Surprise Party Part 3

And I have one more surprise party story...

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Around about my 24th birthday I informed the Professor that I wanted him to throw me a surprise party for my 25th birthday.  I figured giving him a year's lead time gave me time to "forget" and him plenty of time to prepare.  As my 25th birthday drew closer, I of course remembered but assumed that he forgot.  Birthdays and other such events are not usually the Professor's strong suit.

I figured that on the extremely small chance he had remembered what I'd said a year ago, I'd know because he would have to clean the house if we were having a party.  I purposely left the house messy that week so I'd be sure to notice.

It never occurred to me that you could throw a surprise party in another location.

About a week before my birthday, he asked me what I wanted to do to celebrate my birthday.  That settled it as far as I was concerned.  No surprise party for me.  In retrospect that should have been a tip off.  The fact that the Professor was aware of and talking about my birthday a full week in advance was a dead give away that something was up.

He suggested that he take me out to dinner that night.  I agreed, a little disappointed but not surprised. After all we were both poor grad students in those days and a dinner out was a big treat.

Then a couple days before my birthday a couple of friends stopped me in the hall at school.  "We want to have you and the Professor over to play cards sometime.  Does Monday work for you?"

Monday was my birthday but I figured the Professor and I could do dinner another night and I knew he was free that night so I said sure.

He was a bit peeved when I told him we were going to play cards with friends on my birthday.  "I wanted to take you out to dinner for your birthday.  Did you even tell them that that was your birthday? Why didn't you suggest a different day to them?"  After a bit more complaining and discussion he reluctantly agreed that it was my birthday and if I wanted to go play cards with friends without even telling them that it was my birthday and go do birthday dinner another day then that was O.K.

This should have been another huge red flag for me.  I am the one who gets bent out of shape about celebrating big days on the actual day and the Professor has never ever understood or appreciated this.

We got to our friends house and as we started to walk up to the door the Professor said, "Wait, I forgot something," and rushed back to the car and grabbed a camera.

"You are bringing a camera to play cards?" I asked incredulously.*

"I don't think we have any pictures of them so I thought it would be nice to get one."

"That is so weird.  They will think we are strange.  Please put the camera back in the car."

He wouldn't listen.

To recap:  I told my husband that I wanted a surprise party.  It was the actual day of my birthday.  He was insisting on bringing a camera to a totally camera inappropriate situation.  And no,  I still had no suspicion whatsoever.

We rang the doorbell, they opened the door and all my friends yelled surprise while the Professor took a picture.  I was totally surprised.

Successful Surprise Party Tip #3:  Cultivate low expectations vis a vis birthdays for many years and/or marry a clueless spouse.


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*Remember people, dark days before smart phones when taking pictures of anything and everything just wasn't normal.

My Latest Creation

Maybe I can't show my dad, but I can show you.

This is my latest creation.

We call it the antique corner.

Lots of challenges faced us when we moved into this house, the fact that it rained in the basement if we used the upstairs showers, chipped and broken asbestos tile in the family room, windows only the Professor could open, just to name a few.*  But even greater than those challenges was the challenge of what to do with all the stuff.

Because home repairs can be accomplished with enough money and/or blood, sweat, and tears. Dealing with stuff can threaten to end 25 year marriages.

A decade ago when we first prepared to move overseas the option of putting stuff into storage until our return saved our marriage.  I wanted to toss everything.  The professor wanted to keep everything.  As time ticked down and the arrival of the packers loomed large, storage was an attractive option.  We stopped debating and just shifted items into the destined for storage pile.

Unfortunately, what goes into storage must come out.  So in the midst of dealing with showers that rained into the basement and crumbling asbestos tile, we also had to deal with boxes and boxes of stuff we hadn't seen for years, much of which I would have been happy to never see again.

The Professor and I are clearly opposites when it comes to what stuff should and should not be kept. They say opposites attract but I've never heard anyone say that opposites make for a strong, stable, conflict free marriage.

Let's just skip ahead in the story and say that the large crawl space in our house has become the new storage and with God's grace and constant help our marriage is good for another 25 years or more.

But some items don't belong in the crawl space.  What to do with the antique typewriter, adding machine, and old rotary telephone?

And thus the antiques corner shelf was born.

The first plan was to buy a couple of shelves at Home Depot and put them up in this convenient corner space.  The only problem was that the exact sizes we needed weren't available.

No problem I thought, this is the land of things delivered right to my door.  I'll order something.  But I couldn't find anything that was both the right size and not expensive.

So I decided to do it myself.

I checked out what random scraps of wood were present in the shed and found two beat up shelves that the Professor had gleaned from the neighbors trash back in the early days when he was gathering any wood he could find to put on the floor of the crawl space to protect stuff from potential water damage.

I very scientifically made my quarter circle shapes with the marker tied to a piece of twine method then cut them out using a jigsaw.  I filled in the old screw holes with spackle and sanded everything down.

I found more wood scraps to serve as brackets and screwed them into the wall.  I primed, attached everything and painted.

