The Intricacies and Musings of a Madman

Well, guys, it happened. Ya boy got hitched! That’s right: There’s a Mrs. Madman. (Or Madwoman?) So, weep and wail, ladies, for I am no longer on the market.

I play, I play.

Really, it is amazing. And all you atheists out there can’t deny God’s existence because me getting married is a miracle of biblical proportions. I’m kind of kidding, but also not. It’s mostly how I feel.

We met in November, 2018, in the workroom at church while I mailed a package, and I had no clue she’d become my wife. I had an odd feeling about her (in part because she’s gorgeous), but I dismissed it and got on with my day.

It wasn’t until almost a year later when we encountered each other again. The church hired her as a barista in the café, and I was a frequent customer. She made fun of me for putting sriracha sauce all over my food, and, admittedly, sometimes I put the stuff on there just so she’d talk to me.

Over time, this turned into friendship, and soon after that, a relationship. She and I started dating on February 2, 2020, just weeks before Covid hit the US. Ten months later, on December 26, 2020, I put a ring on her finger, and we sealed the deal on November 14, 2021.

Now, she’s my wife, and to say I couldn’t be happier is inadequate. God did this. He prepared us for each other, and He gave signs in the months leading up to our relationship. On lonely days in years prior, He comforted me with the promise of a family. This was a textbook-case God-thing, if there can be textbook-cases for God-things.

Look, go see for yourself. Look what I wrote on Valentine’s Day in 2019, almost a year before she and I dated. See the Greetings from the Madman page of this blog. Read how I intensely desired what’s now entrusted to me.

I wasn’t the first to write this, but it’s true: “Her outer beauty is only exceeded by her inner beauty.” My wife is far, far outside my league—way too pretty for me, though she pretends to not see it. Compound this with our age gap, and you’ve got quite the surprise marriage. That’s my view, anyway.

There isn’t much else I’d like to add for privacy reasons, but you’ve got the high points. God is good—the best. Obvious, I know, but today it really lands home.

There are others who’ve waited for God to perform a similar miracle. And certainly, some should be single. The Bible tells of that possibility. But I believe if you prayerfully feel in your Spirit God has someone picked out for you, then it’s only a matter of time. I was 30 when my wife and I met. 31 when we started dating. 33 when we got married. I recall being unable to sleep a few years ago because I feared staying single forever. I dream of giving my parents grandkids. The possibility that it won’t happen stole the air out of my lungs. Look, I’m just saying, if you feel God’s going to bring you someone, you’re probably right.

Don’t give up. When you feel lonely, get alone and talk to Him about it. Heck, that’s how I found out I’d get married.

Low-Res image used with permission. I am a proud DB member.

This is an entry I intend to publish quietly. It’s the kind of thing a lot of people post to get attention, and attention from this topic isn’t what I want (except from my next girlfriend, of course). But it’s Valentine’s Day, and I feel a day will come when I’m glad I wrote it.

It’s been a long time since I’ve dated, a little over five years. And that’s okay. I’m not desperate. In fact, I really haven’t put much effort into meeting someone. But, even though desperation isn’t a burden I carry, having a girlfriend would be nice. And my parents are pressing hard for it because I’m 30 and they want me to get married and give them grandkids and all that. (I’m not here to discuss children. I’m just pointing out that my parents bring it up a lot.)

So, in case the girl of my dreams happens to stumble across this post, here’s my Valentine’s Day letter to her:

Dear Miss Whoever-God-Picked-Out,

First, I’d like to say thank you for having the courage to let me belong to you. I, too, am a fan of giving to charity, so there’s already something we have in common. I think that’s nice.

For real, though, all jokes aside – thank you. If God blessed me with your companionship, I truly am a fortunate man. Believe me, I don’t say that lightly. I know what kind of girl I’m looking for. I know what God told me to seek. So, if you are her, then you are lovely and special, precious beyond measure, and godlier than I deserve. And I adore you for it.

I so look forward to the things we’ll do together. For my part, if you’re interested, I’d like to take you hiking and do photography. I don’t know whether you’re already a photographer, but I wouldn’t be surprised. (If you’re not, that’s okay, too!) You know how it is these days. You can spit in any direction and wet the hair of a photographer. I’ll bring my drones, too, so we can capture the world from the sky. And I won two hammocks at a retreat last year, so we can set those up when it gets warm and just enjoy being outside together. We’ll talk and listen to the wind and birds and all those good things.

Did I really just suggest listening to birds? I hope none of my friends see this.

I’m also excited to watch movies with you and enjoy meals together. Holidays will be extra special because you’ll be a part of them. The companionship – getting to pour my life into yours – the notion is so amazing. God has overflowed my cup, and I’m eager to share it with you.

I want to write for you. I want to craft entire worlds with you in mind, and then use them to tell you stories. I’d write you a trillion books if I could, with each character I type having the spectacular purpose of wooing your heart to me. Were it that I could!

