Mrs. G's Mr. G~~aka My Knight in Shining Amour

This morning I was awakened at 4:45AM by the alarm after having a restless night’s sleep.  My beloved volunteered to take overtime at work and he needed to get up.  I am consistently humbled by how much he loves us by his willingness to get up days in a row to work double shifts. 

On his days off, he’s pretty well wiped out and naps in the afternoon on his first day off.  I think it is a good thing that he rests.  He needs to rest so very much due to the physical, mental and psychological demands on his body and mind.  You see, my husband works for the state as a Sergeant in a corrections institution.  He has worked in this field for almost 18 years.  I am increasingly in awe with respect for him in his work. 

My husband is a wonderful caring man.  He has many likes and dislikes, many things he enjoys doing, many things he’s interested in and would like to learn more of.  He enjoys the outdoors, hiking and taking walks with us as a family.  He enjoys hunting & fishing, but fishing here in our area doesn’t yield the amount or size of fish he’d like to get.  He loves the sport of getting the fish, then the satisfaction of catching our meal.  I’m hoping to find a good place that would allow him that joy.  The challenge is going to be to find a place that is close by us for him to go fishing on a regular basis.  We’re hoping to find a camper of some sort so that we can find these types of places so we can enjoy doing this as a family. 

He has been a voracious reader all the time I’ve known him.  His chosen books to read are pretty much action fiction, if I’m correct in my description.  I’ve not read the books he’s read, so I’m taking a leap of descriptive assumption or assumptive descriptiveness?  I’m not sure how you’d say that, so I had fun with it.  He also loves to read “how to” books.  For example, currently he’s reading The Alaskan Bootlegger’s Bible.  Yes, I know it makes him sound like he’s obsessed with making moonshine and anything else that’s alcoholic.  To the contrary, there are scientific processes and procedures along with pictures of how to set things up to make specialty wines (like strawberry for me) and the malt beers that he likes so well.  My hubby isn’t an alcoholic by any means.  He just enjoys a good beer every once in a while.  He is the most self-controlled man I’ve ever known when it comes to beer, wines and other liquor.  He usually has just one, maybe two drinks, but that is a rarity.  He is fascinated by the scientific process that changes just a little for each specialty drink.  While we haven’t taken the leap to make anything yet, it is still important to him to read as much as he can to know and understand the process before we take the leap in to the home brewery.

A variety of hot peppers have been grown from seed by my husband as well.  He’s dried them and made a seasoning with other dried vegetables from our garden in a small food processor.  He finds such enjoyment in the whole process of growing things from seed and the challenge of making new and interesting things with what he grows.  The past two years he has grown Scotch Bonnets which are among the hottest of the hot peppers.  He grew them from seed and kept them in the greenhouse through the summer so they would grow strong.  A friend of his told him that he brought them inside the house to over winter and the peppers would keep producing.  He brought them inside and put them in the bay window.  Much to his surprise, the peppers grew.  The peppers were smaller since they didn’t have heat and as much light as they do in the summer time, but they still grew!  Once the weather warmed up, he put all the peppers back in the greenhouse and that summer, the peppers grew bigger than they had over the winter.  What a wonderful pleasant surprise for him to witness!  He ended up taking peppers down to the local bar for the owner to use in their “Dragon Wing” sauce.  Since he knew the owner from the occasional guys-stopping-off-to-have-a-beer-after-work, and had told the owner about his hot peppers, they were more than happy to have my hubby’s home grown hot peppers to use in their “Dragon Wing” sauce.  There are many other instances of him sharing his various hot peppers with others.  He had taken some to work to share with a friend one day.  When the friend came in the following day, he had a fever blister on his lip from the heat of the pepper he ate.  Another time, he took his seasoning in with the hot peppers and other home grown, dehydrated vegetables to share with others and it turned various coworkers’ faces red from the heat.  They loved it though, and wanted to know how he made it so that they could try to replicate it as well.   He also cans the jalapenos each year for me to use in my salsa the following year.  He does this because the air is very difficult for me to breathe when cutting hot peppers.  I get what is very similar to an asthma attack, but it is in my bronchi instead of my lungs.  It’s called environmental sensitivities.  What a wonderful, loving man he is! 

As you could probably already see in the last paragraph, another thing my husband loves doing is gardening.  Our gardens have been glorious in years past with Brandywine tomato plants taller than he is.  The challenge we have with living here is the growing season is shortened by about 2 weeks at the beginning and 2 weeks at the end.  Our peak is in mid July, so if we don’t have all of our tomatoes in the garden for at least a month with tomatoes on them, by mid July, it is too late and they won’t taste right for canning sauce.  The challenge continues after living here for 6 years.  We will try something else this coming summer with the garden as per Mr. G’s direction—black plastic covering the whole garden.  We’ve seen how black plastic does well with the rows, but with the unexpected occurring this past summer (days and days of migraines) the weeds got a hand up on us.  This is why he decided we’d cover the whole garden with black plastic.  Another change we’re making is we’re putting in a more solid fence to keep the deer and larger creatures out of the garden.  One morning while we were walking down to inspect our growing produce to find that a very large area in the middle of our tomatoes had been laid upon.  Mr. G said that it looked like it could possibly have been a bear.  With that information, we looked for paw prints, but couldn’t find any.  Now, plans are being made and solidified to change the fence, make it stronger, easier accessible, neater and functional.  It is challenges like these that Mr. G takes great joy in trying to find solutions for.  Unfortunately, doing changes like this takes money.  If only there were money trees in the back yard! 

Most recently, Mr. G has begun taking an interest in air brushing classes.  He had found one, but I’m not sure when and how he would accomplish them while doing classes online.  I think we’ll need to get air tools and so forth for him to do that.  I’d love to be able to bless him with all those things he needs to get the neat things accomplished that he’d like to do. 

My husband loves to work with wood also.  He makes the most beautiful bird houses and bird feeders.  He’s also made picnic tables and has plans to make some Adirondack chairs for around our fire ring in our back yard.  I wait with eager anticipation to paint the beautiful things he makes.  I love working together with him on things like this.  My heart’s desire to work with him in a partnership using both of our gifts to further the satisfaction that is gained by a job well done, work done together and the love that is built knowing that we’ve done this together is priceless.

There are so many different subtle nuances about my husband that I haven’t written.  What you see above is just a very small representation of what makes him my husband.  There is so much more!  He is a loving man who “puts up” with my desires to give to others.  He helps me to remember that I don’t have to give everything, but to let God fill the needs that we can’t fill.  If it were up to me, we’d adopt every malnourished child whose face graced a camera.  He keeps me grounded.  I would love to have a situation much like Louisa May Alcott wrote about in Jo’s Boys.  My heart is there, but I don’t have the house to do something like that, unfortunately.  Perhaps after Mr. G retires we can look in to something like that.  Who knows?!  The possibilities are endless!