My family and I just got back from our trip to Maryland for my niece’s wedding. The wedding stirred up a lot of memories, mostly about how my wife and I first met and things that happened on our first date, later dates, etc…

When I first met my wife I was working as a store manager on the campus of the University of California Riverside. I had a store that sold clothes to the college kids and it also sold used compact discs. This was back in 1994.

I first met her on the stairs of the housing complex where I lived on campus. She was with a mutual acquaintance. She had beautiful blue eyes, hair that went down to the small of her back and an “Emma Thompson look” and intelligence that sent my head spinning. I like the pretty, brainy, types. We talked briefly and went our separate ways.

I saw her again at a party hosted by the previously mentioned acquaintance. I don’t remember who I was with or who she was with, all I remember was her.

A few days later she came into the store and was looking kind of sad so we talked a while. I blew off every customer in the store, I didn’t care, I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity. I wanted to ask her out but considering her state of mind at the time I didn’t know how she would react to me.

A couple of weeks passed, I’m in my apartment lamenting to myself, “God! Why can’t I find the right girl?” and God replies, “You idiot! She’s next door!”

I heard noise outside, I look out my window and there was my future wife moving into the student apartment right next door. I said, “Thanks God.”

She was just as surprised to see me as I was to see her. I volunteered my services to help move the heavier stuff into her place, getting suspicious glances from the guy that was already helping her move.

Later that night, cleaned up, I went across the common area separating our apartments and knocked on her door. The two female voices I heard inside stopped, the door opened, and it was her.

“Would you like to go out and get some coffee?” I asked.

She and her roommate started to giggle.

“Did I say something funny?”

“No,” she said, “I’ll tell you sometime.”

She grabbed a sweater and we were off.

Later on in our relationship she told me. That night she and her roommate were lamenting about not finding Mr. Right. She said to her roommate, “What do you think? He’ll just walk right through the door?”

That’s when I knocked on her door and asked her out for coffee.

My wife is upset because she’s over 40 and has to get a Mammogram.

“What’s the big deal?” I asked.

“OK”, she said. “We’ll stick your balls in vise and see how you like it. We’ll call it a Mannogram!”

I guess they hurt. She’s also been a little testy lately.

My wife and I have different parenting skills and strategies. She is an only child brought up by divorced parents and step parents as a Protestant. I am one of seven brothers and sisters from a very Catholic background and the word divorce was never in my lexicon. She had a lot of individual attention and a strong support network of aunts and grand parents. I had to fight for attention and toys among my siblings and we fought a lot.

As adults, she went the institutional path. A gifted child, she graduated top of her class from high school all the way through graduate school getting a PhD in Education. I hated school from day one and was thoroughly mediocre up until college. There I could take the classes I wanted and I did, never finishing my breadth requirements, always talking my way into whatever class I liked and never finishing my degree.

She went the way she was supposed to, I fast talked my way and tried everything. How we ended up together God only knows but we did and we’re happy.

As for raising kids, she’s read every book and researched every angle on every subject there is; watched T.V. shows like “Supernanny” and whatever expert on cable she could find. I do it from memory and gut instinct. She freaks out every time our kids fight with each other and all I say is, “You ain’t seen nuthin yet sister.” She has no idea what it’s like to have siblings.

One thing we always disagree about is how to treat our children’s night time problems. I don’t see anything wrong with my kids coming to our bed at night if they have a nightmare. I let them climb right in. If they’re scared and call out from their room, I’ll sit at the end of their bed until they fall asleep. Sometimes I’ll stretch out on the floor and spend the rest of the night there. That’s if they’re really scared.

She says I’m screwing up the sleep training. I say no I’m not and why does she care anyway? She’s not losing the sleep-I am. This is the only time in their lives when I’m Superman, a Dragon Slayer and every other supernatural thing a Dad can be. I intend to milk it for everything I can get. Pretty soon I’ll turn into the big Dork that they won’t want to hang around anymore and won’t want to introduce to their friends. I see it all the time all around me out in the real world.

Right now I’m their world. I’m Superman, and I like it.

I was reading the Sunday paper and having my morning coffee when my four year old daughter came up to me with a very serious expression. She proceeded to tell me that we needed to make cookie dough and give it to our neighbors because some people don’t have cookie dough. I said, “So you think if we gave everyone more cookie dough then things would be OK?” She shook her head yes and walked away.

Maybe Obama should try it.

“A man’s got to know his limitations.” No truer line has ever been spoken in a movie. I’ve lived a huge chunk of my life doing crazy things and finding out just what mine are. Before I got married I wouldn’t think twice about changing a job I was bored with to try another, or go on some stupid adventure or road trip on a whim.

