The Right Richard?

Dearest Blog Reader:

I hope this finds you doing well. I am doing okay. It is funny. This blog started out one direction and ended up here. I think that the first direction was better, but we are here. Now, I have ideas for the next two blogs. We will see if they have staying power, and I will let you go on with what came out.

Politics is the other thing that is driving me closer to the edge. Yesterday, I was setting inside of my cold, cold house. What will it take to get Bev to put the flannels back on the bed? I cannot stop the madness. She becomes more recalcitrant with every frosty morning, every frostbitten fruit bud hardens her resolve. "Let them eat fruitless cake," she declares as I plead hopelessly.

Yes, a political push poll is just what I needed to make this gray cold day more exciting and to remind myself why I suddenly am less tolerant of those around me who hold different opinions. It's not the cold weather. It's not my general intolerance of people inferior to me. No, I am being influenced by political puppet masters for their own nefarious purposes. For those non-hoosiers in "You said what? Roger" nation, Indiana, in an effort to maintain it's non-relevant political status, holds its primary in May, long after the presidential nominees have been selected. While limiting our relevance in presidential politics, it does shelter us from most of the character assassinations that occur in other states. This shelter allows us to be kinder and more lovable than say your Iowans or New Hampsherians.

A quick note to all of my beloved blog readers in the 3rd world, rather than change leadership in the time honored way of bloody assassinations and coups, we simply go out and try to assassinate our enemy's character. It provides a couple of advantages. First, it allows the vanquished the opportunity to go out and make a living facilitating gifts and bribes between the winners and their supplicants. Second, the first advantage secured, the rest of us don't have to look at the widow and children with their little tear streaked faces and be reminded of the whole sordid affair.

But low and behold while the presidential candidate selection process has been settled, the mudslingers are out on the public square trying to decide on the republican candidate for US Senate. That is why my gray, rainy, cold Saturday afternoon was brightened. I received a call from a lovely sounding pollsteresta asking me for my opinions surrounding this election. I love these calls. I keep a list of all of the polls that I participate in with my answers. Then when another call comes in I answer 90 degrees out of phase so it messes up all the numbers.

While I am usually able to amuse myself and find each poll worthwhile on its own merits, this poll was extra special. Having identified the candidates as Dick Lugar and Richard Murdock and confirming that I was likely to vote "come hell or high water", (Funny thing is "come hell or high water isn't a valid choice. So I had to settle on "Damned straight I am very likely to vote in the Republican Primary." "Come hell or high water." “Sir, that would be a very likely; correct?” Compromise; I love it.) She asked me, "Are you voting for Dick or Richard." Somehow she said Dick in such a way that my inner eight year old started to laugh.

Of course, I maybe imagining things, but I am pretty sure that she did put that special little emphasis on the D; that and the fact that she suddenly started using only their first names; not Dick Lugar or Richard Murdock, but Dick or Richard. I think the sudden switch and subtle emphasis was intentional. I don’t think that I am imagining it. It was very noticeable. I wasn’t paying any attention and suddenly I was.  Because at that moment, I was concentrating on timing my ebay bid so that I could win the one bike dodad that I need to be as fast as Lance Armstrong. No it wasn't a syringe. Be nice.

I had my finger poised. 15, 14, ready, 13, 12, 11, and hit . . . "Vote for Dick or Richard?"  I am not very proud of my response, but I was taken by surprise. I was on the verge of securing an extra 1/2 mile per hour and she said Dick or Richard. Suddenly, I blurted out, "well aren't they both Dicks?"

How did she do that? How did she make two people with the same name sound so different? One tiny little inflection and my 8 year old lizard brain totally took over. There is no way that I was going to vote for a Dick when I had a Richard as a choice. Forget that Dick has had a long and distinguished career as the Honorable Senator from Indiana. I couldn’t bring myself to say that I was going to vote for Dick.

That’s they way with politics. We say we are going to vote for the most qualified, the statesman, the best person for the job. We say that we know all of the issues. For those two of you who really do. I congratulate you. How does it feel to have your well reasoned, logically concluded voting decision nullified by a grown man using his 8 year old brain to pick any old lever because he still giggles when someone uses a slang word describing . . . ? Well you know what I’m talking about. I feel for you I really do.

