So it was 18 years ago today when Lea and I married in forest glade surrounded by beautiful green trees, wildflowers, and the bluest sky you can imagine. Okay, that’s not true. We actually got married in a hotel meeting room, but it really couldn’t have been any better because I didn’t give a shit about anything other than the woman across from me, and she was radiant.

I’m not sure how we managed to find each other, but we’re best friends in every sense of the word: we share opinions on politics, religion, how to raise and discipline children, movies, TV, and practically everything else. I read the books she buys; she reads the books I buy. We love to spend our time in the same way, and we laugh at the same things.

We spend more time together than any couple I know, and I still find her exhilerating and fun. She’s clearly made me a better person, and I like to think I’ve made her better, as well.

All I know is that being married to Lea for 18 years is not nearly enough. Not by a long shot. We have a lot of adventures and fun ahead of us, and I sure am looking forward to them.

Originally posted April 24, 2005

She is the best mom in the world.

Her favorite car in the world is a Kharmann Ghia, which is cool because it’s the car most like her:

• Sleek and sporty in a kind of subtle way
• Kind of noisy
• Very rare
• Not very practical
• Very cool

Her strengths balance my weaknesses.

She has a lot of strengths.

She is still the sexiest woman I have ever met.

She is just enough smarter than me that I’m not intimidated by her.

She is smarter than me.

She likes the same junk food I like.

She is challenging and will never bore me.

She is interesting and will always intrigue me.

She wins friends easily but is careful in choosing her friends.

She’s a night owl.

She puts up with comments like this:

Me: “But I need you to remind me only at the exact time that I can do it. Not the day before or even 15 minutes before, but at the exact time I can do it, that’s when you need to remind me.”
Her: “So to get anything done in the house, I have to basically be an alarm clock.”
Me: “More or less”

She hasn’t divorced me yet.

She hates being the one who lays down the law in the house for the kids, but she rarely ever admits it to me.

We can spend the entire day in different rooms of the house, yet I can still feel her close to me. I can spend 15 minutes outside the house without her, and I miss her terribly.

She is a total technophobe, but she has a blog, a damn good blog.

Her favorite radio station is XM Kids.

She has the most beautiful eyes in the world, and I will never get tired of getting lost in them.

She loves herself, her family, and her life, but she strives for more.

She hates injustice in the world, and actually does what she can to change things.

People call her by her middle name.

She has cool tastes in books.

She gave birth to three kids with no C-sections.

She has a high pain threshold.

She likes British comedies.

She is a great cook.

She loves eating out at restaurants.

She married me (and up and moved 1000 miles away) after we had dated for less than a year.

She makes me better.

She makes this list hard because I could go on and on.

So I’ll end here by saying that you can leave comments about how cool your wife is, but it won’t matter. She is nowhere near as cool as my wife.

Originally posted April 16, 2005

The three loyal readers of this blog are aware of my wonderful and quite accurate method of engaging in a debate: Rely on Tooma and everything will work out in my favor. Tooma, as you may recall, stands for “talking out of my ass,” a rather unfortunate nom de plume given by my wife to my method of debating things. While my wife tends to think that I lose every argument between us, the sad reality is that Tooma tends to reign supreme.

Unfortunately, Tooma took a bit of a brusing recently thanks to an argument over Scooby Doo.

While the circumstances of this witty exchange escape me, the basic point of contention was whether Mystery Inc. had ever skydived and used a hang-glider to escape to safety. Well, I’ve seen a lot of Scooby Doo in my day, and I didn’t ever recall them skydiving, so in my finest Tooma fashion, I basically told my wife that she was flat out wrong. Mystery Inc. never sky dived or hang-glided or anything similar. Clearly she was thinking of Josie And The Pussycats or HR Puf’n’stuf.

Well, Tooma took a hit I’m here to tell you. It turns out the damn Scooby Doo gang did glide or skydive or something to safety in one of their episodes. Much to the glee of my wife, I had to admit that, at least in this instance, I must have been really truly talking out of my ass.

Dammit. Who knew? How could have I missed this one episode? It must have been one of those episodes that my mom dragged me away from to do the dishes or something. Damn her.

Wait, I can’t blame mom. I would have been able to sustain the perfection of Tooma if only this specific debate hadn’t occured. So I know exactly to where to lay the blame.

I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling kids!

Originally posted February 19, 2005

My wife has a lot of neat personality quirks. One of them is that she thinks I can read her mind. I guess it’s charming in a way, but it sure can drive you crazy. The trouble is–and I don’t think she’s grasped this yet–I can’t read her mind.

This annoys her to no end. It’s actually a double annoyance. I annoy her when I guess and get it wrong, and I annoy her when I refuse to guess and ask her a bunch of questions to get at what it is that she wants.

My most common dereliction of mind-reading duty comes when I grasp the general concept but wrongly assume that it is a simple request of a general nature:

Her: Honey, my feet are cold. Would you mind getting me some socks?
Me: Of course not! [I trudge across the house, up the stairs, across the second floor, retrieve socks, cross second floor, descend stairs, cross first floor, and anticipate triumphantly handing said pair of socks to adoring wife]
Her: These aren’t the socks I wanted. I wanted my big fluffy warm socks!
Me: Sorry! I’ll go get those.
Her: [Annoyed] No, these will do, I guess.

