As I begin this new chapter in my life, I promise to be honest and open with you, hiding nothing, although I will leave it to your imagination to figure out if I am wearing pants or not.

When unconditional love fades, it doesn’t melt away like the Wicked Witch after she is splashed with a bucket of water.  It happens slower, in a more painful way.  Like the drip drip drip of Chinese water torture.

I was in the laundromat.  It was Saturday night.  It was quiet except for the sound of the the dryers.  There was one other customer.  He was about 60.  Joe introduced himself.  He said he played the mandolin, and gave me his card.  He lived in some trailer park. 

“You mind if I change the channel?” he asked. 

I shrugged.  In the right corner of the laundromat was a small TV that was playing the Dodger game.  The Dodgers were losing.  Joe turned the channel to one of those “America’s Funniest Home Video” rip-offs.  I hate these shows.  I don’t find kids falling into mud or dogs biting their own tails funny.  Ever.  And I consider myself to have a sense of humor.  Since when is pain, shown out of context, funny?

On the TV, a ram was butting his head into a children’s swing set. The bench swung in an arc and then hit the ram back in the head.  The ram showed no fear.  He pushed to the other side of the swing set, and then rammed his way from the opposite side.  He banged his head a second time.  He was relentless.  He attacked the swing set over and over again, each time with the same result.  I know rams do this naturally, but I was worrying about the animal’s health.  Was he damaging his brain?  Was he trying to forget about something?  About someone?  Was he in and out of love?

The onscreen audience was laughing and cheering.  Joe was cracking up.

“Are you watching this?  Man oh man, this is hilarious!”

I went to fold my laundry.  This stubborn ram doing stupid things to himself was not funny, even if he was deceiving himself into thinking he was being productive.  He was in pain.  Emotional pain.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Sophia!

Happy Valentine’s Day, Mom!

Happy Valentine’s Day, Beautiful Bloggers of the Blogosphere! 

May We All Find True Love and Blog About it!

And now for your listening pleasure, I sing the classic "Love Will Keep Us Together," originally sung by the Captain and Tennille. 

My voice may not be perfect, but my heart is in the right place.

A few weeks ago, Jenny wrote this on her blog;

So what do you do with yourself when you stop looking for love? I realized recently that I have spent so much time as a single person looking for love, that I’ll need to take a up a new hobby when I finally do find it.

Jenny, Jenny, Jenny, I laughed for ten minutes after reading that.  Don’t you realize the trouble hasn’t begun UNTIL you meet someone to love?   Your relationship will be your "hobby."

Most of us learn about love from books and movies.

In a movie, the story usually ends when the couple kisses at the altar.

In the real world, we each walk around with our own personal movie projecting in our head.  In each movie, we are our own star.  Most of the hard work in any relationship revolves around this problem.  How do you make sure that you are both in the same movie?  Are you equal co-stars?  Do you both have the same size trailer?

Like most bloggers and writers, I enjoy sitting down by myself and making things up.  I am usually my own main character.  In the movie in my mind, I am the hero — a little bit of James Stewart, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, and Viggo Mortensen.   I make jokes, I flirt with women, I hang out with the guys, I save the day from the bad guys.

I thought I reached my final goal when I married Sophia.  Like Jenny, I figured there was nothing more to worry about.  I was the luckiest guy in the world.  I met Sophia –  someone so beautiful and fun.  Someone who actually agreed to marry a klutz like me!

But it took a while for me to realize that Sophia had her own movie in her head.  And she was the heroine in her movie — a little bit of Lucille Ball, Sophia Loren, Lauren Bacall, and Angelina Jolie. 

There is always trouble brewing when a couple is not in the same movie. 

At the top, is a photo from our wedding.  Can you tell who is the star of this movie?   The photographer surely did.  Every other photo has Sophia front and center, and all you see of me is my back and yarmulke.    Sophia and I always joked that if she ever remarried, she could just keep the same pictures and say this is her new husband.  And I won’t even mention the fact that I was propped up in front of a piano I can’t play at all.   Can you see some of the issues that we ended up having to deal with?

Here’s another photo from our wedding.  A beautiful, sexy woman.  A generic guy with a nice yarmulke.

So, Jenny, don’t worry about needing a new hobby after you fall in love.  Trust me — you’ll be busy enough.