It was just a day in September.

I had worked all night, and come home to find that my wife had the day off, for some reason. She took our daughter to daycare down the block, and we chatted. We had been married for about three and a half years, and were comfortable and familiar, but still, this was a nice day when she was home. I stayed up and might have even had a late cup of coffee, well into the mid morning. It was nice.
We stepped out onto the front porch of the apartment, noticing the less-hot, but still sticky air. Our apartment manager Mac, from next door, told us that he reckoned that we had heard the news. Strangely, I hadn't. I normally would have killed an hour on the internet on my desktop computer (internet on cell phones was in its infancy, and anyway, we didn't have a cell phone), or listening to the radio, but this morning, because my wife was home, I had just enjoyed her company.

So I turned on the television, and we saw the news, and the re-recitation of it for about 3 iterations of the cycle. And the phone rang, and it was my best friend, who told me that we HAD to nuke the Muslims who did this.

I really don't remember what my wife did or said, the rest of the day.

I got to bed at around 1:30 or 2:00 that afternoon (5 hours late), slept poorly, and got up around 7:00pm to hear our President declare that they had identified the group that had attacked our country, and that we would go after them.  I then got ready and showed up early for work for another midnight shift.

17 years later, it suddenly occurs to me that one of the many, MANY casualties of that attack was my lovely day with my wife.

It's nothing, I know. But we didn't have a lot of weekday mornings together, then or now.

I feel ashamed for even thinking about it. People lost their lives, and their families. We lost a little part of our country.

Tell your loved ones how you feel about them. You don't have very many chances to do so. You might even lose the next chance that you think that you'll have.

Pursuit of happiness.

My elder daughter, when in high school band, was very tight with her section members. She and several other horn players would literally have parties, exclusive to their section. As such, my wife and I got to know all of them. These were great boys and girls. I was professionally aware that NONE of these kids had ever gotten in any kind of trouble, and thus I approved highly of the friendship. One boy, whom we will here call Larry, graduated a year before my daughter, He went to college, and got a job. Lately he's been also helping out a lot with the youth group at the local church, as a youth leader. He had interviewed me about my work for a Criminal Justice class, and I just recently found out that he's majoring in that field. He's been dating a sweet young lady whom we will here refer to as Eva, who joins him in assisting with the church youth.

So, yesterday afternoon, while I was at work, I got a text from him:

"Hey Officer G, I have a favor to ask you. I want to ask Eva to marry me and I was wondering if I could get your assistance to help me." 

I asked what he had in mind, and ran it by the chief. I prefaced my ask with my personal perceptions of Larry to the chief. He consented. I told Larry that the gig was a Go.

After my shift, I picked him up at his house in my patrol car. I had him sit in the back seat of my patrol car. He was dressed nicely. We drove to a street corner near her house, and parked in a subtle location. He texted her mother to have her come over to his house. When she drove by, I fell in behind her, and pulled her over at a parking lot. I got out, unlatched Larry's back door, and stepped up to speak to Eva: "Miss, would you mind stepping out of the car?" She got out. I pointed at the rear of her car, and babbled for a few seconds while giving Larry the sign (I pointed at her). I told her that this was important, and then asked her to turn around. Larry was there behind her, on his knee, with a very large diamond ring held out. He had told me before that they had talked generally about marriage, but he had never gone through the formality of asking her before. She said "yes", and they wept as they hugged each other. I took a couple of pictures, and asked her to drive her fiancé home safely.

I went home, and informed my daughter of the role that I had just played in her good friend's engagement. I went back out to my patrol car, to make sure that the camera system saved the event in the highest resolution. Our new digital camera systems assign different storage resolutions for different types of patrol events, pulled from a pre-selected list of headings. There wasn't a listing for Marriage Proposal. I selected "Pursuit," which I knew saved at high-level. This pursuit had gone pretty well.

17th.

We woke up with terms of affection, and consumed coffee, and my wife made sourdough bread while I documented the destruction from yesterday's snowstorm.

Actually? This was taken the evening before, but nearly captures what I saw in the morning. 

On the last day of February, in North Texas, you're actually more likely to decide upon long sleeves or a windbreaker as outdoor clothing, than to reach for a lined hooded parka, as I did yesterday. The average high temperature for February 28th at our local airport is about 60 degrees, with the average low being about 39.  Weather like this is actually kind of unusual, and just adds some spice to our lives; we don't mind it much. By February's end, I've friends up north who are very tired of the snow, and friends down south who are probably kind of bored with the lack of it. 

I was on call this weekend, and I've got: 1. The oldest car in our fleet, and: 2. The only four-wheel-drive vehicle in our patrol car fleet. I wasn't going to be leaving town, nor imbibing any adult beverages.

My younger daughter made cocoa, as she's been doing lately. She's got a good hand at it.