This is how we do it. We vote on intuition. We vote on impressions. That’s why we voted for that good for nothing football jock for class president in high school. It is a popularity contest. It is what it is. That is why we reward the person who goes out an does the best job assassinating the other candidate’s character.  Well everyone except you two high minded individuals who vote based on the issues.

So as May 8 quickly approaches. I will try to set aside all of my preconceived notions, try to be logical, and fair minded, and when I enter that voting booth try to vote for the right “Richard.”

Take care,

Roger

That, too, is what it is?

Dearest Blog Reader

I hope this blog finds you doing well. It gets started in a befuddled state. That is right I am in a befuddled state.  Bev is back from Ghana. Suddenly, I don't have the brains to put two sentences together.  Which I am afraid feeds into numerous stereotypes about the organs used for male intellectual gymnastics.  But it is what it is.

Before I get started, I want to apologize for Bev's bad behavior. I have begged her to put the flannel sheets back on so that this March weather will relent and give us the April weather we so timidly desire and in the past have beseeched the Hoosier weather gods with our flannel sheets remaining in place until mid-May no matter what 70 or 80 degree temptations were placed before us.

"Don't be superstitious, " she says.

"Superstitious? Superstitious?” (Imagine Jim Mora type screech)

Well I never . . . I have scientific fact on my side. When it was 80 in March, we had flannel sheets on the bed.  Now, we have those easy breezy cottony sheets on and the high is low to mid 50's with wind gusts of 30 mph. One can't be so frivolous when the fate of the free world's food supply depends on proper decorum.

I will continue to try to persuade Bev. I know what you're thinking. If its so important Roger why don't you change the sheets and be the hero? What? Lose the opportunity to make Bev believe that she is responsible for the starving children in Africa, China, and Antarctica and fill her with guilt that will take years of therapy to undo? I will not. One has to have a purpose in life.

Back to the blog at hand; I have used the week long hiatus to think about why I write. Am I drawn to it? Is it for the riches and fame? Do I have to do it? If I don't write you every week, will I go crazy? Before I go further, I have a confession. This is not the only blog that I write. In fact, I write two other pieces each week. I am much more dedicated to its publishing deadlines than I am to your expectations, however low, for these weekly installments.

Each week I publish two other blogs to a very limited and exclusive readership. In fact each blog has one reader a piece.  For 4 years, I have written Ben a snail mail letter since he has been at IU. I doubled my output when Grace went to BSU 2 years ago. Each letter they receive is two pages of legal pad long. It hasn't always been that way; some, when reporting momentous occasions in their absence, strayed into 3 pages and maybe one or two tiptoed onto page 4.  But practice and repetition (not to mention redundancy) have left me with the impression that two pages are perfect, or nearly so, at times, my final paragraph has been a little under developed thematically in order to fit proper exhortations and goodbyes on the page. But that, too, is what it is.

My motivation for writing Ben and Grace are completely different than the reasons I sit with you on my weekend excursions. When I start those letter's;  Dearest Ben or Dearest Grace, I hope this letter finds you doing well, I dive into a story that has been going on for years. We are sitting around the kitchen table eating dinner sharing our day; there is no theme, not rhyme, no reason. It just comes out. I am loving on them the only way that I can within the dictates of distance and independence. It has become a beautiful ritual of my life and appears to be able to be sustainable until circumstances empties the ink from my metaphorical pen.

If I feel like I am diving into the deep end of my relationship with my kids when I start to write, the vision that I get when I type; Dearest Blog Reader; I hope this blog finds you doing well, is a vision of hiding under the covers late at night reading with a flash light after being ordered to go to bed. When I type that salutation, I am drawn to it. Like the last 75 pages of that mystery you've been working on all week, I want to get it done. It will be so worth it. Yet, at the same time, I am afraid that I will be caught, found out, warned to turn out that light and go to sleep right now young man. That isn’t what you are good at.

So if I skip a week, that's why. I can hear those warning footsteps wondering up and down the hallway, right outside the door.  That, too, is what it is. And it doesn't seem to be a permanent affliction.

Take care,

Roger

Giving Bev up for Lent?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope this finds you doing well. It is late Saturday night and I am sitting here in the glow of my iPad looking at an app generated icon of a jet that is carrying the lovely Beverly back to Indiana. She is currently over the Atlantic Ocean and should be winging her way into the Indianapolis Airport around 1:00 p.m. tomorrow.  I do not recommend giving your wife up for Lent. I know what you are thinking. "Don't be dramatic Roger. Bev has been gone for only 10 days. Lent is 40 days." Sorry my dear blog reader. It is you who have miscalculated. When you are dealing with a woman of unsurpassed beauty, kindness, gentility, and grace, the distress and longing are four times greater than for a woman of more humble circumstances. It is kinda like dog years only different.

