We got married in December 1995, one day after I got my Ph.D. in Tucson. (It was a truly perfect match - we were born only six days apart, and even had the same shoe size.) We'd planned to do it in April '96, but in a spur of the moment decision, we drove down to city hall on a Friday afternoon with my parents in tow, telling them that it was "happy hour", and we had to get there by 5. They had no idea what we were doing until we ended up in the waiting room with maybe 15 other couples, and some women were wearing wedding dresses. A spectacular start, and looking back, I wouldn't have changed a single thing. (Well, just one thing - I still regret that my brother was already on a bus headed back to St. Louis by the time we decided to get hitched that Friday. If I had even the slightest inkling that we'd rush down to city hall, I would have certainly kept him around.)
When we got married, neither one of us wanted kids. That's a big issue, naturally, and we had talked about it quite a bit beforehand. Eight years later, I still don't want kids, but Margaret seems to have changed her mind. It looks like the nieces and nephews have gotten to her, now that they're old enough to have personalities of their own. She feels that if there's any hope at all of having kids, it's probably not with me.
(from Margaret:)
The correct word for MY feelings about having kids is "VACILLATED". As in I would begin thinking, "I wonder what it would be like to have kids? Probably about the same as raising a puppy, only it takes longer and you can't have the psycho ones put down." Then I would be forced into close quarters with some OTHER PEOPLE's horrifically ill-tempered and ill-behaved spawn and I would immediately react by loathing anything under 4'6'' for the next six months. Then I would begin thinking, "I wonder what it would be like to have kids?" But now, even the horrible brats seem to have potential to me, and it's been that way for a while. It doesn't help that of all the fathers out here about our age, the only one who actively wanted children was my brother. (And if you ever met his dogs, you'd see that he was very well-prepared for fatherhood.) Every other husband was issued an ultimatum or an "accident" and just had to deal with the results. Some said, "Hey! This is great! Why did I fight it for so long?", while others resented the outcome and buried themselves in 60- to 70- hour work weeks to avoid their own children. If I am going to have children, I want a WILLING partner in crimes against humanity. And Ron is not it. That's all. No big drama.
(back to Ron:)
Needless to say, it's not a decision that happens overnight. We'd talked about it quite a bit over the last few years, and while Margaret's been hinting more strongly each time it comes up, I pretty much stand firm. I just can't see it. I know it must sound selfish, but the few grains of happiness I get out of life are from things that would most certainly disappear if I had kids, like the radio show (which recently turned 12 years old. Mazel Tov - next year it gets a Bar Mitzvah).
Everyone says that once a baby shows up, life as you know it is over. The same people tell me that the new life that replaces it is wonderful and the most rewarding experience in the world, but I just can't see it. Instead, I see the screaming kid in the restaurant, or the kid behind me kicking my seat in the airplane. (Which just happened AGAIN on a quick visit to Florida - details later in the letter.) Everyone says that it's different when it's your own kid, but to me that just means that I can't leave the restaurant or get off the plane - it becomes my responsibility, and my problem. Forever. The word that keeps springing to mind is "trapped", and I know that after six months, or a year, or two years, I'd probably walk out on Margaret and the baby. A horrific thought to me, but very plausible.
Sounds dark, and kinda stupid now that I read it over, but it should be very apparent that I am not in any proper mindset to become a daddy. Heck, I even get annoyed when Margaret leaves sawdust all over the house - imagine how I'd react to The Permanent Mess of kids - finger paints, the woodburning set, all the hideously loud and obnoxious gifts that we sprung on the nieces and nephews!
Margaret says that once everything's finalized and signed, she'll move back to Denver to live closer to her family. I'll stay here in Minneapolis with the house and my good job, my good friends, and the one remaining cat. (Of course, I'll pass along her contact info when she eventually settles down.) Until then, she'll be in the house with me. And don't feel like you should hesitate to call us because one or the other might pick up the phone - we're certainly not at each other's throats, and never have been. We just drifted in different directions. My goal is to make her last few months here as pleasant as possible (oddly similar to the last week on earth for our cat, Pukehead, who died this past May). Naturally, she can have whatever she wants from the house. And to our friends in town, don't quit calling us; we still go places and do things together, and there's probably less tension between us now than in the past few months, now that everything's out in the open. We don't read each other's e-mail, if that's a concern for you. She'll be here for at least another six months while the papers go through and if anything, we should all spend MORE time with Margaret while we can; she probably won't be visiting too often after she leaves...
I can't say that I agree with Margaret's decision to leave, but she's made up her mind, and I'm in no position to stop her. She's probably the most headstrong woman I've met in my entire life, and undoubtedly the most beautiful and creative. (And every single one of you knows that I'm not just saying that...) I'll miss her terribly...
...in other news...
In the nonsensical language of karma, my yin and my yang have sprinted off in opposite directions. So I suppose that on average, I'm doing fine, like the guy standing in a pail of ice water with his head on the stove.
The radio stuff just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I'm on the Board of Directors at KFAI now, and while it's not like I get to decide Who Lives And Who Dies, it's still fun to be involved in some of the decision-making process at my station. I don't really want to Decide that much anyway.
