Family

Oklahoma Hockey (and Other Natural Disasters)

Oklahoma weather forecasters don’t give you a report — they give you a threat assessment. A full week out. Not “bring an umbrella.” More like “settle your affairs and consider your roof a temporary situation.” We’re talking atmospheric tantrums that halt air travel, reroute rivers, and occasionally redecorate entire zip codes. I’ve lived in the South long enough that Ohio has some catching up to do, but Oklahoma still plays in its own division — the one where the meteorologists have agents.

Friday night was billet appreciation night at the Warriors game. It was exactly that. It just came with an unscheduled intermission.

The evening started with a charcuterie spread and adult beverages — a social event, not a meal, which is a distinction that matters when you’re trying to justify the brie. Judy and I were mostly there to spend time with the mother of our age-out boys. The year a player turns 21 is the end of his junior hockey career — and the end of his time with whatever family took him in. Crowds aren’t really my preferred operating environment, and I didn’t know most of the people there, which meant I got to perfect my “engaged bystander” expression for the better part of an hour.

The Warriors came out and went up 2-0. As the last team to squeeze into the postseason, this was not how anyone expected them to play. The backup goalie was in net. Nobody cared. The lead was everything.

Between the first and second periods, all the billet families walked out onto the ice. The boys skated over to whoever feeds them and does their laundry, a photographer snapped pictures, and each family received a personalized engraving — “Gruenbaum” was the name etched into our Warriors billet family keepsake. Genuinely lovely gesture. Also, not the reason anyone is doing this. Nobody stands in their guest room — the one now permanently scented with hockey equipment and teenage ambition — and thinks, you know what would make this worth it? A tasteful engraving. The season tickets and monthly stipend do the actual persuading. The engraving is the cherry on top of the “I have a teenager living in my guest room” sundae. A very nice cherry. But still.

The second period had good hockey. Our boys were competing.

Somewhere between the second and third periods, while the crowd watched chuck-a-puck, my phone buzzed. Tornado warning. My first instinct was purely structural: we’re in a large, well-constructed building, they’ll just keep playing. This is what years of Oklahoma meteorology does to a person — they scream wolf so enthusiastically, so consistently, that eventually you stop flinching and start quietly rooting for the wolf just to see how it plays out.

Then our son called. He’d forgotten we were at the game, but since he was near our house, he wanted to use our storm shelter. Permission granted. Good kid. Efficient crisis management.

The arena announcer — who normally delivers commentary at a frequency only retrievers can decode — was suddenly, remarkably, comprehensible. “Leave your seats now and make your way under the bleachers. This is not a test.” The crowd moved efficiently, calmly, without drama. In Oklahoma, a tornado warning is less an emergency and more a scheduling inconvenience.

Judy had more urgency than most. She was ahead of me almost immediately, and by the time we reached the concourse I’d lost her in the crowd. I checked the rooms along the hallway under the bleachers, doing a quick inventory of the available Judys, which came up short.

Under the bleachers, the true Oklahoma spirit revealed itself. Someone nearby announced, loud enough for several people to hear: “I hope the tornado doesn’t mess up my Amazon delivery.”

Cell signal was rough, so anyone who had it became an involuntary broadcaster — announcing radar updates to whoever was standing close enough to hear. The murmuring started: How long would they keep us down here? Would they wait out the full watch? Would the game even finish? Then a guy who had clearly aced every weather-related exam Oklahoma had ever administered worked his way through the crowd and told everyone to head back to their seats. No report on what happened to the west. No update on what occurred to the east. The information was: go sit down.

The Warriors finished the night with a W. The tornado moved on to inconvenience someone else. And somewhere nearby, a Ring camera confirmed that a package survived the whole ordeal without incident.

The Pudding Aisle

My daughter and I had a cooking project last Tuesday. She went through my “make these someday” recipe stack, picked her favorite, and we drove to the store to collect what we needed.