I have been busily cleaning the house, de-nesting the Oreo gorged ants from Bev's side of the bed, cutting the grass, folding the clothes; generally getting the world back into shape and out of the drinking beer and eating Oreos mode (see last week’s blog for an explanation.

One particular clean up task has provided a particular challenge. Without Bev in bed with me, defining the far edge of the bed, valiantly maintaining her hold on her edge of the blankets, the blankets have turned into a wadded up tangle that could not possibly keep me warm unless I went completely fetal; which defeats the purpose of sleeping single in a double bed. Staying warm was a huge challenge this week because some of us (you) refused to listen to our betters and elders and took off the flannel sheets. Those 80 degree days coaxed off our flannels and coaxed out the apple and pear blossoms. Looks like we all paid for our lack of honor and respect for those whose wisdom has been bought by the experiences of a lifetime. In spite of the challenges provided by cold temperatures and uneven blanket coverage, I utilized the same coping mechanisms described last week and found a good use for all of those dirty clothes.

As with many religious experiences, I have received many epiphanies during this Lenten exercise. For instance, I have found that Bev's carbon footprint is rather large. When Bev is here, we have four loads of laundry to do. Today, I only had two loads. Looking at the credit card statement, I have found that we spent half as much on gasoline. Its a small thing but Bev’s trip may be a start to solving the energy crisis. Usually there are two bags of trash and two bowls of compost, this week, only one of each. Finally, I made a big bowl of chili on Monday, and it has lasted for an entire week. Since the kids have gone to college, Bev and I have had to adjust all of our cooking practices. I make a big crockpot meal on Monday. We eat on it through Thursday; leftovers for lunches, a few side dishes for variety in the evening. Then on Thursday night, Bev whips up something delicious that we work on throughout the weekend.

Bev was gone and only one batch of chili was needed. (On a side note surrounding an entire batch of chili, if a guy farts really loud in an empty house will any one hear it and congratulate him. No, but there would have been no congratulations if Bev was home either; so that’s a wash.) Bev was gone and the Sharritt household's carbon footprint was cut in half. Is it any wonder that there are people in the world who think that there are too many people in the world? To my mind, they are wrong headed. I have always found it curious that they never offer to be the first to volunteer to make a deposit in that carbon footprint savings bank.

I had another really big epiphany during Bev’s absence. I have a new found respect and empathy for those who are single. Also my respect for single parents is over the moon. It is a lot of work to do both the laundry and the yard; to do both the shopping and cooking. In order to get everything done last week, I had to give up on average an hour of sleep a night, and I lost 2 hours of bike riding during the week. I don’t know how you do it.

As this epiphany was coming into focus, I was reminded over and over what two wise men once told me.  The first, a good friend of the family, said that he was trying to convince his son, who was having marriage trouble, that he would spend ½ the energy finding a way to liking his wife again as he would working out all of the complications that divorce would cause. He said “I am happily remarried. I get along with my ex; she gets along with me and likes my wife, and still the complications of that decision are twice as messy than it would be if I had just learned to like my 1^st wife again.”

The second wise man was C.S. Lewis, in the Four Loves (I think). He stated that today we get married for Eros, the first love. We have forgotten one of the main purposes of marriage and that was to find a helpmate.  He went as far as to say that if two people entered into marriage only to be helpmates they would be further along and happier than two people who married for Eros and never became helpmates.

When I read that in my early twenties while dating the smokin hot Beverly, I thought yeah right. No one gets married just to be a helpmate. I probably thought that is was unchristian. The only Love God endorsed for marriage was Eros. I am not even sure that I knew how to be a helpmate then. Actually, I am sure that I didn’t know. I know that is the case because there were a lot of tears and arguments as Bev and I learned the practice of helping our mate.

Somehow over the course of nearly 27 years, we struggled and got to that place. My helpmate is back and she is still smokin hot actually more so because we are helpmates.

Who knew that you could gain such clarity by drinking beer and eating Oreos during Lent?

Take care,

Roger