“The race is on tonight, babe.”

“The race is on?  It’s on a channel you get?!  It must be on Fox.  THAT’S why my ball game isn’t on.  Stupid Fox is broadcasting the race!”

“No, it’s just your cheap girlfriend that doesn’t have cable.”

“One day, you might just come home and turn on the TV and find….”

“…that I have cable?!  I’d better have a husband AND cable then.”

“Well…you might have cable THEN a husband…”

“Priorities.  I see where your priorities are!”

Every Wednesday night at six, Flash has marching band practice.  He returns home well-past nine, starving.  Leftovers don’t last long in this house and I certainly know better than to think there will be anything to grab on a Thursday morning for my lunch unless it’s hidden in the vegetable drawer.

This week, Flash came home and mush to his ravenous delight, discovered leftover pork chops in the fridge.  While the chops reheated in the microwave, Flash search for barbecue sauce.  There wasn’t much left in the ogle, but enough for him to get by on for his fourth meal.  He tried to shake what little remained down to the top, but it was cold and thick and not easily persuaded to pour out so he did what any teenager, but no knowing adult would do, holding the bottle like a sword over his shoulder, he sliced it through the air, successfully moving the sauce from the bottom of the jar, but using so much force that he popped the lid off and barbecue sauce fling across the kitchen floor in a gashing arc.

Reading a book upstairs in bed, I heard the thwack and the tell-tale, “Oh crap!” from my child.

“Everything okay down there?” I asked with trepidation.

“Yes,” he said unconvincingly.  “I just spilled barbecue sauce on the kitchen floor.  I will clean it up.”

I heard water running and scrubbing, so I went back to reading my book.

Eli came bounding up the stairs for safety reasons, I suppose, but stopped at the top landing of the stairs.  I could hear excessive licking.  “Um, Flash?  Did Eli get into the barbecue sauce by chance?”

“I don’t see how he could have, Mom.  Maybe he just stepped in a little,” Flash assured me.

Eli came to lay in his usual spot by my bed.  As I lay cuddled up in warm blankets reading, I realized I could smell barbecue sauce quite well.  “I think Eli might have gotten into some,” I tell Flash.

“If so, it can’t be much,” he responded.

I continued to read; the dog continued to lick; I continued to smell barbecue sauce.

I put my book down and peered over the edge of the bed at the dog.  Running down his spine, like an excessive dosage of Frontline, was a huge blob of barbecue sauce that he was desperately trying to reach.

Poor thing was a direct target of the assault, had it washed off by Flash before he could even lick it clean and then had to suffer a bath.

Standing over her shoulder, checking her journal for creativity, grammar and penmanship, I noticed K had written, “In the desert you might find those animals with hips.”

“The animals with hips, K?  What do you mean?”

“You know, the ones that you can ride on?  Some of them have one hip, some have two?”

“Oh, humps!  You mean a camel!”

Never a dull moment reading second grade writing!

Standing next to the car while the tank filled at the gas station, WG remembered that he wanted to give me some grocery money and started peeling bills off his bundle of cash.  Having some fun with the moment, standing outside the car looking in, he teased, “I don’t normally have to pay this much for these services, but I guess you were worth it….”

I was worried about all the wrong things, apparently.  As WG and I approached the doors of our first jewelry store together, I was reciting in my head words to ensure that he would not be sent into a tailspin four seconds in the door.  I was worried that he’d die of a heart attack on the spot from sticker shock.  I was concerned that he might find my tastes in rings to be hideous.  I stressed over how he might react to pushy salespeople.  I took deep breaths, and walked in ready to guard him, and protect him from all evils that make men loathe jewelry shopping.

We were immediately greeted at the door by two very eager saleswomen.  I swear I even held my arm out in a “back off!” gesture while I quickly clarified that we were only browsing, and we had only just begun, hoping to clue them in to the idea that we would NOT be leaving with carats in our pockets.

The woman nodded and tried to lure us in with beverages.  “Can I get you something to drink?  Water? Cappuccino?”  I politely declined, but thinking that WG might certainly enjoy this process more if he had a delicious cappuccino in hand, I turned to him as the saleswoman inquired if she could get him anything.

To which, WG retorted, “Oh, we aren’t together!”

I think the saleswoman was pretty well filled in that we weren’t going to be purchasing anything that evening.

I am, in all honesty, surprised at how fast WG and I have moved from the hypothetical “do you think we’ll get married some day?” to riding in his Jeep to a local jewelry store so he has some idea of the sort of ring to put on my finger.  I am trying not to panic.

We drove to the next biggest city on this quest and so there was time for trapped conversation en route.  We talked over this potential issue and that; we discussed concerns and fears.  We were open and honest and vulnerable, as these steps in the process need to be.  We carefully worded our concerns, avoiding defense techniques or worse, scaring the other one off because we didn’t take the request for a satellite dish seriously enough.  Hypothetically speaking, of course.  Ahem.

