Volume 2: Episode 3

Being a husband isn’t just about being a good spouse.  No, there are many other aspects of husbandry that are crucial to success.  Housekeeping, dishwashing, handyman stuff, dog training and more.  The housekeeping thing I am notoriously bad at.  I can live in a mess and I do.  It would be helpful if I inserted a photo of my home office at this point.  It is nearly identical to my office when I was gainfully employed.  There are papers strewn everywhere.  Photographs are lying flat, scattered across a dresser because whenever I close a drawer, one or more falls over.  And yet, I choose not to move them or remove them because each is important to me.  It may not appear so to the casual viewer since they have nearly all collapsed into a heap, but never-the-less, they are important, and must be there even if they aren’t properly displayed.  Photos of my kids and grandkids and wives.  All whom I adore.

But what inspired this chapter of Husbandry is my complete failure at dog training.  My dogs are my companions.  That’s it.  We hang out together.  I have two dogs.  A big one named Max and a small one named Cyrus.  They are self-taught.  Neither my lovely wife nor myself have spent more than ten minutes training our dogs and as a result they are happy-go-lucky, do-as-they-please animals.  They can both ‘sit’ on command if they are offered a treat.  And they will both happily go into their crates when we go somewhere; again, if they are offered a treat.  But other than that, they are totally untrained.

That means that when my wife and I are gone, our dogs are crated because their behavior is less than perfect when we are out of sight.  Max is a natural hunter.  Or, more accurately forager.  He is nearly deaf at this late stage of his life, but his nose is still very skilled at locating food sources.  Butter, if left on the kitchen counter, is fair prey for this ferocious forager.  Anything resembling food, or what maybe used to be food, but is now a waste product destined for the landfill, is fair game for Max.  And Cyrus is very content to follow Max’s lead since he is too short to get to a table top or kitchen counter.  He depends on Max to drag food off the counter to the floor where the two of them can share it.  So, when we leave the house, our dogs cheerfully get into their crates because they know they will receive a treat.

As I age, it seems I spend more time in the bathroom than I used to.  I don’t know why this is true, but it is.  I can complete the Sudoku puzzle, both crossword puzzles, and study the bridge column from the morning’s paper while I am in the bathroom, which gives the dogs a significant amount of time to exhibit bad behavior.  Cyrus is content to rip up his toys and leave a fibrous mess all over the living room.  But lately, Max has developed a taste for paper.  He recently devoured a novel that was left on the hearth.  But last week he demonstrated his new found political bias by eating my ballot.  I was planning on voting for all three measures on the ballot but Max was apparently opposed to them and proceeded to try to prevent me from voting.

To get a new ballot I had to call the County Clerk’s office.  They wanted to know why I needed a new ballot.  Apparently, they aren’t very receptive to mailing out multiple ballots to citizens.  They have a rule:  one ballot per legal voter.  So, I had to explain to them that I needed a new ballot because my dog ate the original.  When the Clerk stopped laughing, she finally agreed to send me a new one.  So, too bad Max; you can’t steal my vote.

Episode 2-Attack of the Acorns

Rat.  Tat.  Rat-a-tat.  Rat-a-tat-a-tat.  Down come the acorns.  Falling 60 feet from the oaks towering over the house.  Ping!  Ping!  Ping, as the oaken pellets smash into the metal table on our deck.  With each acorn hit, the dog shakes in fear not knowing when the next volley of attacking acorns will happen.  He quivers on the floor on Virginia’s side of the bed.  Whack!  Whack!  Whack! On the roof over our bedroom the assault continues and poor Cyrus dives under the bed.  I coax him out with a trazadone embedded in peanut butter and place him gently in his bed. 

Rat.  Tat.  Rat-a-tat.  The onslaught continues.  Cyrus crawls trembling out of his bed and leaps onto the bed next to me and goes to sleep.

This is fall in Corvallis.  Acorns falling, rain moving in, temperature dropping, leaves turning color, dogs snuggling in for a long winter’s nap.

This year’s crop of acorns is bountiful.  The squirrels are busy burying acorns in the flower pots on the deck.  They are fat and happy.  They will have a vast treasure-trove of nutty nutritiousness to last them through the long, cold, wet winter of the Pacific Northwest.

