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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.

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.

The Remarkable Adventures of an Unremarkable Morning

There’s a meeting at 9:00, and I have a small window before I put on my babysitting hat. So naturally, I ate a bagel, drank two cups of coffee, and chugged the last of a quart of orange juice left over from last month’s wedding shower — because apparently cleaning out a refrigerator is a noble act of self-sacrifice rather than the most basic form of adulting imaginable. Nobody asked me to buy a quart of orange juice for a party. My wife bought the party supplies. My conscience would bother me no matter who did the shopping. I drank it anyway.

Then I scurried outside.

The 4.5-mile walk had to be done before 9:00. I already knew my meeting was starting at 9:05, minimum. Knowing he’ll be five minutes late has never once made me log into Zoom five minutes late. I don’t understand myself either.

The first obstacle was a forklift hauling lumber for one of the new houses going up on the other side of the neighborhood. Our side is the older part — mature trees, individual mailboxes, the kind of street where the mail carrier drives from box to box. The new side has consolidated mailboxes, one big cluster where you can knock out six streets in three minutes. Efficient. I’d be a disaster at it. The numbers would run together, and anything less than five mistakes per day would be a good day. Not my problem, because I don’t have that job, and this is why.

The forklift detour wasn’t much of a detour. What it actually cost me was thirty seconds of my audiobook, paused while a yard crew fired up a leaf blower to redistribute freshly mown clippings to somewhere other than the driveway. Somewhere, presumably, but I didn’t stay to confirm.

The wildlife situation required judgment calls I’m not sure I was qualified to make.

Oklahoma is flat. When it rains, the water has to go somewhere, and at the neighborhood level, that means toads and turtles living in the drainage areas, occasionally making ill-fated decisions about road crossings. I saw a baby turtle sitting dead center in the street. I saw a large turtle just off the curb. I stood there for a moment, fully aware that a decent person would move them.

I did not move them.

I have a thing — a completely reasonable and well-established thing — about touching animals that could carry germs that might somehow, in some freak sequence of events, find their way into my mouth or my granddaughters. I know how that sounds. But I grew up watching a turtle crawl under a sliding wooden door and disappear, and something in me was permanently shaped by that. The turtles were on their own. I am sorry. I walked faster so I didn’t have to see what happened next.

Four rabbits in the park. No squirrels — our trees aren’t mature enough yet for what I can only describe as “tree rats” to fully establish themselves. They have earned my dislike, and I won’t apologize. .

At the park, a young woman was doing sprint intervals on the soccer field within the walking path. I’d seen her the other day running full laps, and today she was going hard, then walking, then going hard again. I admire that kind of self-motivation — the kind where you show up and push yourself with no external pressure, just because. I don’t have that relationship with exercise. I walk because it’s a good time to listen to books and because I’d feel guilty if I didn’t. It’s not suffering, but it’s not ambition either.

The highlight of the entire walk — maybe the entire week — was watching the OKIE811 utility locator do his job.

I assumed these guys walked around spraying paint on the ground and bending over to stick the little flags in. Reasonable assumption. That is not what this man was doing. He was marking a gas line (yellow flags, per the Universal Utility Color Code), and when he finished the spray, he reached into his vest, pulled out a flag, and with one smooth downward flick of his wrist sent it arcing through the air so that it landed perfectly upright in the ground.

I applauded him inside my head as I tried not to stare.

I have no idea if the rest of his flags that day went in on the first try. Maybe he fumbled twenty of them the moment I turned the corner. But what I saw was a man who had mastered something so specific and so useless outside of his exact job that it became a kind of art. I thought about how many thousands of flags you’d have to throw before your wrist just knew the angle. Nobody is going to put that on a highlight reel. And I loved it.

The last stop was my son’s house. He and his bride are finishing up their honeymoon, so I let myself in through the garage, removed my shoes at the door (they have an Asian household — shoes stay outside; I assume the mounted cameras confirm compliance), and found all their houseplants arranged in the kitchen sink with their vines draped across the drying racks in what I can only describe as a botanical hostage situation. I’d like to think my daughter-in-law staged this deliberately before they left. The alternative — that the plants organized themselves — would require a conversation I’m not ready for.

