Family

Talk To The Team

As my daughter gets closer to becoming the mother of three, I could not be more excited for her. Or more aware that I personally will do none of the work involved.

She has spent this entire Oklahoma summer—certainly the hottest one since we moved here—getting kicked from the inside by two little people who do not yet have names and somehow already outrank her in the house. Yes, I was gone for a few weeks of the summer. That does not mean I wasn’t sympathetic. I was rooting for her from wherever I was.

Of course, when your daughter has three kids, that means you have at least three grandkids. I would like credit for that arithmetic.

A friend sent me a video last week of his grandson getting ready to have a sibling. Since my friend already has other grandchildren, something ugly woke up in me. Not sadness. Something closer to a scoreboard.

I would love to tell you I am above comparing my family’s headcount to another man’s family’s headcount. I am not going to tell you that because it isn’t true.

The frustrating part is that there is nothing productive I can do about it. New kids don’t get born because Grandpa felt competitive on a Tuesday. If I want to add players to the roster, the actual work has to come from somewhere else entirely, and I am, at best, in a spoiling and snack-providing capacity.

I brought this up to my daughter while she was complaining about getting her ribs kicked from the inside and having trouble putting socks on her swollen legs. She listened to my grandchild-count predicament with the patience of a woman who has significantly bigger problems and said, “You need to talk to the other members of the team.”

The team.

Currently, the team has one active member, my daughter, and three others on the bench. Of those, only one of them are currently qualified to help me pad the stats, by my own arbitrary rule that I would prefer marriage happen first. I would welcome any grandkids, of course, but please forgive me for preferring that my kids get married before they start producing them. I don’t think that’s asking too much.

So, let’s talk about how I got here, competitive about something I have absolutely no control over.

I didn’t become a father until my thirties, which means I spent a good portion of my life watching other men become grandfathers while I was still working my way through the fatherhood portion of the program. My wife and I always assumed we’d be the kind of grandparents who leaked enthusiasm out of every pore the second a grandchild showed up.

Apparently, our other kids—the ones older than our pregnant daughter—either never noticed that enthusiasm or noticed it and decided it wasn’t worth compromising on a spouse to make it a reality.

Their loss, frankly.

Their siblings’ children are going to get the toys, the outfits, and the opportunity to have us visit more. There is a reason I didn’t lead with the visits.

More grandkids would obviously help my case when talking to my peers. It would also give me even less free time than I have now, especially since the odds of getting the other two kids’ grandkids within the ten-minute driving radius their siblings enjoy are pretty close to zero.

Realistically, it would mean my wife and I doing a lot more driving or flying to keep tabs on whatever new pieces of our extended DNA show up somewhere else. I’m willing to make that sacrifice, although I reserve the right to complain about the mileage.

So, to the rest of the team, if you’re reading this, I have no deceptive motives in mind.

We’ve already proven ourselves to be pretty good grandparents. We are soon to triple our grandchildren, which sounds much more impressive when you don’t mention that we started with one. Tripling again—or more—is something your sister is not going to be able to do on her own.

So, do everyone a favor.

Spare her body the record attempt. Go ahead and get married, have some kids, and give your sister a little competition of her own. She has set some lofty goals, but we have faith in every one of you.

And to the hockey boys: you have also been added to the team, although I realize your membership is temporary. We are only your parents for the season, which means in a few months you are going to leave, start your own lives, and—if everything goes according to plan—eventually contribute to your own parents’ scoreboards.

Just to be clear, I am not counting any future children you might have on my scoreboard. Those are your parents’ points. I have my own scoreboard to worry about.

We aren’t trying to rush you. You’ve got plenty of hockey, growing up, and other things to figure out first. We are glad to have you guys around, and we will be sorry when the season ends and you head off to whatever comes next.

But when the time comes, remember that your billet parents are going to be looking for ways to keep the family roster growing.

As much as we enjoy having you guys around, our focus has to be on boosting the score in Grandpa’s selfish little game.

So, if the Gruenbaums can’t cook and provide a bed for you next season, we hope you understand.

After all, there is a team to build.

Retirement Is a Full-Time Job

I am having a real time problem. Retirement was supposed to hand me buckets of free time. Instead I’ve traded one calendar for four, plus a grocery list that never ends.

On the bright side, I’m collecting misadventures faster than ever. Documenting them is where I keep losing. So here’s the current lineup of things eating my hours, in the order they occurred to me.

