Differing Similarities.

Whew! What a weekend! Did you miss me? Of course you missed me; if you’d hit me, I’d be in the hospital, maybe worse. Most people like to back up and try again.

If you’re gonna bother doing it at all, do it right the first time.

That’s what my mom always said about cleaning house. That’s why I don’t clean the house at all. It creates an “organic” appeal, a secret hideout for the dust-bunny revolutionary army. For a hermitage, that’s important. It’s authentic.

That’s not what the pirate queen likes.

What the pirate queen likes is important to me, on so many levels. So I spent most last week cleaning my house. See, the Pirate queen is looking to move her hideout, and my harbor is on the secret cove short list.

Yo ho ho!

No, she’s not thinking of moving in. She’s a babysteping peg-legger—just moving near. About a year ago, she moved cross-country to be closer, and yet still keep enough distance to man the cannons and scuttle the ship should something go wrong. For her, that’s about 20 minutes from work and at least an hour from me. I told you: babysteps.

Now, she’s considering a place closer to my house, and that takes her further from her work. She’s spending this week at my house. Can she take the commute? For this experiment to work out correctly, I needed to eliminate any external contaminants and that meant Rob had to clean.

“I’m sorry bunnies, you need to hide somewhere else this week.”

The Pirate Queen isn’t the only reason I cleaned my house. I cleaned my house because a good friend of mine came to town too. My friend Dan and I hadn’t seen each other in eight years. Yup, that’s why we’re still good friends.

Good distances make good relationships.

I tried the “good fences” thing but ran into the same problem the border patrol did: friends still kept getting in. It’s just easier if you pack up your borders and move them out of reach. I learned that from Mom and the cookie jar.

If you’re gonna bother doing it at all, do it right the first time.

Yeah, sorry ‘bout the cookie jar mom. I did it right the first time too.

The point is, my best friends live states away—and now two people I care about are coming to town—at the same time.

I’m flummoxed and fluxomed at the same time, and only one of those is a real word!

Still, I’m noting if not prepared. I’m starting with a clean house. Then the Pirate Queen helps me clean again. Not because she needs it, but because she knows my friend Dan is coming, and she wants things to be perfect too.

Perfect for her means cleaning at six AM. OK, I’m exaggerating, but only a little. It’s six AM when she begins bouncing on the bed.

“Are you awake yet?”

“No, but I’ve crushed the dust-bunny rebellion. Can we go back to sleep?”

It’s six-thirty when she rolls my fat butt to the floor.

I’m not a morning person. For me, the sun also rises, but that doesn’t happen until noon. Today, morning has broken, and I’m expected to fix it.

“Why are you friends?” The Queen asks. She’s not being mean, she’s just trying to understand our relationship. While I lint-roll the cat hair from my chair (my friend is allergic to cats. This won’t cure things, but it will ease the pain), I explain, “We’ve known each other forever.”

“But you don’t sound anything alike.” The Queen stares at my baseboards, shaking her head, “You don’t do these, do you?”

“We’re not—and do what?”

She then explains the rocket science of baseboard cleansing while I blink uncontrollably. I got nuthin’. I always thought the darker color contrasting white wall paint was a favorable thing.

Contrast and compare that to my relationship with Dan all you want. On the surface it’s hard to explain. He’s a motorhead, I’m a blogger. He likes bands like Van Stevenson (“Modern Day Delilah” if you’re playing along) and Sly Fox (“Let’s Go All The Way”). I like—wait a minute, he likes what?

On the other hand we spent our twenties hanging out. We were roommates. We dated girls, quit entry-level jobs, and drank—lots. That’s a bond. He was my best man at wedding. When MyEx spoke of an old married couple, she was speaking of Dan and I.

“…more like Jack Nasty.”

No, this isn’t a brokeback story, let me tell ya. PQ was glad to hear that. “Should I go home while he’s here?”

No there are some bonds that defy explanation. Although, our differences probably explain why it’s been eight years. He hasn’t had a divorce. He’s got two boys. I’ve got a cat.

“I love my life.” I explain over a couple of beers.

“Me too.” He says staring at the ceiling. “We’ve come a long way from being kids, haven’t we?”

“A long way.” I lie, drawing the bottle to my lips. He’ll find out later: I’ve short sheeted his bed.

