Cooler Heads Do Prevail (Also, Spoiler Alert: We Won't Be Getting New Cafeteria Food)

Ben:

Perhaps I’ve had my head stuck in books or drywall dust too long, but I just had an encounter that told me the political season is under way. A young man knocked on my door and asked if I’d support his candidate for the upcoming elections. Ugh, here we go.

Mid-term elections aren’t as bad as presidential ones, but they come close. You take a dissatisfied nation in an economic slump and you can bet your hanging chad that fur is going to fly between now and November, and most likely even after that. Here’s the problem. Mouthpieces from every side made their bones getting people to tune into their television shows, radio shows, pod-casts, blogs, books, magazines, or newspapers. The thing is, each of them, whether they are Chris Matthews or Sean Hannity, has one goal in mind: make money. Sadly, this is done by whipping us all into a frenzy. THE LIBERALS ARE EVIL! GO GET ‘EM!! THE CONSERVATIVES ARE EVIL! GO GET ‘EM!!

Ok, fine, this isn’t new. Since the advent of our political system this sort of thing has been going on. The way things should work is that we get together every couple of years, debate the issues at hand, decide who will best represent out interests, vote for them, and then go about our business. Politics used to have an off season. People’d have a chance to calm down and get on with their lives.

The problem we have now is that Hannity and Matthews are trying to sell Select Comfort mattresses and Life Lock personal security services 24/7, 365. We never get a break from all the rhetoric. Worse than that, this steady drumbeat of “the other side is bad, the other side is bad, the other side is bad” has created a serious deep divide in our country, and this how it's been done. People from each side create a faulty premise. To use a mundane example, let's say there’s a motion to hire a city dog catcher. People on one side say, “Dog catchers hurt dogs, so people who support this motion must want to hurt dogs. Bad people want to hurt dogs, ergo, people who support this motion are bad people.” Now the loudmouths have people on one side thinking people on the other side are bad people because of their stance on a political issue. Sadly, that’s where we are right now. We have many groups pointing and screaming at each other until they’re red in the face.

The problem is that the most vocal among us assign motives to the other side. “They want to take your jobs.” “They want to take away your freedoms.” “They want to hurt your way of life.” And so on. The mouthpieces (loudmouths) demonize the “they’s” and “thems” to get the “we’s” and “us’s” all riled up. The political term for this is “energizing the base.”

This has the net effect of making it socially acceptable to treat strangers badly. These “energized” people want to do their part so badly that they seize the first opportunity to confront the other side. They think they can browbeat, harass, and harangue people over to their way of thinking; which is laughable, because it will only cause their opponents to dig in deeper. It's created a toxic environment in our country in which you can’t examine issues objectively anymore.

The solution? First, avoid assigning motives to those who oppose you politically. Second, understand that all people (generally speaking) want what’s best for their country, state, city, county, village, township, etc. The major political parties in our country are like two parents arguing in front of their children about who’s right and wrong and they never let up. It's no wonder we get caught up in their fervor!

The main thing, is don’t assign values to a person you don’t know simply because they belong to a particular party or movement. Take the time to get to know others and really sit down and talk with them before spouting the latest talking points you heard on television. Perhaps if more of us acted less like sheep and more like thinking, feeling human beings, we’d be able to move forward as a truly united nation.

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Esther:

I'm not a political person.  I vote because it's one of our rights, and because women didn't start out having that right, so I feel guilty if I don't use my right, but the whole thing really bores me.  Considering how well it's been going, turning other things over to each other based on our different strengths and weaknesses (goodbye, checkbook balancing and bill paying!),  I admit I'm tempted to ignore politics altogether until voting time, at which point I'd ask Ben to be my own personal Cliff's Notes so I wouldn't have to read the class assignment.

