Return to Sender

The house to the north of us is full of kids. Not all of them play soccer, but the ones who do have made it their life’s mission to kick a ball against our shared fence as often as humanly possible.

We have the pretty side of that fence. They have the ugly side. This works out great for them, because you cannot make ugly any uglier. Kick that ball as hard as you want, guys, that side was already at rock bottom before you got here.

Now, when I say these kids kick the ball against the fence, I don’t mean a gentle little dribble bumps into it now and then. These are high schoolers. The ball doesn’t roll into the fence, it arrives. Full windup, full commitment, like the fence owes them money.

One kick doesn’t do much. Kick after kick after kick, though, and the nails start screaming uncle. Or if they’re not quite screaming yet, they’ve at least developed an attitude about it. Not all boards are created equal, and apparently some nails just got handed inferior wood and told to make it work.

Eventually the boards give up, and my fence loses its smooth look on the pretty side. I wouldn’t call it “unsmooth,” exactly. I’d call it “those darn kids are kicking their soccer ball again, and would you look at that, the fence is not enduring this assault unscathed.” I like making things more dramatic than they need to be. We all have our flaws.

So every other month or so, I grab a hammer and go pound the boards back into shape. My carpentry skills are rudimentary at best. I know what the hammer is for in a theoretical sense. Hitting the actual nail head, dead center, on purpose, is a separate and much rarer skill that I have not acquired. The fence has three coats of HOA-approved stain on it, and around every nail that keeps losing its argument with a soccer ball, that stain is losing its luster right along with it.

The fence itself, though, is a manageable problem. I deal with it every couple of months and move on with my life. The real issue is the balls that end up in our yard, because now I have to decide what to do with them.

The neighbors directly to the north are a married couple, and they’re both police officers on two different local departments. I have decided this is not the household to walk up to and complain about a soccer ball situation. So when I’m out in the yard, or when I spot a ball sitting there the next morning, I chuck it back over the fence like a good neighbor. Sometimes, if they’re still out there playing, I even get a “thank you” for my trouble.

While my wife and I were traveling recently, my daughter-in-law took over plant-watering duty. I told her that if she found any balls in the yard, just toss them back over. She sent me a video of five balls sitting in our grass. Four soccer balls, and one mystery ball that apparently volunteered for the mission because they’d run out of actual soccer balls to sacrifice.

This past weekend, with the temperature sitting comfortably in the 90s, my wife and I were trying to enjoy the hot tub, which is its own kind of ambitious. While we were out there, I looked over toward the house on the other side of ours. Up until that moment I’d been fairly confident that every single ball that ever landed in our yard came from the police house. But a little doubt crept in.

The house catty-corner to us, the one with the slightly annoying weather station poking into our yard that we get zero access to the data from, had a soccer ball up on their roof, and they were making a whole game out of throwing it up there. I genuinely cannot think of a single scenario where a ball comes off that roof and lands in our yard. But knowing there’s now an active second source of soccer balls in the neighborhood does change the math a little. Not enough to unseat the police house as prime suspect. But it’s there now, quietly present, every time I pause before lobbing a ball back over a fence.

Bottom line: I’m glad the kids are active. I’m glad they’re outside doing something instead of staring at a screen. And honestly, for their sake, I’m glad they have so many soccer balls that launching one over the fence doesn’t mean the game’s over, they just grab another. I just wish the balls came with a mute button and a low-impact setting, so my fence boards could stop taking the brunt of teenage enthusiasm. But I know, I know. Another one of my first world problems, and I really should be grateful for it.

The Chip My Wife Never Plays

It’s been hot in Oklahoma again this summer. Since this is only our second year here and most of our plants aren’t cactus, I’ve been talking to the mower man about an irrigation system. Turns out he’s also an electrician. Turns out he also has a friend who installs sprinklers. The man contains multitudes.

Before leaving for Europe, he gave me a ballpark quote. The allpark numbers pushing $5,000, maybe more.

I told him, “I think my wife will let me have this one.”

She did not let me have this one.

She’d go for something around half his estimate, and I already know that number is the conservative one. So the sprinkler system joined the long list of projects that have quietly died in our house. I get it. I own it.

Here’s why I own it so completely: a few years ago, I carved off a little chunk of our retirement money and handed it to algo trading bots and crypto. My financial advisor told me not to. I did it anyway. That decision gave Judy a veto power that isn’t close to 50-50. It’s more like 60-40, and some days I think she’s being generous with the 40.

I recently sat down with my advisor to close out the company I’d run for twenty years, the one that funded my brief career as a degenerate gambler with better vocabulary. I apologized for not listening to him. He was kind about it, which somehow made it worse. He’s clearly seen clients make mistakes that make mine look like a rounding error. Small comfort, but I’ll take it.

So now, when Judy wants a pedicure or a hot tub or literally anything, I zip it. I’ve earned exactly zero opinions on discretionary spending for the foreseeable future.

The strange part is how well this has worked out for me.

I’ve always been a guy who likes to get his way. Guilt turns out to be a remarkably effective muzzle. I can’t fully bury that part of my personality, but knowing I torched a chunk of our savings on bots that promised passive income and delivered passive regret keeps me in check more than any argument ever could.

