We just celebrated our nineteenth wedding anniversary.  We celebrated by driving fourteen hours, sleeping a few hours, and then having a conversation.  It was one of those conversations that starts out, “I want you to know that you made me angry when you…,” followed by the other person saying, “Yeah, well, when you…”  It wasn’t a fight, but it wasn’t a steak dinner at a romantic restaurant.   That’s the way marriage is.  Some celebratory days are marked with strife, and some stressful days turn into occasions for celebration.

I did a couple of weddings recently.  The brides were sisters so I had a lot of the same people at both ceremonies.  It didn’t stop me from giving the same speech.  In the wedding vows there is the part where you pledge to be faithful and true through richer and poorer, sickness and health, and for better or worse.  I think the “better or worse” clause is the most over underrated and neglected clause in the whole wedding process.  I think we overlook it and almost dismiss it.  We know what richer and poorer are.  We plan on health, but foresee sickness.  We know that the time will come when one of us stands by the hospital bed of the other, over the coffin.  It is unpleasant to consider, but we can wrap our heads around it because that is the way life goes.

What we don’t get is ‘the worse.’  When you are in your twenties and in love and healthy, you imagine that sickness and death are the worse.  But the worse is not a one time event.  The worse is the wolf at the door.  If the worse weren’t important it wouldn’t get a clause all to itself.  The worse is when you have finally worked out which in-law will be the least angry if you visit the other for this holiday and you are in the drive-through at Burger King with two screaming children, trying to get the order placed while you search through the change holder trying to scrape together enough money to buy supper knowing that the rent is due and you need new tires and your job sucks and Dear Lord if everybody would just hush up for one minute…and how did I get myself into this in the first place and I could just open this door and walk away… That, my friend, is the worse.  And the worse creeps in during the sickness and the poorer, and it creeps in during the richer and the health.  The worse is the battle against which you must constantly defend if your relationship is going to make it.

To top it all off, sometimes the better ain’t all that much better than the worse.  Part of sustaining a relationship is being able to recognize the difference between the better and the worse.  You have to be able to see that sitting in that same drive-through next year with the same screaming, and the same stress, and with the rent still due, but WITH new tires is the better.

I have heard people say that their relationship never takes any work and that everything has always been peachy.  I mistrust those people.

I’ve been married nineteen years.  I expect that nineteen years from now I will have been married to Paula for thirty-eight years.  Why?  Well, because I love her.  And because I made a promise to her and to God and to our parents and our community and, indirectly at the time, to our children.  And because I try to finish things I start.  Granted, I haven’t finished the bathroom yet, or the door frame in my office, and I still have to put the molding in the kitchen, but I try to finish things I start.

That means that sometimes we are going to fight on our anniversary, or on Christmas, or on our birthdays.  It’s part of the deal.  We promised each other the worse, and, by God, sometimes we deliver.

We don’t always get along.  Sometimes we yell and scream.  Sometimes only a promise we made a long time ago sustains us.  Do we have a flawless marriage? No.  Do we have issues? Certainly.

Do we have a perfect marriage?  You know what?  Yes.  Yes we do have a perfect marriage.  We have a perfect marriage because the both of us are perfectly willing to ride out individual storms, to give the other person the benefit of the doubt.  We are both perfectly willing to look each other in the eye at the drive-through with the screaming children and the bald tires and think to ourselves, “Right now I would like to shove this box of fries right up your nose and dump this milkshake in your lap…but once I pledged my life-long love to you, so I’ll ride this out.  Plus, we’re too poor to buy more fries and I’m starving.”

So, Paula, I am sorry I was unpleasant over the weekend, but I love you and I promise to do better on our twentieth anniversary.

Like many writers, I have written the world’s greatest novel.  Like many writers, I have a box full of rejection letters.

When a writer submitted a story to a magazine, in the old days, the editors of that magazine wanted you to include a SASE (Self Addressed, Stamped Envelope) so that the magazine did not have to foot the bill for mailing the rejection letter.  Occasionally an editor would physically write you a letter saying, “Sorry, no.”  Most just sent a Xeroxed rejection letter.