I turned on the spray nozzle and gave them all a drink. They may be sun-deprived, but they weren’t dying of thirst on my watch. Small win.

The walk takes a little over an hour. I listen to my book, I sweat a little, I make no meaningful impact on local turtle populations. By most measures, it’s an unremarkable way to spend a morning.

But I keep showing up for it. A forklift reroutes me, a utility worker throws a flag like a tiny javelin, a turtle makes a bad decision at an intersection I hope he saw the other side of — and somehow that’s enough. More than enough. I’m not sure when ordinary started feeling like something worth paying attention to, but at some point it did, and I think that might be the whole thing. You live long enough, you stop waiting for remarkable, and you start just noticing what’s actually there.

That’s a pretty good trade.

The Watch Situation

I used to wear a watch constantly. Not because I was punctual—there has never been enough evidence to support that theory. I simply liked having one.

I graduated through the full evolutionary timeline of affordable timepieces. Started with a small analog watch, moved into the glamorous future of digital, first an LED display that required pressing a button to reveal the time as though it were protecting classified information, then an LCD that felt like owning technology stolen from NASA.

Then came the stopwatch phase. I spent an embarrassing amount of childhood trying to stop it on an exact second rather than some renegade hundredth.

I’d hit the button. 10.13.

Again. 9.87.

Again. 12.04.

Eventually, after several minutes of concentrated effort, I’d finally land on exactly 10.00 and feel a sense of accomplishment wildly disproportionate to the achievement. Kids today have streaming services and unlimited entertainment. We had a stopwatch and imagination.

Somewhere after that I developed opinions about watches—never more than one at a time, but I cycled through several of them, each paired with a twist-o-flex band engineered specifically to remove arm hair one follicle at a time. Whether my sweat was corrosive enough to slay the watches before the bands finished the job is a question science has yet to answer. Either way, eventually something inside me snapped. Or maybe it was the band. Watches and I were done.

Was it the sweat under the band? The vanity of not wanting tan lines beyond my already well-established farmer’s tan? The first cell phone clipped to my belt like a middle-aged Batman? The details are lost. The important part is I quit wearing watches and never looked back.

Until I did.

More than half my kids walk around with smartwatches now, closing rings and tracking steps like it’s a competitive sport. I started thinking, I walk a lot. Maybe I should get one so I can receive official electronic confirmation that I am, in fact, moving. Without verification, how does anyone really know?

I also get accused—regularly and fairly—of being impossible to shop for. Apparently my habit of buying things immediately rather than letting them sit on a wish list for six months makes me “difficult.” So I thought: Father’s Day. Put the watch on the list. Prove I’m giftable. I even imagined everyone pitching in together, which was generous of me to consider.

Let’s be honest about what Father’s Day actually looks like at my stage of life. A phone call. Maybe a card. One gift from the daughter who has benefited most from my extensive unpaid babysitting services. The new daughter-in-law might nudge my son toward participation, but I keep expectations low. Low expectations are the bubble wrap of emotional life.

Before officially adding it to the list, I consulted my wife and my local daughter. Their responses were different and spiritually identical.

My daughter used to be in the “sure, Dad, get a watch” camp. Then she spent more time with me and quietly switched parties. Her verdict: “I think you’d get way too much information off that kind of watch. I don’t recommend it.” She wasn’t talking about technology. She was talking about me. Give me access to heart rate data, sleep scores, and recovery metrics, and within a month I’ll be convinced something has moved from green to light green and we need to discuss it with someone. That vote went straight into the “no” column.

My wife came at it from a different angle. She reminded me I’d already broken up with watches once and expressed full confidence I’d abandon this one in about two months. Not hope—confidence. Nothing says supportive spouse like betting against you in your own fitness journey.

So that’s that. My Father’s Day list is empty again, and I’m back to trusting my phone to track my steps and shame me into movement. I already get a little unhinged when I miss my daily goals. If you want me to work hard, make me compete against myself—I hate letting myself down, and I do it often enough that the stakes feel real.

