Kakahead

Well it’s that time of year again. “Benefits Enrollment,” they call it in corporate speak. Our annual benefits meeting informed us all that the pension plan is being phased out; and medical benefits will cost us more. We haven’t had a raise in 4 years and that probably won’t change. However, the Upper Crust seems to make sure their pockets are nicely lined with 6-figure bonuses. This is not unique to the company I work for, it’s become common all over the corporate world.

Small wonder there are world wide “Occupy” demonstrations!

Lots of folks are all buzzing about and grimacing from the changes. Nobody loves change, including me. However, I’m getting a little better at keeping the negative fire storms out of my head. Being annoyed is one thing; but my magnifying mind can, if let loose, really run with a grudge that ends up being harmful to me.

I’ve been thinking out loud to groups of friends about all this work stuff. They are very good at reminding me to stay grateful and just try to do the next right thing. Bless them… they’re probably getting a bit weary of my rants when I start spouting off about all the injustice at work and elsewhere. They’ve heard it before, and before that, and before that. Yet, they seem to love me anyway! Not sure how anyone else works it all out; but I need to vent to someone who understands when I’m hurting inside. The way it works for me is to vent until I get tired of hearing it myself. Fortunately, I’ve become aware that if I allow anger and resentment to fester in my heart, I’m basically working on poisoning myself. Being livid about things over which I have no control is about as effective as eating a poison pill and expecting someone else to die.

I do have choices here of course. I could quit my job. Boy would that show them or what?? Umm, no it wouldn’t. Nothing would change except my ability to pay bills and buy food. So what’s the alternative? Find another job! Well, hey, not much out there that pays very well. OK smartypants (I’m thinking out loud in writing here), now what do you do?

I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do!! I’m gonna continue to work at the job and try to be happy! So there!! I’m going to try to avoid dipping into the poison pot with my peers when they start sniping about corporate dysfunction. After all, the only thing I have any control over is how I react to all these “wonderful” things that are changing at my workplace.

When my serenity alarm goes off, I need to remind myself to run through my “gratitude list.” I am healthy and I have the love of a beautiful woman. She even let me marry her! We have cars that work, a nice home, plenty to eat. We have loving relationships with our offspring, relatives and friends. Life really is good at our house.

No poison for me thanks. I need to make gratitude my attitude. Sometimes it takes a bit of work to pull it off, but life is much more peaceful when I succeed.

Can you tell I’m practicing?

I can’t help but think of Louie Armstrong’s “Wonderful World” when I need an attitude adjustment. Here’s one of his recordings with a very nice photo collage someone put together for youtube.

Although summer is my favorite time of year, autumn rates a very close second when I consider what’s happening in the garden.  Most of the warm weather crops have been frosted to death now; so the remaining harvest is, in large part, greens. 

My beautiful girlfriend and I got hooked on greens as a result of living in Dixie while I was in the Air Force.  Southerners do love their greens:  collards, turnip greens, beet greens, mustard greens…   We tried all of them and were smitten pretty much instantly.  Greens of one variety or another have been a staple in our garden ever since. They are easy to grow and packed with nutrition.  And of course, while we are eating our greens, we sing the Greens Eating Song: 

Greens!!  Greens!! They’re good for your heart!!

The more you eat ‘em the more you’re smart!!

The more you’re smart, the better you feel,

So eat  your greens with every meal!!

(And eat clam chowder to make them louder!!)

Well maybe that’s not how the song goes…

Anyway, greens are one of the most versatile vegetables for the simple fact that you can eat them just as soon as they start growing; and continue to harvest right up through winter.  I garden intensively; meaning I grow a lot of food in a small space.  I often purposely sow seeds for collards or kale a bit too thickly and thin them out as they germinate.  The remaining seedlings are then allowed to grow a bit more, and I continue to harvest by thinning as the plants grow.  The sprouts and / or young plants are a wonderful addition to any almost any dish, salad and stir-fry to name just two.   Just snip off the roots, rinse a bit, and toss them into whatever you like.  I’ve even been known to use them as a substitute for lettuce on a sandwich. 

