fiction

The Great Stone Heist

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across the sales guy for our subdivision—the guy who “lives” in the model home. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, so we had a few things to catch up on. I needled him about whether the stuff he was throwing into the dumpster from the back of his truck was all work-related or whether he had snuck some junk from home into the truck purge. He admitted there may have been a little of both.

Whether the guilt was the reason he told me about a pallet of free stone sitting on the corner or whether it was just friendship, I didn’t think I was a candidate to use any of it. We did our typical fist bump and headed our separate ways—me on foot and him in his truck.

I mentioned the stone to my son as a possible landscaping option, but he couldn’t figure out how to use it either. Then I realized there might actually be a project for me. With almost no rain over the past few months, I had nearly forgotten about my ongoing “mulch sliding into the street” problem around our newly planted tree. I was confident it would eventually rain again, because apparently God has a sense of humor when it comes to landscaping.

I picked through the pile and found some ugly stones along with a bunch that were a pretty consistent thickness. I was still a little timid about reacquiring my old “stone whisperer” skills, so I went to Home Depot for a few supplies. Up to this point, the project had cost me exactly $0.

I needed gravel, topsoil and a stone hammer. The first two were easy. The hammer was more complicated. I looked through their entire inventory of hammers, searching for something with a square striking head and a backside that looked like a normal hammer, except without the part designed to pull nails. I wanted something solid that could chip a stone if reshaping became necessary.

Their selection was inadequate, but I found one that offered a few advantages over the hammers I already owned. And honestly, since the project was still practically free, the hammer was going to be my trophy of accomplishment.

At checkout, I mentioned the project to the clerk. He showed me where I could order the proper stone hammer through the service desk and handed me his business card. He later explained that he wasn’t blatantly soliciting customers for his side business while on the Home Depot clock, but he wasn’t opposed to it if the situation could be justified.

I admired the entrepreneurial spirit.

With the supplies in my trunk and my new hammer arriving by UPS the next day, I could see the project coming together.

Because I was still a little timid about my stonework, I texted the Home Depot guy about helping me. He had told me he was a stone mason, and I figured if I was going to do this, I might as well have someone around who actually knew what he was doing. I also mentioned the “stone stash” that would be his for the picking.

He came over the next day and said he could easily help. I offered to ride with him to the pile, but the pictures I had sent him apparently gave him enough confidence to find it himself.

Everything was fine until I got the text a few minutes later.

The supervisor had spotted him picking through the stones and thought he was some guy trying to scrounge free material without authorization.

Technically, he was.

He just had a better story.

I sent a few texts to my subdivision sales guy—the same guy who had originally told me about the stone—and got the situation cleaned up. It turned out nobody cared who took the stone. They just wanted the stone to disappear.

So the great stone heist was really just a communication problem.

This morning, my stone mason showed up promptly at 9:30. I had done some pre-work. I pulled back the weed mat and made sure the stones I had already hauled home were visible. Comparing the thickness of one stone to another was important, which was exactly the kind of highly technical responsibility I was hoping to avoid.

Our first goal was getting the wall about four inches above the curb. Once we established that height, we put the thickest stones on the bottom. That required some digging to get everything level, although the trick was not digging any deeper than necessary.

Once the foundation was established, we started on the cap—the top course of the wall. The stone mason ran his hand over the stones, feeling for changes in thickness. I pulled out my long level, because apparently I still had something to contribute.

The biggest challenge was keeping the cracks from lining up. The stones needed to overlap like Legos, with each piece connected to two or more others. That way, the wall gets stronger as it goes up instead of becoming a very expensive pile of rocks.

The final product wasn’t perfect, but considering my trophy hammer was the most expensive part of the project, I was happy.

My stone mason gave me a quote on replacing the plastic retaining wall in my flower beds. Then I went with him to pick a few more stones while providing cover from any supervisors who might need to boost their egos. Eventually, he headed out.

I cleaned up the area and made my wife put her shoes on so I could brag about the job we had done.

In my younger years, I would happily spend a few days doing a project that someone else could have completed in a few hours. Those days are behind me. I’m now perfectly happy to pay someone a fair wage to help preserve two things: my body and my self-esteem.

Preserving my body is obvious. The self-esteem part is a little more complicated. My wife has strong opinions about how certain things around the house should be done. I haven’t mowed the grass myself in years, and I have discovered that outsourcing a job comes with a valuable side benefit. If I don’t build the stone wall, any criticism Judy may have about the wall doesn’t stick to me. “Boy, I wish he had done a better job,” I can say, and suddenly, I’m on the same team.

I’m not afraid of the work. I’ve simply reached an age where I appreciate the strategic value of having someone else hold the hammer when the final inspection takes place. A good contractor saves you time. A great contractor gives you someone to blame.

A scapegoat for hire is a cheap version of marital bliss.

Yes, you can quote me on that one.

The Plans Could Wait

As my daughter and the twins prepared to spend their first night together outside of a hospital, my daughter’s body was remembering that it was no longer pregnant. Her body was rushing back toward its original configuration, and she realized it would be helpful to have a support parent nearby, just in case. Judy also fulfilled an earlier request from our daughter by delivering a French toast casserole for breakfast. Evidently, postpartum support now comes with catering.

When Judy returned around 8:30 in the morning, she wasn’t alone. Ellie was with her. I had been given a few days off from grandpa duty, so I was mentally prepared to give up whatever part of my day was necessary to keep her entertained. After our usual clementines, with the optional dried mango, I was ready to reacquaint myself with my granddaughter. The plans I had for the day were only marginally important anyway. The next few hours were a blur.

We walked to a different, more toddler-friendly playground about a mile from the house. Ellie was a little timid at first, but she eventually dove in. The slide was better than our usual one, and the tunnel was perfect for a game where Grandpa reached through one opening while Ellie crawled toward another. This qualified as premium entertainment. We wandered around the open area near the park, where one of Ellie’s favorite words, “doggie,” quickly became relevant. We found a dog in the backyard of one of the houses. He looked old, and I was initially concerned about his temperament. Then I noticed he had three legs. He didn’t look threatening, and he certainly wasn’t a threat, but we still had to return to that yard several times so Ellie could announce “doggie” to the appropriate recipient.