If you saw my resume you’d think one of two things. “My, what unique and diverse individual.“ or “That jackass can’t hold a job!” Marriage changes all that, especially marriage and kids. It changes if you want to make a go of it. I’ve known guys that have never changed, but I did.

Every once in a great while I’ll bump into someone from my past. The conversation will eventually come around to, “Remember that time when you,” and I’ll be waving my hands frantically in the air behind my wife’s back and mouthing the word, “NO!” to get him to shut up. It usually doesn’t work and in a private moment later on my wife will say, “If I’d known then what I know now about you, I’d have never…” and then she stops, shakes her head and gives me a sideways glance.

“Well you’re stuck with me honey,” I’ll say, “till death because my side of the family doesn’t believe in divorce.” Secretly I think my wife lives in perpetual fear that I’m going to crack someday and return to wayward ways in some prolonged midlife crisis binge of sin and debauchery. But the truth is I’m happy with what I have. I’m not going anywhere. And my kids are in for a big surprise if they think I’m going to be some clueless Dork of a dad that they can rollover and con while they’re growing up.

I did a week-end project at my house recently, a DO-IT-YOURSELF project. I finally laid the tile in our upstairs bathroom. Weekend project my ass! Let me tell you, those home improvement shows lie like dogs. Everything is sooo easy and absolutely anyone can do it. Well my wife couldn’t so it was all me. My father-in-law, thank God, helped me out. He’d done it before and knew all the pit falls. I didn’t ask him how he knew but we can probably assume that it was from making all the mistakes himself.

Anyway, the weekend project started one weekend and wasn’t finished until almost eight weeks later. It looks great and I’m really proud of the work I did, but it’ll be a cold day in Hell before I do another project around the house.

Those home improvement shows have staffs that do all the prep work so the on air personalities look good. It’s like putting together a plastic airplane model once it’s time to film. 90% of the job is prep-work, the rest is just follow through. Now when I watch the shows, I just laugh.

Tom’s Divorce

When he came to the door he looked distracted. Not in a scatterbrained, daydreaming way, but in a deep concentration, as if his subconscious was desperately trying to make some sense out of everything that had happened and was happening in his life.

What first struck me was his appearance. He was the same man I knew and had seen just one month earlier, but his ever present smile was replaced with thin, tight lips. The eyes that usually squinted and displayed crow’s feet from laughter were now open and wetted with reality. The most startling difference was the deep lines running across his forehead, as if some sculptor had slipped with his chisel while working on a statue and ruined it. I was amazed how much emotional upheaval and stress a divorce could cause in such a short period of time.

I had received his phone call earlier that day, just after returning home from grocery shopping. We began the conversation pretty much the way small talk does with the obligatory “Hi, how are you? Long time no see” script. When my turn came for asking those questions, the answers became complicated. He told me he was leaving his wife; there was a long pause. That they were getting a divorce; there was a longer pause. He wanted to know if we could go out, get drunk and talk.

Later that day we met. The bar we chose was loud and crowded, but it was handy. I’d known him and his wife for more than two years and still couldn’t believe this all happened in a month’s time. He started his story as soon as the beer arrived.

The downslide had started several months earlier. He decided to leave a reasonably secure job with no future other than a paycheck for another job at a higher risk, with advancement potential and future money. It was a sales rep job that would have produced hefty commissions given time and patience. In order to make ends meet his wife took a job. This was the first job she held since she was single. When his money began to whither and hers became more important, her priorities changed. She now wanted a career; he was stifling her; she wanted control over all her money and refused to pay bills. She maxed out all the credit cards, hid them and items she had purchased for herself. Then he learned about the affair.

Little bits and pieces of information began to slip from the mouths of his children about mommy’s new friend. His four-year-old son was even able to show daddy where the friend lived.

As the story progressed with more sordid details, I kept wondering what kind of pain he was feeling. How does it feel to be totally betrayed? What words of comfort could I give that wouldn’t sound grossly inadequate? He was looking for answers. I had none. He was looking for help. I couldn’t offer any. There we sat, two pathetic individuals in a bar, one wide eyed with pain and frustration, the other wide eyed with astonishment.

Marriage was supposed to be sacred. A spouse was someone who made life that much more bearable. Someone you could emotionally and physically grow old with. For him marriage had now become a demon that held him in a headlock and was preparing to throw him in a pit from which he could not escape; the pit of emotional turmoil, of bankruptcy and whatever else he could not yet know because of lack of experience.

When I dropped him off it was two in the morning. He didn’t want to go back, but he went anyway. He opened the door to find a babysitter in the living room and his wife out again for the evening.

I went home, hugged my wife and kissed my children.

My wife and I went to church with the family today. After church we went to eat at a local family restaurant, IHOP to be exact. After we were seated by the hostess and handed our menus we also received a surprise.

