Life

Humbled at the Exit

This morning started as a routine errand run. Somewhere between the hot tub and Sam’s Club, it turned into a humbling I didn’t see coming.

Four weeks of “scoop of this, scoop of that” Sunday night chemistry had produced a layer of something on the water that my wife found less than inviting. Fair. My self-appointed title of Hot Tub Chemist Extraordinaire was officially under review, so the first stop was Leslie’s for a free water test—which I will keep using indefinitely while buying all my chemicals online at half the price. I’m aware of the irony. I do like the woman who tells me I’ve been neglectful, and those few minutes of conversation aren’t nothing when your social calendar is on the quieter side.

Dry acid, some chlorine. Reputation partially restored.

Sam’s next, because the fridge needed actual food. My wife hosted a terrific wedding shower for our son’s fiancée, and the leftover situation had become a caloric hazard. My body was asking for roasted vegetables. Gas was $3.699, which felt like a small win. I loaded up on Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, Gatorade, and a case of water—placed carefully on the bottom of the cart by a man who had no idea what was coming.

I love the Sam’s scan-and-go app. There’s something satisfying about walking past the checkout lanes knowing you’ve already handled it. I scanned everything, flipped items for barcodes, did my due diligence. Before paying, the app asked me to count my items. I counted twice. Got 17, then 16. The app said 16. I had multiple quantities of a couple things, so I figured that explained the gap and moved on without a tiebreaker count.

The door checker didn’t wave me through like usual. She scanned the water sitting on the bottom of my cart.

“You didn’t pay for this.”

Not a question.

She moved toward the Gatorade next—I held my breath—but that one was on the receipt. Instead of escorting me to what I can only imagine is a folding chair near customer service where you sit and think about your choices, she added the water to my account on the spot. Civilized. Quiet. More dignity than I’d earned.

Next time I’ll probably just use the regular checkout. Or bring my daughter, who has a reliable way of keeping my gray-matter moments from becoming public events.

I always say I’m glad when God keeps me humble. Even more glad when it only costs me my pride—a lot cheaper than a speeding ticket.

Ellie at Almost One: Teeth Optional

Almost a year old and still no teeth. She’s not worried about it, and neither am I. Steak can wait.

What has changed is the noise. It used to be a reliable loop of da-da-da from morning until she crashed. Now she’s experimenting — new sounds, new combinations, little vocal detours I haven’t heard before. I started repeating them back to her. She either returns the exact sound or tweaks it slightly, like she’s filing a small correction on my pronunciation. The negotiation phase of our relationship has begun. Once the teeth show up, she’ll unlock version 2.0.

I haven’t personally witnessed the ten-step solo walk yet, but I’ve heard the reports. Credible sources. I’ve spent months extending my hand the moment she wants to stand, and apparently she doesn’t always need it anymore. I watch her parents stand a few feet away and wave her toward them like a tiny flight crew directing a plane to the gate. I understand the instinct. But grandparents don’t care about charts or percentiles — we don’t care about the milestones on someone else’s timeline. We care that the baby smiles and crawls toward us. That’s what recharges my battery. My job is to hold out the hand a little longer than is strictly necessary, and feel completely fine about it.

The toys lately are wood shapes and colored golf balls — not together by design, but they ended up together anyway because that’s how Ellie operates. Rings, stackable shapes, balls. And our coffee table, which has grooves along the side that are exactly the right size to wedge the wooden pieces into. I did not plan this. The coffee table did not consent. But Ellie spotted the opportunity immediately and has committed to filling those grooves every single visit, then yanking everything out with a satisfaction that’s hard to describe. I occasionally loosen a piece that’s too tight. Grandpa as silent co-conspirator. Works for both of us.

The Sleeping Grandpa Gambit

She still tries to rouse me when I’m pretending to sleep. I’ve gotten better at holding the bit longer — eyes shut, no reaction, even as I hear her crawling over to stage her intervention. She grabs a finger and pulls. I stay down. She reconsiders. Pulls harder. I’m not going to pretend I always win this one.

Naptimes are still neither of our favorites. Once she’s asleep, great. The part before that — where she looks at me like I’ve deeply betrayed her by placing her in the crib — I haven’t made peace with that yet. I’ve started the white noise a few minutes early, hold her with the blanket, wait for the signs. Drooping head. Eye rub. Sometimes she goes down without much protest. Other times she wakes up 40 minutes later standing in the crib at full volume, and I have to honestly ask: was she sleeping, or just considering her options quietly? Either way, I do my best and hope her mom arrives before the crankies fully set in.