The playground also contained a pair of socks and shoes that appeared to belong to the same person. There was a small water playground nearby, but the water had been turned off for more than a couple of weeks. I have no idea how someone could leave their shoes there for that long without realizing they were missing. I know Ellie wouldn’t. The mile home was a different story. Ellie was ready to be home shortly after we left, which meant Grandpa eventually carried her for a significant portion of the trip. When she was walking, however, she was busy collecting weed samples from the yards along the sidewalk and dropping them into the storage compartment underneath the stroller. Eventually, she realized she would have to run tests on all of these samples and had failed to document where each one came from. The scientific process demanded that she throw them out.

She was more successful with some of her field research. At one house, she insisted on completely denuding a birch tree of its bark from about her shoulder height to her knees. She peeled off each piece, scrunched it in her hands, and moved on to the next piece. There was a “For Sale” sign in the yard, and I don’t think I saw any cameras capturing my discomfort. If this had been my child, I would have bolted her into the stroller, smiled through the screams, and kept moving. I am, however, a grandfather. Grandfatherhood has given me a remarkable ability to redefine questionable behavior as “a learning experience.”

Even dogs that showed no particular interest in participating from the other side of the street were awarded the title of “doggie.” I had to keep Ellie from hopping the curb and attempting to catch them and give them a hug. The dog walkers generally understood the situation and kept their doggies moving. The “Grandpa-carrying” portion of the walk introduced another concept: touching trees that hang over the sidewalk. Ellie saw no meaningful distinction between those trees and the trees that required Grandpa to walk across the brown stuff formerly known as grass. Grandpa won that battle, barely.

We share water on most walks. I tolerate a higher degree of floaties and crusties on my straw than many people would find acceptable. Ellie especially likes it when I drink a small Gatorade and leave a little in the bottom. I fully tighten the lid, then back it off just enough that she can unscrew it herself. She then buries the mouth of the bottle in her mouth and works diligently to extract every molecule of flavor remaining. This is one of the privileges of being a granddaughter.

Lunch was spaghetti, and its journey from plate to mouth was not especially efficient. Her clothes provided the clearest evidence. The bib captured what it could, but the fork-and-fist feeding techniques still have some limitations. The backup plan of peanut butter and toast also experienced some logistical challenges. When Ellie finally went down for her nap, I ran to the store for a couple of things we needed for dinner.

At WinCo, I ran into someone buying what appeared to be every bulk bay leaf in the store. “We live in the country,” she explained. “Our neighbor likes to make curry, so she always has us buy them when we come to WinCo.” There was obviously a reciprocal agreement involved, but I didn’t dig into it. Some relationships are best left to the bay leaves.

At Sam’s, I needed two bundles of flowers. Pink roses for our daughter and a nice arrangement for Judy. The woman handing out chip samples next to the flowers wasn’t having much luck. “I’m not moving any chips, so I might as well help you out.” She proceeded to help me pick out both flower bundles. She also showed me that there are bags on the side of the flower station to cover the bottoms of the stems. I have purchased flowers for decades and had somehow missed this entire system. I scanned everything with the app and checked out. I also avoided the chip samples. There are some sacrifices a man must make.

I wasn’t home for long before Ellie wailed. She had been talking to herself before I left, so I have no idea how long she actually slept. My attempt to watch our hockey boys play the Cow Punchers in Minnesota didn’t get very far. It wasn’t quite snack time, but Ellie had reviewed the schedule and decided it was. With Judy gone to take our son and daughter-in-law to the airport for their long journey to India, and me trying to keep a toddler entertained until her parents returned from doing “new baby” things, I didn’t make much progress on the dinner I was preparing for them.

Eventually, Judy returned, and everyone else left. I started prepping onions and stew meat for what I eventually called “Hungarian Beef Fajitas Pasta.” It isn’t the real name. It just seemed to best describe whatever combination of ingredients ended up in our bowls. Judy looked at the pile of dirty dishes and temporarily transformed into her alternate form: Dish Fairy. I’m not a Pokémon person, but the description seemed appropriate.

Between now and whenever our daughter’s life settles into some sort of manageable rhythm, Judy and I are going to be a couple of the lackeys who help make that possible. It isn’t exactly the vision I had for retirement, but I wouldn’t choose any other path. I get to attempt mind melds with my granddaughter. I get to watch two tiny babies begin their lives. I get to see our daughter figure out what it means to be a mother of three while knowing she doesn’t have to figure it out alone.

I’m learning that being involved isn’t a scheduled activity. There isn’t always an appointment on the calendar or a defined block of time where Grandpa is officially on duty. Sometimes it’s a casserole. Sometimes it’s flowers. Sometimes it’s carrying a tired toddler home while she collects weeds for a scientific study she will never complete. Sometimes it’s just being there.

I’m still working on the flexibility part of this retirement thing, especially when it involves putting my own plans aside. But there are worse things to learn how to do.

And right now, I’m in a pretty happy place.

Two More Players

Yesterday, I had no babysitting duties and no expectations to spend time with my pregnant daughter. It was the big day. Those creatures she had been supporting for a few months were finally going to come out, breathe their own air, and circulate their own blood. Her headaches, swollen legs, and all the other things I had heard about secondhand would either disappear forever or eventually convince her that her house needed more humans to love.

This left me with a rare set of circumstances. How was I going to spend a long day without something involving my family? Of course, Judy is family, but she is a big girl and can take care of herself. After the morning routine, where I refill her coffee a couple of times, she puts on her headset and goes into work mode for most of the day. Until dinner, I am only slightly more important than a piece of furniture.

Grandpa 2.0 was planning a more relaxed introduction to the new additions. I was excited to meet them, but with our first grandchild, we may have been a little closer to the smothering end of the spectrum. This time, we were more chill. We had been doing the “old, but still nimble enough” routine for a few months, and we knew our daughter had a much better grasp on parenting than we did when we first became grandparents. She was going to be locked into full-on mom mode. Beyond some tag-teaming of Ellie and a few nights when Momma Judy would stay over to help get the babies on a schedule, my role would remain at home with the hockey boys. I had my own small population to manage.

So, what did I do with this rare free day?

I did one really dumb thing.

