Sometimes you see a man and you think "Wow, the love of a good woman would make him into a terrific guy! He'd be so much more settled and grounded. He'd finally be content with himself and could be this spiritual giant. " Don't kid yourself. A woman's love, though powerful, is not going to change anything. He's going to be just the same way he always was, but now you're setting yourself up to be hurt. His potential for greatness will be no solace when he's ignoring you for his projects, or when you have to beg him to stay at church for the whole meeting. Sure, maybe he's improving, but are you willing to wade through 30 years of heartache? Do you love him enough to put up with all of his crap?

That's what marriage is, after all...finding someone who you love enough to deal with their crap. The fun stuff is easy...the vacations, the birthdays, the sex. That's the easy pary. It's their annoying habit of leaving clipped toenails on the carpet. It's sleep deprivation with a newborn, when you both desparately need a nap but someone has to stay up with the screaming kid. It's the leaving your kids and going to a job every morning because he hasn't found a job yet and you're paying the bills. Are you willing to put up with all that and so much more? If the answer is heck no!, then you're not ready to be married. Are you ready to have kids yet? No? Then you're not ready to be married. Kids have a funny way of showing up unannounced when you have sex. There's no sure way to "wait to have kids."

About 1 in 4 people deal with depression sometime in their life. For some its temporary. Others deal with it their whole lives. The odds are good that you or your spouse will deal with it at one time or another. Depression is difficult for many reasons. He isn't just unhappy, he's miserable. He sucks all of the happiness and energy out of the room just by being there. He is incredibly unpredictable. If you've got a spouse/partner with depression you never know what you're going to find when you get home.

He could be Mr. Doom and Gloom: his answers are restricted to "Yes", "No", and "Fine". You ask him how his day was?: fine. Are you hungry?: no. Do you have to go to work right away?: yes. How was the baby today?: fine. Did the baby take a nap?: yes. Are you ok?: yes.

He could be Mr. Overreaction: he's upset because you're two minutes late and he's got to go to work now!

He could be Mr. Happiness: he's cleaned the house and done the dishes. He's happy to see you, but he has to run to work. He remembers to say "I love you!" as he runs out the door.

He could be Mr. Oblivious: he barely acknowledges that you're home, and sits at the TV/Computer for another half an hour before packing up and going to work. He forgets to say goodbye.

The problem with all of these guys is it's not his fault! He's not doing this on purpose. He isn't doing this to hurt you or because he wants to be unhappy. He just can't deal with life like normal people do. As the spouse of a depressed person, you're going to get all of the above. The rest of the world will probably just see Mr. Happiness. He'll use up all of his energy being upbeat and positive for his friends, while you get the sick times. Sure, that means that he's comfortable enough with you to show you his true self, but it also sucks. This is a great reason why people need to date more than a few months before getting married. You need to be comfortable enough to show your true selves to each other. Even then, nothing is for sure. I only saw snippets of this before I was married.

I guess my point is. Sometimes marriage isn't all its cracked up to be. People shouldn't be in any hurry to get married. Sometimes being single is lonely, but its 100 times better than the possibility of ending up with the wrong person. And even if you do find the right person, it's still hard.

I really love Utah in the fall. That crisp breeze wooshing down from the canyon, the happy little smattering of red trees on the mountains like a Bob Ross painting, the sweet smell of snow from the higher peaks...there's just nothing like it. I love how far you can see here. From my desk at work I can see into the next valley, 50 miles away. I love watching the storms roll across the next valley before hitting ours. I grew up on the East Coast, but Utah has really grown on me in the 6 years that I've been here. I still miss the trees, but I don't miss the buggy, muggy east quite as much as I used to. Especially during the fall. The beautiful fall.

Has it really been so long since I last posted a blog? Shame on me.

Granted, life has been crazy lately, but that shouldn't be an excuse. After all, just look at Duchess's life. Things are really crazy for her, but she manages to blog at least 4-5 times/week.