With summer heat arriving, I’ve shifted my walks to 7-9 a.m. I don’t avoid all the misery, but it keeps my wife from worrying I’ll become a cautionary tale on the side of the road. And I get to start the day knowing I’ve given this body another reason to keep going.

Some technologies improve with age. I am doing my best to be one of them.

Wedding Mode

I am charming.

Not year-round. Catch me on a random Tuesday in February and there’s a decent chance I’m avoiding eye contact at the grocery store while pretending to study soup labels. But give me a wedding where one of my children is getting married, and I transform into a socially acceptable version of myself.

This weekend, the charm was dripping off me like sweat at an outdoor reception in Oklahoma.

Conversations? I could talk to anybody about anything. Politics, brisket temperatures, whether people under thirty still know how to parallel park—I’m in. People walked away convinced I was fully engaged the entire time. I probably was mostly engaged, but these varicose veins keep me from being fully ambistrous.

Yes, I looked it up. “Ambistrous” means being able to do something equally well sitting or standing. My brain can socialize indefinitely. My legs start filing formal complaints with management somewhere around minute thirty-seven. (Or was it those dress shoes?)

Normally I wait for people to find me. This weekend I was seeking them out, starting conversations on purpose, approaching strangers with something resembling confidence. This goes against every part of my being on most days—and, honestly, most years—of my life. But give me a wedding where I’m acquiring a son- or daughter-in-law and something in me rises to the occasion and says, “Today we will appear emotionally healthy.”

DIY wedding? Doesn’t shake me much. My wife wisely withholds enough of the plan to prevent me from offering what I call efficiency analysis and what others might call being difficult. If I don’t know the plan, I can’t optimize the plan. That’s marriage wisdom right there. And if my legs begin filing formal grievances, I wave the “functioning mutant” flag, find a couch, and cheer everybody on from a seated position.

Some people mistake this charm for pure sincerity. That’s not exactly right. It’s more like a carefully managed energy budget—burning today’s charm on credit from future me. The curtain can get thin. Those who know me know exactly which questions drop it.

But there’s a rare category of person who reverses the drain entirely. Someone who returns sass properly. Not cruelty—playful disrespect wrapped in affection. The kind that says, “I see you and I think you can handle this.” Conversational ping-pong. A way of saying, please don’t make me carry this alone.

One of the best surprises of the weekend was meeting Valerie. Not her real name, but it fits. In our family, she became known as the cougar. That’s the story as I received it, and I’m not fact-checking it now.

The origin goes back ten-plus years, when our son worked at the Chick-fil-A in the mall. Valerie was a mall walker who stopped afterward for a Dr Pepper. She wasn’t built for small talk. She’d ask whoever took her order something real—a question with follow-up potential. Our son passed her screening. If he didn’t know an answer, he’d look it up and have it ready next time. And knowing my son, there was some mild smart-mouth commentary included free of charge. All those years of me aggravating him had finally become an investment portfolio.

They stayed in touch. He visited her. She and her husband visited him during their three-year camper-living stretch. Phone calls when visits weren’t possible. This weekend, they came to his wedding.

What got me was how naturally she fit. She sparred with my other kids, my brother, and me like she’d known us for years. Nobody played it safe. Sometimes she’d get me with a good line and I’d fire one right back. You could see exactly why they kept up with each other—she’s the kind of person who refuses to let you be mediocre. If you weren’t going to show up as a real human, she’d have moved on to the next register.

But our son made an impression. A durable one. He earned that relationship by being fully himself, over and over, starting at a fast food counter before he was old enough to vote.

Forty-eight hours ago I had never met this woman. Now I’m a little jealous my son ended up with his own cougar grandma.

Me? Still charming, in short bursts. But I’m old enough to know I’m past the window for acquiring one of my own.

I’ll just keep the one I married.

