Carol Archives - Page 16 of 18 - Ramblin' with Roger

Lucky 13 Years of Marriage

I am lousy remembering people, but she’s much better at it.

Carol and I have been married 13 years today. I’m surprised; I figured I’d have driven her crazy long ago. (And maybe I have.)

That’s not to say she doesn’t have a few quirks of her own. To wit:

If I am reading a newspaper or a magazine, and set it down to get something, I’ll come back to find that she is almost always reading it. And it doesn’t matter what it is: Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, it will have moved from where I was sitting to her locale. I can’t very well be upset about it because she’s keeping up with the world. When I met her nearly 20 years ago, I noted that there were current events she was oblivious to; not so anymore.

When she tidies up, I really CAN’T find anything. More than that, she can’t tell me either. Whereas when I clean up after her – the kitchen counter is a magnet for her stuff – I have about a 98% retrieval rate.

She’s often late. She HATES that I say that, but it’s true. If she says she’ll pick me up at 5:25, I’ll turn off my office computer at 5:26 and be downstairs before she arrives. I recognize that she’s always squeezing in one more thing.

On the other hand:

She’s amazingly gifted at financial stuff. I have no personal debt. The first mortgage on the house is almost paid off. My sisters both want to marry her.

She’s a decent cook, but a great baker.

She’s way more handy with tools than I ever will be.

I am lousy remembering people’s names, but she’s much better at it. And when there’s someone I feel that I should recall, but don’t, she’ll introduce herself to the mystery person.

Did I mention, a couple days ago, that she’s a great mom?

But more than the particulars, we seem to have reached a certain degree of being in synch that I wouldn’t have thought possible. I don’t want to say we finish each other’s sentences – that’s only a sometimes thing – but we seem to find a way to empathize with our partner’s stuff.

Since we’ve been together, I’ve become a bit more patient and tolerant. She, in part from reading the news more, is more ~~cynical~~ realistic about the ways of the world.

Love you, lovey in the middle. (Mysterious family code)

I is for Irene

Yes, that’s 3 hours, 39 minutes of flying time over an 11-hour stretch.

Irene is one of those semi-popular names in the US, 16th most popular among girls’ names at its peak in 1918 and 1919, 684th in 2010.

Irene has also been designated as a possible hurricane name by the World Meteorological Organization. “The Atlantic is assigned six lists of names, with one list used each year. Every sixth year, the first list begins again.” Things before 1978 weren’t quite so neat and tidy, so Irene was eligible to be a hurricane name in 1959, 1963, 1967, and 1971. While Irene was unused in 1987 and in 1993, there were actually hurricanes named Irene in 1981, in 1999, and in 2005.

2011’s Hurricane Irene caused great damage, as you have probably heard. Albany County was among several in upstate New York designated as disaster areas. Our property only lost some tree limbs. But the storm was life-complicating.

As I’ve noted, my wife and daughter traveled down to Charlotte, NC August 24 to visit my sister and niece. One track of Irene would have come quite close to Charlotte, but the storm stayed on the coast, fortunately. Unfortunately, it traveled up the coast, and while it largely spared New York City, it walloped parts of New Jersey, Vermont, and upstate New York.

The problem was that the family was supposed to take the train back from Charlotte to Albany on August 31, but the trip was canceled by Amtrak, likely because of possible damage, or fear of same, to the tracks in New Jersey and elsewhere.

They couldn’t drive back because of washed-out roads. So they got a flight. Or three:
From Charlotte Douglas Intl Airport (CLT)
Departs: 08/31/2011 at 11:40 A.M. To
Baltimore/Washington Intl Thurgood Marshall Apt (BWI)
Arrives: 08/31/2011 at 1:09 P.M.
From BWI
Departs: 08/31/2011 at 4:37 P.M. To
Philadelphia Intl Airport (PHL)
Arrives: 08/31/2011 at 5:26 P.M.
From PHL
Departs: 08/31/2011 at 9:10 P.M. To
Albany Intl Airport (ALB)
Arrives: 08/31/2011 at 10:31 P.M.

Yes, that’s 3 hours, 39 minutes of flying time over an 11-hour stretch. That is what you’re left with – let’s not even talk about the cost – when one books a flight the day before.

Of course, many people had it a WHOLE lot worse! For a mild for instance, my brother-in-law Dan and his family, about an hour south of us in Greene County, NY, lost a bunch of stuff in the basement. Getting around was difficult because the roads were either flooded or washed out altogether; the schools started a week late, as much because of the impassable roads as the damage to the buildings. Those of you who know upstate geography will appreciate this: the fastest way currently to get from Catskill to Oneonta is going through Albany.

I feel a little testy about the notion that NYC overprepared; it was a hurricane, FCOL!

And there will be more storms that travel further north, because of the warmer Atlantic waters.

