There is no way to get around that.  I have to admit I balked at the statement I read in a book where it says it does no good to criticize anyone:  it just lessens our ability to love that person.

I know I often criticize my partner even if it is only self talk.  Somehow I need to forgive her for not matching up every day.  I certainly don’t.  So why should I expect her to not make any mistakes?  I err every day.

Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath is good advice from the Bible.  Give each other a clean slate and forgive each other at the end of each day.

Bitterness can form an almost impenetrable wedge between you and your mate.  So recognize that both of you are flawed and forgive each other at the end of the day.  Every marriage is flawed.

She balances the checkbook to the penny.  I never liked doing that so I certainly do not mind.  I stopped even writing in it for I would make small errors in it posting figures and when we got our monthly statement it would take her hours to find the errors.

There are some things I do for she simply won’t do them.  I empty and put new litter in the cat litter boxes.  I do the shopping.  I am not sure why but every time she goes with me we spend too much money.  Besides, she does not like to shop.

I do not like to clean.  She does just about all of it.  I do vacuum occasionally.  I could go on and on.  A couple divides the tasks as much as possible along the lines of what you want to do.

Of course, there are always tasks neither like doing and one person just decides to do them.

I love black-eyes susans.  They keep spreading in our yard.  My wife also helps them along.  The blooms last for many weeks.  I have been helping my wife in the garden more because she physically can’t do the same work there she used to be able.  She has a bad back and pays for everything.

Last year we had several cherry tomato plants in large pots.  I love snacking on them.  Before we know it the winter will be over and it will be spring my favorite season.  Everything comes alive again.  And spring always come after winter which I just endure.  I don’t like cold weather.  And makes anticipating spring that much sweeter.

Daisy was the first dog I raised from a pup.  She was one stubborn dog.  I finally decided to train her when I broke the front door window for the third time.  She would go berserk whenever I was about to leave the house.  She scared me and I slammed the door again breaking the glass.

It took infinite patience to train her to stop barking uncontrollably every time I was about to leave the house.  I would clamp my hands over her snout when she barked.  If she stopped, I praised her.  Otherwise I said nothing.

I repeated this technique umpteen times.  I knew I had succeeded when all I had to do when she barked was “shush” her and she would stop immediately.

It also took a long time to train her to sleep in the corner of the bed.  She would want to sleep too closely to me.  I must have pushed her away from me dozens of times in bed before she started sleeping at my feet.

My wife was always amazed that now she would automatically sleep at my feet at the furthest reaches of the bed.

When I was in the house her eyes never left me.  She was my dog.  She finally died and I missed her terribly.  And I thought that there would never be a another dog like her.

Well, Tilla came along.  We were down to one dog and someone gave us a young female golden retriever.  And you know the rest of the story:  she got pregnant before we could fix her.  And Tilla was one of her puppies.

Tilla as opposed to Daisy wanted to please.  We had our own set of problems with him.  Tilla was the only dog athletic enough to  jump the fence we had erected and finally at great expense we had it built higher.  He also had a bad habit of pooping in the dining room every night.

He is the only dog of ours who prompted a visit from the local dog warden when a neighbor complained about one of his escapades.

He was a scoundrel and was the most aggressive of our four dogs yet paradoxically was timid when it came to other humans except us.  He will be three next July.

Tilla did certain things to endear him to me.  He loved getting belly rubs and would turn over on a dime for that privilege.  Whenever he was waiting for me to let him out he would twirl rapidly in almost perfect circles.  He was the only dog to do that of our four.

I started giving him special walks because for a while he was the only dog we could not let loose in the yard.  He can’t replace Daisy but he has come close.  And he came when I least expected it.  He has captured my heart.

I have to slow down, listen more closely.  ‘Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger.’  Those words from Proverbs suggest a formula to avoid anger.

The first part of it forces you to slow down.  That is the only way you can be quick to listen.  You first have to refrain from talking, focus on the words of the person talking.

At the same time you may be able to digest the words spoken to you better.  The last part of the equation ‘be slow to anger’ suggests that if you listen better and also do not talk it may become a little easier not to react in anger.

