As I made the transition into the new half-decade, and into a year which would ultimately prove to have its share of ups, downs, hardships, and happiness, it was clear that I was teetering on the edge of domestic life discontentment. That’s a nice way of saying that Carolyn’s and my marriage was really beginning to suffer. This would ache like a cavity all through the year, and furthermore, impending difficulties dealing with Ashleigh’s terrible teen years would be akin to hammering on the cavity without anesthesia.
But the year began innocently enough with a day off of work and a little party and crummy game of Texas Hold ‘Em at my Mom’s place for New Years Eve. On New Years Day, I spent the afternoon at Carolyn’s brother Michael’s house entered into my first Texas Hold ‘Em tournament where there was real money on the line. I paid $20 to enter and walked away with the meager third place prize - $25. Carolyn did not join me, as she spent the afternoon shopping for new furniture with my Mom and visiting my family’s New Years Day get-together at Jim and Jan’s place. The fact that we were making a rather large investment in new furniture certainly indicated that we had no intention of splitting up at this point.
The biggest change that took place in my life this year happened right off the bat. Late in 2004, I had been offered a new position at work when our current POS (point-of-sale) Coordinator Peg took another position elsewhere in the company. I made the rather difficult decision to accept the new job. My trepidation was based on the fact that I would be having to make a daily trek from my home in Fairborn all the way to Northern Cincinnati each and every day. The new wage helped to offset the financial burden, but wow to the miles I was going to rack up on my car.
I spent the first month of 2005 absorbed in trying to learn the new job from my predecessor Peg - which was difficult since her Mother-in-law passed away during this time period and she had to be out of work much of the time. We were also experimenting with installing a new belted self-checkout from IBM at our Lawrenceburg store, so we were making frequent trips to Kentucky and Indiana to deal with that.
Ashleigh with Carolyn’s nephew Brennan who was about five months old. Thankfully, this is the last look at the old couch and couch cover!
Baby and Whitey, her toy mouse
My health habits weren’t all that great to start with, but ever since I had made the switch from being in the Miamisburg store where I was on my feet a lot to working in Store Operations where I was mostly sitting in front of a computer screen, I had begun to really pack on the pounds. During my Dayton area CAO stint the previous year, I had survived on daily lunches at McDonalds. I’d switch to the somewhat healthier cafeteria food once I was down at the office, but the month of January saw no less than three big work-related dinners: Famous Dave’s BBQ hosted by our vice-president, a farewell to my CAO co-worker JD at Burbank’s, and a massive banquet honoring our outgoing KMA president Bob Hodge. These, in addition to a big lunch in Bob’s honor and a field trip with Peg and Sue to Columbus to check out some Giant Eagle supermarkets that employed the model of belted self-checkout that we were anaylzing, were the things I remember most about my first month as a POS Coordinator.
Baby on January 22 with my red brush (above) and without it (at top)
I had begun to grow tired of my role as Grand Sheik of the A-Haunting We Will Go Tent of the Sons of the Desert so I decided that beginning in 2005, I would reduce the number of meetings from 10 to 6 per year, holding them every other month rather than virtually every month. The first meeting of the year was held on January 29 at my place, with the traditional screening of Larry Smith’s 16mm films, highlighted by the feature film Block-Heads. I had not produced an issue of Dante’s Info since the Spring of ‘04 - and although I probably was hoping to resume it, I also probably also knew that it wouldn’t be happening.
In fact, I had my sights on becoming the co-editor (along with Jimmy) of the Intra-Tent Journal. When the current editors retired in early 2005, we put our heads together and volunteered our services…and were shot down. The guy who was acting as treasurer decided that he wanted to take it over, so without vote or consensus - and after a smattering of scathing emails - he took it over, producing what I consider to be the worst issues in Sons of the Desert history. I remember finding all of this out over cell phone while helping Denise and Aaron move their stuff from their old house in Bexley to their new house in Westerville in early February. I even missed eating the move-in pizza! This really drove a coffin nail into my enthusiasm for the Sons, and I would nearly completely disassociate myself from the International club within the next couple of years.
As for other movies, my DVD collection was growing by leaps and bounds, much to the chagrin of Carolyn. It got so that I was spending a silly amount of time just deciding what to watch. So at the beginning of 2005, I created an Excel spreadsheet that simply had all of the letters of the alphabet. I would start out by watching a movie that began with the letter A, followed by a film that began with the letter B. I also began watching all of the Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Alfred Hitchcock, Robert De Niro, Walt Disney, and Academy Award Best Pictures in order - whenever the appropriate letter ‘came up’ of course. To date, this has made deciding what to watch not quite the laborious process that it once was - somewhat!
Ashleigh at a Beaverettes competition on February 26 - during her first year on the team
Other than that, life was pretty normal - other than the fact that Carolyn didn’t seem particularly happy with our marriage, which in turn made me not very happy. I was accused (and rightfully so) of being un-romantic, consumed with too many outside interests, and thereby not paying enough attention to her. Case in point: I had given Carolyn tickets to see Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood from Whose Line Is It Anyway? for a live improv performance at Russ Auditorium in Springfield for Christmas in ‘04. We attended the event on January 27. It was enjoyable, but I failed to plan out a place to eat beforehand, so we ended up scouring Springfield and only coming up with Perkins.
To show me the error of my ways, Carolyn gave me an interesting book called 101 Night of Grrreat Romance. The book contained 101 suggestions that could be ripped out and read privately giving each person romantic ideas for dates, 50 for the man and 50 for the woman. We agreed to each do one on alternating weeks. I remember beginning this process while I was staying at a hotel in Lawrenceburg for work. This was where I created the ‘talking stick’ to present to her.
We kept this up faithfully for nearly two months with my projects including the talking stick, traveling around town and recalling important spots from our past, giving her a card every day, and the best one being breakfast in bed and a hot bath with rose petals leading the way. She had a hot bath for me, a batch of pigs and blankets and a movie, mailing me a couple of surprises (which she sent to the Fairborn Kroger for me to pick up - even though I was no longer working there!), and taking me on a weekend excursion. Unfortunately for both of us, the idea eventually petered out by May.
One thing that we did have in common was our love of attending the local theater whether it be a professional, dinner theater, or high school performance. Early in 2005 we saw both Love, Sex, and the IRS and The Music Man at La Comedia Dinner Theater. We would go on to see all of the shows there for the remainder of the year.
And then of course, there were our DVD series. We would have been finishing up the third season of Smallville and the seventh and final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and just starting the fifth and final season of Angel at about this time.
What we were not doing during this time period was taking any photos, hence the photos seen here are all that are known to exist between the first of 2005 up to March 19th…
…at which time events will continue…
I never got to know Carolyn all that well. I think I met her twice. It’s a shame that you guys didn’t work out, but I sure do like your new girlfriend! And her daughter is just the cutest little thing!
Amber
January 17th, 2008