She Didn’t Want Me There

My wife woke up at 6:30 screaming into her pillow from a nightmare. I told my son—two days out from his wedding—that it was either a bad dream or the crushing realization that she still shares a bed with me. He laughed and said I could self-deprecate with the best of them. I’ll take what I can get.

The real blow came an hour later. She needed my Sam’s card to buy rehearsal dinner ingredients, then followed it with, “I appreciate you, but I don’t want you to come.” Since the card lives on my phone, I was simultaneously needed and unwanted—emotional support livestock, essentially. She didn’t want me wandering beside the cart providing observational commentary on industrial-sized cream cheese or calculating the GDP of the pie aisle. She wanted peace. Focus. Things I occasionally threaten without trying.

Because she took my phone, I became a middle-aged Amish man sitting in the living room wondering where my digital life had gone. No audiobook. No bank account. Just me and my thoughts. Her apology later had all the warmth of a hostage video, but that’s Year 36. Nobody’s trying to impress anyone anymore. You’re just trying not to create paperwork.

What she’s conveniently ignoring is my personal growth. Earlier this week, a woman approached me in the Sam’s parking lot—new job starting tomorrow, two kids, needed rent money, and mentioned she was a Christian. I gave her something from my wallet with one condition: “If you aren’t really a Christian, this is a pretty bad thing you’re doing.” Compassion and spiritual accountability in one transaction. I’m basically a weird Baptist Batman.

I also spent half a day driving store to store hunting overripe bananas for banana bread for the Indian relatives coming in for the wedding. More than one store told me they’d just thrown the old ones out. I kept going. Thirty-five years ago that news would have triggered a level of self-righteous frustration usually reserved for HOA presidents. Now I absorb adversity with maturity and grace. Mostly because I’m tired. Growth should be measured in hesitation, not perfection.

My wife knows mornings are my best hours—when my verbal filter still has structural integrity. She knows that placing me near a pallet of cheesecake ingredients before 10 a.m. creates unnecessary risk exposure. She was not wrong to leave me home.

But the universe has a sense of humor.

My son mentions that his mom called because she can’t log into the Sam’s account. In my most supportive tone I said, “Tell her to call my phone.” Silence. Then I grabbed his phone, because apparently nobody appreciates timing. My wife informed me she had been calling my phone several times before realizing the vibrating device she kept hearing was in her own pocket.

After a couple of six-digit verification codes and some light mockery to keep the marriage oxygenated, she got logged in. She didn’t want me there. She needed me anyway. That’s probably marriage in its purest form.

There’s a currency in long marriages—emotional debits, financial credits, historical grievances filed away with perfect recall. I’m wired for all of it, which isn’t a quality I’m proud of. But somewhere in 35 years, Judy figured out how to make me softer without turning me into someone I wouldn’t recognize. She never tried to fully tame me, which was wise, because I’d have been unbearable in captivity.

I didn’t marry someone fragile. I married someone strong enough to argue with me, laugh at me, and occasionally still choose me anyway. She might wake up some mornings screaming from dreams I apparently star in—but she keeps crawling back into the same bed.

I’m counting that as affection.

The Budget That Lived Briefly

Judy set a wedding budget. Then she exceeded it. By how much is still unclear — probably double, possibly more, definitely enough that when the DJ called asking for his balance, her response was “Oh, I forgot about that one.”

I’ve been married long enough to know what that sentence means.

The original number was $2,000, plus we’d cover the rehearsal dinner — a reasonable, grown-up figure that apparently functioned more as a conversation-ender than an actual plan.

Here’s what I did with that budget: nothing. My wife said she had it handled, and I believed her, the way a husband learns to believe things when the alternative is a much longer discussion. I am a man who does well with specific instructions. “Pay this person on Venmo for the cake” — done. I noted “cake” as wedding-adjacent, did not open a spreadsheet, turned off my critical thinking like a responsible partner, and performed the task.

What I did not do was connect the cake to the flowers to the cheese cubes to the small jar of gherkins now living permanently in our refrigerator. Somewhere along the way, the wedding became a slush fund — gentle, loving, entirely intentional — designed to cushion our son, who has been mostly carrying this thing himself. His bride just finished her doctorate. She’s looking for work. The traditional “bride’s family pays” rule did not survive contact with reality, and Judy quietly decided we’d pick up the slack without making it a whole thing. Hard to argue with, honestly. Tracked? Absolutely not.