I always end up in the pudding aisle.

I’m a pudding voyeur from way back. Pre-COVID, the butterscotch section alone gave me options — store brand, off-brand, multiple sizes. Now it’s just Jell-O, one size, take it or leave it. I leave the chocolate lovers their big box. I don’t need to understand them.

The cook-or-instant question isn’t really a question. Pudding is not meant to meet cold milk in a bowl and get stirred into submission. It’s meant to dirty a pan. It’s meant to thicken slowly while you stand there wondering if you’ve stirred constantly enough to avoid burning it. There’s a small gamble involved, and I appreciate that in a dessert. If you reach for the instant box, you’ve already answered something about yourself.

My daughter — the one I babysit for — has been known to locate the butterscotch box sitting in my cabinet, waiting for someone with patience and standards. I’ll make it for myself if I have to. But knowing someone thinks me worthy of a cooked product is a better feeling than I probably should admit.

Way back when my wife and I were dating, my future mother-in-law bought me a butterscotch pie. To make me feel welcome, I think. She didn’t bake it herself, which, in retrospect, was the correct level of effort for someone who hadn’t decided about me yet. I didn’t make nearly enough of a fuss over it — being a young man of profound emotional stupidity, I offered the bare minimum of gratitude. I’m making up for it now by gatekeeping the pudding aisle. It’s called growth.

I used to make homemade butterscotch pudding too, in the double-boiler era. Every recipe I look at now just says “saucepan.” If you’re currently content with the pre-made plastic-cupped pudding from the refrigerated aisle, I’m not angry. I’m just disappointed.

Many of my taste preferences have shifted over the decades. The butterscotch ones have not moved an inch. They remain loyal, patient, and occasionally indulged.

And I probably shouldn’t mention this, but my granddaughter tried a small spoonful the other day. The look on her face was familiar. I’m choosing to believe it’s genetic.

Yesterday Was a Good Day

Yesterday was a good day. Not the day off I pictured when I took this job (it isn’t an actual day off, but we pretend), but a good day.

When I signed on as the primary caretaker for my granddaughter, the wins were simple. Bottle finished. Burp achieved. Dry diaper confirmed. The job description fit on an index card.

It doesn’t anymore.

Now, a good day means I kept her entertained long enough that she went down for her nap without excessive drama. It means everything ran on something resembling a schedule, because the adults in her life are trying very hard to pretend their lives aren’t a complete shipwreck since she arrived. It means I successfully assessed which objects on her high chair tray were unlikely to choke her, a calculation made more interesting by the fact that God has not yet seen fit to give her teeth.

The surveillance portion of the day is non-negotiable. We walk laps — kitchen, living room, hallway, back to kitchen — while she conducts a thorough inspection of everything that has changed since her last walk. Usually, nothing has changed. She checks anyway.

Outside, it’s the mulch. The brown mulch in the flower beds has captivated her in a way I cannot fully explain. It fits perfectly in her little fists. Also in her mouth, which is where most things end up. Her appetite operates on one schedule: eyes open.

A good day also means I timed the diaper change correctly. Change her, set her down in the living room, execute the strategic maneuver of leaving the bathroom door open, and move with purpose. If the math works out, I’m washing my hands when her little crawling body appears around the door frame, just making sure I’m not having an adventure without her.

Then there are the moments that have nothing to do with logistics.

The reluctant laugh — the one where her tummy figures out she’s ticklish before she’s fully committed to the idea. The way she sticks her chest out when you hold her hands, and she leads you, with great authority, to all the important places that require daily review. The diaper bag left unzipped for thirty seconds, which is thirty seconds too long, and the full excavation that follows. She’s looking for something. We don’t know what. It goes in her mouth.

She has also discovered my glasses. There is a game now — I didn’t name it, she invented it — where she removes them from my face with the focused determination of someone defusing a bomb. I’m usually holding her because she’s in a pre-nap mood, which means I’m also the only available entertainment. The lenses are a mess. It’s fine.

