Marriage- the topic of this week's homily

This Memorial Day weekend my regular priest was off with some GW students running around Rome so we had the former Anglican priest. Also the crowd was light, and the regular people who take the collection were not there as well, so I and my Protestant husband decided we would take the collection. Because I normally am not the lead I was trying to figure out at what point in the mass do we walk up and walk our way back taking collection, and we had a 8 mo baby with us, I really wasn't listening closely to the homily.

It didn't help that the priest didn't seem to have his microphone on, but the topic was marriage. I accept and hold the Church's teaching on marriage. I am aware that another parishioner struggles with this teaching, and he and his non-Catholic partner/spouse were in attendance. So I was slightly concerned about them, in between searching on line to figure out when were we supposed to collect the money (I don't pay attention, I just know it comes at the end of the prayers of the people). After taking communion I patted his shoulder to sort of relay, 'hey, I want you to stick around and keep on struggling.'

Because people like to coo over our baby son, and apparently taking the collection with a baby strapped to you is a huge hit, we didn't catch up to the other parishioner and his spouse until we spotted them in the self-checkout. Because they were nearly done and we were just about to start the conversation was very short. My fellow parishioner's spouse said he was asleep during the homily. So it's a non-issue for him. However the parishioner was awake, and they sit close enough to hear an acoustic priest, and he was very sure that the priest was incorrect in stating that cohabiting couples pretend that they are married. My husband and I both strongly disagreed. I have observed it with straight and gay cohabiting couples refer to their partner/boyfriend as their husband. My elder abusing sister in law did it with her baby daddy and numerous gay couples, or one part of the couple, have named their partner as 'husband'. He then responded about something regarding the city's laws regarding common law marriage.

Our conversation didn't last long. Both men were dealing with health challenges and needed to get home. I expect to see one or both next week or the week after that. I appreciate knowing them, even though one of them seems to trap you in conversation.

But on the topic of marriage, apparently common law marriage and getting legal recognition is tricky and not something you fall into. Marriage is also different than shacking up.

Judgy Post- There is only one man who defines me and his name is Jesus

I have a small irritation with other women, it is those who define themselves by their romantic relationships. Or worse double down and move in/ shack up with some guy.

Yes, being single can suck. I was a 40 year old bride. I was single for at least 22 of my adult years. I never lived with a boyfriend, and did not date a lot (10 years not dating anyone), so I spent a lot of time not being in a romantic relationship. But on the plus side one of my needs for survival (shelter) was not wrapped up with another person who had no obligations to me. Thinking back to the number of times I broke up with Jochen, it was good that I could just cry about it in my own house, or the house I was sharing with roommates.

Even those not shacked up there is the constant serial monogamy. Just broke up? Find a new guy! The constant up and down roller coaster ride where she never gets off but just switches which car she's in. Yes, guys do it do, where they want you to judge them by the improvement in eye candy he has hanging from his arm. There might not be the same level of pressure to have someone around, so others can judge your worth.

The problem with being in constant relationship mode is you don't have time to really reflect who you really are when you're not trying to please, cajole, react to, placate, or consider a significant other. People are looking for their 'authentic' self, but how do you find that authentic person when you're not alone? How do you love yourself and learn to do so when you're constantly looking for others to do it for you; usually not you, but the idea of you.

I knew my worth, that I was loved and my G-d helped confirm it in the blood of his son. By the time it finally clicked and I understood that deep, deep love of Jesus, I was married..... which makes no sense.

I do love my husband. Trying to make him truly my other half has rubbed against my independent woman self. So independent woman gets the boot for the sake of marriage. But I see other women, not married, throwing their independent selves under the bus for some guy. The only man a woman should sacrifice her self, her life, is for Jesus, because he did it first, and better.

Thoughts about my gay catholic friends

Today we went to the funeral mass of a very beautiful man who even in hospice was full of life and faith. Anthony was 78 years old. With G-d's help he remained sober for 31 years. The same amount of time he had been with his same sex partner.
For the majority of the time I've been attending my church, he attended alone. After the cancer, again, when he began getting weaker, his partner John began showing up. Sitting at his side.
I sometimes joke, in my head, that I attend the "gay" mass, and you can't say that I left the Episcopal Church to get away from gays, because if that was so, I failed miserably. I appreciate their presence, because unlike some others who struggle with the Church, they are at least there. I heard a priest once say that you didn't have to agree with 100% of what the Church teaches but you have to be willing to listen to what she does teach.
Homosexuality is not a burden I bear. I have my own struggles and I try to hear what the Church has to tell me regarding my particular sins and troubles.
Anthony loved the Church, he loved Mother Mary. I believe the saints have a job and that is to point us to Christ, Anthony did that too. If you spoke with him, you'd know this.