I stopped looking at the credit cards. If I don’t look, the gherkins are just groceries.

Now here’s where I become the punchline.

A couple of years ago I had what I generously called “success” with algorithmic trading bots. Then came the other part. I let the situation run longer than it deserved, checking the account periodically, hoping something would turn around. This week I finally closed every bot that was “unlikely to ever recover and make profit,” which was all of them. Everything is now in a normal, managed, boring retirement account. The math is simple: more went in than came out.

Judy’s response: “I wish you had never put money in that thing, but I’m glad you’re done.”

No lecture. No monthly callback. Just — glad you’re done.

So when the DJ called, and Judy said she forgot about that one, and I felt that small hot flicker of “we had a budget” — I thought about the bots. I thought about what it looks like when someone decides not to make you pay for something indefinitely. And I closed the credit card tab.

We were careful in our earlier years, because we had to be. That discipline is part of why a blown wedding budget is uncomfortable now instead of catastrophic. We earned the right to be a little imperfect with money, and we’ve both used that right with some enthusiasm.

She keeps terrible track of wedding expenses. I once handed real money to a robot that lost it. Neither of us is keeping score.

That’s probably what a long marriage eventually becomes — you run out of the moral high ground you thought you were standing on, and then you just have each other, some leftover gherkins, and a wedding that’s going to be really nice, rain or shine.

Something’s Going Around

Yesterday I couldn’t pull a post together. Tried a few angles, threw them against the wall, watched them slide like wet spaghetti. Even Mr. AI couldn’t find the thread. I let it go — not a waste, just something to bank for later.

So here I am today, a little achy, coughing in the morning, wondering if something’s coming for me or if this is just what your 60s feel like on a Saturday.

My walks have been fine if your standard is “I checked the box.” Earlier version of me could do five or six miles without thinking about it. My daughter and I took some long ones during COVID. Now I’m listening to a book and ignoring the fact that my feet are staging a slow rebellion.

The shoes are partly to blame. Found a pair I loved — perfect, until this week, when they let some foot pain in like they’d been holding it in reserve. I have Good Feet inserts and a couple of things I ordered online. None of them seems particularly invested in my well-being.

Then there’s the Ellie factor. Playing on the floor with a granddaughter sounds simple. It is not. Getting down is fine. The problem is bending my knees during the playing, and the moment she grabs my finger expecting me to spring upright regardless of whether my leg is folded into an origami crane. She has places to go. The inspection waits for no one. She’s also figured out that closed doors are a lot less intimidating when one of the big people is backing her up.

The germs are probably hers, too. COVID made me paranoid — cart handles, my phone, anything touched by human hands. I’ve relaxed about most of that. What I can’t get ahead of is sharing a spoon with someone who has no concept of germ theory and does not care. I sample things off her tray to encourage her to eat. She samples my lunch with her eyes until I give in. That’s the deal. I’m a willing accomplice.

Oklahoma cedar season is technically over, but I’m not ruling it out. I lived in Texas 15 years and never touched an allergy pill — thought I was immune, that pollen and I had some kind of truce. It left me alone long enough that I got cocky. Now my daily regimen is not exactly intimidating: a multivitamin, an allergy pill, and a baby aspirin. Not a real aspirin. A baby one.

The aches don’t stop me from anything. They don’t usually last more than an hour. Still cooking meals, planting flowers, escorting Ellie from one approved zone to the next.

Whatever it is — age, pollen, shoes, shared spoons — I’ll keep sleeping well and showing up. She’s going to grab that finger again tomorrow whether I’m ready or not.

The Nicest (and Meanest) Man She Ever Married

This morning, I asked my wife if she wanted a coffee refill. When she said yes, I pointed to the carafe, paused just long enough to enjoy myself, and then grabbed her cup and filled it.