Eventually my beds of greens will be thinned so there’s about a foot between plants.  Many of them will thrive throughout the entire gardening season.   I often plant root crops in the beds with the greens.   Here’s an example, click the image for a better view.

Swiss chard and beets

Again, this allows me to grow more food in a smaller space.   The combination of leafy vegetables and root crops keeps weeds at bay while the vegetables thrive.  Beds are also a good habitat for toads, spiders, and other beneficial creatures who keep pest insect damage to a minimum.

Swiss chard tastes very similar to spinach. However, spinach will “bolt” and go to seed in the heat of summer while chard will produce right up to winter. It’s frost hardy, but after the temp falls below 20 degrees F for awhile it will die.  Therefore, the Swiss chard has to be completely harvested before the weather stays bitter cold.  Kale and collards, though, will survive the entire winter.  These two are among our favorites.  They’re good, hearty fare at the table either by themselves or mixed up in other dishes.  The flavor is pretty strong in summer but mellows nicely when the cool weather comes.  And besides, aren’t they just plain pretty?  Again, click on the pictures for a larger view.

Beautiful Kale

We Do Love Our Collards

On more than one occasion I’ve picked collards or kale, and also kohlrabi out of the snow.  Although they  appear to be dead in the garden they’re still green.  When brought inside the effectiveness of their natural antifreeze shows up as they magically “come to life.”  A good snow cover is welcome in the kale and collard beds, because snow protects their leaves from getting wind burn during the cold winter weather. 

However, I’ve learned the hard way that it’s a good idea to mark where the beds are with some long sticks.  It’s no fun shoveling snow around looking for your greens!

Now HERE’S a guy who always loved his greens…

Another great creative soul has left our midst and journeyed into the Great Beyond.  As most everyone knows, Steve Jobs finally succumbed to cancer after a brilliant worldly career. His creative drive sparked Apple Computers and Pixar, but I’m not going to be so bold as to profess I can tell even a fraction of his story. 

October, November, and December are months that I for one can’t help but equate with loss.  Our good friend Lew left this world 3 years ago this month.  Goodness how time flies, yet drags along.  Last night, HBO broadcast the first part of a new film about George Harrison, who left in November of 2001.  And then of course John Lennon was literally shot into heaven in December of 1980.  I mention these not to glorify any of them; but one cannot help but reflect when someone you love deeply and / or has affected your life passes on.

This is supposed to be an installment of “Happy Friday!!!,” so I won’t go dabbling into any morose analyses of all this life and death stuff.  No, I think I will just make this short an sweet, so to speak.

However I would like to close with the thought that grief is an expression of love.   And love for friends, family, Mother Nature, and our fellow creatures (all creatures) is, in my mind anyway, the most valuable and indeed  the most powerful force in the universe.

OK, enough of such babbling… here’s a little stroll down memory lane.

Summer has waved bye-bye here in beautiful West Michigan.  Forty two degrees out tonight already, and my Beautiful Girlfriend and I were scrambling to harvest the last of the tomatoes this evening.  Usually such a low temperature before sundown means a heavy frost overnight.  However, even though we’ve had more than enough rain lately, I see clouds lingering and the deck has telltale signs of a few sprinkles.  Rain means frost is unlikely, but better safe than sorry.

I was in the garden Wednesday evening also, with the dual purpose of picking tomatoes and avoiding the Tupperware party that was busily occupying our home.  My good friend Steve accompanied his lovely bride to the Tupperware gig, and when he learned I was in the garden that gave him an excellent escape plan.

Daylight began to vanish so the tomatoes became less and less visible.  Then Steve asked, “what else you need to get?”  I brought him over to the popcorn row and we got as many ears as we could see. 

That’s right… the popcorn row.  I don’t really have the space to grow a big patch of corn, so I grew about 10 plants each of sweet corn and popcorn.  Raising the popcorn was purely recreational.  As you may know, corn doesn’t fill the cobs with kernels well unless it’s pollinated completely.  When you only grow one row of corn, the best success occurs when the popcorn is pollinated by hand.  So as we were picking I was relating the pollination story to Steve:  “yeah, I saved the seed from some popcorn I bought from this art studio (the Khnemu Studio)we visit every year.  They make pottery but also raise vegetables organically and have lots of interesting poultry.  The plants grew so tall I had to climb a step ladder to get to the tassles!!” 