“What’s this?”, I asked.

“It’s the nutritional information menu,” said the hostess. “The new law started and all restaurants have to give these out to the customers. “

I said, “I don’t want to know.”

She said, “We have to.”

My wife told me to shut up and take it so I did. I told her I just wanted one of the salads.

OH MY GOD! The salad that I order is 1200 calories! There wasn’t a meal on the menu that was less than a thousand and there were others that were a lot worse! WHAT A DEAL BREAKER!

If this is one of the new ideas our government is using to stimulate business it’s the dumbest I’ve ever seen! How are restaurants supposed to survive this one? My wife, the thin as a rail, veggie eating, “The whole world should go GREEN” freak insists that this is a great thing. It’ll help people make better choices and force restaurants to make better meals.

I said, “NO IT WON’T! It’ll make people order and eat out less!” I don’t want to know what’s in it. I WANT IT TO TASTE GOOD! People don’t go to restaurants to eat stuff that’ll taste worse than what they get at home. They go out to enjoy something and have an experience that they don’t ordinarily have. It’s supposed to be a special occasion. I asked her what she’ll think when we go to one of her really high priced restaurants and find out how bad a lobster bisque is or a real, authentic Caesar Salad, a couple of cocktails, the entrée, and her crème brû-lée?

No answer.

This is just another example of people sticking their nose in where it doesn’t belong. There are no substitutes for sour cream, real cream sauces, BUTTER, a good dark beer, a good wine, A GREAT SCOTCH, or a thousand other ingredients that will now be on a hit list of things in recipes to change.

Before all you health nuts out there start screaming, “Oh yes there are, you don’t know what you’re talking about!” Let me just say, “You’re full of it!”

There are substitutes but that’s all they are. SUBSTITUTES! They make a dish passable if that’s what you’re looking for. They do not replace the original ingredients that have been perfected, sometimes over hundreds of years, in a traditional dish, drink or desert. If I want to get thinner, I’ll eat less and exercise more. If, as a nation, we choose not to, well then that’s our own stupid fault if our arteries clog up isn’t it? Having the government get in our face and tell us we’re being bad people just sucks and it’s bad for business.

If it’s good enough for us why isn’t it good enough for them? Hey Government! Your Budgets and spending are FAT and BLOATED! You need to CUT BACK! You’re killing the country with your FAT programs, PORK and excessive SPENDING! We need to pass a spending menu law because you’re too STUPID to make an intelligent decision!

I ordered and ate what I originally wanted, the salad. But I will admit, I will never enjoy it as much again. Thanks a lot!

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Joseph Is Home

It’s been seven days since my last entry and so much has happened. My life has changed so completely it’s hard to even imagine what it would be like without my kids, even after only this short a period of time.

The first time I held one of my babies, it was Rose Marie, and looked upon her face, I heard myself say, “How can anyone doubt the existence of God.”

Then I realized what I’d just said and thought to myself, “Did that just come out of me?”

Things have changed.

One of my kids is home already, Joseph, and is doing very well. He’s a little piggy as far as the food goes, he can’t get enough. Rose and Michael are still in the hospital, they have minor premie problems that just need time to correct. They are saying that Rose will probably be released on Sunday.

My wife and I have been getting our routine down for taking care of babies. It’s a lot of work, just like every one said, and yes I’m very tired.

I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I have the night shift and am enjoying every minute of it. I have Joseph all to myself. So far my favorite part of it is when he’s changed and feed. I sit down in an over stuffed chair, with a Boppie, (large doughnut shaped pillow) around my waist, wedge all sorts of other pillows around me so that I won’t move, and let Joseph snuggle up to me to sleep until next feeding. He hears my heartbeat and drifts off to sleep. An overwhelming feeling of unconditional, trusting love and warmth washes me clean of anything negative or bad I might have been feeling.

I can’t describe it adequately, no words can do it justice and thinking about it right now gives me goose bumps. It’s a feeling everyone should feel and too many never do. A feeling of perpetual hug from a child is the best feeling one can experience in a lifetime. It’s different from the love you feel for a mate, parents, family, and makes the more base and lustfilled emotions you feel that much more dirty because what you feel for your child is so much more pure.

God do I sound whipped… I guess I am, and it only took 5 lbs and 10 oz of baby to do it.

I have a friend who introduced me to his friend who is getting married. We talked about many things but the one thing that struck me was a comment he made about his time and how he and his new wife would be sharing their time with each other. Oh, that poor naive fool! I gave him the truth, and my friend whole heartily agreed.

Marriage Truth About The Concept of Time
When a guy gets married, your time becomes our time. But it’s not really our time, it’s her time. It’s her time to decide what you are going to do, whatever that may be.