Category Archives: Married life

Married life, Religion, Scumbag studies, Social comment

The day we faced down the Phelps gang

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When thinking of people who have no purpose on earth but to hate and harm–real, true emotional terrorists–everyone but about fifty or so Americans agrees that Fred Phelps and his gang take the cake. Out of respect for my Christian friends, I’m not going to dignify the Phelps gang by calling them a Baptist church except in quotes (and tags). As much pain and indoctrination as real Baptists have inflicted on me in life while I was defenseless, even those involved in those abuses would not approve of the Phelps gang. Thus, I’m not cooperating with fake ‘Baptists’ in the effort to steal the title of authentic Baptists. I may not agree with much of anything that comes from the latter’s ecclesiastical leadership, but when it comes to Phelps, I’m okay singing a stanza of Onward Christian Soldiers with the real ones. (With my atrocious singing voice, they may not think of it as much of a joyful noise.)

Being a non-Christian here is actually pretty painless, because the Tri-Cities live by a quiet ethic of staying out of your face. It’s the same way with regard to homosexuality. If one doesn’t wash everyone’s face in one’s difference, and simply lives one’s life in peace, one is left in peace here. My gay, pagan and gay pagan friends living in other states tell me I shouldn’t take that for granted, and I believe them.

On 2 Feb 2007, Marine SGT Travis Pfister of Richland, WA died in Iraq. Always sad, but also an ever-present part of war. A memorial service was scheduled in early March for SGT Pfister at the TRAC (a trade show and expo center) in Pasco, to which one could presume his family, friends, and supportive community members might join in honoring his life and sacrifice. The Phelps gang announced that they were sending a picket.

Where there is a Phelps gang visit, counter-protests appear. For this one, attendance was triply obligatory. Phelps’s gang lives in my home state, in gutless Topeka which snivels and cowers before its barratry rather than taking concerted action to encourage them to find a new state. A civilized Kansan thus had to represent. Considering how many of my good friends are gayer than the 90s, I couldn’t look them in the eyes if I didn’t show up. I’m no patriot, but I respect service and sacrifice, and I don’t appreciate anyone–especially outside thugs–showing up to offend the family of someone who died keeping his oath of service. Deb, of course, was as dead set on attending as I.

We had company.

It was a pretty spring day, though I’m sure it didn’t feel springy for those who came to mourn. The law in Washington is that protests may not approach within 500′ of a funeral. The Pasco Police decided to confine the Phelps gang to a vacant lot across the street from the TRAC, well away from the main entrance and avenue of approach for mourners. A thin line of police officers manned the street with obvious reluctance, to prevent the crowd from physically tearing the Phelps gang to pieces. The air was filled with the sound of big motorcycles, for the Patriot Guard Riders had shown up with about 140 bikes. In most situations, to put it mildly, I am not a motorcycle enthusiast. For that day, I was happy to hear the rumbling sound. This organization travels around organizing counter-protests where necessary, and presumably doing other things associated with veterans’ causes. They do add a sense of muscle to the event, just by looking the way they look, not that we needed extra muscle. There were about two thousand people there, and it was a little difficult to get up the front of the police line. There was no way the family and attendees could see the protesters unless they worked at it. There was no way they could fail to see the rest of us, as there was barely room for cars to get around in the parking lot.

Across from us on the vacant lot were five pathetic individuals. I only remember a wild-haired adult male and a little girl. They were holding up their usual disrespectful signs, insulting military service, Christianity and homosexuals. What struck me was the great diversity of the crowd, a full representation of the Tri-Cities. Black, Hispanic, Asian, white; male, female, somewhere in between; straight, gay, still not sure; old, young, middle-aged; atheist, evangelical, Catholic, pagan, Mormon, Unitarian, agnostic; veteran, union, average joe or jane. At last, something we could all agree on and get together about! I am not a person for whom a sense of belonging or membership comes easily. I truly felt like part of the Tri-Cities that day, and proud to be so. We were supposed to turn our backs to them, or at least the Patriot Guard Riders tried to get us to, but not everyone did. I guess that’s the train wreck factor: it’s hard to look away.

In case you have never seen a Phelps gang protest, it works like this. They only send a small group (they’re a busy bunch, with a lot of people to offend nationwide). Their goal is to get attacked, or have some other event happen that will get them media time. If they do not get it, they lose. So they keep ratcheting up the outrage, in order to see what they can provoke, with increasingly offensive yells and signs. At the end, they had the little girl angrily stomp a U.S. flag into the dirt, which I gather is their ultimate step: if that doesn’t get them assaulted, nothing will. In this case, it didn’t. When it becomes obvious they won’t get what they came for, they leave. They may even have been gone before the family arrived at the memorial, which would be an added bonus. I think four squad cars of Franklin County Deputies escorted the Phelps gang’s car to the county line, off to whatever mission of antipathy awaited them next.

