I hate to play Scrabble

I hate to play Scrabble with Manuela.

Why? Because she has this annoying habit of always beating me.

Even during our years of dating, when she had an incurable case of “Richie-itis”, she was ruthless and completely humiliated me with words such as “ae”, “qat” and “xylophone”.

Regardless, I endured the mortifications, and proposed to my Scrabble Queen. So the reason I’m writing this is both to mark the occasion of our seventh wedding anniversary (May 7th) and also to reflect a bit on the great mystery of our love.

And if you think about it, this really is a mystery - especially in the case of Rich and Manuela Meloche. To begin with, Manuela and I are incompatible. I am a hermit; she is familial. I am okay with a degree of clutter; she is boarding on obsessive compulsion. I am a quasi- intellectual outdoorsman, she likes shopping and foreign films.

Had we joined a dating service, we would never have been matched, for we are not compatible. But then again, men and women really aren’t compatible. As G. K. Chesterton said, “I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one.”

And yet somehow it works. Despite all of my flaws, and all of hers, despite ten plus years of Scrabble embarrassment, despite hurdles too vast to imagine, it works. She knows me better than anyone else, and she still loves me (I think). I know her better than anyone else, and I still love her. I would readily lay down my life for her, and she tirelessly puts up with my shenanigans. We are really only comfortable around one another (except when we’re driving each other crazy).

Isn’t that odd, yet profoundly beautiful?

God, in his wondrous providential ordering has brought Manuela and I together, transported us into a wonderful Catholic community in Florida, and has so increased our love for one another that we now have three living byproducts of our love. How great is our God!
And so I am utterly grateful that both Manuela and I were open to God’s design, and as a consequence God has worked His increase. The satisfaction of my love is such a rich and profound thing, such a surprise. The rejection of love is such a droning pain. And a wife to love – this is satisfaction; this is enough. For from this comes all else of value in this life.

35

A good bottle of Pinot, an enjoyable meal, and a family who adores you. What more can a man want?

Christmas @ the Meloche's

Here are some sweet shots of our Christmas in Middleburg, Florida 2010.  Enjoy!

Pipe the Good Pipe

"The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected..."

-William Makepeace Thackeray, from The Social Pipe

"A pipe is the fountain of contemplation, the source of pleasure, the companion of the wise; and the man who smokes, thinks like a philosopher and acts like a Samaritan."

-Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Lest we forget…tobacco is one of the good effects emanating from the One Cause who is sheer goodness. This ought to be the principle hermeneutic lens by which we judge tobacco use. Furthermore, tobacco and more specifically the smoking of it in a pipe, was once a recognizable institutional symbol of the familial patriarch within the Christian cultural (note the laudable list of authentically Christian manly men who were pipe smokers). As we are now in the midst of a hostile effort to destroy the remnants of any Christian order, and to replace normative family life, which is headed by a strong paternal element with a noxious unisex/effeminate disorder, it is not surprising that certain emblems of the patriarch, such as pipe smoking, would be targeted for disfavor and suppression. We ought not to allow anti-Christian/anti-family sentiments, to strip us of our masculinity. We must stand firm against all anti-pipe/anti-male politically correct rhetoric, with pipes tightly clenched in our teeth.

One more thing, the anti-tobacco campaign is merely rhetoric: If people realized how much of the propaganda campaign about tobacco paid for by tax monies is simply false, and how much is simply the reflection of belief without evidence, they would be shocked. Check out the following info I came across:

The Surgeon General's 1964 report states that most pipe smokers (those who do not inhale into their lungs) live longer than non-smokers. The only way a different statistic has ever been generated has been by including ex-cigarette smokers who migrated to pipes in the statistics, or by including the small number of original pipe smokers who inhale in the statistics. The same is true of cigar smoking although about half of cigar smokers inhale. But those who do not, live longer than nonsmokers. Of course, smokers may be more prone to get cancer, but if they are outliving their nonsmoking brethren and getting it when the aforesaid brethren are decomposing in the humus, then this does not mean what the little energumens of State Hygiene have at great public expense told us that it means. These figures are not known, because they contradict the second hand smoke hypothesis, a hypothesis that itself cannot be sustained without playing statistical tricks (e.g., one study includes people who smoked cigarettes & inhaled into their lungs for up to twenty years and then stopped among "nonsmokers" for purposes of getting their effect of second hand smoke on "nonsmokers"). Even those who inhale cigarettes are not in all cases likelier to die earlier of cancer--both in Japan during a time when 80% of the men chain smoked cigarettes, and now in China when many Chinese men smoke, the links found in the US with smoking are not turning up. In Japan, during the sixties, the life expectancy of chain smoking Japanese men was longer than that of non-smoking American males. But it remains the case that whereas one can perform any obscenity or sacrilege in any hotel room in NY City, one cannot in any hotel room enjoy a mild English pipe tobacco and chat with a friend. Read Tolkiens "The Scourging of the Shire" in Lord of the Rings for what I think should happen to the moral idiots responsible for this state of affairs.

God fear’in; pipe smok’in patriarchs:
Hilaire Belloc; Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati; Tom Crean; G.K. Chesterton; J.R.R. Tolkien; Evelyn Waugh; etc...

October Fun

Trunk or treat.

Mila as St. Agnes and St. Francis by her side:

Seaworld. Cool.

Orlando. Cool.

Making wine.

October saw a LOT of action! A visit from Nonno and Nonna was just the beginning. We went to St. Augustine and we went to Seaworld. It was amazing but now I know the real reason why they call it SEAWORLD: those SEA people really want to 'sea' us parents push their kids the longest and farthest to go on as many rides and see as many aquatic creatures before we rush out of the park so as not to miss the shuttle back to the hotel then completely crash, while THEY laugh and cheer and swim in our cold, hard-earned tax-bitten cash! Kids had fun though.

For Halloween we celebrated All Saint's Day at our church, Mila was St. Agnes and Ezra was St. Francis of Assisi and Simon a turtle that followed St. Francis around.
For an interesting take on Trick or Treating we went Trunk or Treating and that turned out to be good ol'fashioned fun! You decorate your trunk and park and kids go from trunk to trunk loading up on sweets.
They will now spend the rest of November forming cavities.

Busy busy busy.

Happy Happy 5th Birthday

Happy Happy Birthday to our 'little' Mila. After supper, she couldn't possibly wait another minute to open her gifts so we openned them before we had cake. We did miss having family here to celebrate and partake of the festivities but, like I always say, that's the way the cookie crumbles. Until next time...

Goodbye Age 4!

Little Miss Mila is anxiously awaiting her 5th birthday in a unique style all her own.
I couldn't say it better than Ezra, "me love Mila all much".