Amanda bought me a Gilette Fusion razor some time ago. I don’t remember how far back, but I know I’ve had it since quite a bit before we went to Kentucky in July. A few months ago I felt it was time to buy a new razor head for it. Today I finally changed it. I probably could have gone even longer. New razor blades feel so nice.

There was no sign of the South American-Iran anti-America pact in the news that I could find today. I mentioned it to Jason and when I did, I brought up the whole China-Taiwan thing. Jason said I mention that about once a week. I told him that no, I save it for each January 16th. I told Amanda and Michael about my psychic flashes and Amanda said that maybe it’s genetic. My mom has had a couple eerily predictive dreams before. In one she was driving a car and saw somebody in the back seat sort of swaying/flopping back and forth. The next day that guy was in a car wreck and died. She also had a dream where my little brother, Adam, was riding a horse in a room in a skyscraper. He lost control of the horse and it took off through a window. Shortly after that Adam fell out of the top of a barn.

I remember that one really well. We were at a barn where my mom boarded her horses Goldenrod and Shiloh. I was in the hayloft along with my dad and my mom’s brother, Uncle Roy and, of course, Adam. I remember one second he was near the door, the next he was gone. My dad sprinted across the floor (in my mind he was across in about three steps) and jumped down after Adam. Adam was shaken, but fortunately he landed in a bunch of mud (and probably stuff that wasn’t mud but sort of looked like it) and he wasn’t hurt.

Anyway, flash back to today.

I had lunch with Amanda at the Chick-Fil-A by the mall. As I was walking out the door to meet her, Michael called and asked if I wanted to go to lunch with him, so I invited him along. Well, apparently Amanda wanted to talk to me a little about the current living situation and tell me that Tsota, Adam and Renee’s coati mundi, was stressing her out because of the smell. Adam and Renee were cleaning the cage every day, but the room, and by extension some of th house, was starting to smell. I’d gotten tired of hearing about it, so we got into a little argument. Michael felt uncomfortable of course.

Out in her car, Amanda called Adam to talk to him about Tsota’s smell. Adam was open and amenable to what she said and, not knowing I was there with her, called me a few minutes later to say they’d be heading out tonight. They had their apartment after all, and just needed furniture, particularly a bed, so we offered them our air mattress. I talked to him a bit to make sure he knew Amanda didn’t have a problem with him and Renee, and of course he was fine with everything, not offended in the least and very understanding of Amanda’s plight.

So tonight they moved out. Amanda was steam cleaning the carpet as soon as they were gone.

I talked to my friend Ben Lambeth today. He had planned to come down here from Winston-Salem tonight to take care of the final paperwork in selling their house tomorrow, but he’s been sick the last few days and is just going to get up and come tomorrow. I’ll be meeting him for lunch though.

Amanda, Michael and I played on the Wii. We were playing Monkeyball, which is another game full of a bunch of mini-games. Particularly we were playing darts, which was really fun. Michael won the tournament he put together but Amanda wanted to have a playoff wit me for second place. I started out ahead usually, but tend to choke down the stretch.
American Idol’s sixth season premiered tonight. It was okay. Afterwards Michael was talking to his ex-girlfriend Sarah Denning when Amanda called him into the room to see something on the preview for tomorrow night. To Amanda it looked like a little tiny woman dressed up like Paula Abdul standing next to a normal sized woman. Michael glanced at it then went back to him room. I told Amanda she had it wrong, that it was Paula Abdul standing next to a giant woman, so when Amanda rewound the DVR and saw that, she called back to Michael again. Michael was a little annoyed and made some grumbling comment, so Amanda fired back, “What else do you have to do, talk to your ex-girlfriend?”

Sarah heard that because the next thing Michael said was, “I don’t know what she means by that.” Amanda told him to give her the phone and she’d tell her what she meant. That sort of blew up and ended up with Michael going outside. When he came back in he gave Amanda the phone. Amanda and Sarah had a talk, basically explaining Amanda’s feelings (which I totally agree with) that if they’re going to be broken up that they had to have some real separation because Michael wasn’t moving on as long as they were staying together that much. Amanda said that Michael isn’t going to take any steps to cut things off and that if Sarah cared about Michael she’d have to do it. The talk went really well, from the sound of it, and Sarah actually agreed with everything Amanda said.

So that actually ended pretty well and Amanda went upstairs to wash up and get ready for bed, feeling proud of the way she’d kept her cool. At this point I was playing Gears of War on Xbox Live.

After Michael got off the phone he went upstairs and said something to Amanda. Now, I wasn’t really paying attention at that point, but when they started going through the house yelling at each other and saying things they should both regret to each other, I turned off the game and intervened, trying to make sure things didn’t get really nasty. Long story short, emotions ran high and it wasn’t very pretty, but it all turned out okay in the end. I think two things happened. Amanda was coming down off her stress about Tsota and Michael was, at least on some level, mad about Amanda telling Sarah things that needed to be said.

Anyway, like I said, everything ended up okay. Michael gave Amanda a hug when she came downstairs for some water and he and I ended the night playing some more Monkeyball.

Zach Dotsey