On the way home, I wondered if we’d done any good. I decided that we had. We couldn’t prevent the Phelps gang from doing what they did, but to whatever degree knowing of their presence made it worse for the family, perhaps a 400:1 support:hate ratio made it more bearable for the bereaved. It had gotten us all together, in all our different forms and ways of being and living, in good spirits. I didn’t see anyone showing disrespect for the police, who were doing a necessary and unpleasant job in a professional manner, and deserved cooperation from the good guys and gals. It must have been a moving experience for the gay counter-protesters, seeing so many of their neighbors so forcefully rejecting homophobia–which, after all, is the whole basis for this Phelps crap.

If nothing else, at least a few people learned that the Phelps gang is not representative of Kansas or Kansans. The heavy-bearded character in the KU t-shirt, looking like Gimli the Dwarf after a growth spurt, had something to say about that.

Married life

The costs of marital compromise

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This holiday season I find myself in a frame of mind to tell funny stories.

Deb and I got Fabius, a black Labrador retriever puppy, within a few months of buying the house. Most of you know that I wouldn’t willingly share my house with dogs if it were up to me. However, it’s not just up to me. Marriage means compromise or it means divorce. You can die on any hill you wish, but the problem with choosing a hill to die on is that you die there. One of life’s lessons is to learn which hills to live on rather than die.

I chose not to die on Doggy Hill. We got Fabius, who eventually grew into an 85-pound freight train of a dog with a tail like a police nightstick. If you wonder why the name, it is for Q. Fabius Maximus Verrocosus Cunctator (“Delayer”), Dictator of Rome. When we first got Fabius, he would not come on his leash at all, and I had to drag him until he got the idea: he delayed us a lot. Also, Fabius Maximus was a noble and brave Roman general who gave his all for his country, and would have given his life had it been needed. If we had to have a dog, I wanted him to see himself as Deb’s protector unto the grave.

Fabius has given us that, but he’s also given us a few other gifts he can have back. This story covers one such gift.

For whatever reason, in his middle years, Fabius was a puker. You’d find a large decoration of dog vomitus somewhere in the house, which was real bad for the carpet when his food contained kibbles colored red. Most of the time, this was Deb’s problem (that was our agreement: it’s her dog, she will handle the bulk of the care and cleanup). One night, it became my problem.

I tend to go to bed later than Deb, who insists that the dog must be permitted to sleep in our bedroom. She doesn’t mind the smell, which to me is worse than the Sunnyside feedlots. This means that when I come to bed, I’m making my way in the dark, my sense of smell overwhelmed by dog smell. I focus mostly on trying not to stick the square corner of a bedpost top into my thigh, which is very painful when you just want to lie down and go to sleep. I also react badly to sudden pains out of nowhere, simply because of a bad startle that’s been with me since my teens. Friends know not to come up behind me, for example.

So one night, I was groggy and ready to go to sleep. At that time, I did not happen to wear clothing to bed. I came into the bedroom, disrobed, and strode toward my side of the bed in the pitch darkness. All I cared about was avoiding a thigh injury. My bare foot splooshed into something cold, mushy and wet alongside the foot of the bed.

Before I could register my shock and disgust, I slipped in what felt like a square yard of dog vomit. I can’t even figure out where Fabius stored all that. The WHAM of my backside hitting the puddle coincided with the beginning of a yelled curse. I felt vomit splatter as I landed right in the middle of the stuff. Poor me, but poor Deb: awakened from deep sleep by bellowed husbandly profanity and a house-shaking impact, for I’m not a welterweight.

Of course, if she did not insist on having a dog, and did not insist that it be allowed to sleep in our bedroom, this would not have occurred. And in other fantasy worlds, if people would use their turn signals before changing lanes, a lot of accidents would not occur. We do not inhabit a fantasy world.

Deb jumped out of bed to assess the damage. There wasn’t any, except for painful bruising of my tranquility, buttocks and ego, and of course the need to get up and cleanse the carpet and surroundings of splattered dog ralph. I was not at my best husbandly composure and civility. In between vulgarities, I ordered her to clean up the offending substance and exile the dog to the kennel while I took a shower. I credit her for realizing that this was not the time for her to snarl “Don’t talk that way to me!” She kenneled Fabius and proceeded to deal with the present he had left.

