Award Night
John and I had a glorious time yesterday, which is hard to do when you're a guy and he's a guy and you don't use words like "glorious" a lot.
Still. Pretty damn glorious.
This describes the weather in Western Washington lately, one of those tilts of the wheel; systems that should have slid up the coast, tempered by time and attenuated, delivering our spring rain, decided to stop and gang up on California. So Arnold and company get mudslides and we get sun and 60s. I'm not saying it's fair.
We spent a good part of the afternoon doing spontaneous shopping, which is pretty much a redundancy and a fact of life. I can be a thoughtful consumer at the grocery store, but take me to the mall and I either have to know exactly what I'm looking for or else have Vicodin flowing through my veins from a recent dental extraction, usually. But we took the day anyway, with Julie on the penninsula and the sun shining and tomorrow (today) coming. I woke him and we climbed into our asthmatic van and drove the mile or so to the mall, looking for presents.
I'm not good at this. I get lucky, sometimes, picking the right thing at the right moment, but most of the time I get stuff for people that provokes eye rolling or (occasionally) nausea. I just don't have the talent.
John's better than I am, at least now. He has a sense of what people do in life and so what they'd like to do, very concrete and observational. We had a nice day, then, in the sun, wandering through stores and talking to salespeople.
I gave him a lesson or two. One guy calmly asked for my address and phone number, as if paying wasn't enough, obviously wanting another notch for his database, so I gave him a fake one and John's jaw dropped as his dad lied in public. Mr. Computer will have a hard time finding Shelshie Road. I just didn't want to fight, I told him outside, and then we had a discussion about extended warranties. Parenting never ends.
We had lunch in a faux Fifties diner, a booth with lots of room and a banana-and-chocolate milkshake (his) to die for, if a little pricey. "Stardust" was playing on the jukebox, Hogey Carmichael, a song I know well because we sang a medley of his songs doing dinner theater one year and I turned one night and looked into the eyes of a soloist and...
Ah. Well. I have looked into her eyes since.
I fried up some chicken last night. Sometimes I just get in the mood for fried food, so I heated up canola oil and did my milk-egg batter thing and made some chicken strips. I took some of the oil and some flour and milk and made gravy, not that I'm going to eat that stuff, and watched my tired wife dip her chicken into gravy and purr, and I knew then that I will always try.
Always.
The waitresses at this Fifties place wore short dresses, or at least sort of short, or at least dresses, and I made a comment to John about admiring their legs, which might have been called limbs in the 50s, I'm not really sure. Some were skinny, some were meaty, but some were spectacular.
And John tolerated this, but later disclosed that he thought it was sort of an aberration, an act of unfaithfulness even. So I explained that it was okay to admire beauty, female, male, whatever, and I didn't get into lust but I could have.
The point being, of course, is that we're all grounded by love or wish that we were.
I don't want any other legs.
Sure, I think they're pretty, but I have a pair already. I've had them 22 years, and if that offends your sensibilitiies then I don't care. I own these legs, I have watched them walk for a long time. I've seen them dance, and march, and even stomp, mostly at me.
But she stayed, and today my bride is 50. We will celebrate in church, and at lunch, and maybe during the Oscars. She will talk to her mother at some point.
I will give her what she wants, or at least expects, which is a husband with a decent haircut and a partner in the pews. There are flowers, although not from me. Flowers are too easy, and I am not.
I will give her what she wants, though. A guy who stuck around. A couple of remarkable children. An appreciation of where she was and how she got here, coming from an observer. An admirer, although she has plenty.
And tonight, for the first time
(and i'm sorry beth)
I get to sleep with a 50-year-old woman.
Bring it on. And the Oscar goes to...
7:11:31 AM 
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