How I Met My Husband

While looking for some medical information that I hoped I had scanned into my computer, I found a folder called "True Love Stories", written to give to someone on Tumblr who was collecting stories of unconventional meetings and couplings. Since I have been too preoccupied with my son's upcoming wedding to write lately (not too busy, mind you, just too preoccupied), I decided I can post these, at least. This is the first one.

Some background to the story: when I was in graduate school, I met my first husband. He was an Eagle Scout and enjoyed camping, so he volunteered as an assistant scoutmaster with a scout troop near the university we attended. Our first real date was to a covered dish dinner award ceremony (Court of Honor) for scouts achieving merit badges. I don’t remember any of the scouts I met that night, but keep in mind, there were a lot of them there.

Next background bit: ten years later, my husband and I were invited to a party for the troop’s 50 year anniversary. By then we had a two and a half year old son. Our marriage was getting a little rocky, given that he had a hair trigger temper, but I was in it until death do us part, and not looking for anything more than a few minutes conversation with the cute young man with curly brown hair standing next to me at the refreshment table. In fact, by a day or so later I had forgotten him.

By four years later, it had become apparent that the death that was going to part my husband and me was likely to be untimely, likely to be violent, and likely to be mine. I tossed him out of the house and filed for divorce. Eventually I joined a singles group that, among other activities, held a weekly volleyball game. One night, I looked across the volleyball net and saw a cute younger man with slightly splayed feet, a feature that for some reason I found totally adorable. I also thought he looked ten years younger than me, and figured he wouldn’t be interested.

It turned out he was interested, and only six years younger than me. After a few weeks of volleyball, he asked me out for dinner. We talked the usual getting acquainted chit-chat people do on first dates, and I learned he was a) from New Orleans and b) an Eagle Scout.  “Where in New Orleans?” I asked, suspecting I knew. “Uptown.” “What troop were you in?” I wasn’t surprised to hear the answer. “Did you know (ex’s name)?” “Yes, he was one of our assistant scoutmasters.” “He’s also my ex-husband.”

By this time I decided if I had spent my first date with my ex-husband watching this kid get his Eagle Scout award, there wasn’t going to be a second date for the two of us. In his zeal to prove to me it wasn’t so, the next week the cute young man showed me the dated certificate that came with his Eagle, and along with it he had a program from the 50 year anniversary party.

Oh, my gosh! The curly haired young man  (now less curly haired, and starting to gray) from the party!

Eight weeks later we were engaged, and slightly less than a year from our meeting at the volleyball game (the meeting I refer to as “the one that took”), we were married. Twenty-seven years later, we are still married. I fondly imagine Fate pushing us together two or three times, saying, “Will you idiots just get it, already? I have other business to attend to.”

And it took 2 or 3 tries, but we finally got it.

The Mad Dash

“So what did you buy in your mad dash?” CD asked.  The  “mad dash” he referred to was my buying spree at the mall the night before, triggered in part by my being mad at my husband. 

My darling had been in a mood all day long. We had plans to go to New Orleans for lunch and then to watch racing at the Fairgrounds, plans that were my idea. However, he had signed off on them, and I had gone cheerfully to watch a movie with him Saturday so it was my turn to pick.

When it came time to leave, however, John was having problems with an engineering program he was using to double check breach analysis figures. He kept getting an error message.

I suggested we cancel our plans for the Fairgrounds so he could stay home and mess with the software. He declined. All the way to New Orleans, however, he mused out loud about why he was having problems with the software.

It didn’t help that our first choice restaurant was closed. We headed for another favorite restaurant, with John speculating the entire way that they would be closed, too. Actually, they were open, but that didn’t make him any happier that I could see, especially when the waiter gave us the bill for the party at the next table, a bill that was $15 more than ours. It all got straightened out, but by that time I didn’t have high hopes for what was left of the day. The high point was when the ice cream cones my husband bought us melted some on his way to our seats. He threw his away, but I ate mine, getting ice cream on several articles of clothing, plus my nose, in the process. By time I returned from cleaning up in the ladies room, my darling had decided we were never going to that race track again. “Well, you’re not,” I thought to myself, “because next time I come here, you won’t be with me.” We watched a few more races without betting and then went home.

I got home to find a message on the answering machine from a jeweler who was fixing a necklace I got as a Christmas gift by lengthening the chain. It turned out that they were still open and would be for long enough for me to get to the mall and pick it up. I would have let it go until today, but I liked the idea of putting some distance between me and the grump.

The repairs to the necklace were $50, and I had been in need of a new nightgown with long sleeves ever since the colder than normal weather set in. As soon as I got to Dillard’s, I was of course confronted by rows of cosmetics, and the realization hit me that I could use a lipstick that would go better with the coral colored blouse I was wearing than my current one did. Only after I tried on and fell in love with the perfect shade by Dior did I find out that their lipsticks are $34. (Their lip liners are $30, but I bypassed that until I can try the one I have and see how it works.)

I wandered around the nightgown department facing more sticker shock. If I hadn’t been living in a cave, I would have known of Hanro of Switzerland, a company that makes $200 nightgowns of the sort that look like long T-shirts. I might, at a stretch, pay $200 for a silk and lace confection of a nightgown that would be completely impractical and not stay on very long anyway, but not for a long T-shirt. Yes, I know, that makes no sense. But I have my dollar rule. If I pay $200 for something, it had better make me $200 worth of happy.

As I headed for a fitting room with the two lesser priced, prettier looking gowns I did find, my phone began playing Love by John Boswell, my special ringtone for my husband. I fished the phone out of my purse, thinking Love is a Battlefield might make a better choice. “I’m sorry,” were the first words I heard. The next words I heard were an account of how he had tried the software on the new tablet I had given him for Christmas, and it worked fine, so the problem was his old computer, and when would I be home so we could go out for dinner? I promised him that I just needed to try on two things and then I’d be home.

From the top: "Mine, mine mine", "Maybe" and Maybe Not". This is exactly how I try to organize items in a dressing room. Thank you, Dillard's.

“That was my husband, calling to apologize,” I said to a bored saleswoman who hadn’t heard me on the phone and didn’t care. “Where can I try these on?” That she cared about. I tried on the gowns and bought them both, for a total of another $127. I talked to the saleswoman about the $200 nightgowns. “Their panties are expensive, too” she said, pointing to a pair of plain white boy briefs on the counter marked $21. Good thing my husband had called. 