My email is hosted at Google, and I decided I would play IT guru and clean up a few things. My email was working fine, but Google suggested a couple of tweaks that would supposedly make things better. After dipping my toes in the water and not breaking anything, I dove in. The result was that my usual ton of slightly-better-than-spam emails became almost nonexistent. The actual spam dried up, too. The only emails making it through were being forwarded from my Yahoo account.

I don’t need spam emails to feel popular, and I don’t need much of my regular email either. With all my bills on autopay, I can go days without an important email. So, while I am a little mad at myself, I suppose I have given myself the gift of not having to create new rules for the new breed of incoming emails or spend time deleting them. I will take the gift and thank myself.

You’re welcome.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw the guy who “lives” in the model home in our subdivision. With all the new construction going on, he told me about a pallet of rock that was free for the taking. I noodled on it for a while but couldn’t think of anything I could use it for. Then I noticed the tree near our mailbox was living with a ridiculous grade between the sidewalk and the street.

Obviously, the solution was free rocks.

I made two trips to gather enough stones to try to build a little stone wall around the tree. Many of the rocks were ugly, misshapen things, but as I dug through the pile, I found some pretty good ones on the bottom. Nothing worthy of its own photo shoot, but if I can pull this off, the tree should be happier. I also won’t have to buy any more “mulch glue” to keep the mulch from being sucked into the street. If the whole idea goes wrong, my biggest problem will be figuring out what to do with all the rocks I gathered. They’re pretty heavy, so it could become a multi-week project of selectively dropping them into the rolling trash bin. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Since the hockey boys had blown us off for sushi the night before, and Judy and I don’t love garlic bread quite as much as they do, we didn’t bother making it for our Italian meal Sunday night. That didn’t mean it couldn’t become French toast. Judy cut the leftover bread in half and set me up with eight slices, which would get me through two meals. There was still some leftovers from Sunday, so Judy ate that.

We like breakfast for dinner. It just doesn’t make for much conversation. When two people are eating different things with limited options, you can’t say, “Give me another small serving of watermelon,” or whatever else might fill that little empty space in your belly. The plates were cleared, Judy headed to her bike for a few laps around the neighborhood, and I put my AirPods in and listened to my book while doing what I hope was the last watering of the year. I’m happy the heat is gone. I’m also really tired of watering every other day.

At some point during the day, one of our brief interactions produced the question, “I’m really hungry for some custard. What do you think?” Judy didn’t disagree, so I pulled up a recipe that has appeared on my Facebook feed approximately seventeen thousand times. While I finished watering and she got back from her bike ride, she jumped in and made it. After it went into the oven for 55 minutes with a water bath, we climbed into the hot tub. After the hot tub, we had time to start watching our shows before we even had the custard. Did we already watch the second season of The Pitt? Darn. I was looking forward to that.

We eventually ate the custard.

We both had seconds.

It was a pretty normal evening.

Except that somewhere in the middle of all this very important business, we were tracking the progress of our daughter delivering twins. We had been getting updates by text. Pitocin. Epidural. A trip to the OR. More waiting. More texts. We didn’t know exactly how things were going, but we knew enough to know that things were moving.

And then they were here.

Two healthy baby girls.

Our daughter didn’t need a C-section.

Just like that, the most spectacular thing happening in our family was unfolding while I was fixing email, collecting rocks, eating French toast, watering plants, making custard, and watching TV.

I’ll take a month of boring. I’ll take a year. I’ll take years where nothing particularly exciting happens and still call myself fortunate if days like this occasionally show up.

At our age, things happen. We don’t sweat every detail. Our kids are adults now. We get to cheer for them and give honest answers when they ask. We get to watch them navigate their own lives without feeling like we have to jump into every problem and solve it for them.

Before the kids were adults, one of my fears was, “What if something happens to my wife or me?” Now they’re out of the house, building families, solving adult problems, and occasionally making us grandparents twice over in a single evening.

We get to cheer. We get to compliment them when they handle something well. If they have a rough time, we can ask, “What did you learn? What would you do differently if something like that happens again?” We get to meet them wherever they are.

If we did our job well, maybe that’s what this stage of parenting is supposed to look like. Less hands-on, more coaching. We get to watch our kids use the skills they learned while they were living under our roof and hope they realize we weren’t completely clueless.

And if one of the benefits of being a coach is getting to interact with the second team, I’m pretty excited about my new roster.

Two more players.

I can’t wait to meet them.

Monday Had Other Ideas

Monday started like it normally does. Well, not completely normal. As the sun rises later, my requests for blackout curtains become less of an issue. Sleeping past 7:00 is something I take full advantage of this time of year. If daylight saving time ever gets the boot like my married son wants, I don’t care to know what that will do to my sleep. I’m already lucky if Judy wakes up before me and makes the coffee once a week. Breakfast lately has been homemade bagels, thanks to Judy’s new hobby. They aren’t perfect, but they’re getting there. Some could rise a little more. We’re also still figuring out whether freshly ground flour, which requires the flour mill that was part of the hobby, plays by the same rules as regular flour. Yesterday’s experiment was cinnamon bagels. So far, nobody has been hospitalized.

At 9:00, I had my regularly scheduled meeting with a friend in Asia. He listens to me overtalk, and I try to ask questions that help him with his English. He thinks he’s getting the better end of the deal, but I genuinely enjoy our conversations. He knows all about our hockey players, the Oklahoma heat, and the upcoming babies. I know about his son’s health challenges, his mom’s gardening, and life as a college professor. We talk about spiritual things, too, but we could easily fill an hour with random questions and whatever happens to be going on that week. It’s an hour well spent.

After that, I was surprised when my daughter wanted to hang out with Dad/Grandpa for a few hours. This was supposed to be the day she was induced, and she was ready to get those babies out of her belly. She had skipped church the day before because, according to her, she had an overwhelming desire to have them born. She stopped for coffee on the way over and announced that she had now carried the twins longer than she carried her first child. If Ellie were a casserole, she seemed to be baked just fine. Our plan was simple: pick up a few groceries so we could feed the hockey boys before they left for the showcase in Blaine, Minnesota.

