What sort of person???

Don't put those shirts back in my room. 

Where are you taking that ironing board?

Into the sewing room.

Why?

To press my shirts.

I don't want that in my room.

i don't leave it in there.

(never freaking mind the minimal amount of room it occupies standing folded up in the corner if i did, i don't say out loud)

Why do you need to do that in there anyway?

Well, the iron's already in there, and it's a convenient space. It's just easier.

(Silence.)

You don't mind me using your iron, too, do you?

Actually, I do.

Okay. Can you explain why?

Well, the only reason I can think of I asked for a new iron for myself for my birthday, not for the house. 

Really? i have to have my own ironing board and (crappy old) iron and space, even if i put everything away every time, because you don't want to share your nice new stuff even with me, and even when I bought it for you? Are you afraid I'm going to break your fancy new iron somehow? Do you think I want to overpay for another one to replace it if I do?

More significantly: what do you think our life together is supposed to be about, exactly?

Another day in paradise (by the dashboard light). As anti-marriage as that song is, there's another reason I hate it.

Lenten journey

Nice day. Good men's group. Ok retreat on a subject I love. Glad i didn't go to Columbus, as tired as i was. Soup stock cooking. Decent nap. Nice games with wife and granddaughter.

Challenges nonetheless. It is hard being the only one in a relationship who recognizes when they should apologize.

Idiocy makes me a little (more) crazy

On a sponsored post detailing outrageous laws in various places, one of the items begins with a warning for visitors to the Acropolis or Colosseum. It goes on to cite a ban on wearing high heels in ancient Greek sites.

Last I checked, the Colosseum was in Rome and, also the last I checked, that isn't Greece.

In the swim, in a panic

I was getting ready to kiss my wife this morning and leave for my swim when I suddenly realized that it was already time for me to be there.

We have two swim times each month: later in the month we swim at 6:30 p.m. on a Saturday, but our earlier in the month weekday swim is 6:10 a.m. I was thinking that I was leaving myself plenty of time, but it suddenly dawned on me that I'd (m)ucked up the time in my head. So I grabbed the kitchen trash and took it out - since the outdoor trash can had already been full when I set it out the night before, because the garbage service switched up the schedule and arrived before I left for work last week, which was when I used to take it to the curb - running to the street and then to the car to drive to the pool. It was a frantic drive, with frequent shouts of "Go! Go!" to the car in front of me as they laconically pulled through a changing light on the wet morning roads. I explained to the guy at the desk that I was with the group that was already in the pool. Fortunately I was already wearing my new suit under my clothes, so I was able to minimize my changing time. I ended up cheating myself out of 200 yards, which I probably couldn't have done anyway since I forgot last night until bedtime that I was swimming this morning, so didn't pre-hydrate; therefore my feet were cramping within the first 200 yards of the swim. Oh, and I didn't take a water bottle with me, either, at least in part because of my frustrated panic as I was leaving the house. And jeez, I hate being late.

On the other hand, I swam fairly well, though only for 700 yards (after adding four lengths at the end) instead of the 900 that the other swimmers got in. On the other hand, my fitness tracker missed at least one length, because it showed me at 575 yards after I'd completed an even number of 25 yard lengths.

Mathematically challenged

Apparently, "Do I know how to count?" is not one of them: 3 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Quitting Your Job

Needing a bib

Apparently I dropped a chocolate chip into my lap without noticing, where it melted dark brown spots all over the crotch of my khakis. Was able to wash some of it out in the restroom, and the sport coat covers some what's left, so it isn't so obvious (he lies to himself).

Well, that got worse before it got better

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were a flurry. We were actually glad, though, when our dinner for 4 expanded to dinner for 12. First, our oldest grandson and his girlfriend said they'd join us. Then, on Christmas Eve after the grocery stores were closed, our youngest asked if it was too late for her crew to join us, too, for dinner, after all. Good thing I'd bought a way bigger ham than we needed.

I'd convinced myself that it would be okay to support the evening Mass in addition to Midnight and Christmas morning. Fortunately, we used the parish's normal Christmas schedule rather than our normal Sunday schedule. But even so, I really could have used that extra three hours. Maybe then I wouldn't have been par-baking pie crusts at 3:15 Christmas morning, or trying to cook and help with wrapping at the same time on Christmas Day.

Dinner ended up being very nice; there was nothing fancy, yet everything was good; well, the mashed potatoes were a little dry, since we ate about 90 minutes later than scheduled, which was about 75 minutes after everything was ready. It also included a very nice uncured ham that I was able to pick up on sale at Whole Foods when I went for my bulk spices (cinnamon sticks, cured allspice, fresh whole cloves), carrots with a cream sherry and honey glaze, and some canned green beans that our middle daughter and her husband contributed along with half the potatoes to round out enough food for the extra folks. Oh, and my daughter and I were the only partakers of the absolutely delicious cabernet-blueberry cranberry sauce. I screwed up the pie crusts something awful, but the pies were still yummy despite them.