The only election I pay much attention to is the Superbowl of elections, the presidential election, and even then I'm not watching as much for the electoral game as I am for the commercials.  Not having learned from high school class president elections, people entertain me by believing their candidates' promises.  Every presidential election, people want their guy to win because he'll have the cafeteria replaced with a mall-style food court, and we'll get the right to leave class for a bathroom break whenever we want. Whenever we want, guys!  No hall pass needed!

Then the new guy gets into office and maybe a new meal is added to our cafeteria menu rotation.  Our old hall pass system remains in place.  It's still business as usual.  We all shuffle along to our classes.  Rinse and repeat next election time.

That's the sunnier side of elections.  The darker side is, as Ben said, the Us. vs. Them, the mudslinging, the torches and pitchforks. *Yawn.* "Politics used to have an off season." Indeed. What else is on?

*Changes channel*

Be Generous With Your "I Love You's"!

Ben:

You ever see those cats or dogs who turn around and around on a bed, struggling to settle in comfortably? That’s me. I’ve completed my first week at Wittenberg University and am still having a difficult time establishing a routine. Since routines are prime components to my psychological comfort, I’ve felt a bit out of sorts lately, and my long-suffering kids have had to endure my unwarranted grousing. It also doesn’t help that I’ve abandoned the healthy eating and exercise habits I established a couple years ago. (The excuse I love to give is that it’s because of all the changes in my life, but, in truth, it’s because I love to eat, I love to cook, and I cook well, so I love to eat what I cook. Also, I believe that if you’re not eating and hydrating properly, exercise is pointless, so that’s gone out the window, too. The upshot of all this is, my clothes fit as uncomfortably as my routine, or lack thereof.) Overall, my picture is unbelievably bright. I’m married to the girl of my dreams. (That’s a tired cliché so I’ll amend. I’m married to the girl I imagined I’d be happiest with before we even met.) I’ve got a household of great kids, a Rolodex of awesome friends, and I’m working steadily toward my goal of getting a degree. Despite all this, I’ve been a bit grumpy; my sleeping and eating are off, energy is off, I’m just off.

Ok, Ben, WE GET IT, YOU’RE OFF! But here’s why this is important – when you’re off, its hard to feel like you’re in love or that you love anyone else. In fact, when you’re off, it’s easy to get inward focused and forget about the world around you, or to forget that it does not, in fact, revolve around you. It’s in these times that you’ve got to reaffirm your love for others.

I believe love is equal measures feeling and conscious choice – it’s got to be. Conscious choice is what carries you through the ebbs and dips not only in your relationship, but your personal life as well. (Also, let me clarify, relationship doesn’t have to be strictly defined as romantic; at its core, a relationship is any interaction two or more people have on a regular basis.) It’s so important that you continue expressing love even especially on bad days.

I have the unique perspective that comes from being a widower. One thing that sticks in my mind is that, after I’d learned of my late wife’s passing, my first thought wasn’t of bills, groceries, car repairs, bank accounts, or any of the other things that tend to interfere with couples’ relationships. All I could think was, "When was the last time I told her I loved her?" Was it the night before, or that morning? To this day, I can’t remember.

What I drew from that experience is this: you’ve got to tell the person you love that you do, every day. If you wait until you’re filled with warm fuzzies and surrounded by chubby winged cherubs, that time will come rarely, if ever. What’s worse is that, by not telling someone you love them, you risk sending the message that your love for them is conditional. If you’re deliberately not telling them because you’re angry, then you’re driving that point home with a nail gun. You’ve got to maintain a steady baseline of “I love you” that doesn’t rise and fall with the ever-changing chaos that is life. It can’t be "I love you if….", "I’d love you but…", and so on. By making a habit of telling the person you love how you feel every day, you show them that your devotion and commitment to them is not some fleeting emotion, whim, or fragile thing that will go away at the first sign of trouble. Heck, put a sticky note on your monitor, a reminder on your phone, something to tell you to say "I love you," no matter what is going on.