Dan and I catch up over pizza as the Pirate Queen takes notes. She’s learning more about me than I’m comfortable with. She’s learning that even though she might move along way from work, I haven’t moved a long way from when Dan knew me.

“He still does that!”

Yeah, great. It is great though. I’m sitting with two people I share the most with: a lot of differences, a lot in common, One my past, the other my future.

“Tomorrow I’m going to a car show, wanna come?” Dan asks.

“Sure.” I say, “But can we start later than six?”

“You can sleep in, if you want. I’ve got to kick this army of dust bunnies out of my car. I don’t know where they came from.” Dan looks to the Pirate Queen, “You want to come with us?”

“I can’t,” says the Pirate Queen smiling at me. “I need to find an apartment.”

Yous & Mes

I have a flaw.

I know. “Stop the press!”

Alas it’s true.

Recently somebody pointed it out. Understand that even as I mention it, I’m not making fun of that person, or belittling their criticism. We all have opinions. Would American Idol survived without opinions? I think not. And even though my opinion of that show is low, I welcome any Simon Cowell to my life as a Joseph Stalin of love--or something like that.

“Please, tell me more about your concerns. Stand just a little to your left. Please! Ignore the firing squad, just express…”

Likewise, I appreciate the well wishers who’ve chimed in and said, “It’s OK Rob, we accept you the way you are.” I like being liked. During the worst times, we find out who our real friends are. I’m sure Joseph Stalin could express that as well. If you’re going through hell, look around you. Those people holding you up now? Those are the people you want to keep around forever. Seriously. Put them in the freezer. They keep well. You can pull them out as pick-me-up-sicles later. It’s a little trick I learned from Martha Stewart.

Me? I don’t keep well. I spoil easily, don’t bother—nobody wants a spoiled manboy around. You’ll never get the remote control from his cold furry hand. If you’re lucky, it won’t be the hand down his pants. You’ll never want to touch the remote again.

“Rob was over last week. You want to change the channel for me?”

That’s not my flaw. It’s more of an endearing quality really. And for people supporting me, I’m a big manboy. I don’t need defended. Well, maybe a little. Ok, you, miss with the flower in your hair, red. Right. You can defend me.

Why is she running away?

That’s the problem (not mine). People are so hard to read. You can’t tell who’s really who they pretend to be until things get tough. We lose so many allies that way. I got married once. The one thing I loved most about her was that she never pretended to be anything more or less than who she was. When times got tough, she remained true to her nature.

“Get that remote out of your pants, Rob. I’ve brought you a cold beer. What happens next will decide where I put it. You can have it on the table, or you can have it—“

“Oh my!”

Married things were simple. It didn’t stop us from being ourselves though, and in the end, we killed us.

I can say I tried my best to be just as open.

“There is no try, only do.”

Yeah, thanks Head Yoda. Fine, let me say, I believe I did, but my Rob-pinions are biased. I am my own worst critic. That’s why even when I’m being all the Rob I can be, the things other people say bounce around in my skull like a super ball from a cannon.

“Is it true?”

“Are they crazy?”

“Is it because there’s nothing in this skull to slow this ball down?”

Probably.

With nothing else in there, there’s a lot of room for the ball to hit a blob of me. My cranial cavity is oozing with me, like Ghostbuster ectoplasm. See, everything hits me, because everything is about me. You know this, right? Look all around you. There’s a little bit of Rob everywhere. It’s ok, no need to be alarmed. It’s good for the soil.

The Pirate Queen and I discussed this.

“Everything is about me!”

“I know Rob, because nothing is about me.”

You might think she’s being sarcastic, but she’s not. We hold polar philosophies on this. Here’s an example. She calls a penguin friend, inviting them over for Saturday. That penguin never calls her back. Maybe he’ll show up on Saturday, maybe he won’t. That doesn’t matter—at least not to the queen. She believes that her friend is a penguin, and therefore lacks the fingers to hold—let alone dial--the phone, and if Waddles doesn’t show for dinner, then his actions support the queen’s theory.

Me? Waddles better call me back, or I’m having penguin burgers: it’s all about me. His actions speak more about where I sit on his scale of priorities and I know where I sit on my scale of priorities! He needs to find a way to peck-dial, and caw into that phone because it’s rude not to.

