Life

We Found Our Hot Tub Guy

I woke up this morning to my wife’s pillow, thrown at my head. She says she forgot she was sleeping in a shared space. I have questions. Where else would she be sleeping? We had separate beds in Iceland, sure, but we are home now, dear.

Once I recovered from the pillow assault, today had one job on the list: get the hot tub guy out here. The tub is technically still running, but some of the jets have decided to take the rest of summer off. We think it’s a fuse. My wife thinks it’s a “re-fuse-ing” to work. I told her that joke was terrible and she agreed, then used it three more times.

Our Secret Lagoon visit in Iceland had zero jets and lukewarm water, and somehow we still enjoyed it more than our own backyard right now. A hot tub where the inside temperature matches or exceeds the outside temperature is not a hot tub. It’s just a large, expensive bowl of regret. Welcome to OKC in August.

Before the repair guy showed up, I got my walk in early, ahead of the 90-degree wall that hits by mid-morning. My usual walking companion, a kid I’ve never actually met but see most mornings, was nowhere on the trail. Maybe the geese left too much of a mess for him to deal with. Maybe the church’s lawn crew and their two enormous mowers scared him off, since he seems to hate noise. Or maybe he’s visiting grandma before school starts. I like to imagine he has a rich inner life I know nothing about.

I did find a squishy t-ball ball on the path, which felt like a win. My plantar fasciitis has been furious since Europe, all that cobblestone doing exactly what cobblestone does to a heel. One of the women on our excursion said she’d pulled the inserts out of her shoes because the pain got so bad she couldn’t stand it anymore. I’m not chasing a cure at this point. I just want my foot to catch a break, and rolling a ball under it seems to help. The t-ball ball is a serious upgrade from whatever I’d been using. And before anyone accuses me of stealing a kid’s toy, it was sitting in the path of a mower. I saved its life.

While I waited on a text back from the hot tub guy, I thought about how we got here. We came home from our trip excited to sink back into the tub, only to find the jets meant to work on my lower back had clocked out. I called the company we bought the spa from and gave them almost 48 hours to respond before I went looking elsewhere. My wife, ever the optimist, told me to lean on the warranty and give the original company another shot. Their reply, when it finally came, was a form asking me to fill out another form so they could reply to that one. No warranty commitment, no timeline, just enough vague hope to keep me from calling anyone else. That’s the whole business model. Dangle the warranty, stall the customer, collect the check eventually anyway.

So I found a five-star guy on Google instead. He warned me upfront that his labor rate is cheaper than the dealer’s, which was music to my ears after what the dealer charged us for the pergola and everything else in the backyard last year.

He earned his rating. I stood out there while he pulled the panel off, mostly so I could get a photo of the serial number, which I’ve since printed and filed away for the next time this happens. After that I just watched him flip breakers and push buttons until he gave up and called the manufacturer directly. He wasn’t sure they’d even talk to him since he isn’t one of their official dealers, but they did. Together, they tracked it down to three bad solenoids, which had apparently been putting strain on the transformer.

Here’s the part that felt like a small miracle. The manufacturer agreed to ship the parts straight to our house so he could install them himself. We danced right under the nose of the original dealer, and we’ll almost certainly have the tub fixed before they’d have even sent someone to look at it, at a lower price than they would’ve charged us. I’m guessing on that last part, but based on today’s bill, I have a hard time picturing them coming in under it.

My wife tried to talk me out of this whole detour a couple days ago. I’m glad I didn’t listen, because we came out of it with a win and a new guy.

We now officially have a hot tub guy. This is separate from our fertilizer guy, our mowing guy, our bug guy, and our electrician guy. We also have an irrigation guy, who is me holding a hose, a guy who can mount a TV on tile without hesitation, and a guy who will drill a hole in absolutely anything, who happens to be our son. Two years in Oklahoma City and we’ve built out a full roster. We’re open to hiring “gals” for any of these roles too. Fair warning, though: you’ll go broke trying to take our business.

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.

The Fastest Way Through the Line Was Waiting Your Turn

I don’t like writing posts that sound whiny. Nobody enjoys listening to the guy who thinks the universe has singled him out for special mistreatment. That guy is exhausting. This isn’t one of those stories. This is a story about justice. Tiny, insignificant, airport-line justice.

With our trip coming to an end, we arrived at the airport in Iceland expecting a relatively painless journey home. We did have one minor hiccup. Our airline ticket didn’t perfectly match my passport, so we had to stop at customer assistance before heading to security. No big deal. We stood in line, got it fixed, and confidently marched toward security after seeing the magical words every traveler wants to read: Estimated Wait: 5–10 Minutes. Airport monitors, I’ve learned, have a very loose relationship with reality.

