12/31/10 The Inherent Dangers of Christmas Lights and Biscuit Dough, as Covered in Section 32.b, Clause 7

Yesterday Tony and I had an appointment with our insurance agent to talk about life insurance*. Today Tony is convinced that he has almost died twice in the last few hours alone. Apparently now that we're talking policies, Death is following him around the house.

The first "deadly" occurrence occurred while putting the Christmas decorations away. Ya'll might remember that due to my delicate condition, Dad came out and hung my Christmas lights on the roof for me. (I'm sure I could have managed it just fine, but my mother promised me a slow and painful death if I so much as even thought about climbing on the roof while carrying her grandbaby). Anyway, as much fun as it has been to have the lights up, all good Christmas lights must come to an end. And it just so happened that today dawned warm and sunny, and we had the time, so it seemed to be the perfect day to remove said Christmas lights. Only Dad wasn't around. And I'm still not allowed on the roof.

So that just left Tony.

(Here's the thing you need to know about Tony. SERIOUS fear of heights. Not just that he doesn't like them, but that he won't go past about the third step on the ladder. Hold a snake? No problem. Catch a spider bare-handed? Doesn't flinch. Investigate weird noises in the middle of the night? He's a pro. But heights? Not his thing).

Now, it's one thing to be scared of something, (Lord knows you wouldn't catch me with 50 feet of a snake or a spider or potential home invaders), but I think it shows a special brand of bravery to know you have this fear and yet man up and do whatever needs to be done anyway. To take the sweats and the shakes and the paralyzing fear lodged in your throat and just grit your teeth and work through it.

Which is how Tony found himself on the roof, convinced he was about to die.

(To be fair, he was not anywhere close to dying. I go up there all the time. It's very safe. Besides, he was army crawling on his belly across a very gentle slope, a good 4 feet from the edge at all times. And even if he did manage to fall, it would only be a drop of about 10 feet, so maybe a bad sprain at the very worst).

But that is not the point.

The point is that Tony (metaphorically) looked death in the eye and very bravely said, "Not on my watch, Death!" while trying to unhook Christmas lights from the gutter without actually opening his eyes. Then he scurried back down the ladder, kissed the ground several times, and very manfully hyperventilated for the next hour. (All because I needed him to remove Christmas lights. How can I not be crazy about this guy?)

The second "near death experience" was slightly less deadly, but much more shocking. Tony was in the kitchen making Hamburger Helper for dinner while I was in the living room, messing around on this here computer. He had just pulled a tube of crescent rolls out of the fridge and had walked in to ask me something when the can very suddenly exploded in his hands. (And I'm not talking about the little pop when you unwrap it...this sounded like a gunshot going off. The entire can exploded literally, with biscuit bits flying through the air and landing on me from a good 12 feet away. Dough on couch, dough on the carpet, dough on me and Tony...it was the wildest thing I've ever seen).** We just stood there in shock for a moment before Tony threw his hands up in the air and yelled "Happy New Year!" Talk about ringing in 2011 with a bang!

After several minutes of trying to extract raw dough from the carpet (hint: don't try to vacuum it up), Tony decided that this was a sign from the life insurance gods. Apparently the world is out to get us (or at least him) with bizarre and creative death threats, so he might as well fill out the forms and get them back to our insurance guy for processing post haste.

I suppose it makes sense (well, maybe not the death by biscuit threat, but the end result of getting life insurance). We all have to go sometime, right? And none of us knows when that time is coming (or how), so the least we can do is be mature about it and prepare as much as we can.

Plus that way Baby Girl will be provided for while she waits for the wrongful death suit against Pillsbury to come back.






*To make a long story about 30 year term vs universal long life coverage short, it seemed like a responsible thing to do now that Baby Girl is scheduled to make an appearance. (By the way, while the life insurance people were more than happy to cover Tony, it seems that they consider pregnancy to be a pre-existing condition. They want to wait until after the birth to sign me up. I guess it wouldn't be good business for them if I suddenly kicked it during delivery, and only after three monthly payments to boot, so they're waiting on me). Thanks for the vote of confidence, life insurance people.

**Technically, Tony likes to count the exploding biscuits as two attempts on his life. One because he was holding the can when it went off, thus subjecting him to potentially serious shrapnel dough, (can uncooked crescent roll put your eye out?) and two, the reason that the whole thing exploded in the first place was a pressurized buildup of bacteria in the dough. So even though the expiration date was fine, the biscuits were bad, and Tony is just sure that we all would have died from biscuit food poisoning given half the chance.***

*** Tony's food poisoning conspiracy aside, the cats thought that covering the living room in uncooked dough for New Year's was a great idea, and they each managed to eat several pieces off of the floor before we could shoo them out and get the rest picked up. So far, no one has exhibited any poisoned dough-related side effects.