Tag Archives: marriage

Some like it hot

My family is trying to kill me. For sure, the woman and the big boy are. The jury is still out on the little boy; he may not be part of their conspiracy. He might have his own game plan, in which I end up only bruised. I haven’t uncovered the full web of alliances yet.

We didn’t have a blazing hot summer, which may be the only reason I’m still alive. Otherwise, their plan to boil me in my own northern blood might have succeeded.

My wife and my eldest son get cold very easily. Mention November and they start shivering. They dress for a sleigh ride when we go to the grocery store. If I need a break from domestic life, I stand in the frozen foods aisle. Nobody can touch me there. It’s just me and the fish sticks in quiet contemplation.

I’m not a hot weather person. My sun screen bottle says SPF 5×1014. At 78˚F, I sweat from the head like Frosty the Snowman when he got locked in the greenhouse by that magician dude. The Washington Redskins could completely diffuse their whole name controversy if they would only replace their logo with one of me sitting by the pool.

Everyone loves a snowman

Granddad had a way with women. Maybe it was the uniform.

I suspect that my younger son is more like me, but he is still too young and inarticulate to help me. I always get outnumbered, two to one, with the little boy holding his own counsel or voting in a foreign language.

My death by spontaneous combustion/melting will occur in one of two places. In the car, my wife is always surreptitiously turning off the A/C. She thinks I won’t notice the cabin temperature spike to 110. Rather than fight over the controls, I usually roll down my window. This will not necessarily make me comfortable, but it may keep me alive for up to three minutes. Three minutes is as long as the boy in the back can be expected to refrain from kicking a wounded man with “Daddy, can you roll up your window? I’m cold.”

weapon number 1

The moment I look away, this dial will be turned all the way into the red.

Every return from a car trip is a victory, but then I’ve still got to make it through the night. One Christmas, I bought my wife a heated mattress cover. I thought it would ease her January chills. I never imagined she’d use it in July. She only turns on her half of the bed, but my side is still connected. I should be happy. It’s rare that someone shows that much appreciation for a gift. I’m sure she’ll mention in the eulogy that I was always a thoughtful gift-giver.

High!

On the mattress pad controller, H stands for “He’s about to melt in his own bed.”

My only potential ally in this war of temperatures is the little boy. I think he finds it in his interests to save me. He likes to throw stuff. His velocity is good but his accuracy is suspect. To help his confidence, he needs a big target. Without me, he’d frustrate himself aiming for one of the smaller people moving around the house.

Conversations with my wife: Chicken, waffles, and the dry heaves

When my wife found some of those new Chicken & Waffles flavored potato chips in the grocery store, she was very excited. No, chicken and waffles is not her favorite dish. She’s never had chicken and waffles in her life. The first time she saw it on a menu, she thought it was a misprint. She’s never come close to trying it at a restaurant.

It’s all about the potato chip. For a long time, her entire adult life, at least, she has fantasized about new and exotic potato chip flavors. She tells me that they should make a this-and-that-flavored chip. I nod and agree. Sometimes they actually do come out with her flavor, or one resembling it. Then she gets upset and asks me why I didn’t submit her idea first, when we still could have been made rich by it. I shrug and apologize.

Whether or not they stole her idea for their newest flavor, she wants to taste it. She wants to have experienced every potato chip flavor known to mankind. Chicken & Waffles was never her idea, which spared me a scolding, and that is the best thing I can say about it.

I came in from the garage with the last load of groceries to find her slumped over the kitchen sink.

ME: “What’s wrong?”

WIFE: (Gagging noise.) “Oh my God, they’re wretched.” (Gagging noise.)

ME: “What is?”

WIFE: (Hacking into the sink, points at the newly opened bag of chips on the counter beside her.) “Get me some juice!”

ME: “I told you it was a horrible idea.”

WIFE: (Between hacks.) “Don’t talk! Get juice!”

ME: “What kind of juice?”

WIFE: “JUICE! NOW!”

ME: “Here.” (Handing her a glass of juice.)

WIFE: (Downs juice in three gulps. Turns to me with watering eyes.) “That is the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth. I’ve never had anything so wretchedly horrible. There’s never been a food so awful. It literally made me puke.”  (She picks up the bag and shoves it into my chest.) “You have to try one.”

What could go wrong?

Is the world this desperate? Somebody should be working on Tar & Feathers flavored chips right about now.

Dandelion whine

I have a new toy for pulling weeds. Our lawn has lots of weeds. More accurately, our weeds have a little lawn in between them. During the summer, I can hide most of our weeds by mowing them to the same level as the grass. From the far side of the street, the green and level area surrounding my house looks almost like a regular lawn.