My elder daughter invented a reason to go to her best friend's house (to work on a video for a Spanish project), and then happily trudged over in the snow with her rubber boots on (with lace-trimmed cable knit leg warmers visible over the tops of the boots, in the style that has lately emerged here).

My wife and I cleaned some, and discussed how to redo the kitchen. Mostly I said "do whatever you want."

My chickens got extra feed. They were happy, as we had shrouded their coop with a tarp and run a shop light inside it. Marko says that he doesn't get heat to his birds, but his coop is doubtless more airtight than mine. I poured boiling water over their water tray so that they would stay hydrated.

We consumed a black forest cheesecake that my wife made from scratch, and I felt light-headed at all the sugar in my bloodstream.When you're on a near-no-carb diet, you can swoon a bit on your cheat day. For us, that's Saturday.

We went to a fire fighter dinner, and had good barbecue.

We got home, and watched some shows on Netflix.

And I looked up, and it was midnight. My 17th wedding anniversary was over. I had spent the whole day with my wife. We didn't get each other anything, but we were happy with that.

It was a good day, this year, and that. 

Why do they even make that an option?

My KitchenAid dishwasher is a pretty good dishwasher. I can say without a doubt that it is the best dishwashing machine that I've ever owned or had access to. Kinda knock the dried stuff loose on the dishes before loading it, put in one of those AWESOME Cascade Action Pack soap pods*, make sure the reservoir is topped with Dollar General brand rinse aid**, and my dishes come out shiny and clean and new-looking. I never have to re-run the dishes through in such instances.

That is, unless...

...Unless someone has selected the buttons to turn OFF the High Temp Scrub and Sani Rinse.  Then, your dishwasher is running with whatever hot water it gets IMMEDIATELY upon turning on the water valve (it doesn't let it run til it gets hot), with the soap, and that's it. Unless your dishwasher is way different from every one that I've ever seen, it has three things going for it, to get your dishes clean: Hot water, pressure, and soap. It has no scrubbing brushes. If it did, then it could do as well you do when handwashing. Truth is, your dishwasher can get that water a lot hotter than your hands could bear, if you'll let it. And therein is its efficacy.

In the bottom of your dishwasher is a heating element. If you select "High Temp Scrub" (as it's listed on my washer), it heats that element up while the washer is filling with the wash water for washing, and runs that heating element for the whole time that it washes, to get the water really really hot. Thus, it can get those dishes super uber clean. If you select Sani Rinse, then your washer will run the heating element during the whole time that your dishwasher is rinsing your dishes, to get that rinse water hot enough to sanitize. If you select "Heat Dry", then your washer will run the heating element for a while after the rinse water is drained away, to evaporate the rinse water faster.

So here's the problem: My wife NEVER turns on these options. She turns them all off. Why? Because she's a worrier. Wives will do that; they'll worry about getting screwed over again, like when they bought into that whole "I'll bet that he'll look distinguished as he ages, and will eventually grow out of this whole 'let's work for the public and make Jack for money' thing that he's got going on" philosophy. Oh, no. She won't be fooled again. Now, she's Miz Cautious. She's not running the risk of a repeat of that time those times when her Prized Tupperware got a little bit warped melted around the dish racks and had to be scraped and chipped loose. So now, regardless of the absence of such plastics. Regardless of the fact that any plastic stuff could be moved to the top rack and saved from the proximity to the heating element, my bride of 15 years turns the heating options to OFF when she runs the dishes. 

Which leads to Suck and Fail.

I have to admit: I do a lot more dishes than I used to, just to get the damned things run correctly. Maybe that was her plan all along.

_______________________________
*Worth every dime. We came across some packages marked down, but I'll get these from now on, even if I have to pay double. No more powder caking up, clogging up the spring-loaded door flap to the soap dispenser. I don't care if these things cost triple what I've been paying. It's a good product.

**I never used to use rinse aid, but I have to admit that it makes a difference, and the store brand seems to work just as well as Jet Dri or Crystal or whatever. A bottle usually lasts me several months. The reservoir takes about a month to drain.

The things we do.

My wife and I shop for food. We shop for clothes. We prepare meals for ourselves and for the family. We help prepare lunches for the kids. We clean up after meals. We oversee our children's cleanup of the house. We direct our children in matters of hygiene. We tutor our kids in schoolwork. We take our kids to school. We do home maintenance. We go to our jobs for our paychecks. We pay our home bills. We obtain and distribute cell phones to the family. We buy and distribute gifts. We put together family get-togethers. We put together vacations. We visit the doctor. We take our kids to the dentist. We attend recitals and concerts and competitions and meets and matches and contests. We attend to sick kids. We fight (verbally). We laugh. We discuss. We watch shows together. We garden. We sleep together (in snoring repose). We tend to animals. We eat together. We deal with the everyday problems and surprises and expected drudgery of life, when living with another person.

I'm missing something.

