."
"I don't know if I'd recognise Japanese or Chinese or Korean or… or… any other…"
"…ean," we finish together, giggling again.
"So any wooly worm that speaks anything to you other than American, gish him."
"What about an English wooly worm?"
"Better play it safe."
"Canadian?"
"You can let him go, he'll be more polite than the American ones. In fact, come to think of it, the American wooly worms are as likely to shoot you as any oth–"
"This is how Godzilla gets started!"
"Excuse me?"
"I totally get it. You never know which tiny creature is going to betray you and it gets easier and makes more sense to just start gishing all of them until you get fed up and go back into the ocean."

She crossed her arms over her chest, outrageously indignant and red-faced from holding in the giggles. I hugged her and assured her that I would protect her from all the attacking wooly worms who would dare treat her wrong. She would be free, I promised, to do whatever she wanted without fear of military reprisal.

She said, "Oh, good" and started tickling me again.

This sort of thing happens a lot.

This conversation occurred when my wife Teresa and I were in the car listening to Scott, Jay, and Zack discuss their "lists" on MIX105.1 one morning. By "lists" they meant the list of celebrities for whom their usual vows of fidelity would not, temporarily, apply. It's a cute topic of discussion for very secure couples who giggle together about once-in-a-million coincidence-type fantasies.

"So who's on your list," Teresa asked me playfully.

"Don't have one," I replied, watching for a safe place to pull over if this got violent.

"C'mon, no holding out. Which celebrity would you want to fool around with if you had the chance?"

"You first."

"No one, I'm obviously not that kind of girl."

"Uh huh. If Johnny Depp suffered a freak sky-diving accident and landed in our back yard, you wouldn't tie him to the bed and swear to the police you'd never heard of him?"

She stared straight ahead. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Just warn me so I don't sit on him by mistake."

"There'll be a note on the door."

"Thanks."

"C'mon, who do you fantasize about, anyway?"

"Honestly? No one. Or at least, no one specific. Too much work."

"And in your twisted world, that means…?"

I sighed. "My subconscious is a very logical critter, and is not easily fooled. He knows full well that the only way a celebrity would get with me would be to get hostages released, and even then she'd negotiate."

"And so?"

"And so in high school if I wanted to fantasize about a girl I had to construct elaborate fantasies involving heroic rescues from orphanage fires, or daring rescues from exploding classrooms, or exciting rescues from national disasters before I could make myself believe that a cute girl would fall into my arms. My fantasies took hours. Some of them required notes. "

"So your fantasy life relies largely on unreasonable gratitude."

"Exactly. Also, rappelling. I'm honestly still not sure how I lucked into you, but I'm glad I did."

"Because of the way you daringly rescued me from a rampaging bull."

"Ah, I remember now. Wacky fun."

"Seriously, you wouldn't be tempted for a quick fling with Christina Ricci if her limo broke down in front of the house?"

"I couldn't do that to her. She'd never get all the shame off."

"Stop it, anybody would love to be with you."

"You're basing that on your own psychosis and it's sweet, really, but my subconscious is laughing and laughing."

She turned to me with as close to a serious expression as she gets. "You need to fantasize about someone, it'll bring up your self-esteem. Go ahead, start. I'll watch the road."

"You're just afraid you'll have to let Johnny go if I don't have anybody."

"Of course I am. Go ahead, who would you stalk?"

"Really, I'm not interested in jumping on anyone, famous or not. Things would get complicated. But," I said.

"What? Something uncomplicated? Blindfolds?"

"I could see myself becoming friends with someone famous. Getting calls for career advice, or requests to write a song or fix a screenplay because no one else can do it. I can't make myself believe that I'd end up in a half-naked paparazzi photo but I can easily see myself sitting next to Alyson Hannigan while we eat pizza and shoot fire extinguishers out of a 22nd story window."

"Fair enough. So who would you hang with? Chill with? Buddy up on?"

"Please stop that."

"Sorry."

"I'm not talking sex so it can be male or female, right?"

"Stick with female, I'm still looking to even-up for Johnny. And maybe James Marsters. And Bon Jovi."

"OK. Joan Cusack."

"Ooh, she's fun. Can I hang around you guys?"

"Get your own girl. Ellen DeGeneres. Carol Kane. Summer Glau. Um, Geena Davis."

"Really?"

"For 'The Long Kiss Goodnight,' if nothing else. Marisa Tormei. Kate Hudson. Catherine Zeta-Jones."

"The phone commercials got to you, huh?"

"And the Sonny's B-B-Q girl."

"Excuse me?"

"On the billboard on I-95, I pass it on the way home every day. Big grin, got one arm stuck out pointing to the exit? Cheers me up every time I see her."

