Observations

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 Termite Guy, the Ant, and the Contract I Should Have Read

The termite inspector showed up this morning. I wasn’t excited about it, but I like the feeling of a thing being done.

I’d been waiting for him the way you wait for the dentist—not dreading it, exactly, just wanting to get it over with. He roamed the house freely. My wife was on the phone in the family room. My son, fighting off an illness upstairs, was somewhere between working and sleeping. The inspector covered every room, poked around the garage, focused on the outside walls, and pronounced us clean for another year. His lime green boot covers were the most exciting part.

Before he left, I asked him about the ants. There’d been a small parade of them moving through one corner of the kitchen, and I wanted a professional opinion. He came over, I lifted the toaster, and one lone ant skittered across the countertop. Just one. Either he was keeping all the good crumbs for himself, or our kitchen wasn’t worth the effort. The inspector asked whether the previous treatment had used a residual or non-residual chemical. I had no idea. I searched my email for an invoice and came up empty. He told me the office would call about a treatment plan—non-contract, he said. He said that part like it mattered.

It did.

Last year, after the termite inspection wrapped up, I let the termite company do an annual bug treatment. It was a new build. I would see what problems emerged. They left little traps around the house and garage, and I watched them do essentially nothing for a few months. When a pest control company knocked on my door, I figured I’d give them a shot. The company was called White Knight. I signed their contract without thinking too hard about what “contract” actually meant.

Turns out it means something.

When I called to cancel today, I got a screener first—baby crying in the background, pleasant enough. Then I was transferred to the woman whose job it is to make you reconsider. She opened with, “I hear you feel you’re paying too much. Let’s see if we can take care of that today.” I told her I just wanted to cancel. She shifted. To exit the contract early, she said, it would cost $285. I had one treatment left at $129.

So: pay more than double to leave, or wait out one more treatment and cancel then. I told her that was ridiculous. I told her I’d never sign another contract with them, that if anyone from the company knocked on my door again I’d send them away immediately. She said, “Have a good day, sir,” and hung up.

I put a reminder on my calendar for three months out. One more treatment, then I’m done.

The less stressful move would be to pay the $285 and be done with it today. I know that. But there’s something in me that can’t hand over money for nothing, especially not money I owe because I didn’t read a contract carefully enough. So I’ll wait. I’ll take the last treatment. I’ll call back and cancel, and I’ll probably have to fight for that too.

I’m not too old to learn a lesson. I’m just too old to pay a cancellation fee that costs more than the service itself.

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.

The Nicest (and Meanest) Man She Ever Married

This morning, I asked my wife if she wanted a coffee refill. When she said yes, I pointed to the carafe, paused just long enough to enjoy myself, and then grabbed her cup and filled it.

“You spoil me,” she said with total sincerity. “You are the nicest.”

I knew better. “Yes,” I replied, “but I’m also the meanest man you ever married.”

She didn’t miss a beat. In that sweet tone of hers, she said, “I feel like I take advantage of you when you always fill my cup for me. I genuinely thank you for that.”

Since the caffeine hadn’t hit yet and I didn’t feel worthy of the praise, I had to do some soul searching. How does this woman continue to love a snarky, often cranky man who is constantly trying to deposit enough “I care for you’s” into the emotional bank before noon — before the day’s inevitable influences take hold?

In just over two weeks, we start our 36th year of marriage. As I look at the calendar, I realize I need to up my game just to keep pace with her. She is genuinely excited about everything on the horizon. Our future daughter-in-law’s wedding shower? She’s hosting it and is actually looking forward to entertaining. Her new job has come with more Day One problems than expected, yet she’s ready for the challenge. Our Europe trip this summer? Every excursion is planned, and she is anxious to spend two weeks straight with me. Based on that last point alone, she should probably be committed to an institution.

I am well aware of my flaws. I snap when my schedule gets turned upside down. I am prone to funking — my shorthand for being in a funk — where I become either disagreeable or retreat into stony silence for no apparent reason. When I’m tired, I’m nitpicky. I’m often someone I wouldn’t want to spend time with.

