Forgive me, Father, for I have slipped my social media obligations. It has been two months since my last blog post.

So much to unpack from the past two months, like the mosquito at the nudist camp, I don’t even know where to begin.

I don’t blog when the missus and I are at odds. We’ve been on a low broil loggerheads snit for about five months now. I’m concerned. I’m also the impediment. My Beautiful Wife has her Number One Thing: “Don’t lie to me.” Got it. Trust me, there have been times I really REALLY wanted to lie to her, but I didn’t. She was justifiably mad, but the ship righted because I told the truth and life went on.

I’m the grudge-keeper in the family. She’s the forgiving one.

My Number One Thing: “Loyalty.” Culled from childhood issues, I have zero patience for disloyalty in my adult years. Note that I didn’t say “Fidelity.” I said “Loyalty.” I need to know – at all times – that we’re on the same side. We’re a team. I’m not the only adult in her life vying for her attention. She has a career and a loving family. I understand that. Just as long as there’s no doubt that – at the end of the day – it is me and her. She and I.

I had a (former) friend play an extended  practical joke on me back at Christmas. It was a dangerous practical joke because what I THOUGHT he did was something that touched MBW’s Number One Thing. There’s a point where deliberately saying nothing is the same thing as lying. I debated whether or not I should tell MBW what this guy did or not. I knew she’d be mad. I opted for the truth. I told MBW.

She was unfazed. Shockingly unfazed. Shrug. (Okaaaay? Really? Okay.)

What I did not know was that the (former) friend let MBW in on the joke.

MBW did not tell me that I was being punk’d. Ergo, she violated my Number One Thing. She sided with my (former) friend. For weeks this went on. Weeks.

[insert Supernova implosion here when the joke is finally revealed.]

The practical joke was silly. I’m not mad that I was the butt of a long running joke. But I am still furious with MBW for conspiring against me for the duration while the joke was on . I’m done with my (former) friend for bringing that kind of strife into my house that had me thinking seriously about moving out for a while.

I’m still not over it six months later, as you can probably read between the lines.

 

I converted the blog site to an online resume and it took me a while to make sure I could actually still post blogs to this place without them being fodder for potential employers. Theoretically, there’s no way for them to stumble this far beyond the online resume unless they are really nosey and lucky guessers.

MBW and I have spent the last year talking about a move to Florida. I have to get out of the Midwestern winters. They are making me older than my years. I discovered that I can transfer my job to Tampa pretty much whenever I want. The missus had four interviews for a position in Tampa. While that was going on, I was mentally shut down. Emotionally shut down. I held my breath for over a month, waiting to see if it would really happen. We even had a date whereby she was supposed to “get the call.”

“The call” never came. It was a kick in the gut. We were ready to blow town.

MBW picked herself up and dusted her ego off. She has another interview today with another Tampa company. Perhaps this is the job she was meant to have. I had a weird vibe about the last one.

 

A few weeks ago I went to a three-day Adult sailing seminar on Carlyle Lake and learned how to sail a 21 foot cabin cruiser. Followers of this blog may remember a lot of big talk about MBW and I retiring to a sailboat. It only made sense that if that dream were to become manifest, I should probably learn how to sail. Couldn’t hurt, right?

It was an interesting experience. Sailing is intuitive and easy, and yet there is SO much to it. From rigging and hoisting the sails, to the language and choreography of sailing with a crew, to knowing what you are going to do in a crisis. Just when I was getting horns on my helmet from mastering the mechanics of the boat, we had Man Overboard drills. Even though they were just drills and the chop on the lake wasn’t severe and I had experienced sailing instructors backing me up… Jeez. That panic tightness in my chest was incredible as all the procedures and maneuvers we soaked up from a book were suddenly ON. In Play.

“Go! Hurry. Hurry. Don’t lose sight of the MOB. Hurry. Too fast! Don’t run her over! Watch your angle of approach. Now you’re too slow! Too much pinch! Angle out. Not that far! C’mon, that water is cold!”

Sheesh. My heart was beating out of my chest.

Some of my fellow sailing students were comfortable enough by the time high winds kicked in on Day 3 that they were ready to “bury the rail.” That means sailing at a speed that challenges the strength of the wind on the mainsail and keels the boat on a sharp angle. It feels for all the world like the boat is going to tip over and the sail is going in the water. (Understatement: This is bad.) A good sailor must know and trust the boat’s balance. You have to challenge the force of the wind until the opposite rail of the boat is underwater to get the boat up to top speed.

Not Shawn. Bok bok bok cluck bok.

Made me truly wonder what kind of sailor I’ll be on a big ocean. A very slow and cautious one, I suspect.

 

I’ve been cooking ideas for two YA novels for the last year, ever since MBW and I went to Myrtle Beach for Christmas. Both of my YA ideas involve sailing and seamanship. I knew if I tried to write without any knowledge of sailing, I would come off as a ginormous fraud.

I’d be that lady from the writing class in “Throw Mamma from the Train.”

“ ‘Down!’ said the Captain. And the driver man pressed the big button that made the submarine go down.”

Yeah. Like that.

 

Which brings us to Shawn’s writing.

I signed with my agent eighteen months ago. The communication I have had with my agent since the first flurry of introductory phone calls has been anything but steady or informative. If you read this blog on a regular basis, you know I gave up on her.
So, in an attempt to not be a passive aggressive a-hole just once in my entire bitter life, I reached out to my agent one more time in an attempt to jump start the submission of my novel to publishers. It worked. Kind of. I think. We had a long Skype. My agent admitted she had put my stuff on the backburner because I wasn’t bugging her like her other clients. My ms has gone out to many more publishers than I was aware of. The rejections are kind of all over the place. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. It means there isn’t one fatal flaw that’s working against me. It means I just need a second champion somewhere at a publishing house. There might be wind in my sails once more.
We’ll see.

I finished another long novella that will never see the light of day. It is just more magnetic noise on my USB drive. That’s okay. I don’t even know why I wrote it. I’m compulsive, I guess.

Tonight the missus has her Bunko klatch, so I will have my traditional Bachelor Night sushi and then head to the cigar bar to burn one and tip a couple fingers of single-malt in honor of my completed novella.

Thanks for reading.