Oh, yeah. We also occasionally have sex, as married people will do.

If the amount of time that we spent on this last thing were even one half of 1% of our time together, I think that we would be a very unusual married couple, after 15 years of marriage. I certainly could not characterize that as being an identifier of the state of wedlock.

If it's teh ghey seks that makes opponents afraid of gay marriage, then I submit that they have a seriously skewed view of what a marriage actually is.

I'm not much of a joiner. But maybe there are things worth standing shoulder to shoulder about, regardless of whether you're concerned about being regarded as just doing what the others are doing.

If you hadn't realized that I believe in equal rights for all, then you haven't been paying much attention to me.



Fifteen Years Ago Today.

Fifteen years ago today, I got up with a little bit of a hangover, and went to play a miserable game of golf with my two best friends, Scott and Bill. Y'all may have noticed that I don't talk much about golf on this blog. That's because it doesn't interest me to talk about. But it's a pleasant walk with a pair of good friends, and occasionally hand-eye coordination pays off. Also, it's an excellent way to polish your judgement of distance and wind.

After putting up a score well north of 100 (I never have seen the point in fudging my score, or adjusting the way my ball lies without taking a penalty. What's the point?), I went back to my house to get showered and changed. My fiancée was at the hairdresser's, getting ready. I was to meet her at the church.

We were getting married that afternoon.

I was muddy, and sweaty, and probably non-too-savory from the toxins that I was sweating out from the shindig that my friends had thrown me the night before. I got in the shower and drained the water heater, and then had to wait for the water to heat back up to shave.  Finally, I glanced at my watch as I put on my tuxedo. Ooh-- 3:20pm. Cutting it a bit close, for a 4:00pm wedding, with a 15 minute drive.

This was when I discovered that the vest was a size Small.

I'm not a Small. I'm not even a Large. I'm more in the range of XXL.

They had gone on and on about how the groomsmen had matching vests in one color, and the groom had another colored vest that complimented them but was distinctly different. I thought about where the tux place was-- 3.8 miles away, through town. I got my keys, and left at 3:30pm. Driving through town, there wasn't much of a way to speed up the drive. I arrived at about 3:40pm. I dashed in, told the girl at the counter the problem, and demanded a larger vest. She searched and found one, and then removed, if I recall correctly, about 19 straight pins from it before adjusting it to me. I was impatient, and told her that we'd have to make do with how it was. I fled the store, and hopped into my pickup, at about 3:53PM.

Google Maps claims that the 8.5 mile trip from the mall to the church takes 13 minutes to drive. Under normal conditions, I would have to agree, and on weekdays at drivetime, you can double that. But this was a Saturday, and I was wearing my wedding tuxedo and was en route to my own wedding. I decided that I would never in my life have a better excuse to speed.

The 1989 Ford F-250 extended cab pickup with full-length bed was a big old beast, somehow the same length as the King Cab that year. It's heavy, and handles like an ocean liner. Mine had dual tanks and a 7.3 liter International diesel engine, that put out stupid amounts of torque, and seemed to want to give me 12.5mpg no matter how I drove it. The speedometer only went up to 85, but playing around with a GPS, I had learned that it would do 103mph before the governor kicked in. I jumped the median from the access road, and floored it.

While en route up the hill to the church, I saw a slow-moving car tapping its brakes, as if the driver were lost and checking the house numbers. I blew past my friend Bryan and his wife, parked at the church, and walked in. It was 4:00:30 PM by my watch. My dad, who was standing in the lobby and looking anxious, laughed and shook my hand.

I joined the pastor and my two groomsman in the anteroom, off the side of the church. We sent someone to inform the bride that we were ready. And we waited. And we waited. For over 20 minutes, we waited. It turned out that my mother in-law, not content with the professional hair-do that my wife had just gotten, wanted to mess with her youngest child's hair some before sending her down the aisle.

Finally, the music played, and the pastor (a retired military man) led the processional to the alter. Interesting training kicked in; we all began on our left foot, and marched at 120 steps per minute in 30 inch steps to our places. Such is the so-called Quick Time march, which my friends and I had learned in high school JROTC. Thus, in very short order, we were in place, and watched the woman who presently would become my bride be escorted up to us by her elder brother. It seemed like that their march took several minutes.

The rest is kind of a blur. The pastor used his opportunity to give a sermon that I didn't want. We picked up candles and used them to light a single candle together, and I found that the candle wasn't really a 24" taper, but was actually a white-painted metal tube with a spring pushing up a small insert candle, to keep the "tapers" the same height. I grabbed the thing, and the spring shot out the bottom, and I somehow caught it, shoving up the wax insert just before it went out. I managed to light the communal candle without burning down the old church.

Then, it was over. I kissed the bride (as such she now was), and we turned to meet our future. A friend caught this moment with her camera. It was murky in that old church, so I hope you'll forgive the poor picture. (I think she only had 100 speed film.) 