The Walmart trip went pretty smoothly, other than deciding whether Ellie wanted to push the cart from the bottom rack or be carried. The part that nearly brought me to violence was installing the “I am not a baby anymore” car seat in the back seat. Between the cumbersome seat and the retracting seat belt, it took me nearly ten minutes to get it attached to my daughter’s standards. There are moments when you realize parenthood doesn’t end. It just eventually involves more complicated car seats.

When we got home, my daughter informed me that she had basically nothing to eat at her house. “Surely you have more food here than we do,” she said. With church people planning to provide meals after the babies arrive and regular donations available from our kitchen, she had wisely left room for the coming food influx. Her cupboards had become a nutritional wasteland by design.

Ellie happily took care of the mashed potatoes, corn, and watermelon. My daughter helped eliminate some of the leftovers the boys had brought home from restaurants and never eaten. We had chicken, steak, and some good roasted carrots. I even patted myself on the back for clearing enough containers out of the refrigerator to create the possibility of cooking something new. I confirmed that my son and daughter-in-law had received their invitation to dinner and started looking forward to making some fresh leftovers.

That lasted about five minutes.

The hockey boys texted to say they were going out for sushi with another player. Suddenly, dinner depended entirely on whether our son was coming over. Eventually, his text arrived. We had someone to cook for.

For dinner, I was primarily the sous chef. I chopped the broccoli so it would roast properly. Sam’s has stopped carrying the bags of broccoli that used to cost around $4, and now the quality has gone down while the price has headed toward $6. I’m not sure what corporate executive decided that was a good trade, but I assume he doesn’t eat broccoli. Since Judy has officially designated me “The Meat Trimmer,” I prepped the chicken breasts for their Shake ’n Bake treatment. She handled the eggplant Parmesan. The rest of us enjoyed it. She did not seem particularly interested in joining us on that opinion. I also picked basil from our volunteer plant out back, and Judy pulled together my favorite pasta to finish the meal.

Even without the hockey boys, our son brought his appetite. There was a little pasta left, but everything else was within one meal of disappearing. We caught up over dinner, and I got the update that their trip wasn’t canceled, just delayed until the paperwork and travel schedule cooperate.

Meanwhile, after numerous questions about my daughter’s Monday night trip to the hospital, my repeated text response of “She’s getting induced tonight” became an innocent lie. It turns out there was a rush on delivering babies before fall arrives. There were no beds.

So much for the scheduled induction.

A scheduled induction is a great idea in theory. In practice, the hospital gets to schedule the schedule. I let everyone know the arrival would be postponed about 12 hours, give or take. Really, the babies will arrive whenever they decide the accommodations are acceptable.

Before bed, we got our final updates from the boys. Of course, the $400 sushi dinner was the best sushi they had ever had. Our age-out boy informed us that the peptides he had wouldn’t get him through Sunday, so he would have to reduce the daily dose a little until he returned. The other boy, who had been concerned about his playing time, let us know that he had talked to the coach and was told that if he still felt the same way in a couple of weeks, they would work through it. We mixed in some encouragement and affirmation, knowing we wouldn’t be up to see them off before they left at 7:00 the next morning.

A little chaos mixed with a little resolution. That seems to be how life works when you live close to some of your adult children and invite a few extra adults-in-training into your life. We pause our shows for updates. We adjust our viewing expectations. We listen to what they’re thinking and occasionally discover that their problems have become our problems simply because they happened to mention them in the kitchen.

Every once in a while, I find myself wondering, “Is this what we signed up for?”

Then I remember the alternative.

Nothing happening. Nobody needing anything. No car seats to fight, no hockey players to feed, no babies refusing to follow the hospital schedule, no refrigerator full of mystery containers, and no reason to pause the show because somebody just walked through the door with an update.

Boring may be somewhere in my future. I’m just not in any hurry to meet it.

I’d rather be disappointed that I didn’t get everything done than pleased with myself because I never left anything on the To-Do list.

Yeah.

I agree with that most of the time.

Waiting for the Next Brick

I have struggled to string together a series of events that have a solid thread. I think the thread is there, but as I’ve been bombarded with updates and nuances to my original telling, I’ve found it difficult to hold the passion and focus until the end. It’s not a slump in writing ideas. It’s a slump in knowing what to do with them once I have them. So today’s tale will start with no particular destination—unless you consider completion a worthy target.

My daughter’s twins are nearly fully cooked. Thursday was another weekly ultrasound in the parade of ultrasounds she has endured over the past few weeks. I get to play Grandpa for a little while and spoil her as she waits to hear the words she really wants to hear: “Today is the day.” She knows Monday is the day for sure, but she wouldn’t complain if the twins decided to move the schedule up a little.

If I were pregnant with twins and had endured 45 days and counting of 100-plus-degree temperatures, I’m not sure I’d be displaying the same level of calm she has. She has endured the support socks, the poor nights of sleep, the extra parenting duties while her husband starts the second year of his doctorate, and the minor inconvenience of carrying around two additional human beings in a space that was clearly designed for one.

I’m glad she didn’t watch me too closely when she was growing up. If she had, she probably wouldn’t be able to summon a fraction of this calmness. Yes, another great trait she got from her mother.

Meanwhile, my son and his wife have been planning a trip to India for nearly a year. They sincerely want to go, but immigration issues have complicated things. Now that they’re married and my son is considering a job change, they have an opportunity to carve out a month and check a pretty significant box that has been sitting on their list for a while.

There’s just one little problem.

The immigration issue is still haunting them.

Their trip is supposed to begin next week, and as I write this, they’re waiting for an appointment with an immigration officer. They need to make their case that they can travel and feel confident there won’t be problems when they return. Could they have done a better job crossing all their T’s and dotting all their I’s? Yes. Probably. My son is good at figuring things out, but he admitted he didn’t realize how complicated marriage could be when your wife isn’t a U.S. citizen.

Apparently, marriage comes with more paperwork than the greeting card industry lets on.

I’m still hopeful they can pull the trip together. But once again, I’m in the wonderful position of watching something important unfold without having much ability to do anything about it.

Then there’s hockey.

The guillotine blade came down on one of our billet boys again this week. The blade cut deep. We thought this kid was going to stick. Selfishly, he was a really good fit with our family, too. But it wasn’t to be.

