To the nice lady in the elevator this morning, thank you for your thought. However, it wasn’t allergies that was making me sneeze and caused my eyes to water. It was all brought to me by the delicate admixture of day-old lilac, past-its-prime body powder, and Soviet-era floor cleaner, all tied together with just a whiff of freshly-dead rodent, that your body spray added to the atmosphere.

To the crew that put a new roof on our house last week, thank you. You got it done in record time and even cleaned up after yourselves. The roof survived wind and torrential rain over the weekend, and the water stayed outside. I’ll call that a win.

To the writers and actors on strike in Hollywood, thank you for causing my local drive-in theater to show more classic movies rather than the dreck you’ve been cranking out for the past decade. You stay strong and show your solidarity. So long as we get to watch good movies made before most of you graduated from film school, I support you. Stay out there on the picket lines for months, years if you have to, until your most extreme demands are met.

To the hooved critters that roam through my neighborhood, I have provided for you some feed corn and a block of minerals. This is my compromise to keep you out of the garden. If one more raspberry disappears under mysterious circumstances, I will be forced to disregard the intercession of my wife on your behalf and convert you into something to replace the calories you’ve stolen from us.

• You know someone senior on a conference call has asked a dangerous question when the call goes absolutely silent for 45 seconds.
• After working a 15 hour day, a pleasant dinner and attending a bluegrass performance with your darling wife and the neighbors is an excellent way to end the day.
• As a father, sometimes you have to have the courage to tell a dedicated mother that it’s OK if her child does something hard, even though she could make it easier.
• There’s something peaceful about driving along a 2 lane country road in the middle of a rather violent thunderstorm. All the safety features of the car, if the computer hasn’t turned them off, are useless. Visibility is low, sounds don’t convey anything except rain on the car and the wind. All you have is your memory of the road and the feel of the wheel in your hands to keep you between the semi-visible lines. There are no phone calls, no demanding emails, no complaints, just the engine, tires, and headlights telling you which way to guide.
  • That is, of course, until a rather strong gust of crosswind shoves you three feet to the left in a heartbeat, which snaps you back to reality faster than any cup of coffee ever could.
  • That takes you from Lothlorien to Helm’s Deep pretty darned fast, let me tell you.
• Took advantage of all of the other primates being out of the house for the day to clean carpets. Great googly moogly, I thought we did a better job keeping the house clean, but what came out of that rug shows that I suck at vacuuming.
• Irish Woman is adjusting to the fact that the Young Prince is now in high school. Panic stage will commence in about 24 months, but she’s training hard enough now that it’s going to be one for the record books.
  • Right now, it’s ‘Rocky I’ levels of intensity. By his junior year, it’ll be ‘Rocky IV’.
• Everyone always seems so happy when a long-running issue is fixed after finding a rather simple root cause. I’m always the guy who asks ‘How did it get there?” and “Why didn’t y’all see this yesterday?”
  • Not saying I don’t enjoy my job, because it does have its bright spots, but I do have a countdown app on my phone that tells me exactly how many pay checks I have left before I become eligible for retirement. Just saying.
• If you’re talking to your boss, him smiling and saying ‘Don’t threaten me with a good time’ is a hint that perhaps your thinly veiled threat fell upon infertile ground.

• In this house, ‘You fool! She’ll kill both of us!’ is a totally acceptable reason to stop what you’re doing and reevaluate your decisions.
• After six months in my new work assignment, I have decided that these are indeed my monkeys, this is my circus, and they all want me dead.
• Boy Scout behavior – If they’re not setting it on fire, they’re peeing on it. Sometimes they set it on fire, then pee on it. The overachievers pee on it first, then try to set it on fire.
• One way to make sure you lose weight at camp is to build a 1/2 mile walk, each way, across rolling terrain, into each meal.
• One good part of overfeeding weekend house guests is not having to cook for several days afterward.
• High-test moonshine so artfully flavored with fruit that you can’t taste the alcohol is very, very dangerous.
  • The same can be said about honey wine.
  • I have some really, really cool friends.
• Text chatted with an old Army friend the other day. The connection was especially slow. When I asked where he was, he laughed and said “Can’t tell you, but the borscht is awesome.”
  • I miss my real life. This 25 year long fever dream is kind of boring.

• I disarmed another marital booby trap today by buying jewelry for Mother’s Day, not the reasonably priced sneakers Irish Woman asked for.
  • I don’t have much to live for, but I have more than that.
  • And yes, she’s getting the sneakers too.
• To Irish Woman, it’s a graduation, complete with religious ceremonies, luncheons, and a graduation party.
  • To me, it’s “Good job this year, kiddo. Next year, high school, and in four years, you graduate. Now go mow something.”
• My professional life would be a lot easier if I got problem descriptions that were better than the equivalent of “My car’s making a funny noise.”
• My wife, genius that she is, figured out that if she made a tent over the top of the cool-weather crops out of a fine, white gauze, they would grow better and grow longer.
  • It actually works. We’re still getting lettuce, kale, and peas.
  • She also figured out that she shouldn’t let the fine mesh of the tent stretch out into the tall grass, especially when she’s in a hurry to get the lawn mowed before dark.
  • I described the resulting fine, white mesh wrapped around the blades and drive shafts of the mower as “My Big Fat Greek Wedding meets Lawnmower Man”
• Driving a U-Haul truck through traffic in a construction zone really does wonders for the value you place in humanity. By the time I had moved a bedrooom’s worth of oak furniture from one storage facility to another, I was ready to embrace our new alien overlords, intent on the immolation of me and everyone else on this dirt ball.