It’s all about me-- No, this isn’t my flaw. It’s the side affect of one of my better traits and I won’t change it. I accept its existence, and take careful efforts to process things accordingly. I’ll fume over Waddles until I remember: the cause of the crisis? It’s all about me.

Ohhhh…

You see how this could be a teeter-totter of death for the Pirate Queen and I. She may hop off the low end, seeing herself as “just too busy.” I’ll slam to the ground with a tail of pain. I know she got off because it’s all about me.

The funny thing is that it’s just as bad if you’ve got two “mes” or “yous” together. With two yous you’ve got either a bad line from My Cousin Vinnie, or two people ignoring that anything is about them until the teeter totters and breaks under the weight of unclaimed me. With multiple me’s you’ve end up with two individuals jumping up and down, ignoring the other me in the house, who’s now seething because “how could you ignore me?”

Personally, I think there are more mes, but that’s me. I’m a me. Still, how many mes read a book, an article, or a blog and go, “That’s me!” I think far more than go, “No, that’s just you.”

That’s why communication is key. The queen and I set up a talk table. It’s more folding table than a large dinette. It’s portable and we can throw down when and where we need. We both sort our cards into issues and deal them out accordingly. Sometimes it hurts, but by keeping our hands above the table and open, we sniff each other’s palms and tell their intent.

This allows us to air our issues, knowing the other person won’t throw cards in our face, call us “Waddles” or worse, and storm away. We listen, exchanging our perception of “me and you.” It’s what keeps us alive and together--That and the queen’s mean plank policy.

This is what I try to do in all my relationships. Sometimes it’s easier than others, because some wrestlers will take the table and beat you with it. That’s fine. As I explained at another friend’s table, “I’d rather err on the side of love.”

That’s why, when I was confronted about my flaw, I did my best to respond in said fashion. I sat at the table, she reached out and touched my hand. Petting my fingers, the Pirate Queen said, “You’ve got a boogie in your nose.”

I cried.

Cuz it’s all about me.

Hermit Glitterati

OW!

You got gauntlet in my peanut butter!

There I was, enjoying an old man birthday, when blog-fool dropped a gauntlet. The silly thing hit my big toe, glopped in my peanut butter toe vat, then klunk-spatted into the street. That’s where all gauntlets go to die. The streets are littered with gauntlet droppings. The ants and crows pick clean the peanut butter though, so don’t bother…

Anyway… I can’t throw my cat without hitting one (The gauntlet—not the ants. I mean I have plenty of ants, but why would I throw my cat to miss them? A cat is a perfect ant-swatter if you fling it’s tail right. But I digress from the gauntlet gauntlet. Back to the gauntlet.). It’s like people find reasons to drop these gloves at the drop of their hat. I hope some haberdasher is profiting from this, cuz I’m not.

In the old days, they walked out in the street and dueled.

“I’m the fastest haberdasher in these here parts—no wait, blogger—now scribble!”

“Uh, you got me! Your verb usage was too quick. My prose flows purple with embellished blood!”

Now people just throw perfectly good hand wear. Yeah, whatever. I’m a blogger not a writer. Nobody wants to challenge me. Bloggers perch one link above toaster manual writers in the evolutionary chain.

“You know that line about ‘don’t use in the tub?’ I wrote that!”

Interesting side not for all you gauntlet holders out there, we’re one link below cereal box writers. Yeah, they get to join the nutty-cluster union. Bloggers are just a bunch of street vermin dodging gauntlets and flaming comments.

Who wants to compete with that? The Pirate Queen told me somebody at D360 did.

“You know somebody wrote a blog about you?”

“No, you’re probably just reading too much into it.” Cuz the last time I joked that somebody might have blogged about me, I got my eyes clawed out. Even bloggers need eyes, it’s brains and elbows that are dead weight to us. Toes? No, that’s where we keep our peanut butter, silly.

“Well they left a comment on your wall too.”

“Coincidence.”

“They said you were popular.”

“Oh, it’s ON!”

Me? Popular? Hardly. I’ve taken efforts to ensure my unpopularity. I sported horn-rimmed glasses until I was 12, and wore my uncle’s disco hand me downs 4 years after he graduated: 6 years after the great mirrorball piñata riot.

“Hey that’s glass, not candy!”

