Travel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Babysitting, Humidity, and a Balanced Ledger

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

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

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

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

But my wife does what she does.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pre‑Trip Logistics and My Fragile Sense of Competence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 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 Giraffe Named Ellie

I arrived at my daughter’s house at 8:30 with the “Ellie-approved” stroller and no ambiguity about whether I wanted to be there. The night before, I’d said, “Are we going to see Ellie tomorrow?” She said, “Do you want to go to the zoo?” As if Ellie’s presence made the venue negotiable.

She drove. She recently quit her job to become “Mom of One with a 2 girl upgrade before October arrives,” and OKC morning highways are somehow the least chaotic part of her current life. I had no objection. I rarely fight someone else doing the driving — and when she stays at the speed limit, the car tracking app on my phone briefly believes I’m a responsible adult. When my wife drives, that same app apparently concludes I’ve been drag racing on the interstate.

At the gate, my daughter bought the membership: two adults and as many kids under 3 as you can account for at any given moment. The zoo seemed optimistic about that number.

I should be upfront about something. I’m not a zoo person.

I understand what zoos do. Children see animals, become fascinated with the natural world, and some of them eventually become veterinarians. I applaud all of that from a comfortable distance. I grew up near the Columbus Zoo, which is a good one. I don’t remember how many times I went as a child, and I think that tells you something.

What semi-retirement gives you, though, is availability — and decent enough eyesight to qualify as a tag-team partner for a daughter willing to tolerate your company. I’ve done this before. I’ve taken children to zoos before. I’ve come close to accidentally enrolling a son in the chimpanzee exhibit on a Mother’s Day in the early 2000s, and I only exaggerate that story a little.

My approach to animals is efficient. I look at a wildebeest, think something like, “That is a genuinely unfortunate head,” and move on. God apparently designed these creatures with total confidence. My wife and I cannot pick a paint color for a hallway without four trips to the hardware store, so the idea of just deciding to make a wildebeest is beyond me.

One thing the OKC Zoo has over the Columbus Zoo: at Columbus, the exhibits have large sweeping names like “North America.” At this zoo, they have a section called “Oklahoma,” which appears to contain enough variety to cover most of the continent. Having lived here awhile, I’ve stopped being surprised by that.

Ellie’s highlights were specific and, if you blinked, easy to miss.

The Cheerios in her stroller cup holders were the main event. She’d glance at passing animals, then return to the serious work of gumming the oat circles into paste. The animals were ambient. The Cheerios were the feature.

The flamingos got real attention — they were close to the path and practically fluorescent, and her eyes tracked them for a genuine stretch. For reference, thirty seconds of eye contact from a one-year-old is the equivalent of a standing ovation.

The dinosaur at the entrance barely registered on the way in. On the way out, she leaned back against my chest, looked straight up at the brontosaurus (I think), and smiled at him. I don’t know what she thought it was. The dinosaur didn’t smile back, but she held up her end of the exchange.

In my world, large reptiles are always “him.” I know this isn’t scientifically airtight, but I’ve been consistent about it for decades, and I’m not changing now.

The whole trip ran about three hours. My daughter ran the operation; I pushed the stroller and kept the headcount accurate, both of which I managed.

One of the giraffes is named Ellie. I’d go back just to point at her and say, “Look, there’s the other one.”

Our Ellie fell asleep before we made it out of the parking lot. When babysitting, she can convince me sleep is a hobby she hasn’t fully committed to yet — she’ll run the living room like she’s training for something and still have energy when I don’t. But three hours of flamingos and Cheerios and stroller traffic, and she was gone before I finished a sentence.

That’s why we took our own kids to the zoo, too. It’s not something you say out loud at the time, but everyone knows it. The animals are fine. The nap is the whole point.

The Scouting Report

My wife plans our vacations. I show up. She books the excursions, maps the sea days, and treats the whole operation like a project with deliverables. I am the deliverable. So when she said we needed to scout Bricktown Brewery before Thursday’s call with the event coordinator, I understood my assignment.