Judy has a chip she could play anytime she wants. One mention of the crypto years and I’d fold like a lawn chair. She’s never played it. Not once. She’ll give me a look sometimes, the kind that says she knows exactly what she could say, and then she just doesn’t say it.

That’s either extraordinary restraint or a very patient long game. I haven’t ruled out either.

I only let myself get clipped in one category, though: money. Everywhere else, I’m still fully operational. And even the money-clipping is mostly self-imposed, which I realize makes me sound like a man bragging about his own house arrest.

In overpriced Iceland, while I was doing math in my head over every hot dog, Judy said, “I don’t want to think about the money. I want to enjoy our vacation.”

I have never once had that thought naturally. I have to be talked into it, every time, like it’s a foreign language.

Her attitude about money has genuinely made our marriage better, especially given that she married a guy who projects financial competence while quietly having handed his savings to a chatbot with delusions of Wall Street. Not every marriage survives getting frisked by a promise of “regular ongoing income” that turns out to mean regular ongoing losses. To be fair to the bots, they never actually promised me anything. That was the marketing department’s job, and they did it well.

The one thing keeping me from full self-pity is that my company did make real money, and I did put a good chunk of it away. So it’s not like both hands were empty. One hand made it, the other hand threw it into a wood chipper. Not the trade I was hoping for, but it beats “I lost it all,” which is the version of this story I could’ve been telling you.

I can’t undo the bad calls. I can keep telling anyone who’ll listen that “get rich quick” is a genre of fiction, not a strategy. There might be legitimate investment opportunities out there that won’t put a dent in your marriage. I’m sure there are. I just haven’t found many worth chasing once the number gets into six digits, and I’ve stopped assuming my judgment is sharper than everyone else’s.

Turns out the actual smart move was never picking the right algorithm. It was marrying someone who didn’t need one.

We Found Our Hot Tub Guy

I woke up this morning to my wife’s pillow, thrown at my head. She says she forgot she was sleeping in a shared space. I have questions. Where else would she be sleeping? We had separate beds in Iceland, sure, but we are home now, dear.

Once I recovered from the pillow assault, today had one job on the list: get the hot tub guy out here. The tub is technically still running, but some of the jets have decided to take the rest of summer off. We think it’s a fuse. My wife thinks it’s a “re-fuse-ing” to work. I told her that joke was terrible and she agreed, then used it three more times.

Our Secret Lagoon visit in Iceland had zero jets and lukewarm water, and somehow we still enjoyed it more than our own backyard right now. A hot tub where the inside temperature matches or exceeds the outside temperature is not a hot tub. It’s just a large, expensive bowl of regret. Welcome to OKC in August.

Before the repair guy showed up, I got my walk in early, ahead of the 90-degree wall that hits by mid-morning. My usual walking companion, a kid I’ve never actually met but see most mornings, was nowhere on the trail. Maybe the geese left too much of a mess for him to deal with. Maybe the church’s lawn crew and their two enormous mowers scared him off, since he seems to hate noise. Or maybe he’s visiting grandma before school starts. I like to imagine he has a rich inner life I know nothing about.

I did find a squishy t-ball ball on the path, which felt like a win. My plantar fasciitis has been furious since Europe, all that cobblestone doing exactly what cobblestone does to a heel. One of the women on our excursion said she’d pulled the inserts out of her shoes because the pain got so bad she couldn’t stand it anymore. I’m not chasing a cure at this point. I just want my foot to catch a break, and rolling a ball under it seems to help. The t-ball ball is a serious upgrade from whatever I’d been using. And before anyone accuses me of stealing a kid’s toy, it was sitting in the path of a mower. I saved its life.

While I waited on a text back from the hot tub guy, I thought about how we got here. We came home from our trip excited to sink back into the tub, only to find the jets meant to work on my lower back had clocked out. I called the company we bought the spa from and gave them almost 48 hours to respond before I went looking elsewhere. My wife, ever the optimist, told me to lean on the warranty and give the original company another shot. Their reply, when it finally came, was a form asking me to fill out another form so they could reply to that one. No warranty commitment, no timeline, just enough vague hope to keep me from calling anyone else. That’s the whole business model. Dangle the warranty, stall the customer, collect the check eventually anyway.

So I found a five-star guy on Google instead. He warned me upfront that his labor rate is cheaper than the dealer’s, which was music to my ears after what the dealer charged us for the pergola and everything else in the backyard last year.

He earned his rating. I stood out there while he pulled the panel off, mostly so I could get a photo of the serial number, which I’ve since printed and filed away for the next time this happens. After that I just watched him flip breakers and push buttons until he gave up and called the manufacturer directly. He wasn’t sure they’d even talk to him since he isn’t one of their official dealers, but they did. Together, they tracked it down to three bad solenoids, which had apparently been putting strain on the transformer.

Here’s the part that felt like a small miracle. The manufacturer agreed to ship the parts straight to our house so he could install them himself. We danced right under the nose of the original dealer, and we’ll almost certainly have the tub fixed before they’d have even sent someone to look at it, at a lower price than they would’ve charged us. I’m guessing on that last part, but based on today’s bill, I have a hard time picturing them coming in under it.

My wife tried to talk me out of this whole detour a couple days ago. I’m glad I didn’t listen, because we came out of it with a win and a new guy.

