Eric Holen

Yvette and I have been married over 14 years and I still can’t explain sorting her colored underwear.

This evening, after dinner I grabbed the hamper and started sorting the dirty clothes to prepare for the weekend wash. For the most part, sorting clothes follows some logical rules. All of the towels and washcloths, regardless of color, go in one pile. Yvette’s work clothes, again regardless of color, go in another pile so she can wash them on gentle cycle (I think). The whites, lights and darks each go in their respective piles.

Then comes the underwear. There are different rules for my underwear versus Yvette’s underwear.

My underwear follows the general color rules. My white underwear goes in the whites, my grey underwear goes in the lights, and my black underwear goes in the darks.

However, Yvette’s underwear does not follow any of the previous rules.

Instead, her white, nude, rose, red, blue and black underwear goes in the whites. It doesn’t matter the color, they all go in the whites.

This is her rule and just like all rules in marriage, I follow them which helps to explain 14 years of happy marriage.

On Saturday afternoon, I lied to Yvette. Here it is Wednesday, and she has not yet forgotten or forgiven me.

This wasn’t a slipup on my part, or even an oversight. When the words left my mouth, I knew outright that I was telling a blatant lie to Yvette and her mom who was in the vehicle with us.

Maybe if I had given it a little more thought, I might have said something else. However, no matter what I said, it still would have been a lie.

By Saturday evening, Yvette and her mom knew something wasn’t right when I did not live up to my earlier statement. Then came Sunday and I still did not come through.

Yes, I lied.

Saturday afternoon, we had gone to Red Lobster, Yvette’s very favorite restaurant, for lunch. On the way back home, we were going to pass by the Dairy Queen in Kyle before turning home. As we were getting off the freeway, both Yvette and her mom started asking if we could stop for a Blizzard. I hesitated. As we drove up the frontage road, they kept persisting that we should stop for a Blizzard. Finally, as we drew near to Dairy Queen, I lied. I said I was too full to enjoy ice cream and that we would go back later that evening.

That was a big boldfaced lie since I had no intention of driving them back to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard.

Later that evening, they asked to go back to Dairy Queen. I said I wasn’t in the mode, but they could drive themselves, which I knew likely would not happen. I think it’s easier for the two of them to justify something like ice cream if they can get me to take them there. On Sunday, they asked again to go to Dairy Queen. Still, I told them they could drive themselves, yet they didn’t go.

Here it is Wednesday, and they remind me that I lied to them. But they also remind me that the weekend is right around the corner and I can make it up to them.

Yvette, I am sorry I lied to you. We will go to Dairy Queen on Saturday so that you can have your Blizzard (hint: This is another lie).

Yesterday, I checked us in, using Facebook Places, to Railroad Bar-B-Que for their all-you-can-eat catfish. I hadn’t given it much thought, since I had checked Yvette and I into other restaurants in the past. I shared with Yvette that one of her Facebook friends had already “liked” the check-in. That’s when Yvette commented that she was concerned with others who might see my check-in.

Yvette has been going to Elite BodyWorks for the last three months. Three days a week, she gets an intensive workbook from Kaci or Stephanie, her torturers trainers. They have been working to help Yvette’s overall health and reduce her insulin intake, by working with her on diet and exercise. Yvette was concerned that they might see my post about where we were eating.

So as a disclaimer, whenever I check Yvette and me into a restaurant, anyone who is monitoring should know that Yvette always eats the healthiest items on the menu. That includes the occasional Tuesday when Yvette demands begs asks, I drag her to dollar scoop Tuesdays at Baskin-Robbins.

On a side note, the catfish on Railroad Bar-B-Que tasted great, the sides not so much. However, it was on the expensive side and we aren’t likely to go there again.

This morning, we got some news that our friend Sara was back in the hospital for the second time in as many weeks. While we hope and trust that she will be back home in a day or two, I got me to thinking about her and the fun we have shared since I first met her almost 8 years ago.