So this morning I commented to friends online that I really shouldn’t go to the mall when I’m mad at my husband, prompting the “mad dash” comment. Of course, nothing but the overpriced lipstick was a true impulse purchase. And it did look good on me when we went out to dinner. So did the necklace.  And the - 

Well, let’s just leave it at that.

Bittersweet

“It must feel like you are losing a good friend,” my husband said with unexpected commiseration. 

I was surprised and touched. It isn’t fair to say that my husband doesn’t understand feelings, but he expects them to be straightforward. Being angry when someone does you wrong, being sad when someone dies, being happy when you win the lottery - those feelings he can comprehend. Mixed emotions in the case of a happy event are a different kettle of fish.

After all, the conversation had started with him asking, “Are you excited about getting a new car?” I had finally got up the nerve to test drive a Honda Civic at a local dealership. Several prior experiences with sales people had not been happy ones. Most recently, I had tried to make an appoinment online with the service department of the Ford dealership I had dealt with for years. I got a call back, not from the service department, but from a sales person who demanded to know if I was selling my old car, what kind of new car I wanted to buy, why I wanted to buy a Honda instead of another Ford, and when she finally gave me a time to show up at the service department, insisted she would meet me there with someone who would give me a trade-in price for my car. I took the Mustang to another dealership for the repair instead. As I told John, “I know I was filling in a request for a service appointment. The form had a list of items like oil change, front end alignment, and tire rotation.”

My experience with the Honda people was completely different. Allen, the sales person who helped me, was happy to let me test drive several models and go home to discuss the purchase with my husband. My husband would no doubt be surprised to hear the list of things that various sales people around town have been told I am not allowed to do without his consent, especially since he has left for work in the morning and come home to find a new car in place of my old one on more than one occasion. Blaming my husband is the closest I usually come to sales resistance. 

When I returned to the dealership on Saturday (Allen’s day off, but he came in to see us) with husband in tow, I thought we would be buying the car, but after looking at the engine, asking a bunch of questions that never would have occurred to me, and getting price quote that was well within the range of what Consumer Reports considered a good deal, my darling, who had been nagging me for at least a month about getting moving toward buying myself a new car, decided he needed more time to think.

So it was the day after Easter when I finally called Allen back, asked if we could shave another $300 off the price (we could) and if the blue 4 door with the navigation system was still available (on the lot of another dealership somewhere near Alexandria, if I remember correctly.) Late that afternoon I got a call that I could pick up my car Wednesday morning.

That brings us to Tuesday night, the night of the conversation that began with “Are you excited about getting a new car?” I was, but at the same time I was sad about giving up the old car. Being the lady with the Honda Civic is not quite the same as being the lady with the Mustang convertible. Allen, ever the salesman, pointed out that at least I would be the lady with the bright blue Honda Civic with the navigation system. I’m not sure it’s the same.

So, yes, it is like losing an old friend, particularly since I used to talk to Car, and she used to talk back. Yes, I know, I was on both ends of that conversation, and that Car is a soulless machine who doesn’t know it is going to be sold and doesn’t care. But the interesting thing to me is that the Car persona I created was a wide eyed child in her early years who feuded with Pearl, John’s car, and who then grew wiser and more reflective over the years, and got along well with Fern, John’s current car. Car also gave some damn good advice. I don’t remember having an imaginary friend as a child, so apparently I entered that stage of development late, very late. I don’t know if childhood imaginary friends are in the advice giving business, but I do wonder why my imaginary friend gave better advice than I give myself when talking as myself.

I didn’t tell all this to John, just talked about my happy memories of taking the Mustang on my solitary jaunt out west to New Mexico one summer when he was busy with a project and I had two weeks off. 

I’m enjoying my new car, but so far it hasn’t become a person, and probably never will. John suggested Honey as a name for it (Honey for Honda) and I haven’t been able to think of anything better. Allen told me that it is quite common for people to name their cars. He hears them saying goodbye to their cars by name as they trade them in. I don’t know how many of those people give their cars personalities and hold conversations with them. I didn't ask. I didn’t want him to suggest “the wildly eccentric lady with the bright blue Civic” as my next identity.

Oh, Happy Day

I really will post some of my adventures from London if I ever get over my cold. The cold developed the day before we left and I am sure my fellow passengers on the ten hour flight to Houston were delighted to hear me coughing and sneezing my way through the trip. (On the one hour flight to Baton Rouge, I slept.) At least I could rest and recuperate once I got home, I told myself. After all, the only thing I needed to do the day after I got home was get my hair done. I had an appointment for a badly needed cut and color. My hair was so unruly throughout our trip, I am sure people who saw me wondered if I had ever heard of a comb, much less owned one. It wasn’t helped by the fact that much of the time we were outdoors by the Thames where there was always a breeze. I tried to reassure myself that my hair has a certain je ne sais coif.

That is, after I unpacked, put things away, and started out a load of laundry so I would have something clean to wear for my appointment the next day. I was safely in bed by 10:30.

I was also wide awake by 4 AM.

That was fine, because I decided to go with John to the vet to pick up the cats so I could give the staff the box of chocolates I had bought them on my trip. John never goes anywhere without either a cup of hot coffee or a glass of cold tea. As he attempted to start the microwave to heat up his just brewed coffee (don’t ask), he realized it wasn’t working. He checked the circuit breaker, tried plugging it into a different outlet - nothing. Our ten year old microwave, to use a mangled phrase of my husband’s, was dead as a doorknob.

“I have one in the attic,” he told me. “I can get it down when we get back.” 

“Why do we have one in the attic?” I never go in the attic. We could have Mr. Rochester’s wife up there for all I know. 

“It was my mother’s.”

After we got the cats, I realized that I did have one phone call to make. I had never received the refund from the hotel from my cancelled Denver trip. I called the AAA customer service people, who told me I had to call the hotel, who told me I had to call Travelocity, whom AAA had used to book the hotel, who told me I had to call AAA. By time I reached them again I was crabby and coughing, there was a bad connection, and an amazingly patient person who no doubt was thinking Friday can’t come soon enough got it sorted out for me. I think.

Meantime, John had decided to switch from hot coffee to iced tea. That’s when we realized the ice maker was not working. He told me he would call the repairman after he returned some books to the library. Fortunately, he had not left by time I tried to start my car to go for my hair appointment. It would not turn over. John tried to jump start it with his car. Again nothing. He took me to my appointment, which is at least on his way to the library, and I promised to call when I was done.