Cyrus, I should mention, is a little dog.  13 pounds or so.  Part chihuahua.  Part Jack Russel.  Part who knows?  This is a dog with attitude.  Mostly a bad attitude.  Despite my years of diligent training.  He is fearless when it comes to attacking school buses, garbage trucks, any truck pulling a trailer.  He rushes to the end of his leash as if he would attack dogs 5 times his size.  Hackles raised.  His slightly too-long neck straining forward to get to the passive golden retriever across the street.  He sounds fierce.  But terrified of falling acorns to the extent he needs to be medicated.  Why is that we have dogs? 

Cover Wars

I have a wife and two dogs.  We all sleep together.  Well, in the same room.  Each dog has their own bed.  Virginia and I “sleep” in a queen-size bed with queen-size sheets and queen-size blankets.  Virginia has suffered from “hot flashes” for years.  They wake her up and she sighs and throws off the covers.  In the morning, Max, the larger of the two dogs, jumps on our bed and pins the covers wherever they were last thrown.  The pouncing of the dog wakes Virginia up and then she blames me for hogging the covers.  She calls me ratchetman and claims that every time I move, I ratchet the covers to my side of the bed.

That is a plausible explanation which I have not been able to totally refute.  There is a possibility however slight, that her hypothesis is correct; especially since she bought the Chilly-Pad.  The Chilly-Pad is a marvelous invention for those who tend to sleep “hot”.  I receive no commissions (hint, hint Chilly-Pad maker), but this is a sleep-saving and possibly marriage-saving pad that circulates water at whatever temperature you set it.  It works like a miracle and drastically reduces the late-night hot flashes.  However, it didn’t entirely solve the cover wars.  Hence, lending more credibility to Virginia’s hypothesis.

Last night, the comforter was almost entirely on my side of the bed, even so far as to be slightly accordioned on the floor beside me.  I was sleeping comfortably and soundly when all of a sudden there was a mighty tug and the comforter flew into the air and landed unceremoniously on her side of the bed.  There were comments made but I was too sleepy to pay much attention.  All I knew was that there was a mighty whoosh as the covers came flying off me and landed ever so gently and softly on her side of the bed.  I had a partial sheet covering.  The whoosh of the comforter and the unsportsman like comments that accompanied the whooshing must have woken up Max who stretched, sneezed and pounced on the bed pinning the covers so as to leave me shivering in the cold early morning air.  I think we need bigger blankets.

Hot Tub

I married a hot tub.  Wait a minute.  That doesn’t sound quite right.  When Virginia and I were dating and we decided to move in together, we had to decide whose house we were going to live in.  I, of course, preferred my house.  Two complete kitchens and a great patio for entertaining.  New roof, new plumbing, mostly new electrical, new paint, new insulation, new furnace, new water heater, new refrigerator, new woodstove.  Shoot I had spent a fortune getting the house ready for my retirement so I wouldn’t have to spend another damn dollar on maintenance.  I was set.  Things were perfect.

But, Virginia seemed to prefer her house.  Good roof, mostly new plumbing, mostly new electrical, desperately needing new paint and a new furnace and a new water heater, new insulation and a new fridge.  And her kids had strong opinions on where their mother should live.  My kids maybe preferred we move into my house because of their own comfort zone, but my daughter and her husband had not so secret desires to purchase my house from me when I moved into a nursing home.  But they would prefer that I wait for three years before I moved into gruel and drool because they didn’t have quite enough saved up to jump into a purchase agreement quite yet.

But Virginia had a hot tub.  I always wanted a hot tub.  At least since 1975 or so.  One afternoon she invited me to join her in the hot tub and I knew at that moment where we should domicile.  It was heaven.  The jets hit my arthritic back and legs in just the right spots.  It was perfect. 

In 1975 or thereabouts, when my late wife, Linda, and I lived in Moscow, Idaho, pre-children, hot tubs were just coming on to the scene.  Being a college town, some enterprising entrepreneur decided to open a hot-tub business where he rented out hot-tubs by the hour.  Linda and I decided one weekend evening that we should try it out.  There were four or five hot tubs, each with its own private dressing room and visually separated from the others.  It was a chilly fall evening and we stripped down, got into the hot tub, turned on the jets and marveled at the night sky.  It was lovely and mostly romantic.  Yet, while the various hot-tubs were visually separated, there was just a fence between them and there was clearly no sound barrier.  So when the foursome next to us arrived, the romantic nature of our quiet bliss evaporated like the steam coming off the water. 