Security apparently found both of our bags interesting. My wife’s bag was pulled aside because of medication. Mine was selected because, apparently, someone wanted a closer look at my charming personality. A security officer carried my backpack to a separate table, glanced inside for about three seconds, and handed it back. “You can take it.” My internal response was something along the lines of, Thank you for your tireless dedication to international safety. I feel much more secure knowing my backpack survived its three-second interrogation. This came only days after Copenhagen security permanently confiscated our oversized battery pack. We were informed, with all the warmth of an automated voicemail, that it was simply too large. My wife attempted a respectful appeal and was rewarded with the timeless customer service phrase, “Not in Copenhagen.” Apparently, that settled everything. Thankfully, our Iceland tour bus had USB charging ports, so civilization survived. None of this was bad luck yet. This was just Tuesday at an airport.

As we headed toward the D Terminal, we encountered passport control. Picture three large rooms connected by an endless maze of stanchions filled with weary travelers whose backpacks had somehow gained twenty pounds since vacation began. The line actually moved fairly well, but every so often we’d set our backpacks on the floor to give our shoulders a short break. It was a small, human, “I need to put this bag down for ten seconds” gap. Apparently, we made a critical mistake. We believed a line was measured by people. The couple behind us measured it by inches.

The moment a gap of approximately eighteen inches appeared, the wife quietly eased around us and tucked herself in behind the gentleman ahead of us. It wasn’t aggressive enough to qualify as shoving. It was more…creative. They didn’t apologize. They didn’t acknowledge us. They simply acted as though the laws of queuing had briefly been suspended for their convenience. It reminded me of one of those nature documentaries. “Observe the Queue Optimizer,” David Attenborough might narrate. “Rather than waiting patiently with the herd, she quietly advances whenever a tiny opening appears, gaining nearly eleven seconds while sacrificing all social credibility.” Honestly, if they’d skipped forty people, I might have admired the commitment. But cutting ahead of two people? That’s not bold. That’s just morally inefficient.

Then her husband announced from behind us, “I need to go forward to be with my wife.” As if we were the only thing standing between two star-crossed lovers who had been tragically separated by…about three feet.

My wife responded before I had the chance. “What are you doing? You don’t cut in line.” She’s never been particularly gifted at pretending injustice doesn’t exist. If there were a world championship for confronting people who ignore obvious rules, she’d at least qualify for regionals. The gentleman in front of us joined the conversation as well, making it abundantly clear that he wasn’t impressed with Team Queue Optimization either. The couple ignored all of us. It’s amazing how much confidence some people possess when they’re absolutely convinced that social norms apply only to everyone else.

A few minutes later, another Canadian couple struck up a conversation with us and, after witnessing the whole episode, felt obligated to assure us that not all Canadians behaved that way. We laughed, enjoyed talking with them the rest of the way through the line, and I decided there was no reason to hold an entire country responsible for the actions of two aspiring queue entrepreneurs. International relations had officially been restored.

Eventually, we reached passport control, where everyone had to choose one of several available officers. This is where Karma quietly clocked in for her shift. The Line Cutters confidently selected one lane while we picked another. Our line moved like an express checkout. Their line appeared to be staffed by someone conducting passport interviews as part of a doctoral dissertation. By the time we cleared passport control, found a coffee shop, ordered our drinks, and sat down, they still hadn’t made it through. I noticed, of course, but I resisted the temptation to smile in their direction. Not because I had suddenly become spiritually mature. Mostly because I didn’t want my wife to notice them first. She has a wonderful heart, but subtle victory celebrations are not one of her stronger gifts.

Before anyone accuses me of celebrating someone else’s misfortune, I should probably confess that I’m not always the model traveler. I’ve occasionally maneuvered around slower walkers after leaving a cruise ship. I’ve probably sighed louder than necessary behind someone trying to fit a week’s worth of souvenirs into an overhead compartment. I’m sure my own Karma account contains a few unpaid balances. That’s probably why this little airport moment felt so satisfying. It wasn’t because two people had to wait a little longer. It was because, for one brief and beautiful moment, the universe reminded us that shortcuts don’t always pay off.

Sometimes waiting your turn is actually the fastest route. And sometimes the reward isn’t getting there first. Sometimes it’s sitting fifty feet away with a surprisingly good cup of airport coffee while watching poetic justice quietly do its thing.

If that’s Karma, she’s welcome to join us for coffee anytime.