Every day I babysit her, I want to give her a good experience. Her parents don’t tip, but Ellie’s smile more than covers it. When I have other things I’d like to be doing and she decides this is a perfect moment to inspect every room in the house or eat half an apple very slowly — I try to remember that most people don’t get this.

My patience isn’t perfect. It’s getting better. The sarcasm is not going anywhere, though. Judging by some of Ellie’s expressions lately, she’s already picking it up.

A One-in-Ten Kind of Day

You never really know which random Tuesday is going to hand you a chance to be a decent human. And if you’re wired like me—high sarcasm, low patience, questionable halo—you have to be ready when it shows up and taps you on the shoulder.

Today’s opportunity arrived courtesy of a baby who refused to sleep. The groceries were mine, so my daughter stayed home with the tiny insomniac while I got released into the wild alone. Two stops. Don’t screw it up.

I took the back way to Sam’s to dodge the traffic lights, pulled in, and noticed a man three spots over finishing his unload. A cane was sitting in his cart. He was starting that slow, careful walk to the return corral. I hopped out and called over, “Let me help you with that, sir.” He thanked me. I took the cart.

A couple of people nearby had clearly watched the whole thing. And then this voice showed up in my head: I am morally superior to all of you. Which is not the inspirational inner monologue anyone needs—and is exactly the kind of thought a genuinely good person would never have. I tilted my nose back down to its proper setting and went inside.

In the produce section, I grabbed my two bags of precut broccoli, because I’m either thriving or deeply committed to the illusion of it. The woman behind me laughed and said she should’ve grabbed hers from the back, too. We checked the dates—same. She was fine. We ended up talking for a few minutes about which vegetables she roasts and how. She was warm in that effortless way some people are, not polite-warm but actually interested. I thought about her the rest of the trip. That woman is one of the nicest people I’ve met in a while. I should be more like her.

I scanned everything on my phone, paid through the Sam’s app, and walked out feeling like I owned the building. Tried to look humble. Didn’t pull it off.

Back at the car, I loaded groceries the right way—heavy on the bottom, cold stuff together, like a responsible adult impersonator. When I went to return my cart, the guy parked across from me was just finishing his own unload. I hollered, “Send it my way, I’ll introduce it to the other carts.” He gave it a good shove and thanked me. As we were both getting in our cars he said, “I usually leave my phone in the cart.”

“If I’d found it,” I told him, “I probably would’ve given it back to you.”

We both smiled at the probably.

Winco was a quick second stop. I only needed a couple of things, which is why I wandered three extra aisles. My internal GPS runs on confidence and bad information. On the way to the meat section I passed an older couple—husband pushing the cart—and he looked up and said something I couldn’t quite catch. I asked him to repeat it. He did. Sounded exactly the same. I offered a vague “I hope that works out” and kept moving.

The woman ahead of me glanced back. “I don’t think his wife understands him either.”

I said—maybe to her, maybe mostly to myself—”When I get that age, my wife will probably pretend she doesn’t understand me just to make her life easier. Even when she does.”

We all want to age with dignity. To be seen. To still feel like we matter to the people around us.

I don’t always show up well. Today was maybe one good day out of ten. The sarcasm is always there, running in the background—it just needs to stay in my head more, and in my blog, and less in the faces of people who didn’t ask for it.

The folks I run into at Sam’s and Winco deserve a better version of me than I usually bring. Today I came close. I’d like to do it more often.

The Thermostat Chronicles

I found the paperwork for our smart thermostats a couple weeks ago, stuffed in one of those builder-special drawers that exists purely to hold things you’ll ignore for months. I let it sit there while the hockey boys finished their exodus—gave it roughly the same priority as calling the dentist or figuring out what that dashboard light means.

Yesterday I finally set them up. Took about ten minutes.

The downstairs thermostat runs on a theology, not a formula. Cool to 68 at night, off in the morning, coast on captured coolness until we hit 74, then grant ourselves a brief mercy breeze. My wife runs warm. She’s rejected blankets as a concept by 3am and is down to a sheet, while I’m doing a careful negotiation with my own fluctuating temps. Nobody is fully comfortable. We’ve made peace with this.