Yet somehow I’m a better person than the man who stood at the altar all those years ago.

Judy’s ability to look long has either rewarded her or cursed her — I’m genuinely not sure which. I believe I’ve incrementally improved, but it didn’t happen in the first five years. It may have only happened in the last five. In the chaos of shared life, a slightly nicer version of me has slowly taken possession of my faculties more often than the other guy. Maybe my tone is a bit softer. Maybe watching my kids live their lives and spending a few hours a week with my granddaughter has acted as a lubricant for the nasties, letting the good ideas flow while keeping the barely tolerable ones from doing too much damage.

She tells me every time we travel: “I like you more when we travel than when we are around the house.” I get it. At home, I’m weighed down by all the life things I feel responsible for. When we’re cruising, she handles the plan, and I just show up.

I travel well.

Maybe that’s why she puts up with me the other 50 weeks of the year.

Things My Wife Won’t Buy (Until She Decides They Were Her Idea)

We recently got a new coffee maker, which is something I’ve only been asking for since, roughly, the Bush administration. My working theory was simple: “Why does our coffee taste like flavored water?” Apparently that wasn’t a compelling argument. What worked was my wife getting a new job, which unlocked the “gift to myself” justification, which is the phrase people use when they have a little more money than they want to admit.

The new machine does make better coffee. It has a Bold button, which I respect. The Bold button charges you for the improvement in time — double the brew, double the wait — but the coffee tastes like actual coffee, so I’ll take it. She has full creative control over the settings. My only request is that every used coffee ground gets dumped on my roses for the next few weeks. My front roses have never looked better, which means at least someone in this house is consistently benefiting from my persistence.

My wife has also appointed herself Veto Queen of household ideas — specifically mine. The lamp situation is Exhibit A. We have a shared recliner, and there used to be a lamp right between our two seats until the recliner ate the cord. Poor planning or spousal plotting — jury’s still out. Since then I’ve been campaigning: “Can we get this lamp?” “What about this one?” My questions are never ignored, exactly. They’re just not acted on, which starts to feel like the same thing. Her explanation is always that she just hasn’t found one she likes.

This from a woman who can summon TEMU packages like she’s running a small import operation. The wedding shower boxes arrive daily. She knows how to search, scroll, and buy things she wants to find. I’m not saying she’s uninterested in my lamp. I’m just saying it smells a lot like she is.

The blackout curtain situation is a separate grievance. Our bedroom windows face east. This is wonderful for cool evenings on the back patio and terrible for a man who cannot go back to sleep once he knows the sun has clocked in and a hot day is waiting. All last spring and into summer I was awake before seven with no alarm and no plan to be awake before seven.

The blinds help. They don’t cancel the sun. I could wear a sleep mask, but I already wear earplugs to mute the night’s musical selections. Shutting down two of five senses before bed every night feels excessive. In tornado country, it could also be fatal. When my wife says it’s a shame I don’t sleep better, I smile and nod, confident in my own theories about why.

In a small act of rebellion, I ordered a chicken shredder. We grill a few pounds of chicken every week, and I have long believed our enchiladas would be better with shredded chicken instead of chunks. The device is simple — toss in the cooked chicken, twist a few times, done. Before I ordered, I made one strategic decision: orange. My color, unmistakably. Every household member would see that shredder and know whose idea it was. It was cheap, and I was prepared to absorb any guilt that came my way.

It arrived the next morning. She asked what it was with genuine enthusiasm. I explained — chicken shredder, better enchiladas, game changer. Without looking up, she said she’d had one on her list for a while and just hadn’t gotten around to ordering it yet.

Sure you did, dear.

The coffee is better. The roses are thriving. The enchiladas are improving. The lamp, I assume, is still under review.

The Cost of Rent

When our son temporarily moved back into our spare bedroom before his wedding, I made the standard dad joke about charging rent. The kind that isn’t really a joke.