Within a few hours, I was being offered the opportunity to take in some boys from the lower-skilled team. That would have meant having boys from two teams, which would have meant we would almost never have a weekend off. So that wasn’t particularly appealing.

The next day, before our chopped hockey boy even had his flight information, the billet coordinator called about another player. This one had already committed to a college to play hockey and has considerably more hockey experience than our other boy.

With the coach bringing in so many players and teasing the limit of the import rule, we’re hopeful it will be a good season. The new boy will take some adjusting, but we’re hopeful we won’t have another player cut for a few months.

Which, in hockey terms, apparently qualifies as stability.

So here I am, watching my daughter wait for two babies to decide when they’re ready, my son wait for a government official to decide whether he can leave the country, and our hockey players wait to see whether they get to stay in ours.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, I watched two guys laying bricks in our neighborhood.

The guy on top was standing on scaffolding, laying bricks on the front of a house. The guy below was stacking three bricks and tossing them up to him. The top guy’s feet were about level with the other guy’s head, and the bricks came up at just the right angle for him to grab them. The three bricks stayed together, making the whole process look almost ridiculously simple.

Toss. Catch. Lay.

Repeat.

I thought, “That has to be a pretty nice balance between speed and efficiency.”

And then I stood there watching them for a while and wondered why the rest of life couldn’t work that way.

Someone knows what needs to happen. Someone else puts exactly what they need in their hands. Nobody has to guess what the other person wants. Nobody needs an immigration appointment. Nobody needs an ultrasound. Nobody gets cut from the hockey team.

Toss. Catch. Lay.

Of course, life doesn’t work that way.

There are emotions. Guilt. Dread. Uncertainty. There are conversations where everyone knows what needs to happen, but nobody wants to be the first person to say it. There are situations where the most direct path would probably be the easiest, yet we somehow choose the scenic route through a forest of hints, assumptions, second-guessing, and paperwork.

I suppose that’s why I’ve struggled with this post. I’ve been trying to find the cleanest way to connect several stories that don’t have clean endings yet.

Maybe there isn’t one.

The twins will arrive when they arrive. My son and his wife will either make their trip or they won’t. Our new hockey boy will eventually become either another member of the family or another name in the long list of boys who passed through our house.

For now, I’m just standing around watching.

Waiting for the next brick.

The Policy Has Been Revised

After an evening watching a disappointing football game, we went to bed at 10:30. To keep our commitment to our hockey boys, we turned the front porch light on so they could find their way home without taking out my roses along the front walkway. We have been doing this quite often lately. Friday night, they needed to watch the team they share the rink with play before heading out for food. Last night was also about food, but with a little more wardrobe involved.

Both of the junior hockey teams we have billeted for have a tradition of rookies dressing up as girls for a team dinner. The reason for putting considerable effort into shoes, dresses, wigs, and whatever else they can find is simple: the rookie who looks the best avoids paying his portion of the ridiculous food bill the veterans have intentionally inflated by ordering food they have no intention of eating. Our Alaska boy won this year. His $50 investment in a dress, shoes, and wig probably saved him about $300. The worst-dressed rookie pays double. The guys with beards apparently start the competition about three goals down.

Back to my pre-bed routine. For some reason, my nose decided to start bleeding. This wasn’t one of those casual little nosebleeds where you grab a tissue, wipe your nose, and get on with your life. This one earned the coveted two-tissue award. I asked Judy which towel I should use so I wouldn’t bloody up my hand towel. My white hot tub robe also received some unexpected splatter. Apparently, my nose had decided that bedtime was a good time to redecorate.

Judy’s response was very casual. I know why they call her “Dr. Mom” and not “Dr. Wife.” There was no frantic call for medical assistance, no dramatic assessment of my condition, and certainly no attempt to save my life. She basically let me bleed. To minimize any overnight leakage, I suggested grabbing an old towel to put over my pillow. She fully supported that plan. The usual “goodnight kiss” was answered with, “I don’t want to kiss you tonight.”

Nothing says “in sickness and in health” quite like your wife deciding that, for the moment, you are a communicable disease.

The next morning, with a strong desire to get my walk in before church and another 100-degree day waiting for us, I got up to find the towel on my pillow completely unblemished. Apparently, my nose had called it a night. I made the coffee and toasted some of Judy’s day-old, home-baked whole wheat bread, one of her evolving hobbies. There are worse ways to start the day, although I was beginning to wonder whether I was living with a doctor, a baker, or someone who was simply waiting for me to bleed out.

After my walk, I told Judy my nose seemed to be on the mend. I also expressed some concern about what had caused such an enthusiastic nosebleed. Her nosebleeds have all but stopped 5 years ago, so I was hoping mine would follow the same path. Maybe it was simply the heat, the low humidity, or some other weather-related nonsense that our bodies apparently feel obligated to complain about.

Of course, I couldn’t resist mentioning the possibility that my blood pressure was raging and that perhaps I was headed toward a stroke or some other exciting cardiovascular event. In the past, when I have brought up the possibility of dying from high blood pressure, Judy’s response has been, “If you go before me, I won’t remarry.”

It has always been one of those reassuring little marriage statements that somehow manages to be both loving and insulting. Apparently, though, the policy has been revised.

Knowing I was still fragile from the previous night’s trauma, Judy looked at me and said, “I have changed my mind. I think I will remarry.”

I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to discuss your replacement while the current model is still standing in front of you. But apparently, there is a grace period for these things.

The good news is that my nose seems to have returned to normal, and I have no reason to believe I’m about to fall over dead. I plan to be around for many more years. There is even a decent chance I will outlive Judy. After hearing her revised position on remarriage, I’m beginning to think that may not be the news she was hoping to hear.

But I was reminded of something this weekend: if you’re going to spend a lifetime dishing it out, you have to be willing to take it when the tables turn.

Even if the tables turn while you’re wearing a blood-speckled hot tub robe, sleeping with a towel over your pillow, and wondering whether your wife has already started browsing for your replacement.

Marriage is a beautiful thing.

Something Was Clearly Going On

With less than two weeks before my daughter finds out what it is like to have a normal human body again, we decided it was a good zoo day. Yesterday’s temperatures were below 90 degrees, and this morning was in the high 60s. Perfect? No. But compared to what Oklahoma has been handing us lately, it was practically sweater weather. With the clock ticking and the opportunity to see some animals actually moving around, we figured we should take advantage of it.

