My Wife's Super Powers

You may recall that in an earlier post, I had admitted that my beautiful wife is possessed of super powers. You can read here on her amazing internal chronometer.

Well, she does have more super powers, and one of the most remarkable ones that has saved us over and over is her ability to SMELL LIES.

I don't really have a lot of issues with this super power of hers, since I try to be down-earth honest, except when I'm trying to surprise her with a gift or a special trip or something, but it sure does make our kids' lives pretty tough.

I don't want folks to think that I've got rotten kids. They're actually pretty great kids. No alcohol, no drugs, they aren't violent or overly destructive, no thieves...not even habitual liars.

However, they are kids after all. They have in their time (each of them) had opportunity to err, as humans are wont to do. And, as many kids, when they are faced with trying to rationalize their way out of the trouble that is grown around them, enveloped them, and at the same time trying to remain out of trouble. A large effort that, at best. So, like most kids, they have been known to invent circumstances to try to explain things such that nothing is their fault.

When kids are actually kids, spotting these prevarications is something that an idiot like me can do. BUT, when kids are no longer actually kids, and they have co-conspirators at school to help them spot the blatant holes in their little stories, and they also have greater imaginations, more time to prepare, a better handle on what might sound possible...well, the lies become harder to spot. Especially the "small" ones.

However, this is NOT a problem in our house, because we have a lie detector in the nose of the Mrs. I kind of think that it operates similarly to Spiderman's spider sense, which "tingles" when danger is nigh. For her, the corners of her eyes is where that tingle resides. I think this because when she's on the scent of a lie, her eyes narrow to tiny, focused, slits that fire lie-piercing lasers.

She may not know the truth, necessarily, but she knows a lie when she smells one. If she cares, she eventually knows the truth too...she's a bit of a master sleuth as well. That's part of the game: you gotta know when knowing the truth matters, and when it doesn't. When your kids are involved, it almost always matters...you have to dig out those lies every time.

How I Met my (future) Wife

This little story flashed through my mind as a result of reading one at Suldog's site.

In my freshman year at college in Boston (she a nursing student, and I an engineering one) I met a whole bunch of people, one of them being my (then future) wife. I still recall our first meeting, as uneventful as it was. We didn't experience a Thunderbolt, this was not love at first sight for either of us. Hers was one of dozens of friendships that grew during that year of class.

But even now I can see her black patent leather shoes, the white frilly ankle-high socks, black slacks, white turtle-neck and powder-blue knit sweater, and the fake pearl necklace that she was wearing on that day. I can also see the big, ugly purple below-the-knee jacket that she was carrying too. Which is pretty amazing, since I can't see clearly the breakfast that I ate a couple of hours ago. One wonders if I had NOT experienced a Thunderbolt, but it was well below my threshold of perception...food for thought.

One thing about me: I'm nothing if not slow. I don't mean 'slow' as in 'can't run fast' or 'couldn't read until I was 17'. But everything that I do is done slowly, from DIY projects to cooking dinner. I think and think and think and think until I have a fair idea of what needs to be done, then I think a bit about it more, and make decisions typically when they need to be made, and not a moment sooner.

Thus it was that she and I, along with a large group of engineering students, a few nursing students, and the occasional PT student, enjoyed each other's company for over two years while we all collectively became fast friends.

Now, it was clear to me long before those two years were up that I was attracted to her. However, she was at that time involved and engaged (to what I refer to as 'her previous asshole'), and it would be a breach of honor to try to become involved with her in 'that condition'. The second thing that I like to think that I am is honorable, so she was clearly off limits.

But you know the axiom: you don't choose who you fall in love with.

There are dozens of reasons to love her: she's smart, infinitely kind, possessed of a great sense of humor, generous, patient when it counts (and at the same time not patient in certain aspects), adventurous, intrepid, she brings a sack-full of happiness wherever she goes, she's thankful for the least things (good for me, naturally)...the list goes on and on. And she's a pushy broad too.

People other than me have said these things about her (honest, none of these are made up by me):

• She's the sunshine of the facility in which she works.
• She is the yardstick by which some of my friends measure other women (possible partners).
• Everyone needs a little (insert name here) in their lives.
• When you meet her, you instantly feel like you've known her forever.
• She's way, way too good for me (ok, this one's shared only by me and her mother)
• She makes [this place] a better place (the office, the world...depends on who's speaking)

Naturally, lots of other folks knew that we were in love before we ourselves did. Mostly because of her predicament, and also because when you walk into a room, you don't see what your own impact is on folks in that room. So, she was always happy anyway, and not just (or especially) if I happened to be there.

Fast forward to a winter day when I learned that she had broken up with her previous asshole and needed a new one. And there I was! Imagine! The truth of it is that some other person made her aware that I had been interested in her, and it was up to her to make the first move (me being the thumb-sucking coward that I am). Thankfully, and bewilderingly, she did make that move and hauled my ass out of a class to go for a ride and have a conversation about it. Which is to say that she ambushed me.

Early in our romantic relationship, we found ourselves sharing lunch at a Friendly's. Being an omnivorous fellow, and not overly imaginative, Burger and fries was on my menu, and that called for ketchup. One of the many problems with ketchup, however, is that is separates in the bottle and you have to shake it.