Getting out the door first required a small act of theater. Our daughter was coming to pick up Ellie, but she had to walk the dog first. To be ready the moment she arrived, I had to get myself changed, which meant deploying every distraction technique available to a grandfather who did not want to be late. No closets were involved. Barely.

Downtown OKC at 5:00 is not gridlock, but it’s a reminder the city has grown. We made it in about 25 minutes from the south side, including the obligatory backup at our subdivision. On the drive, I thought about what my other son said when he was up for the wedding shower: “Oklahoma is like a scaled-down Texas.” I get it. Texas is crowded and very sure of itself, and I miss parts of it. Not that part.

Parking across the street ran nearly $17 for two hours. Convenient, noted, never recommending it to family members who drove 12 hours and already think Oklahoma is a flyover state.

The windows of the brewery were covered in Thunder graphics. OKC up 1-0 on the Lakers, the city doing its collective thing. Depending how the series goes, there might even be a home game that weekend—but even without that, late May in Oklahoma is always worth celebrating for the simple fact that tornado season is almost over.

Inside, we were seated immediately. We asked about specials. Our waiter had just received a text that apparently required his full attention, so we got something between an answer and a guess. We ordered chicken sandwiches anyway—hers with slaw, mine Nashville hot—and moved on.

While waiting on our food, my wife went upstairs to inspect the event space. Her checklist: could 8-9 tables fit comfortably, and would there be a microphone for announcements? The microphone question matters. She’s the polished one. If you want clean and professional, you hand it to her. If you want a slip of the tongue and at least one rabbit trail the audience has to wade through, you hand it to me. I’ll be involved if necessary. She knows this about me.

She came back down with photos. Plenty of room. Then came the menu conversation—proteins, vegetarian options for about 10% of the crowd, which menu pages to photograph before the call. She took pictures of everything. I suggested tenders. She didn’t reject the idea.

We paid with a gift card from one of our hockey boys. I can’t remember if it was after we helped him through totaling his car or after Judy wrote his college recommendation letter—probably the letter. Her recommendations are tight and punchy. Mine tend to wander into the fourth paragraph before making the point, which is why she writes them and I don’t.

On the way out, she made her notes for Thursday’s call. Cheaper parking options. Menu decisions. Headcount confirmed. As we drove home, we noticed how close the river walk was to the parking lot—a possible quiet end to the night before the wedding, weather and family chaos permitting.

Somewhere under Mother’s Day and our son’s birthday, our anniversary will pass this weekend without much ceremony. But tonight we had a meal together in a city we’ve grown to love, watching Judy do the thing she does—prepared, thorough, thinking three steps ahead—and I thought about how all that early penny-pinching gave us this. A good town. Kids nearby. A son getting married.

Thirty-five years. I genuinely don’t know how we got here, and I’m not entirely sure why she stayed. She says it isn’t pity. I’m going with sense of humor. It’s the only explanation that holds up.

Humbled at the Exit

This morning started as a routine errand run. Somewhere between the hot tub and Sam’s Club, it turned into a humbling I didn’t see coming.

Four weeks of “scoop of this, scoop of that” Sunday night chemistry had produced a layer of something on the water that my wife found less than inviting. Fair. My self-appointed title of Hot Tub Chemist Extraordinaire was officially under review, so the first stop was Leslie’s for a free water test—which I will keep using indefinitely while buying all my chemicals online at half the price. I’m aware of the irony. I do like the woman who tells me I’ve been neglectful, and those few minutes of conversation aren’t nothing when your social calendar is on the quieter side.

Dry acid, some chlorine. Reputation partially restored.

Sam’s next, because the fridge needed actual food. My wife hosted a terrific wedding shower for our son’s fiancée, and the leftover situation had become a caloric hazard. My body was asking for roasted vegetables. Gas was $3.699, which felt like a small win. I loaded up on Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, Gatorade, and a case of water—placed carefully on the bottom of the cart by a man who had no idea what was coming.