I used to submit to Field & Stream regularly, on the premise that since I wrote funny stories about hunting and fishing, and they published funny stories about hunting and fishing, we might develop a relationship.  We did develop a relationship, just not a healthy one.  I’m sure they would have filed a Literary Restraining Order against me if there were such a thing.

Field & Stream sent me an identical Xeroxed rejection letter in my SASE every time.  I know it was Xeroxed because the letterhead and text were slightly askew and I could see the black lines down the edge of the page that indicated sloppy copy technique.   I began including my own Xeroxed copy of their rejection letter in my SASE to save them the time and trouble of reproducing yet another copy.  I thought that even if they rejected whatever story I was submitting, they would at least get a kick out of the pre-made rejection letter.  Nope.  You’d think they might have, at the very least, drawn a smiley face on the letter.  Nothing.  Once they even inserted another copy of their rejection letter into the envelope that contained my copy.  That particular story received the dubious distinction of a simultaneous double rejection from the same periodical.  Sweet.

In the old days, the SASE days, you printed out your manuscript and mailed it off, certain in the knowledge that four to six weeks later your SASE would return to your mail box containing at least one- two if you were lucky- Xeroxed rejection letters.   Everyday I would go to the mail box and hope that today was the day I had found that just-right editor.  I did not know it then, but the best part about that system was that mail only came once a day.  You might get multiple rejection letters on any given day, but because the mail only came once a day, you only had to worry about rejection once a day.  Now we have email submissions and thus there is the threat of rejection every time I hit the SEND/RECEIVE button.   It’s enough to shake a fella.

I have a tendency, on my darker days, to dislike the gatekeepers, to believe that the people who stuff the Xeroxed rejection letters in to the SASEs are blind to my particular brand of genius.  In truth, the letter-stuffers are probably just interns, so lay off of them.  But every now and then, every great and beautiful now and then, your submission falls into the fingers of an editor who had a good night, has had their coffee, is in a good mood, and is looking for exactly what you have submitted.

In 2001 Steven Soderbergh won the Oscar for Best Director.  I hope I never forget his speech.  He said, “I just want to thank everyone who spends at least part of their day creating.”  And I thought, “Wow, he’s talking to me.”

Writers, actors, poets, and artists of just about every ilk are, as far as I can tell, the only group of people who purposely set themselves up for constant, sometimes daily, rejection.  We continually subject ourselves to the process of creating works to present to editors, agents and directors who choose to go with someone else.  I know (or at least hope) that these editors are not rejecting me out of malice or scorn, but because they are simply inundated with many, many submissions- some of which are better than mine.  That’s the business.  One trick to continuing to produce good art is to hold fast to the idea that out there somewhere- somewhere just on the other side of your email SENT file- is the one agent or editor who totally freaking gets you and knows the perfect publication or press to print your stuff.

The artist works, I believe, to please two people: The artist works to please himself/herself.  And the artist works to please the one other person in the whole wide world who appreciates his or her work.  That second person isn’t always easy to find, but keep working, keep creating, keeping hitting the SEND/RECEIVE button, keep taking the stage, and eventually you will find that one person.  And that one person makes every single rejection seem stupid and trivial- but rejection letters aren’t stupid.  Rejection letters are like birthday candles, or mile markers, or scars.  Sometimes you have to collect a few before you can actually get anywhere.

Oh- and my favorite bumper stick about art reads “Just because you are misunderstood doesn’t mean you are an artist.”

Bil Lepp ©2013

“January People” is a somewhat derisive term thrown around at the YMCA, and maybe other gyms, to describe the hordes of folks who show up in January to pursue their new year’s resolution to finally get fit.

These People get branded “January People” because that is about as long as they last. Some make it to mid-February, but “January to Mid-February People” is a cumbersome thing to say.

I’m pretty certain the YMCA does not officially sanction the term “January People.” In this day and age, it is most likely politically incorrect to refer to someone based upon the month in which they began or ceased to do something, but I’ve got nothing better.