We now officially have a hot tub guy. This is separate from our fertilizer guy, our mowing guy, our bug guy, and our electrician guy. We also have an irrigation guy, who is me holding a hose, a guy who can mount a TV on tile without hesitation, and a guy who will drill a hole in absolutely anything, who happens to be our son. Two years in Oklahoma City and we’ve built out a full roster. We’re open to hiring “gals” for any of these roles too. Fair warning, though: you’ll go broke trying to take our business.

Furniture Surgery

Let the record show: I did not order the coffee station. My wife did.

And when I gently suggested — the night before assembly day — that it would be great if the person ordering things that need assembling might consult the person who assembles things before clicking “buy,” she had a ready answer.

“I did,” she said. “And she said it was fine.”

I made a mental note to meet this woman someday.

I’m not a natural assembler. I have Allen wrench skills the way some people have “a little Spanish” — functional in a pinch, dangerous if overconfident.

But marriage is not a walk in the park, and nearly 35 years in, I know when to show up with my wrench and my mouth mostly shut.

When I got back from my walk Saturday morning, she already had more than half of it built. In the living room. With the bolts and screws dumped on the couch — which, for the record, is fake leather, and I spent a quiet moment calculating the odds of one of those screws finding a seam.

I said nothing.

After lunch, I offered to help. She said she had it. I insisted. That was either a loving gesture or a tactical error, depending on how the afternoon went.

My role was clear from the start: brawn, not brain. She was the director. I was the stagehand who also happened to go digging through the junk drawer for a second Allen wrench — either to speed things up or, as I later theorized, to get things wrong twice as fast.

She’s usually the one who saves the day with the manual. I follow directions roughly. She follows them correctly. Knowing this, I made the executive decision not to look at the instructions at all, which gave me a kind of plausible deniability I found very comforting.

We tightened bolts. We stood it up. She declared only a couple of things needed finishing, and I stepped back, fully prepared to let her close it out.

Thirty minutes later, I got the update. “Everything is on the wrong side. I need to flip this piece.”

Still not consulting the directions, I did what she said. We flipped the piece. Then we learned the middle section didn’t have holes where holes needed to be.

We removed the top, attempted what I can only describe as furniture surgery, reconnected everything, stood it up — “That’s just like it was before. I wanted the mug hooks on the other side.”

Here’s what I want you to know about my wife: she is self-aware, and she is funny, and when things go sideways, she does not quietly suffer.

The afternoon was generously seasoned with “Uh’s” and “Ah’s” and at least two “What in the worlds.” She narrated her own frustration with the kind of honest self-deprecation that, in the right marriage, doubles as entertainment.

I almost jumped in and seconded every single one of her accusations. I didn’t. One of those mysterious moments where the better version of you shows up uninvited and makes the call. I just handed her the next bolt and kept my face neutral.

She did say she was “fine” at one point, and I did ask — because I apparently cannot be fully silent — “Do you often talk to yourself like that?”

She gave me the look. Then the wink. We were on the same page.

The coffee station is now against the wall. My wife is moving the mugs and the coffee maker with a small frown — she doesn’t love how it looks, but the plan is the plan, and the counter space will be worth it.

It might be transitional furniture. It might get replaced in six months. That is above my pay grade.

What I know is this: I showed up. I turned off most of my brain and offered the rest of myself. I didn’t complain — which, if you know me, deserves at least a footnote.

I spent a Saturday afternoon next to my person, getting something wrong together, and quietly choosing her over the joke every time it counted.

That’s not nothing. After 35 years, that might actually be everything.

But I do hope she checks with me before the next one arrives.

Date Night, Retirement Style

Family visits start Saturday in Columbus, and our daughter’s crew is off doing their own pre-twins celebration, which meant Judy and I had the house and no real plan for dinner. Last week’s Sam’s Club haul was gone — cooked, eaten, or handed off to kids. Nobody wanted warm-ups. So we went out.

In our defense, we barely tried to stock the fridge for these ten days between trips. We split a Costco pizza across three meals with a couple of bag salads propping it up. We got a burrito bowl from Chipotle and ate our own chips with it, which I’ve decided counts as cooking out. I also grilled some chicken. That’s real. I marinated it and everything.

We’re also deep in our post-cruise phase, which means yogurt and protein shakes for lunch, because apparently the responsible move after a week of unlimited soft serve and buffets is to eat like we’re training for something.

Before picking a restaurant, we did what any financially disciplined household does: dug through the gift card drawer. This particular card came from our hockey boy, who totaled his car on the way to practice — a gift for “going above and beyond,” which is a generous way of describing talking to a police officer before 9:00 outside a charter school. It didn’t have much left on it, but Bricktown Brewery had a happy hour hamburger special and an all-day pizza deal if we got seated before 6:00. That was all the motivation we needed to get out the door.

I tried to be an aggressive driver. Someone else tried to be an aggressive driver at me. I missed the entrance to the restaurant entirely, had to loop around at the light, and dropped Judy off to fight for our spot on the waitlist before anyone else could sneak their name in ahead of ours. Ten to fifteen minute wait, she reported. A good number. Enough to stretch the gift card to its full potential while doing penance for the opulence of our European trip.