We finished picking just as the early autumn night had set upon us.  All the ladies were on their way out of the party when they spied our haul from the garden.  I couldn’t resist pulling back the husks on several of the ears of popcorn.  That, of course resulted in not only a few “ooohhss and aaahhhs” but also in me giving away several ears.  That’s very OK, I grew the popcorn for fun anyway, and it’s also fun to share.  Aren’t they pretty?? Freddy seems to think so…

Freddy thinks corn husks are fun. Click the picture for a better view.

I simply had to show off my toy popcorn you know… it’s only fair.  After all, my Beautiful Girlfriend shows her toys off every season.  Sometimes I joke with her (and family and friends) that if she gets any more seasonal decoration stuff our house will explode from creative critical mass.  It really is a treat for me to watch her get into “decorating mode,” where she pulls all her toys out and places them just so.  She’s had several of her gems for many years, and she often remarks aloud about the memories they conjure up when she holds them and ponders where they need to be.  I have to admit she’s developed quite the knack for making our house festive for every major holiday.  Just look at some of her handiwork. Again, click on the pictures for a better view: 

A Hallowe'en Latrine??

Of course, the bathroom window has to look the part…

Spider web - skeleton window treatment

I call them “my speakers,” but they are also “her counter tops…”

Jack O' Lanterns On Top of My Speaker!!

  As you can see we have no shortage of toys…popcorn or otherwise.  And these are just for Hallowe’en!!  We are basically spoiled rotten.  We’re blessed  with plenty to eat, a nice home, and the love of wonderful friends and family.  What more can we ask for?

Well I’m not sure, but I think my Beautiful Girlfriend still wants more toys! 

Did someone say, “TOYS??”

Once Upon A Time, in a yard very nearby, there lived a very old shed with a slanted roof.  The poor shed was not very attractive.   Made of wood that was apparently scrounged from hither and yon; it was covered from head to toe with tar paper to protect it from the elements.  It had very little paint on it, except on and around the door, which had fallen off years ago.  The poor shed lived near a swamp, so having wet feet would surely have caused it to rot away many years ago.  However, its maker saw fit to place it on a concrete foundation. 

In 1982, a young tree-hugger peacenik hippie-type man and his Beautiful Princess bride bought the land on which the very old shed stood.  The Beautiful Princess was never too thrilled with the house the young man bought for her.  However, they were soul mates and she agreed to live with him in the old homestead with the very old shed.  The young man loved the old shed, because it kept his garden tools and rototiller protected from the weather.  He didn’t have much money and tried many times to patch the slanted roof with whatever was available:  old shingles, old linoleum, old siding… lots of tar and other assorted goops.  This worked for awhile but eventually the slanted roof gave up the ghost and began to droop ever closer to the floor.

Fast forward several years:  the tree-hugger peacenik hippie-type man was not so young now, and he thought it was high time to fix up the shed.  The Beautiful Princess, however, was pretty much sick up and fed with the unsightly shack, and exhorted, “let’s just torch the stupid thing.”  Well this saddened the tree-hugger hippy heart of the tree-hugger peacenik hippie-type man, so he convinced the Beautiful Princess to buy some trusses for a new roof.  This, he believed would be the beginning of a beautiful new shed.

Fast forward a few more years.  Remember the tree-hugger peacenik hippie-type man??  Well, a carpenter he was not.  So after several years of watching the trusses age (along with a few “harrumphs” from the Beautiful Princess), he finally got off his hiney and hired a young man to replace the roof.  He did a splendid job, and although the tree-hugger peacenik hippie-type man had grandiose (good) intentions of finishing the job, the very old shed looked like this for several more years (click on the picture for a larger view):

The old shed in 2006

Please note that the small shed-like building in front is NOT the very old shed, but a doghouse that was inherited when the tree-hugger peacenik hippie-type man and the Beautiful Princess adopted Musky Da Husky.  He doesn’t live in the dog house anymore…

Fast forward a couple more years:  now the very old house that came with the old homestead was newly remodeled and beautiful.  However, by this time the Beautiful Princess had lost patience with the tree-hugger peacenik hippie-type man  regarding the very old shed with the new roof.  She began calling the very old shed the “F*&%ing Shed;” and since great care is taken to keep this a family oriented web site I shall not transcribe the expletive in its full form.