We were rewarded with a great view of the baby elephant born in late June. My daughter kept saying, “Dad, look at the little one.” I saw three elephant posteriors and assumed she was referring to the smallest rear in the crowd. Once I got up and looked around the post that had been blocking my view, I finally understood what she meant. The baby elephant was considerably cuter than the collection of backsides I had been studying. Apparently, I was not the only one impressed. The photographers were out in force, carrying camera lenses large enough to require their own parking spaces. The rest of the animals may not have been particularly active, but they had apparently agreed that the best place to spend the morning was directly in front of the prime viewing areas. The bears, lions, chimps, and gorillas all seemed willing to lean against the glass or accidentally pose for whatever picture the photographers wanted. At one of the chimp viewing areas, we watched a chimp picking up Cheerios scattered on his side of the glass. Even without opposable thumbs, he was doing a pretty good job. On our side of the glass, Ellie was sitting in her stroller with as many Cheerios as she needed to remain happy. It was a strangely appropriate moment. Sometimes it is the little things that make life worth living. Apparently, for both chimps and toddlers, those little things may be Cheerios.

The expected highlight of the trip was the water jets in the Asia area. When we arrived, Ellie seemed a little hesitant. Grandpa performed a variety of highly sophisticated demonstrations designed to make the water look like a good idea without actually getting wet himself. Either Ellie’s curiosity eventually won out, or my performance was more convincing than I realized. Her mom decided to put her in her swimsuit, just in case. A couple of well-timed geysers caught Ellie in the face, apparently giving her all the evidence she needed to reconsider the entire concept. Her attention quickly shifted to a “dead” water spout that she was determined to convince to come back to life. It refused to cooperate. She also discovered that there were many directions she could wander that did not involve water at all. Grandpa did what he could to turn this into a game, because apparently that is part of the job description.

Then came the more concerning behavior. As we passed other strollers and wagons filled with items brought by parents and grandparents to cool down their kids, Ellie began displaying some impressive foraging instincts. She would walk up to a stroller, inspect the contents, and determine what might be available. She grabbed a couple of water bottles, and I refused her multiple attempts to acquire snacks that did not belong to us. Yes, it was cute. It was also a little concerning to watch my granddaughter casually inventory the belongings of strangers. My daughter, meanwhile, stayed close to our stroller, apparently determined to defend our property from the same behavior. We eventually agreed that the “cooling off Ellie” portion of the zoo experience had been something of a bust.

It was after we got Ellie changed back into her clothes that my daughter told me the real story. Ellie had lost her bunny while they were running errands the day before. This was not some random stuffed animal that had been forgotten in the bottom of a toy box. This was Bunny. Her sleeping bunny. Her snuggle bunny. The little guy who apparently doesn’t mind being dragged around by his ears, dropped on his head, or subjected to whatever other indignities come with being a toddler’s favorite stuffed animal. He is her guy. And, based on the report of a difficult night of sleep the evening before, his absence was being noticed.

Suddenly, I had a theory about the zoo. Maybe Ellie’s stroller shopping wasn’t really about snacks or water bottles. Maybe it was a toddler’s attempt to find something—or someone—to fill the Bunny-shaped hole in her life. Her vocabulary is expanding, but it is still not quite advanced enough to explain the deep emotional trauma of losing a favorite stuffed animal. So instead of saying, “Grandpa, I am experiencing significant distress because my primary emotional support rabbit has disappeared,” she may have simply decided to check the nearest stroller for snacks. This particular practice apparently started in the church nursery and has now expanded to random strangers. We may have inadvertently raised a tiny, toddling, food critic with questionable boundaries.

When I told Judy about Bunny, she immediately said, “That poor thing. She loves Bunny.” And she is right. There will probably be a replacement Bunny before the weekend is over. If my memory is correct, the original may have been the generic light-pink variety from Walmart, which means we should be able to resolve this crisis without involving Interpol. This time, though, we may want to make a few improvements. Perhaps Bunny needs a leash. Maybe some Velcro. At the very least, an Apple AirTag. I am not prepared to spend another zoo day explaining to strangers why my granddaughter is conducting a personal inventory of their strollers.

Ellie is about to be promoted to big sister, which is wonderful, but she is also about to experience a fairly dramatic reduction in the amount of attention available to her when those twins arrive. Losing Bunny right before that transition probably isn’t helping. So, yes, she needs a new Bunny. She needs something familiar to sleep with, drag around, drop on his head, and generally subject to the same treatment the original Bunny endured. She also apparently needs Grandpa to stop her from stealing bottled water from strangers, but we can work on that one later.

For now, the priority is getting Bunny back—or finding his replacement. Because if losing one stuffed rabbit has already turned Ellie into a roaming toddler forager, I would prefer not to discover what happens when the twins arrive and she realizes there are now two additional people competing for her snacks, attention, and Cheerios. We may be raising a future criminal mastermind, and frankly, I would rather catch her in the stuffed-animal phase. A new Bunny, a tracking device, and a little extra attention seem like a small price to pay for keeping the family out of court.

Apparently, We Had Plans

As a rule, my wife and I don’t plan to be gone every evening, with every day of the week becoming progressively more exciting and culminating in a series of weekend events worthy of numerous pictures and social media postings. We are more the “What series do you want to watch tonight?” people. So when the hockey boys had a “meet and greet” at a local restaurant where all the season ticket holders, billets (us), and boys were invited, we decided to sit this one out. I am not always looking for that particular hockey vibe. Fortunately, a couple from church had been talking about having us over for dinner for several weeks, after an earlier invitation was canceled because of illness. So, without actually thinking, “Let’s use this night to kill two birds with one stone,” that is pretty much what happened. We could have a pleasant evening with another couple, have conversations about things other than hockey, and do it in a house where, when my conversation meter reached capacity, I could theoretically just stare at something on the wall. Our boys knew what we were doing and had already decided whether they would grab their warmups at our house or at the restaurant. That cleared our dinner-prep schedule, so we made the ten-minute drive and arrived at 6:00.