The hockey boys upstairs had their own thermostat—which is a sentence that should concern any adult paying utilities. Most days they were actually responsible about it. I’d conduct routine inspections anyway, like a very underpaid HVAC auditor looking for an offender. Most days I’d find it off and feel mildly ridiculous. The days I found it cranked below my downstairs temperature, I shut it off and sent it to thermostat jail. Once my eyes shifted into critical mode, I noticed just how messy a room can be and still qualify as technically livable. Apparently, 64 degrees and scattered laundry is peak comfort for teenage boys.

One of them stayed home sick once and ran the AC all day through peak afternoon heat. I stayed downstairs trying to remember I was their on-site parent. No app, no way to intervene—just a man staring at his computer, listening to the AC run in a room he wasn’t sitting in. Next season, boys. Watch out.

Texas was a different category of problem entirely.

Multiple thermostats, multiple HVAC systems—which sounds luxurious until you learn that the upstairs unit was hilariously undersized for several hockey boys and all the heat their lives generated. Setting the thermostat to 60 doesn’t make the AC work harder. It just makes you feel more desperate. The unit cooled at one speed, like a tired old man doing his best and being yelled at anyway. I bought two window units for the upstairs bedrooms. In a closed room they worked great—small icy caves of relief. In the bonus room over the garage, that cold air just got eaten alive.

More than once I found myself promising “the AC guy is coming tomorrow” like some kind of sweaty HVAC prophet.

Then there were the buckets. Window units pull a shocking amount of moisture out of Texas air. That moisture goes in a five-gallon bucket. The bucket fills once, sometimes twice a day. If it’s more than halfway full at bedtime, you dump it—unless you’re a teenage boy, in which case the bucket simply doesn’t exist for you as a concept. Water eventually got into a cabinet. When we sold the house I disclosed the general situation. I did not give the buyers a TED talk on what awaits anyone who tries to keep that upstairs cool. Some things the next owner just has to discover at 2am on their own.

I am still the thermostat guy. This is not changing.

New boys come in the fall. They’ll crank the AC and sleep under twelve blankets like they’re filming a winter survival documentary, and I’ll watch from the couch on my phone app—quietly, in stealth mode, without tromping upstairs to prove a point. I feel less like a spy when I don’t have to stand up.

They brought chaos and laundry and Chipotle bags and a house that felt like something was happening in it. When they leave it gets quiet in a way that takes some adjusting to.

I’ll take the higher electric bills over a quiet house every time.

The Bachelor Weekend That Wasn’t

My wife changed her plans. I absorbed the impact. We had a productive day. That’s the whole story, really, but my Friday night deserves a brief moment of acknowledgment before Saturday erases it entirely.

Judy was here all weekend. This is relevant context.

Friday was fine. Television. Whataburger. A chicken sandwich that came back wrong—spicy mayonnaise instead of mustard—which I ate anyway, because the store wouldn’t take it back and I saw an opportunity. Between a coupon and a free hamburger, we walked out with three sandwiches and paid for one. My wife looked at me like I’d lost my mind for voluntarily eating the spicy mayo. The mustard sandwich showed up again at Sunday lunch. My heroic attempt to stop for additional groceries was denied. We went to bed with no tornadoes. A win by any measure.

Saturday was when the list appeared.

Now, to be clear about my planning philosophy: I don’t make many plans. When social obligations lift, I mourn the quiet for approximately four minutes, then I check the weather, consider a walk, maybe get a haircut. I have a termite inspection this week and I’m genuinely looking forward to it. This isn’t laziness—it’s strategy. Life is chaotic. Commitments made too far in advance are promises to a version of yourself who had no idea what Thursday was going to bring. So I stay available. We have a chest freezer, two refrigerators, and enough food to host unexpected dinner guests of nearly any denomination. We are prepared for spontaneity.

Saturday did not reward this philosophy.

Judy had mentioned setting up her remote desk. New monitor, some accessories. I mentally budgeted about twenty minutes of light assistance before returning to my very important online chess obligations. I figured this was manageable. I was adorable.

“Can I take a walk now?” I asked, innocently.

What followed was a full domestic reorganization. Disassembly. Furniture migration. A king-sized bed that needed to travel one street over to my son’s house. The journey of breaking down two beds begins with the linens, then the mattresses, then the screws and bolts, and then the moment where you can’t find the specific bit for the five-inch screws that hold the whole frame together.

Except this time, I could find it.

