Thanksgiving

Today in the kitchen, while I was mashing my signature potatoes and she was working on a fruit salad, but otherwise unrelated to the holiday at hand, my wife turned to me and said that she was thinking last night that she's probably happier now to be married to me than she's ever been. That I'm a "good man" with a "very good heart." That she would be "so sad" if something were to happen to me or if we weren't together, and "devastated beyond description" if the kids were for whatever reason not to have me as their dad.

Tonight, still under the influence of turkey, stuffing, pie and the aforementioned potatoes, I lay in bed next to #3 as he dozed off. At one point, he bonked me upside the head with his elbow while repositioning his teddy bear. I thought he was asleep, but he turned and whispered, "I sorry. Tat was accident."

A day for thanks.

Golden & Groucho

I heard this one today on an Improving Your Marriage audio book I'm listening to on my commute:

"There isn't one man in a thousand that knows how to treat a woman. And there isn't one woman in a thousand that knows when she's well treated." - J. Golden Kimball

And I found this one just now while Googling the exact JGK quote:

"Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men -- the other 999 follow women." - Groucho Marx

The First Time Ever

I was awakened predawn today by my wife, in effect forcing herself upon me. And what followed for the next hour or so was exquisite. To the best of my recollection, this has never happened, although I know I've wished for it thousands of times.

Thanks for indulging me on this momentous occasion, with the nod to Robert Flack...and everyone else who's subsequently taken on the demanding Ewan MacColl classic, some more tastefully and successfully than others.

Zagat Calls It

I was in New York this week on business. I wrote my wife the following after I arrived:

Saw a Zagat ad in the subway:

Call a great dinner what it really is. Foreplay.

Laughed, thought about the topic I brought up w [our friends] a year or two ago: Is it OK for an endowed (temple, not cup size) woman to replace garments with some form of lingerie as part of her tedious nuptial obligation? If yes, at what point can the build-up to the bedroom be considered foreplay? If that line is a gradual continuum (as opposed to "as soon as the bedroom door is locked, the curtains drawn, and the lights turned off"), then would it be utter heresy to suggest that it's OK for her to wear lingerie on the date itself, without forfeiting her calling & election?

In choosing to be on Manhattan, virtually any heterosexual man with a pulse who does not confine himself to the dark rat-infested, nethermost nooks of the subway for the duration of his stay, is knowingly subjecting himself to a barrage of beauties whose variety is perhaps unrivaled on this planet. The place is home to not only a mix of ethnicity unlike any other, but also a mix of those mixes. And for a man who likes a little brain with the blossom, New York is the place. Before an early morning meeting, I ate breakfast with my colleagues at a little Midtown deli, and the window -- analysits India

Ermelegdo Zegna hipass

Nevertheless and notwithstanding,

Ascensor @ Waldorff

On the flight home, for the first time in my life (if you don't count my wife) I sat next to a bona fide hottie. Sure beats a 350lb sweaty guy. Even beat the in-flight movie options, for that matter. When she sat down--yes, I was watching while she sat down--her sweater pulled up well above her waist, which was an unexpected "revelation," given how painted-on-tight her tights were...everywhere...if you catch my drift. She seemed to have caught onto this eventually and made what subtle adjustments and demure hand-placings she could, and I stealthed this shot to memorialize the arrangement.

Me vs. All The Joneses?!

Yesterday my wife learned from our agent that the sale of the house we were trying to buy closed with another party. (It's a long story involving a very messy short sale and some extremely questionable but evidently legally permissible behavior by the G-Sporting, house-adorned-with-all-the-de-rigueur-accoutrements-of-Mormonism sellers. That their teenage daughter had a baby last year and they filed bankruptcy earlier this year might have made me more sympathetic to their downturn of Lady Fortune's Wheel, had they not proven in the end to be such shysters, the slimy SOBs.) Last night she told me, in more or less these exact words, that she was "angry" at me a) for not earning more money, and b) for not having the courage to ask my boss for a raise. The ensuing discussion, as you might imagine (so I'll spare you the play-by-play), was delightful and thoroughly productive.

This morning, when she continued it as I was getting ready to head out the door, she cited as Exhibit M the fact that I, too, have felt and expressed to her occasional discouragement that I'm the most highly educated (by a wide margin), second-longest tenured, and lowest paid person at my level of the organization. I said, "That's right. But you looking at your profile in the mirror and saying, 'Dang, when is this baby belly finally going to disappear?' and me grabbing a hunk of your gut between my thumb and index finger and asking, 'How long you gonna tote this around, Jabba?' are two radically different approaches to the same topic, don't you think?" She looked at me, perturbed, and responded, "What on earth does that have to do with anything?!"

Oy.

So today from work, I tried a different tact with the following e-mail:

It's hard for me not to take personally (and/or wonder whether the "problem" is really mine) claims about my shortcomings as a provider, when in my mind, I'm thinking "Compared to the general population of this country --THIS country, not Nepal or Bangladesh or Ghana or Ecuador-- we have a very high standard of living, we have a lot of our 'wants,' our family's never gone cold or hungry (thanks of course to two months of Bishop's Storehouse Bounties 10 years ago [i.e., when, in the wake of the dot-com meltdown, the gap between my previous and current jobs dragged on a little long, and my business partner and I were busy naively getting screwed while doing some startup consulting for a con]) or without access to good medical care, and [my wife] has never been forced to work outside of the home in order for us to make ends meet -- a luxury, really, that is becoming increasingly rare."

If this is a hard concept for you to get your arms round, or you think that it's extreme or unreasonable, consider, for example, how hard it is for you not to take personally (and/or wonder whether the "problem" is really yours) my occasional expressions of frustration regarding lack of variety/interest/exploration of different possibilities, etc. in our physical relationship. Because in your mind, you're thinking, "Hold on -- By most standards, I'm an attractive woman, I'm not frigid, and this guy has never gone for very long without sex of some kind with me. Maybe he doesn't 'get' everything he wants, but he's getting enough."

Does that make sense? I'm not asking whether you agree with the comparison -- just whether it makes any sense at all, as a starting point. If it doesn't make any sense, I'm not sure how to approach this.

That was 14 hours ago. No response yet, and she was asleep when I got home tonight. (I'd been off magnifying with Ginger and friends.) We've been sleeping in separate rooms for a week or so -- started because I've been sick, but I think we're growing accustomed to it. Today, my boss told me how much, after 30 years of marriage, he loves now more than ever to get home to his wife and give her a big hug, that she is a living angel to him, and that he can't fathom being without her. I can't fathom how that must feel.