There’s also the nap itself, which raises its own question: when she wakes up crying after forty minutes, is she actually awake, or just passing through? The answer determines whether I have time to start dinner. I have not yet developed a reliable system.

The job description has changed, but so have the fringe benefits. She has a personality that walks into a room before she does. The diapers are worse, the opinions are louder, and she has a will that I respect even when it is aimed directly at me.

But I get to watch a little human discover herself. Every lap around the kitchen, every fistful of mulch, every reluctant laugh — she’s figuring out what the world is.

She’s not the only one.

The Self-Appointed Yard Whisperer

This is a further explanation of one of the titles included on my “semi-retired” business card. (Mulch Magician)

My wife was out of town again, which meant dinner was whatever was in the fridge that could survive a second heating. After staring at three containers of uncertain origin, I decided a walk was a better option than food poisoning roulette.

I had an audiobook. I had a route. I had a text out to my son one street over, which he was apparently in no hurry to answer. Fine. I walked.

About ten minutes in, I spotted a couple of women in a front yard — one holding a hose aimed at some trees that had clearly given up, the other supervising from the porch with a German Shepherd on a leash. I crossed the street to say hello, because apparently that’s the kind of person I am.

The dog was skeptical. Her owner told her several times I was fine, then shook my hand in front of her as a formal introduction. The dog considered this, leaned in, and licked my hand. Endorsed. I was in.

What followed was a twenty-minute conversation I had absolutely no business being part of, and yet somehow led.

The trees had been pruned badly — topped, actually, which is basically a death sentence delivered slowly. The grass was Bermuda sod laid in December of 2021, right before they moved in. They moved from Seattle, where watering the lawn is something God handles for free. They waited for spring. Spring, in any meaningful grass-growing sense, never came. They’d tried a series of quick fixes that the yard had rejected with contempt.

I suggested weed mat and perennials for the flower bed. I floated the idea of waiting until fall to deal with the grass. I cautioned them about ordering a truckload of dirt before a rain. I was, by any objective measure, a complete stranger who had wandered in off the sidewalk and was now running a landscaping consultation in their front yard.

At some point I said something like, “I could come help you with some of this.” Then I heard myself. First meeting. Showing up with unsolicited yard opinions is one thing. Showing up with a shovel is how you become a story someone tells later.

Then one of them mentioned they’d found a drug pipe on top of the kitchen cabinets when they moved in.

“That’s not good,” I said.

“We don’t smoke it ourselves,” she said, “but we own a dispensary. So our main question is — what exactly were they doing while they were high in our house?”

Apparently, one of the answers was fixing the door latch — with notebook paper stuffed around the strike plate. High-effort, low-intelligence engineering that you can only pull off when a glass pipe is involved.

My son called during all of this. Then called again. I let it go. He would understand. He’d seen me do this his whole life — stop to talk to a stranger when someone who knows me is technically available. And honestly, I’d just seen him the day before. The women with the dying grass and the drug pipe had never met me. They needed me more.

Toward the end, something clicked. I asked if they happened to be hockey fans. They loved the Kraken (Seattles Pro Team). I told them about the rink just off I-35 south of 240, the boys who live with us, and the extra tickets we pass out to potential fans.

The two of them looked at each other. Nodded. Already knew who they were inviting.

I walked home with no audiobook progress, a missed call from my son, and the quiet satisfaction of a man who had done exactly what he set out to do — even if he hadn’t known what that was when he left the house.

Maybe it was the yard advice. Maybe it was the hockey tickets. Maybe it was just better to talk to absolute strangers than to call someone who’s heard all my material before.

The trees are still lopsided. But I’ve got fans to cultivate.

The “I Do” Adoption

My son is getting married in a couple of months. She is wonderful. She is also from a completely different culture than ours, which means we are all, on a fairly regular basis, figuring each other out.

