It is a solid relationship, one with good balance and clearly defined roles. She doctors our pets, and I clean up the dogs' poop and entertain them, Mary and the cats. She screens and orders (Netflix) movies for our mutual viewing pleasure while I veto things that are too bloody, too happy or too sappy. I plan our events and our trips and am our public mouthpiece. We are both sports fans, although we watch NFL games in different rooms since we don't always agree on which games to watch. She feeds the critters in the morning and whomever gets home first after work feeds them at night.

My Dad always liked Mary a lot, although he worried that I was being a more negative influence on her than she was a positive one on me and he would express some level of dismay if she ever seemed to remotely agree with me on any point of contention. This photo was the last time Mary saw "Big Al" before he passed away July 12, 2009.

Mary grew up in Berkeley. We met in January 1974 in two American literature classes at Sonoma State University. She liked F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ralph Waldo Emerson. I favored Ernest Hemingway and Henry David Thoreau. Both of us continue to read a lot, although she tends more toward magazines now and detective fiction while I lean toward non-fiction, history and the American West.

As you can tell from our pet rogue's gallery, we have dogs and cats instead of children. No children was a mutual decision neither of us have ever regretted. In the beginning, I contributed a dog and Mary three cats to the clan. We have now concluded that two dogs are easier than one and three cats are about right; and they belong to both of us. We have both (attempt) to train the dogs. We now pick out the pets together, almost always from a local shelter. However, we give Mary credit for selecting Cherokee when I leaned toward a slightly more outgoing dog. We consider the selection and strong advocacy for Cherokee to be Mary's "shining moment" because Cherokee has been such a loving dog and good family member.

We have always shared a common ground in literary naturalism, Eugene O'Neill, film noir, and such dark TV drama as "24," "Battlestar Gallactica," and "Deadwood." We call our vision "The Slime and Grime School of Thinking." We started living together in April 1975 and got married almost exactly seven years later in our backyard in Oceano. Our dog at the time, Marlow, attended the wedding ceremony. Mary wore her most elegant San Francisco 49er T-shirt and I wore a more traditional silver and black Oakland Raiders skull and crossbones.

Our union includes my sincere recognition that Mary is always right, a fact I admit because it is almost always true and because it is a politically valuable conclusion. It also includes my recognition of her superior football handicapping skills. She was consistently beating me in the annual house football pool. I was forced to dramatically raise the level of my game and treasure having a won a few recent years. The winner gets treated to a dinner at their favorite restaurant and, more importantly, bragging rights.