Redemption

I do not care for football. I don't watch it. I don't pretend to understand it. And really if I were queen of the world I'd eliminate American Football from the face of the earth. Despite my disinterest, I can't seem to escape the story of Ray Rice, a local (Baltimore Ravens) football player who knocked out his wife (then fiancee) in a hotel elevator. The response from the media has been one of shock and outrage. The news cycle doesn't seem to be done with the story, because an indefinite suspension, doesn't appear to be enough for the masses. Hopefully, the cycle will move towards redemption, for both Ray and Janay Rice, but right now I'm not hearing much about redemption.

What I am hearing is punishment and anger. The anger is justified and understandable. Punishment, necessary. Unfortunately, it has resulted in the NFL throwing both Ray and his wife out into the cold. What they need is love, paths towards forgiveness and redemption. What would have been nice, would have been for the NFL to suspend Rice for say a season, AND provide marriage/family counseling and anger management to the couple, to wrap their arms around this family and say, "we abhor what you (Ray) did and what we saw, but we want you to be a better man and a stronger woman, and we want to walk with you to that better place." But no, that's not what the masses want.

Thankfully, our Lord and Father is not the NFL. He offers redemption and forgiveness because he knows we are royal screw-ups deeply in need of both. I have seen G-d redeem my father, who was an angry drunk and abusive husband. When I doubt the Lord, I remember the miracle he worked in my parents' life how he brought back to life the dry bones of a marriage of 30 years after 10 years of divorce. No human could have brought forth that, no human (not his family nor friends) convinced my father to stop drinking and to heal whatever pain he was trying to self-medicate. 

Our Lord has redeemed thieves, murderers, and the like. He redeemed Saul, a man who sought to eliminate early Christians, we know him as Paul, author of several books in the New Testament. He redeemed John Newton, a slave trader in the 18th Century, who we know as the author of "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me...."

"for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."
Romans 3:23-24

Is it a white guy thing? Protecting "their" women

I've encountered a sentiment up close a couple times to make me wonder if it is a 'thing'. First time was with a roommate, the white straight male one. He was talking about the future, his concerns about the future with his then girlfriend (now wife). He liked the neighborhood we were in, but had some concerns about living here with her. He had very strong concerns about her safety, about her walking on the streets alone, afraid she'd be raped or something. They wound up in another part of DC, with (as far as I'm concerned) the same crime issues, but much hipper and a better selection of retail and restaurant options. At the time, I was in 'strong independent woman' mode. I was slightly offended of the idea of woman as weak thing that without man at her side will constantly be at the mercy of the criminal element.
The second was with my own husband, the Help. Now the Help and I had been platonic friends for about a decade, so we had a relationship before amor came in. After marriage I noticed he was trying to take on more of the protector role, to which the 'strong independent woman' that was me responded with, "what the Hell?" In an animated discussion about my safety, he expressed concern (despite my years of being safe when the neighborhood was more dangerous) and I countered with asking about the safety of a single female neighbor. He responded that the neighbor I mentioned was not his wife.
In the two examples, the males were white and the females, black. I've heard similar sentiment from other white guys regarding their live in girlfriends and wives, where the guy was white. And from some women inquiring about moving to the neighborhood, hinting that they can't be safe without a guy (bf or husband).
My own father, a black man, never seemed to take on this role. It wasn't protection but honor and respect, where his interests. Other black women seemed to take on protection, in a motherly fashion. There are issues of manhood and masculinity in the Black community that I really can't address here, so I won't.
After marriage, I'm letting go of parts of the 'strong independent woman' and submitting (as I've decided to interpret it) to my husband. I've grown too attached to my husband to think of living independently without him. I allow him to drive me to work, so he can protect me from the bus ride I'll have to take after work. I allow him to be concerned about aspects of my safety that are much in his thoughts, while I continue to maintain and strengthen those areas of our safety that have not crossed his mind.