“You spoil me,” she said with total sincerity. “You are the nicest.”

I knew better. “Yes,” I replied, “but I’m also the meanest man you ever married.”

She didn’t miss a beat. In that sweet tone of hers, she said, “I feel like I take advantage of you when you always fill my cup for me. I genuinely thank you for that.”

Since the caffeine hadn’t hit yet and I didn’t feel worthy of the praise, I had to do some soul searching. How does this woman continue to love a snarky, often cranky man who is constantly trying to deposit enough “I care for you’s” into the emotional bank before noon — before the day’s inevitable influences take hold?

In just over two weeks, we start our 36th year of marriage. As I look at the calendar, I realize I need to up my game just to keep pace with her. She is genuinely excited about everything on the horizon. Our future daughter-in-law’s wedding shower? She’s hosting it and is actually looking forward to entertaining. Her new job has come with more Day One problems than expected, yet she’s ready for the challenge. Our Europe trip this summer? Every excursion is planned, and she is anxious to spend two weeks straight with me. Based on that last point alone, she should probably be committed to an institution.

I am well aware of my flaws. I snap when my schedule gets turned upside down. I am prone to funking — my shorthand for being in a funk — where I become either disagreeable or retreat into stony silence for no apparent reason. When I’m tired, I’m nitpicky. I’m often someone I wouldn’t want to spend time with.

Yet somehow I’m a better person than the man who stood at the altar all those years ago.

Judy’s ability to look long has either rewarded her or cursed her — I’m genuinely not sure which. I believe I’ve incrementally improved, but it didn’t happen in the first five years. It may have only happened in the last five. In the chaos of shared life, a slightly nicer version of me has slowly taken possession of my faculties more often than the other guy. Maybe my tone is a bit softer. Maybe watching my kids live their lives and spending a few hours a week with my granddaughter has acted as a lubricant for the nasties, letting the good ideas flow while keeping the barely tolerable ones from doing too much damage.

She tells me every time we travel: “I like you more when we travel than when we are around the house.” I get it. At home, I’m weighed down by all the life things I feel responsible for. When we’re cruising, she handles the plan, and I just show up.

I travel well.

Maybe that’s why she puts up with me the other 50 weeks of the year.

I Love You More Before 8 P.M

I had a busy day.

Not “storming the beaches of Normandy” busy, but “Oklahoma suburban dad with three doctors, a land rush anniversary, and a fajita deadline” busy. By the time it was over, my social skills had clocked out at 5 p.m. and left the rest of me to freelance the damage.

Fun fact: this particular Tuesday in Oklahoma is the anniversary of the Land Run of 1889. It’s the day people lined up, waited for the cannon, and sprinted for free dirt. The nickname “Sooners” came from the folks who slipped out before the start time. They didn’t cheat; they just identified as “time-flexible.” Meanwhile, I wasn’t cheating anything. I was just trying to survive my schedule.

The day started with me putting the final touches on a project I lovingly call “Bleeding the Benefits Dry” at my wife’s employer. The schedule was aggressive. Some men are made for times like this. I am not one of those men — I am, however, just enough of one to say yes and then regret it in stages.

First stop: the dentist. Routine cleaning, plus a cavity that earned me a bonus visit the next day. On Day One, I wore a bright turquoise shirt. On Day Two, I wore red. I could have worn the same pants, but I cannot let the dental staff know I am capable of a multi-day streak with the same shirt. There are mysteries I prefer to keep between me and my laundry basket. The cavity fill itself was painless. The drill fired up right as Huey Lewis and the News started singing “Heart and Soul,” which felt like my molar’s last request.

From there, the GPS announced I’d arrive at the dermatologist in NW OKC with less than ten minutes to spare. I did what was necessary to buy a little more time and arrived in reasonable shape. Once inside, they weighed me and generously shared my BMI while I was still fully dressed, shoes and all. I’m fairly certain Mr. Body Mass Index never intended his invention to be used in “winter coat plus wallet” mode, but here we are.