I was done just in time for John to pick me up and get home to greet the repairman, who found a busted valve. Fixing that at least was cheaper than replacing the whole ice maker.

While they were dealing with that, I looked up the paperwork on my battery to discover the warrantee had expired three months ago. Of course. John disconnected the battery from my car and we drove to Auto Zone, where it was pronounced DOA and in need of replacement. $130 dollars later I had a new one and my indefatigable husband replaced it and decided we were going for pizza. What I really wanted was hot soup and a bath, but since John had been on the move since 6AM cutting grass, doing laundry, chauffeuring me around, moving the refrigerator out from the wall for the repairman, and dealing with my battery, pizza was the least he deserved. Assuming we can still afford it.

It’s a funny thing - we always seem to go out for dinner when I get my hair done. We don’t plan it that way, it just seems to happen. Fortunately, broken appliances, dead batteries, and colds don’t usually seem to happen when I get my hair done as well. Otherwise, I’d have to stop and spend all my time running around looking like I’d never heard of a comb.

In Short

This is what passes for witty conversation around our house. This morning I told my husband I wanted to stay up and follow Curiosity’s landing on Mars, but “I crashed”.

Hubby replied, “It didn’t.”

Video can be found here for other sleepyheads:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnG-rFFpP8A&feature=player_embedded

Astrology

Today is my husband’s birthday. Today would also be my Dad’s 99th birthday if he were still alive. They were born on the same day, 40 years apart.

Every year after my marriage when I called my dad to wish him a happy birthday, I’d tell him, “You know, today is John’s birthday, too.” “I didn’t know that,” Dad would say, “Next year I’ll send him a card.” Then the next year we’d have the same discussion all over again. Dad was in his mid-70’s when I married John and beginning to show the effects of several TIA’s.

I don’t believe in astrology, but I have to admit it’s spooky how much like Dad John is. Dad, like John, used to know how to do all the basic household repairs. I never even knew it was possible to hire a painter until one of my high school classmates got a summer job as one. Dad and his brothers could do rough carpentry, masonry, painting, wallpapering, basic plumbing and the like. This is not to say they could do them well, mind you. I have fond memories of some of Dad’s work-arounds in my first house. My ex-husband did not know which end of a hammer to use, so when Dad made his yearly visit he would work on our to-do list, and if we didn’t have one, he made his own. One year he cut down a baby magnolia tree in my front yard. He also got poison ivy in the process, so it was hard to be mad at him.

John has more training than Dad in his repair skills, not to mention more power tools, but I still find myself living with some interesting results of his problem solving. I occasionally point out that it is possible to hire people to do these jobs, only to get looked at as if I have three heads, no two of which are working correctly at the time.

The other way in which they were alike is that John, like Dad, has a weird sense of humor, and like my dad, often takes it too far. I find myself sounding uncomfortably like my mom, who I always thought was a grouch. Now I am starting to understand why. You can only get so many quips in response to a serious question before the beady eyes and stare set in.

Unlike John, Dad was the master of the shaggy dog story. He would start out relating a story he had heard on the news or an incident that had happened to a friend, and three or four minutes into it, there would be a punchline. I never knew if he set it up that way all along or if he was telling real news stories and personal anecdotes when a funny twist occurred to him. He did this all my life and I still rarely saw them coming.

John on the other hand, goes in for really bad puns and other quick quips. Most of the time, he has me laughing, but not when I just want an answer to, “Where did you put my mail?”

The one way they are different is that Dad could sing. He had a beautiful baritone, and any car trip taken with him was to the tune of all our favorites: I’ve Got Sixpence, Life of a Soldier, Walking My Baby Back Home, When I Brought Her Apples (the implications of which I never understood until I was grown and gone), Stout-Hearted Men, and other songs of that era. My favorite to hear him sing was When You Walk Through a Storm. Practically my first thought when I heard that my dad had died was that I would never hear him sing again.

John, on the other hand, cannot sing. John singing sounds much like a cat with its tail caught in the door. John can whistle, however. I have never been able to whistle a whole note, let alone a whole tune, but he can. It’s so unfair.

So happy birthday to my wonderful husband, and Dad, I miss you.

Handy Man

John is up in the attic adding more insulation. I may have mentioned this before, but before my husband got his degree in civil engineering, he got one in construction. He can do simple electrical work and plumbing in addition to rough carpentry, painting, and other household repairs. He can also cook and sew, but those skills are self taught.

So as he prepared to take off to the big box hardware store this morning to buy the insulation, a song popped into my mind. Sure enough, it was on You Tube, because everything is on You Tube.

And for you youngsters who only know the James Taylor version, this is the original version. What can I say? I’m sorry my generation hogged all the good music.

On second thought, no I’m not.

ETA: The song Amaryllis linked to in the comment below is so perfect I wanted to see if I could embed the video here (lyrics may not be safe for work):

And while we're at it, here's another song on the same theme, although this man is a little more specialized:

A Day at the Beach

Last summer I really wanted to go to the beach. We actually did take a trip to Galveston right after my husband retired, but the weather that week was uncharacteristically cold and rainy, and although we got to sit out on the beach a few times, going in the water was out of the question.

Some time around the Galveston trip, I broke my foot, and it took the whole summer for it to heal. I had a soft cast on it that I couldn’t even dunk in the bathtub, let alone the Gulf of Mexico. When I finally got the cast off in August, I had hopes for the weekend after Labor Day. Then we heard about the state retirees’ association bus trip to Branson, and decided to do that instead.

So two weeks ago, when my husband asked what I wanted to do for our anniversary, I had an immediate answer. I wanted to go to the beach. In fact, I wanted to go to Pensacola, but was willing to go to Dauphin Island, which is a little closer, and near Mobile if he wanted some nightlife. After a little checking around, hubby suggested Gulf Shores instead. I had never been to Gulf Shores, but friends have gone and love the place.

Then hubby had another bright idea. Instead of staying at an expensive hotel on the beach, we could spend a lot less if we stayed 12 miles from the beach at a hotel in Foley. The hotel was right on Highway 59, and the beach was a straight shot to the south of it. 

The day before we left, John started packing sandwiches, hard boiled eggs, cookies and fruit in our cooler to take with us for picnic lunches. The hotel provided breakfast, so the only meals we would need to eat out were two dinners. Even for my normally thrifty husband, this was a little overboard. OTOH, his usual MO at the beach is to allow me about an hour before he starts asking what we are going to do next. So the picnic lunches sounded promising: I might actually get to spend a good part of the day in the surf and sun.

