Twenty-seven reasons!

Twenty-seven years ago today we promised we'd stay together. For richer, for poorer. In good times and bad.

There have been trials! But my annual accounting is never difficult.

1. I love that you (we!) figured out to watch Netflix on our fancy TV without Charlie writing down each step. (Push the power button on the black remote....)
2. I love your devotion to home decor--making sure every square inch of wall in our condo has something on it.
3. I love going to Key West with you. We could go this weekend but I'm on call...
4. I love tricking you into eating at Hibachi grills which I enjoy but you, not so much...until the food arrives.
5. I love picking the trotters with you at the Pompano track.
6. I love how you enjoy feeding squirrels who live in the trees outside our condo.
7. I love it when you ask me if 70-degrees is cold enough weather for chili. It's not but we can turn up the AC and make it anyway.
8. I love getting up first, making coffee, reading "your" paper (the Sun-Sentinel) until I don't hear you snoring anymore. That silence means it's time for me to start reading "my" paper (the Miami Herald).
9. I love grocery shopping at Publix with you to see your eyes roll in mock disgust at the slowness of the elderly.
10. I love how proud you are of down-sizing our storage to a manageable amount of stuff.
11. I love our Friday night dinners at Rotelli's
12. I love walking on the beach and picking up shells.
13. I love when you take the shells we picked up on Sanibel, and plant them on the beach on our side of Florida and watch tourists pounce on them like treasure. 
14. I love how you try to humanely trap the lizards on our deck so they don't get into the house.
15. I love how you complain about getting up early for Dolphins tailgate gatherings but still manage to have fun anyway.
16. I love that you insisted I spend New Year's Eve and Day with my family in Rochester, MN when Paula and Bob had the transplant surgery. You knew I wanted to go but that I was worried about the cost.
17. I love that you will eat a meatless meal every once in awhile, without complaining.
18. I love how irritated you get at the snowbirds.
19. I love how you always answer your cell phone when my brother calls.
20. I love how you keep trying to win the Powerball jackpot so I can retire. 
21. I am amused by (and thus love) your aversion to sitting at a red light for a few minutes and your goofy detours to avoid that fate.
22. I love that you bought us both bikes for Christmas which has led to delightful rides on Saturday and Sunday.
23. Subsequently, I love that you tricked out my bicycle with a bell, cellphone holder, water bottle grip and a place for my keys.  Ding, ding! Here I come!
24. I love how you drunkenly tried to write a message on a napkin at Irish Kevin's regarding your role in "Walk the Line."  And how you stayed in bed for most of the next day, recovering for the hangover.
25. I love how you talk  r e a l l y  s l o w l y  to our South American neighbor who does not understand a word of English as if that will make it easier. Just smile and wave!
26. Person of Interest! Blacklist ! House of Cards! I love watching certain TV shows with you!
27. I love that you love sushi. Let's celebrate this anniversary with spicy, crunchy tuna. 

He still makes me laugh every day

Watch "VID_20130317_171507.mp4" on YouTube

I can make it.

We had guests for the Labor Day weekend.  My brother Perry and his wife, Toni.  Our son Charlie.  Our nephew Paul.

Hurricane Isaac impacted our plans Friday with a rain out of the Twins game.  I tried and failed to give the tickets away but we ended up using them Sunday in the scorching, searing Missouri heat.  And of course, the Twins lost.  We came home from the K ready for a fine meal and more family time.

The title of this post refers to a "kitchen incident" that occurred Sunday night as I was preparing dinner for my guests.  The menu?  BBQ country-style ribs in the pressure cooker, cole slaw and beans.  Followed by Perry's delicious zucchini cake.

Ribs cooked this way are fall-off-the-bone tender so I was confident that I would be receiving accolades for hours after dinner.  Except for the stupid move I made with a sharp knife.

Quick rewind.  For Mother's Day, John and Charlie bought me some REALLY sharp knives.  I don't even like to put them in the dishwasher, so as not to dull the edges.  I love those knives.  And there's a bunch of 'em.  There's a paring knife, a chef's knife, six steak knives, a bread knife, a boning knife.  A fabulous pair of kitchen scissors that will cut through anything.  Even a tomato knife.

But it was the utility knife that did me in.

Five minutes before the ribs should leave the flame, I was attempting to open a jar of slaw dressing with the utility knife.

The blade slipped and I stabbed myself right in that fleshy part of the hand between the thumb and index finger.

I yelled.

Not in a panic, mind you.  More at myself.

I went to the sink and turned on the water, to wash the wound a bit.

Then blood started spurting from the hole in my hand and I really yelled.  Loud.

"I cut myself!"

Medic!  (My brother was in the National Guard and my nephew is active duty.)

Both sprang to action.

"Put pressure on it," my brother ordered and despite my morbid desire to see the blood blurting out and the fact that he's seventeen years younger than I am, I obeyed.  Paul was right there with the bandage.