It was led by bloggers, before we found our idiom.

Popular?

I don’t send Christmas cards.

I kick my cat.

I hurl lawn gnomes at neighbor kids.

The good humor man? I shot him.

Popular?

Nope.

Why am I such a popu-phobe? I’m not. I just don’t believe in it. Popularity is a benchmark for people concerned with climbing up and falling down the social ladder. I have a social dungeon, not a ladder.

“Bring out the gimp.”

See? I’m too busy being Rob. And let me tell ya, being Rob isn’t easy. In school I was voted “most likely to hide in the library and scream ‘not in the face!’” Was that because my face was so beautiful? Well, duh! But that didn’t make me popular. It made me a target for every gang of pocket protector clad ruffians swinging slide rules like death scythes yearning to be popular. They were too busy playing D&D angry villagers to notice that I was not in the way of their popularity. It was the 20-sided dice and the slide rules.

“You get plus two throw to hit: he’s a blogger.”

Remember the kid in Almost Famous? That was me, except I wasn’t nearly as cute or intelligent: I had greasy hair and ate glue. I was 2 evolutionary rungs over the hairy butt boy at the circus. As an adult? Remember the kid in Almost Famous…? Now I AM the hairy butt boy at the circus.

“Come one come all! See the Rob stick to the Great Wall of Velcro! Careful boys and girls, keep your mitts to yourselves He flings poo! Oh, no worries, he’s stuck to the wall!”

I’ve never been popular. I don’t want to be popular. It takes too much effort. Four out of five dead-stars surveyed agree. Ask them. Go ahead, I’ll wait. What? They’re dead? See? That’s what popularity does to your relevance. Nobody cares what you have to say anymore.

I don’t care about relevance. I want to be Rob. I know, I know, it’s a little ignoble, but it’s who I am. This last weekend was my birthday. In the years since Neil Armstrong made a giant leap, Rob Boyd has tried to figure out what is under his kilt (mine, not Neil’s). It’s not mighty footprints on my moon; It’s a dude, a blog, and another day to smile (yeah, I keep peanut butter under my kilt too, wanna see?) I’m happy with that. My blog has nothing to do with being popular. It pings like a pinball of scattered thoughts. I’m lucky if it coherent.

If a Rob blogs in a vacuum does he make a sound?

He does when he passes out from lack of oxygen. But when you roll away his corpse, you’ll also find the blog he wrote. Maybe somebody will read it. Maybe somebody will crumple it up in a ball and toss it on my lawn: my legacy.

“Here lies Robert Boyd’s final wor—oh, wait, it’s now over there…”

Will the final words of a grumpy hermit yelling for kids to get off his lawn stand the test of time? I dunno. That’s for time to tell, but the one thing time won’t say is “Rob was popular.”

So I’ll continue to blog, and you can continue to stub my toe with the “popular” gauntlet if it makes you feel better, or you can just read and scratch your head. I guess that’s kinda what I’ve learned about Rob over these years. I write because I love it, and because it makes other people smile. If that makes me popular, then I wouldn’t know. I’m too busy working through psychoses, neuroses, phobias, foibles, and peanut butter.

I can tell my gauntlet wielding friend that if he wants popularity, he should go after that Caldwell guy. He’s got a front-page blog and hoards of hotties swooning. Me? I’m just a weak-link blogger and I’m happy that way.

Soiled Sheets of Discontent

There are two women in my life, and one of them is pooping in my bed. Ok, you can stop covering your mouth with your palm and whispering about the Pirate Queen. It’s not her. I’ve got the Pirate Queen bathroom trained.

“No, seriously baby, I cleaned the bathroom. I swear. There’s no need to go to Starbucks…”

She is still using some woman witchery and floating 3 inches over the seat though. Nonetheless, for the record, she is not pooping in my bead.

“Then who is the poo, Christopher Robby?”

My poo-culprit is another Winnie: Persephone, my cat. I don’t get it. We’ve been together over a year and a half. This trick is recent. She does the doo only when I spend the night at the Pirate Queen’s.

Now if she’d done this from the beginning, I’d understand, but this isn’t the first weekend I’ve spent at the Pirate Queens. What’s changed? Why is there a new tension between Persephone and I? Are we just like other couples that have fallen into complacency, and don’t know how to communicate without crapping where they sleep?