I get a heavy adrenaline surge when startled, so I didn’t get to sleep easily. I didn’t laugh about it for several days. But I did learn that marital compromise does come with costs. The more important lesson was to step carefully going into the bedroom in the future.

Gods, but that was disgusting. Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

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Postscript: just last night, marital compromise came full circle after all these years. I was indisposed, to put it delicately, atop the starship USS Sanitize. I heard a feminine yell of great, sudden dismay from the living room, penetrating walls and door. This is not a good moment, because while one will get up and rush to assistance if one must, one devoutly hopes the situation can safely wait for one to finish in an orderly manner.

“Are you all right, dear?” I yelled. No answer. Oh, damn. Louder: “Dear! Are you all right?”

From the vicinity of the hallway: “Yes. Leo just threw up all over me! He was just sitting there, and then he puked!”

That’s even worse than about three years ago, when she was on the floor sorting Christmas ornaments, and the insufferable little creature defaecated on the carpet–right next to her.

Now I’m worried it’ll be my turn soon.

Adventures, Married life

Sedona: the truth

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If you are in any way connected to metaphysical beliefs, neo-paganism, auras, or for that matter your sacred healing spatula, you’ve heard of Sedona. “Amazing, you can feel the energies.” “Such a special, spiritual place.” “I want to move there and start a natural healing center.”

Trust me, they got a lot of those. But the point is that second to Stonehenge, Sedona is to New Agers (and anyone like me who comes unglued when mistaken for them, no offense) as Mecca is to Muslims or Hagia Sophia is to Orthodox Christianity. There are those who have been, and those who wish they had been. So let’s have the candid reality.

We drove up from the southern approach. The scenery is reason enough to see Sedona even if you’re an atheist (amazing geology and views), a devout Southern Baptist (check out what God makes when he’s in a good mood), a Mormon (Brigham Young missed the southward turn, oh my heck), or whatever. You can say faaaaaaaaa to all the hematite jewelry and vortex maps and types of healing you don’t even know what they mean, and just love the trip for the sake of pure scenic loveliness. Sedona is essentially palisaded by tall red walls with very clear multicolored rock layers that are impressive even by the lofty standards of ‘Zona. An overlook near the airport lets you survey a major part of the town–highly recommended.

It is a town very stretched out, yet without sprawl. Roundabouts make it very easy to turn back around to check out that art gallery or crystal shop or restaurant. They manage to have enough parking in spite of the hordes of tourists. I admit I came in very skeptical of the whole business. I promised not to, under any circumstances, blurt the phrase ‘crystal weinie.’ Most essentially, today was for Deb. She has done much of the driving for two weeks, without complaint (I spell her on request, and navigate), and coming here was more her thing than mine. She was due a day driven only by what she desired, with me cheerfully tagging along wherever she wished to explore.

You might have expected Sedona to have a vast excess of metaphysical shops, quaint eateries with vegan-friendly menus, art galleries and enough hematite jewelry to cover the dome of the Arizona State Capitol. (I’m surprised they haven’t thought of that.) Your expectation would be 100% correct. You could not check them all out unless you devoted a month to it, as a day job. If that’s your shopping paradise, by all means make the pilgrimage. Sedona will sate you. However, most people who don’t come for the scenery come for the energies.

On one level, I think there’s something to it. For reasons I cannot explain, my knees–which frequently stiffen up and pain me lately, especially when I first stand up from a long period of sitting, such as in a passenger seat–felt twenty years younger. I felt as if I could walk ten miles or play nine innings. Deb came into town with eyes irritated, we believe by smog in Tucson and Phoenix, but they felt so fine she forgot about it until I asked her if they were better. She’d also had a headache. Vanished. One might attribute those to cleaner air. Cleaner air didn’t give me such a great knee day, I’ll tell you that. What I felt most of all was a sense of calm and tranquility, which I hadn’t anticipated in a moderately crowded place and is rarely the case anywhere I don’t exactly feel like I fit.

Except for the photo ops, of which she took fullest advantage, Deb tired of Sedona the town after a couple of hours. I think the Raven place that turned out to be a timeshare marketing front was the first point of impact. At the same time, she felt the same calm I did in the area. We disappointed the Sedona money machine by buying only one greeting card and one lunch. Fun observation, to which I was alerted in advance by my nephew (who, with my niece, graciously showed us around the natural beauty of the Sonora) in Tucson: the bulding code in Sedona demands that, without exception, all commercial structures conform to a strict code, including color restrictions. The McDonalds in Sedona has teal arches, not golden ones. Dead serious.