Fast forward five more years:  remember the statement that the tree-hugger peacenik hippie-type man is no carpenter?  Well that has not changed.  However, all hope was not lost thanks to the Most Wonderful Son-In-Law.  Although the Most Wonderful Son-In-Law is not a carpenter by trade, he has acquired much practical knowledge in this craft.  By some wonderful miracle, the Most Wonderful Son-In-Law agreed to lend his skills to the tree-hugger peacenik hippie-type man and his Beautiful Princess.  He came one afternoon and calculated how much lumber, etc. would be needed and assisted with the purchase of it all.  Then, he arrived early on a Saturday morning and worked his and the tree-hugger peacenik hippie-type man’s hineys off.  Then he came back a third time to finish the job!!

The results were amazing (again, click the image for a larger view): 

New and improved very old shed!

Truly remarkable, wouldn’t you say?

So, the tree-hugger peacenik hippie-type man and his Beautiful Princess will be forever grateful to the Most Wonderful Son-In-Law.  And now, the “F*&%ing Shed” has been renamed the “Beautiful F*&%ing Shed.”  And the tree-hugger peacenik hippie-type man will, for the foreseeable future anyway, believe that he owes the Most Wonderful Son-In-Law. Big time. 

The End.

It’s really a very good thing the tree-hugger peacenik hippie-type man did NOT try to rebuild the shed himself, as it’s highly likely the result would have been similar to one of his favorite Buster Keaton films…

There are times in this universe when I get so inoculated that I am motivated to write a very short, yet silly story

Here goes:  Once upon a time… THE END.

There.  A very short story.    If you took too long to read it, you should really enlist in the Merchant Marinara Sauce Brigade Platoon for Wayward Wives and Stepfathers.  There you will be shown how to involve very small dirt particles in happy games that require colorful shirts and rooster licking.  Of all the meetings I’ve never attended, I enjoyed the weekend of the 33rd of Octember.  Now that was a cranberry stomping episode I’ll never forget!!  It’s almost as if the Chiclets were let out of their cages thirteen minutes earlier than last year.  Santagoopa certainly knew that all the clock fizzlers would be found guilty of lentil crushing.  But that could only have resulted in electric shaving incidents.

Seriously, can someone please tell me why I have to brush my tooth with fossil strings every weekend??  I’m sorry, but I fail to see the winking radioactive clouds that bring this custom to KalamaKazoo.  The residents of Abracadabra don’t even have any slots for the rusty washers that all clowns pay for parking with… how could these gentle jelly citizens of Okeefenokee be expected to change lanes in a soup throwing contest?

On the other hand, you have doable.  Some people actually use that as a word… they say, “DO-able.”  Well I’m sorry, they are wrong.  Doable.  Since it’s spelled with oa in the middle, that would be pronounced “oh” kinda like boat or toad.  So doable, as it is spelled, looks to me like it should rhyme with “noble.”

Sometimes politics and corporate shenanigans make me want to barf on the floor and find an elf in the pajama closet.  Too many people sniffing bricks and licking stop signs, if you know what I mean.  Their opossum doesn’t have enough cheese to make the baloney go to the top of the elevator sandwich.  They are just a few bottles of cellophane short of a complete truckload.    The toilet mechanism is just waiting for your approval.  Do you get my wind?  Do you understand where I’m arriving from?  Have you gotten the clue of my talk noises yet?  Listen carefully:  do you smell something??  I CAN’T SEE IN HERE WITH ALL THIS NOISE!!!  If you carefully touch all the bugs you see in one day, you will probably want to live with them.  You might even be able to train them to sing worm songs.  You just never know.