A few weeks later I was at work when Loren, the warehouse manager, stopped by and told me that he and his wife, Mary, had just purchased a hot tub for their house in Palouse and asked if Linda and I wanted to come over for a soak and a hot toddy.  I assured him that would be wonderful.  He mentioned that swim suits were optional and, knowing my wife, I assured him we would be wearing swim suits.  It wasn’t clear whether he and Mary would be in suits or not.  But as it turned out, they respected our clothing option and we all relaxed in their hot tub.  Mary commented that wearing suits was probably a good idea, especially in the winter, because the previous week when it was 10 degrees outside, Loren, who was suitless, got out of the tub only to find that the sliding glass door into the house was locked.  Apparently, he got a little close to the door and his damp penis stuck to the glass and he couldn’t back away.  He banged on the door for a few minutes until Mary heard him, and she had to get a pitcher of warm water to free his private parts from their frigid prison.

Fortunately, our hot tub is not a clothing-optional tub.  So, if you decide to join us for a soak, bring a suit.  We take no responsibility for frigid, rigid digits.

Hi there. I hope you have been enjoying my blog about life as a semi-enlightened male. I’m taking a break from my blog for awhile. But if you like my vignettes, I have compiled my blog posts into an ebook and paperback titled Husbandry: Volume 1. Life As A Semi-enlightened male. It’s available on Amazon.

Crickets.  Male crickets chirp at about 100 decibels; about the same as a referee’s whistle.  And they chirp all night.  Right outside my bedroom window.  At 100 decibels.  All night long.  Virginia thinks they are soothing and she goes right to sleep.  For me, they are like the water torture of a dripping faucet. 

A while ago we stayed with friends in Wellington.  They generously gave us their master bedroom during our visit which had an adjoining bathroom.  The faucet in the bathroom leaked.  Drip, drip, drip all night long.  We called that to their attention thinking that they may want to get that fixed in case their water bill started to get expensive.  They explained that they don’t pay for water.  There is no utility bill for water in Wellington.  Hence there was no urgency to fix the drip, drip, drip.

It is the male crickets that are the problem.  They rub their wings together to try to attract a female.  “Hey baby, look at my wings. Come on over. Let’s party.” Typical male. Personally, I think they have it all wrong.  If I were a female cricket, I would be really annoyed at their ridiculous wing-rubbing carrying on.  And the hotter it gets, the louder those little buggers chirp.  You would think they would wear their wings out with all that rubbing.  Non stop.  Every second.  Every minute.  Every bloody hour.  All night long.  They are chirping right now as I write this.  It is cooler tonight, so they aren’t quite as loud as last night.  But last night they were loud.  They were really loud.  And it was hot outside and hot inside.  With the bedroom windows wide open to try to let some cooler air in, what came in was mostly the sound of horny male crickets. 

Many years ago my sister, Julie, rode her motorcycle to my apartment in Concord, California from Seattle, Washington.  She arrived in Concord while I was at work and decided to wait for me outside my apartment until I got off work.  While she was waiting, she heard a cricket.  She had never seen a cricket and since she had time, she decided to search for the cricket.  With her bike parked on the street, she thought she heard the cricket in some nearby bushes so she got down on her hands and knees and crawled into the bushes searching for the little chirper.  Well, one of my neighbors must have wondered what this hippy looking person was doing crawling around in the bushes outside the apartment building and called the police.  The Concord police having nothing better to do decided to check in on the person crawling around in the bushes.  The police car pulled up next to Julie’s motorcycle, called in the license plate, got out of the patrol car and asked Julie what exactly she was doing.  “Looking for crickets”, she calmly replied.  Apparently, it is not a crime to look for crickets so they encouraged her to move on and leave the crickets alone.  Julie assured them that she was just waiting for me to get home.  But she got the hint and decided to look for crickets another day.