The vest really doesn't matter much, does it?

We retired to my amazing friend Paula's house, and took some more pictures. My friend Blake served the most amazing barbecue and beans and smoked ham that I've ever eaten. My friend Kevin served the beer that he and I had brewed using his grain sparge system. (I got rave reviews on it, but of 10 gallons, I only got half a plastic cup. Figures.)

I removed my wife's garter, and flung it to the waiting bachelors before an amazing sunset. An hour or so later, I was told that it was time for us to leave. Apparently, the bride and groom are expected to leave while everyone else is still there, so that they can throw rice at the couple.

Friends, this makes no sense at all. Here I was, at a party with everyone that I gave a damn about in attendance, and I had to leave it early. What we SHOULD have done was go back to our house, changed out of our finery, and re-joined the party in blue jeans and flannel shirts. If you're getting married, do that, friends.

We went to a lovely bed & breakfast place that my best friend and his wife had provided for us, took care of a necessary formality, and watched Rowan Atkinson performing a stage bit, on the televisor. In the morning, there were chocolate banana muffins, and strada.

And we went home, a married couple.

My bride has borne me two amazing children. She has my love, and my loyalty. This is just the first multiple of 15 years.

Tuesday is also Tuesday is sometimes Tuesday.

• I'm ready for the Genom corporation to finish the Showham Project, so that we can get some clean power. We don't even have the Genom Tower built, yet, more less the Umbrella or the Dragon Line. Sigh. 
• The Westboro Baptist Bunch did their stuff at a Baylor football game recently, and got infiltrated. I would have to know whether they were playing the Aggies to know whether the guy in the middle was one of them, or one of the guys doing a schtick on them. This is a perfect example of Poe's Law: 

• At the tender age of 41 and with a 14.5 year marriage, the thought of separate beds doesn't sound that unappealing. The thought of separate bedrooms sounds Awesome. Anyone you know do this? Results? 
• Mixed feelings about Elmo dying because his puppeteer resigned. I'll admit that I've always hated the character he made on Sesame Street. (Whose idea was it, to have a popular character speak with subject-verb agreement issues, refer to himself in third person, and then give him his own segment on a children's educational show?). No, I'm not happy for the reason that he left. Maybe they can have him die in a fire, or something, and do another program dealing with death, like they did when Mr. Hooper passed on to that corner store in the sky.
• Friend of mine on a VERY fixed income just had her oven die. Due to dietary restrictions in her family, she has to come up with a Thanksgiving dinner menu that is gluten-free, lactose-free, and beef-free, without an oven-baked turkey. My first thought would be strychnine, but I suggested cocktails all day long. 
• It's very popular among the hipsters to remind us that Israel is disproportionately responding to Hamas rocket attacks out of Gaza. Hey, has everyone forgotten that Hamas is the ruling Palestinian party, and its platform includes the downfall of the nation of Israel? When a nation stands on such a platform, and pitches wobbly rockets into your cities, you kind of have license to go off on them. Hamas is currently demanding that Israel quit making surgical strike attacks on their military leaders. The reason that Hamas isn't throwing more bombs and rockets at Israel isn't because of restraint. It's because they don't have more to throw. 
• Two things from work keep springing up, again and again lately: 1. If your intimate relationship has devolved until you are literally physically hurting each other, get away. End it. 2. When in crisis, seek the advice of the persons you respect most, and then take it.
• Heath has a really beaut Savage Model 24 D.L .22 mag/20 gauge combo rifle added to the raffle to help out Tam with her nose. At $25 a ticket, it's a steal. Get in on it. I'm about to. Hit Tam's PayPal button,
  
  and forward the confirmation email to Jennifer ( jennifer@injennifershead.com ). Do it before Thanksgiving, QUICK!!!!!
• Jay has the rest of the stuff up for raffle here. Last chance! 
• The awesomeness of the prizes and the very real likelihood that you will win (there's not THAT many [not nearly enough!] people donating and putting in chances) can distract from the fact that you are doing my friend a solid. This is your chance, at Thanksgiving, to help out a member of your community. 
• I don't know what it's like for the rest of you this Thanksgiving, but we're getting a high of 76, and may well eat out on Mom's deck. Wearing T-shirt and shorts. But we don't eat until after I get off my 12 hour shift. 
• A very close friend of mine is going through a large police academy (evn though he's a veteran cop) at his new job. They just hit him with Sabre Green spray. Different from [now] traditional Oleoresin Capsicum (O.C.) spray, which is made from peppers, this stuff is made from wasabi, and my buddy says that the difference is amazing. He and I have both been hit with pepper spray, and the thing about it is, even though it's painful and lasts a long time, it takes a few seconds to take effect. He said that this Sabre Green is IMMEDIATE, and that it hits you hard. Think about the times that you've bitten into a pepper and said "Oh, this isn't so hot. Well, actually, I'm beginning to notice OH MY GAWD!!!"  That little wait seems to be avoided with the wasabi spray. It goes straight to effect. As a big plus, he noted that it was very quick to decontaminate from, too, which is a big issue from pepper spray. Understand: if you use pepper spray on someone, you are extremely likely to receive a secondary hit from it, too. I told him that they should have waited for December, and sprayed them with both Sabre Green and Sabre Red, and called it "Christmas Seasoning." 