After opening gifts, the anticipated altercation occurred, at least in part because it was anticipated, and two people left mad. Apparently one of the kids left a candy cane lying around, and our dog got it. Amid the already-hubbub of grandchildren excited about gifts, our middle daughter's husband raised his voice to call someone's attention to the situation, our youngest daughter took offense at his raised voice, our son-in-law and middle daughter took offense at her offense and left. Ugh. I may henceforth refer to this as The Catastrophic, Calamitous outCome of the Canine Candy Cane Caper^©.

These adults judge each other too harshly. They have too much a sense of superiority.

I taught them well, apparently, the part of myself that most needs to die.

Adventures (in advertising)

On the way home from work yesterday, one of the NPR sponsors that was mentioned was a cruise company that specializes in river travel in "Europe, Russia, and Asia." I'm far more interested in one of these than an ocean cruise. But what caught my attention yesterday is probably another sign of my nit-pickiness: it's been a while since I've studied geography, but I'm pretty sure that once you've said "Europe and Asia," you've got Russia covered . . .

Dear coworkers

Can we please agree that our use:utilize ratio should always be greater than 4:1? Also, can we please agree that "in order to" may almost always be shortened to merely "to"?

A sick and annoyed night

I could tell something was wrong. I don't customarily get chills like that. By the time I climbed into bed, I could tell they had developed into a fever, plus my heart was pounding.

It had been a frustrating evening, too. Our car had been out on loan for the previous two days, and the person who'd had it thought it was entirely reasonable to keep it over one more night, even though that meant that my wife would be stuck without a car again for a third consecutive day. That hadn't been much of a problem, given her volunteer day on Wednesday, and since her friend had loaned her a vehicle for a doctor's appointment on Thursday, but I agreed with her that we needed a different answer for today. So we patiently worked with the person who had it to come up with a mutually-agreeable solution that would suit all of us. We stood our ground, and didn't let ourselves get run over by assumptions, but it really took a team effort to make that happen.

I 'd already been planning an early morning, and my chills had convinced me that an early evening was also a good idea. When I got home from dropping off our daughter at work, my head hung as I removed our keys from the car and noticed hers still attached. Ugh. So I went in the house and texted our daughter, but got no response. We then tried to look up a phone number for her work place, but the only number we could find was no longer in service. Those efforts wouldn't have mattered, as it turns out: yes, she needed her keys. Even though my wife had suggested that she could take them to her after the younger two granddaughters were asleep, the amount of time she spent continuing to look for a phone number after it was obvious we weren't going to find one made it equally obvious that she didn't want to go. So rather than waste further time in a fruitless effort that was probably only going to confirm what we needed to do anyway, I loaded my chills back into the car and drove back to our daughter's workplace, where she was most grateful that I had brought them to her. I then came back home and went to bed. So much for my early night, and I was plenty miffed about it. I'd also taken a disposable plastic and a paper soft drink cup out of the car; I might have left just the plastic one, but was afraid the paper one might give out and make a mess to deal with.

As soon as my head hit the pillow I knew I was feverish, but I still lay there for an hour before texting my wife and asking her to come up the stairs. I knew I was being a bit of a baby, not just taking care of myself, but wanted to be "evaluated" where I was. Sure enough: 101.1°.  She brought me some acetaminophen, but I still lay there awake until 1 a.m., when I moved out to the sofa for a while. I slept fitfully through the night, but could tell that my fever had broken before I'd gotten out of bed.

She still loves and tries to take care of me, and I still love her, too.

A broken moment leads to growth

I spat out the two angry words before taking even a moment to consider their predictable effect. The evening had already gone downhill, as the next round of conflicts with our granddaughters had washed away the glow of the pleasant evening we'd spent watching a movie together. I've seen that my wife's emphasis on placing obedience ahead of virtually every other consideration has not been nearly so effective with our grandchildren as it had been with our daughters - though I wish I'd known then what I do now. In the few chapters I read of The Explosive Child before returning it to the library, I began to get a glimpse of other, less confrontational ways of helping these little ones grow into the people they will become. But it isn't the sort of approach that one person alone can undertake, especially when the children's parents, teachers, and grandmother get so much more time with them than I do. Maybe I could find some support in the school, but at home, no one else bothered to read a word of this intriguing book.

So now our four- and seven-year-old granddaughters were acting up, or rather, out. They were both frustrated at still being with us this evening; mom was supposed to be off work by now, but her relief didn't show up as scheduled. The seven-year-old was the more frustrated one; she'd gotten very little time with her mom that day, just a few minutes after school, in the car, while grandma drove mom to work. Oh yeah: mom is without a car again. 