• Alternate title – Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the horse race?
• Maybe it was the crowds, the $15 booze served in commemorative plastic cups, the $30 for a slice of microwaved pizza and a large soda, the crowds, the clouds of cigar smoke, the crowds, the echo of every alcohol-fueled assbag in five counties screaming at the top of his lungs for 8 hours under a half-mile long metal awning, the crowds, the too-damned-perky-for-human-consumption TV news reporter who just loved my Hawaiian shirt and didn’t understand why I didn’t want to be on TV, or maybe, just maybe, it was the crowds. Either way, I’ve about done with anything Derby for a few decades.
• One thing I can say about Louisville – it’s the only place I’ve ever been that made me yearn for the simple pleasure of being in Killeen, Fayetteville, Tegucigalpa, and other garden spots across the globe.
• In other news, our day at Churchill Downs was fun for the whole family. That is, if by ‘family’ you mean ‘Everyone who can overlay the insanity of Churchill Downs two days before the Kentucky Derby with memories of being taken there as a child and indulged shamelessly while being taught about parimutuel betting and handicapping horses by your uncle the priest.’ If that’s not your definition, then yeah, it was less than stellar for at least 1/3 of our little clan.
• One bright spot for the day was spending time with a couple Irish Woman has known for most of her life and I’ve always considered good folks. We even got to have a nice conversations before entering the racetrack and after we walked out. Yes, we shared a box with them, and no, talking coherently was out of the question for the most part.
• Boo seemed to enjoy himself. He’s still young enough to enjoy the simple pleasures in life, like how pretty a thoroughbred is, the dance music played at a category 2 on the Richter scale, and the strawberry-banana kabobs drizzled with white and dark chocolate that went for what used to be the cost of taking a nice young lady out for dinner and a movie.
• I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – In any large gathering of the general public in Kentucky, you will see a lot of mutton dressed up as lamb, and a lot of lamb dressed up as a streetwalker.

• I’m not saying it’s been a rough couple of weeks, but tonight when I shut the car off, the little going away message on my radio said, “You OK, bro?”
  • I’m OK, little miniature elf box. I just had to destress by driving down a country road, blasting Elvis Presley alternating with Norwegian metal, all the while screaming out lyrics with the windows down. All is well.
  • Is it bad that you have to mute your phone so you can laugh maniacally after your boss says “Hey, why don’t you take a day off?”?
• Irish Woman made the ghastly discovery this weekend that she had purchased the wrong tomato plants. Apparently, this is cause to gnash one’s teeth and beat one’s breast. However shall we make spaghetti sauce using Big Boy tomatoes? The horror, the horror, the breakage!
• I took her out for a lunch date on Monday to cheer her up. Apparently, Tex-Mex makes it all better.
  • Her office building happens to be about a block from mine, so when our in-office schedules coincide, we do wild and crazy things like meet for a lunchtime planning meeting.
  • I flirt by suggesting that the weekend could be best served by buying the boy a half dozen pizzas, making sure he knows to feed the animals, then disappearing for 72 hours to act like boyfriend and girlfriend.
  • Her flirtation involves pressure treated lumber, yard maintenance, and laundry.
  • “The thrill is gone…… The thrill is gone, now, baby!”
• My trip to Texas to commune with the tribe is exactly what I needed. It even got me to write a short story I hadn’t planned to write.
• Little black dog is slowly discovering that little white and brown dog is sick of her shit, and is also discovering that little white and brown dog outweighs her and has a longer reach.
  • By the time this is all done, little black dog is going to look like she’s gone to war. Hopefully she learns the old adage, “Don’t start shit, won’t be shit.” quickly.
• Day after tomorrow, I’m going to be joining a few tens of thousand of my closest drunk friends at Churchill Downs for “Thurby”.
  • 20 years ago, the Friday before the Kentucky Derby, Kentucky Oaks, was the day the locals went to the track.
  • Then it got moved back to Thursday, hence “Thurby”.
  • Now, even that has gotten too popular with the out-of-towners, so the locals go to the track on 502uesday.
  • Pretty soon, all of us sentenced to a life term in the greater Lousville area will go to see horse races and drink overpriced cocktails on March 22nd between the hours of 8:17 AM and 12:25.