Friday random thoughts.

--My elder daughter's band class played their Spring Concert last night. They played the Chicken Dance (A.K.A. "The Duck Polka"). The band instructor, a fun-loving guy, turned around after one verse, called for the house lights to come up, and chastised the parents for not having danced. My wife and I hopped up and implored the others to join us in the dancing.  Very few did. I got some sour looks by fuddy-duddies. Scroom. Heh.

--My best friend's wife wants to get her CHL, and asked about how best to do it. She runs a fireworks stand and wants to be armed, with all the cash that they take in. There's also a certain, ah, clientele that tends to come in, which has made certain persons call it the 'Cracker Stand. Texas law doesn't require her to have a CHL to keep a gun at the cracker stand, but I'm glad to see her wanting to get one, so we'll try to help her expedite. There's not much time before the stand opens. I'll be starting with her from scratch. I think I'll attempt to employ a certain experienced firearms trainer to help me. My best friend, who also will probably attend the class, will NOT be present for her training sessions. We have found over the years that there is a tendency for Texas men to unintentionally assert a certain dominance over their female significant others during training. This interferes with good learning. It has little to do, in my experience, with the quality of the relationship that the couple has off of the range, and needn't be an issue with just shooting. (I realize that I'm speaking in vast generalities, here, which means that there's always an exception.)


---I can think of no song more appropriately titled than "Mush Mouth," here.

I finally understood one sentence: "And it goes a little sumpin' like this."
--Fun is the Radio Time Machine. (Works better in Chrome, for me.) Fun listening to the music from the year I graduated high school, the year I was born, the year my mother and father were born.

--My partner, who had been out on medical leave, came back to work this week. He picked me up for lunch today, and it made me happy.

--Things we should probably be telling our graduates:  Your life is going to get worse. Don't try so hard to be great. Don't make the world worse. You are not that special. Now you know that you don't know much, and have to learn your way into your success. 90% of your interactions with humans will be either negative or neutral-- when you have a positive one, don' let it go.

--Tomorrow marks the sesquicentennial for the Battle Of Puebla. On it, I work Friday night, then work a bike race on Saturday day, then go in to work a 12 hour shift Saturday night. Oof.

--I've GOT to get some reviews from the NRA Convention put up.

Random Wednesday thoughts.

--I went to visit a friend in Waxahachie (by-Gawd) Texas the last couple of days. We wondered around the Ellis Courthouse on the square. That's a beautiful courthouse, and I'm picky. Every time that I go to a Texas county that I've never visited before, I try to get a size-up of their courthouse. There are 254 Texas counties (many of which are ~30 miles square, but not all), and most of them have a courthouse, many of which are over 100 years old and still in service. Some have retired their old courthouses but still keep them for other uses. Some counties share their judicial district with another local county, and thus use their that county's courthouse.

I enjoyed the detail of the stonework over the porticos at the entrances:



I also dug the turrets:

Forgive my poor photography. I was using a crappy not-Smart phone at dusk.

--I'm still liking Sallie Ford And Sound Outside. They've got a rough retro sound that I enjoy.

--I went to a pub last night to get a (wife-approved*) pint with an old friend from high school. I enjoyed our chat. She's extremely liberal. I'm a bit right of center. We disagreed about gun control. We're still really good friends. It's not all about politics, friends.

--Pubs are nice places to get a drink and chat. I've hardly ever done that. However, at 9:00PM, the place basically turned into a club, and the music went all doosh-doosh-doosh-dooshdooshdoosh, doosh-doosh-doosh, making us old people find it hard to hear each other. These kids, with their techno music, these days. . .

--This past weekend, I borrowed a flatbed trailer and picked up 3 cubic yards of enriched compost  humus dirt. They said that it was about 1900 lbs when I picked it up.

 I had mediocre tarps, and the wind kicked up, to 50 mph gusts, which meant that I probably lost almost a half a yard. But given the sheets of rain that fell on it over the next couple of days, I'll bet that we shoveled 3000 pounds of the stuff into our raised beds. My wife had gotten out the nail gun and thrown together some 8'X4' beds with doubled 2"X6"s, and lined the sides with black plastic. We put down layers of newspaper under the beds, and shoveled in the compost dirt, mixed with cow manure, vermiculite, and peat moss. While it's organic, it's also basically not much like any soil found in nature. We should be able to grow some stuff in this. It was a dirty job that even my nine-year-old got into.

