In which Ned does not wish to kick off his Sunday shoes. Also, FREEEK EEE Friday!

I might have been a little dramatic about the Freaky Friday story, but it will show up at the end of this post. So all you have to do is slog through the crap Ima blog about and then you get a nice creepy story. You're welcome.

There are a few Ned stories I've been meaning to tell you, and I get distracted, which is not like me. The first one I will tell you is, well. You know how mostly up till now you've been liking Ned? This may change you, and I'm sorry. I know I had him being all likable, and now Ima turn him into Jack Berger.

The first person to smugly say, "I've never watched Sex and the City, June" gets an indifferent look from me.

Okay, Ned's not Jack Berger. But here's what happened. Brace yourself.

Ned refused to watch Footloose with me.

I KNOW!

We were looking to see what was on, and I said, "Oooo! Footloose!" and Ned said, "I've never seen Footloose, as you can imagine." Really? Just because it's mainstream and doesn't make you want to take your life and the lives of every other theater-goer when the credits go up? Just for that, you're saying it's not the movie for you?

"But it has Sarah Jessica Parker in it," I told him. "And dreamy Kevin Bacon when he was still dreamy." What do he and Kira Sedgwick do, over there? Do they split one leaf of lettuce a week? They are the world's most undernourished couple. I mean, other than actual couples in actual countries where there is no, you know, food. But I'm referring to couples we actually think about, such as celebrity couples.

So we turned on Footloose, and we got to see the slutty preacher's daughter straddle two cars, and what a jerk that girl was. She spends the entire movie posing so that if she were naked, we could give her a full gynocological exam on the spot. Sexy. Feminine.

Anyway, Ned watched it until we got to this scene.

"Okay, no. I cannot," said Ned, who seems to have an issue with men dancing in warehouses, like that never happens in real life or something. "I mean, once he saw this in the script, he wasn't able to say 'Nuh-uh, nope. Give this role to someone else.' He couldn't do that?"

So, I understand if you no longer like Ned. I'm trying to concentrate on his other redeeming qualities.

Oh, and the other thing I wanted to tell you was that the other night I was on the horn with Ned. Ned comes home, works out for like TWO HOURS, I am not even kidding you, then if we don't see each other, he calls me. He is usually cooking something when he calls me, and eats at 9:00 like he's from Madrid or something.

So the other night Ned was starving, the way he always is after WORKING OUT FOR TWO HOURS, and he said he had a sweet potato in the oven. Yes, I know he needs more protein, I tell him that all the time. Anyway, he noted his sweet potato needed an hour and a half to cook.

"There is no way I could live like that," I told him. "I'd be so starved after working out that I'd be hangry, and then if you told me I had to wait for a goddamn sweet potato to cook, I'd just go to a drive-thru."

Say, June, why the cholesterol?

"It'll be done soon enough," said Ned. "And I have green beans, too!"

The next morning, Ned emailed me. "Last night, after waiting an hour and a half for my sweet potato to finish baking, I opened the oven to discover that I had never turned it on. This was not welcome news. Any normal person might have noted the lack of baking sweet potato scent wafting through the apartment, but I, however, did not. As a result, I had green beans for dinner last night, and, currently, I AM STARVING."

Poor Ned. And does it make me the world's worst middle-aged-woman friend that I found that fucking hilarious?

Also, my advice to Ned was to get something dreadful out of the vending machine at his work, and I am certain he ignored me.

I can't go around hungry like that. I mean, I just can't. I get too angry, really.

Okay, those are my Ned stories. Remind me to tell you about how he and I went out to eat last night and my throat closed up. It's a fun story!

Here, as your reward for slogging, is Freaky Friday, from Becky.

I think I may have shared this once in the comments but thought I would submit it anyway.

 

In 2008, my husband went to India for a few weeks because his dad was in a diabetic coma. One night, around midnight, Lizzy, my 3-year-old, came into my room and asked, "Who is that man standing in the corner in my room?" I quickly slammed my bedroom door (you know, to protect us from the ghost), grabbed her into bed with me, and hid under the covers. My other daughter was sleeping down the hall, and I love her, but apparently not enough to go past Lizzy's room to get to her.

I don't know if she really saw anything or if she dreamed it. She never had dreams like that before or after, so I kind of like to think that it was her grandfather she had never met, saying goodbye. I called my husband to make sure that he hadn't passed that night and he was still in a coma. He died about two weeks later, never having woken up to ask him about it.