The reason regulars at the Y have developed a slightly derisive term for these people is mostly because they take up all the good parking spots, use the equipment without signing up for a time slot, and … Hmmm, it might just be those two reasons. Treadmilling on a machine for which someone else has registered is tantamount to sitting in someone else’s pew, or one country claiming the moon for itself. It is not done.

The regulars do not personally dislike January People. We applaud the effort. Many of us were once January People. The thing is, January People are kind of like the “new guy” in a war movie. The old vets don’t want to waste time building a personal relationship with the new guy because they know he probably won’t be around very long. And because the new guy is all the time taking the good parking spot and getting on the treadmill when somebody else has signed up for it.

Here’s the thing: I want you to succeed at your resolution to get fit. I also understand why it can be discouraging to try and get fit, and why so many folks give up so quickly. For more than a year now, I have been trying to develop a “six-pack” in my abs region. Currently I’d settle for a two-pack. I am beginning to think that everybody with six-pack abs is just an illusion. They aren’t real.

On the other hand, I take solace in an article I read that said everybody probably already has six-pack abs underneath their abdominal fat. So, instead of searching for abs I think I’m just going to start believing in abs the same way I believe in God. If I flex my faith really hard I can feel God. If I flex my stomach really hard, I can feel something.

Anyway, please, those considering getting fit, please come to the Y — or any other gym. But don’t give up. It takes time to shed pounds and even longer to get fit. It certainly takes more than a month.

Make a goal, but don’t make that goal unreal. Don’t look at a photo of a professional athlete or a buff movie star and think, “I want to look like that!” First, those people aren’t real. Second, they get paid to be fit. They make loads of money, have lots of free time and hire the best trainers. You are poor and have next to no free time. If you are lucky, you get an hour in the gym a couple of times a week. Be realistic about it.

Don’t look around the gym, either. Don’t look at the pretty young buff girl or the super-muscled guy. They have been at it for a long, long time. They live this workout crap.

Don’t be embarrassed that you are bigger than other people at the gym. The gym is for people who want to get thinner the same way the church is for sinners. Every church has its group of nasty little self-righteous ninnies who say, “Why is she in church? This is no place for the likes of her.” But just as there would be no need for religion if everyone were perfect, so there would be no need for the gym if everyone was in shape.

This isn’t “The Biggest Loser.” You don’t get to go to a resort and be under the eye of an expensive personal trainer. You will have to invoke your own inner Jillian. Furthermore, the only person who can vote you out of the gym is your nasty little inner ninny. Don’t let lazy you win.

It took longer than a month to get out of shape. It is going to take you longer than a month to get skinny.  Oh, and it hurts. It hurts a lot at the beginning. Those platitudey shirts that say “Pain is just weakness leaving the body” are wrong. Pain is just pain, and it hurts.

I would love it, and have proposed the idea with no success, if the Y would give out January Person T-shirts to everybody who joins at the start of the new year. I think if new folks wore those shirts they would be met not with derision or shame, but with encouragement and enthusiasm by the old vets in the gym.

We would say, “Glad you are here. You have to commit to the long haul. I’ll answer any questions.”Of course, we vets would also say, “Don’t take my parking spot, and make sure you sign up for the machines,” but that’s just because we are ninnies.

Since the DNR has instituted and early bear hunt this season, I thought I might offer some advice to novice bear hunters on how to hunt bear.

One: Know that you are hunting bear to begin with. 

Bear hunting is not a ‘spur of the moment’ activity.  If you are in the woods and see a bear, and then decide, “I am hunting bear,” you are at a distinct disadvantage.  You probably won’t have the proper equipment at hand.  It is another matter altogether if a bear suddenly sees you and decides, “I am hunting people.”  Bears are born with the proper equipment to hunt you.  If the bear initiates the hunt, you cannot then decide, “I am hunting bear.”  At that point you are not hunting.  You are screwed.

Two: Have a weapon capable of dramatically halting a bear’s forward progress. 

A big rifle is the best choice.  A big rifle that holds a lot of bullets.  Some bear hunters use bows and arrows, but people who hunt bears with bow and arrows are generally people who are not rich enough to be Republicans, and thus cannot afford guns, which is why Walter Mondale and Al Gore never shot a guy in the face.  Arrows are so remarkably slow that you can usually get out of the way before they hit you, especially if you are a bear, or a Democrat.  And most bears are Democrats.  We know this because even though they could eat meat all the time, they often eat skunk-cabbage and berries instead.