Well, one of the twelve or perhaps twenty five things I know for sure is this:  if anyone gives me a lot of money and expects absolutely nothing in return, I will be greatly amused and toasted inside with a blue sugary coating of genuine American Cheese flavored bicycle tire pumping rituals.  In other words, I’ll drive as quickly as I can straight to the nearest Kentucky Fried Chicken Laxative Emporium and set all those poor coleslaws free so they can find their way back into the wilderness.  I will also find special homes for the mashed potatoes and gravel.

Well my fiends, I must leave you all with this important symbol:  which of course represents the true tolerance and love our Creator designed us to have.  The symbol also represents what happens when you smash a pair of binoculars to yank the prisms out and then you put them in your windowsill and force the sunlight to make ha ha rainbows on your walls.  This is the way of refraction.

Be well, and may all your coleslaw be free and may your mashed potato gravel be found only under the sink with all the other cleaning agents.  Enjoy life and love your fellow humans and other animals, for you never know when an aardvark will be your boss.  Tell Frinkle I said hello.  Eat marshmallows.  It’s fun!!

I’m really getting sick up and fed with all this job stuff. I try to stay grateful to be working, but Holy Mahlooka it gets on my nerves sometimes. May I be retired now please with zero debt and lots of spare cash?? OK, thank you, that’s very kind.

I have the privilege of joining my two offspring at a They Might Be Giants concert this coming Sunday. That will be very good medicine in the realm of stress relief. I try to make my job as much fun as theirs seems to be. It’s all in the mind you know.

Vacation can be very addictive.  I’m really grateful I have a job so I can actually have vacation; but I did something rather foolish last month.  I took a whole week off.  In conjunction with the Labor Day holiday, that meant a total of 10 days away from work.

We loved it. 

Didn’t do anything special, just our annual trek to Pennsylvania to see my Aunt and cousins.  This visit was to be quite different than previous years, however, as my poor Tante (Norwegian for Aunt) was in the hospital with a broken pelvis.  My cousin, God bless him, has stepped in to take care of her.  She really can’t be left alone anymore.  He definitely has some challenges in store for him.

Since he moved my Tante from her house to his, he offered to put us up at his home during our stay.  Very kind indeed.  Then some stormy lady named Irene blasted past his house, and the wind knocked down a bunch of trees.  The result:  no power at Cousin Pete’s house.  

No big deal right?  We stayed there anyway… hey we’re from the sticks and understand how to rough it for a few days.  We’ve lost power ourselves a few times in the past, and actually broke down and bought our first ever generator this year.   When you raise a big garden and freeze lots of veggies, it’s very disheartening to try to find a friend who has both electricity and enough freezer space to help us out.  So we took the plunge this year.

Thankfully Cousin Pete introduced us to his wonderful friends Steve and Lisa who opened their home to us so we could shower up.  Pete used their kitchen and cooked us all up some fabulous spaghetti and meatballs with a nice salad. 

We borrowed Pete’s GPS and went to see Tante in the hospital while he was cooking.  First experience with a newfangled thing like that.  I work in computer support but I shun away from such toys.  I have a small compass on my car’s dashboard and that’s my GPS… also known as a General Pointing System.  Call me stubborn but I prefer to read maps over listening to the voice of C3PO navigating aloud and then shrieking with delight, “congratulations!!  You’ve reached  your destination!!”   Well OK, I have to admit the silly thing was quite handy.  I actually managed to navigate backwards and get us back to the delicious dinner at Steve and Lisa’s house. 

My lovely girlfriend and I commiserated during the drive back that we felt powerless over my Tante’s predicament in the hospital.  We consider ourselves pretty young, but we’re approaching 60 and we know that our turn will come eventually.  Unfortunately I can’t seem to find my magic wand so I could wave it over my Aunt and fix her up so she could be self reliant again.   Life doesn’t work that way… all we can do is pray, try to accept, and be cheerful when we visit. 

We left Pennsylvania in a powerless state also… we saw trucks driving about that appeared to be working on electric things but still now power when we left.  Still had a nice visit though… very kind people made all the adversity pretty easily tolerated.