--We filled Mom's raised bed frame and her front yard flower beds with the stuff, too.

--After all that rain, there seem to be some ruts in my yard from where I backed the trailer onto the soft dirt, and then back out. At least I didn't get the van stuck. This time. I need a yard roller.

--I go in tonight to see how I did on my Homeland Security test in grad school. I'm not enthusiastic. Then again, I'm not really enthusiastic about the state of our nation's homeland security, either.

--I had my daughters do without TV or computer for two days. Given the results, I think I'm going to do this some more.

--My chickens are back to laying about an egg a day. Two of them are laying eggs the size of duck eggs.

--I got to take the weekend off from fire training. It was the first weekend off this year. It was very nice to have the weekend off from training, because I worked at my paying job all weekend. This stuff makes you tired, when you don't get any sleep on top of it.

_______________________________________
*You think that "wife approved" part is silly? Not me. I'm in this thing for the long haul, friends.

Epic weekend.

This past weekend was my three-day weekend off.

On Friday evening, Scott, my best friend of 29 years, called me and said that he and his parents and kids were having dinner and seeing movies nearby. I hopped in the car and met them at the cinema to see Act Of Valor, which I had it on good authority was worth seeing. It was. I found that the reaction to the movie by the packed theatre was almost identical to what Tamara observed: no one moved for 5 - 10 seconds after the lights came up, and what slight voices were heard were very hushed, as about 300 people (?) left. Something about a dead warrior's best friend telling the dead man's son about his father's outlook on life, and quoting Tecumsah to him, that hits you (well, me, anyway) right in the middle.

I won't reprint those strong words here. I suggest that you read them all (just three short paragraphs), because there is iron and tenderness in the admonition there.

Scott and I went with the kids for ice cream afterward, and who doesn't like to watch kids enjoy ice cream? I ask you.

On Saturday, after fire training, I dropped by my shift partner's house to drop something off. He had out cases of quality Belgian, American, and German beers, and entreated me to try a sample, with his old roommate. Never one to insult a gracious host, I had a sample. He pushed another into my fist. I explained that I had to drive home. Nonsense, he argued. His bride would be happy to do so. She smiled and said that she would be glad to do it. I looked at her face, and saw the love of a good woman spouse for her life partner. She really wanted me to stay, because it gave her pleasure to see her husband happy. We ordered pizza a spiced mussels from a local Italian place, and commenced to enjoying great beer, and better stories around the kitchen table.  My shift partner's friend had some great ones about his time in the Navy, and he appreciates good beer like I do. Before long, my partner and I were conducting SFST's on each other, and laughing about the outcome. It was all very silly, I assure you.

It was 3:00am when his wife dropped me off at my house. I had dropped by their place at about 6:00pm. 

I woke up on Sunday feeling great. Seriously. I haven't had a "choir meeting" like the one on Saturday night in years and years, yet I felt as right as rain.

And I was late. Dad wanted to go see a matinee with me. We picked up my car, and went to luncheon on Mexican food, and went to see Act Of Valor again. I watched for tactical techniques. Word is that a lot of the scenes were shot with live ammo. The operators were for-real operators. Many of the scenes were shot with Canon SLR digital cameras, from first-person perspectives, so that you see what the operator sees. I thought it a shame that the director had the guys in low-light using IR goggles but red-dot lasers, when he could have shown the IR beams that they all had on their M4s, through their goggles. But that was a very small criticism. I almost never see movies twice. This one was worth it.

I thanked my wife and my partner's wife for making Saturday night possible. Understanding spouses make a huge difference.

I'm about to go to work, and I'm looking forward to it. Such is what a good weekend can do for you.

What do you do when both parties spout nonsense?

Roberta X throws out some nice barbs on Newt Gingrich. I particularly like her analogies of the two parties as our crazy uncles.

Then Tamara pens this one: "Newt Gingrich criticizing Barack Obama's position on the Sanctity of Marriage is like Nick Nolte giving PR advice to Donny Osmond."

Hey, guys? Refusing to discriminate against an entire class of Americans is one of the few things that I actually agree with Obama about.

And who misinformed Gingrich that he was still relevant?

Can we move on to issues more pertinent to the business of running this country, please?

Battle of the 'bots.

You may recall a certain nifty washing machine that I geeked out over, a year or two ago. It does a GREAT job. It washes the heck outta my clothes, and centrifuges them dry enough that the dry cycle takes less time. It uses less soap. It just... it generally makes me happy.

But there are times when operator error in its use makes me unhappy.

Like, say, when I hurridly last night gathered up clothes for a wash and picked up my wife's jeans where she had shed them in the dark, and washed her iPhone.

It's a really clean paperweight, now. I've accepted that it will NEVER work again.

I just got off the phone the most Apple-icious guy I know. I have gone complete through denial, still feeling rage, sadness, and am going through my bargaining phase.