Being ourselves

I think that the greatest glue in our marriage is the power of our savior and Lord Jesus. Another pretty good binder is the fact we can be ourselves with each other.
Too much time in one's youth is wasted trying to be someone else.
This weekend the Help once again won the 'only white guy in the room' award at my aunts' alumni fundraiser dance. He is the whitest white guy who was ever white and was so for the whole evening. He did not cease to be him while dancing with one of my aunts, chatting with table mates (though limited by the fact the DJ was trying to make us go deaf), and attempting to do the dance of my people, the Electric Slide. He decided to sit out the "booty call" and other line dances. He did not try to discover some blackness in him or blend in.
When he attends mass with me, he is comfortable being Mr. Presbyterian in the pews. He's decided his job is to hold the missle so he sits and stands and does the low impact excerises short of receiving the host, kneeling, and genuflecting. He sits. He stands. He holds a book and turns the pages. I love him for that.
And I can be me. I can do interpretive dance in his presence. Seriously, serious, non-parody dancing. I do parodies too. I can also sing freely. Private comedy shows with a lot of inside jokes. I can choose to give up on make up and other beauty "musts" the modern world insists on, and he can make me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world.
He can be weird. The kind of of weird that I know he is, because I'm somewhat used to it after a decade of friendship. I also tell him that he's weird and he says, "I know."
In all this we are being ourselves and I love it.
I can only hope others can find the same love being simiply who they are.

Don't want a sleeping prince

I gather the authors mean well when they switch up genders of classic western fairy tales. One that I'm thinking of is switching up Sleeping Beauty, with a princess waking a sleeping prince. Is an unconscious man attractive? Do the new authors ever ask that? With the goal being raising up girls, the price of devaluing boys is not factored.
Seriously, what is the ideal man for a independent minded strong secure woman? A future hen-pecked husband? A supportive but do nothing partner who spends his waking hours on the X-box? Nice but really useless guys, boy-toys?
The modern examples I can think of is Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley of the Harry Potter books. She's strong and smart, and he can be the hero, the supportive man to Harry and Hermione when called for. He doesn't require much rescuing, no more than the main hero, and he has his own list of accomplishments. Another strong fictional female is Katniss Everdeen. When she bothers to think of the opposite sex her heart wavers between Peeta and Gale. Gale is her hunting buddy, the guy who taught her to improve her hunting. Peeta is the guy she has to pretend (she's not even sure on this point) to be in love with. He admires her survival instinct, and his doesn't need rescuing as much as he needs care. Katniss needed Peeta in order to get through the Games, their star-crossed lover story made the rules of the game change. For the rest of the trilogy Peeta is damaged goods, physically strong (despite losing a leg) but mentally, by Book 3, messed up due to the Capitol. Katniss also has some sort of PTSD. As two people who experienced the horrors of the Games, they understand each other and thus rescue each other. Chatting with the Help, who is the in house comics expert, Wonder Woman is now exploring dating her equals, instead of having to deal with her Lois Lane equivalent, Steve Trevor.
So what the sleeping prince stories seem to offer to girls is a future of romance where she'll have to settle for weak passive men, whereas the strong man, the daring man, the man worthy of admiration is left for the gals weaker than she. The better stories are where she shares the story with the guy, not as a lesser character, a weak woman but a co-hero.
The woman in Proverbs 31 is not passive. As I remember, she buys real estate, she has household servants, she's involved in trade. Her husband, no clue, but he's worthy enough to sit with the elders, so I gather he's respected.

Sickness & in health

The Help came down with a cold.
I, thank the Lord, am fine. With rest and eye-talian cough syrup (equal parts honey, lemon juice and cognac, heated in the microwave) I've so far kept illness at bay.
This weekend I figured my job as wife and helpmate was to make sure he didn't go anywhere. Seriously, if he had his way, he'd be dragging his diseased corpse to outer Maryland for his weekend volunteer gig and then at church spreading the love and the germs. The most loving thing I could do for my guy and the health of the DC metro area was to keep him in bed and try to stay cold-free myself.
Thankfully we have a second room. It still isn't up to guest room snuff yet. So after 1 night of hacking and tossing, we slept separately. I miss him and I love him, he with the raw red nose and looking like an extra from a zombie movie. I love him and he is mine, every germy snotty coughy inch of him.