That’s not a complaint. That’s just the truth.

When your kid gets married, you don’t just gain a daughter or son-in-law. You adopt them. Nobody tells you that when your kid says “I do,” you’re quietly saying it too. The vows are theirs. The adoption papers are everybody’s.

We’ve had our share of “whoops” moments. Some of them are hers. Some of them are ours. I’d be willing to bet that on the occasions where I thought she’d missed something, she had a perfectly reasonable explanation rooted in how she was raised — and I just didn’t know enough to ask. I’ve been married for 35 years. I still miss things. The idea that I’d have it all figured out with someone I’ve known for just over a year is ambitious, at best.

To his credit, my son prioritized pre-marital counseling before any of this got official. Smart move for any couple. For a cross-cultural one, it’s close to mandatory.

My wife is better at this than I am. She is more patient, more instinctively gracious, and far less likely to assign fault before asking a question. I am a work in progress. She has been working on that project for 35 years and will probably need a few more. It took me that long to become even slightly less selfish than I was on our wedding day.

We are, in a sense, the booby prize she gets for loving our son. She knew what she was signing up for with him. The rest of us came with the package.

What I do know is that she is trying. She genuinely loves our son. She has put real effort into being part of this family, even when this family probably made that harder than it needed to be. She’s learning us in real time. So are we.

The grace has to go both directions. Different families have different quirks even when they share a culture. When the cultures are genuinely different, you need more runway, more patience, and a willingness to say “I didn’t understand that — can you help me?” without anybody getting their feelings hurt. We are still building that. Some days are easier than others.

When they say “I do,” we all do, a little bit. We’re agreeing to figure each other out. To give grace before assigning blame. To ask before assuming. To remember that someone who does things differently isn’t doing them wrong.

I’ve needed that same grace extended to me more times than I can count.

Welcome to the family. We’re still under construction, too.

Feeding the Ungrateful

The first night with a new hockey player, we made pasta with roasted cherry tomatoes. He had told us beforehand, “I eat everything.” After dinner, he quietly revised that to “everything but tomatoes” — with the look of someone who’d just been served a plate of gravel. Good to know. Lesson learned.

We have been feeding a rotating cast of hockey players, exchange students, and our own four kids long enough to know that the dinner table is not a democracy. It’s a negotiation, and we are usually the ones making concessions.

The extra challenge with hockey boys is their shelf life. One week you’ve learned a kid’s specific enthusiasm for jalapeño sausages, and the next week he’s injured or traded, replaced by someone who eyes a Hebrew National hot dog like it’s a personal insult. Being nimble is the only way to survive. This year, broccoli has been universally accepted. Brussels sprouts with a hot honey glaze were a shocking upset victory. The Hebrew National — gold standard of my youth — has not had a good season.

The safe foods exist for a reason. Grilled burgers, sliders, tater tots, mac and cheese, and pizza that warms up well in the toaster oven. Both the meat-lovers’ and the BBQ chicken versions are improved by bacon, which I consider self-evident.

Speaking of bacon — I call it the Paradox of the Bacon. Bacon on a pizza: consumed without hesitation. That same piece slides off onto the plate: suddenly toxic, fit only for the trash. I don’t know what molecular threshold determines when meat loses its dignity, but it is apparently non-negotiable. The unwritten rule, imported from somewhere I was not consulted, is that wasting food is acceptable provided you were enjoying it moments earlier. That wasn’t taught at my table. But staging an intervention for young men unlikely to change their habits based on my disappointment is not a good use of dinner conversation — especially when they’re already eyeing the door.

The complications stack up fast. My wife picks out mushrooms with the precision of a diamond sorter, so mushrooms get roasted separately now and left to fend for themselves. Tomatoes are a minefield. Meat in the sauce gets carefully excavated like a crime scene. My son’s fiancée has moved us to vegetarian baked beans, whose label cheerfully claims they “Make Burgers and Hot Dogs Even Better” — which feels like a passive-aggressive way to sell beans, but here we are. Seafood options evaporated after a quiet veto years ago. Chicken and pork are cheaper anyway.