Deb and I did find our own spiritual connection in the Sedona area, but we didn’t find it by seeking out a ‘vortex’ crowded with eager seekers in search of energies. Here is the lesson I drew from it. Sedona and its surrounds are so beautiful that I’m not sure how anyone could sustain a bad mood. They represent a special sense of nature, spirits, gods or God–whatever you choose–presenting its/their very best. If you want to find spirituality there, you will find it anywhere you feel drawn–it is an attitude within you that you find reflected in what you see. Deb and I felt a profound sense of unity and love, and wherever we looked, we saw symbols that reflected this. Maybe the place amplifies what you bring to it. Maybe there are ancient spirits who don’t resent the masses of medicine wheel setter-uppers, Whole Foods junkies, mountain bicyclers, pagans and flabby tourists. Maybe it’s something I don’t understand and may never grasp.

Doesn’t matter what I think or understand. Take my word that the scenery of the entire side drive between Rimrock and Flagstaff that includes Sedona is reason enough for any non-blind person to go. As for the rest, bring a good heart and an open mind, seek what you wish, and you may find it. Far as I’m concerned, the shopping is overrated but the natural beauty is Grand Canyon-level smack-you-in-the-soul stuff. The rest is your call.

Adventures, Married life

Notes from the carriage-room, #4

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It has rained all day tonight, conferring muuuud upon the ranch. And welcome, too, all over Kansas. They have had an eastern Washington summer minus the irrigation. No more starscapes; overcast but no chance of serious thunderstorms. This isn’t twister season. Many comments about us bringing rain from Washington to Kansas. I’m willing that we might have done so. I went out to the rain gauge, .33″. Hope it rains all night so we get more.

Reflecting on the many odd juxtapositions of the carriage-room, as Deb watches Dance Moms on a TV sitting six inches below a rack of well-used saddle blankets. Horses came down from the pasture this afternoon and Deb rushed out to see them, like a girl of seven. Deer in the vineyard today, and she zipped out along the muddy driveway to try and photograph them. A little too swiftly, causing the deer to make their “stay the hell away from us, you faecolith” noise. It’s kind of a brief low sputtered moo. I wisecracked to Uncle Mike that they were fed up with paparazzi.

Tonight was Deb’s night to probe Aunt Jaque and Uncle Mike for their knowledge of the cattle industry. They described one time they took exception to a group of cowboys who treated the stock too roughly during loading. Remember, these aren’t their cattle, though it is their property and they don’t have to tolerate behavior they find unbearable. The cowboys weren’t allowed back. Looks like some family principles traverse many generations.

The power just cycled, probably to do with the rainstorm. Common event out here. Kept right on typing. Laptop battery power is a win.

A lamed old part-Dalmatian named Rowdy is having weird dreams on one of the rugs in here. He is the current beneficiary of Aunt Jaque’s Ad Hoc Homeless Animal Shelter, in which any dog or cat who can achieve this sanctuary and doesn’t belong to someone else is granted automatic lifetime employment slaying varmints (cat) or patrolling the premises and barking at everything (dog) or running the barn (cat of great agility and survival skill). I can’t even keep track of ’em all over the years.

I never gave the stone walls of this place a just description. They are limestone, a light creamy color, held together with gray mortar. Kansas limestone comes in several hues, but nearly all of it is found in strata of the same thickness. Most of the rocks are either 4″ or 8″ thick, depending on whether the rocks were quarried with care, or just picked up nearby. They make mosaics that look like state county maps if the state had a bunch of fairly elongated counties. It is routine to spot an ancient seashell in a piece of the wall, a fossil from the days when this was a massive seabed. They contrast oddly with the perfect light beige 1′ square tiles of the floor, a fairly apt metaphor for the room overall. Notice I said all four walls. Some of the interior walls of the house are stone as well.

Limestone construction is not rare in Kansas, and in the 1800s and early 1900s was quite the norm. A good many old churches, civic buildings, and the bulk of Kansas State University are built from limestone. It is an emblem. It means a great many cream-colored buildings, often in very stately and appealing architecture. And they last. Here is a good example, sitting approximately four miles from me.

This one has lasted 126 years, and it shows zero sign of failing. If in 1898 I sat where I sit now, I’d have a big horse-drawn carriage pretty much blocking the TV and harness case.

I could live with blocking the TV.

