Home life

Just when I thought it was safe to stand at the sink and prepare a salad, Laurel raised the bar on my lettuce washing. The first class of Lettuce Washing 101, ably taught by my resident instructor, was documented in my February 2004 “American Splendor/I learn to wash lettuce” post. Professor Laurel commented on my blog paper a few days later, taking exception to my use of “evil eye,” which, however, did not actually appear in my rendition. “Wife eye” did. And this all-seeing, all-knowing force was what I once again felt peering over my shoulder a few nights ago…

I surrendered my blood-giving virginity last Monday at the Courthouse Athletic Club here in Salem. Somehow I’d managed to get well into my fifth decade without donating blood. And I would have kept my record going if it weren’t for a misunderstanding that made me appear to be more selfless than I really am. I was lifting weights on a Nautilus machine when a youthful, attractive, perky female athletic club employee (is there any other kind?) approached me with a clipboard in hand. “Would you be interested in donating to support the Courthouse blood drive?” she asked. My mind zeroed…

We are slaves to our beautiful yard. Don’t get me wrong: we love our servitude. Up to a point. It’s just that the older we get, the crazier it seems to be to lavish so much time and effort on maintaining Garden Poet-created landscaping that, mostly, just Laurel and I see. For we are not the most social of human beings. We rarely entertain (except ourselves) and our rural neighbors are entirely out of sight. Thus when I divide the work we put into the yard by the number of people who visually enjoy the fruit of our labors, the…

Laurel is a published photographer—with help from me. At Laurel's request I sent her “Feed Me!” photo of a begging baby robin off to the Salem Statesman-Journal and it was printed today in the Click! section where interesting reader photos are featured (no online access, I'm sorry to say). It doesn’t look as good in black and white as it does in color, and I wish the newspaper had taken my advice and cropped it as it appeared on my weblog posting. Still, it’s a great shot that required some stealthy sneaking to capture. Congratulations to Laurel. I’m envious, of…

Today I was pleased to find HinesSight listed on BlueOregon’s “Blogwire” of progressive Oregon blogs. However, I’m feeling really regressive at the moment, having discovered that I’m shrinking. In my baby book I found a chart, prepared by yours truly, of how I progressed to a height of 6 feet 1 ½ inches by June, 1967 when I was 19 years old. Now, at the age of 56, I’ve regressed to 6 feet ½ inch. I’m back to where I was at 17 years old. When I made this chart I never figured that I’d be adding declining entries. It’s…

The older I get, the softer I become. And I’m happy about it. Let me hasten to point out that I’m speaking about my martial arts training, not, um, something else. For nine years I labored in the field of a Shotokan karate dojo. Shotokan is one of the hardest of the hard-styles. I then transplanted myself to the Pacific Martial Arts Academy here in Salem, where, for about four years, I cultivated the mixed-style approach taught by Warren Allen—a blend of karate, jujitsu, aikido, weapons training, and other disciplines. Now I’ve thrown myself into nurturing the seed of Tai…

When Laurel walked in the door I figured that I should state the obvious, since the contents of the box that had just arrived from Amazon were scattered on the counter and a new battery obviously was merrily charging away in the new charger. “I got a new camera.” Then I heard the words that every woman must learn to recite in When You Become a Wife school: “But you already have a _____ .” Laurel filled in the blank with “camera.” In the past it has been “computer,” “cell phone,” “GPS receiver,” “atomic watch,” and the names of other…

Coming home to 55 degree Oregon after twelve days in 78 degree Maui is a shock. Waking up moderately jet-lagged this morning revealed the lows and highs of returning from vacation. Low. The refrigerator is disturbingly empty. Low. The grass is scarily high. Low. The mower that cuts the grass chose this day to break a belt. Low. The suitcase filled with recently-bought shirts that are a mass of wrinkles owing to my poor folding skills (see post below). An ironing board is in my destiny. High! Serena survived the kennel, where she was appropriately given a Hawaiian-themed bandana to…

Like many homeowners, Laurel and I have had a love-hate relationship with moles. On balance it’s been about 1% love and 99% hate, with a mild feeling of closeness to the bastards arising only when our dog manages to dig one up, starts playing with it, and the mole frantically tries to wave its paws and dig its way to safety—a tough job when you’re caught between the jaws of a gentle-mouthed Lab-Shepherd mix. If you’re looking for a solution to your own mole problem, I’ll get right to our current approach to controlling the S.O.B.s. These boxes contain 80…

Note what lies in front of the caveman in what I must assume is a historically accurate The New Yorker cartoon (December 20/27 issue). A carpet. He doesn’t look happy. He shouldn’t be. His cavewoman gatherer has just introduced a hitherto unknown horror into his caveman life. Carpet cleaning. Yesterday I endured my semi-annual carpet cleaning hell. Laurel knows that I hate these incursions into our cave. It doesn’t matter. She calls up the carpet cleaner and schedules them anyway. I had been dreading the coming of 9:00 am on Friday all week. The reality was even worse than I…

click to enlarge Some sixteen years ago Laurel placed a personals ad in Willamette Week. This was in the ancient pre-online days, so I read about this 40 y.o. aware, fit, well-educated, independent, successful, attractive, blonde, long-haired SWF as I was thumbing through a Willamette Week copy that I had picked up at the state Capitol. This enticing and absolutely accurate description got me to write a letter to Box 601 that evening. As of today we’ve been married fifteen years. Thank you, Willamette Week. By the way, karmically speaking it was interesting that a personals ad in a Portland…

Highlighters are a big part of my life. I am utterly unable to read a non-fiction book (and I read a lot of them) without a highlighter in hand. I consider myself a highlighting professional. I’ve test driven many kinds of highlighters over the years. I’ve come to settle on what I consider to be the Porsche 911 of highlighters: the tank style Sanford liquid accent. I always have a few extra around the house to avoid a highlighting emergency. However, a big advantage of the Sanford liquid accent is that you can see how much highlighting fluid is sloshing…

“Where did this CD come from?” Laurel said a few minutes ago. “I saw it sitting next to your CD player in your hospital room,” I told her. “When I packed up your stuff I threw it into the bag.” “I’ve never seen it before. It’s not one of my Successful Surgery CDs. They’re the only ones I took to the hospital.” Ah, a mystery! The CD had no identifying information on it apart from a hospital patient property label, the same as a pre-op nurse put on Laurel’s CD player that she took into surgery with her. I began…

Laurel’s hysterectomy surgery today was successful, and I am happily blogging the news from her room in the Family Birth Center wing of Legacy Emanuel Hospital in Portland. Down the hall a bunch of firefighters (subtly identifiable by the “Portland Fire Dept.” on the backs of their jackets) are congratulating a woman who I initially assumed was the wife of a firefighter. Bad sexist Brian! She could, of course, be a firefighter herself. Regardless, there is a certain pleasing symmetry here. One woman is recovering from having her uterus removed from her body in Room 2502, while a few doors…