All Is Fair In Love, War, and Games

When you work in healthcare, there is no such thing as a 'snow day'. There is, however, such thing as an 'everyone in our office called in sick' day that also happened to fall on a Monday that greeted us Iowans with snow, sleet, and freezing rain.

I woke up exhausted from another night of sporadic sleep, texted my boss at 6:50am that I was not coming in until later, and promptly went back to sleep. When I woke an hour and a half later, I had a text from her that said, 'Don't go in - I'm closing the office.' Basically the best boss in the history of the world.

Monday is traditionally Ryan's day off, and as someone who needs her alone time in order to not become a raving lunatic, I was very concerned about 'crashing' his time off. Fortunately (for a lot of reasons), he is a much better person than I am and was happy to share his time with me.

We are both incredibly competitive (one of us, who shall remain nameless, once yelled 'In your face!' when their bag filled up the fastest at a charity blood drive) and we love games so we decided to make this a day of playing. We started with Monopoly, a game that I have yet to win. Here's my theory on why: I'm too nice. I get very sad when the other player doesn't have very much money, I always agree to trades that help my opponent, and though I own Park Place and Boardwalk almost every time, I can never bring myself to put up hotels because I feel bad charging others so much. I'm an intelligent, successful woman and yet I cannot convince myself that this is make believe money. Much like I once got into a VERY heated conversation with Ryan about how we were going to spend the $625M lottery jackpot (that we didn't even have a ticket for), I sometimes have a hard time separating reality from fantasy. Even after getting a pep talk about how it is okay to win at Monopoly because it's just a game, I can't in good conscience participate in a scheme where the rich get richer while the poor have to mortgage pretend properties to pay me.

After realizing that I am never actually going to win at that game, we set out for our weekly date night. We decided to try bowling, as I have no ethical issues when it comes to winning that game. What I failed to take into consideration is that in 3 years worth of date nights, I've never actually beat him in bowling. Nor did I account for the fact that we choose which alley to frequent based on who has a 7 lb ball that I can use, because my girlie arms can't throw 8 or more pounds with any sort of regularity. Needless to say, there were no victory dances done on my part. Out of 4 games, I broke 100 once.

Down 0-2 on the day and not knowing when to cut my losses, we headed to Toys R Us to pick out a new game. After browsing a few aisles and getting over the initial shock of the going rate for board games ($35 each?!? Really?!), we settled on a $6 pack of Uno and another reasonably priced card game, Rack-O. The moment we walked in the door, I was opening Rack-O and rapidly reading the instructions so I could prepare my winning strategy. The basis of the game for those of you unfamiliar with Rack-O is that you get dealt 10 cards and have to place them in the holder in the order you are dealt them. Then you take turns swapping cards from the deck for cards in your hand in an attempt to get all 10 cards in numerical order first. There is a point value associated, and the first to 500 wins. My mom was a math teacher for 17 years...you'd think I'd have this in the bag. Well, after approximately 6 rounds, I was down 200 points and did what any self respecting adult would...I quit and then texted his mom.

That's right, I told on him. Unfortunately, she apparently can't ground him for winning. Down 0-3 on the week and unable to convince Ryan to re-download Words With Friends (I RULE at word games), my last hope is that sweet, sweet beacon of draw fours. And if I lose at Uno tonight, we're going to a blood drive for next week's date night!