Marriage and loss

I've gotten married and I am starting to lose things. Not my mind, just stuff.
Before I got married I had two waiter's corkscrews. Now I have none. Where did they go? Dozens of roommates, and I kept those two corkscrews. One husband... BAM! They are gone.
Same for a really nice sweatshirt I had since 1988. I got it in Paris. Now, it is no where to be found.
I had some folding chairs but I think my aunt may have run off with those.
There are non-material things too. There went my sense of independence. When I was single, I was very comfortable being alone. I liked my own company and was at peace with my own thoughts. Now I yearn for my husband and to be near him. I worry about his commute. I need him. The old single me, who exists in a corner in my mind is very annoyed at the needy yearny woman developing. That single self also got annoyed at women who defined themselves by their men. I still think I mostly define myself outside of my role as wife. And even inside that wife role, I am trying to define what my roles are, as the Help also tries to figure out how to play out 'husband'.

"Communicative sex life"

In an article in the Washington Post today there is an article about Catholic women being supportive of the Church's position on artifical birth control, "communicative sex life." That is what NFP (less so that and more TCOYF ) has given the Help and I. He plays a part. In the morning he measures my tempurature. Every morning. And he records it, along with other information that relates to our attempts at pregnancy. He is very aware of my cycles and what's going on, and I am more so now. A little less so on the cervical fluid part, as I haven't gotten past the "ick" factor. But I'm aware of it and more aware of my body than I was when I was on the pill from big pharma.
The idea in there is that NFP needs to be brought into the 21st century. It has, because there is an app for that. I just don't know if I want to pay that much for an app, and the free/cheap ones look like a waste of space on my phone.
We do communicate. The tempurature measurement is a daily thing, a first thing in the morning after the alarm clock goes off thing. Okay, thwacking him on the chest and mumbling "measure me" is not the most romantic thing, but it makes him an equal partner. With the pill, it was just me. A solo thing, in my then solo life. Guys only cared if you were on it, not if you were actually taking it every day or going along to doctors visits for the depo. Here he is a true partner, and active partner.

Come thy fount

'Come Thy Fount of Every Blessing' was one of our wedding hymns since it means so much to me. Despite being misspelled in the wedding program.
There are the lines

Let thy goodness, like a fetter,

bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it;
Seal it for Thy courts above.

I do catch myself wandering in thought and I need the Lord to reel me back in. The world is like an endless sea or the boundless space above the Earth. I am not a fish nor a space creature that can live in the vaccum of space and the thought of floating adrift in the world saddens me. I am very aware that others may find the fetters constraining and limiting if not choking. I've been adrift, with my fetters unhinged, free to sin, and the reward was pitiful. There is another part of the hymn:

Jesus sought me when a stranger,

Wandering from the fold of G-d;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

I have wandered and Jesus reeled me back in. I love my Lord, and like my relationship with my husband it has its highs and lows but regardless of its current state, I value my relationship with him.

How's married life treating ya?

"It's an adjustment"
That's my answer. Someone asked hubbyman the same thing and apparently he said 'exausting'.
It is an adjustment and I am very thankful that my husband is open to change and criticism. However I do stop myself when I think I'm being too much of a shrew. He is trying. Half of it though is relearning old good habits and skills and unlearning habits he picked up while living in a place we call "that house" or the den of inequity.
A husband is way different than a roommate. Roommates weren't this much trouble. Apparently my roommates feared me because I was the landlady. No fear with the husband and so the walls have gotten marred, several things broken, and rough treatment of the fixtures. Also the utilities have gone up! We are working towards being more energy effiecent and less destructive.
We are working on his husbandry, his spiritual leadership of our small family.

Letting the Spinster Pass and catering update

In a few days I'm going to let the happyspinster.com url go into the great beyond where someone else can buy it up and use it since no one has asked for it. I'm keeping crappychristian.com
Now on to wedding matters. We are pondering a caterer. He's really not a caterer but a former chef. A former 4 star chef. I mentioned our price constriants. When I brought him up to the Help, he also wondered if we could afford him. I Googled him, he almost hit celebrity status. Worked at restaurants I can't afford. Okay, normally can't afford. I'm re-reading my email to him and I told him what our budget is and that I think he's worth more than what we've budgeted. I ran into him and he said, no problem he's not that busy at that time of the year.
Still, worried about the afford part. Because I know he has that 4 star chef desire for great, fresh, and local ingredients. And everything will be out of season.