"Crap From The Past" just turned 12 years old, and it did it on the day it hit -24 degrees F, and -43 degrees F with the wind chill. That's some serious cold, and I'm relieved that our cars started. If you've never experienced -40 wind chill, imagine your nostrils freezing up on the very first breath you take outside. That's crazy cold. Three days later, it warmed up a bit, then snowed 14 inches. I take great pride in shoveling off my driveway (by hand - none of that wussy snowblower stuff), and I shoveled four different times over the course of the whole storm. That's Minnesota!
About two months ago, I stopped for some take-out from my favorite pizza place in town, and I ran into a local TV journalist there. Keeping in mind that TV people are probably not too fond of "Hey everybody look it's the guy from TV!", I politely introduced myself as a radio guy and complimented him on the work he does for the newscast. All true, since I watch his station every night at 10. Turns out that he'd heard of "Crap From The Past", or at least someone he works with had heard of it, which surprised me to no end. We exchanged a few emails about '70s music. Nice guy.
Wouldn't you know it - about a month later, his editor (news director? I don't know the names of the hierarchy) assigned him a five-minute piece on the 1980s as a decade: what was it like in Minnesota? It was part of a '60s/'70s/'80s series of pieces, and he got the '80s. Apparently, my name sprung quickly to mind, and he actually brought me down to the station and interviewed me! On tape! With video! A first for me, and I got to show off my huge collection of Prince records and some other local music from the '80s, as well as my first-generation CD player from 1983. (It's a Philips, and it has a European plug on it. It still works, and it probably weighs close to 40 pounds.) I have no idea if my clip will make it into his piece (it is only five minutes and he did talk to a lot of people) but I was pleased as punch to help him out, and I got to see the inside of a TV station. Neat! Plus the more people I know in the world, the better.
(For those of you here in Minneapolis, the '80s piece will run on KARE 11 on Tuesday, February 24th, on the 10 PM news. I still don't know if I'm in it, but it was a blast just to help put it together.)
My grandmother turned 93 in January. 93! And since my mother was heading down to Florida to visit her, I thought I'd take a weekend to visit them both. I flew out on a Friday and back on a Sunday. Amazingly brief, but long enough to recharge the batteries. I spent many hours walking around outside in short sleeves. No particular activity, no particular destination, just the mere act of being outside in short sleeves in January felt very very good. I took my mom to a Colombian restaurant that we'd discovered the last time we visited, and I think she actually liked it. Who knew?
A fine trip, marred only by some stupid two-year-old sitting behind me on the plane, kicking the seat. I'd like to think that I scared the bejeebus out of him, because at one point, I turned around and scowled at him. Eye contact and everything. I think I even grunted a little. I also scowled at the dad, sitting right next to him, with no discernible effect. Stupid parents...
And I discovered to my dismay, again, that another record store in south Florida closed. Everywhere I go, this keeps happening! This time, the casualty was run by an old guy who had a store full of cool old records. Maybe 10 CDs in the whole place, but thousands of cool old records. Now, just a vacant store front. Apparently, the old guy wanted to give the business to either of his two kids, and neither one wanted it. I've discussed this at great length in some of the previous Big Life Updates, and it just saddens me even more.
We did our taxes, and because I was unemployed for most of 2003, our income was laughably low. So low, in fact, that after deductions, it was effectively zero. Now if I was living on the street, there would be nothing funny about it. But since I still have my house and a good job now, I can laugh. Zero! 2003 sucked rocks.
My band still doesn't have a proper name, which is starting to cause some headaches. (We're a four-piece cover band. We play bars n stuff.) We got one gig under the name It Figures, but that name really does nothing for me. I've suggested about a bazillion others, but the rest of the band doesn't seem to share my tastes on band names. For example, behold my list of most triumphant suggestions, in no particular order:
Fly Monkeys Fly
Catch And Release
Bait And Switch
Quote Unquote
Squeeze The Shamen
The Punch Cards
Trial Size
Wind Chill
Control-Alt-Delete
Schrödinger's Catbox
Aruggio
The Skeleton Keys
Au Gratin
Rocket Science
Vic 20
Paper Or Plastic
Dad I'm In Jail
Fries With That
The Perforations
Forty Finger Discount
Paper Scissors Rock
The Dotted Line
Deep Bass Nine
The Stick Figures
Rush Limbo
Dot Matrix
Brimstone
Fold! Spindle! Mutilate!
Därt Börd
Plus Tax
Gravel Pitt
Pyridium
The Cavity Creeps
Spinnell [sic]
Plum Igneous
The Three R's and Marti
Mudflap Girls
Don't Encourage Us
Older Than Rose
The Dryer Sheets
I didn't say they were the greatest names ever - they're not "Comatoast" or "The New Originals" - but you'd think something on the list would have stuck. If you've got potential band names rolling around in your head, I'd love to hear them. I'll certainly pass along any suggestions to the rest of the band and maybe, just maybe, one will click with the four of us, all at the same time!
And just for giggles, some impossibly horrendous band names (just imagine them on the marquee):
Owner's Nephew's Band
Tour Cancelled
Open Mike Night
Sold Out
All Ages Show
Closed For Repairs
And so it goes.
Happy Valentine's Day to all of you! It's a good time to tell that loved one how you really feel. Except if you want a divorce... that can wait a few days...
Stay well!
Ron & Margaret