I suppose I should explain why my husband does not like sitting on the beach. He is very fair skinned and burns easily. Not only that, but his hair is thinning and he can even get sunburn on his scalp. I, on the other hand, have skin tones of a warm Mediterranean olive and with reasonable access to sunscreen, rarely burn. I don’t think I ever had a sunburn as a child, back in the days before SPF anything, even though my grandparents had a summer home on the water* where we went crabbing, clamming and puttering around in grandpa’s little boat.

John also needs to be in perpetual motion. When we got home from our trip yesterday, he spent the afternoon doing his laundry, gluing down loose carpet in his car and putting more insulation in the attic. As I write this, he is outside prepping the eaves in front for repainting. I, on the other hand, have an endless ability to sit and loaf. I can work hard when needed, but I don’t go out of my way to look for things to do.

We arrived Monday around one. Check in time wasn’t until three, so we went straight to the beach and ate our picnic lunch, but we weren’t dressed for splashing in the surf. We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Fort Morgan, a pre-Civil War fort that was important in the Battle of Mobile Bay.

Tuesday morning, we were up early and I finally got to go to the beach. “I just remembered something,” I told hubby. “We forgot to pack towels.”

“The water is still too cold to go in,” he opined. “No one was in the water yesterday.” I put on my suit anyway, after a liberal slathering of sunscreen. Hubby put on jeans, a ball cap and a long-sleeved polo. I started to picture a very short and uncomfortable hour or so on the beach.

When we got there, people were in the water. I left my shorts on over my bathing suit and strolled down to the water’s edge to at least put my toes in. On the way I saw the one person on the beach wearing more covering than my husband - a woman in a jilbāb and headscarf, watching her children play in the surf.

The water is cold at first, but as I got used to it, I strolled in further. I decided to go back to my chair, take off my shorts and get all the way in. “It’s not bad once you get used to it,” I pointed out to hubby, who was reading a paper and eating the cookies he brought with him. A gull swooped down and grabbed a cookie out of his hand. I left him swearing at the gull and went off to enjoy the water with a growing crowd of other people. At some point I renewed the sunscreen and fed peanuts to the gulls before spending more time cavorting in the water, walking up and down the beach, and hunting for seashells.

We hung around until an hour after lunch, by which time my skin was starting to feel a little prickly. Then we went shopping at the big outlet mall across from the hotel. We went back to walk on the beach at sunset and listened for a while to music from a nearby club. 

The next morning, as we were packing to leave, I noticed that John is sunburned. Everything from his eyebrows down to the V on his chest where his shirt was opened, including his ears, was cherry red. “I thought my hat would be enough protection, but it wasn’t.” I, on the other hand, have one nasty burned patch on my left shoulder where I missed with the sunscreen and otherwise look like I haven’t been near a beach for a year.

My precious baby. He spent half a day roasting on the beach with nothing to do just to make me happy. That’s true love.

*Okay, I know that sounds luxurious, but for “summer home” picture a rundown bungalow they got at a distress sale price and for “boat” picture a rowboat with an outboard motor. I grew up in a working class home where we never had to worry about food or necessities but we wore a lot of hand-me-down clothes and summer trips to grandpa’s were the only vacations we ever took, and they were usually day trips.

The Wrong Person

In the past few days I have followed a crooked trail from Fred Clark’s summary of a book by Mark Driscoll to a blogpost called So You Think You’ve Married the Wrong Person. 

The “so you think” is a dead giveaway that the blogger's conclusion, even not having met you and knowing nothing about you and your spouse, is going to be “well, you thought wrong, bozo”. (“Bozo” is not stated, merely implied.)

The post is a short one, and starts out with:

From time to time I hear a husband or wife wonder if perhaps they made a mistake in marrying the person that they did.
Things have usually gotten pretty bad by the time this question arises. Maybe the differences between the husband and wife are much greater than either one anticipated. The husband is neat, the wife is messy. The wife is talkative, the husband is quiet. The husband is always on time, the wife lives more in the moment. The wife is social, the husband is a homebody. These differences, which were initially just an irritant, have grown into something massive. What was once a tiny gap has become a great divide.

Pretty bad? Here’s my list, culled from real life and internet blogs and message boards, of things getting “pretty bad” that cause people to reflect that they might have married the wrong person:

1) A spouse having multiple affairs and giving the other spouse an STD;

2) A spouse who cannot hold a job, not because of the poor economy but due to inability to get along with supervisors;

3) A spouse who is an alcoholic, gambler, or unrestrained spender;

4) A spouse who treats the other spouse purely as a source of supply, of sex, personal services such as housekeeping, or of income;

5) A spouse who is abusive towards the children;

6) A spouse who is abusive to the other spouse.

To be fair to the blogger, however, it may just be the case that when he meets spouses involved in those situations, they aren’t just wondering if they married the wrong person. They’re pretty damn sure of it.

The post goes on to quote some words of Paul Tripp and then to conclude:

Your marriage, and the struggles in your marriage are not an accident. Even if you married a non-Christian, you’re [sic] marriage is not an accident! God is sovereign over all your struggles and sins, and he is using the differences between you and your spouse to bring himself glory and to make you more like Jesus.

I am trying to put myself in the mindset of those who are regular readers of The Blazing Center and whose beliefs would make this comforting advice. I am failing dismally. If you are miserable in your marriage, at war with your spouse and worried about the effect your quarrels are having on your children, I don't think a glory hound god who did this to you on purpose is going to make you feel better. This post makes me feel like a cog in the machine of God’s Greater Glory, Inc rather than as if I matter. Furthermore, rather than my spouse being considered an actual person in his own right, he’s apparently God’s object lesson for me. I don’t know about God, but I see my spouse as so much more than that.

The blogger has added a “side note”, which I don’t remember being there the first time I read his post, but it may have been. It goes 

There are obviously a thousand different variations on marriage. If you are in an abusive marriage, I am not saying that you need to stay in the path of harm. That conversation should be had with your pastor or another wise Christian.

No, that conversation you need to have with the police, or an attorney, or an expert on spousal abuse. 

I understand that the author of the post is speaking from a faith tradition in which marriage is forever. That is why he cannot bring himself to utter the word divorce even in cases of abuse, preferring to pass the buck to some other pastor or “wise Christian”. That’s why he trivializes the concerns of people whose marriages are in trouble. Those of us who have spouses who merely talk more than we would like don’t necessarily think we’ve married the wrong person. We think we need to buy more earplugs, and maybe some duct tape, but we don’t think we’ve married the wrong person. 