The hockey boys are back, appetites fully intact. They eat well, generally. What we’ve learned is that “eating well” comes with fine print.

For years we blamed their parents for this. A childhood of fast food runs between practices will shape a palate. This year’s contribution to the family vocabulary is the classic “I don’t eat tomatoes” and “I don’t eat cheese,” which after some gentle interrogation turns out to mean no whole tomatoes and no cheese specifically on tacos or hamburgers. Somehow that’s more specific while creating more questions.

We’re navigating it. What we haven’t solved is quantity, since we’re still cooking for our local kids too, and it’s only the start of the second week of practice. Once the warm-up leftovers start surviving in the fridge instead of getting fought over as second dinner after nine o’clock, that’s our signal it’s safe to go back to boring.

Then there’s the billet coordinator, who giveth and taketh. Really, it’s the coach making every call. The coordinator is just one of the minions relaying it with a cheerful “yes, sir.”

All of our boys made it through the first cut and played in the intrasquad scrimmage. One didn’t show well and was on a plane to “Plan B” the next day. The bed sat empty exactly one night before a non-tendered, non-drafted player got invited to move out of his hotel and into ours. I got a little scrappy making that happen, and I regret nothing.

We don’t do this for the money. It doesn’t hurt that there is some, and in exchange we feed these kids well and let them load up the wifi with all of their devices. And, if feeling extremely generous, we even let them control their own thermostat at night.

In three weeks I’m scheduled to acquire two more granddaughters. My daughter is finishing her last week of Zoom consulting, and everyone has quietly agreed it’s better to have grandpa on standby than to have her explain to a client that she needs a minute for baby maintenance.

So my calendar now includes clementine distribution and teaching a toddler exciting new ways to play with toys she already owns, mostly because grandpa needs the entertainment. This is genuinely on my top ten list of things I want to be doing with my life. It has been fulfilling, but grandpa needs a little variety there, too.

The last item is the one I complain about the least: getting to know these hockey kids while I still have them under my roof. Dinners run long. Plans get pushed to make room for them.

Any of them could be gone tomorrow or here through the end of the season, and I’d rather spend the time now than look back in April wishing I had. The billet fees cover food, laundry access, and the basics of keeping a teenager alive. I haven’t run the actual math, but I’d bet money we don’t turn a profit on any of it.

Somewhere between retirement, travel, and grandkids we apparently can’t say no to, the hockey hosting is going to get squeezed out eventually. Whenever that day comes, I want to have done it well and left these boys wanting more, not counting down the days until we stop showing up.

Nobody handed me a vote on how this fall’s schedule filled up, and I wouldn’t trade a single piece of it. I’ll find the time somewhere. Probably by writing shorter posts about it, which defeats the purpose, but here we are.

The Day My Moral Compass Needed a Tune-Up

I know it may appear that my only contact with humans outside of my family occurs on errand days. There is more truth in that statement than I would like to admit. I do, however, still have the ability to recognize when something is out of the ordinary. Or, if that ability has quietly left the building, I at least hope to score some points when I retell the story later.

Having already drained the hot tub twice this year, I have decided to keep a tighter rein on the chemicals. Since I have no desire to learn how to test the water myself—apparently there are limits to how much responsibility I am willing to accept for my own hot tub—I wandered into Leslie’s again.

When I pulled in, I saw a car with a stroller and baby coming out of it. I was hoping they were headed to Rally House to get an OU T-shirt. Surely that would make more sense than what happened next. Nope. They were going to Leslie’s to have their water tested, too.

For a brief moment, I considered running past them and getting my water tested first. I may fail socially in a number of ways, but even I knew that would be wrong. So I waited patiently while mostly keeping my mouth shut as the baby-mama went first. My bottle of hot tub water was already set up for testing, so I stood there like a man waiting for the results of a medical procedure he had performed on himself.

When it was my turn and before the test was completed, the bottle was pushed back toward me. A little probing revealed that the employees had been having a problem with customers not getting their bottles back, resulting in a growing collection of bottles under the counter, each conveniently labeled with a phone number. Apparently, even returning a plastic bottle is now a process that requires documentation.

Eventually, the results came back. High phosphates. Organic material.

The source could have been any number of things. It might have been the hockey boys making a jet-less visit to the hot tub last time. It might have been something else entirely. I prefer hockey boy broth as the explanation because it allows me to blame someone else. The hot tub will do what it does. I just don’t want to be responsible for why it does it.