My learning on this particular day was to always make sure that the cap is actually screwed onto the ketchup bottle when you shake it. This comes up every so often even now, more than a quarter of a century later. She never got put out by it, but laughed and filed it away with her growing list of things to hold against me...like her stomach.

Now I had known long before this experience that she was a keeper, but this is a pretty good anecdote that relates just that point. Ketchup all over her sweater (and she has always been careful about her cleanliness and whether her clothes "go" with each other and what not) in public, and she just laughed. Perfect, because I know, without a doubt, that Mr. Clumsy here is going to be doing things like that for a long, long time, and how she responds is very important.

We were married 7 years after we met. We debated on where to go for our honeymoon. She wanted a Caribbean cruise, and I wanted to go to Alaska. We compromised and went on a Caribbean cruise. We'll get to Alaska yet.

The best relationships do indeed begin with a firm foundation of friendship.

Searching for Gifts for the Mrs.

So with the holiday season getting near, I just went out to cyberland to search for ideas for things to buy for my wife for Christmas.

My search: “Gifts for my awesome wife”.

The results:
Gifts from my awesome wife
x-mass gift from my awesome wife
My father's day gift from my awesome wife and kids
TTMs and awesome gifts from my amazing wife!
An awesome gift from my awesome wife
Surprise gift from my awesome wife
yet another awesome gift from my wife!
Gift from my wife
Awesome Gift from my lovely wife
Anniversary gift form my awesome wife
and on and on....

Isn't this an interesting collection of responses? I type in gifts FOR my wife, and I get responses for gifts FROM my wife (not MY wife, but lists from  men who have gotten gifts from THEIR wives). Huh. At first, I was hoping that Google might be a bit dyslexic, but I don't hold out too much hope for that.

But what sort of comment does this make for the husbands of the world? NO ONE has any thoughts? No inspiration for an obtuse bloke?

Admittedly, there were a couple of responses for gifts FOR my wife, but they were advertisements, at the top of the page; it's in that area where they take whatever you type in and they tell you where you can get it, pretty much not matter what you typed into the search engine, so those results don't count.

I just thought this was really odd; thought I'd share it. I suppose it's probably a worse comment that I've known my wife for more than half of my life, been married to her for *this* long, and I still don't know what to get her for Christmas.

/hangs head.

How does my wife know...?

My lovely wife is an amazing woman. She really does have an internal chronometer, like Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation had. It's a remarkable ability that has nearly unlimited applications:

She tends to call me NOT when I'm sitting in my chair looking for something to watch, but:

• As I visit the “library”, sometime between getting my ass cheek on the toilet seat and the first tensing of my abs;
• Right after I've started washing the chicken for tonight's meal (and there's about ten minutes of washing left to do...don't you hate that you have to wash chicken in cold water? Why is that, anyway; you're only going to raise the temperature of the chicken in a few minutes! Are bacteria gong to “get used to” the temperature and NOT die in the oven / grill / roaster?);
• As soon as Mr. Happy breaches the multi-toothed cavern to exorcise excess fluid from my “guzzattah” system (when I'm at the urinal);
• 5 minutes after my eyes close....*just* when I fall asleep;
• When I'm almost home: “Where are you?” “In the driveway”. Actually, the answer is, about 80% of the time “On north street”, which is within 3 minutes of home, but about 5% of the time, I'm just pulling onto our street or into the driveway;
• As soon as the shampoo is lathered.

I think that she picks the times because she knows when it's most inconvenient for me.

She can even internally set the time when she wants to wake up in the morning. I've witnessed this countless times over the last 20+ years that we've been married: she'll look at the clock as she's going to sleep, and she'll say something along the lines of “I've got Dr. Wantstofeelgood (pseudonym) at 9:15; I'll have to be up by 7:30.” The next morning her eyes spring open at 7:29:35.

When I try to do that, I'll have a meeting for 8:00 am, and I'll wake up at 8:17 am.

It was funny day when she texted my eldest and his text came back that he was in the “library”, and how did she DO that?!?

I suppose I really should have seen this ability of hers coming, even though ever since I've known her she's been a very organized woman who always kept an appointment book and had things written on calendars and such; I'm not sure why someone with an internal chronometer needs such organizational tools, since it's built in. I think that's her way of lulling me into thinking that she's a bit more “normal” and has no super powers.

The real tip-off for me should have been during the delivery of our first child, about 19 years ago. We had been at the hospital seemingly forever. We arrived in the afternoon and went through all manner of voodoo, from walking around the L&D floor, squatting in a ritual fashion at the foot of the bed, rocking to and fro, rolling from side to side, etc.

We were at it all night long (admittedly she more than I, but that's a different blog), with sparse intervals of sleep. Nothing significant was happening. The sun graced the next day with much the same stuff going on. A lot of trial-and-nothing. I decided around 10:00 am to run through the shower.

As soon as I had lather in my hair, the frantic pounding came to the bathroom door. You gotta be frickin' kidding me!! Kid was born at 10:20, and she did that on purpose, just to because she knew it was an inconvenient time for me!! :)