Sometimes I don’t realize that this game is afoot until its too late:

Me: I’m heading to the kitchen. Do you want anything?
Her: Can you get my book from my nightstand in the bedroom?
Me: Sure. [I dutifully head to the bedroom, whereupon I find a nightstand with six books on it.]

This scenario has actually evolved over numerous repetitions. I started by guessing which book she wanted. But it quickly became apparant that 6/1 odds don’t exactly work in your favor. So then I went to the “can’t lose” strategy of bringing all the books. This left her, you guessed it, annoyed.

There’s also the “it’s so obvious you shouldn’t even have to read my mind” scenario:

Me: I’m going to the kitchen to get a sandwich. Do you want anything?
Her: [Brightly] Oh, yes! Would you make me one, too?
Me: Sure. [You can't really get this one wrong, I think. I make myself a sandwich, make her one, and then dutifully return to the bedroom]
Me: Here’s your sandwich.
Her: You didn’t get me a drink?
Me: [Exasperated] You didn’t say you wanted a drink.
Her: [You guessed it--annoyed] You know I always want something to drink with a sandwich!

There’s also this scenario:

Me: [Entering bedroom with a piece of chocolate cake]
Her: [Frowning] You went to the kitchen and didn’t bring me a piece of cake?
Me: [Deer in the headlights look on my face] Well, I didn’t know you wanted a piece of cake.

Oh, yeah. She was annoyed in the last scenario, too.

Most often, my fictional mind-reading abilities are needed when I’m asked to get something generic, like a shirt or coat, when my wife wants something specific. For example:

Her: Honey, would you mind getting my black shirt from the closet?
Me: Sure. [I head to the closet and grab a black shirt and return in anticipated triumph]
Me: Here you go.
Her: Not this shirt. Why in God’s name would you think I wanted this shirt?
Me: Uh uh uh. [The response, "Because it's black" isn't an option]

The sad part is that this scene can actually go several rounds:

Me: Okay, let me get you the one you want. [I head to closet, put first black shirt away, and grab a new black shirt. I return with the second black shirt]
Her: Gawd. That’s not the shirt I want.
Me: Well, which one do you want? [Turning around and heading back to closet]
Her: Never mind. I’ll get it myself.

The annoyed “never mind, I’ll get it myself” response has also become more frequent now that I’ve pretty much given up trying to actually read my wife’s mind. To wit:

Her: Would you mind getting my book from the bedroom?
Me: Which book?
Her: One Hundred Years Of Solitude.
Me: Where is it?
Her: In the bedroom. I just told you that.
Me: Yeah, but where in the bedroom? On the nightstand? On the bed? Next to the TV?
Her: [Rolling eyes] I’ll get it myself.

Still, I love my wife for her continuing confidence in my ability to read her mind. Not that long ago she was working on a project in bed while I was watching TV. She looked up and…

Her: Honey, can you get that thing over there?
Me: [Looking up and then frantically looking around the room, pretending I didn't hear her] What’s that?
Her: [Pointing in the general vicinity of the door] You know, that thing. I need it to finish this. It’s over there.
Me: Uh, uh, okay.

Wouldn’t you know, after one step I saw the thing that was over there. I handed it to my wife, after which she smiled sweetly and said, “Thank you.”

To this day, I don’t think she realized the incredible feat of mind reading I had just achieved.

Originally posted February 5, 2005

I recently had a disagreement with my wife over the etymology of the “GI” used in the name of GI Joe action figures (I’m a guy. I refuse to call it a doll). She was adamant it rererred to “general infantry,” while I stated that it referred to “governement issue.” We were in the car, but I could see the fire in my wife’s eyes, and I knew the moment we were home, she would be googling and yahooing and alta vistaing and whatever the hell elsing in a mad attempt to prove me wrong.

Unlike my wife, I have no such need for objective reinforcement. Nor do I have the tenacity to hunt through obscure websites to find that one answer. This annoys my wife to no end, and she never hesitates to tell me that I’m “talking out of my ass.” Truth be told, I much prefer the tried and true “talking out of my ass” method of argument bolsterization (is “bolsterization” a word? Don’t ask me, I’m talking out of my ass). I’ve even coined a cute acronym for it: tooma. As in, “Where’d you find that information out?” “Oh, tooma.” Call it my own cutting edge search engine. Other people google; I tooma.

So in this issue of google versus tooma, I am proud to note that tooma was once again victorious. My wife did the research on GI Joe and it does, indeed, refer to “government issue.” You can even read her grudging and not nearly sincere enough admission of my eternal rightness here.

So, with that out of the way, let me add some background to the story of GI Joe:

The crux of the question is why are army grunts called GIs? And who first started calling them that? The answer, using the tooma method, centers around who called them GIs. The term “GI” was originated by the civilians in France and Germany. They called them this because every piece of equipment and clothing used and worn by US soldiers was stamped with the letters “G” and “I.” The ubiquitous “GI” stood for “government issue” and could be considered a rather less in-your-face way of saying “Property of the US Government.”

Imagine you had hundreds of guys running around with the letters “GI” stamped all over them. What would you call them? Yeah, you’d probably call them GIs, too. Similarly, what do we call those guys running around with the letters “MP” stamped on their armbands? Yeah, we call them MPs. Imagine that.

As you might expect, it didn’t take long for GI to become synonymous with “soldier.” And from there, the alliterative “GI Joe” was born.

You can, of course, disagree with this etymological analysis, but you would be working against tooma.

You have been warned.