But here’s what I’m looking forward to the most: Sharing our love for the Lord. You have no idea how excited I am to pray with you. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to pray with someone I love, but, ironically, it’s my prayer that we have that kind of relationship. I’ve also asked God for a unique chemistry between us, one that causes us to spend hours talking about Him. You know what I mean? Those kind of conversations. The absolute best kind. The kind where we enjoy each other’s company while dwelling in the presence of the Holy Spirit. That kind.

I guess what I’m trying to say, Love, is that we’re going to have a blast. I promise you that. So, Happy Valentine’s Day, whoever you are. I await God’s moment!

In loving anticipation,                                                  

The Madman

Ladies and Gentlemen, the first two paragraphs of my OkCupid self-summary:

I’m an enormous obese man who dresses up as an evil clown for children’s birthday parties.

Lol hey, I’m kidding. I’m not obese, and hopefully I’m not a clown either. But I might be. We’ll see. If I do turn out to be one, and you’re also very lucky, I may let you hand-feed me marshmallows while honking my nose. It’ll be breathtakingly romantic.

Oh, yeah. This’ll win the girls.

I’ll admit it: I’ve got nothing to talk about. So, if you’re cool with a blog post about three completely unrelated topics – great. If not, go read Leviticus or something.

Topic #1

Let me tell you a story called Everyone is in the Way. It’s about how when I drove home from the farm last Saturday, four people pulled out in front of me so that I had to slam my brakes. One of them proceeded to drive real slow for the next five miles, so I passed him as rudely as possible at the earliest opportunity. I made sure to get a good look at him, too, because, well, you know how we all want to see what bad drivers look like. Another two people didn’t go when the light turned green. I honked at them both. The amazing thing is that one of them looked up at the light and still didn’t go. You peasants are why we need self-driving cars, and also why I nearly stroke out every time I drive.

Topic #2 

My job is amazing, and if any of you reading this are on staff at my church, I probably love working with you. I’ll let you guess who I don’t love working with. (That was a joke. Don’t read into it.) Lately, as one or two of you may already know, I’ve been working on a project regarding all our Macs. By itself, it would normally only take a few hours to complete, but I’ve had an unusually high number of helpdesk tickets lately. That, combined with the fact that some Mac users proved difficult to track down, made the whole thing take about two weeks. Oh, those helpdesk tickets. The ones I had to stop my work to answer. I love answering most of them, but some of you – let’s just say my boss doesn’t think “why don’t you try praying over your printer because I’m busy” is an appropriate response.

Topic #3

If you’ve kept up with my blog, you already know how much I like trolling my mom. Today, I took scripture out of context to show her how the Bible says we should be communists. For the record, I am not a communist – at all – and neither is my mom. Also, the Bible doesn’t advocate communism, obviously.

That certainly wasn’t the funniest joke I’ve ever made, but it’ll do.

Goodnight everybody. 😏

As opposed to sleep-walking. Get it? I deserve paper-cuts in the webbing of my toes for that one.

Here’s an appetizer to hold you over until the big event – that is to say, the Making the Most of your Time essay.

I’m still working on it, by the way. It’s just that, well, remember how I said I had writers block working on my book? I prayed about it, and it ended shortly afterward. I have tons of inspiration, and the scene I struggled with is complete. I can’t wait for you guys to see what I’ve got cooked up for you. One of these years…

So, back to what we’re here for.

I wanted to write about this the day it happened, but I worked on my book instead. Last Monday, May 1^st, I had to take pictures of a computer setup at work. And when I reviewed them, I noticed something rather…odd…in the Photos app:

You see, when I first stumbled across this screenshot, it wasn’t 4:20 yet. It was something like 2 or 3 in the afternoon. That puzzled me a good fifteen seconds before I realized the screenshot had been taken at 4:20 AM. Holy wow, dear reader, do you realize what this means?

It means I got up in the middle of the night and checked the time on my phone. And apparently, the sleep-walking version of me thought the fact that my phone said 4:20 was hilarious. And I guess I took a screenshot to show my conscious self later.

So, uh, thanks, unconscious-me. What a lovely gift.

Happy birthday, Dad! I can’t believe you’re 64.

Seems like yesterday when you caught me sneaking onto the internet when I was supposed to be grounded, and you pretended to be some dude named Chance who was 48. I knew it was you because you were also 48, and the only 48-year-olds who chat with 13-year-old boys on the internet are dads and pedophiles. Plus, Chance? Picking a name like that, I think you wanted me to know I was caught.

Anyway, we’re going to celebrate my dad’s birthday at the farm this weekend, and I’m all hyped about the terrible birthday cards Mom will make him read out loud. I’ll have to write something awful and dark to shake things up.

Last year, on my mom’s birthday card, I thanked her for not having an abortion when she was pregnant with me. She’s pro-life (I am too, but that’s irrelevant for this story), and watching her squirm awkwardly as she read it out loud in front of friends and family was great. It really helped the mood of things – for me, at least.

I love my mom. She’s fun to mess with, and it’s one of the many endearing things about her.

On a different note, I’m working on two writing projects at the moment, and both are going slow.

