Married In Ohio

I wasn’t really thinking much about it as it happened; but I realized when I was reflecting on things during my run earlier today that California Girl and I had sex four times on Tuesday. Once in the morning before I left for work. Once in an unnamed outdoor location to be revealed in our next HNT post. Once at the conclusion of our Two For Tuesday photo session. And once when we went to bed Tuesday night. Three or four times would not be extremely rare for us for us for a Saturday; nut it’s a lot for a weekday that I spent a full day at work. That’s one of the reasons that I like participating in Half Nekkid Thursday. Having a regularly scheduled weekday photo session encourages us to slow down, relax and take some times for ourselves. And have some fun sex at a time when we might not do so otherwise.

California Girl’s watch died over the weekend. I’m almost certain that it’s the battery which is a nuisance since it has to be special ordered directly from Seiko. I’d like to get her a nice new watch; but, since we have his and hers watches, I’ll probably just get another battery. It was supposed to last 5 years; but, both this one and the original one lasted for less than half of that. If we had known beforehand that a replacement battery would be so hard to find, we would have never purchased the set. Unlike hers, my watch is still running on the original battery.

We like to have matching stuff. It’s kind of a trademark of ours. We don’t overdo it; but we do like jewelry and other accessories that remind us of each other. For example, we always have coordinating costumes at Halloween. If anyone has suggestions for a nice coordinated set of his and hers watches we’d love to hear them. We don’t want to spend too much money; but we’d really like a matched pair. After the “fun” we have had with batteries, we’re thinking that we would like to have automatic (self-winding) movements. And, or course enough water resistance so that we can swim in them. (It gives us a funny tan, so we don’t usually wear them in the pool; but, sometimes we do need to know the time). The only thing I can say is our next set of watches will not be Seikos.

Other than the battery being such an annoyance, we really like the watches. They keep very accurate time and are perpetual calendar models so we only have to adjust them when changing to or from daylight savings time. Even though they only display the date, they “know” what month and year it is and adjust the date accordingly. It’s a good idea; but poor execution. I guess the same could be said about many things.

We’ve got clocks all over the house; and we’ve always got our cell phones with us; so we don’t really need a watch to know the time; but it’s a touch of elegance that we like share. I’ve always thought that timepieces were symbolic of relationships. Hopefully we’ll be able to find something that is a suitable remembrance of ours.

Happy Father’s Day to all of the dads out there! It’s raining now (again) but I spent the afternoon in the pool with California Girl which is one of my favorite places to be. It’s quiet and peaceful with, of course, the best friend I have in the world. I can’t think of a better place to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon. After being on the road on Father’s Day for the past two years, it was good to be home. I made sure to call my dad. I hope that you were able to call or visit yours.

After twenty consecutive weeks of six and seven day work weeks, I finally had a three day weekend. I really enjoy my Christmas and Independence Day vacations but five months is a long time to go without a break; especially since I worked so many weekends. My telephone did not ring and I did not even turn on my laptop. It was bliss. I just caught up on mundane chores and generally “decompressed”.

If you have a blog that I frequent regularly, I apologize for not visiting this weekend. I had planned to visit everyone on Sunday or Monday; but was too busy relaxing. Every year, it seems like Memorial Day Weekend takes longer and longer to arrive. I’m already paying for my three-day weekend at work; but it was worth it. I must admit that I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time playing computer games on our new widescreen monitor. The wider display made some older games seem new again.

If possible, I have also developed even more distaste for spammers. On Saturday I inadvertently deactivated the spam filter for comments. In a matter of minutes, the moderation queue was overflowing. It’s a nuisance for real people, but the CAPCHA (code words) stops thousands of bogus comments on every post. I wish they would go away. Their advertisements never show up. They are just a waste of bandwidth and processing time.

P.S. California Girl is taking The Boy to a pre-graduation event. We plan to have our photo session when she returns.

I’ll pay for it with very late nights today and Monday but I took a much needed day off from work on Saturday and took California Girl out to dinner. It seems strange saying that I took a day off on Saturday but I’ve working weekends for so long, I can’t remember when my last free weekend was. The Girl had an early out of town soccer game which meant I had to be up and early; but even with the long drive, I was back home and had the day to myself by 1:30 or so.

I had planned to catch up with everyone in blogland; but spent the time catching up with California Girl instead. She accompanied me while I ran a few “fun” errands like going to the computer store. Then I washed the car and took a nap. My late afternoon naps are always great since California Girl usually joins me and we don’t go to sleep right away. But we really did sleep for a bit. Afterwards we got up and went out for our new favorite restaurant for a sumptuous dinner. It’s very expensive; but we love eating there for special occasions.

Our 20^th wedding anniversary is this month and we wanted to celebrate. It’s hard to believe we’ve been together that long. Even when I’m not cutting it off, I’ve lost most all of the hair that I had when we first met; but California Girl looks almost exactly the same. I’ve no doubt she could still wear the same dress now as she did then if they were still in style. Days like this don’t come around very often and I’m glad it was a good one.