I don’t know what started it, but I am familiar enough with poo-munication. With dogs it means, “Dude, could you put this somewhere?” With people, it means you pay an extra $50, with cats it’s “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore.”

I’ve tried accommodating her. I made sure her food was full. I made sure her water was full. I made sure her litter box was empty.

“Yes dear. Whatever you want.”

Persephone has an eating disorder that makes things challenging through. Whenever she eats, she eats everything at once. If I’m leaving for the weekend, and lay out enough food to last until Monday, her bowl is empty before the back door is locked and my butt’s belted in my car.

At first I thought this was the source of the problem: she’d eat all her food, and blame me because there wasn’t more. See? Just like any other relationship. In order to combat this, I bought her an automatic feeder that would disperse food in digestible increments.

I went away this weekend thinking, “Mission Accomplished!” I came home to a quilt planted poo-garden. Now I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore. I grabbed my fuzzy miss and rubbed her nose in the poo with repeated “NO!”s.

Ok, so I should pause here. If you haven’t guessed, I’m a dog guy. That’s what you do with puppy-doo. I suck when it comes to women and cats. I swatted the Pirate Queen with a rolled up newspaper once and she pulled out a whip.

“Now that’s a swat.”

Persephone didn’t take to my dog training any better. When I went to bed, there was a fresh pile of “communication” waiting for me. I gave her a communicatory facial with a “No!” and placed her in her box. Then I locked her in the

bathroom.

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t confused about the message my cat was communicating. This isn’t my first relationship. I understand bitter spite poo. I can leave a few piles of my own.

I chose not to do that--this time.

Still, I can’t let a mad cat think that she’s the queen of my house. I’ve seen where that leads. This time it’s gonna be different.

On the other hand I’m considering a trip to the Humane Society in the morning. There’s only room for one shitty disposition in my house, and both MyEx and the Pirate Queen can agree that I have it.

But isn’t that a bit extreme? Ending a relationship because I don’t agree with Persephone’s attitude? After this much time, it’s like divorcing after our first fight. We’re a civil culture. We don’t do that—OK, maybe we do, but I won’t. I’m a drag my feet in the muck kind of guy. I don’t quit.

So what do I do? Cuz the princess and the Poo are not the answer either.

I could go to an expert and have them help us. That would be intelligent. Instead, I go to the Internet. This is like going to your single best friend for marriage advice. The first thing I see is a Yahoo page saying, “My cat poos in my bed. Should I put her to sleep?”

I gasp.

Persephone and I are going through a rough spot, but I would never consider that. Most of what I find online is like gaggling hen advice, suggesting everything from “I’m a bad mate” to “my cat is imbalanced.” Neither of these accusations are true, and neither one answers the question that I really have: how do I stop this?

Finally I find a site suggesting something I hadn’t considered. I read the words, and a tear rolled down my cheek, like an Indian in a slittered casino. “Your cat poos in your bed because she loves you.”

Awww…

What do I do now? I mean I can go toe to toe with hissing anger, but love? How do I fight that?

The site offers the theory that my cat is pooing where she smells me most (yup, the bed. That makes sense…) She’s marking her “Rob” territory because she’s afraid of losing me.

“Holy needy cat-shit Batman!”

What is our dynamic duo to do? Tune in next week…

I can’t wait that long. This theory has spun our relationship into a new spiral. I’m not angry anymore. I’m sad. I’ve pushed away someone’s love because I misread their needs. In what kind of world does this make sense? What kind of ass did that make me?

Yup, the poopy-bed kind.

I wondered if we looked at all our relationships in terms of actions of love instead of reactions in anger what would our approach be? Would our failure rate be as high as it is today? I dunno. I’m only reading the poo leaves.

I’m trying a new approach. This morning I walked into the room where she spent the night. I sat on the floor, held out my hand and waited. When she was ready, she came to me. When she did, I pet her.

“You know, kitty, we both have to get along here.”

“Mew.”

Yeah, I know. I’m partly to blame, but I’m trying. This is new to me.”

“Mew-mew.”

“No, I’m not excusing myself. I’m not apologizing either—but I’m not asking for an apology. You’re you, I’m me, and we need to find a place that works for both of us. That’s not always going to be easy, but we’ll try, OK?” I rubbed between her ears of encouragement.