Fireworks, Vacuum Bags, and the Woman Keeping Me Semi‑Functional

I asked my son if I could borrow his vacuum packing bags, and for about ten minutes I actually believed I’d been handed a personal black hole. Suck the air out, and my “will it be cold or warm in the Baltics?” wardrobe folds down into something almost manageable. The clothes really do take up less room. What the bags also do is create a small mystery, because somewhere in there is a version of me who decided a swimsuit and a fleece belonged in the same airtight tomb, and I have zero memory of making that call. Judy gets to unpack the evidence on the cruise and reverse-engineer my packing logic like a forensic scientist of poor decisions. The answer to what I was thinking is, frankly, none of my business.

The morning after the 4th, our trash cans and the neighborhood port-a-potties were all flat on their sides, and none of them were drunk. They just lost a fight with the wind, the same wind that knocked out some power for good measure. One of our cans apparently sacrificed itself against the downspout to keep one of my roses standing, and I’ve been considering a small ceremony for it. Standing in the yard afterward, looking at the mess, I remember thinking this seemed like exactly the right week to leave the country.

Somewhere in the last week I also had to have an honest conversation with myself about cake. I’m a cookie and brownie guy, through and through. Some of the women in my life still like to bake cake, and it’s good cake, thoughtful cake, and I will eat exactly one piece and never come back for seconds. I haven’t found a way to say this out loud without sounding ungrateful, so for now the plan is something like, “This is delicious, but I’m staying loyal to my first love.” If that doesn’t land, I may just start cutting brownies into circles and calling it diplomacy.

Then there’s the cookout math. Hosting a vegetarian and not ending up with a fridge full of regret takes a real system. Don’t make excess to begin with. Freeze what’s left if you do. And if the day after you leave happens to be trash day, empty the fridge like you’re turning in a rental car, no evidence left behind. With Judy already gone a few days ahead of me and my own appetite in no hurry to expand, I’ve been running rules two and three on a case by case basis, like a one-man Supreme Court of Leftovers.

We also got the house ready for a couple staying with us one of the weekends we’re gone. We’re not running an Airbnb, so nobody’s expecting turndown service. Make sure the AC works, keep something cold and non-alcoholic in the fridge, and accept that the only bed built for two people in this house is staying off limits, no exceptions. The two downstairs beds, formerly belonging to our kids who’ve moved on to careers and bigger things, will do fine. My only real hope is that they remember to turn the thermostat back up when they leave — there’s a whole system of checks and balances built around that one, and I’ll probably forget most of it until the electric bill shows up and I gasp in three languages.

The rain and wind ganged up on the mulched trees too, undoing more of that “mulch glue” project than I want to think about. I had plans, actual plans, curved edges and everything. Then the weather rolled through and turned it into a lumpy suggestion of landscaping, and at some point there’s nothing left to do beyond the effort already spent. I said “uncle,” out loud, to nobody, and decided the mulch’s rebellion isn’t allowed to bother me again until mid-August.

Without an irrigation system, we’ve been watering constantly, and while we’re gone the job falls to the kids (my son and his wife) who live a street over. The instructions I gave them sound less like a plan and more like a riddle: if it rains plenty you can ease off, unless it’s also been brutally hot, in which case trust the ground to sort itself out anyway. Keep everything alive, don’t drown it, good luck. Explaining this out loud, I realized my only real qualification for any of it is owning a shovel.

All of that was just warm-up for the fireworks. Judy had come off a disappointing, rain-delayed show at Scissortail Park and wanted her real finale, so after watching as much of a delayed soccer game as we could stand, we went hunting for the one spot that might deliver it, fireworks pilgrims in search of the promised land. A packed grocery store parking lot looked promising, though it made no promises. We moved our sitting towel exactly once and settled for the best angle available. A drone show with patriotic shapes went first, then the fireworks started, framed nicely between two guys in lawn chairs who’d claimed the spot ahead of us. Fifteen minutes in, Judy turned and said, “This is the finale I wanted Friday night, but I got a dud instead.” Two separate fires had apparently thrown off the whole schedule that first night. When this show kept going past what felt like the ending, we took it as a gift, got up, and cleared the lot just as the real finale wrapped up behind us — no gridlock, no extended parking lot purgatory.

My relationship with fireworks comes down to one rule: if the drive home takes longer than the show, it counts against the whole evening. This time we got out early, Judy was next to me, and I called it “fine.” From me, that’s basically a standing ovation, and she knew it.

With fireworks behind us, the countdown to vacation officially starts. There are still the fake fears and the vague what-ifs that show up before every trip and never mean anything once we’re actually there. But somewhere past all that noise, there’s a good vacation waiting. Judy’s the one who keeps turning this pile of wind-flattened trash cans and rebellious mulch and questionable packing decisions into a story instead of a crisis. I just need to get out of my own way and let it happen. If I can’t manage that for myself, I’ll manage it for her.