I love the Sam’s scan-and-go app. There’s something satisfying about walking past the checkout lanes knowing you’ve already handled it. I scanned everything, flipped items for barcodes, did my due diligence. Before paying, the app asked me to count my items. I counted twice. Got 17, then 16. The app said 16. I had multiple quantities of a couple things, so I figured that explained the gap and moved on without a tiebreaker count.

The door checker didn’t wave me through like usual. She scanned the water sitting on the bottom of my cart.

“You didn’t pay for this.”

Not a question.

She moved toward the Gatorade next—I held my breath—but that one was on the receipt. Instead of escorting me to what I can only imagine is a folding chair near customer service where you sit and think about your choices, she added the water to my account on the spot. Civilized. Quiet. More dignity than I’d earned.

Next time I’ll probably just use the regular checkout. Or bring my daughter, who has a reliable way of keeping my gray-matter moments from becoming public events.

I always say I’m glad when God keeps me humble. Even more glad when it only costs me my pride—a lot cheaper than a speeding ticket.

The Thermostat Chronicles

I found the paperwork for our smart thermostats a couple weeks ago, stuffed in one of those builder-special drawers that exists purely to hold things you’ll ignore for months. I let it sit there while the hockey boys finished their exodus—gave it roughly the same priority as calling the dentist or figuring out what that dashboard light means.

Yesterday I finally set them up. Took about ten minutes.

The downstairs thermostat runs on a theology, not a formula. Cool to 68 at night, off in the morning, coast on captured coolness until we hit 74, then grant ourselves a brief mercy breeze. My wife runs warm. She’s rejected blankets as a concept by 3am and is down to a sheet, while I’m doing a careful negotiation with my own fluctuating temps. Nobody is fully comfortable. We’ve made peace with this.

The hockey boys upstairs had their own thermostat—which is a sentence that should concern any adult paying utilities. Most days they were actually responsible about it. I’d conduct routine inspections anyway, like a very underpaid HVAC auditor looking for an offender. Most days I’d find it off and feel mildly ridiculous. The days I found it cranked below my downstairs temperature, I shut it off and sent it to thermostat jail. Once my eyes shifted into critical mode, I noticed just how messy a room can be and still qualify as technically livable. Apparently, 64 degrees and scattered laundry is peak comfort for teenage boys.

One of them stayed home sick once and ran the AC all day through peak afternoon heat. I stayed downstairs trying to remember I was their on-site parent. No app, no way to intervene—just a man staring at his computer, listening to the AC run in a room he wasn’t sitting in. Next season, boys. Watch out.

Texas was a different category of problem entirely.

Multiple thermostats, multiple HVAC systems—which sounds luxurious until you learn that the upstairs unit was hilariously undersized for several hockey boys and all the heat their lives generated. Setting the thermostat to 60 doesn’t make the AC work harder. It just makes you feel more desperate. The unit cooled at one speed, like a tired old man doing his best and being yelled at anyway. I bought two window units for the upstairs bedrooms. In a closed room they worked great—small icy caves of relief. In the bonus room over the garage, that cold air just got eaten alive.

More than once I found myself promising “the AC guy is coming tomorrow” like some kind of sweaty HVAC prophet.

Then there were the buckets. Window units pull a shocking amount of moisture out of Texas air. That moisture goes in a five-gallon bucket. The bucket fills once, sometimes twice a day. If it’s more than halfway full at bedtime, you dump it—unless you’re a teenage boy, in which case the bucket simply doesn’t exist for you as a concept. Water eventually got into a cabinet. When we sold the house I disclosed the general situation. I did not give the buyers a TED talk on what awaits anyone who tries to keep that upstairs cool. Some things the next owner just has to discover at 2am on their own.

I am still the thermostat guy. This is not changing.

New boys come in the fall. They’ll crank the AC and sleep under twelve blankets like they’re filming a winter survival documentary, and I’ll watch from the couch on my phone app—quietly, in stealth mode, without tromping upstairs to prove a point. I feel less like a spy when I don’t have to stand up.