Sam’s provided most of the other entertainment for the day. After getting gas, I walked inside prepared to fight my usual battle with the compacted shopping carts. To my surprise, there were carts separated and ready to go. I made sure to thank the greeter for helping me avoid the conundrum that must be solved every time I visit Sam’s: finding a cart that is actually usable without having to perform a minor demolition project.

After that, I happily sampled the donuts. Unfortunately, the guy handing out the samples had no idea what the difference was between a cake donut and a yeast donut. He knew the flavors. He knew the decorations. But the basic taxonomy of donuts appeared to be outside his area of expertise.

What are they teaching kids in school today?

I passed on the Dude Wipes. Those are not included in our hockey boy billet fees. We determine what is covered, but we don’t get more money if we spoil them. If my hiney isn’t spoiled, neither is theirs.

The parents of our boys have been instructed to send their billet fees to my Venmo account. Since a significant portion of what hockey boys do is eat, it seems only appropriate that I use that money to pay for the food and necessary paper products we buy at Sam’s.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think of that while I was shopping.

Instead, I thought I was being clever by scanning everything as I went. Eventually, I abandoned the whole process in the Sam’s app because paying with Venmo wasn’t convenient. I then circled the cart scanning things like one of the other losers who had somehow become technology-challenged in the middle of a warehouse store.

As Sam’s visits go, this one was about average. The parking lot, however, was holding the real excitement.

After unloading the groceries and returning the cart, I didn’t pull straight out of my parking space. The steering wheel was leaning to the right. I was barely halfway out when I heard a noise.

I didn’t think it sounded like metal on metal, but the radio was on and it was Two-fer Tuesday, so I wasn’t fully committed to listening.

In an attempt to be responsible, I backed the car up and looked at the vehicle to my right. The fact that there was no additional sound of metal being rearranged probably should have been a clue, but I wanted to be a good citizen and double-check.

I saw and heard nothing that raised a red flag for driving sins. And that stupid app on my phone, had I still chosen to turn it on, wouldn’t have gathered any insurance-rate-raising data from my parking lot maneuvering.

Still, knowing I wasn’t a perfect driver worked on me during the drive home. The optimistic part of my brain was perfectly happy to believe something had shifted in the trunk. The part of my brain that isn’t quite so naïve kept asking why I hadn’t been more thorough after hearing the noise.

When I got home, that part of my brain went exploring on the passenger side of the car.

That’s when I saw it.

A previously undetected flaw in the paint screamed, “CAR DOOR DING.”

It didn’t feel like a scrape caused by some guy driving through the Sam’s parking lot as if he were the only person there. It looked more like the kind of thing that happens when two perfectly innocent cars have a brief disagreement and one of them loses.

Of course, I had to tell Judy about my possible sin.

I view Judy as my confessor. I figure my moral compass was engineered to bless behaviors that make sense only to a male brain, so I run things by her occasionally to make sure our compasses are still synchronized.

On this one, she reassured me. She didn’t see anything unreasonable about what I had done. There was no big hug followed by, “It’s going to be okay.”

I got the more practical, “Don’t worry about it.”

The other thing about Judy is that she is a non-practicing attorney. I don’t think her compass has caved in the way some legal professionals’ compasses apparently do, but her needle may be skewed a little.

Then again, all of our compasses are probably skewed a little.

I just pray that any skewing that takes place doesn’t eventually assume I am incapable of making mistakes. I have lived with this guy long enough to know he still has more arrogance than he should have. Every now and then, getting figuratively pinched by reality is probably a good thing. It knocks the overconfidence down a few notches.

Of course, that’s only the overconfidence I can still salvage after being married for a few decades.

The Eve of Controlled Chaos

Friday was an errand day—well, at least the morning was. With the hockey boys arriving this weekend, I had to finish up the grocery shopping. Earlier in the morning, Judy and I had discussed what the menu might look like for the first week. After that, we would have time to pick their brains and figure out what foods we could slide into the rotation without causing anyone to thumb their nose too high.

Our returning boy told us, “I like to eat everything.” So naturally, the first night he was here last season, we made a tomato pasta dish. (The things he liked was hence modified to be “everything except tomatoes.”) Our two Alaska brothers have already informed us that they dislike tomatoes and onions, and one of them dislikes peppers. The next few meals should help us get into the finer points of these dislikes. Is it the size? How they’re cooked? Or is it the flavor? Apparently, we are not simply cooking dinner. We are conducting a culinary research project.