I met Sara in October 2003 at my very first meeting of the Kyle Volunteer Fire Department. Sara and Dallas, her husband, were already members, and I was trying to get on to the department soon after moving to Kyle. Sara was in the truck bay when we were training on donning air packs. There were only two girls among the group of guys and Sara had blond hair. Later I would find out that her husband was an officer in the department.

I ran into Sara several months later on a small grass fire. I was on the back of the brush truck and her husband asked me if she could ride with me so that I could show her what little I knew about fighting fires. At the time, her husband scared me a little, even though he was several years my junior. Not only was he an officer, but he had a stare that seemed to say don’t mess with him. That small cage on the back of the brush truck couldn’t have seemed any smaller as I tried to squeeze myself into the smallest space to avoid even brushing against Sara while the truck was in motion.

Somehow, the four of us became friends and started doing group things together.

In September 2006, 10 of us traveled to Vegas for a few days. On the first night there, we got into a little trouble with Sara because we called her room at something like 5:00 AM to let her know that everyone was still awake and safe.

In November 2006, Yvette and I went on our first group camping trip with Sara and our friends. It would be the first of several camping trips. Sara generally had the Saturday dinners covered and we enjoyed whatever she whipped up, especially her pico and queso. Over the course of several trips over a few years, we watched as Sara went from Sara, to pregnant Sara, to Sara with a beautiful baby boy who also went camping with us.

In 2008, you could find us babysitting Mason, her son.

For a birthday celebration for another friend, in June 2008, our group shared a two bedroom condo in Port Aransas. Including two babies, there were 10 of us in the one condo, but we had the best time swimming, eating and strolling along the beach.

The Stocks and Holens in the pool at Port Aransas

Closer to home, you could find us at Club 21 especially on New Years’ Eve. I enjoyed watching Sara and Dallas dance because they seemed to just glide across the floor as they two-stepped around the room.

Just a couple weeks ago, we got together for a group dinner. Yvette and I gave her some outfits for her beautiful daughter, who is just a few months old. It was later that week when Sara first entered the hospital. She got out of the hospital a couple days later and all of us hoped it would be over.

For purely selfish reasons, we hope that Sara gets better soon. There is still plenty of good camping weather left and she owes us a copy of the recipe for the delicious shrimp dish that she prepared in Port Aransas.

If you search carefully through our house, you may come across the secret craft room. This was the room, which up until a couple of years ago, was a spare bedroom. After we sold the furniture, it became Yvette’s “craft” room. A few months later, we picked up two IKEA table tops off Craig’s List, one for Yvette’s computer and another for her crafts.

This wonderful secret craft room has all sorts of items if you had the time and were so inclined to craft something. There are needlepoint projects, with enough thread to stretch from here to somewhere else. You can find some acrylic paints and construction paper. Looking a little deeper, you will find containers of foam shapes and letters, which she has used to decorate gift bags. She also has a Cricut personal cutting machine, which I gave her a Christmas present a couple years ago. She used the machine once to test it, after it sat unopened in the box for almost a year. Finally, she has stickers, lots of them.

So Saturday, we were in Hobby-Lobby buying some items to support a theme at an upcoming work-related conference. During our shopping, some obviously non-work related stickers ended up in the cart.

Yvette mom’s and I tried to convince Yvette not to buy the stickers and that she had enough at home, but it was a losing argument.

So, thinking Yvette had spent A LOT of money supporting a craft room that she doesn’t use, I fired up Quicken to report back on how much she had spent at Hobby-Lobby and Michaels over the past two years. To my disappointment, it totaled just a little over $300 or under $13 a month. I was sure it was going be in the thousands, if not tens of thousands. It just seemed like she bought a lot.

So then I took a look back and found that I spent almost $130 to maintain this blog, which even my mother admits she doesn’t read.

So she can have her craft room, where she doesn’t do crafts, and I can keep my blog, which seems that only you and Yvette read.