Travel

I May Have Been Too Excited About This

As I’ve described before, the hot tub was not supposed to become my weekly chemical experiment. My years of playing chemist with our pool in Texas were supposed to give me substantial credit on any outdoor full water immersion projects for a number of years. When the hot tub arrived, I encouraged my wife to use the chemicals as directed. The problem was that the chemicals were dropped off with the hot tub, while any meaningful support apparently took a different delivery truck. The hot tub slowly spiraled downward until we decided a random lagoon would probably be more attractive. Judy eventually transferred some of her many wife credits into one of my individual virtual bank accounts, and I became responsible for water quality. I may not have excelled, but things have been improving.

With hockey boys and family using the hot tub, the chemistry is no longer my biggest concern. The bigger problem has been opening and closing the lid and, more specifically, clipping and unclipping all the latches. Early on, my daughter failed to unhook one of the back corner clips, and it snapped right off. Disappointing, but not worth making a fuss over. I figured I would probably be responsible for breaking one eventually, too.

That day was Tuesday.

After we had gone through a few hockey boys who had no interest in clipping all of the available clips on the hot tub lid, our newest boy, with my knowledge and encouragement, was determined to do a complete job. That included clipping the last back clip, which had rarely been used during the previous year. The only time we really needed it was last winter, when the wind was blowing hard enough that we needed the back clip secured to keep the back of the lid from flipping over the front and turning our hot tub into a very expensive outdoor cooling device.

Tuesday, while I was cycling through the series of chemicals necessary to maintain a happy hot tub, I popped that last back clip. At first I thought, “Why is it so hard to flip the lid off?” Then came the pop, and I knew the clip had given up the good fight.

When my daughter popped a clip, I thought, “Oh, darn.” When I do it, it needs to be fixed immediately so I’m not reminded of my stupidity every time I look at the hot tub.

The problem was that the existing clip was on a strap sewn directly onto the cover. Replacing it the traditional way would mean cutting the strap that was sewn into the cover or figuring out some other solution. I was a big fan of the “some other solution” option. This led me to a video featuring a guy with an English accent replacing the same type of clip without cutting the strap. I don’t know why an English accent makes a repair seem more trustworthy, but I was willing to accept the evidence.

The replacement clip has a small opening in an otherwise solid piece that allows the existing strap to slide into place without cutting it. The video sent me to an eBay listing, but after some significant trepidation, I eventually found what appeared to be the same thing on Amazon.

This is the important part if you have the same problem: look for replacement male clips that have slots for attaching the strap without cutting it. (see image below) That allows you to remove the broken clip and install the replacement without cutting or sewing the existing strap. Even better, the male portion of the replacement clip fit into the existing female portion already attached to the cover.

That meant I didn’t have to replace the entire latch assembly. I just had to replace the broken male clip.

And it worked.

In fact, it worked so well that I decided to fix the two clips that were already broken. Then, apparently overcome by the thrill of my own success, I decided to cut one of the perfectly good clips and replace it, too.

I really can’t explain this.

I was so drunk with success that I broke another thing just so I could fix it again. At some point, I need to develop hobbies that don’t involve destroying things that were working perfectly well five minutes earlier.

Still, there was something satisfying about solving the problem myself. Usually, Judy is the one who finds the part, orders it with complete confidence, and eventually fixes the recliner or whatever other household problem I have probably helped create. I’m perfectly happy to watch her do this because she has a much better track record.

This time, though, I found the solution, ordered the part, and actually fixed the problem. I may not be ready to become the primary “Maybe Amazon has a kit to fix that” shopper in the family, but I’m willing to volunteer as the more enthusiastic second-stringer.

I take disappointment pretty hard, especially when the disappointment is something I created myself. But there’s something pretty satisfying about finding the right solution, making the repair, and watching something that was broken work again.

Even if you did have to break one more thing to celebrate.

The clip on the left is the replacement clip. The clip on the right is the clip that came with the hot tub cover. (I cut the plastic and removed it from the strap to properly contrast the two pieces.) The top gap in the clip on the left is how the clips can be replaced without cutting the sewn strap. The part name is: “4 Sets Spa Hot Tub Cover Clips Latch Replacement Kit”.

This is the Amazon link to a set of 4 of the clips as shown on the left: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BM5DLT2B?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

Two More Players

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

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

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

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

I did one really dumb thing.

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

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

You’re welcome.

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

Obviously, the solution was free rocks.

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

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

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

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

We eventually ate the custard.

We both had seconds.

It was a pretty normal evening.

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

And then they were here.

Two healthy baby girls.

Our daughter didn’t need a C-section.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two more players.

I can’t wait to meet them.