They brought chaos and laundry and Chipotle bags and a house that felt like something was happening in it. When they leave it gets quiet in a way that takes some adjusting to.

I’ll take the higher electric bills over a quiet house every time.

The Cost of Rent

When our son temporarily moved back into our spare bedroom before his wedding, I made the standard dad joke about charging rent. The kind that isn’t really a joke.

He countered with lattes and espressos. Which sounded generous until I did the math and realized we’d need to consume coffee at levels typically reserved for medical residents and long-haul truckers to break even.

So he sweetened the deal with two tickets to a Thunder playoff game.

As a landlord, I found this reasonable.

There was one small wrinkle. The game fell on the same weekend he’d committed to being in a friend’s wedding. Poor planning, really — if you’re going to have friends, they should at least consult the NBA schedule. Through some workplace point system I don’t fully understand — something between airline miles and a Vegas loyalty program — he’d been saving up for exactly this kind of game. Once he committed to giving us the tickets, he dumped every point into the opening home playoff game. His coworkers, apparently uninterested in burning points on a boring first-round matchup, offered no resistance.

He did, for the record, manage to score tickets to Wednesday’s game. Nobody else wanted those either. First-round games are very boring.

Getting the tickets transferred to my phone was described as seamless. This is a word technology people use when they are being optimistic. Eventually, after some button pressing and what I can only assume was divine intervention, they appeared. Victory.

April 19th is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, which means downtown sees street closures and the city feels different. There’s the upcoming Art Festival setup, the Marathon connections, and the memorial events marking 31 years. It added a layer of reflection to what was otherwise a “let’s not get a parking ticket” mission.

We parked on the west side of Jeff’s old apartment building — his recommendation — which translated loosely to: park far enough away to question your choices, but save ten dollars. The walk took us past art show booths and through the Botanical Garden, and we eventually merged into the crowd moving toward the arena with the slow determination of migrating animals. We crossed the final street in police-approved mob fashion and successfully ignored a street preacher, hoping he’s able to plant some seeds.

My wife walked through the entrance carrying a Sonic drink like a seasoned contrabandist. No one stopped her. Whether this was arena policy or a lapse in attention, I have chosen not to investigate.

Every seat had a t-shirt and a clapper noisemaker. The shirts were extra-large, which felt simultaneously optimistic and judgmental. We were fine with extra-large.

Section 114 put us close enough to see everything without the monitors, which I appreciated. My varicose veins don’t prevent walking, but standing in place for extended periods is another matter entirely. When the crowd rose, and we did not, I used the monitors to catch whatever I was apparently missing by remaining seated like a reasonable person.

Blessing Offor sang the national anthem and performed at halftime. He wore sunglasses indoors, and I briefly wondered if he was trying to channel Stevie Wonder. Turns out, he actually has a story worth knowing. That one’s on me.

The camera work featured a lot of hip-level shots of dancers and performers and whoever else was on the floor. I’m told this is a stylistic choice. It is also, apparently, a young person’s broadcast world, and I’m just living in it.

The Thunder started slow, then remembered they were defending champions. By the third quarter, the outcome was about as uncertain as a Hallmark movie, and I found my attention drifting. At one point, I thought: if I were home watching this, I’d already be doing something else.

Final score: 119-84. Great seats, great outcome, questionable engagement on my part.

During the third quarter, the season-ticket holder next to Judy mentioned that the six seats in front of us belonged to out-of-town fans who never showed. We waited until the result was genuinely not in doubt, then quietly liberated two extra shirts — one for Jeff, one for his fiancée. Consider it a finder’s fee.

We left two minutes early. This is our standard “outcome is clear” protocol, and it almost never actually helps. We still ended up shuffling fifteen minutes behind a crowd moving at the speed of thoughtful contemplation.

I usually operate in about five walking gears. Judy has two, maybe three on a good day. Normally, I’d be quietly restless about the pace. But somewhere between the arena and the parking lot, it occurred to me that my best friend was right there, enjoying a beautiful Sunday afternoon with a man who complains about camera angles and caffeine-to-rent ratios.