We were seated by 5:45 and already knew our order before the menus hit the table. When the waiter asked about drinks, we let him know we’d be getting the free ones that came with the ten-dollar hamburger deal. Lemonade for both of us. I asked Judy if I was worth the extra dollar fifty for sweet potato fries. She said yes, which, if you’ve been married a couple dozen years, is code for “I love you” and also “please stop asking me this.”

I should mention that settling into the gap between trips does not bring out my best self. Judy knows this and indulges me anyway, more than she probably should.

Pizzas kept coming out of the kitchen while we sipped our lemonade, and half-priced wood-fired pizza is a genuinely hard thing to say no to. But the foil in our toaster oven was still greasy from the Costco pizza’s reign of terror, so we held the line. Barely.

The hamburgers arrived just before 6:00. Same basket, different colored fries. Ketchup was not my choice of condiment for sweet potato fries, but they were never the main event anyway. The burger was the star. Judy cut hers in half to create the illusion of restraint, then barely paused before starting on the second half. Her fries had come cold. We considered asking for new ones, but since she had no intention of eating them regardless, sending them back felt like theater. I’ve been a jerk before. Usually to family. I know my limits.

She tossed me a few of her fries before we noticed our baskets were mostly empty and flagged down the check.

Turns out the gift card only had $6.50 left on it. Judy handled payment, which has been her job ever since I developed a reputation for being stingy on tips. She’s better at that kind of math than I am — more aware, more generous. Every so often she asks me to bump it up a couple of dollars, and I don’t put up much of a fight. We both like the total to land on a round number, so a dollar or two of rounding doesn’t bother me.

By the time we got back in the car, only forty minutes had passed since we put our names down. The restaurant probably would’ve preferred we lingered over a beer or two, but they held up their end of the deal, and so did we. Judy didn’t plan on getting home in time for Wheel of Fortune, but with the food coming out that fast, it was hard to avoid.

Her word for the whole night was “efficient.” We’re both home all day — she’s working remotely, I’m on babysitting duty when it’s offered — so by dinner we’ve already said everything we need to say to each other. No chit-chat required. We’re deep into overlap territory on our list of conversation topics, and with more travel ahead, we’ll be leaning on our European stories for a while. We tell them well. People seem to think we’re funny. Really, we’re just two people who’ve rehearsed the same bits on each other enough times to have the timing down.

Efficient eaters, happiest in our own recliners. You will not find a more thrilling dinner date than us.

My New Walking Companion

Three weeks away is apparently the exact amount of time required to forget how your own life works.

Fortunately, our granddaughter still likes us, our kids welcomed us home like we hadn’t abandoned them for Europe, and next week we’ll be packing our suitcases again to visit family. So I haven’t had to fully commit to normal life just yet. My computer, however, has already made it clear that if I expect any sympathy, I won’t be getting it. During a conference call this week, I somehow managed to click the “Join” button twice. Evidently, there’s an alternate universe where I wasn’t actually joining the meeting, and that’s the window I spent several minutes trying to convince to turn on my camera. Technology 1. Andy 0. Again.

Thankfully, my morning walk doesn’t require Wi-Fi.

Most mornings before 8:30, I wander through the neighborhood, around the walking path behind a nearby church, and back home while listening to an Audible book. The path has its regular cast of characters. There are the serious walkers, the runners who make me question my infatuation with sour-cream-glazed donuts, and the occasional dog who seems happier than everyone else combined. But sometime during the three weeks we were gone, a new character joined the morning shift.

He’s a teenager.

Now, I don’t know many teenagers who voluntarily choose to be walking before 8:30 in the morning during the summer, which immediately raised questions. He shuffles around the path in flip-flops with his head buried in his phone, looking less like someone pursuing physical fitness and more like someone fulfilling the minimum requirements of a negotiated settlement with his mother.

I have absolutely no evidence to support this theory.

None whatsoever.

That has not stopped me from improving it every morning.

At first, we crossed paths several times each lap. Neither of us seemed especially excited about that arrangement. Then, without either of us saying a word, he quietly switched directions. I like to think we reached an unspoken agreement that once every three or four laps was plenty of social interaction before breakfast. Frankly, I appreciated the compromise.

Eventually, I discovered where he lives because every morning he leaves the path through the same backyard gate. There isn’t much need for stealth. It’s just the two of us out there. He doesn’t have to dive behind bushes or army-crawl across the lawn. He simply veers toward home with all the enthusiasm of someone who has completed exactly the amount of walking required—and not one step more.

Naturally, my imagination has been working overtime. Maybe he’s grounded. Maybe he’s earning gaming time one lap at a time. Maybe his smartwatch reports directly to his mother whenever he stops moving. “Warning: Walking has ceased.” Ten seconds later his phone buzzes, followed by a text that simply says, “Keep walking.” Or maybe she checks his GPS history every evening like a probation officer reviewing an ankle monitor. Of course, there’s always the possibility that he’s simply avoiding the strange older guy who keeps appearing at exactly the same time every morning. Honestly, if I were taking bets, that’s probably where I’d put my money.