And then there is the brisket — the meat that doesn’t care about my feelings. We have invested. It has returned nothing but chewy heartache. The oven is kinder than the smoker, but the oven is already running the sides, and getting everything to the table at the same temperature at the same time is a project I have not solved.

What I’ve learned is that you don’t perfect a recipe for an audience that eats around it. You stick to the reliable choices, you guard the refrigerator’s sovereignty against the slow creep of warmups that age out or multiply, and you remember that the dinner table is really just a place to sit together.

They know this, too. Which is why, when the meal doesn’t land, the move is always the same: “I think I’m going to run out for ice cream.”

You go get your ice cream. I’ll be glad I didn’t double the recipe.

Apology Accepted, Access Denied

I saw this phrase during my morning scroll, and it made me pause. As a Christian, I lean into the forgiving part. The “access denied” part is harder to admit, but I’ve made peace with it — mostly.

I met Jerry (not his real name) through my online business, back when I was cobbling together a living after a post-9/11 layoff and the birth of our 4th child. He was sharp, helpful, and seemed to want what I wanted. That last part turned out to be the problem.

Jerry was one of those people.

Over nearly two decades, Jerry talked me into several business ventures. Some I was smart enough to avoid. Others, I wasn’t. The pattern was always the same — he’d find the angle that sounded like it worked for both of us, and I’d believe him, because he was genuinely convincing. My wife saw it before I did. She usually does.

The last venture was the one that finally clarified things. He connected me with a job through a supplier he knew — Jerry was the manager, and Jerry’s unacknowledged nephew was the chief of operations. The nepotism ran its course, and I was the first to go. Within a week, Jerry called and suggested lunch. He managed to seem apologetic about the fact that he’d had me fired. He also handed me paperwork to sign away my right to unemployment.

My wife didn’t let that stand.

I collected every dollar. I never saw Jerry again.

Looking back, the warnings were there early. Another supplier told me Jerry had dealt with him dirty. I filed it away and kept going. That’s the thing about a skilled manipulator — he doesn’t come at you all at once. He’s a master of the long game. He stays in light contact, patient, until you have something he needs. Then he’s your best friend again.

The hardest part to admit is that I liked him. He was warm and funny and made you feel like the smartest guy in the room for listening to him. I thought I was lucky to have someone like that in my corner. I wasn’t lucky. I was useful.

Now I get occasional Facebook updates. If a customer emails about an order Jerry once fulfilled, I write him a short note. He sends curt replies. That’s what twenty years looks like when one person was paying attention, and the other one wasn’t.

In my mind, the most unbelievable part of the story is that Jerry is now a pastor.

I’ll be honest — I’ve thought about showing up at his church. Not to make a scene. Just to see whether the man preaching from the front is the same one who handed me that paperwork. He has the skills for ministry. He also had the skills for everything else.

But poking around in someone’s life after a three-year gap feels like reopening a wound that’s healed clean. Whatever apology passed between us was probably silent and probably mutual. We moved on. I genuinely hope he’s doing good work now.

I even hope we spend eternity together. I just don’t need to spend any more of my time on earth with him.

The Call That Postponed My Retirement

This is a further explanation of two of the titles included on my “semi-retired” business card. (Dual Format Bookworm and Spousal Support Engineer)

The phone call came two months ago, and just like that, the Summer of ’26 vanished.

It was an offer my wife couldn’t — and, logically, shouldn’t — refuse. A similar role to her current one, fully remote, better pay, working with a well-respected colleague from her past. I wasn’t in the room when she took the call. I heard about it afterward, which is probably how most husbands learn the major plot twists in their lives.

