A Council of Husbands Convenes over ‘The Bread Incident’ (+ a quick promo)

Since getting married last year, I like to think I’ve grown into the role of ‘husband’ rather well. It was a long road getting to matrimony, and my now-wife continues to be patient with me as I learn the in’s and out’s of my new job. Seeing as half of that job is knowing what to say and what not to say, suffice it to know that it’s been a learning process.

Some months ago we had a disagreement (what I like to call episodes where I earn her ire), and we’ve since laughed about it, so I feel somewhat free to discuss it here. As with any good disagreement of this kind, I have almost no idea what started it. But what I can say is that I didn’t help matters. The short version:

I said words about something, then she said words about that thing, after which I uttered sounds, whereupon one of us was grumpy with the other. We had plans to be at a friend’s that evening, and I was making flatbread to take with us. It’s a super simple recipe, dough gets squished, says hello to a skillet, boom – done. I think there was some lingering tension in the air, which led to some anxiety over us being punctual, and so with regards to my food prep and time management she asked, “Well, does it need to rise?”

I couldn’t help myself.

“I mean,” I half-snorted, “it is called flatbread.”

#comedylegend #foreverfunny #got’em

She gave me a look. And long story short, she was mad at me for about the next thirty-six hours. I went in to work a couple days later perplexed, and so asked my married friends. In short order, I was surrounded in a half-circle of other husbands, trying to decode where I went wrong. My friend Kopa mostly laughed, either at my misfortune or in sympathy, I could never really tell. Brad, the longest-married and most experienced of us broke it down for me like a coach reviewing a play, capping it off with a ‘better luck next time, champ’ kind of attitude. My friend Jason, though? He gave it to me straight.

“I thought it was pretty funny,” I argued.

“Oh, it was, but you called her stupid.”

“I categorically did not!”

“I get it, but yes you did. ‘It’s called flatbread, you idiot, no it doesn’t rise. How could you be such a dumb person to think that?’ That’s what she heard.”

“It was a play on words. Nothing more!”

“And it was cute, clever. But you shouldn’t have said it. In that moment, all it sounded like was, ‘Duh. It’s called flat, so no, it doesn’t rise, you dumb dummy.’

I took his wisdom to heart, went home, and apologized. We’ve been best friends ever since.

The creature Woman yet remains a mystery to me. At one moment, she stands clear as glass, transparent with her feelings and intentions. The next, she conflagrates, and stands aflame in righteous fury that is somehow your fault. Beautiful, deadly, she stands as an enigma to me, but one in whose aura I know only awe…

Anyhoo, if love stories like the above are your jam, go check out Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight Magazine and my story “Just Like Old Times” with them. It’s a cute little ditty about a love like we should all hope for. I should have more news soon too, been a busy year.

Bye now ❤

What Cake Taught Me (+ Story Promo)

A few years ago, I baked a cake for the first time, and I legitimately think it changed who I am as a person. I think I’ve shared this before, but I’ve been ruminating on it again recently. It was maybe January of 2022, my wife and I were lazing the day away watching Try Guys baking challenges on Youtube, and I couldn’t help myself.

“Is it…I don’t know. Is it bad that I kind of think I could do that?” I asked. I had never made a baked good outside of boxed brownie mix to that point in my life.

“You think so, huh?” she asked back, indignation clear in her tone. “I know what I want for my birthday then. I want you to bake me a cake from scratch.”

“You’re sure? Easy-peezy. Consider it done,” I said with a shrug, palms already sweating.

I’d never followed a recipe before in my life, much less attempted the delicate art that was creating a baked good from raw ingredients. And, I’ll be damned, I did it. But not only that, my wife and others also swore under oath that it was actually pretty dang good. Now yes, beginner’s luck played its part of course, but I’ve managed the hat trick of two more birthday cakes in the years since.

But that isn’t the important part. The important take-aways of the experience are two-fold.

The first came when I was making the frosting. I put heavy whipping cream into the stand mixer and watched the attachment whirl away. Cream lapped and splashed while I waited for it to “turn light and fluffy,” but I just wasn’t seeing it. I shot a confused glance over at my wife where she sat, resolutely content to observe and not offer hints. Then the miraculous happened: the stuff in the bowl went from milky liquid to fluffy clouds.

I felt like a god. I felt like I’d harnessed the powers of alchemy and transfiguration itself, granting new form where it hadn’t existed before. The power of creation was at my fingertips, and it felt good.

And that led into the second take-away: I made a thing…by following instructions. Cake was no longer something that existed just in pictures and in stores. I’d taken a bunch of stuff and turned it into a birthday cake by following written shared knowledge. And that meant that could be true of other things. Things you see around you that have been made or built, there’s a strong chance that with the tools and the know-how, you could do the same. (In fact, that reminds me of another recent triumph that I’ll share in greater detail next time.)