So, crickets are just trouble.  I’m sure they don’t mean to be trouble.  Although the whole point of rubbing their wings together is to try to get lucky, so in that sense, they are, indeed, looking for a little trouble.  Chirp, chirp, chirp.

“My brand new sandals are a little stiff, and I think they’ll give me blisters.  But I love them, so I’ll probably wear them out.  With cautious feet, we move forward.  Today is the first step of our new lives.” – Inio Asano, Solanin

“…the track of the three camels and three pairs of sandals was like an arrow diminishing into infinity across the wavering sand.” – Mike Bond, The last Savanna

I bought a new pair of flip flops today.  When I was a kid, they were sometimes called thongs or zories.  I can’t imagine myself wearing a thong but I do wear flip flop sandals.  You know, the sandal like sole of a shoe with a strip of fabric that goes between your big toe and you know, that little piggie that stayed home.  I’ve worn the same pair of flip flops for years.  I bought them in Corvallis at what used to be the Famous Shoe Store near the Cannery Mall in Corvallis.  So…I don’t know maybe eight years ago?  I’ve walked hundreds of miles in them.  The ones I bought back then are Dr. Scholl’s.  The ones I bought today are something called Olukai.  Never heard of them.  They cost twice as much as Dr. Scholl’s but I guess everything is more expensive today than they were eight or so years ago. 

But the Dr. Scholl’s were comfortable to walk in.  From day one.  No, rawness between the toes.  They fit like they were a part of me.  I kept them beside my bed.  They were the first thing I put my feet into when I got out of bed in the morning.  I had a routine. Get up.  Put on my flip flops and my bathrobe and take the dog out to pee.  My neighbor across the street, Betty, had the same schedule.  She would take her dog out to pee in her bathrobe as well.  No, the dog didn’t pee on her bathrobe.  I guess I could have written that sentence a little differently.  With both dogs, peeing, we would greet each other and wish each other a good morning.  Rain, shine, snow, whatever, every morning the same thing. 

Then I’d come inside, take a shower, fix breakfast, have juice and coffee, and then take the dog for his morning poop walk.  We had different walks.  If I was in a hurry, we did the quarter mile walk.  Most often we did the half mile walk.  But almost as often we did the ¾ mile walk.  In the evening we often did the mile walk.  The morning walk was nearly always in those Dr. Scholls unless it was snowing and even then, occasionally.  Once Linda got sick, I let her sleep in, and it was just me and Cyrus.

After work, I’d change out of work clothes, and Linda and I would take Cyrus out for our evening walk.  Again in the Dr. Scholls.  During the early stages of her disease, we walked the same walk in hopes that if she went out on her own, things would be familiar and she might find her way back.  It was normally the mile walk.  Linda needed to get out and get exercise and walking together hand-in-hand through the neighborhood was very special for us.  I’m not sure the same routine was that beneficial, because Alzheimer’s kind of robbed her from any sense of direction and she would occasionally go for a walk while I was at work and get lost.  We had an awesome mail carrier and he knew Linda and knew that she could become disoriented and he would call 911 when he saw her out and about and the police would come and give her an escort home.  Instead of being upset by this, Linda was quite happy to see our local police officers who kindly would return her to our home.  I am very grateful for the kindness, tenderness and respect with which they treated her.

I still have the Dr. Scholls and they still have some life left in them, but the bottom tread is getting cracked where there is still tread left and I know at some point they are just going to fail.  So, today, I purchased new flip flops.  Seems appropriate.  New love.  New marriage.  New flip flops.  “Today is the first step of our new lives.” Who knows where these sandals might go?

“Love recognizes no barriers.” – Maya Angelou. “There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.” – Jane Austen. “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing.” – Blaise Pascal. “You can’t blame gravity for falling in love.” – Albert Einstein

There is no shortage of quotes about love.  The quotes cited above are ones that seem true for me.  So, here is what I have learned about love these past 72 years of life.  I suspect there is more that I’m not telling you, but this is what’s on my mind this morning.  First, this is a beautiful morning.  The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, the sky is clear, I just got back from a magnificent bike ride through one of our lovely parks, and there is an asshole with the noisiest damn leaf blower in the world that has been blasting away for the last two fucking hours.

