A friend of a friend has started dating a guy with a history of mental problems, including an in-patient hospitalization. That should be exciting. Some guys are boring. Me, for example. My wife tells me all the time how boring I am . . . I remember a few years ago, a woman came over to clean our house — a white woman, which is unusual in Southern California. She was telling my wife that her alcoholic ex-husband was in jail, as a result of which, she wasn’t getting any financial support from him and had to take up house cleaning to make some money. Now that’s excitement! You hook up with a guy who you don’t know if or when he’s going to be home, how drunk he’s going to be when he gets there . . . maybe he’ll end up in jail and you can spend your… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Marriage
The Weaker Sex?
My son and I are eating lunch at Subway when a group of teenage girls comes in. I notice that in the process of pushing one another through the door, one of the girls has dropped a hat on the sidewalk. “Hey, girls,” I say. “One of you dropped a hat outside.” “Oh, that’s mine,” one of the girls says. “Thanks.” And she goes out to pick it up. “You see the way I saved those damsels in distress?” I say to the boy, who’s about the same age as the girls. “Try to learn something from that.” “Why?” he says. “Because you’ve got to take care of girls. They’re the weaker sex.” “Mom would kill you if she heard that.” He’s right about that. His mom is extremely volatile and always on high alert for slights, real or perceived. “I’m gonna tell her,” he says, nodding and taking a… Read more →
Conversations With My Wife
My wife calls me at work. “How do you spell ‘Casablanca’? she asks. “Like the movie.” “C-a-s-a-b-l-a-n-c-a.” “I am so good!” she says. “I just need more self-confidence.” Read more →
What is Life?
My wife, a non-native English speaker, is explaining her philosophy to me . . . “Life is a journal,” she says. “It is?” “You take a trip,” she says. Read more →
Another Reason Dogs Are Better Than Wives
Here’s how my wife describes me and the pug: an old man and a boring dog. But the dog doesn’t insult the old man, and that’s why the old man likes the dog . . . Read more →
Building a Boat
Two men within a mast length of Rick Hedrick’s homemade 32-foot sailboat have toiled away on their boats for 30 years each. Another for 25 years. Another recently died before his life’s work saw the briny sea. By comparison, Hedrick, 61, of San Clemente, has practically set a land-speed record. He only had to give up 17 years – working every weekend and two or three nights a week after work to complete his life’s dream. . . . “Yes, I’m anxious,” Hedrick said last week at the Boat Yard, where men dream of water, sometimes for half their lives. “The only thing I have ever wanted to do is go sailing. But now that I’m here, I’m reflecting on everything. I’ve spent so much of my life here. I haven’t lived a normal life. I’m never home. I’m 61. I wonder, did I pay too great a price?” —… Read more →
Earthquake Preparedness
A colleague of mine had a vacation planned, visiting some friends out of state. Then a psychic told her that an earthquake would strike California during that week, so she cancelled the vacation to stay home with her family. If I really believed that an earthquake was going to hit on a certain date, I’d make sure that I was out of town. Of course, I’d hope that my child made it through okay. And my dog. As for my wife, there’s nothing wrong with our relationship that a couple tons of rubble wouldn’t fix. Read more →
Why I Don’t Own a Hatchet or a Gun
I’m in the processing of converting all the old content here into WordPress, which among other things, lets me assign categories to each item. I filed one item, principally about a woman who ran over her husband with a car, under several categories, including Murder and Kids. My son, who’s sitting next to me on the sofa doing homework, says, “You’re posting stuff about murdering kids?!” I say, “No, it’s about murdering husbands.” “You’re posting stuff about kids murdering husbands?!” “No, it’s about wives murdering husbands, which happens a lot, unfortunately.” “It would happen around here if Mom had a hatchet or a gun.” “That’s exactly why we don’t have those things.” Read more →
HW Solves the Problem of Poverty in America
According to a U.S. Census report released yesterday, the nation’s poverty rate rose in 2004 for the fourth straight year. Read more →
Last Request
There’s a company in Chicago that will make “a certified, high-quality diamond” from the carbon of your deceased loved one. “Send me the link to that,” my wife says. I don’t know if a web page is legally binding, but I am stating right here that I do not want to be crushed into a gemstone upon my demise. Read more →
You Asked For It
My wife wants a massage . . . “Moderate pressure or deep?” I ask. “Deep . . . AAAAHHH! Moderate!” Read more →
The Happy Wife
Today I saw a woman driving a car with a license plate frame that read: A HAPPY WIFE IS A HAPPY LIFE How ominous is that? It’s a threat, really. Get ready to have “I’m not happy” brandished as a weapon against you for the rest of your life. You see, the wife can’t figure out how to be happy, therefore the husband must devote all of his energy and attention to figuring out how to keep her happy, solve her problems, and somehow get her through the day. And what if, as a result of this, he is not happy? Who cares!? Be very careful, young man, is what I’m saying here . . . Read more →
Notes from the Asylum
Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest. — Alexander Pope, Essay on Man. Epistle i. Line 95 Thus we never live, but we hope to live; and always disposing ourselves to be happy. — Blaise Pascal, Thoughts, chap. v. 2 My wife is schizophrenic. She’s mostly functional, but she’s crazy. I always feel like someday things are going to get better, even though they never do. Does that make me an optimist? Read more →
Patrick Henry’s Crazy Wife in the Basement
My boy is doing a school report on Patrick Henry. Something I didn’t know about Patrick Henry is that his wife went insane in 1771 and was subsequently kept in a straitjacket in the basement of the family home. Read more →
Negative Milestones
I buy my first pair of reading glasses. My wife almost weeps when she sees them. “You’re getting old,” she says. Read more →
The Potential for Fidelity
My wife is apparently a prime candidate for an extramarital affair, according to this article. She denies it, of course: “I have time for an affair?! I don’t even have time for lunch!“ Actually, I wasn’t reading the article to assess her potential for fidelity, which I already suspected was very low. I was looking for tips on how to hook up with some desperate housewives when she finally runs off with another man . . . Read more →
His Master’s Voice
My wife is making noises about getting rid of the dog, because we just moved into a new house and he’s making a mess of it. He’s not doing anything bad, it’s just that normal canine activity puts some wear and tear on a place, which is why I said don’t get a dog in the first place. Read more →
Temptation
It’s tough to eat healthy . . . I usually buy a fruit smoothie for lunch, but as I was telling my wife, to get from the parking lot to the smoothie shop, I have to walk by the taco shop, the pizza shop, the sub shop and the doughnut shop, all with the doors open so you can smell everything. “Why can’t you just eat normal food?” she says. Read more →
Hollywood Confidential
Tom Cruise says wife number three has to be funny, honest — AFP headline As opposed to the rest of us, who would be looking for humorless liars, if we weren’t still hanging in there with our first wives. I ask you — who is stupider: Tom Cruise or the people whose job it is to follow him around and write this crap down? Read more →
Chapel of Love
Today’s the day We’ll say “I do” And we’ll never be lonely anymore. — The Dixie Cups, “Chapel of Love” For decades, I thought this was just a happy, sappy little ditty . . . now I wonder if it isn’t one of the most bitterly ironic songs ever written. We’ll love until The end of time And we’ll never be lonely anymore . . . Read more →