My first marriage was to the wrong person. Although I grew up in a liberal Methodist church that tolerated divorce and although I was not a practicing Methodist at the time, I took seriously the vow I made “until death do you part.” I took the vow seriously through years of verbal abuse. When it began to seem that the death in question was likely to be untimely, likely be violent, and likely to be mine, however, I decided “I didn’t sign on for this” and threw my now ex out of the house. I like the way Wayne and Tamara Mitchell put it, “ When you married for better or for worse, the worse refers to life, not what the wrong person decides to put you through.” 

The funny thing is, though, for most of my marriage, I thought we were right for each other. I thought I was a good person to deal with my ex’s volatile temper, name calling, and threats, because I was brave enough to stand up to him and not be manipulated by him. If he hadn’t progressed to physical violence, I would have stayed in a bad marriage and agreed with the writer that no one is perfect.

I like to say that when my ex beat me up, he did it in the kindest way possible. He came home from work, picked a fight over nothing, and worked himself into a rage with no participation on my part. There was no room for me to say, “Well, maybe if I had . . .” As a result, when I met my husband, the right person, I was free to marry him. And you know what? He talks too much. When we are going somewhere, when he says he is ready to leave what he really means is he will spend the next ten minutes heating his to-go cup of coffee, looking for his car keys, wallet, and sunglasses, and going back into the house to check if he left something on. He refuses to get rid of items I see as junk and clutter.

And he has his list of my little irritants as well. Despite all these, we are amazingly in synch. If he says he is thinking of something, it’s very often the same thing I was thinking of as well. If I have a yen for nachos, he is likely to come in from some errand he is running and say, “I thought we’d go get Mexican tonight.” We have the same values, the same political views, and many of the same interests.

It’s more than that I am just physically safer with my husband. If I had stuck with my ex, I would never have known the well-being that comes from a relationship with someone who actually is the right person. I probably would have agreed that people divorce too easily over the wrong things.

As it is, I consider myself fortunate that when I was dealing with a bad marriage, I didn’t go to anyone like the author of So You Think You’ve Married the Wrong Person for advice. He would definitely have been the wrong person.

It's a Wrap

My husband wanted a hammer drill for Christmas, specifically, a DeWalt hammer drill, not cordless, that Lowe’s had for a good price. We don’t do surprise presents - he took me to the shelf and pointed it out to me. A few weeks ago I went to the nearest Lowe’s to buy one. They had one left on the shelf, and it looked as if it had been previously opened, as the nearby clerk confirmed.

So I waited a few days, until the day of my ophthalmologist appointment, and went to another Lowe’s which is one exit down the road from there. They, too, had only one left on the shelf, and it was fastened with a wide piece of tape, but the tape looked as if it could have been the original packaging. So I bought it, and left it in the trunk of my car to await an appropriate time for me to bring it in the house and wrap it. (We don’t do surprises, but we pretend we do.)

I do not like wrapping packages. I'm not good at it, and don't like my uneven results. We used to have a store near us that did gift wrapping, but it went out of business when a Mailboxes, Etc (now The UPS Store) moved in a block away. For a while, another packing and shipping store had a gift wrap service, but they discontinued it a few years ago. So I am on my all thumbs own when it comes to wrapping. I use a lot of gift bags, but the drill is too heavy for that solution.

Wednesday, after driver safety class, John decided to go replace a front tire on his car that he was worried about. It was the perfect time for me to bring the drill in from the trunk, wrap it, and put it under the tree. As I wrapped the package, I heard rattling, which worried me.

That night, we went to Lowe’s for John to buy blades for his jigsaw, and I noticed the shelves were now restocked with drills, and that each package was fastened with  a flat plastic ribbon circling the package in both directions. I started worrying that I had bought a drill that had previously been opened and returned.

So Thursday morning, I snuck the package out from under the tree and hid it, plus the receipt, in a bag of old ornaments that I had promised to take to the thrift store.  I headed to Lowe’s with my wrapped drill and told my story to the customer service rep. She agreed they could swap it out, but she had to unwrap the box first to make sure it wasn’t damaged, because if it was, I’d have to take it back to the store from which I purchased it.

Once she unwrapped it, she asked, “What makes you think it’s been opened before?” 

“Because it just has that one piece of tape and the ones you have on the shelves now have binding on them.”

“Well, let me check with someone from that department.” A few minutes later someone else came by, looked at the package, and said, “Thats the way they pack them.”

“Then why is it rattling?”

“That’s the way they pack them.” He offers to open the box and check that everything is there, which it was, rather loosely packed but still in its plastic bag. He also explains that when they stock the shelves, they are only required to put the plastic binding I saw on items priced over $100; somebody may have chosen to put it on the smaller items, but they don’t come from the factory that way. “We’ll take it back if you want. It’s up to you.”

I decide to take it home. The clerk threw out my torn wrapping paper for me and put another piece of tape on the box. Now I had the problem of finding another opportunity to wrap the box again. Fortunately it came sooner than I thought,when hubby needed to make yet another trip to Lowe’s to get new weatherstripping for the front door. As soon as he was out of the driveway, I grabbed the box from the trunk, rewrapped it in the same kind of wrapping paper and ribbon, and stuck a tag on it and put it back under the tree. By this time, I've had enough practice with it that it actually came out looking decent.

It doesn't matter. Next year, I’m getting  him a fruit basket.

Little Old Lady Driver Class

My foot is still not quite up to Little Old Lady Exercise Class. My knees are getting stronger; I can actually pedal fast enough on the exercise bike to get my heart rate up. I even walked up the ramp to the P-MAC on two occasions to go to basketball games instead of taking the elevator. “Jumping around”, in Dr. S’s words, is still not advised.

My dear hubby found me a substitute, however - Little Old Lady Driving Class. It’s not just  for little old ladies (well, neither was the exercise class). It’s actually a class sponsored by AARP for drivers 50 years old and older. Hubby found out about it when he called our insurance company to find out of his rate would go down now that he is driving fewer miles a month. It turns out it does, a bit, but what really makes a difference is this driver safety class. It saves him $40 every six months. I’m not sure yet what it saves me, but it will be something. So he signed us up.

