This and that

It’s been about a month since I last posted. After our trip to France, I needed a bit of a “blogacation.” I’m back with a mixed bag of thoughts.

The hot news out there this past week has been the sex scandal surrounding David Petraeus.

David and Paula Broadwell in happier times.

What a waste! It is interesting to note the double standards our society has for those in the public eye. If Petraeus were a Hollywood celebrity or a professional athlete, the entire episode might not even be worth a mention in People Magazine. I think we, as a society, tend to be a little sanctimonious when it comes to a good scandal. I’m not justifying marital infidelity, but I don’t understand why today that activity needs to ruin a good career. In the not-to-distant past, many great and admired leaders had a little, or a lot, action on the side. (Hello, FDR, Ike, JFK, Teddy K, etc.)

I got a chuckle out of a set of petitions that have been circulating around the Web promoting states to secede from the Union following President Obama’s re-election. What a bunch of sore losers! I’m not an Obama supporter, and, while fairly centric, lean more towards the right side of the political spectrum. (Big surprise there, huh?) This is a democracy folks. If you want someone you like in any elected office, then go out and convince enough people and get them to vote. If you can’t, then suck it up and live with it. Don’t just try to take your ball and go home. And, oh, by the way, didn’t we settle the issue of secession back in the 1860s? You would think the folks here in Georgia would remember that.

How messed up is college football? Imagine this. My Florida Gators are 10-1 and ranked #4 in the country. With just a couple of games going the “right way” this weekend, (wins by UF, USC, and Alabama) they could play for the national championship. And this, for a team with an offense so bad they would have trouble getting a first down against Sister Mary’s School for the Deaf and Blind. I love the Gators, but I do wish they would play some offense.

And if sex scandals, a replay of the Civil War and the BCS aren’t enough controversy for you, how about skydiving cats? There has been a uproar (or at least an upwhisper) over a Swedish insurance company television commercial that featured supposedly skydiving cats. I like cats. I have two of my own, one of whom is snuggled in my lap as I write this. But when I heard about this, I laughed. Jeannie Moos with CNN picked up on the story and had this tongue-in-cheek report.

The key here, folks — they didn’t really throw cats of airplanes. It’s all a joke. And besides, don’t cats always land on their feet anyway? (That’s also a joke.)

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“Hope Springs” fails to spring

Mrs. Poolman and I went to the movies last Saturday afternoon.  We don’t go to many movies at the theater, mostly because it seems most producers tend to target their films for an audience of middle-school age children.

Mrs. P really wanted to see “Hope Springs” with Tommie Lee Jones and Meryl Streep. This film was definitely not targeted at the adolescent set.  As a matter of fact, we were sitting in the front row, and when I got up to look at the audience when the movie ended, I think we were the youngest people there.

“Hope Springs” is the story of a 60-ish Omaha couple whose marriage has fallen into a stale, repetitive routine. They sleep in separate bedrooms and, as it comes out later, have not made love in four years. Streep drags her husband, Jones, kicking and screaming to Maine for a week of intensive marriage therapy.

The plot from there is predictable. I don’t need to lay it out. Much of the dialogue consisted of clichés you see in the marriage advice columns in women’s magazines.

Some of the scenes were fairly stupid when you think about it. In several scenes, the couple tries to reignite the sexual flame in their relationship, but they can’t seem to figure out how to take their clothes off. I appreciate the director saving us from the sight of pot-bellied Tommie Lee in the buff. But seriously! If you are trying to heat things up in front of the fire, don’t you think you would do it without all the clothes in the way? Oh, well. Maybe that’s just me.

Streep and Jones save the movie from being a total bust. They do a good job with their characters.  It was enjoyable watching them play back and forth with each other. But aside from their interplay, there is not a compelling reason to spend the time and money to see the movie in a theater. If I had the chance to do it again, I’d wait until it comes out on DVD. It’s less expensive, and I can read a book during the slow parts.

This is pretty funny!

I pulled this off of a friend’s Facebook page, so I can claim no credit for it.

One less thing to worry about

Last night Mrs. Poolman and I spent the night on cots at our church, as overnight hosts for two homeless families. This is part of a program called Interfaith Hospitality Ministry. Our parish take two or three weeks of the year and provides overnight housing, breakfast and dinner for two or three families. Other churches pick up the other weeks.

I didn’t sleep that well, so I’m a little raw today. This will be a short post.

I thought that the reason I didn’t sleep well was the uncomfortable cot and the unfamiliar surroundings. I was wrong. Apparently I was worrying about the new etiquette for gay weddings.  Marlo Thomas has all the answers for me.

I’ll rest easy tonight.

Take the fuss out of same-sex marriage

The issue of same-sex marriages is back in the news, as the “Defense of Marriage Act” is under attack once again.

More than a year ago, I wrote about a solution. Check it out here.

Love via the thermostat

It’s a long standing issue with Mrs. Poolman and myself, that we are comfortable at different ambient temperatures. Being post-menopausal, she is prone to hot flashes and definitely likes a lower room temperature. During the winter, she’ll be sitting in the family room in scrubs or a tee shirt, while I’ll be wearing sweats and have a blanket wrapped around me.

“Are you cold?” she’ll ask.

“No,” I reply.

“Well why do you have a blanket on?”

“Because if I didn’t, I WOULD be cold.”

On the other hand, she is much less tolerant of warmer temps in the summer. I’m happy with the AC set at 78. She needs it around 74.

That brings us to today’s story. Mrs. P left work early because she wasn’t feeling entirely on top of her game. She came home, called me and told me she was home, and then layed down on the couch and took a five hour nap.

When she woke up in the late afternoon, she thought there was something seriously wrong. She was hot and drenched in sweat. She was ready to call her doctor and tell her that something was seriously amiss.