This morning brought an unexpected twist. For nearly an entire lap, he wasn’t looking at his phone. I briefly wondered if we’d reached a new stage in our relationship where we’d acknowledge each other with the universal walker’s nod. Then I looked down. A flock of geese had spent the previous day decorating the walking path with enough little green land mines to demand everyone’s complete attention. Apparently, even teenagers know there are limits to trusting your peripheral vision.

As he headed home after four laps, I noticed the trampoline in his backyard with a bicycle balanced awkwardly across the top of the fence. Obviously, this generated several new theories. Perhaps the trampoline exceeded its weight limit. Perhaps biking privileges had been suspended until further notice. Or perhaps everything I’d imagined over the past week was completely wrong, and this kid simply enjoys taking a morning walk before the day gets busy.

That explanation seems entirely too reasonable, so I’ve decided to reject it.

Vacations have a funny way of resetting your expectations. You leave your routines behind, and when you return, ordinary things somehow feel new again. My computer is still just a tool I’ll eventually figure out, and this walking path is still just the easiest place to collect my steps while someone reads me another chapter of a good book. But because I stepped away for three weeks, I came back paying attention in a way I hadn’t before.

The teenager probably has no idea I’ve invented an entire backstory for him. He’s just taking his morning walk. I’m the one who’s turned him into the main character of a story that exists only in my imagination.

Maybe that’s one of the unexpected gifts of slowing down. The world doesn’t suddenly become more interesting.

You simply start noticing it.

The Men’s Invitational

Of the five stops on our Golden Circle excursion in Iceland, the Secret Lagoon ranked dead last on my excitement meter. It wasn’t because I dislike warm water. I love warm water. We have a hot tub at home. I’m practically a warm-water connoisseur. No, my hesitation had everything to do with the pregame festivities. Somewhere in Iceland, someone decided the proper way to relax was to strip down in a communal changing room, squeeze my aggressively average middle-aged body into a swimsuit in front of complete strangers, take a mandatory shower while carefully avoiding accidental eye contact, and then act as though this was perfectly normal human behavior. Judy, ever the optimist, smiled and said, “It’ll be fun!” She has said those three words before. They rarely precede something I would have voluntarily signed up for.

So, in the interest of preserving marital harmony, I followed directions, survived the changing room without creating an international incident, and joined Judy in the thermal pool. It was beautiful. Steam drifted across the water while volcanic rock framed the lagoon. We slowly wandered around looking for the warmest spot like two human rotisserie chickens. It was peaceful. Relaxing. Picturesque. And after about fifteen minutes, I was bored out of my mind.

Sharing a hot tub with my wife is enjoyable. Sharing a giant natural hot tub with my wife and three busloads of strangers is…different. There are only so many laps you can make around warm water before your brain starts looking for a side quest.

That’s when I discovered the cold pool.

Now, Judy insisted on testing the water first. Rookie mistake. If you’re going to make a bad decision, don’t let facts interfere. Just commit. She dipped a foot in, immediately reconsidered every flight that had brought her to Iceland, and stepped back. I climbed in, lowered myself into the water, and began repeating, “Oh my gosh…oh my gosh…OH MY GOSH,” with all the confidence of a man who was suddenly questioning whether circulation was really all that important.

I managed to sit down. Judy’s body held an emergency board meeting and unanimously voted against the proposal. She was back in the thermal pool before I had finished convincing myself that the pain was temporary.

Not far behind her, I returned to the warm water where my body slowly remembered how nerves were supposed to function. That’s when another man from our excursion wandered over to the cold pool with his son. I asked if I could join them because apparently nothing builds lifelong friendships faster than voluntarily lowering your core body temperature together. We introduced ourselves, talked about our excursion, and eventually discovered he was from Oslo.

Of course he was.

I couldn’t accidentally be freezing next to an accountant from Nebraska. No, I had to find a Norwegian. A real Scandinavian. A man whose ancestors probably considered frozen lakes to be recreational facilities.

Since we had visited Oslo a few days earlier, we talked about the palace and the King’s Guard. When I mentioned taking pictures with the guards, he casually informed me that he had once been one of them.

Naturally.

So now, without either of us saying a word, my brain quietly transformed this conversation into an international competition.

The amazing part was that talking distracted both of us from the cold. The water didn’t get warmer. My body wasn’t any happier. But conversation somehow convinced my brain to stop sending constant updates about my rapidly disappearing body heat. His son wisely climbed out first. Then, after another minute or so, my Norwegian friend stood up and climbed out.

I waited.

One Mississippi…two Mississippi…then I climbed out.

Was he competing with me?

Absolutely not.

Did he know there was a contest?

Not even a little.

Did I still consider it one of my greatest athletic accomplishments?

Without question.

I have no trophy. Iceland did not present me with a certificate. There is no internationally recognized governing body for “Middle-Aged Men Sitting in Cold Water Slightly Longer Than Necessary.” But somewhere in my memory is the undeniable fact that I remained in a freezing Icelandic pool a few seconds longer than a Norwegian, and nobody can ever take that away from me.

The return to the thermal pool was glorious. My body didn’t simply warm up; it rebooted. Every nerve ending woke up one painful pinprick at a time until I felt like someone had microwaved me back to life. It was oddly satisfying, which explains why I kept repeating the process over and over during the next hour.

That’s when I noticed something.

The women floated peacefully through the lagoon, chatting, relaxing, and enjoying the scenery exactly as the Secret Lagoon was intended.