A year and a half ago, I tore down this same bed, lost that bit, drove to Home Depot, drove to Lowe’s, and eventually bought an entire screw package just to get the replacement bit. This time, I had placed it exactly where a logical person would store it: with the other tools, in the bit bank, where screwdriver bits live with their people. My wife looked at it and said, “That’s a pretty handy tool.” I smiled and said nothing, because explaining the full backstory would have required admitting how long it took me to figure out where screwdriver bits go.

The bed itself was stamped “Manufactured in 2002.” It came with us from Ohio. It survived several room shuffles in Texas before landing in Oklahoma. It used to be a bunk bed. At a certain age, none of us should be responsible for supporting someone above us, and I think it’s relieved to be done with that phase.

The king-sized mattress went into the van at an angle, half of it resting on the bike rack hanging out the back. Two of its four handles had been destroyed in previous moves—no explanation, just the natural attrition of a mattress living its life. We scooted it tactically along the sidewalk to the front door. Our next-door neighbors are both police officers, one for OKC and one for Moore. Nobody was cited. The biggest concern once we arrived was where to place the bed in my son’s future master bedroom. Centered on the three windows looked right. His fiancée didn’t disagree, which is the international signal for “this is acceptable for now.”

Back home, we finished setting up our daughter’s room—the one she uses less than 10% of the year—which is “her room” with an asterisk. It’s also my wife’s remote office, my other daughter’s Zoom studio, and occasionally a nap zone for my granddaughter while the rest of us swirl around her. A simple room trying to live three lives. Fits the family brand.

The flexibility isn’t really for me. It’s so I can be there when my son needs help moving a bed. When my daughter needs a hand. When my wife has a list and a Saturday and a vision for where the monitor should go.

We got a lot done. None of it was on my list, which didn’t really exist in the first place.

I’m going to become a part-time babysitter soon. I won’t be filling that schedule with hard appointments. My Kindle will be nearby. I’ll be available. Some people would look at that and see a boring life. I look at it and see a front-row seat to the lives of people I had some small part in building. If I can nudge them occasionally as adults, that’s a bonus.

Legacy. I’m going with legacy.

She Stayed Home Anyway

Friday night was supposed to be a bachelor night. My son skipped his camping trip to celebrate his fiancée’s new doctorate. My wife was supposed to be at a women’s church retreat somewhere in southeastern Oklahoma, surrounded by people who say “I’ll pray for them” and “Bless their hearts” every few minutes, and mean it. A room full of actual personalities.

She canceled. She stayed home with me.

I have spent considerable time assembling a list of plausible explanations.

The weather. Earlier this week, an EF4 tornado hit north of OKC. The retreat was a couple of hours away. Most of those women have lived here their whole lives, which means they’d have known exactly what to do. Judy would have been in better hands with them than with her husband, who has graduated from watching tornado coverage on TV to calling it “fieldwork.”

The new job. She finished her second week and told me, “If I knew it was going to be that hard, I would have asked for more money.” The graceful glide into semi-retirement she’d been planning has been postponed indefinitely. A full weekend of singing and fellowship might have felt less like rest and more like a different kind of exhausting.

The wedding. Their photographer canceled this week — a death in the family, and the memorial service landed on my son’s wedding day. The caterer they’d lined up is closing at the end of June. Judy found out about both of these things Friday morning, and before the day was out, she had a list of approximately a dozen photographers to call and filed the situation under problems I can fix. This is her natural environment. When I eavesdrop on her talking to our daughter, I hear a woman who genuinely believes she can solve things, and who is usually right about that. A retreat would have taken her off the field during crunch time.

The house. Between saxophone recitals, a doctoral defense, and family dinners, deep cleaning has been hard to come by. Our son is still living here until the wedding, which means every room is in use, and Judy hasn’t been able to close a door behind her and declare it “clean” the way she likes. Saturday presented an opportunity. I recognize this possibility.

Me. Her first comment was, “You were certainly a factor.” She said it warmly, which is the charitable interpretation, and I’m going with that. I’ll acknowledge I’ve been crankier than usual this week — by evening, I’m running on low-battery notifications, more tired and capable of the sharp word instead of the kind one. I start most mornings reasonably enough, but the day works on me. Talking less or answering in vague generalities is usually the better move. The last remaining bits of common sense do what they can.

She’s always had a heart for a project. Apparently, I still qualify.

The truth is, I don’t fully know why she stayed. My best guess is it was the wedding stuff, and that I was a small contributing factor, and that she weighed a weekend of fellowship against the specific pull of problems she could actually do something about — and the problems won.