So even when g-ma was trying to get them to be ready to go when mom was finished working, they were both in conflict mode. And while I agreed that the seven-year-old deserved the timeout she had been assigned, I judge that grandma is sometimes to quick to reach the final straw and call it a night, removing all hope from the child. She surely knew that she'd be asleep before mom was picked up if she was sent to bed for the night, and then she wouldn't get to see her at all! While trying to calm her down so that she could take her timeout, I heard a lot of what she was saying. Some of it, of course, was just a child trying to worm her way out of the trouble she was in, but there were valid roots in some of it. 

So when my wife came up the stairs and started tossing orders my direction, too, I was not especially open to complying, either. That must have been frustrating for her, on top of the conflicts with the grandchildren, but then, I am not a child to be directed in such a way. 

And when she told me, "You're being ridiculous," I felt completely dismissed. My reaction took all of two words which I'm certain made her feel as dismissed and belittled as I did, so maybe I would have spoken them even had I considered them first. But once I said them, I realized almost as they traveled through the air to her ear that we were done for the night. She left in anger. Our granddaughters did their respective times out, then I read to them while we waited for mom to be finished working. G-ma returned so that I could drive them to pick up mom and take them home, and I apologized again for my outburst. I explained the emotional place that it came from without blaming her for it, acknowledging that what I'd said to her was wrong in any circumstances. I picked up our daughter from work, then drove her and the grandchildren home. The dear seven-year-old fell asleep in the car, confirming her own fear that she wouldn't end up with any time with her mom yesterday. 

When I got home, I told my wife that I understood that merely saying that I was sorry wasn't going to make everything okay, and that I respected her need for space from me. She'd told me that she wouldn't have come home last night had I not needed her car to transport so many people. 

At some point in the night I saw and heard her enter the bedroom across the hallway; then she turned the lights out, so I figured that she had decided she didn't want to share the bed with me. I understood. Before much longer, I got up to find her asleep on the sofa and, not wanting to compound the problem by intruding on her space, I grabbed a throw from off of the loveseat and lay down on the living room floor. After a couple hours, I went into the spare bedroom and grabbed a more adequate blanket, and used one of the loveseat cushions as a pillow, so I might sleep more comfortably for my last hour before needing to arise for men's group. 

I got up and showered, and quickly apologized when she sat upright as I turned on the bedroom light. I hadn't heard her move into the bedroom while I was showering. She smiled, and I could tell that she was feeling more accepting of me. I quickly doused the light and dressed, and when I attempted to kiss her cheek or head before leaving as is my custom, she turned and tenderly kissed me on the lips. 

After men's group, she told me that she had tried to come to bed but couldn't get the dog to move. She knew that I knew she was on the sofa, and wondered why I hadn't awakened her to come to bed, as I usually would have. I explained that I was trying to be considerate of her feelings, and she was surprised when I told her where I'd spent the last half of the night.

We have things to work on, here. I still have to figure out why that phrase makes me feel such a strong emotional response. Of course it is a rejection, but there feels like something deep underneath my feelings. I would like for her to see how she dismisses, well, not just me, but pretty much everyone with whom she disagrees. After four decades together, beginning in high school, I have learned that there is very little chance of her offering an understanding apology for any of her own faux pas. Her greater need, though, is probably to be able to set boundaries that have not really been practical for her to establish given our daughter's circumstances, even given that some of those circumstances have been the direct result of our daughter's own decisions. 

It seems clear to me, though, that I am moving on to grow in a new area. It's amazing how fast it happened. I've struggled with purity for so long, and through Abba's Heart God has given me a new and highly effective tool to use in response to those temptations. For the first time, I don't feel like I'm gutting it out against them but destined to fail eventually. My newfound confidence in the Father's joyful love for me is empowering my life. But other areas in which I need to continue to grow are no longer obscured by that long-ensnaring cycle which consumed so much of my attention and energy for so long.

For freedom you have been set free, and that freedom is far deeper and broader than one area of struggle. It isn't as if God just wants to remove a set of handcuffs, so that we can be more comfortable in our leg chains.

Sleep interruptions

I always hate waking up in the middle of the night alone. But I especially hate it when things are crazy busy at work. I get up to wake mrs. tg from in front of the television, use the bathroom while I'm up, and when I get back into bed the gears are cranking too much to let me sleep.

Bourbon, do your stuff.

Latest proposal should go out tomorrow, and my 70+ page process should go into review tomorrow, too, right on schedule and on budget.

I think I'm going to take on some freelance technical writing/editing work, for extra income. Or start looking for another job in a few months, with a salary increase instead of a parallel move.

Butchering the language

"Three-time Boston Marathon winner Bill Rodgers threw out the ceremonial first pitch. It reached Wade Miley, Boston's left-handed pitcher who was behind the plate, on a fly."

