Home life

Hey, I’m cool with it. I know that I can’t meet all of my wife’s needs. So it didn’t bother me when another guy came to our house yesterday and spent all afternoon doing stuff that made Laurel ooh and aah. I wish I could have given her all that pleasure on my own. But I’ve still got some macho self-esteem left, since I’ve convinced myself that it takes a real man to call the plumber. Who arrived right after lunch. First, he installed a replacement kitchen sink faucet, tearing out the old Moen that I had managed to reverse…

Well, that’s the spin I’m putting on my phone call to Judsons Plumbing yesterday. To be honest, I feel totally emasculated. I finally had to admit that fixing a leaky kitchen sink faucet was beyond me. After my first quasi-successful fix-it attempt it took me a week to come to this conclusion. By “quasi,” I mean that I got the single-handle Moen faucet back together after disassembling it down to the cartridge and then not being able to figure how the damn thing came out. With some struggle I was able to get the faucet into working order again, aside…

Wanting to improve the world through my blogging, today I’ll surpass all of my previous efforts and share my exceedingly well-tested recipe for vegetarian spinach lasagna. This is the only dish that I ever bring to a potluck where meat-eaters and vegetarians are mingling. It also is the only dish that I make for visiting carnivorous (or, more accurately, omnivorous) relatives. In short, this recipe swings both ways. Almost everyone likes it. A big plus for me is how quickly this dish can be made. You don’t have to cook the lasagna noodles ahead of time. Putting in the ¾…

It’s my 57th birthday today. Already I’ve gotten a couple of special presents: a finger up my ass and some Flomax samples. And it’s just early afternoon! Maybe I shouldn’t have scheduled my annual physical for October 7, but that was the best appointment day available when I phoned my new doctor’s office a few months ago. On the advice of my live-in health advisor, Laurel, I switched to her female family physician from my previous male doctor. Laurel believes that doctors should listen to you and express an interest in your problems. That hasn’t been a big consideration for…

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…