Life

Retirement Is a Full-Time Job

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Day My Moral Compass Needed a Tune-Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are they teaching kids in school today?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s when I saw it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Eve of Controlled Chaos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It did not entertain her at all.

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, dear. You’re welcome.

A Plod Instead of a Skip

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, it wasn’t the best decision.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then there’s the cold.

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

And then there’s chess.

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

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

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

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

This is clearly another first-world problem.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whatever it was, the funk started losing its grip.

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

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

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

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

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

Another Chance to Make an Impression

Yesterday was my triennial visit to the blood donation center. I just learned that word and I’m proud of it. It actually means every four months, not every three years, but “quadrennial” sounds like a made-up word and “triennial” sounds like I read something once.

The place is full of the heavily pierced and tattooed, all of us there to hand over a pint for the greater good. There’s nothing sneaky about it. Somebody out there needs blood, and in exchange, the center offers free air conditioning and snacks, which is honestly a better deal than most gyms.

I watched the self-recorded video of my visit afterward, the way you’d review game film if the game were “old man talks for ninety minutes while a machine drains him.” My conclusion: they don’t invite me back because they enjoy my company. They invite me back because I do the double red donation, and they’ve decided my blood is worth the price of listening to me.

The initial screener was the same woman from last time. I’m fairly sure we talked hockey during that visit. This time she engaged with me, but not overly, the way you’d engage with a dog that keeps bringing you the same tennis ball. I think she clocked pretty quickly that I was just a lonely old guy who’d talk the leg off anyone who made eye contact.

My blood pressure ran a little high. I blamed needle anxiety, which is a generous way of describing a lifelong hobby of mine. I also may have stretched the truth slightly on the questionnaire. If I’d mentioned our recent trip, I’d have had to list every country, in order, with exact dates in each one, and there was no chance of that. Naming them out of order and guessing at the timeline would have exposed the true state of my memory, and honestly I felt I was sparing both of us the paperwork. I hadn’t done anything else on the naughty list, so skipping the travel questions felt like the fastest route to the gurney.

Which brings me to the business end of the donor center, and my technician, who I’d also worked with before. She started off friendly. Then I kept talking, and I watched recognition arrive on her face like a slow-loading webpage. She survived the appointment. I think it cost her something.

I probably didn’t help my case by opening with “I’m your next victim.” Then I called myself a secret shopper, which didn’t confuse her so much as make her wonder if her performance that day was being quietly graded. It wasn’t. I just like watching people recalculate.

They hand you a squeeze ball while you donate, and mine came shaped like a basketball. I told her I’d have preferred a football. Turns out she agreed. “The Norman donor center gets footballs,” she said. “They have a budget for that. We just take what we’re given.” She’d made peace with it, in the way people make peace with things they complain about constantly.

For reasons known only to the blood-donation industrial complex, technicians aren’t allowed to let you watch the monitor to see what’s actually happening in your arm. Instead, there are little spinning knobs that mean things, sort of, if you squint. Double red donation is basically alchemy anyway, since what goes back into you isn’t what came out. My tech tried to walk me through which knob spins during a withdrawal and which one spins during a return. You squeeze the ball on the withdrawal, not the return, a fact I nearly learned the hard way. We got it sorted before I blew a vein, which I’m choosing to call a win.

I think I ended on a decent note. When the machine gave its final beep, I announced, “I survived another one,” and got an actual smile out of her. We never quite bonded, but I’m already workshopping better material for next time. This is apparently what passes for a hobby now.

So why do I keep doing this? There isn’t one clean answer, and not every part of the experience is the center throwing confetti and begging me to come back in sixteen weeks. But you don’t donate blood out of boredom either.

The t-shirts help. I get a new one every time, and while not all of them are “wow,” a couple have earned a permanent spot in my drawer. The latest one connects blood donation to the dog days of summer somehow. I’m apparently in my t-shirt era, though at this point I think every era of my life has just been a t-shirt era. Congratulations to me, I’m now a t-shirt connoisseur.

My cholesterol has also never been an issue, and giving blood is a nice reminder that I did pass along at least one good gene. When my kids bring up whatever genetic flaws they inherited, I remind them, “If your cholesterol’s fine, that’s me. You didn’t lose the whole lottery.”

On my way out, the front desk person, who must have missed my check-in while on break, sent me off with, “Thanks for your help on that double.” I have no idea if she actually knew that or just says it to everyone, but either way, I fell for it completely. I didn’t book my next appointment, but I’ll probably be back before Christmas to keep the friendship going, see what jokes show up on their own, and hope I don’t lose an entire vacation to “amnesia” again.

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.