I'm pretty pleased with the result.

After looking at the final product, the Professor added the antique I-Pod.  I'm trying to decide if I like it or not.  Should I add a small shelf above the phone to hold the I-Pod, leave the I-Pod on the shelf with the phone or get rid of the I-Pod altogether (and by get rid of I mean put in the crawl space of course). What do you think?

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* I could get the windows open if I used a hammer but for some reason that made the Professor nervous.

Two Dads

Last night I pointed out to the Professor that the anniversary of my Dad's death was coming up.

Image courtesy of mikumistock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

"I'm sorry" he said.  "I hadn't thought about the exact date."

Before I even had a chance to feel upset about that he added, "It was 20 years ago this year that my dad died."

There's a dose of perspective for you.

My dad didn't live to see me move back to the states.  He didn't live to see me learn how to use power tools.

The Professor's dad didn't live to see him get his doctorate. He didn't live to see him established in his career. He didn't live to see his son become a father. He didn't live to see him follow in his footsteps in so many ways both big and small.

Maybe the wound isn't as fresh but do you ever get over losing a parent?

I had 18 more years with my father than the Professor did.  My Dad saw my graduation with a Masters degree.  He baptized my three children.  He visited me in England. He discussed my job with me in the final days of his life.

I know it isn't a contest.

We both had wonderful fathers.  Imperfect, flawed, colorful characters the two of them.  And both of us lost them way too soon.  Because it is always too soon to lose a parent.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

When the Professor and I got married over two decades ago we were poor struggling college students.

I believe our monthly budget was about $400 and over half of that went to rent.

Image courtesy of graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So we furnished our first apartment with whatever we could get our hands on for free.

The summer we got married the Professor worked maintenance at the college dorms.  They were replacing some furniture that summer so he was able to bring home two desks and two dressers.

Do you have any idea what state dorm furniture is in by the time it is discarded by the college?

Just use your imagination.

Over the years as we moved again and again (and again and again) various bits of this furniture were scrapped.

But one college cast off dresser made the trip with us over the ocean to our current location.  Here it has served ably in the garage holding mittens and scarves and random craft supplies.

But it was time to say goodbye.  This dresser was not fit to make yet another move.

I sat down with the screwdriver and pulled the dresser apart so the trash people would pick it up with out charging us extra for furniture removal.

It was very bittersweet to dismantle this item which had seen so much good usage and been with us so long.

As I piled all the pieces by the trash I just couldn't get rid of it all.

I saved this, the base of the dresser.

I figure we can use it in our new crawl space to pile stuff on that we don't want sitting on the floor.

I can't tell you how happy it makes me to think that this item someone else discarded and which has been a part of our entire marriage will still be used.

Over the years of marriage our fortunes have changed.  We can buy new furniture if we want to (which we rarely do).  But that original spirit of working with what we have, of being content with less, of seeing possibilities where others see trash, that hasn't changed.

My Dad would be so proud.

The Comfort of being known.

It's been a tough time of year for me with lent and Easter and memories of my Dad's death a year ago and lots of uncertainty about our families future and general unsettledness.

Image courtesy of photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We had a Confirmation in our church last week.  It was a lovely service.  I'm not a big crier but I cried quietly during the service.  The Professor didn't say anything but took my hand.

As we drove home the kids asked why I cried in church.

Before I could form an answer the Professor answered for me, "Mom cried because when John makes Profession of Faith grandpa won't be there."

And I started to cry again.  Good tears not bad tears.  Because I didn't tell him that.  He knew.

This.

This makes me love my husband.

The comfort of being known and being understood and being loved.  That is the comfort of marriage.

Today I pray for my mother and all the other widows who struggle with the loss of that comfort at a time when they need it so desperately.

Making decisions

Making major decisions is difficult.  It is even more difficult when you need to consider the needs and desires of more than one person.  And it is extremely difficult when those persons have different decision making styles.

hang_in_there via photopin cc

The Professor and I have very different styles.  We both believe in research but approach it opposite ways.  I look quickly for something wrong so I can eliminate options and narrow down the list.  The Professor thinks outside the box and comes up with ways that we have even more options than it previously looked like.

So if we start with 10 good options, by the end of the day I will have things narrowed down to 3 and the professor's list will now have 20.

This is not the stuff marital bliss is made of.

And it isn't over once the decision is made.  Once I have made a decision I consider it done. Closed.  Over.  I don't want to hear anything that might make me think I made the wrong choice.

Not so the Professor.  He likes to do a lot of post game analysis on decisions.  After we bought our first house he continued to read the housing ads in the newspaper for months always sharing with me when he found a house that might have been bigger, better, cheaper than the one we bought.

Neither approach is perfect.  Several times we have ended up living in a house that we loved that I, in my rush to narrow down the list had already eliminated, and the Professor insisted on putting it back on the table.  On the other hand, at some point you do need to stop adding choices and researching options and make a decision.

So, as in many other ways, our decision making strategies complement each other.

And that IS the stuff marital bliss is made of.