The first night this year is tacos. Our carnitas have a few jalapeños beaten into a pulp, so we’ll get to test where the pepper line is. If the problem is flavor, they can fall back on brisket tacos. There is always a backup plan when you are responsible for feeding three teenage hockey players. It just happens to involve another kind of meat.

With my daughter within a month of her C-section—we are all rooting for the natural birth—I picked her and my granddaughter up so she could get out of the house and run some errands. It never hurts to have another adult available when a toddler decides to spontaneously melt down. This particular outing also resulted in one of my rare visits to Hobby Lobby.

I don’t shop at Hobby Lobby. Judy will buy craft items there, and on this day my daughter was shopping for birthday gifts for a church friend’s daughter. My granddaughter had her own opinions about what should be purchased, naturally. My daughter worked within her $25 budget and found a couple of things that seemed like they would actually feel like “her.” Ruth, my granddaughter’s code name for purposes of this blog, allowed Grandpa to push the cart while Mom did the math and performed increasingly sophisticated guesstimations about each gift’s position on the enjoyment spectrum.

As we checked out, we passed the inevitable temptation along the checkout aisle: Horehound lozenges. My daughter didn’t seem particularly excited to see them. I did. Not because I wanted any, but because they reminded me of my dad and the stash of horehound he kept tucked away in the kitchen cabinets of the house where I grew up.

Apparently, even a trip to Hobby Lobby can turn into a brief visit with your past.

The trip to Sam’s was more of a refrigerator “topping off” than a major shopping expedition. We’ll see which boys are still in our house next weekend. They started with 51, and we are told they will cut that number to 34 next weekend. Three of those 51 are staying with us, and there is also a boy trying out who happens to be the brother of a hockey player we had when we lived in Texas.

He is a goalie, so we are hopeful he makes the team. If he does, the billet coordinator has already promised that he will be “ours.” We really enjoyed his family when his older brother was ours. Most billet parents are fine. His parents were exceptional. When they came down for one of their son’s games, they were great fans and made it obvious how much they appreciated what we were doing.

That is part of the answer when people ask why we let young men stay with us when we could just eat out every night and avoid the whole cooking-and-parenting-adjacent experience.

First, we would cook anyway. We just throw a few more pieces of chicken on the grill. Second, most of the boys are genuinely appreciative. Yes, we’ve had a few entitled players enter our home. We tolerated them. And, regardless of whatever antics a kid might attempt, having parents we really liked tended to raise our tolerance level considerably.

There is a little chaos involved, but the boys also bring something we probably wouldn’t get otherwise. They are chasing a dream. Watching them work toward it gives us a reminder of what it looks like when something matters enough to work for. And when that dream takes a detour, we get a chance to help them figure out how to handle it.

The only truly “new” thing on this set of errands was voting early in a runoff primary. There were a series of tables I had to graduate through before I could finally get my ballot. At the first table, I signed an affidavit saying I wouldn’t vote again at another location during the remainder of the voting period. At the next table, I presented my driver’s license again, along with the affidavit. I believe they attached a label to it before sending me on to get my ballot.

At the previous table, I heard someone mention that about 120 people had voted. My ballot number was R103. I’m not entirely sure what the numbering system meant, but it made me wonder if the Republican ballots were winning the early-voting popularity contest. Then I remembered there apparently weren’t any Democratic runoffs, so that probably wasn’t much of a contest. The rules of the runoff simply meant the people participating were concentrated on one side.

There were only two state issues on the ballot, so I filled in the little rectangular boxes the old-fashioned way. No electronic ballot for me. I was told the ballot could be scanned with either side up. In my case, the scanner apparently preferred that I maintain my privacy and scan it face down.

I usually don’t take the “I Voted” sticker, but I thought it might entertain my granddaughter, who was already fighting a cranky mood brought on by incoming teeth or whatever other battle toddlers wage in their ongoing effort to preserve a good mood.

It did not entertain her at all.

Aldi’s was our final stop. We needed a few taco supplies—vegetable toppings for those who eat them and plenty of cheese because meat and tortillas need cheese to graduate to official taco status in all parts of the country. Tomatoes are optional.

By the time the errands were finished, I realized the day had been more than a grocery run and a few stops around town. It was the eve of another transition for our family. The boys arrive Saturday, and with them comes an eight-ish-month commitment.