Adventures, Married life

Kennewick to Manhattan

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With an early start Friday, Deb and I set forth in her car (because it gets better mileage, has AC, and mainly because she stamped a huge Wife Veto on my bill proposing we take my truck), destination Strong City, Kansas. I have family around Strong and Emporia, and in the Wichita area, so any such trip is a good excuse to see everyone who can put up with us. We also have plans to meet some people in person I’ve only known online, and to duck down Zona way to see our niece and nephew. Plus, we love road trips.

Deb is the better, safer driver and does most of the driving. I’m the better navigator and do most of the navigating, fetching of stuff from the back, and anything else that can make her more comfortable (includes relief driving on request). The night before we left, we had a general moment of panic about Deb’s missing phone, which turned up at the Italian restaurant we’d eaten at earlier that day. Large props to our nephew and niece for running down there at 9 PM to get it for us while we were packing and trying to remember everything. I had an interesting conversation with Sprint before that, confirming my low opinion of the company. It occurred to me: if the FBI showed up with a warrant and said, “Locate this person’s phone, right now,” Sprint would do it. Thus, they can do it. I asked them to do it. They wouldn’t, basically proving one of my basic points, which is that major corporations care far more about helping government with surveillance than about making life better for a paying customer. Welcome to the world where you’re just a measly bill-paying peon, and the surveillance apparatus rules.

Off early Friday, therefore, destination Bozeman, Montana. We’re doing this as much on the cheap as Deb’s medical issues and comfort will allow, which means a car loaded with Costco-bought junk food and a cooler full of beverages, cooled by two 1 gallon milk jugs of water Deb froze before we left. I was pretty skeptical they would last a day, but no harm letting her try. A drive across the Idaho panhandle, where we learned that the favorite Idaho hobby (besides buying guns and ammunition, and grousing about the government) is changing the speed limit for no evident reason. 75, 45, 60, 55, 75, 65, 50…the list would read like a recording of my pre-calculus test scores. Last time we did Montana, we got a piece of bone through a tire sidewall, so we hoped to avoid that. Missoula looks like a great town–one can see why people want to live there, especially when one adds in the university. While we’d have liked to push past Bozeman that first day, the problem there is that the next significant town (except for Livingston) is Billings, a stretch to consider and decline if one can for a single day’s drive. If you ever want to see something you just know is leaching some kind of toxins into the water, drive past Butte sometime and ogle the shut-down open-pit copper mine just behind the town.

A real early start Saturday, and a bit of a painful one as I would normally prioritize college football on a September Saturday, but not as painful as it might have been with UW scheduled to be destroyed in Baton Rouge by LSU, which of course would preface and follow up the pounding with the braggartry and self-satisfaction that makes the rest of the nation hate most of the SEC. At least I would have a valid excuse not to watch that and get my blood pressure worked up. The plan was to head to the Little Bighorn battlefield site, then south to the Black Hills. I’d never been to the Little Bighorn, which is on Crow land. First surprise: it is as much a national cemetery as a battlefield park. Second surprise: so many men, most of whom would no doubt grumpily insist on their hearty patriotism, who do not remove their headgear as they walk among the graves of dead soldiers. Not kids, either; men of middle age and older, most of whom I’d bet would scowl in anger if someone didn’t take his hat off for a song and a flag. I guess someone who thinks actual people are more significant than ceremonial gestures are just out of step with the times. Third surprise: a lot of those interred at Little Bighorn are civilians, so it’s not just a military cemetery. A number of former Indian scouts are buried there.

It has a nice little museum, including some rather precious relics of Custer donated by his widow Libbie, examples of Indian dress and weaponry (it may surprise you that the Lakota and Cheyenne rather outgunned the 7th Cavalry with not just more weapons, but better), and of course a quality interpretation of the campaign and its climactic battle. Last Stand Hill is a very short walk away from the visitors’ center. Interesting: sites where Indian warriors fell are marked with stones similar to US military gravestones, but in a really pretty dark brown stone and with a tribal emblem instead of the customary cross/star of David/crescent/etc. Very classy-looking, and we may presume the Indians approve, since I’m pretty sure they got a major say in the concept and design. Looking around Last Stand Hill, I agreed with what my father-in-law (a retired Ranger and senior NCO) had told me about the position: “You wouldn’t never defend that if you had any other option, it’s just a little hill. No wonder they got wiped out.” Of course, the Lakota had the 7th where it wanted them: divided and in deep trouble. The overall presentation felt balanced and considerate to both sides, though as I learned from Vine DeLoria while reading during the drive, that may be just how it looks through my cultural filter. All I can say is that I hope the Indians feel the modern presentation is an improvement over the past, seeing it through their own cultural filters.

