Anyway, 30-35 years later we spent a few years together seeing one another every day and night.  She had a lot of strong points, beautiful woman, smart, and good intentioned.  I'd mentioned to her once that it used to really hurt my feelings in school on Valentine Day.  I hated it, all those kids getting valentines from one another and I didn't get any.

Valentine Day, maybe 1993, '94, I headed down to her house after work.  Came in the door and fell over.  She'd decorated the house with valentines, fed me a piece of cake shaped like a valentine, and handed me a box shaped like a valentine wrapped.

Made me open it.  Crazy woman had filled that box with old timey valentines like were around when we were kids...... full, chock full that box was, with valentines claiming to be from we went to school with, all addressed to Doyce...... that was me in them days.

Crazy stuff.  I've cried maybe twice during my adulthood, but for some reason I was having to hold back tears on that one.

But that isn't why I'm writing this blog.  I just wanted to preface the next thing with that one, so you'd understand she wasn't a bad person underneath everything.

Anyway, she had two habits I found particularly irritating, aside from being miserable and liking to spread it around, toward the end of our relationship.

She pronounced the "G" in guacamole.  Drove me nuts.  Knew better, but maybe couldn't remember, maybe didn't care.

Secondly, she had this thing I figure came from being upper-crust as a kid.  "You find someone to work on the roof?" I might ask.

"Oh yes," she might warble.  " Hired this little Mexican man."

When I see the guy, he ain't little.  He's 240 pounds.  But he is Hispanic.

"Oh!" she might say.  "I hired this little Indian woman to do some beadwork for me."

Turned out the little Indian woman was....

[ More ]