Our hosts live on an acre, which immediately made the evening more interesting than anything I could have found on television. I went out back and talked with the husband while Judy and his wife had a good conversation inside. The highlight for me was the buffalo hide hanging in the garage that their daughter was tanning herself. It is eventually destined to become a rug in the middle of the living room, assuming it survives the tanning process. Before it gets there, however, it needs one more step that involves something called “smoking the hide.” I am not sure exactly what that entails, but I know enough about home projects to recognize the beginning of a sentence that ends with, “Well, that didn’t go quite as planned.” The husband seemed happy to support his daughter’s project, although he was less enthusiastic about his workshop being temporarily converted into a buffalo-processing facility. The deer hides they had done previously were apparently much easier. A buffalo, it turns out, brings considerably more hair and considerably more buffalo to the project. She had already been warned that Dad’s shop was no longer in the tanning business.

Dinner was chicken thighs with the bone in, risotto, and roasted broccoli, and it was really good. The hostess did mention, “It might be a little salty.” My immediate response was, “I’ve never had it before. It tastes fine.” The part of my brain that occasionally insists on honesty eventually agreed with her. The chicken gravy poured over the risotto did not exactly move us in the opposite direction, either. Still, it was a good meal with good color balance, and I ate two chicken thighs, so apparently I was not suffering. Had my mother-in-law cooked it, I probably would have been a little more honest. The hostess also reminded me of something I had apparently said when she asked at church how I would feel if she invited us to dinner. According to her, my response was, “Well, can you cook?” Apparently, she saw through my crusty exterior and decided to take the risk. She was rewarded with an enthusiastic second helping and only moderate criticism of the sodium content.

It was not the kind of meal we would normally make for the hockey boys, but that has less to do with the food than with the fact that I am already tired of eating the extra warmups they refuse to eat. The husband did his part by scraping everyone’s plates as he carried them toward the sink and eventually the dishwasher. I apologized for not being a chicken-skin eater. There was no obvious penalty, so I assume I remain welcome. Their fictional “upstairs maid” is the husband. In our house, the frequently vacationing “dish fairy” is Judy.

At some point during dinner, the conversation turned to marriage, and the hostess told us about the first thirteen years of theirs. They had made themselves crazy trying to come up with gifts for every minor and major holiday. She wanted good gifts, and he apparently had trouble determining what qualified as a good gift. By their thirteenth anniversary, they had reached the point where the whole thing had become more work than celebration. So they lived their thirteenth anniversary like any other day. They went about their business and didn’t even realize what day it was until they heard a “Congratulations” on their answering machine as the day was winding down. That was apparently the moment they realized they had spent thirteen years creating a tremendous amount of busyness for very little return. From that day forward, their marriage became a little saner. There is probably a lesson in there somewhere, although after thirty-five years of marriage, I am still suspicious of any lesson that involves buying fewer gifts.

Eventually, it was time to deal with the peach pie that had been sitting there staring at us from the dining area. The peach was good, and the ice cream was an excellent supporting actor. My only suggestion for future guests would be to ask how large a piece they want before cutting it. One-eighth of a large pie is not a serving. It is a commitment. Both Judy and I are good guests, so we cleaned our plates. That does not mean we were grateful for being made quite that full, but we did our part to maintain the illusion of good manners.

The most contentious portion of the evening came when we started talking about books and television shows. I mentioned that I thought the character of Reacher on Amazon was basically a shallow gorilla. The hostess did not take that particularly well. I also mentioned that Lee Child, the author of the Reacher books, has talked publicly about smoking marijuana while writing. Judging by the reaction from our hosts, this was apparently not information I needed to bring to the table. I felt the elbow from Judy even though she wasn’t sitting next to me. I explained that I thought the characters often make a poor transition from books to television, which did not improve my standing. Eventually, I agreed to read the first two Reacher books and report back. Judy did not identify any other major problems with my performance that evening, so apparently the invisible elbows were doing their job.

Just as the Reacher impasse appeared to be settling down, we got a text from the hockey boys. Two of their teammates were coming over to use the hot tub. Since it was almost 9:00 and four hockey players plus a hot tub creates a mathematical equation I did not want to solve, we decided it was time to say our goodbyes. It had been a good evening. Our first “date” with this couple had been a hockey game in late winter, and the follow-up was much more relaxed and insightful. Between their camping schedule and the arrival of the twins, it may be 2027 before we manage another one. At least we now know where we stand on buffalo hides, pie portions, and Reacher.

When we got home, the four hockey boys settled into our back porch area between the hot tub and the fire pit and proceeded to hang out for another hour and a half. At one point, I had to tease the boy from Michigan. “So, if I go to Michigan, do I need to set the clock back an hour and a second?” He seemed a little frustrated with the question and, more importantly, with the fact that this was even a topic of conversation. I eventually left him with this: “We can squabble about Ohio State and Michigan, but have no doubt I will be cheering for you when you have your Warriors jersey on.” Apparently, there are limits to my loyalty, but they are not quite as narrow as my opinions on college football.

As Judy and I did our pre-sleep reading, the boys continued their animated conversation on the patio. With our bedroom right next door, sleep and four late-teenage hockey players were never going to coexist peacefully. A little after 10:30, Judy turned off her light and commented, “It is about time they end the party.” And it did. Somehow, her womanly will continues to force us males to submit to her wishes, even when she is lying in bed and the males in question are several feet away on a patio. I am not sure how this works. I just know it does.

For a night that was supposed to be our low-end-of-the-excitement-spectrum evening, it turned out to be a pretty busy one. We had dinner with friends, learned about buffalo tanning, debated the proper amount of pie, offended someone over Reacher, argued about Michigan, and hosted four hockey boys late into the evening. And somewhere in all of that, there was a reminder that adults and late teenagers (i.e. young adults) who are not related to each other can actually live together, laugh together, jab at each other, and occasionally even learn something from one another.

The boys will keep playing hockey, eating breakfast with us on the Fridays of home weekends, arguing about sports, and figuring out how to live with a bunch of other guys. They will eventually move on to different teams, different cities, different jobs, and whatever comes next in their lives. The friendships they are forming now may end up being more important than anything happening on the ice. Learning how to share a house, give each other space, work through differences, and still enjoy being together is part of growing up that doesn’t show up on a hockey schedule.

