730 and Counting

Today, Thursday, is not significant other than the fact it's another day, and if you're reading this you're alive. So you have something to be happy about.

Friday will not be significant, other than the fact that it will mark the end of the work week for most of us.

Saturday is a toss-up.

Now Sunday is special. And while I could wait till then to write what I'm about to, I have no intention of being on my computer on Sunday. So you get my soliloquy a few days early.

Sunday will mark two years since Mrs. B and I said "I do" - or was it "I will?" - to one another on the alter at St. Mark's Church on Brewer's Hill, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

And my thoughts on marriage haven't changed much from a year ago. A year ago I was stoked but shocked that we had made it 12 months - not because I doubted that either of us loved the other very much, but because we just hadn't realized how greatly our lives would change once we became responsible for another human being. We had a lot to learn - still do. Lots of laughs, a few frowns, a few tears, more laughs, and some all-around wisening. It didn't kill us and we're stronger.

I'm still in awe of the fact that someone agreed to marry me. Seriously, that still unnerves me. Ask my friends - especially my female friends, and they'll tell you I am the absent-minded professor. Forgetful isn't cute, I'm told.

I'm still learning to share my space. I love Mrs. B. And I love our dog. And I'm friendly with our cat. But there are times I still want to wake up on Saturday morning and roll over in bed and watch cartoons and not get going till noon or so. Really, I'd like to do that everyday. Well, even without kids yet, there's still just too much to do. No time for so much lounging. Same goes for me just jumping in the car and taking a random drive to think and soak up the quiet and ambiance. Or spending five hours on the basketball court on Sunday afternoon. Can't do these things quite as much. And that's OK. We have stuff we do together now that's more enjoyable than pretty much anything I'd do alone. Get your minds out of the gutter. Again, my friends will tell you that I was the ultimate single guy in terms of my space. When I lived in Milwaukee, before I started dating Mrs. B, if a major holiday rolled around and I was unable to get home to Virginia for it, I was perfectly content ordering a pizza, buying a six-pack, renting a couple of good movies, and spending the holiday weekend, stretched over my couch...alone. I was House, MD, but not quite as sharp-tongued or sharp-witted. I'd let the friends drag me out for holiday celebrations, but most of the time it was grudging. So when I found someone I realized I would like to share my space with it was an awkward transition. I have those flashes of single-envy, where time is concerned. But I wouldn't trade w/any of my single friends.

I'm still thrilled that Mrs. B - the Bonnie to my Clyde - and I silenced the haters (salty friends, jealous former friends, ex-girlfriends, and all-purpose bitter people who predicted I wasn't cut out for marriage and we wouldn't last). Where are you cats now? Mmmmm, taste the silence!

If I've learned anything new since the conclusion of year-one, it's that she knows me better than I ever thought possible in such a short period of time, that I love her now more than I did "back then," and that we work best when we "riff" off of one another and compliment through action each other's strengths and weaknesses - sort of a symbiotic thing.

Now, from what the veterans tell me, two years means we've just been broken in like a new car.

Here's to 40 or 50 or 60 more.

I'll post tomorrow some time. But this one? This couldn't wait till Sunday.

Peace and hair grease, my friends.

Celebrating blindness

I know that "you've come a long way, baby" was once a corny cigarette marketing slogan. But in some ways it is applicable to the social development of the United States.

No need to rehash in this post all the things that were wrong 40 or 50 years ago and further.

But I was reading my hometown paper the other day and came across an article observing the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made it legal for couples of different ethnicities and colors to get married.

I'm not gonna call 'em "mixed-race" marriages or "interracial marriages," 'cause while I'm not PC and hippies bug me, I do agree with the granola set that there's only one "race" of humans...at least on this planet.

Anyway, I believe today marks the exact day 40 years ago the high court struck down the Virginia law that made it a crime to marry someone who had a lighter or darker "tan" than your own.

Scary, especially considering that in this country more than half of us are mutts, whose ancestry is as mixed as a bowl of Neapolitan ice cream.

So while I'm not the nostalgic type, kudos to the Supreme Court, to the attorneys who argued that old Virginia state law banning such marriages was wrong, and to the couples who stuck to their guns because they really loved one another in spite of what they were told to think.

They paved the way for couples like me and Mrs. B... to be!

Today's reading material

Gonna be swamped this morning - actually probably most of the day - trying to make progress on a story, so here is a link to the article I had in Sunday's paper about former heavyweight boxing champ Lennox Lewis reinventing himself since retiring from the sport.

Will post more this evening.

Physical semantics or legitimate complaint?

Have you guys heard about the alimony case under review in Clearwater, Florida?

Seriously, a guy there petitioned the court to end his alimony payments to his ex-wife, because she had a sex change operation and is now a man. The court shot him down yesterday.

The plaintiff's argument was that he agreed to pay support to his ex wife, not the man she became.

I have mixed feelings. His ex-wife did not drop dead or anything. The person's still alive, just with a different set of tackle, and so that person should keep getting the ex-husband's check every month.

Buuuuuuut, I can't front. Call me closed-minded, but I sort of understand why the ex-husband is annoyed. He's paying spousal support to another man now. And, while he may not have any issues with anyone else's lifestyle as a general rule, he personally doesn't get down like that. So it bugs him.

On the other hand this could be about nothing more than the ex-husband wanting to get out of having to pay anymore. And he might have tried it even if his ex had remained a woman. Somehow I doubt it though, 'cause their original divorce agreement was pretty clear cut: he'd pay her until she died or remarried.

What do you think?

Oh, if you want to read a complete account of this story, here it is.