Have you ever woken up in the morning and that song is going through your head? I’m not referring to any particular song, just the particular song that happens be to be going through your head when you wake up in the morning that that’s been an occasional earworm for the past two days, and you have no idea why or how to get rid of it.

This morning for me it was Alanis Morissette’s “That Particular Time,” from her album Under Rug Swept.

I was introduced to Alanis with her breakout album, Jagged Little Pill, in the mid-90’s. You live, you learn, naked in your living room, one hand in my pocket, and all that. “Would she go down on you in a theater?” I don’t know. But I do know that “Ironic” is literally the least ironic song on the entire album! What’s with that?

Hey! Maybe that’s the true irony. (Whoa! I think my brain is going to explode.)

I wore out that poor CD listening to it.

Then she promptly disappeared from my radar.

Until… Spotify!

And some very special people entered my life.

I was born a Pentecostal.

My background was not as extreme as Kim Davis’s Pentecostalism, but I did grow up on Jimmy Swaggart and “That Thing” and homophobia and overt misogyny and stories of demon sex spirits imprinting pornographic images on my mind and shoving me into a pit of fornication and adultery and infidelity and shame and misery— But I’m jumping ahead.

More progressive religions—UU, Reform Judaism, Buddhism—don’t necessarily have these problems. But I didn’t grow up in any of those traditions.

When I lash out, I’m lashing out at the person I used to be, at the stories I tell myself about me and my own sexuality. I hate those stories. My life improves every time I leave another behind.

Last week, I drove my daughter’s iPad down to her at to school.

One of the Blue Shirts there in the parking lot approached me and asked what I was doing, and told me, “we get a little concerned,” because I was waiting there for her. I figured, as soon as he realized I was a parent who had a legitimate reason to be at the school, that would be the end of the conflict. But during our short conversation, he repeated this line several times, “we get a little concerned.”

I said, “Sorry about that.” But what I was thinking was, “‘Concern’ on your part does not translate to a demand on mine.”

And maybe if I were a bigger asshole, I would have said, “Well, I’m sorry you feel concerned. Maybe if I bring you some milk and cookies next time, you’ll feel better. Would you like that?”

In early August, while the girls were at camp, I spent a lot of uninterrupted time with Tessie-cat. At almost-19 years, she’s even older (in cat years) than I am. I call her “my geriatric cat,” which is what she is. All she did for the whole week was to sit on the back on the couch, in her favorite spot, and sleep, taking brief breaks to eat or pee or poop or remind me that she depends on me for everything, including attention. After so many years, when it comes to our relationship, she’s really still just a kitten.

And during this time we had to spend together, a truth acutely implanted itself on my consciousness, that no relationship lasts forever, because all creatures die, for one reason or another, and probably far too soon. My relationship with Tessie, I thought, will eventually end as well, and probably not too many years hence.

A thought like that really puts in perspective how annoyed I get at her when she begs and begs and begs for attention, at the most inconvenient opportunities.

We make life more complicated than it needs to be. In the most vibrant and optimistic time in human history, we live without hope. And I’m including myself in that “we.”

Last week, my Beloved and I celebrated our 19’th wedding anniversary. And you might think after 19 years, it’s getting a little old… and maybe in some ways, it is— comfortable, that is. And I’m good with that. I hated dating, hated life before marriage, never want to go back to that life. Because there is a lesson—if I had learned it from the start—that would have made those years a little more bearable, a lesson that finally allowed me to meet and marry Margaret, my wife.

Unfortunately, I’m still learning that lesson, even though I wrote about it in Love through the Eyes of an Idiot. That’s right: I don’t follow my own advice, even when it’s good advice, many years after I supposedly learned it.

Shared recently by a friend of mine (on one of those social networking sites), a heartbreaking story, but not for the reasons you might expect.

A pretty, young woman is riding the train, reading a book. The entire car is empty, except for her and a quiet, elderly gentleman near the back. A young man enters, his bicycle in tow, and sits down directly opposite the young woman, leans over and says, “What’ch’ya readin’?”

She glares at him, voice piercing, “Look!”

Shock.

A friend of mine remarked today (in a private online forum), “Once you’ve walked in the shoes I walk in, live the life I live, and feel the pain I feel, then you can judge me.”

This is a common sentiment, which has inspired some powerful stories, and which inspired some involved thoughts of my own (at almost one in the morning). I gather that this anonymous quote has been floating around the Internet. There’s a lot stuffed into that single, pithy thought. I’m not sure I buy into all of it. So I felt compelled to write this short note, expounding what I think is an important truth.

All those days sitting through Mrs. Owens’s seventh-grade algebra class, then years staring through Reverend Hardy’s sermons, and now centuries yawning through business meetings, she would have thought she’d have gotten used to the experience.

She shifted in her seat, as the company CEO flipped to another PowerPoint slide, animatedly spewing the latest rendition of corporate spin to the assembled audience. Sales figures and production are up! (Except in the divisions that the company did not purchase this year.) We’re launching several exciting new projects! (Because we weren’t able to finish the last ones.) We now control more gigabytes of shitty software than all of Microsoft and IBM combined! (And that’s something to brag about? Even if it were true?)

She glanced around. Hundreds more faces, just like hers. She was suddenly overtaken with isolation, that she could feel so alone amongst so many others just like herself.

I’m sitting here in my virtual living room with Sandra, of one of my favorite blogs Add Humor and Faith…mix well. I absolutely love her stories, especially the ones about her and her Hubby. And I actually wanted to have her over (virtually) for Valentine’s Day, to talk about love and marriage. But because of things happening on my end, I couldn’t pull it together. But I’m happy she’s able to spend some time with us today.

Hi, Sandy.

Hi, Tim!

As I understand it, you and Hubby will be married 45 years this coming June—the day, in fact, just before I turn “only 42.” A city girl and a country boy. And you’ve been in love with him since you were 15. How did you and Hubby first meet?

On New Year’s Eve when I was 15, I was staying overnight with my friend, Robyn. Her boyfriend, Wayne, called from a party he was at to tell her that he would like to stop over for a little while at midnight to see in the new year with her. But, she explained that I was there. No problem. He said he had a friend that he had wanted me to meet anyway, and that friend just happened to be right there at the party too! Okay, Robyn told him they could both stop over for just a little while.

A romance thread at Sherry the Redhead Riter’s “BlogNTweet” forum reminded me of this story. Sherry asked how often we date.

Now, of course, I don’t date, because my Beloved (formerly “the Missus”), she doesn’t let me date. (It’s probably better that way.)

But we do “date” each other, occasionally… Well…

We used to date, even if we didn’t call it “dating.” For example, when we first got married, we moved into a tiny, third-floor, attic apartment. I worked down the street, and my Beloved was still finishing up her college education. (In fact, our wedding date we chose because it was during a break from classes, which gave us a couple weeks for a short honeymoon.) We had plenty of time during our off-hours to hang out together, spend time with friends, do chores together, or whatever. We used to go grocery shopping together every week, and then we’d carry all those bags up all those stairs. We had to do the laundry at the laundromat, so every week, we loaded up the car with our dirties and drove across town to the “good” laundromat. While the clothes were drying, we walked across the parking lot and got a bite to eat at Burger King. Not fancy, but it was special, and these memories I now look back on fondly.

Then we had kids.