writing

She Didn’t Want Me There

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the universe has a sense of humor.

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

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

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

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

I’m counting that as affection.

Something’s Going Around

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 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.

She Stayed Home Anyway

Friday night was supposed to be a bachelor night. My son skipped his camping trip to celebrate his fiancée’s new doctorate. My wife was supposed to be at a women’s church retreat somewhere in southeastern Oklahoma, surrounded by people who say “I’ll pray for them” and “Bless their hearts” every few minutes, and mean it. A room full of actual personalities.

She canceled. She stayed home with me.

I have spent considerable time assembling a list of plausible explanations.

The weather. Earlier this week, an EF4 tornado hit north of OKC. The retreat was a couple of hours away. Most of those women have lived here their whole lives, which means they’d have known exactly what to do. Judy would have been in better hands with them than with her husband, who has graduated from watching tornado coverage on TV to calling it “fieldwork.”

The new job. She finished her second week and told me, “If I knew it was going to be that hard, I would have asked for more money.” The graceful glide into semi-retirement she’d been planning has been postponed indefinitely. A full weekend of singing and fellowship might have felt less like rest and more like a different kind of exhausting.

The wedding. Their photographer canceled this week — a death in the family, and the memorial service landed on my son’s wedding day. The caterer they’d lined up is closing at the end of June. Judy found out about both of these things Friday morning, and before the day was out, she had a list of approximately a dozen photographers to call and filed the situation under problems I can fix. This is her natural environment. When I eavesdrop on her talking to our daughter, I hear a woman who genuinely believes she can solve things, and who is usually right about that. A retreat would have taken her off the field during crunch time.

The house. Between saxophone recitals, a doctoral defense, and family dinners, deep cleaning has been hard to come by. Our son is still living here until the wedding, which means every room is in use, and Judy hasn’t been able to close a door behind her and declare it “clean” the way she likes. Saturday presented an opportunity. I recognize this possibility.

Me. Her first comment was, “You were certainly a factor.” She said it warmly, which is the charitable interpretation, and I’m going with that. I’ll acknowledge I’ve been crankier than usual this week — by evening, I’m running on low-battery notifications, more tired and capable of the sharp word instead of the kind one. I start most mornings reasonably enough, but the day works on me. Talking less or answering in vague generalities is usually the better move. The last remaining bits of common sense do what they can.

She’s always had a heart for a project. Apparently, I still qualify.

The truth is, I don’t fully know why she stayed. My best guess is it was the wedding stuff, and that I was a small contributing factor, and that she weighed a weekend of fellowship against the specific pull of problems she could actually do something about — and the problems won.

I am the guy who takes out the trash and reminds her we need to get to the bank Saturday morning. I am the gardener who calls the perennial company to get replacement plants sent, then makes sure they’re in the ground before we can go out for dinner. Our emotional lanes are pretty well established. The kids don’t bring their big life questions to me. They bring them to Judy, who has the patience to sit with the answers longer than I do. I give responses that are either too vague or too sharp. Not nearly as helpful.

So if she tells herself she stayed home partly for me, I’m not going to argue. I know she has a full world of people who make her feel needed. If I’m somewhere in that number, I’ll take it.

Whether it is with a toilet brush or a phone call, Judy will continue her mission to save the world. Mine is just to make sure she can.

What Grandpa Did in Norman

My son-in-law had a saxophone recital this week. My future daughter-in-law is defending her doctoral dissertation. These are significant life moments, and the family is rallying around both of them with appropriate enthusiasm and support.

I was with the baby.

To be fair, Ellie’s other grandma was in town for the recital, and she graciously babysat Ellie during the day so I could have some Andy time. This left her with a clear conscience when I accepted the recital shift. All of us attended the dinner portion of the evening, which was the part I was looking forward to anyway. The pizza was good.

The recital was held at OU, which meant Ellie and I spent an hour roaming the halls of a building not designed with either of us in mind — me like a slightly confused mall Santa, her like someone who has never encountered a carpeted ramp and intends to fix that immediately.

We walked a lot. With Ellie, walking means holding both her hands while she does something between a march and a controlled fall. Her legs can’t quite keep up with the ambition, but viewed from the side, the illusion of running is convincing. She seems to enjoy it. The grandpa executing the maneuver gets winded faster than he’d like to admit, so we don’t overdo it.

One of the hockey boys had left a neon yellow golf ball in their room, and once I introduced it to Ellie, every white ball I’d ever collected on my walks became an afterthought. We found a carpeted ramp — one of those long, gentle slopes that make stairs optional — and developed a game. She’d release the ball from the top. I’d stand below and try to kick it gently back up toward her. She’d decide, with visible deliberation, whether to crawl up to meet it or scramble down after it.

At one point the ball rolled toward her from above and she spotted it over her left shoulder. Something clicked in her baby brain and she decided the correct response was to lead with her right leg, which required a small full-body flip. She didn’t intercept the ball. But she committed to the plan completely — a tiny, determined engineer working a problem she hadn’t quite solved yet.

I lost the golf ball somewhere in all of this. I ordered a six-pack of colored ones on Amazon that night.

When two college students passed by during our ramp experiments, I mentioned something about developing her eye for the putting game. They smiled the way young people smile at old men doing inexplicable things with babies. Politely. With their whole faces.

We found a bench and ate. Cheerios, and some apple-strawberry star-shaped things that dissolve before they become a choking hazard. I favored the method where the snack is secured between my lips and Ellie retrieves it with her fingers. As the session went on, her hands got progressively damper. Baby slime. Nothing toxic.

A man walking the hallway stopped and watched us for a moment. “First grandchild?” he asked. I confirmed. He nodded like he knew something. “She’s the one who’ll pick your nickname.” Then he kept walking.

I would like a nice nickname…

The motion-activated faucets in the bathroom are not designed for a man holding an infant with one hand. You do what you have to do.

When my wife texted that the recital was over, I handed Ellie off to her assembled fans and faded into the background, which is where I do my best work. By the time dinner wrapped up, we were four hours in and dangerously close to disrupting my pre-sleep routine. The pizza held up its end.

Today is the dissertation defense. I was encouraged to bring Ellie, but it only takes one wrong moment — one well-timed shriek during a committee question — to make that a memorable afternoon for the wrong reasons. She has worked too hard for that. And frankly, I’m not sure the room needs both Ellie and me in it. There may be some older professors present with limited social skills, but they’re not variables I can control.

Phase two of Grandpa Goes to Norman happens from home. Better snack inventory. Bibs within reach. No motion-activated anything. No college students watching me lose a golf ball.

And maybe, if I keep spoiling her at the current rate, she’ll give me a decent nickname.

The Nicest (and Meanest) Man She Ever Married

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I travel well.

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

I Love You More Before 8 P.M

I had a busy day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was the plan.

That was not what happened.

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

That was my moment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.