"Little young for you…"

"Ah, but we're not talking sex. I'd just take her out for some ribs."

"Not exactly Maxim girls. You like them quirky, don't you?"

"Of course," I said, and I kissed her on top of her head. "And I married their queen. So, does that equal a Depp and a Marsters?"

"Of course not, but I'll let it slide. So this is your list? No playmates, no supermodels?"

"Nah, silicone makes me break out. Am I good? Do we need a written policy?"

"Nah. If you do anything wrong I've still got plenty of rope left over."

We watched "Transporter 2" last weekend, and, as we do after every impossible action driving movie with cartoon physics, we talked about our own driving habits. I am constantly surprised at how many intelligent people fail to share my unshakeable belief: every other person on the road is purposely out to kill you.

Well, maybe not every person. I'm pretty sure the Road Ranger folks don't want to make any more work for themselves, and there are probably a few new drivers who haven't checked their glove compartments yet for my dossier and their nefarious orders.

But there's simply no other excuse for why my whole entire car seems to be invisible and tractor trailers race each other for the chance to cut me off. Maniacs ride my bumper and playfully nudge me towards the bridge railing. People race their engines at stoplights, anxious for their chance to T-bone me. Even squirrels wait motionless for hours before they leap out to make me swerve.

It wasn't always like this. When I got my first car I didn't drive defensively. Or offensively, or in any manner that indicated I was aware of exterior stimuli whatsoever.

Instead I treated my car as an auxiliary bedroom. I had my music, I had books stashed here and there, I had food and drink and usually at least two of my friends with me at all times. Driving was more like hanging out, but at great speeds. Other drivers, when I noticed them at all, were nothing more than background decorations that occasionally had to be navigated around.

On occasion I also used my car as an experiment in physics I happened to be sitting in, usually prefaced with the words, "Hey, I wonder if we could…"

That all changed in an instant the day I strapped in our son's child seat and I realized with a blinding flash that I was my child's sole defense against hordes of homicidal motorists. I've calmed down somewhat since then, but evidence still points to my theory.

On the other hand, my brother-in-law Rodger drives the way a careful, efficient person would drive if he was being chased by enemy helicopters. To my knowledge he has never raced up a conveniently angled tow truck bed and sailed over three SUVs filled with armed insurgents to land skidding on an overpass, but he always seems alert to the possibility.

To ride in my son Tony's car is to know that all the vehicles around you are contact explosive, like driving through a moving mine field. The temptation to yell "Bang!" just to see what would happen is overpowering.

My dad always drove with a specific goal in mind, with a specific deadline and a calculated amount of gas expenditure. Had a yak jumped out on I-95 playing "My Way" on a tuba he would have jogged slightly to the left and then sped up to make up the lost .068 seconds in drive time.

Most of my friends in school drove with a goal in mind too: the Winner's Circle. They were all Dale Earnhardt dropped onto a huge racetrack with traffic signals and a never-ending line of competitors to be outwitted, outraced, or simply bashed.

The one attitude I had a problem accepting was my wife's. Teres treats everyone on the road, against all evidence, as her best friend. When they stop suddenly, pull out unexpectedly, or just spin in place, she doesn't get mad because she knows they don't mean it. It just happens.

And you know, maybe she's right. Who among us can say we've never innocently taken out a mailbox, or reached to add ketchup to our fries and found ourselves skidding sideways 65 feet into a farmer's market? It happens. It's certainly a more positive way of dealing with traffic and you don't feel as worn out afterwards.

So I've decided to adapt this mental viewpoint. From now on I'll pause and wave drivers in front. I'll move to the slow lane to let faster drivers pass. I'll smile and gently nod and we'll all drive on a little bit happier, a little bit more at ease with ourselves.

But I'll secretly know what I'm really doing. I'm thwarting their evil plans.

And now I'm behind them.

This May my teenage son, Tony, complained about needing money during his summer break at UCF. My wife, Teresa, said, jokingly, "Hey, I'd pay you to take your brother away." Tony asked, in all seriousness, how much. And the Summer of Unexpected Delight began.

For a bit less than it usually cost us to board, feed, and amuse his 12-year-old brother, James, we offered to pay Tony to act as a one-boy summer camp. Provide a couch, Internet access, take him to the pool and to movies and generally keep him occupied. Arts and crafts were optional. Before either son could think this through we dumped James — along with his computer, his TV, enough gaming consoles to launch a successful invasion of the eastern hemisphere, a handful of clothes, and a toothbrush — at Tony's Orlando apartment and we drove off, laughing gaily and high-fiving each other.

We knew it couldn't last. We weren't entirely sure they wouldn't beat us home. Tony and James, seven years apart, have a healthy and spirited fratricidal relationship that would have fit right into any of your more common Greek tragedies. We fully anticipated seeing James back within a week, and then only if we changed the locks on the sixth day to slow him up. But hey, even a quiet afternoon would be a nice change of pace.

