romanian spy.

Last Sunday after church, there was a note stuck on our door when we got home. It was vague and odd.

"Does Sandra live here? If so, I have something that belongs to you."

Followed by an unfamiliar name and phone number.

I considered my options. The only thing that I had lost recently that would lead someone to my front door was my wallet, which I lost back in November at the Charlotte airport. It seemed unlikely that someone had found it and wanted to return it two months later and 165 miles away. Then again, I couldn't figure out what kind of scam someone could be running here. Had the note been composed of cut-out newspaper letters and made some demands, that would be different. Also, it seemed like a proper ransom note would at least tell me what they had, to make sure that I understood the urgency of the situation. It could be blackmail, like maybe they had evidence of my shady dealings. But I don't have any shady dealings. Possibly they were casing the joint? Well, I don't want to spread misinformation about the viciousness of pitbulls, but I really haven't worried about the safety of my home since I got one.

So I called the guy. No answer, and his voicemail was full. A minute later, he texted me to say that he'd call me back after his meeting. Alright, then. In the meantime, I googled the guy's name. I found a dude that used to live in Florida but now was in Charlotte. He used to be in TV, but now seemed to be in some kind of vague get-rich-by-doing-something-unstated business. Now my thought was that he was going to try and sell me something.

Enter my husband. Have I ever told you about his imagination? It's vivid. Our unknown visitor was in some kind of group of television professionals named TVR. As far as I could tell, it was a group specifically associated with the social media platform. But Josh googled it and came up with the Romanian state television. Ergo, this man was a Romanian spy. He wouldn't say why the Romanian government would be interested in me, but he felt that any association with a former Soviet satellite country was very fishy.

The Cold War was very formative on my husband.

Josh complains that I make him sound like an idiot on my blog. I am guilty of that, usually because making someone else sound like an idiot is funny. But he's not. He's brilliant. His curiosity is insatiable, and so he knows a lot about a lot of different subjects because he happened to have a question one day and then spent hours reading everything about it. He sees patterns and connections that I would never notice. I have a pretty high opinion of my own intelligence, and we are evenly matched when we debate (except for all that knowledge, he just has so much). But it's like he's seeing whole different layers of the world than I am.

It's just that sometimes those layers aren't really there, in a strictly objective sense. I think sometimes he looks at reality and then at the magical world painted inside his head, and I guess he concludes that the latter is more interesting and thus probably what's really going on. And so, I'm sorry, my sweet beloved man, but there is no way to say that you thought that guy was a Romanian spy without making you sound a little off.

Obviously, I find this trait of his frustrating and occasionally maddening, like when he's sternly telling me that I shouldn't have called that guy because something-something-Romania. There are times when I wonder if this is going to be something that gets worse with age, and I'm going to be sitting at the nursing home, too old and tired to argue anymore. And there are still other times when I grimly realize that I have married my own father, who also sees plots where the general chaos of the world and incompetance of the human race will do.

Like I said, a wonderful and brilliant man. His imagination is magical, and I love him for it. I am happily passing on his shimmering, multi-colored genes. It's just hard that the very things you adore about a person in some cases are the things that make you want to throttle them in others.

I have never been attracted to logical men. The computer science department was lousy with single men, but they just weren't interesting to me. The world was the world, and that was that. They had no imagination. Boooo-ring. Obviously, I'm into crazy painted brains. And Josh's dating history is a series of sensible women. Aside from the attraction, we're just good for each other. I assist him in navigating the world as it exists, and he keeps me from being mired in technicalities. I can be excruciatingly pedantic. I probably used to call it being precise (and RIGHT!), but really it's just being a jerk.

So he's crazy, and I'm a jerk. And somehow it turns out that crazy and jerk attract each other and help one another become a little less crazy and a bit less of a jerk.

ANYWAY. The note guy came by later and gave me my wallet. It had everything in it, all the cash, cards, gift cards, and even my used book store credit. Romanians are A-OK in my book.