My Philosopher King.. uh, Husband...

Lying in bed last night, T and I were talking about our day. Mine was pretty ordinary of late: at work all day editing a very long report. I can't say T's was un-ordinary, but listening to him sleepily tell me about his day, snuggled up close to him in the dark, made me smile and remember how much I love him... First, we went to Mass together, which was nice. It’s always better with him.

He works at the Lonergan Center on Thursdays. Yesterday he was asked to run an errand by the director of the Center:

“T, here’s my card, here are my keys. Go to this place and do this errand.”

“Ok, where is the place?”

“On Market Street by the something-or-other”

“Oh, is it near this thing?”

“Yeah, but you make a sharper left.”

“Oh, ok. Cool.”

Then he tells me:

“So I went to her car and drove to the place. The radio was tuned to a mix-it station, and I listened to 5 songs on the way there. It occurred to me while I was driving that these same 5 songs were always played on the Seattle mix-it station in high school. Then I wondered if all mix-it stations played the same songs all across the nation.

Anyway, then I got to the place, did the errand, and drove back.”

After work on Thursdays he goes to class. His first class of the day is at 2 in the afternoon:

“In Kierkegaard today, our professor was looking around the room to find someone to help her out of her pause, and I was smiling. She said, “T, do you have something to add?” And the whole class looked at me.

“I opened my mouth, which was a mistake, and then paused, because I wasn’t sure if what I had been thinking about was the same thing she had just stopped talking about. I didn’t want to say that I was thinking about Lonergan’s idea of the agent intellect and how it could be called “god” the way Kierkegaard does because I thought someone might stone me, so instead, I just said: “I wasn’t paying attention.” And everyone laughed and laughed.”

Normally he goes to his favorite class next: Bernard Lonergan's Insight taught by the one, the only, Pat Byrne. But..

"Insight was canceled today because Professor Byrne wanted to to go to this lecture thing. When I got there, everyone was really dressed up, and I was wearing my hobo coat. So the nice name tag people shoed me through the door so no one would see me outside the lecture hall. Then I took off my coat [he had on a nice blue sweater his mom got him for C'mas] and went out again and they were much nicer."

His “hobo coat” isn’t really that bad; but it’s the typical plaid-flannel, polyester-lined, over-sized coat that he wears when he’s working outside and it’s cold.

T really liked the lecture. The speaker was good and she incorporated several solid elements into her talk (even JPII). “But she was introduced by four different people. And at the end, another guy got up to talk about her.” He wanted to record it, and kept telling himself “Ok, get ready to record. Get ready…” He even had his voice recorder in his bag. But I guess the number of introducers threw him off because he realized he was still telling himself “Get ready. Get ready…” half way through the actual lecture. Oh well.

He called me at the end to ask if it was ok to bring home a friend or two for dinner. I love that about him—he always calls to make sure it's alright. I don’t think I would go berserk if he didn’t ask me, but sometimes it could be bad… He’s very considerate :)

We had a delightful friend over for dinner and spent some time watching youtube videos about babies and hiccups and funny songs and fainting goats and had a good time laughing together. We told philosophy jokes (even about Plato and his political philosophy--the philosopher kings..) and talked about theology. We're such geeks.

Getting ready for bed, T began to do several things but forgot to finish them. He walked over to our humidifier, looked to make sure there was enough water in it, but then paused to, undoubtedly, catch a thought racing around in his head. Then he kinda stumbled away from the humidifier…

and plugged in his phone to change and reached to turn off the light. Except we have a lamp plugged into a socket that’s controlled by the wall-switch and he was reaching for the lamp. “T, you should turn it off at the wall,” I told him. “Oh... yeah” he said.

Then he climbed into bed and snuggled up to me and we said prayers together. Before drifting off, I asked him, "T, did you look at the humidifier and forget to turn it on?" He said, "Um.. yes." So I got up and turned it on :)

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I think he’s deeply pondering one of the papers he will write this semester. One he will call "Kierkegaard Crosses the Rubicon" (a paper comparing Kierkegaard to Walker Percy, which title he told me about when he was in the shower: "Oh, and I've decided what I'm going to call my paper!"), and another for Insight. I don’t know what that paper will be about. I don’t know if Taylor knows yet either—but he’s super-excited to write it!

Or he could be thinking about the small village he and a bunch of friends are dreaming about building in Spain in a couple years. Apparently land there is quite cheap, and the spot is fairly close to Madrid but still fairly rural.

In any case, he was just adorable :) If anyone ever asks me why I married him, I quote my mother:

"He makes me laugh."