Babysitting, Humidity, and a Balanced Ledger

I want to go on record that I volunteered for this. Nobody made me do anything. That will matter later.

My wife had been excited about the 4th of July Eve plans ever since she heard the OKC Philharmonic was playing a free concert at Scissortail Park with fireworks after. She heard “free concert and fireworks” and I heard “several thousand of your closest strangers, downtown parking, and a heat index designed by someone who hates you.”

The concert started at 8:30 and the fireworks at 9:30, which is great timing unless you live near a small human whose bedtime is 8:00ish. So I made an offer I considered safely hypothetical. I told Judy that since Ellie’s parents wouldn’t be able to enjoy the concert anyway, I could stay home with the baby.

I assumed this offer would be admired and declined, the way all noble offers are supposed to work. Instead, my daughter texted me that Mom said I’d watch Ellie if they went. My generosity had been converted into a signed contract before I’d even finished congratulating myself on it, and I wasn’t even consulted on the press release.

But my wife does what she does.

Here’s my honest accounting of what I skipped. It was going to be mid-90s during the day. The event was free, which is a polite way of saying the whole metro was invited. Parking downtown is always an adventure, and the dinner plan involved either hauling food in like pack mules or standing in a food truck line long enough to qualify for residency.

We’d done the orchestra-on-the-lawn thing plenty of times in Ohio, listening to the Columbus Symphony at Chemical Abstracts, and I knew that routine cold. I knew where to park, where to sit, and when to leave. This event offered me zero known variables and a forecast that guaranteed everyone around me would be operating at about 90% of their normal patience, myself included.

So while the family went downtown, I fed Ellie dinner and followed her around the house for less than an hour. Her exhaustion and her bedtime arrived at the same moment, which is the babysitting equivalent of hitting the lottery. Grandpa did not have to endure the big sad eyes, and I consider that the real fireworks show.

Then I watched soccer and debated whether I’d made a wise decision or simply confirmed my status as the family hermit. The jury stayed out overnight.

The next morning I got my redemption arc. I attended the parade in Edmond as the only male in our entire family delegation. My son passed, and my son-in-law passed. I alone carried the banner of masculine parade attendance, and I did it on one of the hottest mornings of the year, when my bed was right there offering a very compelling counterargument.

My daughter came along and admitted she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to a parade. I understand that completely. It takes a certain amount of pride in your country to get out of bed on a morning you could sleep in, and I don’t count the 4th as a political event anyway. It’s a celebration every American should want to attend regardless of whatever Washington is currently doing to itself.

We arrived half an hour early, which earned us a seat that was worse than the canopy people’s and better than the stragglers’. In parade seating, as in life, you mostly aim for the middle of the pack and call it a win.

Some observations from the curb. Even at 9:00 in the morning, the sun means business, breezes should never be undersold, and humidity is a monster that needs to be slurped up by a cloud and relocated to a part of the country where I don’t live.

An hour is the correct length for a parade. Anything past that and the babies get restless, and I’m not going to pretend the old people weren’t doing the same math about beating the traffic.

You cannot have horses in a parade without a cleanup vehicle following them, which reminded me of a horse parade we attended near Delaware, Ohio, one of the biggest east of the Mississippi. People there drew chalk boxes on the street hoping a horse would leave its contribution inside their square. After a hundred horses go by, watching one do a #2 becomes genuine entertainment, and somewhere out there, a lucky winner was thrilled about manure.

The Shriners apparently brought every vehicle they own. Every float and car said “India Shriners,” which is the OKC chapter, and I did confirm that a Shriner is a Mason but a Mason isn’t necessarily a Shriner. I now know this permanently, whether I wanted to or not.

They did doughnuts in tiny cars and drove motorcycles in circles that slowly migrated up the route. They weren’t amazing, but they were entertaining, and this being our second year, they were exactly as entertaining as I remembered, which is its own kind of reliability.

An early highlight was a plumbing company float featuring Uncle Sam in a bathtub, either grateful to them for fixing his pipes or too lazy to walk the route. Based on what we could see, our Uncle was fully committed to the appearance of actually bathing, and I respect an actor who stays in character.

The expected inventory was all present. Three high school bands, fire trucks, police vehicles, a couple banks, politicians, beauty queens, and past grand marshals all baked in their own convertibles, waving hard enough to count as cardio.

My wife pointed out that the jazzercisers really had some energy. Their float came early in the route, and I suspect their jazziness declined as the temperature climbed, but they were giving us everything they had as they passed.