I am the guy who takes out the trash and reminds her we need to get to the bank Saturday morning. I am the gardener who calls the perennial company to get replacement plants sent, then makes sure they’re in the ground before we can go out for dinner. Our emotional lanes are pretty well established. The kids don’t bring their big life questions to me. They bring them to Judy, who has the patience to sit with the answers longer than I do. I give responses that are either too vague or too sharp. Not nearly as helpful.

So if she tells herself she stayed home partly for me, I’m not going to argue. I know she has a full world of people who make her feel needed. If I’m somewhere in that number, I’ll take it.

Whether it is with a toilet brush or a phone call, Judy will continue her mission to save the world. Mine is just to make sure she can.

What Grandpa Did in Norman

My son-in-law had a saxophone recital this week. My future daughter-in-law is defending her doctoral dissertation. These are significant life moments, and the family is rallying around both of them with appropriate enthusiasm and support.

I was with the baby.

To be fair, Ellie’s other grandma was in town for the recital, and she graciously babysat Ellie during the day so I could have some Andy time. This left her with a clear conscience when I accepted the recital shift. All of us attended the dinner portion of the evening, which was the part I was looking forward to anyway. The pizza was good.

The recital was held at OU, which meant Ellie and I spent an hour roaming the halls of a building not designed with either of us in mind — me like a slightly confused mall Santa, her like someone who has never encountered a carpeted ramp and intends to fix that immediately.

We walked a lot. With Ellie, walking means holding both her hands while she does something between a march and a controlled fall. Her legs can’t quite keep up with the ambition, but viewed from the side, the illusion of running is convincing. She seems to enjoy it. The grandpa executing the maneuver gets winded faster than he’d like to admit, so we don’t overdo it.

One of the hockey boys had left a neon yellow golf ball in their room, and once I introduced it to Ellie, every white ball I’d ever collected on my walks became an afterthought. We found a carpeted ramp — one of those long, gentle slopes that make stairs optional — and developed a game. She’d release the ball from the top. I’d stand below and try to kick it gently back up toward her. She’d decide, with visible deliberation, whether to crawl up to meet it or scramble down after it.

At one point the ball rolled toward her from above and she spotted it over her left shoulder. Something clicked in her baby brain and she decided the correct response was to lead with her right leg, which required a small full-body flip. She didn’t intercept the ball. But she committed to the plan completely — a tiny, determined engineer working a problem she hadn’t quite solved yet.

I lost the golf ball somewhere in all of this. I ordered a six-pack of colored ones on Amazon that night.

When two college students passed by during our ramp experiments, I mentioned something about developing her eye for the putting game. They smiled the way young people smile at old men doing inexplicable things with babies. Politely. With their whole faces.

We found a bench and ate. Cheerios, and some apple-strawberry star-shaped things that dissolve before they become a choking hazard. I favored the method where the snack is secured between my lips and Ellie retrieves it with her fingers. As the session went on, her hands got progressively damper. Baby slime. Nothing toxic.

A man walking the hallway stopped and watched us for a moment. “First grandchild?” he asked. I confirmed. He nodded like he knew something. “She’s the one who’ll pick your nickname.” Then he kept walking.

I would like a nice nickname…

The motion-activated faucets in the bathroom are not designed for a man holding an infant with one hand. You do what you have to do.

When my wife texted that the recital was over, I handed Ellie off to her assembled fans and faded into the background, which is where I do my best work. By the time dinner wrapped up, we were four hours in and dangerously close to disrupting my pre-sleep routine. The pizza held up its end.

Today is the dissertation defense. I was encouraged to bring Ellie, but it only takes one wrong moment — one well-timed shriek during a committee question — to make that a memorable afternoon for the wrong reasons. She has worked too hard for that. And frankly, I’m not sure the room needs both Ellie and me in it. There may be some older professors present with limited social skills, but they’re not variables I can control.

Phase two of Grandpa Goes to Norman happens from home. Better snack inventory. Bibs within reach. No motion-activated anything. No college students watching me lose a golf ball.

And maybe, if I keep spoiling her at the current rate, she’ll give me a decent nickname.

I Love You More Before 8 P.M

I had a busy day.

Not “storming the beaches of Normandy” busy, but “Oklahoma suburban dad with three doctors, a land rush anniversary, and a fajita deadline” busy. By the time it was over, my social skills had clocked out at 5 p.m. and left the rest of me to freelance the damage.