He countered with lattes and espressos. Which sounded generous until I did the math and realized we’d need to consume coffee at levels typically reserved for medical residents and long-haul truckers to break even.

So he sweetened the deal with two tickets to a Thunder playoff game.

As a landlord, I found this reasonable.

There was one small wrinkle. The game fell on the same weekend he’d committed to being in a friend’s wedding. Poor planning, really — if you’re going to have friends, they should at least consult the NBA schedule. Through some workplace point system I don’t fully understand — something between airline miles and a Vegas loyalty program — he’d been saving up for exactly this kind of game. Once he committed to giving us the tickets, he dumped every point into the opening home playoff game. His coworkers, apparently uninterested in burning points on a boring first-round matchup, offered no resistance.

He did, for the record, manage to score tickets to Wednesday’s game. Nobody else wanted those either. First-round games are very boring.

Getting the tickets transferred to my phone was described as seamless. This is a word technology people use when they are being optimistic. Eventually, after some button pressing and what I can only assume was divine intervention, they appeared. Victory.

April 19th is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, which means downtown sees street closures and the city feels different. There’s the upcoming Art Festival setup, the Marathon connections, and the memorial events marking 31 years. It added a layer of reflection to what was otherwise a “let’s not get a parking ticket” mission.

We parked on the west side of Jeff’s old apartment building — his recommendation — which translated loosely to: park far enough away to question your choices, but save ten dollars. The walk took us past art show booths and through the Botanical Garden, and we eventually merged into the crowd moving toward the arena with the slow determination of migrating animals. We crossed the final street in police-approved mob fashion and successfully ignored a street preacher, hoping he’s able to plant some seeds.

My wife walked through the entrance carrying a Sonic drink like a seasoned contrabandist. No one stopped her. Whether this was arena policy or a lapse in attention, I have chosen not to investigate.

Every seat had a t-shirt and a clapper noisemaker. The shirts were extra-large, which felt simultaneously optimistic and judgmental. We were fine with extra-large.

Section 114 put us close enough to see everything without the monitors, which I appreciated. My varicose veins don’t prevent walking, but standing in place for extended periods is another matter entirely. When the crowd rose, and we did not, I used the monitors to catch whatever I was apparently missing by remaining seated like a reasonable person.

Blessing Offor sang the national anthem and performed at halftime. He wore sunglasses indoors, and I briefly wondered if he was trying to channel Stevie Wonder. Turns out, he actually has a story worth knowing. That one’s on me.

The camera work featured a lot of hip-level shots of dancers and performers and whoever else was on the floor. I’m told this is a stylistic choice. It is also, apparently, a young person’s broadcast world, and I’m just living in it.

The Thunder started slow, then remembered they were defending champions. By the third quarter, the outcome was about as uncertain as a Hallmark movie, and I found my attention drifting. At one point, I thought: if I were home watching this, I’d already be doing something else.

Final score: 119-84. Great seats, great outcome, questionable engagement on my part.

During the third quarter, the season-ticket holder next to Judy mentioned that the six seats in front of us belonged to out-of-town fans who never showed. We waited until the result was genuinely not in doubt, then quietly liberated two extra shirts — one for Jeff, one for his fiancée. Consider it a finder’s fee.

We left two minutes early. This is our standard “outcome is clear” protocol, and it almost never actually helps. We still ended up shuffling fifteen minutes behind a crowd moving at the speed of thoughtful contemplation.

I usually operate in about five walking gears. Judy has two, maybe three on a good day. Normally, I’d be quietly restless about the pace. But somewhere between the arena and the parking lot, it occurred to me that my best friend was right there, enjoying a beautiful Sunday afternoon with a man who complains about camera angles and caffeine-to-rent ratios.

When she’s happy to be there, the least I can do is find a higher gear of gratitude. Dial back the sarcasm. Pay attention to the win that’s actually happening.

More than three decades in, and she still wants to spend a Sunday afternoon with me. The least I can do is show up for it.

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.