The class took four hours (almost to the minute), and consisted of videos, lecture discussion, and a pre- and post-test. The time went by relatively quickly. Subjects covered were how minds and bodies change as we get older and how it affects driving, eight safety strategies, other road users and how to respect their road usage, knowing our roads and highways, understanding our vehicles, and judging our driving fitness and knowing when to retire from driving. 

A sobering thought: death rates from motor vehicle accidents climb dramatically once you hit age 75. For women my age, there are just over 2 deaths per thousand crashes. For 75-79 year olds, that rate climbs to 4 deaths per thousand and for 80 years old and older, almost 7 deaths per thousand. For men, those rates are even higher and climb more steeply as they age.

As we went through the material covered, I realized I hadn’t taken a driver’s test of any kind since I moved to Louisiana in 1972. I’ve kept up on changes in the law (for instance, you now have to turn on your headlights as soon as it rains enough to turn on your windshield wipers; that didn’t used to be the law until some time in the late 80’s), but some things I really just did not know, like how far you have to stop behind a stopped school bus. Usually I just hit my brakes as soon as I see the driver activating the stop signs, but one time I came up a slight hill on a four lane highway behind a stopped bus and did not know how far behind I needed to be. (Thirty feet, in Louisiana.) I did not know who has the right of way when entering a roundabout (the drivers already in the roundabout), although I’m pretty sure I would have reacted correctly when faced with the situation. And it turns out I have been taking some risks in driving on the road with big trucks: cutting in too closely when passing them and then slowing down, and hanging out in their blind spots.

At least I behave safely around railroad crossings. If a gate is down and/or the bell is clanging, even if the train is not in sight, I won’t drive around it to get across the way I have seen some drivers do. I also do not walk on railroad tracks or stand too close to them.

So the class was worth the $14, even without the insurance rate reduction. (It’s $12 for AARP members.)

After class, hubby drove us to the insurance agent’s office with our class certificates in hand. As he chattered away (distracted driver), he was reminded of something he needed to convey with a gesture that took at least one hand off the wheel. “Sweetheart,” I pointed out mildly, “Didn’t we just finish taking a driver’s safety class?”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, then proceeded on with his anecdote. Fortunately we made it to the agent’s office without causing an accident.

Because I really, really would have hated to explain that one.

Jury Duty

My husband has jury duty this week. From all the moaning he’s doing, you would think he’s about to ship out to Afghanistan for an indefinite tour of duty. Keep in mind, hubby has never had jury duty before. I’ve had it twice, including the week my son was going off to freshman year of college in another state. So you can imagine how sympathetic I am.

As I may have mentioned before, hubby, like me, is retired. The times I had jury duty, I was employed and had to cancel clients. Since after the first day of jury duty you may or may not have to return and if you do return you may or may not have to stay all day, it was hard to know what to tell my employer about when to expect me and who to cancel. Employers, at least mine, also seem to have a funny attitude toward jury duty, one that can be summed up as “You mean you’re too stupid to know how to get out of this?” Of course, they don’t exactly put it that way.

Hubby, on the other hand, is down to waxing the furniture as a way to fill his time, so you think he’d be jumping for joy at the idea of having something to do, but he’s not. For one thing, they won’t let him bring coffee or snacks into the jury room, although there is a little cafeteria in the courthouse. He did bring a book.

In neither of my two stints at jury duty was I selected for a jury. The first time, I got as far as being interviewed as a potential juror in a tort case, but was rejected by the  plaintiff’s attorney. The second time, I had actually been called to jury duty a few weeks earlier, but my boss complained that week was bad for me to be out and asked if could get it moved to another time. The problem is, when you do that, you have to show up at the time they reschedule, which was, as I mentioned above, the week my son was leaving for college. Thanks, boss. Fortunately, my son had to leave on Thursday and all juries needed for the week were filled by people who were not me by Wednesday evening, so I got to go embarrass him on his first day on campus after all.

That’s the down side of jury duty. In all likelihood, you are going to sit around in a big room with no coffee being excruciatingly bored while attorneys work out plea bargains. After the first day, you might get told to call the next day and see if you have to come back, or you might be dismissed early in the day or early in the week, but you can also be kept waiting around all day. The powers that be can’t tell you that the attorneys are trying to work out a plea bargain because if the attempt fails and a jury is called, that knowledge might prejudice the jury against the defendant.

On the other hand, you could be like my former co-worker who got selected as a juror in a murder case and be sequestered for two weeks. From what I am able to tell browsing the newspaper, there are no big cases coming up in court this week, so I think hubby is safe.

I know if I were ever charged with a crime, I’d want a jury that was serious and motivated to do a good job and not wishing they could be with their son at college or worried about being fired. Now that I’m retired, I could be that juror. 

I just don’t like the part about no coffee.

My House Smells Like Lemon Pledge

Well, it did this morning, anyway. Now it smells more like the lentil soup I’ve been cooking, but when I woke up this morning around eight or so, my husband was wandering around with a dust cloth and spray can in his hand, dusting. Dusting is nominally my job, but I only get around to it every three months or so, because I hate it. I hate all forms of housework except cooking and laundry. I don’t exactly like laundry, but I find it inoffensive.

John is the kind of person who has to be busy. I’m the kind of person who thinks sloth is a hobby. Since he retired, John has repaired everything in the house he could find that needs repairing, repainted the living room, after swearing for years that he couldn’t move the armoire to paint behind it, repainted the bathroom and the mudroom, changed out several light fixtures, cleaned out the storage shed next to the carport, practically rebuilt the pergola, and polished the headlights on my car with a kit he got from Auto Zone. He also does all the yard work (frequently at 6:30 in the morning) and almost all of the housework.

What I’ve done since I’ve retired is played a bunch of computer games and bought a bunch of clothes.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. I started a regular exercise program, which led to my breaking my foot and not being able to do much of anything for months thereafter. I decluttered 4 bags and 4 boxes of stuff for a fundraising drive back in February and have since gotten rid of 4 more boxes, including a skirt I could now fit into again and wish I had back. I’ve been writing blog posts several times a week. And I do batch cooking of soup, chili, and spaghetti sauce a few times a month so we have easy fix meals in the freezer.

Just yesterday I did our first big grocery shopping in over a month. After recovering from sticker shock at the check out counter, I came home to find John mopping floors.  Grocery shopping wasn’t the end of it. I made a marinade for the chicken breasts. I marinated them overnight and then wrapped them and put them in the freezer. I did the same with some skirt steak and store bought marinade. I was feeling very virtuous until I woke up to the smell of make-believe lemon.