It was more than a couple of days but we are back. As usual, we’re a bit later posting than we would like. Hopefully, I’ll get around and visit everyone’s blog on Wednesday. In the interim, here is a photograph of me hanging out waiting for California Girl. This probably would have been one of our HNT photos if we had been posting last week. Click to enlarge.

I “overslept” today which is a polite way of saying that I spent some quality time with California Girl this morning. I wonder if the people I work with have any idea what we do when we are “sleeping”. I’m probably in a better mood that usually when I first arrive in the office; but other than that, I am unaware if there are any other outward signs. I try not to look guilty when I get to work; but, some days, I can’t help but laugh when I think what I was doing while the early arrivers were tapping away on their keyboards. The Monday after Easter is not as hectic as a typical Monday since many people are away on spring break. The morning’s activities may it a very relaxed.

I can hardly wait until May when California Girl and I can resume our summer schedule. I don’t need to get up and out early in order to get the kids to school, so, there are always a lot of mornings like this one. If it was an everyday occurrence, I probably would not appreciate it as much. Days like today are precious since days like today are so rare when school is in session. Even though we both have to work, California Girl and I can still have fun while the kids are on break. The skies got cloudy as the day went on; but we certainly put a bright sunny morning to good use. Hopefully tomorrow will be another sunny day.

We went to a very nice restaurant on Saturday night to celebrate The Boy’s college plans. It was fabulous. We all dressed in evening attire and spent almost 2 hours being pampered. We can’t afford to do things like that very often; but California Girl and I thought that it would be a nice way to recognize The Boy’s accomplishments. Pretty soon, it will be party of three; so it was good to live large with The Boy. We call him The Boy; but he is really almost a man. I have been having some very serious conversations with him. Like most teenagers, he likes to have fun; but he understands the big picture much better than most kids his age. Despite being quiet and introspective, he has a lot of insight into people and things. I think that ability will serve him well in life.

We also went to another “last” for The Boy. It seems like his senior year is just flying by. I’m both proud and sad at the same time. I’m glad to see him doing so well in his final few months of high school; but sad to turn the page. California Girl and I are more than mom and dad; so are relationship with him will continue even when he doesn’t “need” us anymore. But there won’t be as many opportunities for the spontaneous good times that we have enjoyed. He’s needed his share of pep talks; but he brightens our lives with his quick with far more than he needs cheering up. Some of the things he has said are priceless.

As we zoom toward the day that California Girl and I will be taking The Boy off to school, we can’t help but think about how quiet it will be in the house with only one kid. The kids are only two years apart, and The Girl learned to talk at a very young age, so most of the past 15 years has been filed with their conversations. As any parent will attest, a four year old has some very interesting conversations with a two year old. Some of our fondest memories are of the kids talking to each other. When they were small babies every day was a grand adventure and they took great pleasure in the simplest things. I’ll never forget some of the conversations they had as they explored the bags from the grocery store.

They were inseparable as they grew and went through their elementary school days. I often said, for example, that it was like having the mind of a five year old with the size and manual dexterity of a seven year old. Whatever they did, they always did together. Some days were very trying but I still wouldn’t trade them for anything. Nowadays, they talk about the teams that they play on or other things (e.g. teachers and fellow students) from school. They’ve been doing a lot together, even for them. California Girl and I get the feeling that they‘re both starting to realize that their days together are almost over. The Girl is very, very unlikely to go to the came college as The Boy, so this coming August is a new chapter for everyone.

Thighs-n-Eyez commented in the shoutbox:

I love you both! May I ask why you didn’t get married before you lived together? Also, what made you want to get married to CG, MCB after you guys were already living together?

We decide to respond in a post since the answer is more than 500 characters.

Even when we had separate places, we didn’t spend very much time apart, so, it didn’t seem to make very much sense to do anything else. It seemed almost like “hedging or bet” which wasn’t how either of us felt. Plus, neither set of parent’s approved off our relationship, so a wedding which is typically for family and friends was difficult to arrange. Everyone wants their wedding to be special, and we were no different, so, even though it was something that we expected, it was very frustrating. In a way, because our relationship was so controversial, we didn’t receive a lot of pressure from our parents to “do the right thing”. And, remember, by the mid to late 1980’s living together had lost the stigma that it once had and was becoming much more widespread, especially for people of our generation.

We got married because we both like having a spouse. There is a sense of commitment and permanence that living together doesn’t have. It may just have been in our minds; but it was important to us. I liked the idea of proposing and trying to make a special moment to California Girl. We like having an anniversary to celebrate. Unlike a lot of men, I always wear my wedding band, probably even at times that I shouldn’t. We ended up having a small wedding; but it’s still part of our shared history together. We like to focus on the positive; but were a lot of external things gong on that made our life much more difficult. We’ve always made our own way without muchany help. In, fact, I was just mentioning to California Girl about an event that happened around that time that I consider a watershed moment in my personal history. We make decisions more for ourselves and each other than almost anyone that you will ever meet. We wanted to get married so we did.