Then she checked the thermostat.

82 degrees.

When both of us are at work, I reset the thermostat during the heat of the day. I get home a couple of hours before her and reset it to 76 or 77 before she gets home.

I didn’t think to tell her and she hadn’t thought about it.

On the good side, it’s a lot easier to just reset the thermostat than fix your hormones. Or so she tells me.

A solution to the same-sex marriage debate

The issue of same-sex marriage is back on the front burner this week, courtesy of a Federal judge’s ruling this week that struck down California’s Proposition 8, which would have outlawed the practice, at least in California.

There was an interesting column on The Huffington Post today with a reasonable solution — get government out of the marriage business.

Gee, I wish I had thought of that. Oops, maybe I did.

Questions and answers

Mrs. Poolman and I don’t always communicate as well as we should. I suppose that is probably true of most married couples. Wives generally, and maybe justifiably, blame it on the husbands. In our case, that may be partially (or substantially) true, but we have another issue that is sometimes funny and sometimes frustrating. Mrs. P is simply incapable of answering a simple question. She will jump around or jump ahead, but almost never does she simply answer the question I have asked. She is a lot smarter than I am so she is probably reading my mind and anticipating what I am really trying to ask, and answering my second or third question, but on occasion it can be frustrating all the same.

This morning, Mrs. P heard my alarm go off when she was about to walk out the door to go to work. She came into our bedroom with car keys in hand while I was sitting on the edge of the bed still trying to come awake. I was already thinking ahead to this evening. Since she is working, I’m responsible for dinner. We have several options, but I did not want to duplicate whatever she took for lunch.

Me: “Did you pack chicken salad for your lunch?”

Her: “Chicken salad would be all right.”

Huh?

Did she mean:

• She packed chicken salad for her lunch but it would be all right to have it for dinner also?
• Chicken salad would be all right for her lunch?
• She really didn’t really want to have chicken salad for either meal, but didn’t want to come right out and say so.

That is too much thinking for me when I’m not entirely awake yet.

We have exchanges like this all the time.

Me: “Do we have any vacuum cleaner bags?”

Her: “I vacuumed yesterday.”

Or…

Me: “Have you already fed the dogs?”

Her: “We’re almost out. Would you pick some up on your way home tomorrow?”

Or…

Me (when she arrives home from work): “Can I fix you a drink?”

Her: “I have to go to the bathroom.”

Or…

Me: “Would you like sliced tomatoes or green beans with dinner?”

Her: “I had a salad for lunch.”

Oh well. I guess little mysteries like these keep the spark in a relationship.

Entering the home stretch

Our CCD season is in the home stretch, and it isn’t coming any too soon. I think both the volunteer teachers and the students are starting to burn out.

I was a little concerned about how last night’s class was going to go, but it worked out fine. We covered the sacraments of Holy Orders and Matrimony. Each year, I worry about teaching the Church’s position on marriage. Officially, the Church looks at marriage vows as a life-long commitment, and does not sanction divorce. The trick is to get this idea across to my 5^th graders as something they should strive for without seeming to take any  shots at their possibly divorced parents, siblings or other relatives.

At the beginning of the year, I sent a note home to all the parents, asking them to advise me of any family circumstances of which I should aware, so I did not say anything to present a difficult or embarrassing situation to one of my students. I mentioned that we would be covering both the Ten Commandments (ie: adultery, coveting your neighbor’s wife, etc) and the Sacrament of Matrimony.

One mom sent me an email saying that she was relatively recently divorced and remarried and she had some concerns about the effect of those class sessions on her son.  We communicated back and forth throughout the year. Last week, I sent her an email to advise her that the class on matrimony would be this week. She would be most welcome to sit in on the class, or alternately to hold her son out for a week. I was really very flattered when she responded that, based on the information she had received from me and her son, she would be comfortable having her son participate in that class.

In any case, we got through last night’s class without any major bumps in the road.

We have one more regular class session, and then an end-of-the-year party. It’s too bad 10 and 11 year olds can’t drink margaritas. I think we’ve all earned it.

Low standards

Mrs. Poolman and I had a conversation yesterday that gave me something to think about.

It started when she called me at work in the late afternoon. She said that the staff in her intensive care unit was planning a group lunch today. Her assignment was to bring a couple pounds of meat for tacos. She asked if I would pick up some ground beef on the way home.

An aside here – Mrs. Poolman is an RN who works 12 hour shifts in an intensive care unit. When she works one of her three shifts a week, she is out of the house at 6:20 am and doesn’t return until after 7:30 pm. When she works back-to-back shifts, like yesterday and today, she isn’t interested in running errands on the way home. Understandable.

So, of course, I said I would do so and offered to cook the meat also. No big deal. I get home between 5:30 and 6 pm and have time in the evening to take care of that.  Besides, what’s the big deal about browning some ground beef?

I stopped at Publix and picked up two pounds of ground chuck and taco spice packets. I cooked it up when I got home and left it for Mrs. Poolman to pack as she wanted for the next day.

When Mrs. Poolman arrived home close to 8 pm, she told me the other nurses were astounded when she mentioned that no only would I stop at the grocery store, but I would also cook the meat for her. One nurse asked if she could have first dibs on me if Mrs. Poolman should happen to die anytime soon. Huh?

All this made me wonder about these nurses’ husbands. Do they not do things like that for their wives? Apparently not.

Have the standards for “good husband” sunk so low that cooking a pan of ground chuck constitutes grounds for canonization? That’s kind of sad. On the other hand, it makes me look good by comparison. It doesn’t hurt to have Mrs. Poolman’s co-workers telling her what a sterling example of a husband I am.

Rock on, brothers!