Off we went through Canada on the way home, just because.  Didn’t do anything special… stayed overnight in Brantford, Ontario and ate at Moose Winooski’s.  We both ordered what we now consider “naughty” food:  ribs.  Oh my they were good.  Got about 10 pounds of potatoes with the meal though… I got mashed and she got fries.  Gravy with both.  Delicious and deadly.  Then we stopped in Sarnia, Ontario and went to our favorite Salvation Army thrift store and spent our $15 in Canadian bills (started out with $20 I got from an ATM in Brantford) and found some “treasures.”  Doesn’t take much to please us…  Didn’t even get any Tim Hortons until we got back into Michigan!

Ah well, home again, home again, jiggety jig.  Home a couple days, then WHAM!!  It was our turn to get a big storm and lose power for a couple days.  Powerless again!!  Let’s hear it for the generator!!

So… vacation didn’t go exactly as we had planned.  Whenever I experience that kind of scenario, I’m reminded of what a good friend of mine once told me:  “hey, you wanna make God laugh??  Tell him you have plans!!”  Ten days off in a row gave us a good sense of what retirement might be like.  I’m thinking that could be a really nice thing to wake up to each morning. 

Only 8 ½ years to go!!  That is, of course, if everything goes according to plan…
 
We drove again, and these guys seem to be as thankful as we were to get home safely.
 

Another marvelous vacation… but as Dorothy repeated at the end of her stay in the merry old land of Oz, “there’s no place like home.” 

Needless to say, I’m a bit fried from all the driving.  However, I’ve certainly changed my ways as I’ve gotten older and (I hope) a little wiser.  When I was in my 20s and 30s I actually believed I could drive for 24 hours straight safely.   Such denial I nurtured!!  Worked pretty hard to convince myself and others that I could actually drive ridiculous distances with no rest. 

Thank God I didn’t kill anyone!!

We still were in the car pretty much all day yesterday and today.  Or at least, it seems like it.  A little over 700 miles from our house to Cousin Pete’s.  In the “good old days” I would have gotten up way too early and drove the whole thing, stopping only briefly for food and fuel, etc.  These days my lovely girlfriend and I stop more often, and one of those stops is an overnight stay somewhere.  This year the Hampton Inn of choice was in Youngstown, Ohio.  Kind of a halfway point.  We love Hampton Inn!!.  Just makes much more sense to travel during daylight, and to get a good night’s rest and some hot breakfast before resuming the journey. 

Same thing on the way back, but rather than slog through on I-80 again we like to take advantage of our passport ownership and swing up through Canada (eh) for the fun of it.  After checking in to the hotel in Ontario, we asked what local eateries we should look for.  Ended up at Moose Winooski’s… very nice ribs with a side of way too many potatoes. 

Anyway, nice to be home, and really nice to be OUT OF THE CAR!!  So forgive me for being brief, but I’m going to close with:  again, holy cow it’s nice to be  home!!  And dig up a video for your enjoyment. 

Did I mention that it’s really nice to be home?
Now this video has nothing to do with traveling… or does it??

Well here we go on vacation again.  A long drive to see Aunt Nancy, Cousin Peter, and of course Cousin Rocco.   And yes we really do have a Cousin Rocco…

“Ken,” my boss will say,  “some people are beginning to drive me a little crazy.”

Of course,  I ask him with my best Long Island accent:  “you want I should cawl my Cuzzin Rocco??”

We’re a bit smarter than when we were “kids” in our 20s or 30s… we don’t travel the whole 700 plus miles in one day.  We take our time, spend the night about half way, wake up refreshed and continue on.  Gonna stop at IKEA along the way this time, but that will still give us time to relax at the hotel in Youngstown.

The radio can get boring… the news gets depressing and the music is often the same old stuff.  Of course you can find some neat things on the dial but there are times when you’d just like to pop in a CD and enjoy the ride.  So as I write this I’m burning some discs to keep us entertained. 

