28 years...

Greetings Blog Readers!

Saturday my lamby-pie and I celebrate 28 years of married bliss. Ok, maybe not ALL 28 were bliss. There were some days of “Holy crap what did I do?” and “Who the heck are you and what have you done with my sweet adoring life companion?” but for the most part we consider ourselves fortunate to have made it through the last 28 years still in love and with most of our marbles in one bag.

With that in mind, I thought I would inspire everyone with the wisdom gained from 28 years of married life. PAY attention men especially, as we used to say in the Navy, everything in a Navy flight manunal (we called them NATOPS) is written in blood, especially NOTES, WARNINGS, CAUTIONS.

In that spirit, here we go:

Notes: These are the little things that you should know

We shall start with the easy things. 

Men are always responsible for the position of the toilet seat. This is a mystery to me. Someone invented a hinged toilet seat for a purpose, you put it up if you’re a guy, you put it down if you’re not. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

However, this moves into a CAUTION status (where you could have severe aircraft damage or serious injury) if say, early in your marriage you left the seat up (or are accused of such) and your new bride has to use the bathroom at 3 am and say, sits down and experiences cold, cold water.

AND you could move into WARNING status (loss of life or an aircraft) if said wife shrieks at you that her butt is wet and cold and you roll on the floor laughing at her predicament. Not of course that this happened to a young Ensign in flight school or anything. Yup, not that it was stinkin’ hilarious. Not at all.

Ok, another NOTE. 

Somehow, men are expected in a marriage to perform three basic household tasks day or night, in all weather and flight conditions.

1) Smash large bugs. It is amazing to me that after 50 years of feminism, we still have to smash the huge hairy crawly things. Not that we mind, it is in our nature to hunt big game, but seriously honey, the spider the size of your finger-nail will not gnaw your leg off.

2) Open jars. This isn’t really a big deal, again, it’s an engineering thing, so we don’t mind doing it.

3) Take out the trash. I guess this goes back to removing the Wooly Mammoth carcass from the cave, but fine, whatever we can do that.

SO, I propose, based on my experience, that women should have three basic household chores to perform day or night:

1 ) Replace the stinkin’ toilet paper. 
Seriously, women use toilet paper twice as much as men, but somehow it’s our fault if the roll is empty? How does this work? I mean I always check toilet paper as a pre-flght rule, but somehow, my lamby-pie doesn’t and that’s my fault.

2) Remember ALL the family birthdays. 
Ok, this is a no-brainer. Men can reasonably be expected to remember that all those little people running around his house are his children and probably remember their names and well, shoot, their birthdays, BUT all the nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins., OYYYYY.. I have like 18 nieces and nephews (wife says 20) and there is no way I can remember all their birthdays…not even gonna try. Oh, and the wife should remember the parent’s anniversaries too, to avoid awkward phone calls.

3 ) This actually wonders into CAUTION territory sometimes, when it comes to date night, it’s ok to choose where to go to dinner. I mean after 28 years of marriage and 30 years of being together we still are like Laurel and Hardy (HA, if you don’t know who they are, you’re clearly not mature enough yet) “Where do you wanna eat?” “I don’t know where do you want to eat?” NOW, I have learned after 28 years to never go into WARNING territory and let my wife pick the movie as she tends to like sappy, emotionally laden movies where someone DIES tragically. So, I usually pick the movie and we do our schtick until we decided on the place we both really wanted to go to in the first place, but we’re being nice and letting our spouse come around to our point of view. Marriage Psycology 101….or as I like to say PSYOPS.

Now some real WARNINGS...

MEN, this is key…never, ever do this….TALK TO YOUR WIFE ABOUT HER BAD HAIR DAY. It’s like that movie Fight Club:

The first rule of Bad Hair Day is: you do not talk about Bad Hair Day. The second rule of Bad Hair Day is: you DO NOT talk about Bad Hair Day! Third rule of Bad Hair Day: if someone yells “stop!”, goes limp, or taps out, Bad Hair Day is over. Fourth rule: only one woman in the house can have a bad hair day on any given day.

DON’T mess this up men, women become strange flame spewing she dragons when you ask (or don’t ask) “Honey did you get your hair done?” This may also work in reverse if your sweety is having a GOOD hair day and you don’t compliment her on this. Basically men, it’s sort of a Kobiyahsi Maru scenario…you can’t win. Seriously, after 28 years of marriage, I’m happy to have one, yes (1), 1, uno, lone hair on my head.

Another important WARNING. Never ever, listen to your sweetie when she says, “Ok, if that’s what you want to do, then go ahead.” This is usually a clever trap where she knows you want to do something expensive, ill-advised, or something involving fireworks, so be very careful, after all, she will be the person who calls the paramedics….or not.

Finally, and on a good NOTE. Always be appreciative for your spouse. Our best line, which we always used in marriage mentoring is “Well, at a certain point, you know you married the right person, because they are the only one who can put up with your craziness. (Yea I toned that down a bit). Now this may seem a bit crass (especially the original sailor version) but in a way it is true.

Love is knowing everything about your spouse, the good, bad, and ugly, and loving them everyday anyway. Knowing they always have your six (have your back for you civilians) and that they will love you no matter what.

My lamby-pie have literally been through hell together and these last couple weeks have been PAINFUL, but we hang in there.

We are a team, now and always.

1986 - The Beginning...

I love you lamby-pie.

OH, AND I do want it publicly known that I made actual dinner reservations for our anniversary to avoid the Laurel and Hardy routine. SCORE!

Today- 2016 - She's still cute, a keeper for sure. Happy Anniversary Babe!