Fun fact: this particular Tuesday in Oklahoma is the anniversary of the Land Run of 1889. It’s the day people lined up, waited for the cannon, and sprinted for free dirt. The nickname “Sooners” came from the folks who slipped out before the start time. They didn’t cheat; they just identified as “time-flexible.” Meanwhile, I wasn’t cheating anything. I was just trying to survive my schedule.

The day started with me putting the final touches on a project I lovingly call “Bleeding the Benefits Dry” at my wife’s employer. The schedule was aggressive. Some men are made for times like this. I am not one of those men — I am, however, just enough of one to say yes and then regret it in stages.

First stop: the dentist. Routine cleaning, plus a cavity that earned me a bonus visit the next day. On Day One, I wore a bright turquoise shirt. On Day Two, I wore red. I could have worn the same pants, but I cannot let the dental staff know I am capable of a multi-day streak with the same shirt. There are mysteries I prefer to keep between me and my laundry basket. The cavity fill itself was painless. The drill fired up right as Huey Lewis and the News started singing “Heart and Soul,” which felt like my molar’s last request.

From there, the GPS announced I’d arrive at the dermatologist in NW OKC with less than ten minutes to spare. I did what was necessary to buy a little more time and arrived in reasonable shape. Once inside, they weighed me and generously shared my BMI while I was still fully dressed, shoes and all. I’m fairly certain Mr. Body Mass Index never intended his invention to be used in “winter coat plus wallet” mode, but here we are.

The doctor came in apologizing about thin walls and how they talk to reduce stress. What I learned next was that Integris has decided dermatology is now a luxury, and they’re dropping coverage. My earlier-in-the-week appointment turned out to be a minor miracle of timing. The doc, however, was locked and loaded with his cryotherapy gun and not afraid to use it. He addressed a couple of spots on my back and one in my eyebrow — an old acquaintance, originally treated twelve and a half years ago after a trip to China. Most spots barely registered on the “Did you do something, Doc?” scale. The eyebrow one probably wasn’t cancerous, he said; it was just growing with more enthusiasm than I wanted on my face. He double-tapped it and sent it to keratosis jail. If anyone wants to post bail, they’re welcome to it. I don’t need that barnacle of aging marring the wrinkles and other disfigurements already collecting on my face.

Parting instructions: a blister may form. Don’t pop it. It’s nature’s band-aid. Use Vaseline.

I am a man who now has Vaseline on his mental checklist.

The GPS said I could make it home before Ellie woke up. The gas gauge disagreed. The next driver is also my wife, so I filled the tank and accepted I’d be a few minutes late. Marriages are built on these small surrenders.

She was still sleeping when I arrived, which gave me a short breather. When she woke at noon, I was on duty until 3:15. She got her bottle and then spent forty-five minutes making faces and drooling all over her peanut butter toast. She’s operating on gum-and-slobber settings right now, but the volume of drool and the frequency of bib changes suggest teeth are on the way. The afternoon was mostly play and exploration, followed by the subtle art of convincing her it was nap time. Grandpa has his methods. None are scientifically validated, but they eventually work.

Before she was up again, I slipped out to the eye doctor. I paid the small fee for the retinal camera instead of the dilation drops — quick, easy, no blurry afternoon to manage. I aced the vision test. My prescription hasn’t changed. The doctor couldn’t find the floaters or the Fuchs’ Iris Crypts. Boring is good. I awarded this the Best Doctor Appointment of the Day, an honor it earned simply by not finding anything worth worrying about.

One grocery run for guacamole fixings later, and I was home for dinner. My daughter had already sliced the peppers and onions and put them in the oven to roast. There was marinated chicken to grill and Ellie to entertain. When we sat down, we could have won a regional Mexican condiment award: homemade guac, cilantro salsa, and street corn dip, with strawberry shortcake queued up for dessert. It was a good dinner. The kind of good that tricks you into thinking you still have gas left in the tank.

After dinner, my son and I took a walk. He filled me in on honeymoon plans and some work challenges. Good conversation. But when we got back, I was already sliding toward wind-down mode, and I retreated to the den hoping my wife and I could salvage some TV time together.

That was the plan.

That was not what happened.