On the way home Judy wanted to stop at Sonic for a drink, an idea that was good in theory and then met parade traffic and a short-staffed Sonic that was losing its battle with the drive-thru. Fortunately, air conditioning can repair an attitude in about four minutes flat.

So that’s the ledger for the weekend. I skipped the concert on purpose, and I showed up for the parade on purpose, and I think the books balanced.

The truth underneath all of it is that Judy and I are getting closer to full retirement, which means a whole lot of years ahead of just the two of us deciding what we do with our days. I don’t want her dreading the thought of hanging with me every day, and I definitely don’t want her starting our upcoming trip wondering what kind of a boring guy she married.

Staying home with Ellie so her parents could have a night out was worth something. Standing in the heat while the Purple Heart veterans passed and the chairs emptied was worth more. The kids came over later for a cookout and homemade ice cream, and I’ll be there being adequately social, which for me is the sweet spot.

Judy knows what kind of guy she married. He complains about the humidity, skips the crowds when he can, and still gets out of bed for the parade, because some things deserve the sweat.

Pre‑Trip Logistics and My Fragile Sense of Competence

Two weeks before we leave for Europe, I ordered a universal plug adapter on Amazon.

About two hours later, I found the one we already owned sitting right in front of me. I did not tell my wife. What I said was, “It’s probably a good idea to have two of them.” She believed me, or she was kind enough to pretend she did. Either way, my fragile sense of competence lived to fight another day.

Packing for this trip is more complicated than it sounds. If we were flying straight to the cruise ship in Copenhagen, it would be simple—once you’re on the boat, American plugs work, and a European adapter just doubles your chances of having too many things charging at once. But we’re spending a few days in Germany first, which means adapters matter. On our British Isles cruise a couple of years ago, we needed European plugs for exactly one night before the cruise and zero nights after. Different math applies here: five nights of actual need, twenty nights of me obsessing about it like we’re going off‑grid.

My wife will be flying to Houston for work the Monday before we leave. I won’t join her until Thursday. Her plan—which is honestly a good one—is to take a work suitcase to Houston, have our daughter ship it back to our son in Oklahoma, and then go to the airport together Friday afternoon with one checked bag and one carry‑on. Clean. Simple. Elegant. Almost guaranteed to be attacked by reality at some point, but I admire the ambition and I appreciate that someone in this marriage can visualize a straight line.

We borrowed vacuum packing bags from our son to make the most of our space. I have doubts about this. Not strong doubts, but doubts. In theory, vacuum bags help you pack smarter. In practice, they help you pack more, which is how a three‑week trip starts to look like we’re quietly moving to a new continent under witness protection.

The temperature question is the one keeping me up. Europe was hot last week, but it might cool off and be hot again by the time we get to certain ports. We overpacked for cold on the British Isles trip. We overpacked for cold in Alaska. At some point you’d think we’d learn. The problem is that packing for heat and then hitting a cold snap makes you look like someone who doesn’t know how to use a search engine. I would like to not be that person this time, mostly for my own dignity and the ability to walk off the ship without looking like I dressed in the dark.

We also had to reorder umbrellas. We lost our last pair somewhere between packing and unpacking after the British Isles trip. Maybe the OKC move got them. Maybe they saw our packing style and ran away to live with a more responsible family. Either way, they’re gone. Two new ones have arrived, which means somewhere in this house, there are four umbrellas slowly planning a reunion, and I will absolutely find all of them three days after we get home.

The t‑shirt debate is more personal. In my younger years, I loved the clever phrase shirts—the ones that made strangers think I was witty without me actually having to talk to them. Now I want the opposite. Minimal design. Small logo. Something that asks nothing of anyone. I’ll probably wear my Texas shirt because I lived there. Maybe a hat with the hockey team logo from the boys we billet. The older I get, the less I want to be noticed and the more I want to be comfortable. That’s my fashion evolution: from “look at me” to “I’m fine, let’s all move on.”

One souvenir I’m almost certain to bring home is a t‑shirt I’ll wear on the next trip. That’s the full circle: buy shirt, wear shirt, repeat, occasionally remember the trip, almost never impress anyone. It’s a quiet investment in future laundry.

The karaoke situation deserves a mention. My wife has already brought it up multiple times—how excited she is to watch it on the ship. I do not love karaoke. When the same person who cannot carry a tune insists on performing multiple nights in a row, the novelty fades faster than my patience. I’ll be there. I’ll smile. I’ll clap at the right times. She knows I’ll be there and smiling, and that’s probably why she keeps mentioning it—she enjoys the show, I enjoy the sociology experiment of watching one person’s confidence outlive everyone else’s eardrums.