It's not a big cut...just about a quarter of an inch.  But it is deep and it hurt like hell.

Pressure and a bandage was exactly what I needed.  That and for my brother to finish cooking dinner while I supervised, telling him what to do and when.

Just what I needed.

The painted ponies go up and down.

If you have the six minutes to spare, listen to the BRILLIANT Joni Mitchell.  She's incredible.

I didn't come by my love of this song in the right way...I was old enough to appreciate Joni Mitchell when this tune was first released but I was probably too busy listening to Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy to notice.

The FIRST time I became aware of  Circle Game was when I was married to Carly's dad, Clyde, who had an incredible sense of musical beauty.  He taught me a great deal.

The second time I recall is when I was a news director at another station. The general manager "fired" a long time consultant at the TV station where we both worked.  The GM had preceded me by about a year, hired me and we both agreed that our consultant (who had worked with the station for more than two decades) needed to go.  He (the consultant) was a really nice guy.  Really nice.  But the station we were working at had slipped from a dominant first place to number two.  And you know how that goes:

1. Fire the consultant
2. Get new graphics
3. Build a new set
4. Hire a new news director
5. Lather, rinse, repeat

But I digress.  This particular GM sent an email to the consultant relieving him of his duties.  And the last line of the email was "and the painted ponies go up and down."

At the time, I thought the phrase was kinda heartless.  I know better now.

When Carly's dad died, we played Circle Game at his memorial.

And since our son Charlie moved from KC to Jackson, Wyoming, it is meaningful again.

USAToday has a story about how Boomers are helping their kids get along.   We have tried to help both of ours as they meander through adulthood.

How funny it is that both John and I have struggled so with Charlie's decision to move west when both of us did it decades ago.

John was the oldest of two, finished a stint at college and in the late 70s felt the need for more.  He and some friends moved from Connecticut to Reno.

I, the oldest of seven, dropped out of college in the late 70s because I wasn't a great student and felt the need for more.  I move from South Dakota to Reno.

Eventually we found each other and Charlie is the product of our discovery.  Yay!

Now our Charlie has jumped from the nest.  He graduated from college, spent some months with us and felt the need for more. 

Wednesday, he left for Jackson, WY.  He has a job.  He loves the outdoors.  This is perfect for him.

And the seasons, they go round and round.  And the painted ponies go up and down.

25 reasons why I love John Phillip

I'm a list-maker.  

In what has become a series, here are the 25 reasons why I love my husband as we approach two and a half decades of commitment which will be celebrated in style on April 2.

1. I love how you always ask me the speed limit when we're driving somewhere and how you then brag about never getting a ticket.
2. I love that when I walk in the door at the end of a long day, you instinctively know if I've had a challenging day and STILL kiss me hello and ask me about it. Even when the answer might be long-winded and boring.
3. I love that you let me have two Christmas trees this past year.  I might go for three eight months from now.  You've been warned.
4. I loved looking for houses with you and I love the one that we (I) picked...even though it doesn't have a big deck and a finished basement.
5. I love it when I come home in the winter and the fireplace is already lit.  Even on a Tuesday.
6. I love how you made my brother Pat's 50th birthday special that made him feel special.
7. I love that you insist on hanging pictures of our kids in various stages of growth in a prominent place so everyone knows that our family is very important.
8. I love how you put up with my live-on-the-edge mentality.  Plans?  Who needs plans?
9. I love taking pictures of you in funny places (in front of signs proclaiming the locations of Tightwad, Missouri and Peculiar, Missouri).  Yes, you are a tightwad and peculiar.
10. I love going to Sonic with you and getting a giant cherry limeade with our hot dogs.
11. I love that you're becoming quite the handyman with your new tools.
12. I love how irritated you get when I call my veggies-in-pots-on-the-deck a "farm."  Get over it.  I'm a farmer's daughter.  Anything I grow is a farm.
13. I love how you insist we see fireworks on the 4th of July.
14. I love that you seem not to mind that I'm "husky."  And that you support me when I try to lose weight.
15. I love that you know every single dog on our weekend walking route and that you've adopted Curly- the-Great-Pyrenees.  Bonus Love.  I know you know Curly is not enough for me because I want our own dog.  (Tick tock tick, the clock is ticking for us to get another mutt...)
16. I love that you wrote down all the days we should OFFICIALLY fly the American flag on the calendar so we don't forget.
17. I love how you wear your political emotions on your sleeve and that incredibly, you're more liberal-leaning than I am.
18. I love how you put up with my mad sports obsessions...like the Chiefs, Sporting Kansas City and the Royals and enjoy tailgating almost as much as I do.
19. I love that you buy lottery tickets for me to scratch off and are disappointed when we don't win.
20. I love how you groaned about going to South Dakota last year when the floods disrupted our regular routes but did it anyway, even when it added hours and hours to the trip.
21. I love how worried you were when Carly got hurt in the bike crash and how you called every hospital trying to find her.
22. I love how you've figured out how to take pictures of any jackpots you win at the casino.  And text them to me so I can be jealous that I'm not winning too.
23. I love how you take Charlie golfing and gloat when you beat him.  Enjoy it now.
24. I love how there can be a million men in a room and that I only have eyes for you.
25. I love how you've tried and tried to guess what your anniversary present would be...and how you may have figured it out but won't let me know for sure.  And I'm not telling until I'm ready.