We now had a good long drive toward Rapid City via Gillette, Sheridan and Newcastle (Wyoming). We had a special mission there. As I told some time ago in this post, something special happened the last time we were there. We received a beautiful and moving gift, and wanted to say hello again, plus give something precious to us. The way we do that is wander around until Deb feels like ‘this’ is the spot, stop and do our thing. Both of us felt a great calm while we motored around, which we did until she felt what she feels in such cases. We had brought a very nice thick crystal of which we were fond, plus one of the very nicest granite heart-shaped rocks from our long accumulation. These we left in a quiet spot, and as we did, something like it happened again. Ten feet away, Deb spied two radiant white quartzes, the size of golf balls. While we had seen another beautiful stone, she felt sure we should take the quartzes and leave the other, so we did with thanks and a warm feeling. I do not want, plan to try and be, or imagine myself an Indian; I’m a visitor in that place, one that does not belong to me. But some places feel very good to be a visitor, at least to some people, and that includes us at the Black Hills. Our main desire was to say howdy and share, and Paha Sapa accepted. The place was full of bees, yet my apiphobic bride was barely disturbed–this would be like an acrophobe walking up to the edge of a steep canyon and gazing in without hesitation.

Most of the development in the area, especially the theme parks and naming a town for Custer, made me want to throw up. With all the mountains in the West into which to carve presidents’ heads, why choose these? One strongly suspects that it was a deliberate in-yo-face to the rightful owners who had the temerity to refuse to sell the hills, and to resent gold-seekers rushing in to exploit its wealth. I don’t like Mt. Rushmore, and I don’t like the rest of the associated crap, and I guess if people find that bewildering, they’ll just have to find it bewildering.

Would that Rapid City had felt as serene as the Black Hills. Most of what we met there–lodgings, food, etc.–was mediocre and somewhat laced with apathy. I get the impression that since Rapid City is guaranteed a heavy flow of tourist money thanks to Mt. Rushmore, it doesn’t really care because it doesn’t really have to. In a perfect world, there’d have been someplace further down the interstate where we could reliably hope to stay, but after Rapid City there’s not much for many miles. We just declined to let it spoil our generally happy time, but we also knew that the next driving day would be a marathon if we wanted to reach Strong City at all, much less before nightfall.

That didn’t happen. Getting between I-90 and I-80 (we took the route that gets you there at North Platte) is a long and empty haul almost no matter where you do it short of the Iowa border. Deb loves Nebraska, mainly because she had a great experience there as a young woman. I like it myself, a friendly and polite place overall (except for terrible tailgating on I-90, and I must say, the Nebraska tags were the most notorious). I can think of a lot worse places to spend nine hours driving, that’s for sure. One highlight of the transit was stopping in Kearney for Runza. Not many people outside Nebraska seem to know what this is. Brought to the region by Volga German immigrants, a runza is a sort of ground, cheese and cabbage pastry. Don’t even begin to compare one to Hot Pockets except via superficial resemblance. The Runza fast food chain sells these plus more conventional stuff, but I can’t imagine why anyone would go there for a hamburger when one could have a runza. Deb remembered them, I had heard of them, and we were definitely going to chow down. A must-try for any non-vegetarian visiting Nebraska.

I took over driving (finally) at Lincoln, where we headed for Kansas. Managed not to start crying when we crossed the state line. Came close to it later, for the opposite reason. Various delays, mostly construction-related, had cost us a lot of time. Despite waking at 5 AM and getting on the road well before 7 AM, our chances of making it by dark dwindled with each mile and construction zone. Called ahead with time estimates, which proved unrealistic. Neither Deb nor I are spring chickens, and neither of us feels great about our night vision. She had returned to the wheel in northern Kansas, about which I was dubious but I don’t contest that without some compelling reason. When we got turned around in Manhattan and seemed to miss the turnoff in the full darkness, stopped at a Denny’s for directions, managed to screw those up also despite the best kindness of the staff, it was 4th and 21. Time to punt. We stopped at a motel, called my aunt to confess failure and heavy fatigue, and packed it in for the night.

A very long three days, but ones filled with much beauty and mostly good encounters.

Married life

“I’m the Have-Nots for the week.”

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This morning I was brushing my teeth while Deb attempted to blow-dry all that hair. I brush my teeth reliably, but I dislike it. The mess, the taste, the gagging that will happen when I do it for the proper length of time. Deb is going camping with friends, and I’m going to go hang out with friends, staying with the delightfully hospitable McCall clan. (And no, I have not opened a can of dumbass posting on the blog that we are out of town. There’s still a family of five living here in our absence.)