• As we drove across the Midwest the other night, we hit a pretty ugly thunderstorm. I switched over to AM radio to see if I could find a weather station. I knew things were bad when the clearest station I could find was nothing but a woman praying the Hail Mary over and over again.
  • It must have worked, because we made it through OK.
• You know the “Balkan Cafe” you’re having lunch at is authentic when the older gentlemen sitting at one of the couches are wearing Adidas running suits, white tee shirts, gold chains, and enjoying a Fanta with their coffee.
• On the south side of the Iowa-Minnesota border, there were spots of snow in shaded areas, but otherwise, it was spring. Everything north of the line was under a foot of snow, demonstrating that the Good Lord loves Minnesota, but has a general dislike of Minnesotans.
• We settled in with family in North Dakota just in time for 6 to 8 inches of powdery snow with high winds to set in. I take this as a sign that I need to stay here for an extra day or two. Maybe I’ll look at real estate. You never know how long it will take for the snow to melt, dontcha know?
• Irish Woman is not impressed. She’s back in Kentucky digging in the garden while I shovel snow up here.

• The Young Prince and I got home last night from a mission trip to Appalachia. About half the boys in his class spent a couple of days helping out with cleanup and rebuilding at a home that was damaged in recent flooding.
• The area we went to is an old coal-mining area. My memories of rural Russia and parts of Latin America kept jumping up as we drove around.
• For Boo and his classmates, we may as well have been driving around on Mars.
• Most of these kids are significantly higher on the socio-economic ladder than the folks we met, and I think they got quite a bit out of it.
  • A couple of them, on the other hand, wouldn’t know humility if it wore a “Hi, my name is: “ name tag.
• I’ve worked with small explosives, been shot at, and been on multiple aircraft who decided to see what was going on 3,000 feet lower in about 2 seconds, and I’ve never been more nervous than the first time I watched these boys use a circular saw.
• Day one was all new and fun. Day two was sore muscles and ‘let’s get this done!’
• It helped that a group of girls from their grade had gone on the same trip a few weeks before, so they had a goal to get more accomplished than the ladies.
• In 3 days, we went through all 4 seasons. It was chilly and rainy on Wednesday, warm and sunny on Thursday, and pouring down rain on Friday. The trees were even changing colors.
  • The boys seemed to roll with it, although a couple had to be reminded that they were not made of sugar and would not melt.
• Thursday evening, we went to a bluegrass music performance. The look on these young men’s faces was comical when we walked in.
  • Apparently, mandolin and banjo were not on their list of previous experiences.
  • Over time, they got into it and a few went to the dance floor to join the crowd.
  • A few of them even danced with females.
• The ministry we worked with provided very nice facilities for us to stay at. I had my own small room, which was worth its weight in gold because it was far enough away from the boys that I couldn’t hear them for a few minutes.
• It only took 3 times of me asking the nice lady running the dining facility if she needed any help and being being told, nicely, no, for me to get the hint. It was then that I remembered that I was in Appalachia, not Louisville, and that was her kitchen.
  • I may be assuming a bit here, but I seemed to be more than welcome to partake of her fare, and to even make a pot of coffee using her pre-measured coffee portions, but she was emphatically in charge of cooking and cleaning.
  • I knew I was going to be working with a matriarchal system, but I forgot it was that kind of matriarchy.

• Someday, when I have the extra money, right after I buy a flying pony, I will have a family crest put together. Not sure what imagery I will use, but it will probably have a bear in it somewhere. For the family motto, I’m thinking I’m going to have someone who knows what they’re doing translate “Sleep is for the weak” into Latin.
• Irish Woman and I plan to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary next year by going back to Ireland.
  • My goal is to make my wife happy
  • Her goal is to introduce her son to Ireland and be there when he has his first beer.
  • I’ve already warned the lad about pretty Irish women and sweet, smooth, Irish beer.
• Looking at the cost of airfare, and ye gods and little fishes, it’s dear. For what they want for an 18 hour flight to Dublin and back, with a 9 hour layover in beautiful Newark, it might be cheaper to pay someone to smuggle us over as livestock.
  • For those of you keeping score at home “9 hour layover in beautiful Newark” is not a romantic proposal, no matter the lady to whom you’re making it.
  • Does Aer Lingus have steerage? Might as well get the whole family history experience while we’re at it.
• The news is breathlessly reporting how responsive and leaderish Joe Biden is because several more unidentified flying thingies have been sighted in the past few days, with at least one of them being shot down.
  • Here’s a hint – If he were a real leader, they wouldn’t be there in the first place, because we would answer in kind with something a little more festive.
  • Is there a Mandarin equivalent to “Fuck around and find out”? How about Mongolfier?
• My bones tell me that the Ukraine war is going to come down to who gets tired of spending first. Will Russia get tired of spending young men and dwindling technical resources for land or will the West get tired of spending war reserves to make every square kilometer of ground gained by the Russians hideously expensive in blood?
• The earthquake news out of Turkey is horrific. No matter how well you build, no building is going to do well when hit with multiple 7+ scale earthquakes.
  • An evil little part of my soul is wondering if Russia, who Turkey has been cozying up to a tad too much, will contribute as much aid and relief supplies as Sweden does. Sweden, you will remember, has applied for NATO membership, which Turkey has been blocking because….. Kurds, I guess?