Three:  Remember, bears are not aardvarks. 

You cannot hunt bears the same way you can hunt aardvarks.  Everybody knows that you can stop an aardvark by saying, “Oh man, here comes that crazy aardvark,” and then grabbing it by its long nose and smacking it into a tree, or the ground. This will not work on a bears because bears are not aardvarks.  Furthermore, bears and aardvarks often share trade secrets and thus bears have found a way to cleverly disguise their abnormally long noses.  Additionally, aardvarks are not Democrats.

Four: Start with small bear, then work your way up. 

Start with the smaller bear species.  Black bears, for example, would be a good place to start.  Polar bears and Kodiaks would be poor first choices.  And koala bears, while small, are not bears- despite their name.  They are cunning and untrustworthy marsupials.  Untrustworthy marsupials are not fun to hunt because sometimes they just pretend to be dead, until you put them in your pocket, at which point they set up house and then you have to explain to everyone why you have a marsupial in your pants.  Plus, a lot of marsupials are amateur magicians and are always saying, “Look- nothing in my pocket.”  And then they turn their pockets inside out, which can be rather disgusting. One advantage, however, to having a koala around is that if you are walking in the woods with a koala, and you meet a real bear, often the two will begin to argue about the koala’s ‘bear’ status.  These are often long arguments and so if, during the argument, you decide, “I am hunting bear,” you will likely have time to run home, get a weapon, and then sneak up on the real bear while it is distracted by the lying marsupial.  Panda bears should not be hunted because they are extinct.

Four: Don’t hunt bear naked.

This sends the wrong message.

Five:  Locate suitable bear habitat.

Find an area to which it is financially reasonable for you to travel.  You don’t want to waste all your money just getting to the place where you are going to hunt.  Let’s face it, you probably aren’t coming back, so leave a little cash behind for the family.  Go somewhere close to home.  Some suitable bear habitats include: the woods, dark caves, dumpsters, campgrounds, and, presently, Wall Street.  Zoos are not suitable bear hunting habitats.  Nor is Soldier Field.

Six: Go hunt bear!

Once you have decided to hunt bear, have outfitted yourself with a suitable weapon, dressed, chosen a destination, and checked your pockets for marsupials, you are ready to hunt bear.  Good luck.

Note on hunting licenses and permits:

Licenses and permits are not needed to hunt bears.  Bears are considered to be varmints because they often get into garbage cans, and because they are often Democrats.  There is even some data suggesting that polar bears hold to the liberal-minded idea that their habitat is shrinking.

Note on Tree Stands:

Some bear hunters prefer to use a tree stand.  Tree stands are platforms way up in trees from which the hunter can scan a large area of terrain, and sit comfortably.  Tree stands also provide the hunter a safe place to be should a bear decide to hunt humans.  Everybody knows bears can’t climb trees.  This stems from their group insurance policy deeming tree climbing a dangerous activity.  So, for insurance reasons, the only bear you are likely to find in a tree is a koala bear, and they are not bears- no matter what they tell you.  Therefore, it is unnecessary to hunt bears from a tree stand.  Incidentally, bears have been strongly urged by their life insurance companies to not engage in the sport of being hunted.

It’s hard to be vain while you are gardening. Vanity may come as an end result of your gardening, be it pretty flowers or delicious produce, but it is hard to be vain while you are in the act of gardening. I base this theory on the physical positions one must assume to garden effectively. When you garden you spend an awful lot of time bent over. Being bent over leads to your pants riding too low, as well as to lower back pain, and a person with low riding pants, grimacing in pain, is hardly attractive. This combination is not a recipe for vanity. Your neighbors are not looking out the window thinking, “Wow, look at him garden. He looks good!” Instead, they are thinking, “Lordy! I wonder what just bit him?”

I have seen some folks wearing stretchy pants to combat the drooping trousers effect, but, let’s face it, if you are at the stage in your life where you are gardening for pleasure you have probably passed the point in your life were you look good in stretchy pants. No offense. Bless your heart.