Something Was Clearly Going On

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The Final Flight of the Summer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 Men’s Invitational

Of the five stops on our Golden Circle excursion in Iceland, the Secret Lagoon ranked dead last on my excitement meter. It wasn’t because I dislike warm water. I love warm water. We have a hot tub at home. I’m practically a warm-water connoisseur. No, my hesitation had everything to do with the pregame festivities. Somewhere in Iceland, someone decided the proper way to relax was to strip down in a communal changing room, squeeze my aggressively average middle-aged body into a swimsuit in front of complete strangers, take a mandatory shower while carefully avoiding accidental eye contact, and then act as though this was perfectly normal human behavior. Judy, ever the optimist, smiled and said, “It’ll be fun!” She has said those three words before. They rarely precede something I would have voluntarily signed up for.

So, in the interest of preserving marital harmony, I followed directions, survived the changing room without creating an international incident, and joined Judy in the thermal pool. It was beautiful. Steam drifted across the water while volcanic rock framed the lagoon. We slowly wandered around looking for the warmest spot like two human rotisserie chickens. It was peaceful. Relaxing. Picturesque. And after about fifteen minutes, I was bored out of my mind.

Sharing a hot tub with my wife is enjoyable. Sharing a giant natural hot tub with my wife and three busloads of strangers is…different. There are only so many laps you can make around warm water before your brain starts looking for a side quest.

That’s when I discovered the cold pool.

Now, Judy insisted on testing the water first. Rookie mistake. If you’re going to make a bad decision, don’t let facts interfere. Just commit. She dipped a foot in, immediately reconsidered every flight that had brought her to Iceland, and stepped back. I climbed in, lowered myself into the water, and began repeating, “Oh my gosh…oh my gosh…OH MY GOSH,” with all the confidence of a man who was suddenly questioning whether circulation was really all that important.

I managed to sit down. Judy’s body held an emergency board meeting and unanimously voted against the proposal. She was back in the thermal pool before I had finished convincing myself that the pain was temporary.

Not far behind her, I returned to the warm water where my body slowly remembered how nerves were supposed to function. That’s when another man from our excursion wandered over to the cold pool with his son. I asked if I could join them because apparently nothing builds lifelong friendships faster than voluntarily lowering your core body temperature together. We introduced ourselves, talked about our excursion, and eventually discovered he was from Oslo.

Of course he was.

I couldn’t accidentally be freezing next to an accountant from Nebraska. No, I had to find a Norwegian. A real Scandinavian. A man whose ancestors probably considered frozen lakes to be recreational facilities.

Since we had visited Oslo a few days earlier, we talked about the palace and the King’s Guard. When I mentioned taking pictures with the guards, he casually informed me that he had once been one of them.

Naturally.

So now, without either of us saying a word, my brain quietly transformed this conversation into an international competition.

The amazing part was that talking distracted both of us from the cold. The water didn’t get warmer. My body wasn’t any happier. But conversation somehow convinced my brain to stop sending constant updates about my rapidly disappearing body heat. His son wisely climbed out first. Then, after another minute or so, my Norwegian friend stood up and climbed out.

I waited.

One Mississippi…two Mississippi…then I climbed out.

Was he competing with me?

Absolutely not.

Did he know there was a contest?

Not even a little.

Did I still consider it one of my greatest athletic accomplishments?

Without question.

I have no trophy. Iceland did not present me with a certificate. There is no internationally recognized governing body for “Middle-Aged Men Sitting in Cold Water Slightly Longer Than Necessary.” But somewhere in my memory is the undeniable fact that I remained in a freezing Icelandic pool a few seconds longer than a Norwegian, and nobody can ever take that away from me.

The return to the thermal pool was glorious. My body didn’t simply warm up; it rebooted. Every nerve ending woke up one painful pinprick at a time until I felt like someone had microwaved me back to life. It was oddly satisfying, which explains why I kept repeating the process over and over during the next hour.

That’s when I noticed something.

The women floated peacefully through the lagoon, chatting, relaxing, and enjoying the scenery exactly as the Secret Lagoon was intended.

The men wandered over to the cold pool.

One by one.

They all wore the same expression—the look every guy gets right before making a questionable decision simply because another guy already has.

Some dipped a toe and immediately abandoned the mission. Others managed to sit down before their nervous systems filed formal complaints. A couple. Three brothers. Several confident-looking men who discovered confidence and body temperature are only loosely connected. Everyone of them climbed out before I did.

Somewhere during that hour, the Secret Lagoon quietly became the Men’s Invitational Cold Water Championships. There were no officials, no spectators, and certainly no prizes. Just a handful of middle-aged guys unknowingly competing in an event none of us had discussed.

The rules were simple.

Last man shivering wins.

Looking back, I don’t think I proved I was particularly tough. If anything, I proved something I’ve suspected about men for years. Give us a perfectly relaxing experience, and we’ll invent a competition. Give us a beautiful Icelandic lagoon, and we’ll ignore ninety-five percent of it because there’s a tiny freezing pool over in the corner daring someone to do something stupid.

Judy left relaxed.

I left convinced I had defeated Norway.

Honestly, we both had a wonderful afternoon.

I’m just fairly certain only one of us enjoyed the lagoon the way it was originally intended.

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.