I considered a counterargument. The best I had was “I have over 6,000 books on Kindle and Audible.” Most of them were free. The rest I bought on sale, fully intending to read them immediately. That argument, it turns out, doesn’t hold much water against a high-level role with better benefits. So we pushed the goalposts. Summer of ’29 it is.

To understand why I didn’t put up more of a fight, you have to understand our roles. For 35 years, my wife has been the undisputed Bread-Winner. I’ve made several noble attempts at being a Dough-Winner, but her bread is simply better baked, more plentiful, and has a much more reliable crust.

As we navigated kids, fostering, and a move to Texas, she was the one traveling when the company called. She worked evenings and weekends to make the bosses happy, while I waved from the sidelines — or texted her from the same room to see if she remembered she had a husband. My retirement is technically rock-solid and investment-backed, but it is not the golf-and-slow-coffee variety. It is a series of Supporting Roles. I am the Head of Domestic Logistics, and my CEO just signed a three-year extension.

Here’s the part that gets me. She’ll be home. Physically present, same house, same zip code — and completely unreachable. My wife working remotely is not my wife being available. It’s my wife in a digital fortress with a closed door and four consecutive video calls.

I was hoping to pass the childcare baton this year. Instead, I’ve been re-enlisted. I am currently a specialist in diaper-related hazardous waste management — an unpaid internship with zero upward mobility, but I’m told the exposure is great. By the time 2029 rolls around, our granddaughter will be four and likely helping her mom manage two or more siblings.

Then there are the hockey boys. Another three years of work means another three seasons of high-protein breakfasts and civilized-living lessons. It’s all penciled in. As long as they like toddlers and don’t commit any sins beyond redemption, the house stays full.

So we’re staying in the wind and the Oklahoma heat a little longer. Our local kids will be here at least two more years before their academic pursuits take them elsewhere, which means delaying retirement only adds one year of real extension anyway. I participated in this decision. I agreed it was the right call. My counterargument was weak, and I knew it.

I am a reluctant retiree, but I have people — and one very small person — depending on me most days of the week. I don’t get paid, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get compensated.

I’ll get to those 6,000 books eventually. I just need my wife to retire first.

The 6 AM Rule

I have a 6 AM rule.

If the airport dropoff requires me to wake up before 6, I am operating in dangerous territory. When I am awake, I am awake — but the manner in which I arrive at “awake” matters enormously. I shake the sand out slowly. I need time to build momentum. If that process starts before the sun has any intention of showing up, I will spend the rest of the day staring at walls, losing verbal sparring matches I would normally win, and napping in chairs I had no plans to sit in. I am, essentially, a human screensaver.

My wife has no such limitations. She can wake at 3 AM, drive to the airport, come home, and go back to sleep like none of it happened. I find this both impressive and deeply unfair.

The labor of being the free Uber isn’t actually free, by the way. It’s paid for in brain cells and accidental afternoon naps.

Earlier this year — February, maybe, or early March, the details are fuzzy in the way that only pre-dawn experiences can be — I did a 5 AM dropoff. The wakeup was somewhere around 4:30. I won’t describe the rest of that day except to say I spent most of it trying to goose a single brain cell into firing.

So I updated the policy. One pre-6 AM spousal run per quarter.

This coming Saturday, her flight is at 5 AM. The math on that wakeup is not complicated. She asked me something about the flight options — “5:00 or 1:00?” —, and I thought my preference was obvious. She said, “Oh, they gave me the 5:00 flight.” There I was. A man of principle, staring down his principles.

I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do about that. A paid Uber is getting my vote, but votes change

Now, the rules are not the same for everyone. I’ve developed what you might call a tiered system. It is not written down anywhere, but it is very real.

Hockey boys know the score. They’ve seen enough early practices to understand that some hours of the day are not meant for human activity. If their flights are reasonable, I’m happy to run them. If they’re leaving at what the military calls 0-dark-thirty, they’re calling an Uber without any hurt feelings on either side. This is an understood arrangement.