We “get” to be parents again, but with some significant upgrades. They are mostly self-sufficient, although we may need to help with transportation from time to time. And if they screw up, we don’t have to blame ourselves for whatever parenting mistake supposedly caused it. We can help them navigate the challenge without taking their indiscretions personally.

If they have a great year and grow into better players and better young men, we get to watch that happen, too. Their parents deserve the largest share of the credit, without question. Our job is mostly to provide a home, feed them, encourage them, and occasionally nudge them back toward the idea that their priority right now is supposed to be hockey.

And if I ever need a reminder of just how good I can be at the nudging part, I can always ask my wife.

Yes, dear. You’re welcome.

A Plod Instead of a Skip

The “funk” happens 6 to 8 times a year. The variables change, but the result is usually the same. I do more of a plod than a skip.

I still get the “must get dones” done. The “nice to get dones” wait their turn.

I can fake upbeat for a while if the kids are around. I don’t bother faking it for my wife. She knows me too well, and pretending to be cheerful when I’m not is a lot of unnecessary work.

A bad funk also dulls my humor and makes my brain feel like it’s swimming uphill through molasses. I can still function. Everything just takes more effort than it should.

Naturally, I decided the best way to handle this was to analyze all the reasons I might be in a funk. Because nothing lifts your mood like conducting an internal investigation into your own bad mood.

One contributor is my current battle with the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I like my fantasy to have a predictable magic system. Once I understand the rules, I expect the author to follow them.

For the first four books, my son’s enthusiasm kept me going. By about 25% into Book 5, I had to admit his positive review had carried me farther than my own enjoyment.

I probably could have quit sooner, but I let optimism run high. The premise was clear after book one, and each book since has been a little more of a struggle. Vacation was good for the series, since I could read 10% or more in a day. Now the daily trickle isn’t enough to move the story forward fast enough to keep me engaged.

So I have two problems: frustration with the book, and frustration with finding something else to read. I considered starting something new, but talked myself out of it. “Andy, you don’t want to learn a new world’s rules right now. You want something you already understand.”

Well, it wasn’t the best decision.

Now I may have to wander between a couple of books before I find one that fits, with a plot simple enough that I’m not spending three chapters remembering who everyone is. First-world problem? Absolutely. Apparently the funk has standards.

Another contributor: I gave blood the other day. The blood center’s follow-up email announced, “You have a new badge.” Naturally I had to check.

Instead, I found out about the badge I didn’t get.

But I also found something that made me smile. Between double-red donations in Ohio and Texas, I’ve never had an accurate lifetime total. After moving to Oklahoma, I started giving through the Oklahoma Blood Institute instead. I logged into my old Carter BloodCare account this week and found out I’d donated more than seven gallons there alone.

That’s a lot of me being voluntarily drained and sent home with a cookie.

One of my Facebook friends is past 20 gallons. I have no idea what my Ohio total adds up to, so my real number could be higher than I think. Just finding the seven-gallon figure moved my funk down a few percentage points. Apparently even my blood donation history is conspiring against my bad mood.

Then there’s the cold.

A cold makes my brain run slow whether I’m in a funk or not. Add in the lack of sleep, and the result isn’t exactly peak performance. I can plow through what needs doing, but the list has to shrink to keep the frustration manageable.

And then there’s chess.

My son and son-in-law both play at Chess.com. I’ve taken the Duolingo approach: too shy for real people, so I play the AI. I generally hover around 800-900 ELO.

Every time I get close to 900, hope creeps in. Maybe I’m getting better. Maybe I’m finally figuring this out.

Then the AI decides it’s had enough of my nonsense. Does it call me a loser? Of course not. It just does some voodoo with its queen and cleans my clock in under a dozen moves. Once it’s beaten me back down to 800, it puts its “idiot hat” back on and lets me win a few with my low-end strategy.

I don’t have the commitment to go deep into chess. I just want to keep my brain active. Unfortunately, the “you are horrible, maybe you’re not horrible” cycle accounts for a surprisingly large share of my funk.

This is clearly another first-world problem.

Then the hockey boys started arriving Saturday. The last arrived Sunday afternoon.

Thirty-four boys made it through the July camp that picked the roster pool. Now they’re competing against each other and against 17 more boys for a final spot. Fifty-one boys chasing a limited number of spots is a good way to wreck a teenager’s sleep schedule.

The late arrivals were probably off the coach’s radar for one reason or another. But what if they deserve a spot too? I’d hate for one of our boys to get cut because a late-comer showed up and pushed him off the roster.