And then, the impossible happened. The boys didn't kill each other. Not even once.

We failed to realize just how desperately Tony wanted the extra money, and how much James enjoyed pestering the heck out of him without referees present. Somewhere in there a shaky ceasefire emerged, undoubtedly after many civilian casualties, and aside from a weekend home or two and the inevitable requests for more cash we didn't see either son for two and a half months.

It was glorious.

You see, in two decades of living together my wife and I have never, ever been alone for more than 24 hours unless surgical sedation was involved. From apartment to apartment to house, our home has always been crammed with family members, roommates, friends just crashing for a few congressional sessions, and kids, not all of whom were ours. Suddenly and without warning it was just … the two of us.

Try and comprehend this, fellow parents: when I came home from work there was, miraculously, the same number of drinks in the refrigerator as there had been when I left. Toys were not underfoot. Books and videos were oddly unstrewn. The TV in the living room stayed off for weeks. There were no mysterious and unaccountable jelly stains on the ceiling fan. No experiments involving the dogs, a bag of rubber bands, and a disposable razor. Representatives from the local emergency centers called periodically to make sure we were all right.

And, best of all, Teres was always waiting for me bright-eyed, cheerful, and hardly wanting to murder anybody at all.

Exciting and life-enriching things awaited our newfound freedom. The remodeling and the yardwork. Teres' art projects, and the writing I wanted to do. The yoga classes and fitness courses and horseback riding and traveling and oh, all the new things in our bright and uninterrupted future.

Of course we didn't do any of them. Mostly we snuggled up every night, picnicked on the bed, watched DVDs, and enjoyed the silence. Sometimes we would go out to a restaurant that didn't serve chicken fingers or hamburgers, and we'd just giggle to ourselves.

This has been, bar none, the best and least productive summer of my life. It was like a honeymoon, only without the bills and sunburn and embarrassing discoveries at Customs.

All good things must come to an end, thanks to unreasonable regulations regarding child abandonment, and so Camp Tony closed its doors and we welcomed James back home last weekend. I found I even missed the little guy until he started eyeing the dogs' fur.

Now we have school to get ready for, and clothes to buy and shots to get, and we huddle in our bedroom trying to identify where he is by the crashing sounds. But we have our memories of one glorious summer.

And we're saving for next year. I'll bet the boys would like Mexico.

After a great deal of consideration and argument, we have decided to redo our living room in classic Addams Family style. The argument was over whether to redecorate at all, of course, since usually we're too lazy to remodel anything we can't reach from the couch. Once we made the commitment, actually deciding on the theme took about fifteen seconds.

Teres and I have been "Addams Family" fans since we were both children. Something about the subversive nature of it appealed to us, even then. The Addamses weren't quite evil, per se, but they were probably related to it by marriage. The whole family was relentlessly cheerful and accepting of just about everyone they encountered, where the reverse was most certainly not true. And while "The Addams Family" may not have been the first sitcom to show a husband and wife in bed together (that was, oddly enough, "The Munsters") it was the first sitcom to suggest the parents had a sex life. Also, bear traps.

This, we knew, was something we wanted to embrace in ourselves. And in our living room.

Friends, family, and authorities making "checkup" calls can attest that this is not new for us. For over ten years our front door knocker has been a wooden hand. A plastic gargoyle found a home over our entrance back in '89. Black and violet holiday lights from Christmases past can still be found winding around our window hangings. When we threw a silk cloth over Teres' upright piano and covered it with goblets, weaponry, and small chests full of fake gold coins for her "Pirates of the Caribbean" birthday party two years ago we liked it so much we left it that way.

Unfortunately we can't quite match one aspect of the Addams family's life: we're not rich. If our house was to be a museum where people come to see 'em, we knew it would have to be the smaller, economy model.

This is trickier than it sounds. You can't just buy some discount Halloween stuff and throw a few rubber bats around. We don't want to force weirdness into people's faces, we just want to provide a pleasant living area that encourages comfort, an occasional double-take, and, with luck, an involuntary scream accompanying the temporary loss of bodily control. Is that too much to ask? Subtlety, that was our watchword.

Of course I'm saying that because I don't know where to buy a stuffed and mounted swordfish head with a foot sticking out of its mouth. Maybe eBay…

Like any young homeowners we've been anguishing over the details. A dusting of mold on the walls, or just dust? Is the disembodied arm under the couch too noticeable, or should we move it farther back? Do you need a permit to install a trap door in your foyer? What if it's more or less non-lethal? How many maces and axes are just right without being ostentatious?