After writing that last sentence, I hope my grandkids don’t read my blog.  Because I love them and I want them to properly idolize me.  Which they do.  That’s the purpose of grandparents – to provide role models for youth to emulate.  Parenting is hard.  I know of few parents who haven’t partially ruined their darling children.  Because parenting is a learn as you go kind of thing.  It is trial and error.  I don’t care how many books you read on child rearing, your kid is different and doesn’t follow the guidelines laid out in the books, so you are on your own to try to figure it out.  And, you will screw it up.  I know I did.  I think you will too.  If you want to be a perfect parent, get a dog instead of a kid.  Their love is pretty much unconditional. 

But even though you will make mistakes, your kids learn to love from you.  Give them love and they will learn to love others.  And society will be a better place.  That’s it.  The secret to life and to a better society.  More love.  God knows this world needs a lot more of it.  So, just love your kids.  They don’t have to be as smart or as good of an athlete or as talented as some other kid you know.  Parenting is not a competition.  It is not a win-lose kind of deal.  Your child is not an extension of yourself.  Let it go.  Let them be who they are.  And just love them.  That’s it.  It’s not that hard.  If you teach them to love, all the other values will follow.  Love is the center of it all.  Everything moral derives from love. 

Love is additive.  Love for one person doesn’t diminish the love for another.  It’s just more love.  The more people we love, the more love we have.  The more love we give, the more love we get.  It is really quite amazing!  And it doesn’t come with conditions.  It just is.

Love is unbounded.  It is not constrained.  It is not packaged.  It is not a commodity.  It is free flowing.  You can’t grab on to it and hang on.  It is like this morning’s summer breeze.  It is warm and all encompassing.  You can’t just keep it for yourself.  It doesn’t belong to you. 

The family (whatever you conceive that to be) ensures the continuity of love.  Parents love each other and that love is passed to their children.  Because they are loved, they have love to give.

While love has no barriers, you can feel it and see it in the faces of those around you.  It wraps you in a warm cloak and makes you feel safe. 

Love is totally without reason.  There is no science to love.  It is not a mathematical equation.  It is completely unreasonable.  You can’t “make” it happen.  The closest thing to a rational explanation of love is that “it is”.  It exists.  I know it.  You know it.  But it is ephemeral.  Not in the sense that it is fleeting.  It is not.  It is forever.  But in the sense that you can’t just grab it.  Like Einstein said, “you can’t blame gravity.”

I think that is all I have to say today. 

“What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?”- George Eliot

I haven’t written anything for at least a month.  Maybe two.  I can’t remember.  Well, that’s not quite right.  I just stopped writing in my Husbandry blog.  Instead I’m writing a very cheerful story about a dystopian world.  You know that “deep state” that Trumpians always talk about?  It’s about to become real.  The New World Order of Q is about to begin.  Get ready.  Buy my book. 

Viruses aren’t funny.  They simply are not.  How can something that is not really alive, that depends entirely on a host to survive and multiply be so freakin’ nasty.  Virginia and I got married on March 20, 2020.  And we have been domiciled together for that entire time.  Ninety eight days together.  Nonstop.  Twenty-four hours each day.  Same house.  Two thousand three hundred fifty-two straight hours.  Couldn’t possibly have been a better start to our marriage.  But it is not exactly like a honeymoon. 

Working from home may have been a novelty for the first day or so.  But long term, zooming all day is downright stressful.  Sure, you can zoom in your workout clothes which may be comfy and all, but non-stop staring at people on a screen with a dozen talking heads in boxes scattered across a monitor just isn’t normal for one thing and for another it is exhausting.  Look, I don’t know why sitting in an office chair staring at a screen is exhausting but it is. 

Exhausted, stressed out brides require a special response and a little time and space.  Sure, she can go for a walk in the neighborhood, but she still has to come back home.  Virginia likes people.  She is a people person.  She likes conversation and dialog.  She is an extrovert.  Not an extreme extrovert, but she is very comfortable with other people.  I, on the other hand, like people okay, I just prefer not to have to actually talk to them.  Well, there are exceptions.  But I’m very comfortable being just with Virginia, or just with the dogs.  Not that I’m equating my experience with Virginia and our two dogs.  There is really no comparison.  The dogs don’t talk back. 

