By Bill Rea This has been a strange summer, at least in terms of work.

It traditionally is supposed to be a time when things slow down, and to a large extent that has been the case. The local municipal councils, along with other groups, have been on their summer schedules. Yet for some reason, I seem to have a lot more on my work plate than would seem to be normal. And there are other matters putting in dibbs for my time that have had to be shelved, such as household chores. I’ve got as leaky faucet that I have been putting off addressing for some time, simply because there’s been no time. And there’s been yard work, and I have household financial material that is piled on the kitchen table. The pile continually grows, despite my best efforts to deal with it. Thus booking down time has been a lot more difficult than it should be.

However, occasionally one must set aside at least a day to things other than work, if for no other reason than one’s wife puts her foot down.

Such was the case for me Sunday, although the record should reflect this piece was written Sunday morning (some workaholics are more hopeless than others).

The main reason I was told to stand down Sunday was it was our wedding anniversary. Thus Beth told me to have the slate cleared of work before I retired Saturday night. I did try, but was unsuccessful.

Now you don’t have to get the wrong idea that I’m in the proverbial dog house. After 12 years in this association, I have learned a few tricks to keep me out of doo-doo.

For example, Beth is in the habit of accompanying me on my work rounds Saturdays, and such was the case this weekend past. Upon arriving home late in the afternoon, I made a convincing show of being frustrated because I had left some important material in my office. I headed for the door, assuring my somewhat peeved wife that I would be as quick as I could. The truth is I was trying to get out of the house to get to a flower shop for a dozen longstems. As any married man will readily tell you, there are few little white lies that flowers will not get you off the hook from. I even got away with a wise-guy crack that she’s a hard person to get away from on a Saturday.

“Aren’t you glad this isn’t 12 years ago?” Beth asked me at one point Saturday night while I was hard at work. I grunted something in agreement, but soon found myself reflecting on what a pressure filled day and evening it had been.

Having only been married once, I cannot set myself up as an expert on these occasions, so I have no idea if my experiences at that time were typical or not.

All I remember is I was under a lot of stress the day before the wedding. I spent most of the day (it was a Friday) at home trying to get a massive number of items into some sort of order. The woman I was working for at the time had made it abundantly clear to me that the office was offlimits to me that day, and for the next seven to follow (I had heard talk that some of my colleagues had tried to organize a pool on how long after the wedding it would be before I phoned the office, but I never found out if that came to be).

So after a day of slaving away at a whole host of tasks, I saw it was getting late. So the stressed-out groom-to-be had to knock off for the wedding rehearsal (as if I didn’t enough demands on my time). The rehearsal went off reasonably well, although the minister thought himself obliged to loudly reprimand one of my ushers for leaning on one of the railings near the church alter (this guy’s a bank executive, and he wasn’t used to being yelled at — we still get a good laugh at the memory).

That was followed by a party my mother threw for the wedding party.

Everyone was in the appropriate mood, except for me, as a simple message kept roaring through my head, ala, “I’ve got too damned much to do, I don’t have time for a party!”

I finally got home and was able to get back to addressing the issues that had been confronting me during the day. By 1 a.m., I had even completed a draft of the address I was expected to deliver at the wedding reception (I think the thought of that had been stressing me out more than anything else).

It was at that point that I started to chill out, feeling for the first time in about 24 hours that I was actually in some control over events.

And then the phone rang. It was Beth calling at that hour, and it was her voice that really started to calm me. It was a simple call — she had left her sunglasses in my car, and she asked me to retrieve them, since we were planning to take her car on the honeymoon (she had air conditioning in those days, and I didn’t).

My brother was also my best man, and he showed up early in the morning.

Like I said, this was my first wedding. No one had told me the best man was supposed to help the groom dress, so I dressed myself (I had been doing it all by my self since I graduated infancy). Thus I was all decked out in my tux, and he strolled in wearing shorts and a t-shirt. There were a few pithy words exchanged, then we hustled to Beth’s brother’s place. He was to be an usher too, so my brother got to help someone dress, while I serenely sat back. My brother also confiscated my wallet, charging it created an unsightly bulge in my pocket (I got it back a couple of hours later).

And so we were married, on a day when things went serenely without a hitch. Indeed, just before the formal part of the program was to begin, I was casually chatting with the minister. “Aren’t I supposed to be nervous at this stage?” I asked him.

Like I stated, things went off without a hitch, if we forget the fact that one representative from my side of the congregation somehow got himself locked inside the church after the ceremonies (to this day, I’m still not sure how he managed that).

And after all the pictures had been taken, and after the reception, and the post-reception activities, Beth and I were headed away on our own.

After we had gone about a mile, I glanced over at her and said, “Did we do something strange today, like get married?”

And the best part is I have finished this piece of work Sunday morning, and Beth hasn’t risen yet. For all she knows, I took the whole day off. Didn’t I say I was getting good at keeping myself out of doo-doo?

Maybe I should work on that leaky faucet today.