When I’m trying to brush my teeth with Deb around, she takes advantage of the fact that I can’t talk by heckling me. When she found out I was going to Steve and Melissa’s, she had visions of culinary delights, so the Heckling-of-the-Day concerned the fact that I was varying unflattering epithets for going without her. I should also mention that we sometimes watch a trashy reality show called Big Brother, in which people live in a sound stage that the show calls a ‘house,’ compete for food and powers, and try not to get evicted. If they are Have-Nots, they have to eat ‘Big Brother Slop,’ a nutritious but unappetizing wallpaper paste.

So I’m brushing my teeth. “You are such a faecolith for this,” she groused. “I’m on slop. I am the Have-Nots for the week.”

As hastily and poorly as I set that line up before leaving, it probably won’t do to you as it did to me. I was overcome. Ever try laughing with a mouth full of toothpaste while brushing? I was doubling over, causing toothpaste foam to come dripping down my beard (which I hate), pouring out down the toothbrush onto my hand (which I abhor), messing up my orderly brushing routine (which annoys me). The whole mess made it funnier, my fastidious brushing turned into a hydrophobic-looking FAIL.

Have a good weekend.

Married life

Waxing my ears

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No, I don’t mean the stuff that gathers inside them. I’m talking about the plague and annoyance of male middle age: not that your hair falls out your head, but that it takes root in your ears thereafter.

You can’t really shave the inside of your ear.  You can use a clipper, but it’s annoying and imprecise.  I can’t stand this stuff, and after watching a few shows where people had large amounts of hair ripped from their bodies, I thought: why couldn’t I wax my ears?

I fiddled around with the idea quite a while before I took the plunge. At the grocery store:

“Dear, where is the wax stuff women use to take hair off?”

“Over here somewhere,” puttering past the toothpaste.

“But you’re a woman and this is a woman thing.  How can you not know where it is?”

“I don’t use the stuff, you goober!” In a few minutes, we found some Nair face wax strips.  Cost about $6.

I waited until everyone else was gone before I decided it was time to give this a whirl. I didn’t want any help, or if it came to that, any witnesses; I was going to do this my way, without any wisdom. Went into the bathroom with the Nair stuff, opened it up. It said that I was supposed to use it on shorter hair, and that when I pulled the strip off, to rip against the direction hair was growing. What direction is hair growing in your ear, for gods’ sake? I read the instructions, deciding which ones to heed (rub it first to soften the wax with warmth; wash the ear first) and which to ignore (most). Soon it was wax or die time. The effort at washing my ears was a moderate success given that it’s not that easy outside the shower.

The strips came in pairs, which one pulled apart: great, one per ear. (I think the ones I chose were the ones intended for women’s mustaches, not their chin hairs.) Of course, the transition from inside the ear cup to the outside is anything but a flat surface, so I somewhat pinched the strip in there. How long do I leave this on? Evidently not long at all once it’s slicked down. Okay:  rippppppppppppp! That hurt, leaving my ear bleeding a little. The strip left a gummy residue all over my ear, and didn’t get all the hair (especially the long tresses). By the way, this is not wax. Wax is what drips down a candle, or you use to shine your car. This was stickum, about like duck tape. In fact, I think duck tape might do a better job.

Fine, I decided, let’s scissor off the flowing locks and see if a second pass will work. Disregarding the admonition never to do this to the same skin within 24 hours, press, ripppppppppp. It got more of the hair this time, though there were some whiskers left. Now time to apply the lessons to the other ear. Trim dainty curls, press on strip…rippppppppppppp! You know, ears are pretty sensitive. I saw no need to make a second pass, since the second ear went rather better. Only then did I note that you could use a given strip several times, so for fun, I put it on the moderately furred back of my left hand.  Rippppp. Slick as a whistle.

My ears felt traumatized, but not horribly so, so I passed on the ‘soothing wipes.’ That may have been a bad decision, especially if they would have taken off the excess glop. I certainly wasn’t going to GooGone my ears. I guess they worked, imperfectly but maybe as well as one could hope for given the terrain.

Since I was using a female-specific product, I waited all evening for Deb to notice the Tremendous Change and give me Lavish Compliments. Nothing! Crushed that she failed to notice. I finally showed her, including the bloody part. Her reaction:  “Oh my god! You are such a fucking dork!”

Always there for me.

Married life

It looks like Shrek puked in our blender

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Deb and I are fond of the HBO fang series True Blood. While the plotline sometimes goes to dippy places, for the most part it’s quite entertaining. The dry comedy never fails to crack us up, and the characters grow in complexity over time. I’ve got no use for this whole zombie fad, which I think, hope and trust will fade away like a crappy dream, but some of the vampire stuff is pretty good.

