My wife and I celebrated 20 years of marriage yesterday (9/16), and although you may call assembling a piece of compressed-wood furniture (attach molding piece W to side panel A with four 9/16 inch screws) a dud, I consider it a win.

We didn’t have time to go out to dinner, so we put that off for a few days. Instead, we had a quick bite at home, opened each other’s cards, and immersed ourselves in assembly-required hell, because time is of the essence.

I won’t bore you with the details, but our granddaughter will be staying with us for a few weeks, and we figure it would be good for her to have a place to sleep. So we're scrambling to set up a guest room, and that means evicting the computer from its present location, and so begins the whole domino-effect of rearranging rooms, blah, blah, blah.

I inherited a ready-made family 20 years ago, as Denise had four kids who ranged in age from 10 to 18. If I’m doing the math right, that puts them all in their 30s today. Then we added a couple more clowns to the circus, and our boys are now 17. They all have jobs, lead productive lives, and two of the older guys have gotten married and given us a total of four grandchildren.

We’ve had 20 great years. But it’s come with its share of heartbreaks. (And I’m not even talking about the stupid TV show.) We buried her last living grandparent, as well as both of my folks and my sister, and we all pulled together as one of our sons and his wife buried a daughter. That last one, let me tell you, that’s the low point of all low points right there.

So yes, we spent our milestone anniversary putting together a piece of furniture. But we hung out together, didn’t turn on the TV or pick up our phones for several hours, and accomplished something that will help us help several members of our family.

Win.

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