Exchange students have, in my experience, been European, and Europeans apparently book flights like reasonable people. Arrivals tend to land in the afternoon. Departures can get a little early, but my wife handles those. She, as previously established, is built for this.

Family is where the policy gets complicated, mostly because family comes with feelings attached to it. There is an ongoing negotiation in our house about whether saving forty dollars on an early flight is worth what it costs in parental sleep and the general goodwill that holds a family together. I have opinions on this. I keep most of them to myself.

The honest truth is that family members (not our kids) who visit us for weddings usually have rental cars. Which means I can say, with complete sincerity, “Too bad you’ve got the rental — I would have been happy to run you.” And I might even mean it. I just don’t have to specify that my happy shuttle service has operating hours, and those hours start at 6.

The OKC airport, for what it’s worth, is a genuinely pleasant experience. Easy drive, easy TSA, more marijuana dispensaries along the route than I remember from DFW but fewer traffic lights, so it probably evens out. The only real drawback is that flights out of here tend to leave early. If you’re connecting through Dallas or Denver to get somewhere real, your day starts at an hour that tests people.

It tests me, anyway.

My wife is fine.

Almost Okie

Today, an era ended. I officially traded my Texas swagger for an Oklahoma “Okey-dokey.”

I switched my driver’s license.

I walked in, sat down in front of a woman, she looked at my papers, and sent me to the one chair reserved for photos. Barely 15 minutes from entry to exit. Three miles from my house. No app telling me when I was allowed to show up. No line snaking through a building the size of an aircraft hangar.

In Texas, you schedule days out — months if a driver’s test — and pray the system doesn’t go down on your day. If it does, you haven’t wasted a whole day. You’ve wasted a whole day and your will to live. There’s a substation near most Texas neighborhoods for plates and stickers, but for a license? You’re probably driving 25 minutes to the mega-processing center and clearing your calendar. Here, I had the choice of many locations. The office I chose handled everything. One stop. One very efficient woman who probably wished I’d stop complimenting the process.

The guy behind me had his required documents on his phone. He emailed them to the nice lady and they printed them for him. Both methods work. One involves planning ahead. I’ll let you guess which one I prefer.

I did not ace the eye exam. I want to be clear about that. I passed — barely — but I read the “just a line short of blind” line, and apparently that’s good enough to drive. Nobody seemed alarmed. I appreciated their restraint.

They also gave me genuinely useful advice: go for the 4-year license instead of 8, because renewal is free after 65. In Texas, I might have paid extra just to avoid coming back. Here, I almost want to return.

We’ve lived in Oklahoma for almost a year and a half. My wife was still technically on a Texas payroll — with perks tied to her Texas address — which gave us a convenient excuse to keep the fiction going a little longer. When that chapter closed and a new opportunity let her be honest about where she actually lives, the last reason to delay went with it.

So I kept the Texas license. Not for legal reasons. For sentimental ones.

As long as it was in my wallet, I was still a Texan. There’s a low-grade smugness that comes with that, and I hadn’t realized I was addicted to it. I liked our community, our neighbors, the restaurants we knew by heart. Oklahoma has been kind. Oklahomans are genuinely good people. But we haven’t found our Mexican place yet, or our Italian place, or the one spot we’d drive across town for without discussing it first. My wife asked where I wanted to eat recently and I said Chick-Fil-A. She wanted somewhere nicer. Neither of us could name it. That’s the whole problem right there.

The restaurants will come. I know that. My patience just didn’t get the memo.

The real reason I finally made the switch: I want to vote here. We watch Oklahoma primaries and bond issues play out on TV and I have no voice in any of it. I’ve said for years that if you don’t vote, you can’t complain. I meant it. Time to get in the ring.

So now I’m an Okie. Officially. I’ve got the license to prove it, and I only had to squint a little to earn it.