ode to ray

You know, my brother in law, Ray, is a good guy. I had a flat tire today, and he fixed it, which wasn't easy, because it involved shoveling all the junk out of my trunk to get to the spare tire, then taking the (also flat) spare tire to be patched, then bringing it back to my house and putting it on my car. And while he was looking at my car, he realized he can screw my bumper back on so it isn't hanging askew (due to holiday run-in with nasty, intrusive shrubbery).

Ray always does things like this for me, ever since I began living sans guy about three years ago. For better or worse (yeah, I know some of you think I am an idiot because of this) I don't know how to do a lot of things like fix flat tires, turn on the pilot light on my furnace and install shelves on my walls. When I was married, my extremely handy husband did all of this stuff, but now, of course, he does not. So Ray generally gets the call and he is always so, so nice about it. I know he would rather have spent his Sunday afternoon doing any number of other things, but he never complains.

I actually foisted Ray, who was a friend of mine, on my sister, encouraging her to go out with him for a full year or two before she finally did. As I knew she would, she fell in love with him. Now they have two children.

He's a good guy.