Our household shares a sort of morbid sense of humor because of what we’ve all been through. A byproduct of this is that we often say we love each other when parting ways, and laughingly follow it up with, “Just in case you die in a fiery car crash and I never see you again.” On the surface this might seem shocking or inappropriate, but, at its heart, it’s a good mindset to have. If you live and relate to people you care about with the notion that you may indeed never see them again, you may be inclined to love more, forgive more, and criticize less. 

People often incorrectly assume that dire relationship problems arise from a single dramatic cause like infidelity. In truth, relationships wither before they die, a tiny bit each day. Relationships usually die of starvation. So feed them!

But don’t read too far into this, readers; I’m addressing nuanced feelings that got me thinking. I’m madly in love with my co-author.  :)

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Esther:

Ah! Thank you, Ben, for that writing prompt-slash-launchpad for a quick rant.

You know what I hate?  Romance.

I mean false romance.  The red, pink, and white vomitus in stores during February.  The obligatory card, flowers, dinner, movie, and sex on anniversaries.  The props people in lackluster relationships buy to convince each other they're in actually good relationships.

This may just be because I'm not a fan of any forced emotion.  I detest sappy movies that may as well sport neon signs prompting audiences to "Cry Here" and "Say 'Aww' Here."  You're not doing your job right if you have to tell me what to feel.

This does, in fact, bring me back to what Ben said.  Nuance truly is a major part of our marital interaction, partly because I'm like a drug-sniffing dog when it comes to subtleties of tone of voice and body language, and partly because Ben is, too.  God forbid one of us should have a headache without disclosing it.  The other one will instantly seize upon an "off" expression or tone, and will be halfway down the road of panicky relationship examination if we aren't quickly informed as to the mere organic reason for said expression or tone.

When my husband is "off," it means he fires a few grouchy episodes into his normal routine of going above and beyond for his wife and kids.  Gee, Ben, you were a little short-tempered right before you cooked us our favorite dinner and you seemed stressed before you asked me what I needed to do to de-stress after my long workday.  I swear, I don't know how I live with you.

I'm not a fan of PDA, and I want to be careful to not turn this blog into a groan-worthy display of affection between newlyweds, but this needs to be said.  At the end of our honeymoon, my husband surprised me by lamenting that perhaps he did not give me with the romantic excursion it should have been.  After all, we didn't go to an exotic location, we didn't dress up and do fancy things, we just kicked about in our rehabbed home.  But here's why he was wrong about the lack of romance. At a restaurant one day, I had a hankering for a particular soda they didn't serve.  As I ordered something else, he excused himself from the table, and when he returned, I discovered he had actually left the restaurant, driven down the street to another restaurant, and returned with the soda I'd really wanted.  Then he looked on with confused humility while, mouth gaping, I tried to explain why I thought it was a big deal that he'd done that.  To him, it was a matter of common sense, not a romantic gesture.  His wife wanted X brand of soda.  She must have X brand of soda.  End of story.

I've experienced the outward trappings of so-called romance.  I've endured serenades, candlelit dinners, and enough roses to fill a funeral home.  I've ticked off all the checkboxes on a romantic holiday or anniversary and still felt no evidence of any specialness to the relationship, and no proof that, on this day, I was thought of with any extra consideration.  Just another Saturday, Tuesday, or what-have-you.  Meh.

I'll tell you what real romance is (to me, at least).  It's unpremeditated, or at least not staged.  It's a permeating attitude of thinking the other person really is a catch.  It's spontaneous hugs and thoughtful treatment of the person you're with, despite the fact that you had a really sucky day and you feel like crap.  If you're doing it right, your relationship can survive your "off" times.  Maybe you're doing it right if you just notice you're having an "off" time and care how that might affect those closest to you.

As Ben said, though, loving like this doesn't apply to just romantic relationships.  I went off on that tangent about romance because it's a longstanding rant of mine and I saw the opportunity to rant again.  It's what I do.

Welcome to our first blog!