The men wandered over to the cold pool.

One by one.

They all wore the same expression—the look every guy gets right before making a questionable decision simply because another guy already has.

Some dipped a toe and immediately abandoned the mission. Others managed to sit down before their nervous systems filed formal complaints. A couple. Three brothers. Several confident-looking men who discovered confidence and body temperature are only loosely connected. Everyone of them climbed out before I did.

Somewhere during that hour, the Secret Lagoon quietly became the Men’s Invitational Cold Water Championships. There were no officials, no spectators, and certainly no prizes. Just a handful of middle-aged guys unknowingly competing in an event none of us had discussed.

The rules were simple.

Last man shivering wins.

Looking back, I don’t think I proved I was particularly tough. If anything, I proved something I’ve suspected about men for years. Give us a perfectly relaxing experience, and we’ll invent a competition. Give us a beautiful Icelandic lagoon, and we’ll ignore ninety-five percent of it because there’s a tiny freezing pool over in the corner daring someone to do something stupid.

Judy left relaxed.

I left convinced I had defeated Norway.

Honestly, we both had a wonderful afternoon.

I’m just fairly certain only one of us enjoyed the lagoon the way it was originally intended.

The Fastest Way Through the Line Was Waiting Your Turn

I don’t like writing posts that sound whiny. Nobody enjoys listening to the guy who thinks the universe has singled him out for special mistreatment. That guy is exhausting. This isn’t one of those stories. This is a story about justice. Tiny, insignificant, airport-line justice.

With our trip coming to an end, we arrived at the airport in Iceland expecting a relatively painless journey home. We did have one minor hiccup. Our airline ticket didn’t perfectly match my passport, so we had to stop at customer assistance before heading to security. No big deal. We stood in line, got it fixed, and confidently marched toward security after seeing the magical words every traveler wants to read: Estimated Wait: 5–10 Minutes. Airport monitors, I’ve learned, have a very loose relationship with reality.

Security apparently found both of our bags interesting. My wife’s bag was pulled aside because of medication. Mine was selected because, apparently, someone wanted a closer look at my charming personality. A security officer carried my backpack to a separate table, glanced inside for about three seconds, and handed it back. “You can take it.” My internal response was something along the lines of, Thank you for your tireless dedication to international safety. I feel much more secure knowing my backpack survived its three-second interrogation. This came only days after Copenhagen security permanently confiscated our oversized battery pack. We were informed, with all the warmth of an automated voicemail, that it was simply too large. My wife attempted a respectful appeal and was rewarded with the timeless customer service phrase, “Not in Copenhagen.” Apparently, that settled everything. Thankfully, our Iceland tour bus had USB charging ports, so civilization survived. None of this was bad luck yet. This was just Tuesday at an airport.

As we headed toward the D Terminal, we encountered passport control. Picture three large rooms connected by an endless maze of stanchions filled with weary travelers whose backpacks had somehow gained twenty pounds since vacation began. The line actually moved fairly well, but every so often we’d set our backpacks on the floor to give our shoulders a short break. It was a small, human, “I need to put this bag down for ten seconds” gap. Apparently, we made a critical mistake. We believed a line was measured by people. The couple behind us measured it by inches.

The moment a gap of approximately eighteen inches appeared, the wife quietly eased around us and tucked herself in behind the gentleman ahead of us. It wasn’t aggressive enough to qualify as shoving. It was more…creative. They didn’t apologize. They didn’t acknowledge us. They simply acted as though the laws of queuing had briefly been suspended for their convenience. It reminded me of one of those nature documentaries. “Observe the Queue Optimizer,” David Attenborough might narrate. “Rather than waiting patiently with the herd, she quietly advances whenever a tiny opening appears, gaining nearly eleven seconds while sacrificing all social credibility.” Honestly, if they’d skipped forty people, I might have admired the commitment. But cutting ahead of two people? That’s not bold. That’s just morally inefficient.

Then her husband announced from behind us, “I need to go forward to be with my wife.” As if we were the only thing standing between two star-crossed lovers who had been tragically separated by…about three feet.

My wife responded before I had the chance. “What are you doing? You don’t cut in line.” She’s never been particularly gifted at pretending injustice doesn’t exist. If there were a world championship for confronting people who ignore obvious rules, she’d at least qualify for regionals. The gentleman in front of us joined the conversation as well, making it abundantly clear that he wasn’t impressed with Team Queue Optimization either. The couple ignored all of us. It’s amazing how much confidence some people possess when they’re absolutely convinced that social norms apply only to everyone else.

A few minutes later, another Canadian couple struck up a conversation with us and, after witnessing the whole episode, felt obligated to assure us that not all Canadians behaved that way. We laughed, enjoyed talking with them the rest of the way through the line, and I decided there was no reason to hold an entire country responsible for the actions of two aspiring queue entrepreneurs. International relations had officially been restored.

Eventually, we reached passport control, where everyone had to choose one of several available officers. This is where Karma quietly clocked in for her shift. The Line Cutters confidently selected one lane while we picked another. Our line moved like an express checkout. Their line appeared to be staffed by someone conducting passport interviews as part of a doctoral dissertation. By the time we cleared passport control, found a coffee shop, ordered our drinks, and sat down, they still hadn’t made it through. I noticed, of course, but I resisted the temptation to smile in their direction. Not because I had suddenly become spiritually mature. Mostly because I didn’t want my wife to notice them first. She has a wonderful heart, but subtle victory celebrations are not one of her stronger gifts.