The older I get, the softer I get. If the boys are in my house, I’m cheering for them. Next Friday night, when the cuts happen, our house could lose one of three beds. I feel for them, living with that uncertainty.

As my wife put it: “They are young. They can handle it.”

She’s probably right. I’m glad I’m not still young, though. I wouldn’t want my life’s direction hanging on something my older brain knows won’t matter in five years. Getting cut from a hockey team isn’t going to determine the rest of anyone’s life.

That doesn’t mean I won’t hate seeing any of our boys go.

Somewhere in the middle of writing all this, something strange happened. My mood improved.

Maybe it was the seven gallons of blood. Maybe it was laughing at my own chess career. Maybe it was admitting how invested I am in a house full of teenage hockey players. Or maybe it was just getting all of this out of my head and onto a page.

Whatever it was, the funk started losing its grip.

That might be the real lesson here. You can’t be satisfied with every part of your life every day. Some days are just plod days. The book frustrates you, the chess computer questions your intelligence, the cold fogs your brain, and teenagers remind you that life can turn on someone else’s decision.

But there are good things happening around us too. Sometimes it just helps to stop and notice them.

So I’m going to address the envelope, put the funk inside, and send it back to the return address.

Unfortunately, I know who lives there. Eventually it’ll find its way back to me. It usually does.

But for now, the shift has begun, and I’m going to enjoy it. Besides, I’ve got a book to quit reading and an AI chess player to lose to.

The Final Flight of the Summer

Finally, the day we get to go home and stay home. Of course, getting home requires traveling, so today is still a travel day. Fortunately, it hasn’t started badly. It has, however, managed to collect a few things that should make it memorable.

Judy’s mom got us up at 5:30. I assume she thought she was doing us a favor. Judy’s alarm was set for 5:40, which might have been cutting it closer than necessary, but it still would not have resulted in our Uber leaving without us. Instead, we were ready early and spent the next ten minutes staring at each other, wondering what people did before smartphones. Eventually, our guy showed up, we gave Mom Hugs 2.0—we had already hugged her last night, but apparently she was banking them—and we were out the door.

Our Uber driver was quite a character. According to his story, he had been retired for more than five years, although I’m not sure “retired” is the word I would use for someone who gets up before 3:00 every morning to lift weights. His wife is a maternity nurse on weekends, and once she finished delivering the baby currently in the queue, they were going to drive to Florida. He claimed he only needed a few hours of sleep, which I suspect is the sort of thing people say right before their body files a formal complaint.

He apparently drives Uber because he needs something to fill the gaps in his day, and we benefited from that decision. He claimed to just love people and talked like he had never had a bad thought about anyone in his life. It sounds wonderful. My mind doesn’t work that way, so I mostly let him talk and limited my contributions to grunts unless he asked me a direct question. When he asked, “What do you do?” I realized he had found a subject that would allow him to talk even more.

If he told us once, he told us a dozen times, “I was born poor. I never had anything. I retired early not because I was rich, but because I don’t need much. I bought two packs of crackers this morning for $2.04. That is all the money I will spend all day.” This was apparently his financial plan for the day, and I respected its simplicity.

He also told us about his daughters. “From the time my daughters just started to make noise, I talked to them at least 15 minutes a day. My wife and I always wanted to be the house the kids wanted to come to. And for some reason, my girls seem to gather friends from broken homes. They sort of became my kids, too. When we went to the beach, we would take them. When we went out to eat, I would get the girls their own table and tell them to order anything they wanted. My only request was that they didn’t waste food. I was born poor, and I will get a little preachy if you waste food. Get a doggie bag!”

He was an enjoyable guy to listen to. He pushed the “happy Uber driver” spectrum about as far to the right as it could go. Our Uber getting to my in-laws had been a Chinese gentleman who had only been in the country for six months. His son was doing a post-doc, so he was cooking for him while trying to learn the language. His English was limited, but he seemed genuinely happy to be in America. Apparently, our Uber drivers had decided to give us the condensed version of the American experience.

When we described what we do and have done, our driver told us we were the first people he had ever driven who had done foster care. I expected a question or two about that experience. Instead, he immediately started talking about something his wife wanted to do. She wanted to bring a child from an orphanage into their home over Christmas and then send him back after Christmas. Our driver thought that was cruel. Why bring a child into a warm, loving home, spoil him for Christmas, and then send him back?