These scriptures from Proverbs give me hope.  My wife has told me I repeatedly interrupt her.  I have to work on this.

Unfortunately my wife often does not have a chance to do the same.  When she gets up I am usually revved and wide awake.  I don’t know how many times my wife has lost her temper at me because I did not permit her time to get up and awake and would not stop talking to her.

Then my feelings are hurt.  And it may takes hours for us to recover from that.  I have suggested she go to the office and do her devotionals there and wait until she is ready for company.

She would indicate this by then entering the living room.  Of course I would leave her alone while she is in the office.  I have suggested this before.  I am hoping she tries this out.  I do not know why this is so hard to work this out between the two of us.  We will see.

It has become a little easier to do.  I wired my stereo so I can play it just in the office.  Sometimes I leave her alone and listen to my music without disturbing her.  It is amazing what silence can do to a relationship.  There are many hiding places in this house.  I just have to avail myself of them periodically.  There can be too much togetherness.

I was sure I must have left them in a spot I normally do not keep them.  I probably had them in my hands and dropped them somewhere I normally wouldn’t.  I looked upstairs and downstairs, even outside.  No luck.

It was a small thing but it was driving me a little crazy.  The worst possible scenario was I would have to replace them.  My wife had duplicate keys.  I was sure I would come across them when I stopped looking for them.  I just could not understand how I could misplace them.

PS  I finally gave up.  My wife prayed and started to help me look.  She first looked in the car.  I had told her that I’d taken out the trash, so she checked there, and spotted them in  the bottom of one garbage can.  Thank God:  the trash was being picked up tomorrow.  I was relieved.  It is funny how a small thing like misplacing your keys can throw for a loop and cause you to become disheveled and completely disturb your day.

It is a little toy and sometimes I bring it out and act silly with it.  I do not care.  People take themselves too seriously.  And when it goes off in my pocket I laugh and when my wife hears it she laughs also.

My wife gave it to me when I had lost a small piggy toy that oinked.  We were traveling and we met a foreigner who gave it to me for a gift.  I treasured the pig key chain but I lost it.

I also have a lighter I keep in my pocket that flashes multicolors.  It does not always work as a lighter but I love showing it to people for it catches their attention.

It just lightens up my mood.  I can take myself, sometimes, too seriously.  Sometimes I act as if the whole world is on my shoulders.  The world does not really revolve around me.  And my little toys help break my somber moods.

I do not know how many times I talked to a woman who told me she was on a diet.  The perennial diet.  Many times a person gets heavier as she/he ages.

My favorite cousin who I had not seen in a while had to apologize to me right off and tell me she gained weight.  I had not seen her in a number of years.  She really is quite lovely.  My two kids warmed up to her instantly.

Beauty is so many things.  I don’t care if you have everything in the right place but if your smile is not there I lose interest quickly.  If you are not genuinely caring and loving I dismiss you quickly.  It is what is in the inside that makes you beautiful.

Who you genuinely are is what transforms you.  Not your weight or having the right parts in the right proportions.  Your sense of humor is important.  Can you make me laugh.  Or think.  Your intellect.  Your charm.  All those things.

Fortunately my wife has most of these attributes.  And I consider myself a lucky man.  She is self conscious about her weight but I keep reassuring her that is not the most important thing although she has been losing weight steadily.

And I keep calling her “skinny”.  And telling her she has a beautiful smile for I know it comes from deep inside her.  She also makes me laugh  and challenges me.

I was attracted to her by who she was deep inside.  That is really the only thing that truly matters to me.  She is beautiful to me.  Looks can get you only so far.

I used to keep bird seed in the garage, too, but I had the same problem.  Some animal probably a mouse took a liking to it, scattering the shells of the sunflower seeds, creating a real mess on the floor.

My cobs of corn which I put out for the squirrels hoping they would eat less birdseed were not safe there either.  There would be neat even rows of corn kernels gone.  This creature was winning.