For Judy and me, there is something pretty special about getting to watch that happen up close. We didn’t set out to become the parents of a bunch of unrelated teenage hockey players, and I’m still not entirely sure how we ended up with four of them on our back porch at 10:30 on a Thursday night. But these are the kinds of evenings that tend to become memories long after the hot tub has been drained, the breakfast dishes have been put away, and the boys have moved on to whatever comes next. Maybe that’s the real benefit of having a house that occasionally feels a little too full. Sometimes the best parts of life are the things you never planned for.

The Strategic Value of Corn Hole

After dinner and a dessert consisting of homemade ice cream and baked goods last night, Judy and I stared at each other at 6:30. I could feel myself moving toward a conversation about how unexciting we old people are. Then it happened. My daughter suggested, “We could play some corn hole.” This is what we had done last year, and it was the perfect solution to the boredom that was threatening to take possession of our home.

The corn hole paraphernalia was right outside our back patio door. With such easy access, it was hard to believe it had probably only been moved once since last Labor Day, when I did a sweep of the back porch. A quick inspection of the bean bags was concerning. Apparently, they had not been designed to sail 20-plus feet in a light Oklahoma wind. Fortunately, the remaining bag in the corn-hole corner contained four red and four blue bags of appropriate weight. We were in business.

Last year, the primary competition had been Judy and me against the two hockey boys we were hosting at the time. Judy and I didn’t exactly dominate, but apparently those boys had not yet discovered their full bag-tossing potential. This year, our two new hockey boys arrived with a considerably more polished game. At least, that was the story they told us about all those graduation parties.

Frankly, I was just glad my daughter had suggested doing “something.” Saturday and Sunday, our hockey boys had scrimmages against the team we used to host hockey boys for in Texas. There were moments of potential, but they lost both games. The wins and losses weren’t really important—focus on the word “scrimmage.” What mattered was what the coach saw during their limited playing time. Our returning player played in both games. The other two are still working to earn their spots, so each had an opportunity to catch the coach’s attention.

Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, is expected to bring more cuts. The boys got a little surprise last night when the group chat told them when to arrive and reminded them to bring their suits. During the regular season, the boys are shown on the big screen wearing their suits and announcing where they are from while “Enter Sandman” plays somewhere during the pregame festivities. Apparently, junior hockey has decided that announcing a teenager’s hometown while he stands in a suit to the soundtrack of a heavy-metal song is the appropriate way to introduce players. With the possibility of cuts hanging over the house, playing a few rounds of “toss the bean bag into the little hole” seemed like a pretty good way to avoid thinking about what surprises Tuesday might bring.

Our two new hockey boys proved to be formidable competitors. Both had developed a near-frisbee approach to throwing the bags—one left-handed and one right-handed. The rest of us relied primarily on an arced approach to reaching the Ohio State-flavored boards. For the first match, I was paired with our returning player, who was also an arcer. Having been told the proper distance was 27 feet, I took nine steps between the boards. Whether nine of my steps actually equaled 27 feet is questionable. What was not questionable was that arcing a bean bag that far made me look like a very weak corn hole player. Or perhaps my muscle memory was simply more familiar with corn hole boards that were much closer together.

The frisbee throwers quickly became the favorites and showed no signs of giving up their advantage until they beat us. The next game, Judy teamed up with my daughter-in-law. Judy insisted the boards be moved closer together, which allowed them to hang around considerably longer than we had. The frisbee boys continued making a compelling case for their technique. We played about six matches over roughly 90 minutes, and honestly, it was some of the best time we have spent with our hockey boys so far. For an hour and a half, nobody was thinking about who might get cut, wondering what the coach was thinking, or worrying about who might be coming back to take someone’s spot. We were just throwing bean bags, arguing about distance, and discovering that two teenagers apparently know how to play corn hole better than the people who own the corn hole set.

Once we put everything away, we filed back into the house. Our kids had already left while Judy and I attempted to put a final hurting on the frisbee boys. The hockey boys headed upstairs to shower, while the old people headed for the first-floor shower facilities. While we watched some TV, the one boy who doesn’t have a vehicle came downstairs looking for a snack. He settled on Oreos. Judy had a full tray of brownies sitting there that we would have loved for him to eat, but knowing he had to face the coach the next morning, we decided not to make him responsible for any of the adult problems in the house.

I casually told him, “If you have any reason to get picked up early tomorrow, just let me know. I’ll be around. Ideally, you can forget about this whole conversation.” He gave me a big smile with just a little stress around the edges. He understood.

Both Judy and I have mixed emotions when cuts are imminent. We hate to lose any of our boys—at least this year, we like all of them enough to genuinely hope they stick around. But there is another side to it. If a player is going to spend the entire season on the bubble, knowing the coach doesn’t expect to play him much, sometimes the kinder solution is to cut him and let him move on to whatever comes next.

Every other day, the boys come home from practice with another example. “This guy from last year got cut from his USHL team. He’s coming back.” Or, “This guy wants to leave his Canadian team and come back to the Warriors.” If the coach has a choice between keeping a bubble player or bringing back someone who has already proven himself, it isn’t difficult to imagine which direction he is likely to go.

Our boys will always be welcome in our house. But that doesn’t mean we have to believe staying here is always the best thing for them. If the better opportunity is somewhere they can develop, play meaningful minutes, and avoid spending an entire season picking splinters out of their seats, then that gets my vote. Fortunately, I don’t get a vote. I get to be the appreciative dad—the guy who gets to watch these boys chase something they care about, provide a little food and a place to sleep, and remind them that regardless of what happens in a coach’s office, they have a home here. And, occasionally, I get to throw bean bags at them.

I am grateful I didn’t begin a hockey journey a few decades ago, when I might have had to live with old people who were this competitive about corn hole. This morning, I also decided there was no reason for me to get out of bed before 7:00. Part of that was simply because I could. The other part was that I didn’t want to risk running into the boys too early and having to say, “Good luck,” again. There are only so many times you can say “good luck” before it starts sounding less like encouragement and more like a funeral director wishing you well on your way out, so I stayed in bed. Sometimes being supportive means making yourself available when someone needs you. And sometimes it means strategically avoiding the kitchen until after 7:00.

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.