There were a few moments of silence while we pondered points made and opinions offered, when WG said he had something very important to ask me.

Believing beyond doubt that my man was going to propose while driving, I worried about the intensity of his question and was already preparing myself to not get defensive, but to stay calm and open to whatever he was going to say.

WG took a deep breath and said, “What are we eating for dinner?”

Sigh.  No worries that he will become a sappy romantic anytime soon, that’s for certain!

Flash emerged from his room and asked if he could get me anything.

“Sure,” I replied.  “A husband, a million dollars, a teaching job without administrators and a dessert that makes me lose weight.”

Flash replied, “One: I think that’s your responsibility.  Two: Fine, but I am going to need about a million dollars to buy enough tickets to get the winning one.  Three: Start your own school, and Four: There’s this amazing French dessert that does the trick.” He continued with flair and a terrible accent, “It’s called aire!”

Oh that kid.  Wherever does he get his sense of humor.  Oh right….

Yesterday Flash met me on the back steps as I came in from work with a lawn mower wheel in his hand.  As he showed me how it broke right off the wheel mount, I became instantly empathetic to my dad, as I remember how he used to say, “Can I just get in the door before I have to deal with something?”

Broken clean off, it didn’t give one hint of “fixable” but screamed of “replace me!” the idea of shopping for a new lawn mower sounding about as inviting as cutting each blade of grass by hand did.

I decided my best plan was to not deal with it right then.  I had absolutley no idea what to do about it, and I wanted nothing to do with buying a new one.  So, like a good middle child, I simply postponed the decision.

Today, I had a message from WG, “Have an idea about the mower.  Let me take a look at it today.”  He was an instant hero in my book simply for taking the burden of figuring it out off my shoulders.  Tonight, he backed the Jeep into the drive and pulled my briefly broken mower out of the back.  He showed me how he fabricated a new mount and bolted this thing to that and adjusted the-I didn’t even car what, I was over the moon excited!  HE FIXED IT!  He took a wheel that was broken off…. BROKEN OFF – a concept that in all my stubborn independence, I am afraid I know nothing of how to fix things that are BROKEN OFF – and he returned my mower ready to go.  He even topped it off with gas as he knew my little red tank was empty.

I could not even formulate a thank you sincere enough or deep enough grateful enough for what I feel.  It isn’t just that someone fixed it, or that the cost was $5, or that it was up and running the very next day, it’s that I never even had time really to worry about it.  I didn’t have to stress about buying a new one, or shouldnI just buy another used one, or do I take it somewhere to see if they can weld it?  I never had to even THINK about the broken mower.

WG did.  he thought about it all morning at work.  If you get a steak from the market that seems a bit more choice than prime, it’s because he was a bit distracted while grading cattle this morning, trying to figure out how to fix what I assumed was unfixable.  For me.

Maybe, just maybe, God wanted me to be single all these years so I wouldn’t take for granted these amazing things that WG does for me.  If that’s the case, may I never, ever forget to be grateful.  These are the things that mean the most.

I had no idea the trouble that would come from playing Scarbble with WG.  First, it was just a casual game or two, out on the deck usually, occasionally with Flash and his girl, but usually just the two of us.  For a man who is often stuck on what word he means to say, WG was quickly addicted to what I originally thought was an ill-suited game.

It got worse when he discovered the iPhone app.  Now he plays at work against the computer, or he plays with me, when he is at home watching the Tigers game and I am at home curled up in bed reading on my iPad.

Then we started playing on our devices sitting next to each other on the sofa.  Sad, perhaps, but now that he can use a built-in dictionary and has a quick reference to all the two-letter words, there is no going back to the traditional board version of the game.

He has gotten to be such an addict that he will mention how many points a word is in regular conversation.  Or he’ll announce how many of those letters are in the game.  He can tell you what word he has scored the highest with, and what his highest point total for a game has been.  I was already looking into a 12-step program for him before tonight’s incident.

Tonight, sitting side by side on the couch, him with his iPhone and me with my beloved iPad, we went back and forth in a couple of games.  As I sat wondering what the odds were for me to get a “c” to make the word “juice”, I inquired of the new Scrabble genius at my side, “How many c’s are in Scrabble?”

To which my beloved man answered by exiting the game and looking at the name on the app, “There is only one ‘c’ in “Scrabble”.”

He knew his error the minute the last word came out of his mouth, but by then I was in a fit of giggles.  Oh my dear sweet man, I meant in the game itself.

I never did get the answer, but I think he might be calling the hotline even as I type.

“Hey, Eliza, did I tell you about the rose I have in the yard?  It has this long stem, and it’s this gorgeous color, and the minute it starts to bloom and open….”

“Yes, WG?”

“I’m going to cut the %#&$@?! thing for you!”

“Aw, WG, you’re such a….romantic!”