Keep in mind, I’m a dinosaur.  I was born millions of years ago when radios and televisions had tubes inside them and you had to wait for them to warm up.  I consider myself privileged in this regard, though.  When I was growing up, entertainers like Abbott and Costello, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Red Skelton, Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy (to name a few) were not only appearing in old movies on TV, they were still alive.

So, my lovely wife and I still love to hear the old shows every now and again.  Fast forward to the internet, where free copies of many of these old shows are available for download.  No cursing, no explicit sexual innuendos, just good clean fun. 

Because I’ve got much to do to get ready for the trip; I’m going to make this Happy Friday!!! short and sweet… but here are a few samples of what the masters did in “the good old days.”

Did you know that 7 x 13 = 28? Lou Costello proved it!



I remember being smitten by the remarkable Carmen Miranda at a very young age…

Thirteen Thousand, Eight Hundred And Seventy Days.

Four Hundred And Fifty Six Months.

Thirty Eight Years.

Thirty eight years???  Holy Moly time flies when you’re having fun.  I mean jeez, it seems like it was just a couple years ago when the Beatles first came to America on the Mayflower (or something like that).

As of Sunday, August 21, I will have the privilege of being married to the Most Beautiful Woman In The Universe for 38 years.  Now if there are any other Beautiful Women reading this, please do not despair.  Here’s why:  although it is impossible for you to compete with my Lovely Girlfriend for the title of Most Beautiful Woman In The Universe; please be very aware that all the other women in the universe are the Second Most Beautiful Woman In The Universe.  So even though you cannot be the Most Beautiful in my universe, you are now and always will be the Second Most Beautiful.

That is my professional opinion.  If you don’t believe me, just ask me some time.

For us, being married is finally getting easier.  Almost as natural as breathing, really.  However we still have a few (very few) times when it feels like we are breathing in a few bugs and they get stuck in our throats.  But after a few pittoooeys or boohoos or maybe a grunt or two, it’s all better and time to kiss and make out.  In other words, life is not always peaches and root beer.  We do disagree, but we can finally disagree without being disagreeable.  Most of the time.

Here’s a nice bonus:   SHE LETS ME KISS HER!!  Now that’s really nice, ya know??

Sometimes we are asked how we’ve managed to pull this marriage thing off.  Well here are some observations and / or suggestions I’d like to offer for your reading enjoyment:

1)  We were very good friends for several months before we started wondering what was hidden under each other’s clothing.

Q)  When we realized it was true, we made sure to tell each other “I Love You” at least once a day.

27)  Before we got married, we made verbal contracts.  Things like: “we must always tell the truth no matter what;” and “if we have kids, we can’t have just one, and no more than two.” 

B)  We go on dates.  Movies, concerts, picnics, vacations.  Sometimes it’s something simple like renting a video and taking the phone off the hook.  Or maybe even just taking the phone off the hook…

V3)  We say “please,” “thank you,” and “you’re welcome.”

#)  We hold hands often.  One of my favorite stories about this:  Our daughter’s best friend Andrea said “Look at those cute old people going into the store holding hands,” to which our daughter Jessica replied, “that’s my PARENTS!!”

8F)  I tell her she’s beautiful.  And of course, I mean it.

And last but not least,

K!)  Communicate, communicate, communicate.  Never assume.  Talk stuff over.  Big stuff, little stuff.  And be nice about it all.  God knows we live in a crazy world, there’s no need to fling fire at each other at home.

I could go on and on… suffice it to say that we’ve learned how to treat each other as if we were best friends.  That’s probably because we ARE best friends.  Hasn’t always been easy, but definitely worth it. 

Life is good.  We have enough to eat, a nice home, beautiful offspring.  Yes, the verbal contract stated two kids  They aren’t kids anymore, but they’re ours so we’ll call them “the kids” whether they like it or not.  Except to their faces… then we let them know that they are simply beautiful people.  And we tell them “I Love You” whenever we see or talk to them.

And the coolest thing is, we’re in love.  Did I mention I have the privilege of being married to the Most Beautiful Woman In The Universe?? 

These days, George’s song flows through my mind and often out of my vocal chords…