As opposed to "on the fly."  Pick your mental image for the way the AP worded it: do you prefer your flies mighty or squashed?

Empty holder

I could understand this way better when there were five other people living in the house.

But the grandchildren were over yesterday, so maybe this was the doing of a child. I'm going to assume as much.

Even if it wasn't, it is way more important for me to not reinforce decades-long patterns of judgment than it is to dwell on this. That particular habit of judgment is so ingrained, though, and it is general, not just geared toward an individual.

At least whoever it was didn't leave anyone stranded.

It's because . . .

The reasons our six-year-old granddaughter might have a permanent hearing loss:

• Mom and dad are too busy pissing at one another to really make the kids proper priority.
• Dad neglected to get her antibiotic prescription filled and to tell mom about it. 
• Mom is too wrapped up in her ADD to be willing to get out of bed to take care of her kids as she needs to, so waited 4 additional days to get her back to the doctor from when she knew she had to go.

I'm a wee bit angry, and am venting here because I just might assault someone if I don't. 

These precious kids are utterly dependent on the two of you gathering your defecation. If you can't do it on your own - and you clearly can't - then grow up and get the help your children need for you to get. They may be resilient, but they're also fragile, and you're breaking them.

Today's words

The first two are from today's Dictionary Devil puzzle:

fricandeau \ˈfri-kən-ˌdō\ - larded veal roasted and glazed

I may have encountered this on a menu somewhere, but likely never ordered it.

schwarmerei \ˌshver-mə-ˈrī\ - excessive sentiment

Perhaps I'm often guilty of this?

And I'm familiar with today's WOTD . . .

nonage \NAH-nij\ - 1. minority  2a. a period of youth  b. lack of maturity

. . . but it always takes me a moment to remember that it's the opposite of dotage.

The difference in pronunciation style used in the WOTD feature compared to the dictionary entries drives me batty, but I'm not going to take the time today to make them match.

Conforming (phase 2), God So Loved the World - The Birth of Jesus (step 9), session 5

In the beginning

This session uses my favorite Gospel from the different masses of the feast of Christmas.  The vigil mass calls for St. Matthew's account of the genealogy of Jesus and the events from St. Joseph's perspective. The midnight mass reading is the only one to use St. Luke's account of the angels and the shepherds and no room in the inn, and is the Gospel that our parish uses at every. Christmas. mass. for the last ten years, because "everybody wants to hear this one," I guess. The mass at dawn is supposed to use the aftermath of the shepherds' visit, still from St. Luke.

For me, the Gospel designated for the mass during the day is the one that best captures the magnitude and context of the events of which all the others are mere details.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. - Jn 1, 1-5

It is as if God himself has delivered these words back to me today, when I have so desperately needed them to overcome my own darkness!

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him.  He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light.  The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. - Jn 1, 6-13

This is the very point of the only-begotten, eternal son of God becoming a son of Adam: that we might be granted our place as children of God!

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.

(John bore witness to him, and cried, "This was he of whom I said, `He who comes after me ranks before me, for he was before me.'") And from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. - Jn 1, 14-18

I love this gospel reading, and my determination to read it on my own on Christmas day faded away in the decompression of our dear grandchildren being gone and the decision to spend the evening with friends. I am so glad that I have now been brought back to a chance to reflect on it a bit (even if it does mean that I'm about two weeks behind where I should be in the Exercises).

Facebook annoyances from today:

Item number one: Okay, I've noticed it before, but have never commented on it as I am so tempted to every time: this picture should definitely have the skull rotated 180° vertically. I suppose it is a sign of my own anal nature that this bothers me enough to interfere with the humor. (Also: was the first politician a woman?)

Item number two: Reeaaalllly?  Some people think that because they are "so close" to someone because of all the deep conversations that they've shared that they can publicly question their marriage decision on Facebook? I hated the decision, but I'm certainly not going to slam it there!

Item number three: I've decided to stop posting comments with links to the Snopes site for all of those gift card scam posts. Any of my friends and relatives who are so gullible - even after years of being online - that they don't recognize a phishing scam when they see one deserve to be phished.

Another way of looking at it:

Steve Smith posted his first multi-TD game since Cam Newton's debut (2011). Smith has as many multi-TD games with Joe Flacco as he had in three years with Newton. - ESPN NFL Power Rankings, week 5

Or: it took Smith four times as many games to get his first multi-TD game with Flacco as it took with Newton. As it happens, I think Flacco is the better QB, but still.

Unintended hyperbole?

Christianity has over 2 billion followers in the world with countless denominations and sects. - PlayBuzz poll: What Christian Denomination Should You Actually Be a Part Of?

"Countless" denominations and sects: umm, okay, but clearly less than or equal to the number of followers . . .