Man Points

To those of you who will be offended by this, I apologize in advance: I live in a fairly male-centric family. And I like it that way.
Girls are something of an anomaly around here. I'm an only girl of an only girl, born to a dad with no sisters and I married a man with no sisters. My daughter was the first girl born into my husband's family for 40 years.
So, naturally, I have always gravitated toward guys when it comes to friendship, and my thinking tends to be a little bit more testosterone-y than most girls'. In fact, many of you who are reading this and have known me for a while are either my guy friends or women who married my guy friends. I hope that will help to explain why the following is the pinnacle of fun for me.
In keeping with Male Competitive Nature, we have a point system in this family. It's evolved rather slowly....and it's completely arbitrary. No one really keeps a tally, but the gains and the losses of so-called "Man Points" are announced out loud, often in public settings.
You can gain Man Points for an extraordinary belch ("nice hang time/tonal quality! that's worth at least 10 man points!"). You can gain man points by winning a game of kick ball in the backyard. You can even gain man points for gadgetry....say, being the first in the family to buy an iPhone. Usually, the gadget category is soundly wrapped up by my brother Jon.
You can lose points, though, for texting sweet nothings to your wife on you iPhone. This may even cancel out your initial pointage. You can lose points if your wife makes you wear a shirt that matches hers. You lose at least a week's worth of points for getting caught listening to Michael Bolton. Possibly more.
As I said, the scoring is pretty arbitrary, and though the scoring the guys give each other is pretty much by-the-book, the scoring the girls dole out is difficult to predict. This makes it even more fun.
Emma is pretty adept with the scoring, and I don't really understand her system. Her daddy can be losing kickball to her brother in the back yard and still wind up with 50 million Man Points to her brother's paltry negative four.
Emma announced tonight at the dinner table that there would be a new Man Point Competition that would last one year - this year. She also let it be known that her dad was going to kick all the other guys' butts. The prizes at stake are "a medal, 24 kisses and 10 hugs."
With prizes like that, the competition is sure to be lively.

DAILY BLISS: I stopped by "my spot" at one of the local lakes today - just for five minutes or so. What made it great was that I was supposed to be somewhere else. That was simply a delicious slice of life.