I decided to keep my potatoes in the closet in the house hoping no creature could get at them there.  I will see.  I was running out of hiding places.  I was fighting a battle with an invisible enemy.  And I was losing.

Some of the computers crashed but she still entertained the idea of salvaging the hard drives on them and the 1000’s of graphics she had stored on them.  I can not understand any of this.  These things are driving me crazy.

I am still flabbergasted we actually straightened up one room, started from scratch, put a new rug in it and furnished it.  It is our office and incidentally our favorite room in the house.  I become happy when I go in it.

In that room, though, is a pile of old catalogs–years old that she collected and stacked between the two clothes closets.  She could not possibly order any thing from these catalogs.  They are too old.

I even ordered current catalogs from the ones she especially liked but it made no difference she would not discard the old ones.

I guess she is a pack rat.  All this is driving me a little bonkers.  But I chose to ignore my frustration.  There are too many things I love about my wife.  And I am sure there are things I do that drive her nuts too.

I remember the few times my family went on vacation without me (I raised a boy and girl) things actually did not move.  They stayed in the same spot.

But I have to live with my own messes.  So does my wife.  I try to logically place items I put away.  Currently we are running out of space for books.  And we still buy more.  And I have run out of space for newly recorded cassettes.

We have empty cassette racks but we have to agree where to place them.  And that has not occurred yet.  It would take me another lifetime to play all the cassettes I have not heard.  Don’t ask me where we got them that is another story.

All this drives me crazy (and my wife).  Sometimes parts of my house actually looks neat and organized.  Until next time.

She is the recipient of my DJing every day.  And to me there is no greater joy than to share a beautiful piece of music, especially something she never heard.  Both of our tastes in music are eclectic:  we listen to a broad range of music.

I was responsible for her falling in love again with Peter, Paul & Mary.  She listened to the ninety minutes I put together of them on cassette repeatedly.

I have put together dozens of anthologies on cassette culled from my extensive music collection.  I must do a good job.  The cuts usually blend pretty well and she can’t tell always tell when they have come from different albums.

I have always gone deeply in particular groups and individual performers I have loved.  I sometimes surprise her with the material I have recorded of performers she knew well.

I turned her on to British folk rock–a world she had no idea of–Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span.  And performers from England  like Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson and John Tams for starters.

She was the third woman I turned on to Richard Thompson.  The second one divorced me.  The first one was a friend.  And we have gone to several of his concerts.  She has fallen in love with his songwriting and guitar playing.  We never get tired of him.

To be able to share my deep love of music with my wife is a gift.  And I never forget that.  It is a real treat.  When I am home, the stereo usually is on although I have to admit when I go out, silence  reigns.  I never take that love we share for granted.  It is a real gift.

I usually have two or more things on my mind at one time.  It is amazing I close any but I do for she complains.  She insists after I use the toaster and toaster oven I pull the plug.  I do, but every once in awhile I forget.  And then get yelled at for it.

Every marriage is really composed of many small things you work out between the two of you.  She does the checkbook for she has to balance it to the penny.  I would write in the register and make small errors and it would take her hours to locate them so I now longer write in the register.

It drove me nuts that our tax returns were always late.  I once asked her about it and it seems that her Dad’s returns were always late.  My parent’s were always on time.  Marriage is composed of myriad details you work out one by one.  Even making sure the dirty socks are not inside out.  She does the laundry.

All trees were once seeds strewn in the wind.  This property bought by my wife almost thirty years ago was barren and now the bushes are gigantic and woods and grass and trees are all over.  The land surrounding the house is no longer bare.

I wanted to see how much time the Lord afforded me.  I wanted to observe this small pine growing up and see if I could remember when it was this small.  At the beginning of the twentieth century the United States was denuded of much of its forests.

And they grew back.  I wanted to see how much time I would have.  I want to watch this small tree grow tall.

I realized that yesterday she had finished transferring the rest of  my blogs to our computer.  I did not realize she was working most of the day.

I needed to acknowledge the greatest gift she could give of herself her time.  And thank her for it.  So when she gets up, I need to show her I appreciate the hours she spent on the project.