Just a quick review of outdoor occupations/tasks associated with attractive participants: Pool Boy, Cabana Boy, Lifeguard, Lawn Boy River Guide, Swimsuit Model. No gardeners on the list.

Lawn Boy is close to gardener, but the truth is, when we think of famous gardeners we think of folks like Mr. McGregor. When I think of gardeners I get an image of a teapot in my head. This is no doubt a result of all the gardeners I remember from childhood being bitter, bunny killing, English characters in stories.

Further detracting from your ability to be “hot” while you are gardening is the fact that while you are gardening you often have to interact with compost, dirt, and slugs. It is hard to be vain while you are dealing with rotted broccoli, manure, and the stink of rotten leaves. The same thing holds true for cooking poultry. No matter how good you think you look, nobody wants you touch them when you have raw chicken on your hands. And just see how far you get if you say to someone, “Baby, umm, you look like a slug and smell like the bottom of a pond.”

Anyway, my point is that vanity wrecked my garden last year. I got into the gardening arts because I love spaghetti sauce. We grow parsley, oregano, basil, rosemary, cattails, dandelions, and weeds in a small herb garden by the kitchen door. When I make spaghetti I’ll snatch a handful green stuff from the herb garden, chop it up, and throw it in my skillet full of Newman’s Own Garden Herb & Garlic pasta sauce. Why? Because by putting my own homegrown herbs into the sauce I feel I’ve contributed to the ‘homemadeness” of the meal.

And then I got the bright idea, “I bet I could make sauce just as good as Paul’s, and save money to boot if I planted my own garden and made my own sauce from scratch!” (I tried not to think about the fact that Mr. Newman raises money for sick kids by selling his sauce) I also thought this would save time. Gotta be quicker to run out to the backyard, pick some tomatoes, peppers, garlic, onions, parsley, and catnip, chop it all up, and render all that into sauce, then it would be to drive two miles to Kroger. Right?

I planted the plants and made my offerings to the various gods of organic gardening. An interesting side note on the gods of organic gardening is that most of these gods are agnostic and thus don’ t even believe in themselves- and they are omnipotent, so they should know.

I began dreaming of all the pasta sauce I was going to make. I dreamt of eating pasta every night, or maybe every night I dreamt of eating pasta. Both statements are true. I like pasta. I had visions of canning pasta sauce in Mason jars, putting the jars in food baskets, giving them to friends, family, visiting dignitaries, deserving secretaries, distinguished functionaries, legionnaires, engineers, my paper boy, postman, and trash men. (I’m not being sexist. My paper person, postal person and trash people are all male.)

I dreamt of handing out jars of sauce by the thousand and each time proudly stating, or even shouting, “Everything in this jar came from my garden!”

There would be “Ohhs” and “Ahhs.” Awards. Offers of marriage. Sponsorships. Private jets. A TV show. Tabloid stories. Fast cars. Addictions. Detox. A bad movie starring Larry the Cable Guy. Oh man, I rest my case. Any subject about which you could film a movie starring Larry the Cable Guy can’t possibly be about anything sexy. Go ahead, take another bite of that waffle while thinking of Larry the Cable Guy bent over- in stretchy pants.

So I toiled in the soil. I watered, I sweated, I tended, I pruned, I weeded, I killed bugs (organically, so they didn’t mind) I fertilized, I picked. I harvested, I chopped, boiled and canned.

But my vanity was like a blight. It attracted the bugs like a pheromone. And not just an ordinary pheromone, or even a county-pheromone. I’m talking about something like a state-pheromone. The kind of pheromone that draws thousands of cotton candy starved RVers to the fair grounds every August.

No matter what I tried, something always ate my produce before it was ripe enough to harvest. I ended up with about eight tomatoes, two peppers, and something that was either a small clove of garlic or a grub.

In the end, I held up a single jar of spaghetti sauce and lamely proclaimed: “Everything from my garden is in this jar.”

I listed it on Ebay starting at $1,250.00. That’s what it’ll take to get my original investment back.