(You're reading this, waiting for the joke. There isn't one. We really do think like this. Walk carefully in my home, and brace yourself before opening innocent doors.)

Fortunately I have in my wife a marvel of shopping expertise and sick, twisted ingenuity. For the last few weeks I've been getting messages at work: "Found the perfect clock but we'll need more spiders for it," and "Do we want people scared as soon as they come in or should we wait until they realize they can't get out?"

So far we're going with a comfortable Victorian look with lightly scattered strangeness. She found an understated Edvard Munch "Scream" candleholder at fantasy-gifts.com, and haunted portraits at GoreyDetails.net . HumaneTrophies.net has stuffed animal heads we can modify to our nefarious needs. Various sites offering horror props, medical supplies, and medieval weapons will benefit mightily from our surfing. Teres picked up an ornate gold-leaf Princess phone at Goodwill and we have our eyes on their assortment of cast-iron offerings, which should go along nicely, in a vaguely unsettling way.

Soon we'll be able to enjoy our new room — Teres in a form-fitting black shroud, me in a smoking jacket, standing on my head — and welcome new visitors, possibly quite briefly.

Especially if they use our new downstairs bathroom.

Friends and neighbors, I come before you today to say the Internet is not just an invaluable tool for researchers, not just a best friend to every lonely single guy in the world, not just a source of entertainment and community and wonderment and video game cheat codes. It's also the greatest boon for hypochondriacs ever created.

I know this, because I live with one.

Actually my wife Teresa is more of a hypochondriac hobbyist. She doesn't panic or stalk her doctor around the ninth green with meticulous charts of her bowel movements and the latest Reader's Digest list of trendy diseases. Instead, whenever she feels ill she looks up all the possible medical conditions she could conceivably be suffering from, no matter how obscure, and picks the absolute worst one imaginable. Only then can she relax, take a couple of Tylenol, and go back to bed, strangely content.

This was fine when she was forced to read through medical books the size of engine blocks to find her favorite infirmities because it kept her occupied and just picking the things up was good cardio. But now, thanks to www.medical-library.org, www.yourdiagnosis.com, www.easydiagnosis.com. www.wrongdiagnosis.com, www.ecureme.com, and many, many more, I get instant messages at work like this:

Teres: I have Hansen's disease.

Chris: What?

Teres: Paucibacillary Hansen's disease. Or maybe multibacillary. I'm not sure yet.

Chris: You're telling me you have leprosy.

Teres: All the signs are there. I even got a second opinion from a different site.

Chris: You have a rash. A small rash. And you got it right after you planted flowers next to that three-leaf plant.

Teres: You know, it's that kind of discrimination that forces people like me into leper colonies.

Chris: What people like you? Crazy people?

Teres: I'm going back to bed now, I'm exhausted. Don't nudge me when you get home, something might fall off.

My browser suddenly sprouted bookmarks for Lyme disease, ulcerative colitis, and endometriosis. One whole summer she was convinced she had benign prostate hyperplasia. I tried explaining that she didn't, medically speaking, have a prostate, but she simply said, "That's why it's benign," and smiled a sad, brave smile.

Last Saturday I threw my back out.

As is required by law, it was while doing something meaningless. I bent to open a bag of dog food and spent the rest of the evening eating Advil, walking like Mr. Burns in a high wind, and staying in the shower until I'd used up all the hot water in the Volusia County area.

Just for the heck of it, purely for fun and to get my mind off the spasms that woke me at 4 a.m., I went online and tried looking up "lower back pain."

An hour later I was spinning (carefully) from all the possible disorders that might have struck me down. I could have transverse myelitis, Cushing's syndrome, or a herniated disc. I could have gall stones, kidney stones, or intercostal neuralgia. Pancreatic cancer! Scheuermann's disease! Post streptococcal glomerulonephritis! Even worse-sounding stuff! Some with pictures!

Here I'd been thinking it was because I was out of shape, had terrible posture, and hadn't lifted anything heavier than a bagel since 1986, but no! I was host to a veritable plague of potential plights! Suddenly I didn't feel helpless any more.

I felt afflicted, which is way cooler.

I wasn't suffering from a lame-sounding problem that happens to old guys in sit-coms. I was a victim of random and possibly malicious diseases I had no control over. And some of them were rare indeed, which made me special. How many other guys suffer from chlamydia, huh? Huh?

Now I take quiet pleasure in discovering new and exciting conditions to adapt as my own. Japanese encephalitis? Had it last week. East African Trypanosomiasis? It's a struggle, but I get by, I get by. No longer just some guy with a bad back, I am now the guy with the really interesting out-sick excuses and the cough that can cause a public health emergency if even half the stuff I found out is true.

And now I have to go lie down. All this typing wears you out.