His fiancée came over for strawberry shortcake and, more dangerously, conversation. I sat in the den watching the clock, wondering at what point a household should put a “Closed” sign on dessert service. My daughter, who had been at the house most of the day working her online job while we babysat, wrapped up her final call around 9:20.

That was my moment.

I walked out of the den and announced: “Everybody needs to leave so I can get ready for bed. I had a busy day and I am tired.”

That line doesn’t invite much counter-dialogue. They shut down their conversations and headed for the door. My son walked his fiancée home. He probably apologized on my behalf and explained it wasn’t personal — just one of his dad’s quirks. That is, unfortunately, a very accurate assessment.

Here’s what I know about myself after all these years: I’m usually a happy, snarky guy. But when the tank is empty and the façade runs out, I become a less pleasant version of myself. He is not the one you want at game night or in a room full of people who are still wide awake and full of things to say. The den is supposed to be where I go to keep him contained. Sometimes it’s just where he simmers until he needs to vent. I am responsible for all of it. I’m just not always able to steer it in the moment.

So to the people who had to deal with that side of me — I’m sorry.

If you’re scheduling time with me, mornings are good, afternoons are fine, and evenings are a gamble. After 8 p.m., you’re probably working with about 75% of my usual civility, and that’s on a calm night. Consider this your operating manual: Andy is at his best — and yes, it’s a narrow best — until about dinner time.

I love you all. I just love you more before 8 p.m.

Saturday Was Going to Be the Day

After three or four orders, a couple of borderline-needy phone calls to make sure I still got the sale price on things I forgot to add to my cart, and a few middle-of-the-night “what if I moved the flower bed?” brain spirals, this past week was supposed to be the week: all the new plants in the ground, finally.

The tracking number swore they’d be here mid-day Thursday. Then mid-day Friday. Then late Friday afternoon, like a teenager rolling in after curfew. So Saturday became Planting Day by default.

Armed with two cups of coffee and the kind of optimism that only caffeine can buy, I started sorting through the new “friends” I’d be spending the day with. Not required, technically, but I’ve learned it’s wise to get everything laid out before the shovel hits dirt. Inside each box, the plants were grouped in threes — because when I landscaped in my younger years, everyone got brainwashed by the same doctrine: plant in odd numbers. Three, five, seven. Apparently plants are as awkward in even numbers as middle-schoolers at a dance.

I didn’t honor that maxim with every purchase, but when I broke the rule, I did it on purpose. By the end of phase one, every plant was grouped with its brothers and sisters. I had two types of echinacea, which required some label archaeology to make sure no cousins were accidentally bunking together.

I rewarded myself with a break inside. My son is “camping” at our house until after his wedding, and he brought his Starbucks-style coffee maker with him. He made me a latte, mostly because I tried to look like the kind of person who appreciates a latte. About twenty minutes later, the caffeine had opinions about me sitting still, and I was back outside.

First up: three phlox around the roses in the front yard. The roses were thriving, but the rest of those beds were living in a depressing mix of clay, brick chunks, and sand — way more of all three than anyone needed. I shoveled out the junk, mixed the reusable pieces with new soil, and tried not to judge Past Me for cutting corners.

One of the phlox and a couple of the coreopsis in the backyard looked rough — parched, almost shriveled. Those coconut-husk plantable pots are great in theory, but when the pot is bone dry, the plants don’t have enough tears left to cry. If they don’t perk up by Monday, I’ll contact the nursery. Based on their email yesterday, they seem like reasonable people.

After watering, wrapping up the hose, and then unwrapping it again to spray off mud I’d allegedly missed — my wife’s request, and she was right — I moved to the backyard.

The backyard still required some jockeying. I kept hearing a voice in the back of my head: if you get too creative, you’re going to be cutting a lot of new holes in that weed mat. Not using a weed mat would be more flexible, but this is Oklahoma. Bermuda grass does not accept “no” as an answer. One year in and it’s already burrowing through like it’s just another minor inconvenience. Clay and sand out, fresh soil in — same drill everywhere.

Thirty plants by afternoon. My body was filing complaints. I’d been kneeling on a mulch bag all day, and my legs are no longer amused by repeated ups and downs. By evening my fingers were cramping from jamming soil into gaps around each plant. Those cramps were just the physical footnote on one simple fact: planting in my seventh decade hits different. My work gloves would have helped, but I couldn’t find them — my son had probably borrowed them, and I chose not to pursue it.