So we went to Arizona over labor day weekend. Boy, was that a fiasco. Taking a baby on vacation isn't as easy as it sounds. Our luggage tripled, while our patience quartered. Think it takes a long time to get through security? Try it with an infant. Like curbside check-in? Can't do that with a baby! There's a special form you have to fill out that they clip on to your ticket. Otherwise they'd have no record of a baby being on the plane, and if we crashed that would be a bad thing. So anyway, flying wasn't fun. We've done it twice before (this baby has been on eight planes and he's only 7 months old!) but last time it was a bit easier. He's a lot more active now, and wants to try his new scoot/crawl trick on the dirty airplane floor. But then he gets away from me, and that's no good.

We got to the SLC airport early since my sister was flying in from LA about 2 hours before our plane departed. This was fine with us, however, better to have too much time rather than too little (see "security/check-in times" comments above), or so I thought. We got through the line just fine carrying a car seat, two large suitcases at 50 lbs. each, one smaller duffel bag, a laptop case, a diaper bag, and of course, a baby in the baby bjorn carrier . To top it all off, Dinomight had severe whiplash as a parting gift from his random Grand Mal Seizure three days before our trip. He was OK to fly, but the doctor told us that he couldn't lift or carry anything, not even the 14 pound baby.

Lucky for me, my sister, LA Girl, was able to help us through the check-in line and to drop off our luggage. That was awesome. It was nice to drop off 4 of 7 things that we had to carry. They wouldn't let us check the baby, though. He apparently had film in him and was locked. There are rules about that kind of stuff, you know. We got through security and thought we were sitting pretty when I realized that I didn't have my purse. I'd gotten out my ID at the counter, so I wasn't aware that my purse and wallet were missing. I left Dinomight sitting there with Dinomyn and ran to find it. I searched the terminal, the sidewalk, and the check-in area. Nothing. I asked at the desk, but they said no one had turned in any purses. I was about to leave when I randomly checked with the luggage drop-off to make sure I hadn't stuck it in there, but it wasn't there. As I was leaving some luggage check-in guy came over and said, "Are you looking for something?"
"Yes!" I said, "it's a purse! It's small and black..."
"Well, someone turned in something like that, let me go find my manager."
He and the manager had a little chat, and the guy went behind the counter.
"Are you T------n (my last name here)?" he said
"YES!!!"
Somebody had found it outside on the sidewalk where it had dropped out of the diaper bag, and they turned it in. This was the second time in 3 days that I had lost my purse and someone had returned it to me. It had my cell phone, my checkbook, several hundred dollars in cash for travel money, and all of my credit cards still in it. I couldn't believe how lucky it was.

After that fiasco we counted ourselves lucky as we walked quickly to the gate. Turns out that we needn't have bothered. It was a zoo at the gate and the surrounding gates. According to the airport desk attendants, there were "sheer winds" at the airport, as well as a "security risk" on an incoming airplane. They were turning all of the airplanes away from the airport, and most of them were going to to Ogden. Our plane decided to go to Twin Falls, Idaho. Why? I'm not sure. That means that it was delayed about 2 hours. For adults, 2 hours is nothing. For a 7 month old, 2 hours means an eternity. They need to eat and sleep twice in that amount of time, a feat that isn't easy in a busy, bright, noisy airport. It was finally our time to board, after 3.5 hours of sitting around the airport. The only good thing about traveling with a baby on Southwest is the pre-boarding. When its open seating, being first is best. We got seats right near the front of the plane, and that was nice.

Because of the delay, when we landed in Phoenix, there were a bunch of people who were late for their connecting flights, some on different airlines. The stewardesses asked everyone to stay seated and let these people get off the plane first so they could run to catch their next plane. Of course, no one listened and people immediately got up when we got to the gate. (We stayed seated… aren’t we nice?) One guy even climbed over Dinomight, Dinomyn and I to get to the aisle. The stewardesses were really mad, and walked through the plane making everyone sit back down in their seats. When everyone was seated, they got the connecting people out of the plane, and then let everyone else go. Seriously, folks, it was like kindergarten all over again. We had to wait until everyone was quiet to go out to recess. Unbelievable. If those dumb people had just stayed seated in the first place everyone would have gotten off 5 minutes faster.

OK, this is getting too long. Stay tuned for the next installment of our trip.