One of our TB traditions, as I’ve mentioned in the past, is strawberry milkshakes with a ton of red food coloring in them. She makes them with Splenda and low sugar ice cream, and they are surprisingly good. The strawberries? Dumped frozen straight into the blender. That thing can’t last much longer.

Last night I came upstairs just before the show, having heard the construction work noises of the blender going to work on the fruit. Before I got around the corner, Deb lamented in her traditional way (at the volume you’d use to address a gathering of deaf elderly people):  “Jonathan! I screwed up really bad!”

“What happened, dear?”

“LOOK!”  I did.  The blender was full of green slurry. “I was trying to mix colors and I forgot that blue and yellow don’t make red! I’m so sorry!”

I started laughing so hard I doubled over. My wife is a brilliant woman in the many areas where she is brilliant, but when it comes to chemistry, physics or biology, they barely register. She was and is entirely capable of forgetting color mixing while cooking, though she would never forget it while painting (at which she is quite capable). Between gales, I reassured her: “It won’t taste any different, dear, it’s fine.”

“Noooo! I can’t believe I did this! It looks like Shrek puked in our blender!”

“It really is fine, dear.” And it was, if you didn’t mind imagining strawberry flavor colored emerald green. We watch the show with the lights off, which made that a little easier. As I believe wise old colonial horndog Ben Franklin once said, ‘in the dark all cats are grey.’ We started to watch the show, with all its nudity, violence and adult themes (everything you want!). Except that every so often, I’d turn and laugh at her.

After a while, I said, “Dear, I just figured out what would be perfect for this.”

A sidelong look of foreboding.  In resignation:  “What?”

“There needs to be a Vulcan vampire show. Can you imagine Spock as a vampire? We could drink this every time!”

“You’re weird.”

Many of our conversations conclude with those words from her.

Married life

Marital justice

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As some know, I’ve had some bumps in the road lately, some very saddening.  And yet, even at such times, something funny can happen, and if one can’t still laugh, one simply rejects whatever the cosmos is doing to try to cheer one up. Not wise.

Tonight Deb and I were watching the Survivor reunion episode, where Colton had every chance to prove that he was something other than a twit, but wasn’t strong enough to do so.  Too bad.  At one commercial, rather than mute the TV and try to avoid seeing silent car advertising, I got up to hit the restroom.  Now, Deb at times thinks it’s great fun to block me from whatever I want to get done at a commercial.  I guess it’s just her way of being playful, but it isn’t always my favorite joke.  So, tonight, she hurried into her slippers hoping to get in my way, but even with bad knees I was too swift and agile for her.  Around the corner I darted.

She does not habitually admit defeat at that point.  As we all know, to urinate, men typically stand before a toilet and lift the lid (which we had put down previously, as we are admonished without cease, by guess whom).  I did in the typical fashion.  Deb sandwiched herself between me and the commode, confident I would not, well, just go anyway.  (I’ve been tempted a time or two.) I gave her the “really?” look.  No effect.

With an air of exaggerated defiance and satisfaction, she prepared to assume the traditional female posture of urination on a commode–in such a hurry that she didn’t stop to consider that the seat was up.  I saw this immediately but said not a word, of course.  Down she sat–on the icy porcelain, the thing no female wants to sit on, for several easily grasped reasons.  Her eyes went wide and she bounded up as I started laughing.  No normal laugh, but a belly laugh, the kind that doubles one over.

She used a profane term for me that means the rectal opening, and also called me a ‘meany’ as she fled.  There I stood, bent over laughing, trying to figure out how it was that I was the ‘meany’ and other choice terms, when it had been her giving me trouble in the first place.

“On the blog!” I called out after her.

“No way!” she exclaimed.

“You gotta own it, dear,” I rejoined.

Sure enough, after the show when I headed downstairs with my hasty notes, she tried to block that also.  However, I threatened to just go to her computer and post it, and she yielded with dire threats.

They didn’t work.  And I had a very difficult time typing this, because every time I think about it, I start laughing my head off.

Adventures, Married life

“There are some popsicles out on the grill.”

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Yet another on the List Of Statements Made Mainly In Alaska.  I just made it, and I was not wisecracking.  I brought my wife home the fruit popsicles she enjoys, but there was no room in our hosts’ freezer, so I stuck both boxes in the snow piled atop the grill on the back porch.  They’re still out there.

In a normal place, the response might have been:  “Honey, have you been drinking?”

In Alaska:  “Great, dear, will you please bring me one?”