“Mew.”

I stood up, and let her think. I’m not confused. This isn’t some ABC movie special. Credits won’t roll. We won’t fall into each other’s furry arms and live happily ever after. I only want to find a way for us to live together. I want to make one relationship work, because if I can get along with a cat, I can get along with anybody.

And that’s why I’m waiting for the Pirate Queen. She’s leaving to visit her family in a few weeks. She’ll be gone for a little over a week. I’m gonna miss her. So while she’s gone, I’m going to stop by her apartment, crawl up on her bed and leave her a pile of my love.

Won’t she be surprised when she gets home to see how much I love her?

Man in Waiting

Waiting.

It’s a game for one player. OK, many people can play, but it’s more of an individual task. Group waiting is like a baseball game without the…well, it’s like a baseball game. Waiting is a hands-off sport. It’s not competitive, although competitive people participate. It’s one person, a clock, a gaze, and a pot: refusing to boil.

I have no patience. Waiting? It’s not my strong suit. OK let’s face it. Waiting, it’s not even a card in my hand. If I’m playing waiting bridge, I’m passing the bid to my partner every time. Let them wait on me.

Even as a kid. I couldn’t wait. Whether it was waiting for Billy Fritz to take his Sorry-turn, or Mom baking the chocolate chips, I couldn’t handle it. In either case, somebody ended up with a mouthful of something.

“Robby, where are the blue Sorry pieces?”

“Billy ate them.”

“Why did Billy eat them?”

“Cuz a sock puppet forced them down his throat?”

Sock puppets? I can do sock puppets. They don’t wait. You know why? Cuz nobody wants food served by a sweaty gold toes, no matter how cute it looks. See? Waiting humor isn’t even good. It stinks

So what’s Rob waiting on?

Wait for it…

Yeah, sorry, I couldn’t help it.

No really, now, here it goes.

I’m waiting for life.

Yup. The life train left Chicago at 3:15pm carrying 700 cars of 10,000 happy people moving on with life. If the train is traveling at 115 mph, how long until it derails, leaving Rob stranded, and pee-pee dance in Union Station? Oh yeah, the crinkled cars of burning people? We’re not talking about them.

We’re talking about me.

…

And waiting.

I’m waiting on an employer to tell me whether I’m employed. I went in for a second interview two weeks ago. This week, I still haven’t heard anything. If I get the job, there’s a mortgage company waiting on me to pay my bills. They aren’t good at waiting either. Their nasty-grams are paper kindling for the train of life.

Some cats can handle waiting better than humans so long as it doesn't involve food.

Did you know that the average American spends 15,000 hours waiting? Do you know that I just made that up? Why? Cuz I didn’t want to wait for survey results. I’m way too busy—waiting.

I’m waiting for responses from book agents—even bad responses, so that then I’ll know how they feel about my ugly baby. I did get one ugly baby rejection this week. It’s not the response I was hoping for, but it is one less waiting.

I rarely make people wait in my own world. I hate to leave people hanging. Ask the agents who hate my work. I don’t even leave a participle dangling. OK, that’s a lie, but those participles, they deserve it. They’re just rude.

I’m waiting for the Pirate Queen. I’m not sure what I’m waiting for there, but I’m sure it’s sexy, lacy and a little risqué…

There’s no need for you to wait with me for that. I won’t share.

So where does all this waiting leave me?

Thinking.

Yeah, what’s worse than waiting? That’s right: thinking. What’s the number one cause of regime change in this world? Men who think. Unlike waiting, people can think in groups. That’s called “group-think.” Group think is less dangerous than individual think. It’s like thought bubble wrap. Nobody can get too hurt from group-think, unless they’re following an individual thinker. Then we’re all lost in thought.

That’s why I never think alone.

I think in the shower.

Loofa Kermit and Scrubby Doo help me to make sense of my world. Today we thought about waiting.

As a man of faith, I’m a firm believer in “God’s time.” Unfortunately he hasn’t read my schedule, and he keeps me waiting while Life’s thought train burns 700 cars of 10,000 happy people. Well, they aren’t too happy: their burning. Either way—Thanks God.

These were my thoughts while scrubbing Doo over my fuzzy butt. That’s when Kermit called from the shower caddy.