The doctor came in apologizing about thin walls and how they talk to reduce stress. What I learned next was that Integris has decided dermatology is now a luxury, and they’re dropping coverage. My earlier-in-the-week appointment turned out to be a minor miracle of timing. The doc, however, was locked and loaded with his cryotherapy gun and not afraid to use it. He addressed a couple of spots on my back and one in my eyebrow — an old acquaintance, originally treated twelve and a half years ago after a trip to China. Most spots barely registered on the “Did you do something, Doc?” scale. The eyebrow one probably wasn’t cancerous, he said; it was just growing with more enthusiasm than I wanted on my face. He double-tapped it and sent it to keratosis jail. If anyone wants to post bail, they’re welcome to it. I don’t need that barnacle of aging marring the wrinkles and other disfigurements already collecting on my face.

Parting instructions: a blister may form. Don’t pop it. It’s nature’s band-aid. Use Vaseline.

I am a man who now has Vaseline on his mental checklist.

The GPS said I could make it home before Ellie woke up. The gas gauge disagreed. The next driver is also my wife, so I filled the tank and accepted I’d be a few minutes late. Marriages are built on these small surrenders.

She was still sleeping when I arrived, which gave me a short breather. When she woke at noon, I was on duty until 3:15. She got her bottle and then spent forty-five minutes making faces and drooling all over her peanut butter toast. She’s operating on gum-and-slobber settings right now, but the volume of drool and the frequency of bib changes suggest teeth are on the way. The afternoon was mostly play and exploration, followed by the subtle art of convincing her it was nap time. Grandpa has his methods. None are scientifically validated, but they eventually work.

Before she was up again, I slipped out to the eye doctor. I paid the small fee for the retinal camera instead of the dilation drops — quick, easy, no blurry afternoon to manage. I aced the vision test. My prescription hasn’t changed. The doctor couldn’t find the floaters or the Fuchs’ Iris Crypts. Boring is good. I awarded this the Best Doctor Appointment of the Day, an honor it earned simply by not finding anything worth worrying about.

One grocery run for guacamole fixings later, and I was home for dinner. My daughter had already sliced the peppers and onions and put them in the oven to roast. There was marinated chicken to grill and Ellie to entertain. When we sat down, we could have won a regional Mexican condiment award: homemade guac, cilantro salsa, and street corn dip, with strawberry shortcake queued up for dessert. It was a good dinner. The kind of good that tricks you into thinking you still have gas left in the tank.

After dinner, my son and I took a walk. He filled me in on honeymoon plans and some work challenges. Good conversation. But when we got back, I was already sliding toward wind-down mode, and I retreated to the den hoping my wife and I could salvage some TV time together.

That was the plan.

That was not what happened.

His fiancée came over for strawberry shortcake and, more dangerously, conversation. I sat in the den watching the clock, wondering at what point a household should put a “Closed” sign on dessert service. My daughter, who had been at the house most of the day working her online job while we babysat, wrapped up her final call around 9:20.

That was my moment.

I walked out of the den and announced: “Everybody needs to leave so I can get ready for bed. I had a busy day and I am tired.”

That line doesn’t invite much counter-dialogue. They shut down their conversations and headed for the door. My son walked his fiancée home. He probably apologized on my behalf and explained it wasn’t personal — just one of his dad’s quirks. That is, unfortunately, a very accurate assessment.

Here’s what I know about myself after all these years: I’m usually a happy, snarky guy. But when the tank is empty and the façade runs out, I become a less pleasant version of myself. He is not the one you want at game night or in a room full of people who are still wide awake and full of things to say. The den is supposed to be where I go to keep him contained. Sometimes it’s just where he simmers until he needs to vent. I am responsible for all of it. I’m just not always able to steer it in the moment.

So to the people who had to deal with that side of me — I’m sorry.

If you’re scheduling time with me, mornings are good, afternoons are fine, and evenings are a gamble. After 8 p.m., you’re probably working with about 75% of my usual civility, and that’s on a calm night. Consider this your operating manual: Andy is at his best — and yes, it’s a narrow best — until about dinner time.

I love you all. I just love you more before 8 p.m.