Just, I know it can often not feel like it, but just remember that you’re plenty capable, with whatever it is. Baking a cake, fixing up an old car, landing a job, running a marathon – people worse off than you have done bigger, so the math checks out that you can do it too. Different things might take more effort, more investment, more time or willpower than others, but it’s frighteningly simple how many things are within our reach reach as capable people that escape us just because we convince ourselves they’re beyond us.

So get out there and do it, whatever it is.

Oh! And something awesome. Had another story get picked up recently, this time to podcast! So if you’re looking for something to do, or just to go on a journey for a little while, go check out my story “Re-Runs” with Tell Tale TV. It was a funny little story I brainstormed with a friend, and Chris over at TTTV did, I think, an excellent reading of it.

Bikes, Bows, and Everything Else

I recognize that I’m saying this from the perspective of a first-world dweller, but I like simple things. I think it’s part of what keeps me frustratingly (for my friends, not me) about five years behind any kind of trend or bandwagon, and by now most of my friends know not to ask if I’ve heard of something before those requisite 1,825 days.

As I mentioned recently, I got married in October. My wife was the one who taught me about this “wedding registry” thing, and she held most of the interest in keeping and updating it for the longest time. My brain just didn’t have the depth for considering things like receiving wedding gifts. That was until a couple of our friends gifted us with a two’fer: a serving set of margarita glasses and a cast iron skillet.

Y’all, I love that skillet.

Even when we opened them, we both gave audible happy sighs, but then she grabbed the glasses and I hugged the skillet, silently each telling the other, “I love you, til death do we part, but if anything happens, this is mine and that’s yours.”

In the months since then, I’ve taken a real cooking turn. I bought a couple of cookbooks (The Official D&D ones – Heroes’ Feast and Flavors of the Multiverse – because I’m a nerd) and have been churning out culinary creation after creation. A lot of the credit goes to my aforementioned spouse for challenging me to bake her a cake a few years ago (which has gone on to become a solid tradition) for first introducing me to the magic that is following a recipe, and the rest goes to that skillet.

Certain things on occasion call for using food processors and immersion blenders, but I’ll modify as I need to in order to eschew those and make due with the following: a knife, skillet, hands, yum. That does the trick nine out of ten times, and it had me thinking of the tons of kitchen gadgets and shiny things that exist out there for cooking. And that had me think of a couple other encounters where I think it’s easy to be oversold, namely bikes, bows, and everything else.

I remember a time I was at my favorite archery shop. I’d just finished at the range, had packed up, and was milling about before leaving. All sorts come through, from hunters, competitive shooters, casual and seasonal shooters like myself, to total beginners. One such newbie was looking around the store, thinking aloud on where to start, when another somewhat-new guy approached him. I’m all for being helpful, but I…disagreed with his advice.

“Yeah bro,” Sorta New Guy told him, “I tried all sorts of bows when I started looking, and I just got my first. Now, you can get one of those beginner units, and that’s all well and good or whatever. And this puppy” (he said, hoisting up his own, pretty expensive compound bow) “cost me about $1,700, but let me tell you, you get what you pay for. You can feel the difference.”

Which to that I say, you can…to a point.

My bow is a faithful steed that was just a baseline Great Tree recurve, out-the-door all said and done for about $300. He’s stuck by me for north of eleven years and…well, got me preferable results up at the line than Sorta New Guy with his bells and whistles.

Am I against bells and whistles? No. Am I here bragging? Well…a teensy bit, yes. But just more to say that that dude way overbought, and that a sturdy, reliable, baseline set can demonstrably serve you for over a decade. Kind of like the above-mentioned “knife, skillet, hands, yum”.

The other encounter was when I went shopping for a commuter bicycle about six years ago. This was an expensive purchase, but that’s because…I won’t lie, I guess these things are just pricey. Mine cost me about $1,000, which hurt, but I genuinely think it’s immortal. And when I was looking at bicycle prices, the costs could be little dinky ones for less than mine, ones like mine, and then quickly and suddenly up into the thousands of dollars, then thousands of thousands of dollars. Like, Jiminy Christmas, I guess if you’re Lance Armstrong and microseconds count to you in a race, but outside of that, no thank you.

The lesson I found in these things is this: More often than not, baseline will do you. Like bikes, bows, and everything else, stuff can and will get as expensive as you want it to be, but wow will that not really mean that it’s much better. It’s about the skill you apply (or eventually apply, through learning) that will make the difference.

And that’s the fun part.

Update: A Little Nothing Placeholder

So, I’m working. A lot. Both in a day-job sense, and on something special for here. I’ve also got a number of fiction publications on the way that I’ll get to bug you about when they hit the market (which is rad), so stay tuned n’ such.

I’ve also been working on…calculations? Yeah, I think that’s the simplest and most accurate way to describe that. I’ll put up a preview soon, but in a nutshell: it’s the most bro-science, but legitimately hardcore math I’ve done in a long time.

In the meantime, a note: A lot of people think it’s annoying to talk about your diet, which is true. But mine’s, like, 50% hummus, and I think that’s interesting.

Anyway, keep it breezy. I’ll have more soon.