I had planned to make the lentil soup anyway, but not first thing in the morning. I found it hard to sit around reading the paper with John spraying his way through the house, so instead of having the soup for dinner, we had it for lunch. Dinner is going to be the steak sandwiches that I originally planned for lunch, dressed up with Gorgonzola butter and roasted red peppers. And maybe onion rings.

Hubby is getting a lot of mileage out of one can of Lemon Pledge.

Drugged

I have a cold. I caught it from my husband, so for the last two days, I have been uttering, “I hate you” at 2 hour intervals. Fortunately he knows better than to believe it, and agreed to stop at the drugstore on his way home from getting his flu shot to buy me some more Allegra-D. I told him either the 12 hour or 24 hour, whichever was cheaper.

He came back with a tale to tell. Of course, my husband can take out the trash and come back with a tale to tell. Anyway, he had to take a card from the shelf and bring it to the counter to get the medicine, because it contains pseudoephedrine, which can be used to make drugs that do more than cure your sneezes and stuffy head. The woman at the counter demanded to see his ID. (“Demanded” is his word. I suspect she asked politely.) “Why do you need my ID?” he asked.

“It’s the law.” Hubby didn’t like it, but he complied.

Then she gave him a form to sign. “What’s this?” he asked.

“It says you aren’t going to use this drug in an improper way.”

So, hubby says, he took it over to a seat to read it. (I'm sure he reads all 42 pages of the user agreement every time he upgrades software. Me, I could have promised someone a lifetime interest in my house for all I know.) It didn’t say anything of the sort, according to him. He brought it back to the counter and said, “It doesn’t say that.” (Am I the only one who is feeling sorry for this poor clerk at this point?)

“Yes it does.”

“Where does it say that?”

“Sir, you have to sign it.”

So he signed it, and she gave him the price. They didn’t have the packet of ten, just the packet of 20 for $21.

“Well, how much is the packet of ten 24 hour tablets?” he asked.

“I can look that up for you. I just need to see your ID again.” Yes, she made him show his ID and sign another form, just to check the price. I don’t know if that’s really the law or if she was just fed up.

The ten 24 hour tablets were $16 so he got me those.

At this point in the story I asked, “So can I have one?” He got me one with some ice water. It seems to be helping.

But I have to agree with him. That was weird.

The Difference Between My Husband and Me

Recently we took a trip to Branson. We take a lot of trips. In 2004 we went to Thailand to visit our former foreign exchange student. With us was our 2003-2004 foreign exchange student, a young man from Denmark.

While we were on the Branson tour I heard my husband telling the story of our flight to Bangkok to some of our fellow tourists. It occurred to me that if you want to know the biggest difference between my husband and me, you can listen to each of us tell that story.

The way my husband tells the story, we got to the airport in Narita, Japan and waited for our flight to Bangkok to be called. And waited. And waited. Every time we asked for information about the flight, we were told an announcement would be made soon. Finally, an announcement was made. The flight had to be cancelled due to mechanical difficulties.

At this point my husband will add that there had been other flights leaving for Bangkok, and if they had cancelled the flight earlier, we could have been on one of them, but by time they told us, all the other flights had gone, so they had to put us up in a hotel until the next day. The three of us were dressed for the weather in Louisiana (mid-80’s) and Bangkok (low 100’s). The night temperature out there in Narita was 40 degrees. Then when we finally got to Bangkok, our luggage wasn’t there and we had to wait until the next day for it.

All of that is true. Most of that would also be in the story as I tell it. However, the story as I tell it includes details he leaves out.

The airline put us up in the Narita Hilton, a hotel we would not have been able to afford on our own. The break in our travels meant we got to take a shower and sleep in a bed for the first time in something like 18 hours. We were also given vouchers for a phone call to tell our friends we wouldn’t be arriving until the next day, and for dinner and breakfast. So as I tell the story, we got to eat real Japanese food in real Japan. The hotel also had a beautiful garden, and on the way back to the airport, we saw cherry trees in blossom.

Garden at the Narita Hilton

Furthermore, we snagged business class tickets for the six hour flight from Narita to Bangkok. As compensation for our being inconvenienced, we later got three $200 vouchers for future flights, which we used on Memorial Day weekend to go to St. Louis for the Louis and Clark exhibit I had been hoping to see.

It is only next to my pessimistic husband that I look like a sunny natured optimist. My husband’s ability to feel aggrieved, however, accounts for the business class tickets. When we got to the airport, we were told to wait by the ticket counter for an airline official who would give us our tickets. John, being fed up with the whole situation, looked over at the counter and saw a clerk at the business/first class counter. He politely explained our situation to her, she said “I can find you tickets”, and gave us not only the tickets for the flight, but passes to the business/first class lounge as well. If he had listened to Little Miss Look on the Bright Side instead, we would have had another hour of waiting in the waiting room for the flight and six hours of being crammed into the cheap seats we had paid for.

So if there is a moral to this story, it’s that we are good for each other. Hubby benefits from my relatively more optimistic outlook on life, but I also benefit from his capacity to feel righteous indignation and act on it. 

Still, whenever I hear him tell the travel story, I wonder if we were on the same flight.

Elephant Ride in Thailand

Boys and Their Toys

To my amazement, my husband has recently replaced our almost 25 year old gas barbecue grill with a new one. I say "to my amazement" because he had been nursing the old grill along since I first gave it to him for Christmas a few months before our marriage.  When he was unable to find a part, he'd make do with something else, as when he replaced the broken handles on the hood with blocks of wood.

I'd like to think that his attachment was sentimental because the grill was a gift from me, but hubby is this way with practically everything. Cars, bikes, lawnmowers, washing machines, all get nursed along along they finally give up the ghost. It's not a bad way to be, especially since he seems to apply the same way of thinking towards wives, but the grill was getting to be the bane of my life. It seemed downright unsanitary, because birds apparently perched on its redwood side shelves and did what birds do, and the wood was hard to clean. Since the grill sat outside the back door, those shelves made a handy resting spot for anything hubby had in his hands while unlocking the door, and what was in his hands was frequently food related, like his travel coffee mug or restaurant leftovers.

Every birthday, Christmas, anniversary and Father's Day for the last five years, I offered to buy him a new grill (we don't usually give surprises, we check first) and he would say the old one was fine. And then one day a month or so ago he astonished me by saying he had seen a Webber grill that he was thinking about getting. Oh, and that it cost around $700.

