The Ogress of Greenleaf Manor

It’s Halloween. I’m not feeling well, so I am in bed early, watching Young Frankenstein.


It is one of the funniest movies ever made. I might make watching it a Halloween tradition.

Today I went to a large electronics store to buy supplies for my tech program. It is a little odd speaking to a Hillbilly zombie about the advantages of one memory card reader over another.

Jeremiah had a costume party at school. He went as Darth Maul. It is his only real costume, but one he fixates on too much. I don’t like his fascination with powerful figures of evil. We let him hand out candy to kids who came to the door. The pumpkin he carved sat on the wicker chair on the porch, a glow stick illuminating it (no more candles in our home since the fire at the church!).

I let my misgivings about his costume slide and crawled into bed with this laptop and the funniest movie Mel Brooks ever made.


I tend to let things slide a bit in parenting. A sort of “Don’t sweat the little stuff” attitude. It probably comes from the nearly hands off approach my parents had in raising me.

Parenting styles are a natural source of conflict in a marriage.

Brenda tends to be firmer, stricter. I tend to be more laid back, more accepting of the ol’ “boys will be boys” philosophy.

She wanted me to become stricter. I wanted her to lighten up a little. We didn’t find a compromise. Instead she got stricter, angrier. I tried to lighten things up, joke her out of her mood.

I called her the Ogress of Greenleaf Manor.

You know, that didn’t amuse her as much as you might think.

When she was extremely upset I would back her up in silent tacit acquiescence, but not explicitly.

But, I worked on it. Became stricter.

As I tried to meet Brenda halfway she relaxed a little more.

I’m feeling pretty achy. The cough is deep enough, hurts enough, I wonder if I haven’t contracted a touch of pneumonia, an infection in the lungs. Brenda brought me hot chicken soup. Very hot. Hot enough to defend a castle. Sweet of her.

I know she is deeply unhappy in many ways. I know her heart has strayed far. I know she is confused and hasn’t a clear idea about what she wants.

It would be easy to vilify her actions. But I haven’t the right. I’m responsible for a lot of mistakes myself. I need to worry about that dang pressure-treated 2”X6”X12’ beam in my own eye. (I’m sorry about the ogress crack, Brenda.)

Discounting the vagaries of the modern calendar, Halloween marks an ancient cross-quarter day (half way between an equinox and a solstice; so does Ground Hog’s day). Perhaps my life is also at some sort of cross-quarter. My wife is still in my home. I’m lying here trying to eat scalding soup, and she is doing what she can to be kind and loving.

“You are talking about the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind,” Gene Wilder shouts at his visitor.


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Happy All Hallow’s Eve.