“Hi, ho, Rob. Even the great men and women of God wait. Look at David. He waited for Saul to have a workplace accident.”

“Trooby-dooby-doo!”

“Yeah, Ok…”

And look at Abraham. He waited for God’s promise.”

Scrubby Doo tried to agree again, but I was holding him under water.

“And Daniel—“

“You’re right Kermit, but there’s one flaw in your logic?”

“Oh? Do tell, Rob!”

“These were all great men of God, right?”

“Why Yes!”

“I’m not great.”

Kermit looked at the wall, then back at the shower head, “Uhm, need me to scrub your back?”

Still, my shower mates made their point. It’s ok. I’m fine being an okey-dokey man of God. I just don’t want to be an okey-dokey man who waits. And waiting is what I’m doing now. I’m take comfort in shower epiphanies and the knowledge that when the waiting is done, I can be an okey-dokey man of action. Behind every man of action is a man who waited, and not in a “Can I scrub your back” fashion.

I’m tired of waiting. I want to do.

All I need is a word.

Any word

but “wait.”

We Dance

“sssyfish roffly.” My Queen said over our third bottle of wine.

I want to tell you what that means, but I’m happy to remember the words themselves. She followed that up with something about “Jacuzzi “and “champagne.” That I’m sure of. I nodded and stumbled into my swim trunks, pulling them up, doing my uncoordinated jig.

“Are you going to take off your pants first?”

“Uhm, yeah. I was just trying them on to see if they fit.” There’s no lie like a drunken lie.

This was our anniversary weekend. One year ago, on Memorial weekend, we met in Napa Valley. This year, we opted for the other wine country: Temecula. It’s closer, it’s cheaper, and gosh darn it people like it.

We wanted to.

There was one question keeping us uncertain though: Could we regain the Napa Magic in its cheaper cousin? We both look back at the time we spent up north with fond remembrance. Would this weekend be flawed Zirconia to our diamond dreams? We both turn to the OCD side even when we’re drinking.

“If you’re gonna spill the wine could you please hit the napkin?”

“The force is strong in this one…”

Our big dread is this: we’re not high school kids riding the Big Giddy of infatuation. We’re skeptical adults with nubby-scarred hands. We’ve both touched the hot stove too many times. Our flesh is calloused and insensitive; what’s imperfect now, will always be imperfect. What’s perfect now, will annoy the hell of the other person in six months. What’s left?

“We’ll always have Napa.”

Yeah, thanks Monty Hall, but I don’t want the consolation prize. I want the real thing. I want yesterday, today, tomorrow. This puts me in the divorced man’s paradox. Would I know the real thing if it bit me in the ass? I’d like to think so, at least before the venom kicked in. But I’ve been married. Didn’t I the real thing sink its fangs into me then?

If I answer no, then what makes me believe I can tell the difference this time?

If I answer yes, then why couldn’t I keep it together last time? Am I a better person now?

To make matters worse, I know that the Pirate Queen is asking herself the same question. We’re plodding the insecurity waltz. 1,2,3,4 draw close…2,3,4 push away, 2,3,4…

The real problem is there are no answers here. We can dance around this until we’re dizzy. We’re turning mental rings as insubstantial as the ones at the bottom of the champagne bottle. We need to pick a course and move forward. Otherwise everything will evaporate, leaving us with nothing more than a bitter circle stain of what never was.

The Pirate Queen and I, we’re not perfect. We’re bent. We’re bruised. We’re bedraggled, and that was before the alcohol. We’ve had our good times, we’ve had our bad times. It doesn’t matter if it’s Napa, Temecula, or Omaha: as long as we stay together we will have more of both.

“Why do you love me?” She asks after our swim.

All the reasons rush forward, muddling in my mouth before they can escape, “mmmghma.” Yep. That says it all.

She smiles. “Me too.”

I reach out and take her hand. Even in our insecurity, we understand each other. To me that says a lot. Last year when we met, we had nothing. We were two souls meeting each other for the first time. This time we have a year of companionship. The answer to my divorced man’s paradox is that the Pirate Queen good outweighs the bad. Enduring her worst is preferable to imagining life without her good.

That makes this anniversary even better than the last. Now if I can just get these wet swim trunks down from around my pool drenched pants.