Before anyone accuses me of celebrating someone else’s misfortune, I should probably confess that I’m not always the model traveler. I’ve occasionally maneuvered around slower walkers after leaving a cruise ship. I’ve probably sighed louder than necessary behind someone trying to fit a week’s worth of souvenirs into an overhead compartment. I’m sure my own Karma account contains a few unpaid balances. That’s probably why this little airport moment felt so satisfying. It wasn’t because two people had to wait a little longer. It was because, for one brief and beautiful moment, the universe reminded us that shortcuts don’t always pay off.

Sometimes waiting your turn is actually the fastest route. And sometimes the reward isn’t getting there first. Sometimes it’s sitting fifty feet away with a surprisingly good cup of airport coffee while watching poetic justice quietly do its thing.

If that’s Karma, she’s welcome to join us for coffee anytime.

Vacation Eve

With my last full day in the neighborhood before disappearing for a few weeks, I found myself running through a list of “please the people” tasks. The kind of chores that keep things stable enough that no one files a complaint while I’m gone. Some were easy, some were sweaty, and some were just annoying enough to remind me I’m still useful. But this is what a man does to keep the peace and avoid hearing that tone when he returns.

My wife has been gone a couple of days, which meant the dishes from our 4th of July celebration had reached a level of multiplication normally reserved for bacteria cultures. She was off getting her nails done, a choice I tease her about, mostly because I’d prefer spending that money on a seat with legroom instead of practicing yoga in economy. Given my historic financial sins, my debating privileges on discretionary spending are on a very short leash.

The dishes were the big one. Sure, “clean the bathrooms” and “scrub the floors” were probably on her internal list too, but the dishes were the item she’d notice first. If I hadn’t done them, her opening line when we returned would’ve been, “Oh, you didn’t get those done.” I could practically hear it. So I did them.

This morning, I took my daughter and granddaughter to the zoo for what I’m calling an early bake. With twins on the way, our zoo days are numbered, and I’m trying to squeeze in the last few before my daughter’s life becomes a blur of diapers and double feedings.

Despite the heat, we lucked out. One of the elephants was swimming, holding his breath like a showoff while debris bobbed around him like a questionable soup. The meerkats were doing their meerkat thing, which my granddaughter has loved ever since she saw them at the Fort Worth zoo. I don’t think there are too many surprises left at our zoo, but we’re narrowing down her favorites.

The splash pad was the real story. A month ago, she was afraid of it. Today, she received multiple direct hits. She walked across the water exit points while the jets were off, caught a blast directly to the diaper, and the face shot ended things with the decisiveness of a referee whistle.

And of course, the flamingos. She’s obsessed. Maybe it’s the legs. Maybe it’s the color. Either way, they’re now a mandatory stop on every visit.

My daughter didn’t insist I come along, but this is exactly the kind of thing a semi-retired (or fully retired? still unclear) dad can do to help a pregnant daughter survive a summer in Oklahoma.

The rest of my list isn’t strictly necessary, but these are the tasks that somehow convince my wife I still have a unique talent for over-complicating simple things.

Oklahoma hail season never really ends, so I’ll be hoisting my wife’s bike onto the wall rack and then creating a fat man’s squeeze to get both cars into a garage already shared with a storage rack and a storm shelter. Whether an off-season tornado shows up or not, it won’t matter to us. The puzzle will be solved.

The refrigerator has been accumulating pickles, hummus, and corn salsa that have aged past food and into a philosophical question. Tomorrow is execution day. Unless one of my local kids files a stay, nothing in there is making it to the weekend. Trash day is Friday, so if no one is willing to commit to using it, I don’t care if the flies unionize and take over the trash can—their celebration will be short-lived.

Speaking of flies, I refuse to leave the house infested. The kids will be dropping off mail and celebrating our departure the entire time we’re gone, so I can’t guarantee long-term results, but I can at least demoralize the current population before I leave. I’ve already racked up kills over the 4th, bare-handed, as is my way. My son-in-law was amazed the first time he saw it. My daughter wasn’t. She grew up assuming every family had a designated fly assassin. We’ve got the blue-light zapper running in the kitchen, and I’ll be on patrol until wheels-up.

That pretty much does it. I need to grab my swimsuit and the fingernail clippers. My AI buddy assures me they’re fine in a carry-on if they’re standard clippers and not some experimental weaponized grooming device. After a night in Texas where I won’t eat any salads or anything capable of gifting me parasites, my wife and I head out Friday afternoon.

I’m practically in Germany already with zero jet lag. A bold lie I’m telling myself.

I’m ready to hand my wife the reins. Let her steer this wagon for a few weeks while I enjoy the trip she planned for us. She does this sort of thing really well, and I’ve gotten smart enough to just show up, carry the bags, and let her run the show.