Now that we've settled into our lives as much as we can given that we've got three kids, school, work, a dog, and four fish to wrangle, Esther and I have decided it's time to share our collective insanity wisdom with the world. We don't yet have a theme for the blog. As it is, we'll just share the musings that arise from the madcappery of a newly minted, blended family. Mmmm, blended minty things...

I, Ben, the husband of our married unit, am the one beginning this blog entry. After five seconds of painstakingly flipping a coin, it was decided I'd go first. I'll be discussing the where's, when's, and how's of things going on in our little corner of the universe. Esther will be doing whatever it is Esther tends to do on these things. I find it best just to stay out of her way and not ask too many questions. My husband brain, though more enlightened than most husband brains, tends to short circuit when I try to fully understand what goes on in my wife's infinitely more complex (and interesting) mind.

As most of you know, we are indeed a newly wed couple fresh off of our honeymoon. Considering we'd spent the last four months scrubbing, scraping, patching, sanding, painting, scrubbing some more, moving, planning, and moving some more, it stands to reason that, come our honeymoon week, we would collapse into a heap. We essentially spent the week like two teenagers on a sleepover. We ate copious amounts of junk food, rented every new release we could find, and played games for hours together. In short, it was glorious. (And NO, it wasn't just my idea. I KNOW what some of you are thinking and she's got gaming lust just as badly as I do, so it was with collective joy that we played our hearts out).

Anyway, after nine days of being accountable to and responsible for no one, you can imagine the shock when we took the reins of our blended household officially for the first time. It was akin to leaping onto a fast-moving treadmill holding a tray of hot cups of coffee. Bus schedules, impromptu school clothes shopping trips, and digging up pill bugs late at night were what awaited us upon our return. Gone was the sleeping until the mail lady clanked our mailbox; past was the time of calm, carefree days in which we mused about silly things and ate like royalty. No, we'd been handed a rifle and a helmet and were pushed out into the front lines. Our enemies? School forms that asked the same question over and over and over again, never-ending supply lists, and the oh-so-fun bug-digging assignment. Our dutiful kids pull their weight as much as they can, but in the end, it is we, we happy few, who must hold the line.

I shall now turn the reins over to Esther.


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I, Esther, am the wife of this married unit.  And I've discovered already that nothing can prepare you for marriage - not the well-meant advice/horror stories/anecdotes of other wives, nor libraries of books on marriage, nor even a previous marriage.  More on marriage later, if I don't forget.

Speaking of the way minds work, let not my husband convince anyone that my mind is more complex or interesting than his.  Mine is pretty straightforward, for a woman's.  It likes to focus on one and only one thing until -- butterfly!  Conversely, Ben's mind likes to start the morning with lists, spreadsheets, and pie charts, and by mid-afternoon is ready for a rollicking game of Task Juggling with breakout sessions of trivia.  By evening his mind dutifully revisits the morning's objectives and checks off accomplished tasks with satisfaction.

By that same evening, my mind has traveled from butterflies to cheese to insurance copays to cheese to iambic pentameter to gas prices to earrings to cheese to Shakespeare to coffee to what's-wrong-with-society, before finally settling in a confused jumble of where-did-this-day-go.  You see why the "who's going to start this blog" discussion took five seconds.  But I digress.

People have asked me about our honeymoon, and I scramble each time for a grand or at least respectable answer, but Ben speaks the bald truth: we slept.  We gamed.  We ate.  We watched.  And okay, that doesn't sound like a glorious honeymoon, but if you can look back into your adolescence and remember a long sleepover with your best friend in which the hours stretched lazily before you, every suggestion met with excited agreement, and every activity was pure joy - then you'll understand when I say it was perfect.

But now real life returns, with its bills, homework, and errands, and we will begin to see this play out on a daily basis, this hilarious mix of shocking similarities and stark contrasts between my husband and me - not only in our marriage, but in our parenting and family dynamic.

Like Ben, I don't know what to expect from our blog.  I only know that I must write, and he must write, so we write together now.