I did a quick mental calculation of $700 divided by 24 years and decided he really deserved it. We waited to buy it until a tax-free holiday (no state sales tax). We had to special order it to get the color he wanted, so we also ordered an extra feature - a burner on the side that you can put a pot on. It's not that we are likely to use it under ordinary circumstances, but if the power goes out we can heat canned food on the burner as well as grilling. When you live along the Gulf Coast, power going out is not an unlikely occurrence.

The new grill, with a spare propane tank, and a burner for pots on the right.

The grill arrived and for awhile everything was cooked on it, except maybe pancakes. Meantime, our hot water heater developed a mysterious problem. The pilot light kept going out. Fortunately it's under warrantee, so we called the company that installed it and soon had a service call. I was in my office right next to the attic stairs when I heard the following conversation:

Hubby: Wow, that's a big flashlight. Where did you get that?

Repairman: Yeah, I really like it. It throws a lot of light. You can get them just about anyplace. They're expensive, though.

(After the repairman left) Hubby: I'm thinking of getting a new flashlight. Want to come with me?

Since he does almost all the home maintenance around here himself, I'm not about to begrudge hubby a new flashlight to add to the six or so we already have. Anyway, Lowe's is right next to the Pet Smart store and I have been wanting to get new water bowls for the cats. Two new flashlights later ("If the power goes out, you're going to want this one, so I need one, too") we found new bowls for the cats and were looking at toys for them.

Suddenly Thrifty Husband fought his way out of whatever basement he had been locked in all this time. "I can make one of these, " he said, looking at a toy that was basically a string on the end of a plastic wand. I had to agree that it was overpriced junk. So we went home and he drilled a hole in some narrow PVC pipe, tied on a piece of thin rope, and now plays with the cats by flicking the rope around the room for them to chase. 

It keeps them all out of my way. I'm not going to complain.

Five

Truffle as a kitten

Yesterday was Truffle's fifth birthday. While for the most part, I anthropomorphize my cat, who probably doesn't regard me as prey only because I provide him with easy access to food and water, I don't celebrate his birthday. We don't make him wear an annoying hat and sit around staring at candles while we sing to him. I did wish him a happy birthday, even though the only word he seems to understand is "outside". I carry on lengthy conversations with Truffle, his part as well as mine, and try not to act surprised when his behavior contradicts my version of his words.


Most of our conversations lately involve the impending arrival of a cat brother or sister from the local animal shelter. While Truffle promises me, using my voice, that he will be kind to the new arrival, I know exactly what is going to happen. He's going to try to eat it. Truffle is as territorial as a gang lord. It took him only a few hours after his arrival at our house to establish himself as top cat.


When hubby first proposed going to the shelter to select a new cat, I asked him what his plan was if the cats don't get along. His response was "They'll just have to get along." Yeah, chief, I'll start circulating the memo. Finally when pushed he decided the new cat could be an outdoor cat if need be.  Well, I told him I needed a plan, not that it had to be a good one.


Not getting another cat is not an option for hubby. Five is not just Truffle's age, but the maximum number of cats we've had at one time. Until Truffle's arrival, the only time we had a problem with a new cat was when the neighbor's cat adopted us despite all four of ours taking a dislike to him. When the neighbors moved and left Imp behind, he became our outdoor cat. When Imp died in a struggle with we don't know what, maybe a possum, he was replaced by Poppy, who became a favorite of the older cats immediately.


So hubby naturally concludes that it will be just as easy this time. I don't know where he has been the last five years of Truffle's life. I have a plan of my own, though. It involves a very large water pistol. If that doesn't work, I still have that gift certificate to the day spa. A spa day for mama while the fur babies battle it out on hubby's watch is my idea of a plan.

Target Practice

It occurs to me that when I post about my husband, I may seem unduly critical. I don't mean to sound critical. Florence King once responded to criticisms of her book Southern Ladies and Gentlemen by saying that she does not stereotype people, she just "points them up", the way Betty MacDonald "pointed up" country people in her book, The Egg and I. I like to think I just "point up" my husband.

Still, it is more than time I pointed up his many virtues, instead of his endearing faults. What started me thinking about his many virtues most recently is the Bruno Mars song, Grenade:

I’d catch a grenade for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)
Throw my hand on a blade for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)
I’d jump in front of a train for ya (yeah, yeah , yeah)
You know I'd do anything for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)
Oh, oh
I would go through all this pain,
Take a bullet straight through my brain,
Yes, I would die for ya baby;
But you won't do the same

The first time I heard this song, I wondered how often Mr. Mars was likely to be called upon to catch a grenade for his girlfriend, as opposed to say, picking up his dirty socks, or maybe even running a load of laundry. Sure it sounds romantic to promise to catch a grenade for your lady fair, but that's not the kind of promise that can be easily tested. If he had said, "Honey, I love you so much that I'd even carry your purse for you while you try on clothes at the mall", she could reply with something like, "Does Saturday work for you? Because I need a new dress for your class reunion next month." That'll weed out the talkers from the doers. But what do you say to someone who promises to catch a grenade for you? "Let's go see if they have any at the Army Surplus Store"? No, the extravagant promises of the type Mr. Mars makes are the sort that sound impressive (if you're 18) but are useless in every day life.  

Mr. Mars' other complaint about his girlfriend, besides her unwillingness to make suicidal gestures on his behalf, is that:

Should've known you was trouble from the first kiss

Had your eyes wide open, why were they open? 

This is just a guess, but maybe she was checking for incoming ordinance.

My husband, on the other hand, is not given to making extravagant promises. This is what he does. When we first met, I had a job making home health visits, and a car in its death throes. I had known him for about a week when I mentioned I needed to rent a car to make a home health visit because mine was in the shop. He immediately loaned me his. We spent the rest of the weekend coordinating schedules so we could get the health visit, his grocery shopping, and my grocery shopping done, not to mention getting lunch and going to a party together that night. By the end of the weekend, we were like an old married couple. 

Then he repaired the broken clock on my oven, and exterminated a carpenter beetle that was making a hole in my front porch.

He didn't stop doing helpful things once we were married, either. Twice he made the twenty mile round trip to bring me my extra car key after I locked myself out of my car. Then he bought me a magnetic key holder for the extra key.

And since I broke my foot, he has done all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, chauffeuring, and pet care. I never doubted for a minute he would.

For that matter, I don't doubt that if it came right down to it, he'd catch a grenade for me.

He just won't sing about it.