Living apart- shocking

We announced our engagement to some aquaintences we've known over the years and when asked where we are living, the Help said he's in Beltsville and I'm in DC, and the person had a look of mild shock on her face. Following questions and answers made it clear that no, we aren't going to start living together until we're married. I'm just getting a thrill by shocking someone with our unconventiality.
There is a very practical reason why it is best that we live apart beyond the living out our faith. The new roommate will help raise a couple thousand bucks for the wedding. Second, I hate to be unromatic but this house is my largest asset and is the reason why my net worth is a positive number even after factoring in the mortgage. It seems unwise to have someone who will claim the property moving in before he has a legal right to it.

Wussman I love

The Help is a bit squeemish regarding some food. His last girlfriend has some severe food allergies and barely ate anything. I on the other hand believe if it bleeds I can cook it and eat it. He likes the openess I have towards food but sometimes I am a little too open. I had him cleaning mussles for a dish, at some point he noticed the mussles making noises and I made the mistake of telling him they were alive. Oh, the little remarks I had to endure after that.
Before the mussle incident he would proclaim that he didn't want to eat anything with a head on it. He would eat meat or fish, just as long as there was no head on it. After the mussles he's included them in the list of things that look back at him. Dang it, I want to cook and eat blue crabs! I don't want to hear bitching about food that can attack you.
Then there was the time with the rabbit. The rabbit had no head. But there I was cutting it into parts for browning and he walked into the kitchen. The way he describes it is that its little legs were all sticking up and then I cracked the ribs. Upon the rib cracking he turned on his heel out of the kitchen. He also likes to avoid me when I've got a knife in my hands.
He's quite happy to eat what I cook, but I could deal without the wussiness of his meat eating. With further discussions we decided if push came to shove and if he had to live off the land like his hero Daniel Boone, he'd toughen up and eat things with heads and faces. Until then he's the 21st Century equivilent of the bespeckled man in the bowler hat who steps off the stagecoach in dime store Westerns.

Poor Ms. Kagan and the right to be an asexual cat lady

I know as a conservative I'm supposed to be against her but so far her biggest fault is liberals like her and until we hear she has personally drop kicked babies over cliffs, she'll more than likely be the next Supreme Court justice. But I feel badly for her, as a single woman.
Here's the problem, you get older, it's a bit harder to make new close friends. You get set in your ways. You find a life that's comfortable, like a pair of old stained sweatpants, but this doesn't include another person. And because you aren't actively seeking someone else, particularly someone of the opposite sex, and if this continues for several years, decades, people assume you're not straight. Gawd, why is that!
Can't a person just not be single and happy?
If it were not for that idea that I'll credit G-d for putting in my head to approach the Help on our current path, I was sort of planning on spinsterhood. An enjoyable spinsterhood. Unfortunately, my 8 year period between boyfriends and about 3 or 4 years without going on a date during that period, I felt somewhat obligated to prove my heterosexuality by interjecting mention of ex-boyfriends in conversation. Not that in that period I didn't want a boyfriend or date, but the environment and the available persons just weren't suitable. My pursuit of men really didn't go beyond prayer and updating dating web profiles.
But now I'm in a relationship with the Help, long time friend turned boyfriend, with an eye (no date yet and stop asking) towards marriage. But the irritation (anger is too strong a word) came concerning the speculation of Ms. Kagan's sexual orientation because she's an unmarried squat woman with a short haircut. It reminded me of a conversation with others, men & women, who were in their late 30s, 40s (maybe 50s) about the problem of people thinking you were gay just because your dating life was dead, you were never married and had no kids.
I look forward to the day when I do get married. Mainly so I can form better relationships with associates who are lesbians, because I've kept a distance because I don't want to bother with defending my orientation to other people.

"It just happened" prevention insurance

I'm trying to plan a summer vacation with the Help. And I've narrowed it down to two places on two different weekends both in Western Virginia. Not West Virginia but 'Western'. These places I'm trying to rent for the weekend are privately owned cottages and cabins in rural VA, surrounded by farmland or woods, one in the shadow of the mountains. Part of the deal is we need a chaperon.
I know what you're thinking, he and I are two educated adults, why would we need a chaperon. You know that phrase, "it just happened." A couple of friends of ours, also educated adults, one an MD, said 'it just happened' when explaining how they are getting their 1st child. A doctor. You'd think this person would have a great understanding of how human reproduction works. You may also be thinking, you and he are such committed Christians. Yup. Even though some people in some one's church might not think of me as a Christian, yup, we love Jesus and G-d and occasionally the Holy Spirit (kinda forget the Spirit at times). However, I still sin, fall from grace, wander into temptation, do dumb stuff. So thinking logically, and learning from mistakes of others, we need a chaperon.
So I started contacting folks who'd I think would make lovely travel companions. Jon, being one. Problem with Jon, there is a 50% chance he'll flake. Something will come up right before we leave. I'd put money on it. I'd bet it would be a family-friend emergency in the Midwest or wanting to catch up with work. So I emailed my cousin to be an alternate, should he flake. 50%, and that's being generous.