I wonder if Irene’s name will be retired. “The only time that there is a change is if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate for obvious reasons of sensitivity. If that occurs, then at an annual meeting by the WMO…the offending name is stricken from the list and another name is selected to replace it.”

Check out some Vermont devastation HERE and HERE and HERE, collected by long-time VT resident, and my buddy, Steve Bissette.

(And I won’t even get into the subsequent destruction of Tropical Storm Lee, which did damage from the Gulf Coast to upstate New York this past week, as this video from Binghamton, NY, my hometown, will attest.)

ABC Wednesday – Round 9

Carol is 30, again

It’s her stuff cluttering the office and the kitchen counter. That said, she’s much tidier than I.

My wife’s birthday is today, and I thought I ought to celebrate that fact with some random observations.

A couple of weeks ago, she was talking about Nixon and the Checkers speech. When she met me, she didn’t know what the Checkers speech was, and she says it’s due to my influence that she does now. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

When she watches Dancing with the Stars, she’s always behind. The last episode this season was May 24, which she STILL hasn’t watched. The amazing thing is that she STILL doesn’t know who won. Heck, I don’t even watch the show and I know who won.

She’s a decent cook, but an excellent baker.

Her two favorite singers are in the adjacent sections of the collection: Alison Krauss and Diana Krall.

She was born in a small town in upstate New York and used to belong to the 4H Club. Sometimes, she still has that small-town sensibility, especially in contrast with my more cynical nature.

She was a teacher for a couple of years and left it to be in the insurance business. She got all sorts of designations, an alphabet soup of them. Then she quit her job, went back to college to become a teacher again, this time of English as a Second Language.

Her brothers are even taller than she is, and she is quite tall. When I shrink, she’ll DEFINITELY be taller than I am.

She’s one of the best, safest drivers I know.

She enjoys yard work.

It’s her stuff cluttering the office and the kitchen counter. That said, she’s much tidier than I.

She has a solid moral center.

If we’re at a party meeting new people, she is MUCH better at remembering names than I am. She’ll say at some point, “we should leave in 15 minutes,” and I dutifully get ready at the appointed time, only to stand around for an additional 10-15 minutes while she chats.

She’s better looking than I am, but I’m more photogenic.
***
Here’s a duet between Linda Ronstadt and Kermit the Frog. It’s also Linda’s birthday today (she’s 65), and I am also green.

A dozen years

She also has considerable assets of her own. She manages money well. She’s not a religious zealot, but she has a moral center that I trust.

Carol and I have been married 12 years. Not a tremendously long time, but longer than any two other relationships I’ve ever had, so that’s something.

I submit that of course, it’s partly that she is a very good woman. But it’s also the case that I’ve probably learned better relationship skills, probably due to trial and error.

It’s not that the little stuff – you know, discussions of where to store the garbage cans, or her reading my blog in draft form, or me regularly having to clear the kitchen counter of (usually her) non-cooking/non-food stuff – doesn’t bug me. It’s that it just bugs me considerably less than it might have 20 or 30 years ago. Have I mellowed? ~~Maybe~~Probably.

Still, she also has considerable assets of her own. She manages money well. She’s not a religious zealot, but she has a moral center that I trust. Also, and I’m afraid I’ve been a bad influence with this, she’s not nearly as believing of the things that people in authority say as she was when I first met her almost 19 years ago.

So happy anniversary, honey.

The new Mother’s Day reality

The running joke when I’d call or send a card is that I’d say or write that it was from her favorite son.

Someone sent me this picture some months ago. I thought it was rather funny. Specifically, it reminded me of the Paul Simon song Mother and Child Reunion, which is based on a chicken and egg dish that Simon had at a Chinese restaurant.

Then my mom died, and it’s my first Mother’s Day without her. The visual is still funny but in a more melancholy way. Melancholy humor.

I’ve discovered that Mother’s Day ads REALLY irritate me lately, more than Father’s Day ads did 10 years ago. Maybe it was because it was longer between when my father died until the next holiday (August to June) than it is for my mom (February to May). But probably it’s because I get more e-mail solicitations than I did a decade ago, and they are more difficult to ignore.

The picture above is of my mother with her favorite son many years ago in front of 5 Gaines Street, Binghamton, NY USA; the house and the trim, BTW, were green. The running joke when I’d call or send a card is that I’d say or write that it was from her favorite son. She was generally polite enough not to mention that I was her ONLY son.

Last Sunday, there was a Mass for Mom at the Mission San Diego Basilica de Alcala in San Diego. As my sister Leslie reported, it was “beautiful. It was the regular Noon Mass, but it was announced at the beginning that this Mass was for Trudy Green, mother of Leslie Green, who is a member of the Mission Choir.” I will be getting a copy of the event. “It was a packed house on a beautiful day.”

The bottom picture is of my daughter with her favorite mother. Carol is, among other things, a good mom.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you mothers, and all of you who have or had mothers.