When I get back, life will snap right back into its rhythm. Babysitting two days a week, spot-sitting whenever needed, early coffee with peanut butter toast, morning walks, cooking for the hockey boys, and the daily tug-of-war between my to-do list and whatever my kids need. This is my first cruise as a grandpa, and when I return, I’ll reattach myself to all of it with gratitude. I’ll have a few Facebook posts to prove I left my zip code, and I’ll settle back into the boring, predictable life I’ve built around the people I love most.

Vacations are great. But home is where they need me. And that’s enough.

Fireworks, Vacuum Bags, and the Woman Keeping Me Semi‑Functional

I asked my son if I could borrow his vacuum packing bags, and for about ten minutes I actually believed I’d been handed a personal black hole. Suck the air out, and my “will it be cold or warm in the Baltics?” wardrobe folds down into something almost manageable. The clothes really do take up less room. What the bags also do is create a small mystery, because somewhere in there is a version of me who decided a swimsuit and a fleece belonged in the same airtight tomb, and I have zero memory of making that call. Judy gets to unpack the evidence on the cruise and reverse-engineer my packing logic like a forensic scientist of poor decisions. The answer to what I was thinking is, frankly, none of my business.

The morning after the 4th, our trash cans and the neighborhood port-a-potties were all flat on their sides, and none of them were drunk. They just lost a fight with the wind, the same wind that knocked out some power for good measure. One of our cans apparently sacrificed itself against the downspout to keep one of my roses standing, and I’ve been considering a small ceremony for it. Standing in the yard afterward, looking at the mess, I remember thinking this seemed like exactly the right week to leave the country.

Somewhere in the last week I also had to have an honest conversation with myself about cake. I’m a cookie and brownie guy, through and through. Some of the women in my life still like to bake cake, and it’s good cake, thoughtful cake, and I will eat exactly one piece and never come back for seconds. I haven’t found a way to say this out loud without sounding ungrateful, so for now the plan is something like, “This is delicious, but I’m staying loyal to my first love.” If that doesn’t land, I may just start cutting brownies into circles and calling it diplomacy.

Then there’s the cookout math. Hosting a vegetarian and not ending up with a fridge full of regret takes a real system. Don’t make excess to begin with. Freeze what’s left if you do. And if the day after you leave happens to be trash day, empty the fridge like you’re turning in a rental car, no evidence left behind. With Judy already gone a few days ahead of me and my own appetite in no hurry to expand, I’ve been running rules two and three on a case by case basis, like a one-man Supreme Court of Leftovers.

We also got the house ready for a couple staying with us one of the weekends we’re gone. We’re not running an Airbnb, so nobody’s expecting turndown service. Make sure the AC works, keep something cold and non-alcoholic in the fridge, and accept that the only bed built for two people in this house is staying off limits, no exceptions. The two downstairs beds, formerly belonging to our kids who’ve moved on to careers and bigger things, will do fine. My only real hope is that they remember to turn the thermostat back up when they leave — there’s a whole system of checks and balances built around that one, and I’ll probably forget most of it until the electric bill shows up and I gasp in three languages.

The rain and wind ganged up on the mulched trees too, undoing more of that “mulch glue” project than I want to think about. I had plans, actual plans, curved edges and everything. Then the weather rolled through and turned it into a lumpy suggestion of landscaping, and at some point there’s nothing left to do beyond the effort already spent. I said “uncle,” out loud, to nobody, and decided the mulch’s rebellion isn’t allowed to bother me again until mid-August.

Without an irrigation system, we’ve been watering constantly, and while we’re gone the job falls to the kids (my son and his wife) who live a street over. The instructions I gave them sound less like a plan and more like a riddle: if it rains plenty you can ease off, unless it’s also been brutally hot, in which case trust the ground to sort itself out anyway. Keep everything alive, don’t drown it, good luck. Explaining this out loud, I realized my only real qualification for any of it is owning a shovel.

All of that was just warm-up for the fireworks. Judy had come off a disappointing, rain-delayed show at Scissortail Park and wanted her real finale, so after watching as much of a delayed soccer game as we could stand, we went hunting for the one spot that might deliver it, fireworks pilgrims in search of the promised land. A packed grocery store parking lot looked promising, though it made no promises. We moved our sitting towel exactly once and settled for the best angle available. A drone show with patriotic shapes went first, then the fireworks started, framed nicely between two guys in lawn chairs who’d claimed the spot ahead of us. Fifteen minutes in, Judy turned and said, “This is the finale I wanted Friday night, but I got a dud instead.” Two separate fires had apparently thrown off the whole schedule that first night. When this show kept going past what felt like the ending, we took it as a gift, got up, and cleared the lot just as the real finale wrapped up behind us — no gridlock, no extended parking lot purgatory.

My relationship with fireworks comes down to one rule: if the drive home takes longer than the show, it counts against the whole evening. This time we got out early, Judy was next to me, and I called it “fine.” From me, that’s basically a standing ovation, and she knew it.

With fireworks behind us, the countdown to vacation officially starts. There are still the fake fears and the vague what-ifs that show up before every trip and never mean anything once we’re actually there. But somewhere past all that noise, there’s a good vacation waiting. Judy’s the one who keeps turning this pile of wind-flattened trash cans and rebellious mulch and questionable packing decisions into a story instead of a crisis. I just need to get out of my own way and let it happen. If I can’t manage that for myself, I’ll manage it for her.