I haven’t had writer’s block in a long time, but it finally happened. I’m in the fifth chapter of Primoris, and I’m stuck. I know what I want the chapter itself to do, but there’s a part of the chapter that’s heavily tied to the grand scheme of things of the plot, and that’s where I’m lost. Sure, I know what’s going to happen all through the book, but I’m more or less stuck figuring out how I want to tell it.

NO! I just sneezed all over my screen.

You ever get one of those sneezes that come totally out of nowhere and you don’t cover your face in time? It doesn’t happen to me often, but when it does, I hate it. And it happened a second ago while I was writing to you, Dear Reader. Be glad you’re on the other side of the internet.

My other writing project is actually the next entry for this blog, and it’ll go into the Making the Most of your Life category. I want to discuss something God showed me, and that “something” is how to make the most of your time.

If you read my old greeting (the one from late 2014), you know how bad I used to be at managing my time. I asked God to teach me how to be good at it, and He showed me quite a few things that I’d like to pass on to you.

Now, I’m not saying I’m perfect at time management, but I’m a lot better than I used to be. However, regardless of how disciplined and effective I am personally – and discipline is the fuel for time management, by the way – the ideas behind doing it well are still good ones.

I’ll tell you all about it sometime in the next couple weeks, I hope. You can never truly know how long it’ll take to write something, so I could be way off on that. I’ll give it my best shot just for you.

It’s amazing how I went from “Happy birthday, Dad!” to “How to manage your time.”

I need medicine.

Hey guys, good news. I’m not dead! That’s good news, right?

Anyway, long story short, 2016 was a hard year. Cliché, I know, but it’s not for the same reasons most people say that. It was more because I started what I thought was my career, and it didn’t work out. And then during all that, one of my dearest friendships crumbled away between my fingers. She meant far more to me than she ever realized.

I just didn’t want to write back then, you know? My flame of passion had been snuffed out, and because of that, I didn’t have much to say.

Now, things are different. It’s a new year – heck, a great new year, and I have so much to say! I don’t know where to begin.

But more on that later (I’m writing about it in the new greeting). Right now, it’s after midnight, and I have work at my, you know, mother freakin’ career job in the morning. Yeah, you heard me right.

Man, life tastes sweet.

I am so excited to write this entry. Like, as I drove home from class today, I kept thinking about what a nice addition it was going to make to my blog. So here I am sitting in my underwear, cup of coffee in hand, with a self-satisfied smirk on my face. I am too excited to put a towel down, so I’ll just deal with my chapped god-thighs later.

Today there was a minor incident in class. My professor is notorious for being a jerk to students in front of everyone, and that’s exactly what happened to me. But, like any madman would, I embraced the situation and made the worst of it. And by that, I mean I wrote him an email telling him I have diarrhea. Enjoy:

Dr. [Scum],

I hope you’re doing well today and that you’ve had an excellent week so far.

I am sending you this email because of what happened earlier in class. Last week I caught the flu and was absent Wednesday. Today, I have a mild case of what I believe is food poisoning, but since I missed last week, I didn’t want to be absent again. In light of that, I opted to come to class sick (I’m not contagious as far as I know). That is at least part of why I was five minutes late today. Getting here this morning was an enormous struggle.

It turns out coming was a mistake. After being there for only a few minutes, I had to rush out of the room. As I left, I heard you comment to the class about people coming in and out, and how rude you think it is.

I decided that, since you are willing to say something to the class instead of directly to me in private, there was a strong likelihood you would put me on the spot in front of everyone when I returned. And I wasn’t particularly keen on the notion of telling you in front of the class that I had severe diarrhea, and that I had to hurry to the restroom as quickly as possible. Actually, I wasn’t particularly keen on telling you any of that at all, but given the circumstances, I don’t have a choice.

I realize you don’t like your class being disrupted, and I assure you I respect that and will always do my best to abide your wishes. I promise you I’d have remained in the room had that been an option. And when I did leave, I endeavored to be as quiet and non-disruptive as I could. In fact, there was a strong likelihood that I would have needed to leave again later if I came back, so I decided to simply go home instead of further disrupting your class.

I hope you’ll accept my apology for any inconvenience caused today. I promise to do my absolute best to come to class on time or early and then not leave until it’s over. Had things gone my way, that’s precisely what would have transpired. I have no desire to cause issues in your class. Your lectures are fascinating, and I truly do enjoy them.

Best,

[The Madman]

This guy really needs to take a look at Rate My Professor. His ratings show what everyone else already understands: His students can’t stand him.

Sept. 4, 2015 UPDATE: I was going to post his response, but as of yet he hasn’t replied. If he does, I’ll post it here. I’ve been checking my email constantly, delightfully looking forward to his reaction. Maybe I rendered him speechless.

I go to KSU, so I can swing a cat and hit a girl with a hot body.

What I think makes a girl’s appearance stand out in a crowd is her face and hair. It’s all about the softness of her expressions, the voice behind her eyes, and the smile upon her lips. That, combined with what her hair looks like, makes all the difference in the world.