So here we are: twelve days out. Adapters acquired (twice). Vacuum bags borrowed. Umbrellas replaced. T‑shirts effectively sorted into “attention‑seeking” and “emotionally stable.” Karaoke mentally prepared for.

We’re basically ready—or at least as ready as two people can be when one of them keeps ordering things we technically already own and the other one kindly pretends this is part of the plan.

The Chaos Doesn’t Care That I’m Getting Better

After my Monday rebound on the health meter, I briefly believed I was proving my wife wrong. She’d been quietly predicting a longer recovery than I wanted to admit, and I was walking around like I’d just won the argument without actually saying, “I told you so.” She enjoys being right the way some people enjoy pickleball: casually, competitively, and with a suspicious amount of strategy. Fortunately, she decided a healthy husband was more valuable than a correct one, so she put on her “supportive spouse” face. If you ever meet her, please don’t let her know you know this. I need plausible deniability.

Feeling better meant I got to do normal‑human things again: I took my walk, hopped on a couple of Zoom calls, and tagged along with my daughter and granddaughter to the zoo. Six miles on a body that had been dragging for weeks. It felt like the comeback tour. I might have been insufferable for a few hours.

Tuesday had notes.

The good news was I slept through the night. The bad news was my energy evaporated before I could even decide what to do with it. Babysitting duty was coming later, so I chose the no‑walk option and pretended it was “strategic pacing” instead of “I can’t move.” I’d love to say I used the time wisely, but all I really accomplished was navigating the administrative obstacle course required to host hockey boys again in the fall. Background checks? Done. “USA Hockey Safe Sport” training? Also done—most of it aimed at people who actually see the boys in locker rooms. Apparently, I’m part of the extended safety net: the guy who hands out snacks and, if necessary, phone numbers for people who fix bigger problems.

Ellie arrived and we slid into our usual routine: constant snacking, nap avoidance, and me conserving enough energy for the playground run. On the walk there, she demanded frequent sips from my water bottle. I could refuse—I’ve been sick for weeks—but her parents aren’t particularly germ‑shy, and she’s been marinating in my personal germ broth for the same amount of time. Also, I’m terrible at telling her “no.” I know that’s a bad grandpa move. My current self‑diagnosis is long COVID, so odds are she already has better antibodies than I do.

At the park, a potential playmate was waiting. Her grandmother, Malinda—same name as my own grandmother, which earned me instant points—was already mid‑conversation with a woman walking her dog while her granddaughter tried to pet it. Once the dog walker escaped, Malinda turned her attention to me. Her grandma instincts were strong; she stayed half a step ahead of me to catch Ellie if she tripped. With my germ‑rattled brain and slow‑motion reflexes, I welcomed the backup.

Her granddaughter loved the slide, which meant Ellie needed to love the slide too. I lifted Ellie past the first giant step and let her instincts take over. The playground’s first landing was not designed for Andy‑sized humans, so I performed a sort of hunched shuffle that was heroic in spirit if not in appearance. Malinda warned me to keep my feet wide, so I wouldn’t go too fast. She claimed she once landed on her fanny. I’m not entirely sure I have a fanny, but I took her advice. She went first and absorbed most of the water on the slide, so I only got the “lightly damp and mildly undignified” version. Ellie and I survived two runs. The second one just required a deeper stoop and a quiet prayer.

Back home, we tackled lunch—the official one, not the Cheerios she treats as an emotional support snack—and then I followed her as she dismantled tissues and anything resembling organization. After a very dirty diaper where she “helped” spread the diaper cream, she finally went down for a nap. My wife suggested I do the same. Earplugs in, thunder shaking the house, I accepted the challenge.

An hour later I woke up thinking, “Why is it freezing in here?” The thermostat app swore nothing had changed, but the air said otherwise. I had that first quiet suspicion that the HVAC system had gone rogue. I did what any reasonable person does: ran through my standard “If I were an HVAC system trying to hide my misbehavior, how would I do it?” test. My final move was simple—cut the power. A rascal can’t rebel without electricity.

Not wanting to sleep in a house slowly turning into a meat locker, I called an HVAC company. I picked one with good ratings and an “& Sons” in the name. Maybe it’s marketing, but something in me trusts people who sound like they also attend each other’s Thanksgivings. The tech on the phone walked me through a few steps that matched my diagnosis, then added phrases like “lightning can do wonky things” and “sounds like a motherboard problem.” If it were a grandmother‑board problem, my wife would’ve solved it instantly—or at least acted like she could.