Parenthood

Parenthood.  Funny thing.  This morning on my walk, my iPod on "shuffle," this Enya song came on and I started thinking about a part of the lyrics:

One by one my leaves fall.
One by one my tales are told.

At 54, I'm staring mortality right in the face.  My children, at 29 and 24 years, respectively, no longer need me (except for cash, sometimes).

Jacquelyn Mitchard wrote a book entitled "Deep End of the Ocean" that I read even before it got onto Oprah's hit parade.  And because of that book, I bought another written by her.  "The Rest of Us" is a compilation of her columns and on our recent trip to New Orleans, I re-read it on the plane.

Her description of parenthood goes like this:

"...our sons and daughters are only passing through.  At first, they are of you, born to come to your arms.  Rapidly, they are with you, pausing only long enough for you to dab a few hurried strokes of paint on the canvas they are becoming--they are on their way to belonging to themselves, and then to the world.  If we are lucky, they always will consider our home their harbor, but they are headed out to the open sea, almost from the first."

I still consider the farm six miles north of Wagner, SD my harbor.  But which home, of the many we've had, will my children consider their harbor?  Germantown?  Kansas City?  Somewhere else?

I wonder.

Eddie Vizzo

We have a routine on Saturdays during the football season. No matter where we live, John finds a casino that has a free NFL football contest. Reno, Memphis and Syracuse were not a problem -- casinos were readily available. Other places, not so much but we managed.  The rules are simple. You pick who you think will win the game, slide a "players card" through a slot and then leave.

Yeah right.

While we don't gamble as freely as we did five years ago, we still like to give money away, for some reason. Probably because both of us have tasted small victories. A hundred here, a couple of hundred there...sometimes more. When Carly and I went to Reno to scatter Clyde's ashes, I won $800! (Thanks Clyde)

But now we always stick to our budget of losing. Once fifty bucks is gone so are we.

Saturday was no different. We went out for breakfast and then took the dog for a walk.

Dottie is now a very old doggie.  (We got her as a pup in Tulsa in 1994.)  She doesn't enjoy life as much as she once did.  But she does like these walks (we think) and we also believe that the mile or so does her good. 

When we get home, she's exhausted.  She can't climb the three steps up to the front door so either John or I carry her up and then she sleeps for most of the rest of the day.

Saturday started pretty much the same way it always does.  Breakfast, dog walk, grocery shopping, casino.

John's cellphone rang just as we were entering the Harrah's parking gargage.  It was his brother Billy.  Bill is forty-seven years old but we always refer to him in the diminutive.  He's the youngest of two.

"I have bad news," he told John.  I was watching John's face and I saw it screw up in sadness and confusion immediately.  I knew somebody died.

John's parents are both gone.  We miss them all the time.  He has two aunts, one of which is in her eighties.

He turned to me and I waited for the bad news.

"Eddie Vizzo died."

Edward Vizzo was John's cousin's husband.  It might seem like a distant leaf on the family tree but in John's small group, it's a big loss.  Ed and his wife Rainy had two children.  Jessica and Jennifer are only a few years older than our two.  When Rainy's mom and dad got too old to care for themselves and Connie, their developmentally challenged daughter (who is older than John), he built a home where all could stay.  He was a big hunk of the glue that held them altogether and we always said he was "a good guy."  He'd give you his last nickel, if he thought you needed it.  He was always kind and welcoming to me when John and I were first married.  And then, when Carly and Charlie were youngsters, he looked for ways to entertain and include them.

Google him and you'll find...not much. Edward Vizzo Electric didn't have a rating with the Better Business Bureau.  That's not surprising to me.  Ed Vizzo was a journeyman electrician who did business with people who appreciated his one-on-one approach.  He had plenty of loyal customers and others waiting in line.  In fact, he died while working for a client.  Felled by a heart attack in the kitchen.  That person called 9-1-1 right away and administered CPR but he was gone.

I don't know his medical history but he had a stress test recently.  His doctor told him that a surgery might be necessary in a couple of weeks, another stent perhaps.

If I were a young, thin, non-smoker who never drank alcohol, I might move on without much thought beyond the grief I feel for Elaine, Rainy, Jennifer and Jessica.

But that's not the case.

And so I'm studying this.

Thank you Eddie Vizzo.