So, 18 year old phone. What's my best solution to get my wife back into a Genius Bar?

I am in soooo much trouble, right now.

I was just doing a little laundry in the dark.

Getting credit the old fashioned way...

When my wife married me, I had a couple of credit cards maxed out with payments for school. Yep, I was paying minimum balance on 19% APR revolving debt, on a few thousand dollars. Terrible. She sensibly enough asked me if I were going to, you know-- FINISH my degree, and when I answered timidly in the affirmative, she had me get some school loans at cheap rates, and consolidated my debt down to a nice tiny rate, deferred until I graduated. Good stuff, and a smart move, that was.

We bought a house, with that debt sitting there.

We sold that house, and bought another one, with that debt sitting there.

Nowadays, I pay a bit every month on that debt, and it's still there. I figured that this would make my credit look kind of stale.

Apparently not. We just got locked in a nice rate for our house that we bought last year (international bank of Mother In-Law), and which we would like to pay off. The rate was astoundingly low, at 4.75% for 15 years, and I'm pretty happy about the tiny size of the payments. I asked the banker lady about our credit, and she snorted. Near perfect. She showed me the credit reports, and my jaw dropped. I'll be honest: having never really studied the whole credit thing very much, I didn't know that the numbers went that high. I was vaguely aware that over 700 was pretty good.

I'm not bragging-- all I did was marry a good wife who takes what little I bring home, and manages it effectively. She also says "No" a lot, which means that we don't have a lot of expensive white elephants that I would love to have around the house, but which would drain our finances and ruin our credit. And she can cook. And... well, there are other benefits.

Okay, maybe I'm bragging a little. I married well. But I've mentioned that, I think.

More proof that money doesn't buy happiness...

...it just buys the THINGS that make us happy.

About a week ago, I remarked to my wife that our second-hand, 11 year-old mattress was just about worn out. I had been waking up with some knots in my back, and was noting that I had to climb up out of the trough in my side of the bed, and up from the rather low bed edge (20" off the floor, by my tape.).

We started talking about how to finance a bed. Local place had a deal for no interest, no payments for a year, or even two years, if you spent enough. We began talking about it, in a leisurely fashion. Beds cost several hundred dollars, and in my house, such purchases are not made without due consideration.

Then, this Saturday, my wife said, "Uh, honey...? Come look at this." My wife, a week before, had bought a Texas Lottery scratch-off, on a lark. We both consider lottery tickets and scratch-off tickets to be a voluntary tax for people who are bad at math, but we also both agree with Robert A. Heinlein when he said, "Of course the game is rigged. But don't let that stop you. If you don't bet, you can't win." Last year I think I bought a single lotto ticket, and my wife estimates that she bought $16 worth. I believe her; I've NEVER seen any evidence of her purchasing them. No crumpled up tickets or scratched cards in the trash or in her purse, or in her car. I've seen her once or maybe twice buy one with a soft drink at a convenience store, to swap turns scraping off the silver coatings from the hidden numbers. Purely for occasional entertainment, and nothing else.

Well, this ticket had a set up where "three of a kind for each hand wins." There were four hands of 5 playing cards, and each hand had a dollar amount next to it. My bride presented me with a card with 3 of a kind in all four hands, and the combined amount was... $2000!!!

I said, "Bull! We're mis-reading this." I read the fine print, front and back.

Then I questioned the card's authenticity.

Finally, we saddled up and bought us a Sealy AirSpring pillowtop mattress with box springs, delivered, with old-bed haul-away. It arrived Sunday afternoon. We sprung for the non-crinkly, breathy kind of dust mite cover, and a memory foam pillow for me.

My wife collected the very real check for Two Thousand Dollars & 00/100's from the local Texas Lottery Commission place today, and declined to have her picture taken by an annoyed clerk, who told her, "If privacy is a concern for you, then next time buy your ticket in another town." Yeah. Will do, chief.

It's our first-ever brand-new bed.

After my second sleep on this bed, I can categorically report that this is the best purchase that we've ever made for us as a couple. And the leftover cash paid for the last of our superwasher.

The lesson here? Well, I don't know if there is one, other than that a new bed brings good sleep, and good sleep makes Matt a happy man.

Bed and breakfast.

• I've always heard from other guys that these B&B places were a beating. And what do I know? I'd been to one exactly ONCE before, on my wedding night, and that was only courtesy of my best friend and his wife. That B&B was nice, but I was at the time a little irritated to have to leave the best party that I'd ever been to, to go to it, with rice still in my hair. I had threatened to change clothes and go back, but was told that it simply Wasn't Done.
  
  On that first occasion, after certain basic formalities of nuptuality were attended to, we didn't have much to do but watch some TV. Rowan Atkinson had a decent wordless physical comedy routine that we laughed out, and we turned in fairly early.
  
