You know, he don’t have a straight angle in that whole god-damned porch, or the whole house for that matter. He is the worst damn carpenter.– Unforgiven

Irish Woman really has a high opinion of my skills.  She believes that I’m a competent carpenter, gardener, cabinet maker, painter, plumber, electrician, and a plethora of other DIY skill sets.  To be honest, I look at a lot of my projects, and the best I can say is that they’re not a public health and safety hazard.  One little trick I use is to always make sure to use an indelible marker somewhere on a project to put my name and the date of assembly on it.  That way when it’s replaced or fixed in a few years or decades, they’ll know who to blame for the creative engineering and bad decisions they uncover.

Note – Edited to make the last few sentences actually make sense.  Don’t blog when you’re half asleep!

Grumpy: Angel, ha! She’s a female! And all females is poison! They’re full of wicked wiles!
Bashful: What are wicked wiles?
Grumpy: I don’t know, but I’m agin’ ’em.

— Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

It took a lot of time after my divorce before I started dating again.  In fact, it was over two years from the time that my ex decided it was best that we go our separate ways until I met Irish Woman.  I knew I was angry, both at my ex and at women in general.   I recognized that if I were to have anything to do with a woman, it would not be healthy, and nobody deserved to be my emotional punching bag while I got myself together.  I wasn’t quite as abrupt about it as Grumpy, but the underlying feeling was the same.  I guess you could call it ‘irrationally applying a bad filter to all inputs from women’.

Luckily for me, Irish Woman showed me that not all women were evil, hateful things.  She showed me that I was a better man than the thing that was sitting at the bottom of my psyche.  Our relationship and family are rarely easy, but they’re definitely the best I’ve ever had.

It’s not like my mother is a maniac or a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?  — Psycho

Ladies, if you don’t realize that your kids have driven you at least a little batty, you’re farther gone than you think.  You are whipsawed between pride in their achievements, happiness in their joy, anger at their less than helpful behavior, and fear for their future.  You are on call for skinned knees, bonked noggins, bruised egos, hungry stomachs, and broken hearts.  You teach them to talk, to walk, to do long division and laundry, and to stand on their own two feet.

If you’re a mother that does her job, thank you.  You’re making the world a better place.  You deserve more than one day, and you deserve a heck of a lot of credit for what you do.

It’s true what they say: Cops and women don’t mix. It’s like eating a spoonful of Drano; sure, it’ll clean you out, but it’ll leave you hollow inside. — The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!

 

Rule number one, as one of my first leaders in the Army told me, is to not be stupid.  If only I’d listened to that advice.  Rushing into a relationship, especially one that rapidly involves children, is almost as dumb as grabbing something randomly from under the kitchen sink and taking a swig.  If someone is giving you a time limit or making an ultimatum, that’s a good hint that maybe they’re not the one for you.  If it’s worth spending the rest of your life with them, it’s worth taking an extra year or two to make sure.