The technician came out the next morning. After an hour and a half of poking around, he had mixed news. He could rewire around the problem and get us running, and the part itself should be under warranty. He started on the workaround while I called the original installer to schedule the warranty visit. Their answer: “Sometime Monday, if we can fit you in, thirty‑minute notice.”

Vacation is in two weeks.

By the time I added up the labor for two technicians, we were approaching 75% of the cost of just replacing the motherboard outright and being done with it. So we went with the sure thing. Yes, it cost more. But I don’t have to spend the next two weeks playing thermostat man while the temperatures climb and the warranty visit exists in the mystical realm of “sometime Monday.”

My wife thought it was the right call. She was right.

She usually is.

Somewhere in there is the theme of this whole stretch of life: my health finally creeping in the right direction, while the rest of the universe keeps throwing toddlers, lightning, and circuit boards at me just to see what I’ll do. Apparently “feeling better” doesn’t come with less chaos. It just means I’m well enough to show up for it.

The Glue That Could Not Hold

This morning I became that neighbor. Not the fun one who waves from the porch with a coffee mug and mysterious confidence. I became the guy who steps outside to defend his landscaping like it’s a national monument.

I was waiting for the HVAC technician — because nothing says “adulthood” like scheduling strangers to fix things you only vaguely understand — when I wandered into the den and glanced out the window. And there it was. A scene unfolding in slow motion.

A man.
A dog.
My freshly edged, freshly mulched tree circles.

Not just any mulch, either. This was mulch I had curated. Mulch I had arranged. Mulch I had glued, because the tree sits so high above street level that the whole setup is basically a ski slope for wood chips. I had bought that “mulch glue” stuff — a real product, somehow — that promises to keep everything in place as long as you don’t, you know, touch it.

The problem was the mulch itself. It was older, dry, and apparently had the hydration needs of a marathon runner. The moment the glue hit it, the mulch said, “Cute. Try again.” So I did. Two or three coats later, I had something that looked like a cross between a landscaping project and a craft experiment gone wrong. But it held. Mostly. Right up until this morning.

Because this morning, the dog was not just sniffing. He was committing. He was on top of the mulch mound like he had been training for this moment, paws going, nose down, sending mulch into the air in what my memory insists was a majestic brown cloud.

So I walked outside. Sheepishly. Because no one wants to be the neighbor who says, “Excuse me, sir, your dog is compromising the structural integrity of my glue‑dependent mulch ecosystem.”

But that’s exactly what I did.

I launched into a full explanation about how the glue only works when the mulch pieces stay united — a sort of mulch‑based community model — and how once it’s disturbed, the whole thing reverts to “every chip for itself.” I’m sure this man woke up hoping to learn about adhesive failure at 8 a.m. on a weekday.

He apologized. The dog looked mildly offended. And I walked back inside feeling like I had just scolded a toddler for touching a museum exhibit.

Then I saw him pull out the poop bags, and I felt even worse. Here he was, being responsible. And here I was, the old man who isn’t anti‑dog, just aggressively pro‑plants.

It’s true: I don’t have a dog. But that doesn’t make me an animal hater. I simply choose hockey boys, grandkids, and my own kids over adding another creature to the chaos. That’s not cruelty — that’s capacity management.

If the neighbors eventually stage a protest outside my house and my gallon of glue ends up a wasted investment, so be it. I know how it started: I just wanted my roadside tree to wear a nice little mulch skirt without flashing its weed mat to the entire neighborhood.

If that makes me the weird neighbor, at least I earned it honestly.

Andy: 1, Death by Sneezing: 0

I am the unfortunate one who is “it” today.
It with what? Cold, sinus infection, COVID, mystery crud with commitment issues—hard to say. Whatever it is, it picked me to carry it on Father’s Day. I’m not sure if this thing started two weeks ago or sometime back before our son’s wedding, but the headline is simple enough: I am sick on Father’s Day.

I won’t blame the sickness entirely for my lack of a blog post lately. It hasn’t helped, but it doesn’t deserve full credit. My stubbornness has played a strong supporting role, especially the part where I refuse to rest like a man my age who has, allegedly, earned the right to lie down without guilt. Instead, I’ve been spending my limited energy knocking items off the pre–vacation list: swapping Texas plates for Oklahoma plates, finally closing out a business that overstayed its welcome, babysitting through both scheduled and “guess who’s here” Ellie visits, and getting the house ready for the hockey boys we’re expecting again in the fall.

Written out, it doesn’t look like a heroic montage. It looks like paperwork, childcare, and laundry with extra steps. But when you layer those things over days where my body is operating on the “barely functioning” setting, I’m oddly proud of it. It’s not dramatic, but it’s the real shape of being Dad at this stage: still moving forward, even if I’m wheezing while I do it.