  That next morning, we awoke on the first new morning as a married couple to a quiet knock at the door. In the hallway outside the door we found a tray with great huge banana chocolate muffins and a coffee service on it. We went downstairs an hour later for strada and friendly conversation, before going home to my house.
  
  I hadn't paid for it, but had generally enjoyed myself.
  
  This weekend, we celebrated the 11th anniversary of my marriage, and I arranged for my parents to watch my kids. I then surprised my wife with a trip to Big City and a downtown B&B. After checking in, my wife and I went and had the most marvelous lobster bisque at a restaurant that I like, before raiding a bookstore, catching a movie, hitting the bookstore again, and having a late supper. We got back to the Bed & Breakfast shortly before midnight.
  
  The next morning, we went refreshed to the dining room, where we had a savory strada and some frickin' INCREDIBLE fresh apple muffins.
  
  Conclusions?
  
  --Bed and Breakfasts are NOT a beating. It's a combination of my two favorite things. Seriously, throw in "long-range plinking with large-bore pistols," and you'd have the trifecta.
  --Strada is a standard at these places, evidently, both in sweet and savory formats.
  --Muffins are way better within the walls of a B&B. You simply will never eat a better muffin, anywhere. I expect to have loving dreams about those muffins.
  --Plan your entertainment, and have it nearby, for the evening before, and the day after.
  
  I doubt that we'll wait another 11 years (to the day!) to patronize another one.

As usual,

The 2 dozen roses and pound of hand-made chocolates from a specialty store got nowhere near as much response as the house-cleaning did.

Well, hell, flowers don't look good in a cluttered kitchen.

Act like a grown-up, please.

First: Come Tuesday, it's very likely that Barack Obama will obtain more electoral votes than is necessary to be voted our next President. I don't like that fact. I will do what I can reasonably do to prevent that from occurring. But I have enough respect for scientific polls to believe that we had best prepare ourselves to:

---Get a grip. He's not the candidate I want, but if he is legally voted into office in good faith, there's no sense in whining about it afterward. I was most appalled by the opposition's response when W was elected. Dear Lord, what a passel of whiners. They haven't let up for eight stinkin' years. Don't snivel; it's self-demeaning.

---Come together. This is hard. I know that the guy we've tried (and will continue to keep trying, for the next three days) to keep out of office is hard to get behind, but once he's become our POTUS (perish the thought), we need to show him the respect of the office. Just as important, we need to hope he succeeds in making this country succeed. Think about that for a second. Do you hate B.O. so much, that you want him to fail as President of this nation? Because the ramifications are that our nation fails, too.

Fight the good fight. But in the event of failure, do NOT become someone who turns on his neighbor. This nation sees enough division.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Next, I've noted that a couple of my friends are having some tough, tough times with their marriages. One thing that keeps rearing its head in these deals is how immature parties in the marriages might act. (I'm not going to blame a gender, because that's specious.)

Come to think of it, it's more than just a couple of friends having problems. Not the we're-having-a-spat-and-we've-even-had-to-sleep-in-different-beds-problems, but the Divorce Is Looming kind of problems. And I've noticed some trends:

--You're not in constant bliss? You're not sure that you're In Love with your spouse, anymore? Okay. Work through it. Constant happiness was NOT guaranteed. Let me say that again: You are NOT guaranteed happiness, all the time. Are you compatible? Can you work together? Do you trust and respect each other? Good enough, most of the time.

--Do you want to succeed? This is like my second point on the election issue. If you are willing to throw in the towel rather than work to save the marriage, and perhaps make some concessions along he way, you're acting like a spoiled child.

------------
Yeah, you heard me. I said it.

Grow the hell up, people.

A comment on marriage that I'll listen to.

Online pal Sabra posted a comment that's too damned profound to be lost in the comments section of my last blog post:

I think most of the "we grew apart" divorces could be prevented, if the people want to.I agree with love and respect, but I have to point out that both genders want both things.

In hindsight, a LOT of what went wrong in my marriage boiled down to: I was so hurt and so lonely that I ignored my husband's pain and loneliness in favor of my own, as he ignored mine in favor of his. Which came first? Doesn't really matter in the long run. But if we'd been as nice to each other during our marriage as we learned to be during our separation, things probably would've been different.

Verklempt

Think of the coolest married couple you know.

Now make one of them your best friend of a quarter century.

Now have your best friend come tell you that he doesn't know why his marriage is suddenly at the brink of divorce.

There is no answer. There's no "reason," in the traditional sense.

There's no advice to give.

These two wonderful people are together so much greater than the sum of their wholes. Yet here they are, and they don't know why. I sure as hell don't.

Damn it.

Responsibility (Ex-Spouse and Children mix)

Our San Antonio correspondent Sabra writes a damned compelling little collumn on the rights you give up, when you walk out on your wife and kids.

Word.