iTunes U

Unfortunately work is slow and plodding and very uninspiring. It's just that I have a few things sitting on my desk that I've put off and ignored and there is no ignoring them. They must be done until something more interesting comes down the pike.
Anyway while that's going, I have almighty MP3 player and a few new sources of interesting lectures that almost make me miss college. Almost.
So far I am loving Seattle Pacific University. They have a bunch of old chapel lectures and speakers, as well class lectures. I've enjoyed the chapel speakers covering sex and cities (not those two subject together) from a Christian (with evangelistic notes) perspective. I've shared some the SPU and other lectures (from Reformed Theological Seminary) with the Help and sparked some discussion with him on related topics. The RTS lecture was on C.S. Lewis and the lecturer mentioned how in his old age he is comfortable with visiting the thoughts of Roman Catholic writers, but is secure in his Reformed outlook. The SPU lectures on sexuality, helped strengthen our resolve and appreciation for dialing way back the physical aspects of our relationship.
Unfortunately since the EcoTalk and Cato podcasts have had some dull (it happens) episodes I've had to get my libertarian economic ya yas somewhere else. The Mises Institute does have a lecture series that I've finished an enjoyed by Ralph Raico on the history of liberty. Now if only the Acton Institute would put a lecture series together of some of their stuff I'd be happy.
Goodness I'm spoiled.
Anyway, I keep looking for a class out there somewhere that covers Western historiography. I need a refresher. I've struggled with Open Univerity's German. I'll actually need to print out the related material, because mein Duetsch has gone to pot, and just listening isn't going to cut it.

Valentine's day recap

For those who actually want to know.
I had told Jon that I was keeping my expectations low, as the Help admitted he didn't have a romantic bone in his body. Also the day before and day of I kept bugging, without response, the Help about what I should wear, because if we were going somewhere nice I wanted to dress the part. Day of, I find he hadn't reserved a table anywhere and just figured we'd go somewhere. *sigh. Because of the snow and the angry parking fights, I encouraged him to metro it over to my place.
He arrived a little late, 20 minutes past his ETA, which made me worried. When he did arrive he had in a plastic bag a pink teddy bear and a valentine's heart box. I eyed that with suspicion/ contempt. I am not a pink stuffed animal kind of girl. I was never a stuffed animal kind of girl. The box was a Russell Stover chocolate box, an inferior candy that I will eat if it's free and in the office and I don't feel like going out of the building for something better, like a Reeses Cup. And the box was falling apart.
I opened the box, no chocolate. Instead, the paper cups were filled with shallots and bubble gum. The kind of cheap .99 gum I love. I am addicted to bubble gum, especially the kind that gets hard quick and is nothing but sugar. The bear was just a container for brown rice. Yay. He knows me! He loves me!
Since my roommate was in and about and I really didn't have anything prepared we hopped on the metro to go back out to Maryland. We went to Tiffin, an Indian restaurant out in Langley Park that I used to go to when I worked and lived in Maryland. It wasn't full and we later stopped by the nearby former House of Spices (now some Halal market) to grab some black cardamon.
A good Valentines' Day.

Argh my parents

About 10 years ago my parents divorced after 30 years of marriage. Then about a year ago they started dating each other. They never solved the property issue of daddy's name on the house and the lot. So now daddy is parking his heavy equipment on the lot and sort of reclaiming "part" of the life he walked out on. I say part because I know what or who in the next town over is keeping those two from restarting. And it isn't entirely her fault, so it's hard to be mad at her. So I'm annoyed at him.
Anyway, dad took mom out to dinner and breakfast last week. I have no idea what the hell those two are up to. So when I think of them, I say I'm happy they are hanging out and forming some sort of relationship, but it ends with me exclaiming "argh!"