After a breather, Judy suggested a trip to Home Depot to fill a few gaps. We picked up marigolds and a pink hydrangea she loved. It rang up higher than expected, but we shrugged and paid. Beauty doesn’t come cheap.

Unless you go to Costco next.

A bigger version of the same hydrangea, cheaper by double digits. A very enthusiastic employee — Costco’s unofficial hydrangea whisperer — informed us that hydrangeas are basically the mood rings of the garden: shift the soil acidity and the blooms go from blue to pink. She also mentioned morning sun only. I mentally scheduled the return before we left the store.

With two slices of Costco pizza on Judy’s lap, we swung back by Home Depot to return the overpriced original, and headed home.

Post-pizza, I finished the job. Butterfly bush in the open spot, the hydrangea tucked into the covered corner near the gas line, marigolds up front in the clay-heavy soil where they’ll either surprise me or confirm my concerns. I still need to get those roses at Costco this week. It’ll sting at checkout, but every one of these plants is out there for Judy.

The outdoors is my lane. Judy’s lane is the indoors — laundry, dishes, cooking — and she does it well and loves the color these plants bring into our lives. She goes out of her way to compliment my efforts even when she’s being generous with the grade. Despite my many flaws, she keeps nudging me toward better, quietly and consistently, without making it a speech. I’m grateful to have a woman with that much patience in my corner.

The sore muscles are the tax. The joy is shared.

The Art of the Squeeze: Another Donor Day

My new “Sticks on Route 66” shirt.

My double red eligibility opened up earlier this week — right on schedule, every sixteen weeks, whether the world needs me or not. I didn’t want to look like the guy who watches the schedule too closely, so I waited two days before heading in. Judging by the mood I walked in with, the staff probably wished I’d waited a couple more.

Before I left for OBI in Norman, I had to give our final hockey boy his end-of-season pep talk. I snapped a picture of him before I left so I could pretend I was still there when he actually walked out the door. The picture was taken a half hour too early. I am a scoundrel with no photographic ethics.

The older couple ahead of me at the front desk had arrived early. Fortunately, the staff member recognized my impatience and quickly got me into the screening room. I had a couple of lines I was proud of. When they asked if I’d ever donated under a different name, I said I usually go by Andrew, but sometimes Andy. When they asked if anything had changed since I completed the survey four hours earlier, I said I’d been briefly pregnant but wasn’t anymore. My slap-happiness does not always have good taste.

The screener, it turned out, works at the hockey rink. She has brothers who played out of state and were billeted at houses just like ours. Except the homemade pizza probably wasn’t as good.

Three people got involved once I was set up at the apheresis machine — the vampire machine, as I think of it, since it gives back what it doesn’t need.

The first got me settled in. Heating pad, arm pillow, squeezey toy. She handled the light work so the next person could focus on the vampire-specific functions.

The second was Hannah. I didn’t say Montana, but I thought it. She walked me through a recent FDA rule change: you now squeeze the toy the entire time, not just when blood is leaving your body. Apparently, the change was made to keep things straightforward for everyone. It does more than tickle when the flow reverses, by the way.

The TV had replaced the Power Rangers with American Ninja Warriors. One contestant was clearly training full-time for this at age 52. I thought about thinking something more critical, then remembered I was the guy who drove across town to lie in a chair and squeeze a toy. With the TV failing me, I studied the donor-recipient chart on the wall. My O+ can go to any blood type with a plus sign. I’m basically the Costco of blood.

The third had a paramecium tattoo on her left upper arm and a light blue bandanna. I’m not explaining it further. After the needle came out, she reached for the stretchy wrap and opened a drawer full of colors that would have had me deliberating for several minutes. She chose beige. It was the end of the roll, so I can respect that. But couldn’t I be special just once?

I settled in at the snack table with my Chex Mix and Gatorade, Nutter Butters tucked away to go. With my daughters out of the house now, setting them on the kitchen counter still brings back some fond memories — something to look forward to on their next visit.

So why do I throw two hours away watching things I don’t care about while surrounded by tattoos and piercings? It’s not the T-shirts, though “Get Your Sticks on Route 66” is genuinely good. It might be a little bit of my dad, who donated regularly — except he had hepatitis, which probably disqualifies the hereditary angle. Since he’s not around to ask, it still makes a good story.

When all the other reasons fall away, I’m healthy and able to, and that’s enough. When the cholesterol results show up in the OBI app, I smile and pat myself on the back for something I had no control over

I must like people at least a little. I married one.