When she’s happy to be there, the least I can do is find a higher gear of gratitude. Dial back the sarcasm. Pay attention to the win that’s actually happening.

More than three decades in, and she still wants to spend a Sunday afternoon with me. The least I can do is show up for it.

Oklahoma Hockey (and Other Natural Disasters)

Oklahoma weather forecasters don’t give you a report — they give you a threat assessment. A full week out. Not “bring an umbrella.” More like “settle your affairs and consider your roof a temporary situation.” We’re talking atmospheric tantrums that halt air travel, reroute rivers, and occasionally redecorate entire zip codes. I’ve lived in the South long enough that Ohio has some catching up to do, but Oklahoma still plays in its own division — the one where the meteorologists have agents.

Friday night was billet appreciation night at the Warriors game. It was exactly that. It just came with an unscheduled intermission.

The evening started with a charcuterie spread and adult beverages — a social event, not a meal, which is a distinction that matters when you’re trying to justify the brie. Judy and I were mostly there to spend time with the mother of our age-out boys. The year a player turns 21 is the end of his junior hockey career — and the end of his time with whatever family took him in. Crowds aren’t really my preferred operating environment, and I didn’t know most of the people there, which meant I got to perfect my “engaged bystander” expression for the better part of an hour.

The Warriors came out and went up 2-0. As the last team to squeeze into the postseason, this was not how anyone expected them to play. The backup goalie was in net. Nobody cared. The lead was everything.

Between the first and second periods, all the billet families walked out onto the ice. The boys skated over to whoever feeds them and does their laundry, a photographer snapped pictures, and each family received a personalized engraving — “Gruenbaum” was the name etched into our Warriors billet family keepsake. Genuinely lovely gesture. Also, not the reason anyone is doing this. Nobody stands in their guest room — the one now permanently scented with hockey equipment and teenage ambition — and thinks, you know what would make this worth it? A tasteful engraving. The season tickets and monthly stipend do the actual persuading. The engraving is the cherry on top of the “I have a teenager living in my guest room” sundae. A very nice cherry. But still.

The second period had good hockey. Our boys were competing.

Somewhere between the second and third periods, while the crowd watched chuck-a-puck, my phone buzzed. Tornado warning. My first instinct was purely structural: we’re in a large, well-constructed building, they’ll just keep playing. This is what years of Oklahoma meteorology does to a person — they scream wolf so enthusiastically, so consistently, that eventually you stop flinching and start quietly rooting for the wolf just to see how it plays out.

Then our son called. He’d forgotten we were at the game, but since he was near our house, he wanted to use our storm shelter. Permission granted. Good kid. Efficient crisis management.

The arena announcer — who normally delivers commentary at a frequency only retrievers can decode — was suddenly, remarkably, comprehensible. “Leave your seats now and make your way under the bleachers. This is not a test.” The crowd moved efficiently, calmly, without drama. In Oklahoma, a tornado warning is less an emergency and more a scheduling inconvenience.

Judy had more urgency than most. She was ahead of me almost immediately, and by the time we reached the concourse I’d lost her in the crowd. I checked the rooms along the hallway under the bleachers, doing a quick inventory of the available Judys, which came up short.

Under the bleachers, the true Oklahoma spirit revealed itself. Someone nearby announced, loud enough for several people to hear: “I hope the tornado doesn’t mess up my Amazon delivery.”

Cell signal was rough, so anyone who had it became an involuntary broadcaster — announcing radar updates to whoever was standing close enough to hear. The murmuring started: How long would they keep us down here? Would they wait out the full watch? Would the game even finish? Then a guy who had clearly aced every weather-related exam Oklahoma had ever administered worked his way through the crowd and told everyone to head back to their seats. No report on what happened to the west. No update on what occurred to the east. The information was: go sit down.

The Warriors finished the night with a W. The tornado moved on to inconvenience someone else. And somewhere nearby, a Ring camera confirmed that a package survived the whole ordeal without incident.