Last night, as we got into bed, my wife gave me a pep talk. At least, that’s what she thought it was. She caught something too—worse than mine, in her version of the story. My theory is we have the same bug, her symptoms just showed up in different costumes. Either way, what I received was the “the next few days of your life will be miserable” speech.

She used gentler, more reasonable words. What I heard was, “You aren’t as tough as me, but I’ll try to support you through the certain misery ahead.” She denied this, naturally. I reminded her that communication isn’t about what you say; it’s about what I hear. And what I heard sounded like a pretty unflattering movie trailer. We agreed to disagree and rolled over for yet another night with no goodnight kiss. Nothing says romance like marital plague protocols.

The funny part is that the night went better than her forecast. I took something for drainage, then waited to see whether it would help or if I was just participating in expensive wishful thinking. She had one coughing fit, so her suffering continues and, by extension, my predicted misery has apparently been extended by at least another day on principle. I blew my nose a few times, rolled from left to right more than usual, and then—somehow—actually slept. Morning showed up, and I felt more rested than her non-prophetic words had promised. For that one night at least, the scoreboard read: Andy 1, Death by Sneezing 0.

Possibly out of guilt, my wife turned the leftover half of a French loaf—the half that didn’t get turned into garlic bread—into French toast this morning. We reheated some sausage, sat down together, and had a real breakfast. We did not hold hands to pray over the food. At this point, I’m not sure how much difference hand-holding makes when we’re living in the same air and sharing every surface known to man. She put up such a strong “no goodnight kiss” boundary when she got sick, which would have been adorable if she hadn’t kissed me the night before my symptoms showed up. By then, the virus had already RSVP’d.

I’m no specialist in germ theory, but I’m fairly confident she’s enforcing a rulebook the viruses never agreed to follow. That said, the French toast was a satisfying touch. On a normal rough morning, “I’ll make the coffee” is about as extravagant as we get. Guilt offering or not, the extra effort landed.

We decided to skip church, too. On any other Sunday, that decision would have been straightforward: we’re sick, we stay home. On Father’s Day, it comes with a little extra twinge. On Mother’s Day, our church passes out “Her-She” candy bars. Hershey, with a wink. I can’t remember if the men get anything. Our big treat is the chance for the willing and able to sit up front in the choir area and help lead the singing. I skipped every practice, which technically should have disqualified me. But practices were optional, and my secret plan was to sneak in anyway and let my voice blend in with the other dads who also didn’t rehearse.

My voice still works. My conscience apparently works better. The close quarters up front started to look less like worship and more like the opening scene of a documentary called “Superspreader: The Tenor Section.” As much as I hated to miss the male bonding, staying home felt like the least selfish choice. I may have lost the joy of singing off-key with the guys, but somewhere a congregation is slightly healthier for my sacrifice.

Tonight’s dinner with the kids is still technically on, but it now carries an asterisk in all the group texts. We might cancel. We might rally. I hate even imagining not being there, but everyone else has earned the right to stay healthy, too. No one wants their Father’s Day dessert with a side of virus.

Whoever I end up seeing today—however upright or congested I am—I’m calling this Father’s Day a win. This year, we added a new daughter-in-law to the family. Our daughter is due late summer with twins. There are murmurs of permanence in the lives of our other two kids, the kind of quiet conversations that sound suspiciously like future weddings warming up in the wings.

Father’s Day has never really been about me, at least not in the way the cards suggest. It’s more of an annual status report on what’s happened over the past year and what seems to be growing underneath all the noise. The real takeaway isn’t “Look what I built.” It’s closer to, “Thank God my kids are out there choosing kind people to build a life with.”

I’d be thrilled to be a grandfather many times over. That’s no secret. But the part that actually feels like a report card on my parenting is simpler: they make decent choices; they care about the people around them; they’re building lives that look, for the most part, healthy and hopeful. My wife and I blurred plenty of roles over the years and improvised more than we’d admit, but the results walking around out there seem to speak for themselves.

On the low end of the scale, they graduated from college and pay their own bills. On the high end, they’re married or moving toward it, they’re happy—or at least earnestly trying to be—and grandkids are starting to appear as the bonus round I selfishly can’t wait to keep playing.

By next Father’s Day, I’ll get another snapshot of where everyone has landed on that spectrum. Maybe more weddings. Maybe more babies. Maybe more ordinary Tuesdays that quietly matter more than any of it. For now, I’m just glad to be here to take attendance. Healthy would’ve been nice. But present and accounted for, even with a box of tissues under my arm, feels like enough.