I don’t want to brag, but Virginia and I are pandemic trend setters.  I’ve been baking sour dough bread for the last four years.  It took a while.  Maybe it took a pandemic.  But, look, everyone is making sour dough now.  You can’t hardly even find flour and yeast anymore.  And puzzles.  We had jigsaw puzzles going on day one.  And now, everyone is doing jigsaw puzzles.  For an introvert, I am setting trends right and left. 

The main problem with the pandemic is sports.  (Well, there is the whole death and disease thing.)  Or perhaps, more accurately, the lack of sports.  Today I watched the 1997 Mariner game against Cleveland or something.  It was a little hard to stay interested.  This is totally tragic.  I was never that into tennis before I fell in love with Virginia.  Now I am a fan of Roger like no one else.  Well, not quite.  Virginia’s daughter, Elizabeth, is Roger’s greatest fan.  There is no close competition.  But I miss watching the French Open and other great tennis matches. 

This, of course, brings me to beer.  Beer is designed to be drunk while watching sports.  It just is.  I don’t know why.  But beer and sports go together like wine and cheese.  I had a beer today.  While watching the Mariners.  Totally sad.  The pandemic is ruining my beer drinking.  But on a happier note, my wine consumption has gone up.  My daughter is probably wondering how that could be possible, but our glass recycling bin is a bit embarrassing.  I wish they would pick up every week.  Once a month is kind of like shouting to all the neighbors that we have a wine problem.  Which we don’t.  Period.  We just enjoy wine.  More wine means more enjoyment.  We seem to be enjoying the hell out of this pandemic. 

Virginia and I met playing bridge at the Corvallis Duplicate Bridge Club.  Most of the people who play bridge at the bridge club are, shall we say, older.  At 72, I am a youngster.  Virginia’s a babe.  Totally.  But the pandemic has disrupted our weekly bridge lives.  There is no worse scenario other than perhaps bingo at the Senior Center than bridge for spreading the virus.  So, all in-person bridge games are over.  At least until there is a dependable vaccine.  But there is bridge on-line.  I love it.  I can play bridge with other people or I can play bridge against robots.  Either way, I don’t have to engage with them.  It’s perfect!  

I hope you all are doing well.  If you have a good pandemic story, please feel free to share it with me.

During our virgin bike ride after getting new ebikes, my lovely bride said accusingly, “All men are alike”.  I feigned ignorance and innocently replied, “what do you mean?”.  Yet I knew that hitting 35 mph on Whiteside Drive was a new and exhilarating speed record for me and I felt a tinge of remorse at leaving Virginia in the dust.  But to my credit I slowed and stopped at the bottom of the hill whereupon she assaulted me with the phrase, “all men are alike.” Apparently, men my age (slightly over 70+; ok 71 almost 72) should behave a little more responsibly.  But here’s the thing.  There is not a chance in hell that I would tell Virginia that all women are alike.  The death stare would cause my instant evaporation. 

I have never been the recipient of the death stare, but I’ve seen it.  I know its power.  And it is terrifying.  A couple of months ago we were having dinner with some friends and one of the men (approximately my age) rides his bike down his narrow, windy, mountain road and all of his neighbors recognize him as the crazy man with a death wish.  At the time, I also thought he was a bit nuts.  But now, I get it.  It is the same feeling you get while skiing down a mountain slope that maybe is just too steep for your ability and you are flying down the hill at the absolute edge of your skillset; almost out of control but not quite.  And so, Virginia may possibly have been remembering the conversation at that dinner when she announced that all men are alike. 

Since she is a biologist of some renown, it got me to thinking about the biological differences between men and women.  I don’t mean the anatomical differences but the behavior differences.  Would I be a chauvinist if I suggested there may be inherent behavioral differences?  Or does science back me up?  Well, son-of-a-gun, science does back me up.  There are multiple studies showing the differences in a male’s brain compared to a female’s brain and also in terms of neurological function.  I could cite several sources from Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania but that would make this anecdote more credible than it deserves.  Apparently, Virginia is right.  All men are alike.  Well, maybe not alike in all ways.  But, my gentlemen friends, we have definite similarities in brain function.  And in some ways, let me just say, it is quite amazing that our species has survived so long.