He had a point. And somewhere, there is probably a child who missed out on getting to know this warm Southern man because his wife had a questionable Christmas plan. I don’t think he could have been my best friend, but he could have been a good one.

We had barely gotten to our gate when Judy realized her “I’ll just set my jacket on top of my backpack” strategy only works if the jacket stays on top of the backpack. Apparently, it had shifted during the Uber ride, and our driver never saw it. I opened my suitcase and gave her mine, hoping it would actually make it home and not become another victim of Judy’s “forgetfulness” spell.

We had more than an hour to kill before boarding, so I told Judy I was going to walk for a while. The A terminal at the Raleigh airport isn’t exactly a hiking trail, but I figured I could get some steps in. As I walked back and forth, I began tracking some of the characters inhabiting our little airport ecosystem.

First, the TSA guy commented on my “Yoda Best Grandpa” T-shirt. “I like your T-shirt,” he said. He also informed me, “I don’t need to get steps in. I do 18,000 steps a day.” Apparently, this was important information for me to have. Our Uber driver had also noticed the shirt and said one of his daughters and his wife liked Star Wars. He probably would have continued, but fortunately, he was busy unloading our luggage.

Second, I kept passing a woman wearing a T-shirt that said “Mashed Potatoes.” It’s a short terminal, so we passed each other several times. She only had a backpack, which left me wondering whether she was traveling alone or whether she had five pounds of North Carolina’s finest potatoes hidden in there.

Third, there was a guy who was definitely traveling alone. I felt sorry for him because he had to wheel his suitcase around while getting his steps in. My own steps were unhindered because Judy was sitting at Gate A7, monitoring my stuff while being entertained by her phone. This is what teamwork looks like when you have been married for 35 years.

On the plane, I generally avoid wearing shorts. Pants take up more room in the suitcase, but I also don’t enjoy rubbing knees with strangers. The list of people I know well enough to willingly rub knees with is pretty short, too.

On this flight, Judy and I weren’t sitting together. I had the window seat, and the woman beside me was greeted with, “You don’t have to talk to me. Our Uber driver wore us out this morning.” She immediately put on her mask and didn’t say another word. The guy sitting ahead of me gave me a knowing nod. Maybe his Uber driver’s brother had driven him.

The woman in the window seat in front of me had very long hair. She didn’t do the annoying thing where people flip their hair over the back of the seat, so I appreciated that. Unfortunately, as she leaned against the side of the plane, her hair dangled down onto my uncovered knee.

Was it disgusting? Not really. Her hair looked clean. Was it something I would have preferred to avoid? Absolutely. There are certain levels of intimacy I prefer to earn before someone’s hair touches my knee.

Our connection in Medway was pretty tight. We inadvertently took a detour to the wrong gate, but Judy spotted a Garrett popcorn stand along the way. We figured we might find another one closer to our gate, but potty breaks robbed us of its caramelly goodness. There are few things more disappointing than knowing caramel popcorn is somewhere in the same airport but being unable to locate it before your bladder makes the decision for you.

The head stewardess on our Southwest flight looked like she may have been an original. She ran through the entire Southwest schtick like she had been there when the jokes were written. I’m not judging, but she was either extremely seasoned or had made a questionable decision regarding suntan lotion at some point in her life.

I had a middle seat on that flight and ended up between two kids who were slightly older than a third my age. Judy was sitting in the middle seat directly in front of me. This created an opportunity I could not ignore. Poking your wife from behind when she has forgotten you are sitting directly behind her is one of the small pleasures of marriage. Priceless.

And that brings us to the end of our flying journey for the summer. We won’t be completely escaping airports because hockey-boy pickups are waiting for us, but at least the international portion of our travel is over.

Of our six flights in Europe and six in the United States, I preferred the first four in Europe the most. They implied adventure. The final two flights of both trips implied something different: the closing of a journey.

And I have journeyed far too much this summer. I was grateful to miss much of the 100-degree weather while we were gone, although it appears Oklahoma City saved a few of those temperatures just for our return.

Apparently, even home wanted to make sure we knew we were back.

The Chip My Wife Never Plays

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

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

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

She did not let me have this one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Furniture Surgery

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

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

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

I made a mental note to meet this woman someday.

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

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

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

I said nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Date Night, Retirement Style

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My New Walking Companion

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

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

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

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

He’s a teenager.

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

I have absolutely no evidence to support this theory.

None whatsoever.

That has not stopped me from improving it every morning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You simply start noticing it.