Wednesday, January 26, 2005

On a toothpaste smear and true love

After thirty years of marriage true love sometimes takes interesting shapes.

One morning last week I woke at 4:30 a.m. and decided to get up and have breakfast at the Indian Valley Inn to work on collecting signatures to run again for the library board in the April election.

The Indian Valley Inn is one of two bars in Tiskilwa (pop. 600) and the place to get breakfast in Tiskilwa.

I had quite a few signatures on my petition but I needed more to get the 50 required. By the way, to run for sheriff in our county you need 15 signatures but to run for library trustee you need 50.

Who knows why? I try to persuade myself that its because some bureacrat decided that a libary trustee is more imporatnt than a sheriff.

Last time when I ran three years ago I froze my buns off in Janaury going door to door. Breakfast at the Indian Valley Inn seemed like a better plan.

As I was getting dressed I was wondering how I was going to get my socks on since my hands were stiff (I have rheumatoid arthritis). About that time Sarah woke up and went to the bathroom.

When she came back to the bedroom she put on my socks before going back to sleep.
I went to the Indian Valley Inn and had oatmeal and grape fruit juice for $2.98. By 6:30 I had only five more signatures to go. I stopped at Casey’s, the one gas station and convenience store in town, bought a chocolate donut, and collected two more signatures. Only three to go. Then I decided to go home and hope I could collect the final three at a joint meeting of the village board and library board in the afternoon at the bank in Tiskilwa.

As Sarah was getting ready for work she looked at me and started laughing. She had spotted a big smear of bluish white Crest tooth paste beneath my mouth.

"Didn’t you look in the mirror?"

"No, I didn’t look in the mirror."

She laughed and brought me a mirror so that I too could enjoy the sight.

Now she could have called me an idiot. I felt like one. All those strangers I was charming and asking to sign my petition while I had tooth paste on my face.

But Sarah didn’t take it seriously--just laughed. I love being married to that woman.

Laughing is a lot more fun than thinking I am an idiot.