In Dandelion season, there is no hiding my shame. As my son used to say whenever he looked over our ¼ acre estate, “Look at all the pretty yellow flowers.” Dandelions send up a bright yellow flag of neglect, signaling to the world my impotence as a groundskeeper.

A lawn-full of Dandelions

“Look at all the pretty yellow flowers.”

I don’t mind Dandelions. My parents were farmers, and when you’ve got cows to milk, hay to bail, and a myriad pieces of equipment to keep running, it’s hard to give a rat’s ass about Dandelions. My parents didn’t, and up until now, neither have I.

But I don’t live on a farm anymore. I’ve started to concern myself with Dandelions because I’m beginning to feel like the Typhoid Mary of weeds in my neighborhood. Dandelions want a better life for their children. So they send their little seedlings this way and that to search for greener pastures, or in this case, lawns.

Periodically, I try to show respect for those around me. The latest flare-up of this civil attitude has inspired me to attempt to nip the coming neighborhood Dandelion infestation at it source. I’ve already tried to spray the horde into submission, but poison is an unreliable murder weapon. It left the Dandelions listless for a day; then it made them angry.

Dandelion choker

It’s nothing personal, Mr. Dandelion. You and I are just pawns in a wider Flora-Fauna conflict that neither of us are bright enough to understand.

They’ve come back with a vengeance. My new weapon resembles a metal cane with a circle of spikes at the bottom and a little ledge to step upon. You place the bottom of the cane on top of the victim, step on the ledge, twist, and pull out the weed by the roots.

Weed extractor

Fun for the whole family.

It works so well that the entire family wants to play with it. My son had to be the first to try it, but he’s too light to make it work efficiently. Then, my wife got hold of it.

My wife is a champion of maintaining the interior of a house, but her dominion ends at the threshold. She has rarely shown an interest in keeping up the appearance of the outdoors. This she considers to be the responsibility of Nature, with my occasional, if ineffective, help.

But once she tried my new toy, she was hooked. She’s spent two evenings in a row battling Dandelions. This sounds like a happy ending for me, right? No work and no Dandelions.

Except.

My wife, for all her strengths, is not the most proficient Dandelion hunter. Dandelion stems tend to lean off to the side (damn their milky souls), so if you aim for the bright, decoying flower, you will surely miss the root. My wife has made a regular hobby of missing the root.

She regularly pulls up out of the ground a wisp of Dandelion petal, a shock of our all-too-precious grass, and a clump of soil. Still nestled safely into the ground is the bulk of the Dandelion plant, waiting until she turns her back to send up a fresh stem.

I tried to show her how to locate the root, but she shook off my advice. “That stuff is all green down there,” she said. “How am I supposed to identify anything in that mess?”

“All you’re doing is surrounding the Dandelions with holes,” I told her. “There’s not going to be any grass left.”

She shrugged. “Well, it will just be the year without a lawn.”

And so it may be, if I can’t break her odd fascination with my new toy.

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful

Can’t we all just get along?

Five years of trading bacon (and it’s only the beginning)

Five years ago today, my sweetheart and I became husband and wife. Five years may not seem like a long time when it comes to the longevity of marriages, but it’s only just the beginning for us.

My wife and I come from vastly different backgrounds. Neither of us imagined marrying someone like the other before we met. Even after we met, it took a while for this to change. It was easier for her to reel me in because she’s so darned cute. I still don’t know how I got her to fall for me. I’ve never come near that level of salesmanship in any other situation.

My wife is and extrovert with a capital E. I’m a steadfast introvert. She’s a spur-of-the-moment gal. I’m a planner. She jumps from one hair-brained scheme to another. I stick with the one hair-brained scheme I’ve had since I was 12. She prefers the fat part of the bacon. I didn’t know there existed people who preferred the fat part of the bacon.

Sure, we drive each other up the wall sometimes with our different outlooks. But mostly we give each other balance. I keep a foot on the ground and she extends a hand into the sky. Together, we make sure that no one will drift too far away from home and no one will miss a chance to touch the stars.

We also don’t waste any part of the bacon. I’m not big on the term soul mate, but if I were, I’d define it as someone you can always trade bits of bacon with.

I’m looking forward to the next five years, and beyond. I’m sure my wife will take me places I wouldn’t have gone on my own. I feel so lucky that I found the person I wasn’t looking for, the one person I truly needed. It’s easy to love a person completely when they are always making you feel lucky. That’s just one of the reasons why I find it so easy to love her so completely.

Happy anniversary to my soul mate, bacon-swapping, love of my life!