The Love of a Good Man

There is a woman at work who re-applies her make-up in the evening at work.  I see her on occasion in the ladies room touching up her under eye concealer and blusher.  Today when I witnessed this, I thought to myself: how lovely that she makes herself pretty before going home to her family. I internalized this as a sign of her respect and affection for her husband that she would, literally, want to have her "best" face on when she first sees him after a long day.  Years ago, in one of those dumb girly mags (I'm looking at you, Glamour), I read this "Dear Abby"-type letter from a guy asking how he could get his girlfriend to stay "dressed up" when she got home in her sexy, professional outfit instead of immediately ditching her duds for sweats and a curry-stained T-shirt.  There's a couple of worrying points about that letter, not the least of which is not being able to ask for what you want from someone you love, but I thought the concept of "being pretty" after a hard day's work worth considering.  Of course, what constitutes "pretty" for the great love of my life has almost nothing to do with what I consider to make me pretty (read: he prefers no make up, while I think I look like an extra from World War Z without it), but the point is to do things for the one you love to show you love them.  And sometimes, that means thinking about what they need from a partner.  As Wesley says, " I have made my body strong because I thought you might be pleased by a strong body. "

Jiggity-Jig

For as much as I love to travel, there's no place like home.  I am of the age when doing laundry is soothing and helps center my internal compass.

After taking the red-eye home from the West, My Beloved met me at the airport with a fistful of daisies (my fav).  I could spot his sexy slouch from hundreds of feet away as I staggered towards the exit (me + less than 5hrs of sleep while at 30K feet = ankles too swollen for walking).  It felt like coming to the surface after the longest attempt to swim the length of the pool underwater.  I was happy I did it, but ooh that oxygen felt so sweet: my lungs instinctively inhaled.  There is nothing, nothing in the world better than being greeted at the end of a long journey by a warm hug from arms that wraps all the way around me.

After almost four days, the swelling in my feet has subsided, but I still can't help breaking into a wide smile when I come into a room and he's there.  I have been looking at public health fellowships and such, some of them with the option for remote-ish travel or that are stationed in nearby states and would require temporary relocation.  It wouldn't be so hard for six weeks or so, I told myself as I daydreamed about developing health education programs in Sudan.  We did it in college, we could do it again.  

Clearly, I am crazy.

Yes, of course we could do it, don't be silly.  But I am also of the age when the "novelty" of sacrifice smacks of ungratefulness.  

Raise Your Hand if You Recognize This?

When I was a tween or teen, my mother brought one of these home.  I asked her what is was, and she explained that it was a splatter screen for keeping grease in the cooking pan and off the stove.  I noticed that one edge of the screen was ripped out already, and asked her what happened*.  She got this funny look on her face and explained that my kid sister has asked her what it was, too.  Mom told her it was for spanking little girls and playfully bopped her on the butt, which made it rip. In my memory, Mom kept that same ripped splatter screen for eons.    

There is five years between me and Kid Sister, but my older sister is only so by 18 months.  When my mother speaks of raising my older sister while pregnant with me, and then raising two infants simultaneously, her eyes shutter a little and she is at a loss for language to articulate the complete exhaustion she experienced.   When Kid Sister came along, Older Sister and I were a little more self-sufficient.  Mom got to really enjoy having a baby in a way she missed out on with the first two.  I could tell even then at the tender age of 5, 6, and 7 that she cherished having a baby.  (The fact that Kid Sister is pretty darn adorable didn't hurt either.)

My mother is a world-renowned saver, recycler, and repurpose-er, so it is no surprise she held on to a perfectly functional, although slightly blemished tool.  She is also neat as a pin, and it is possible the funny look on her face was a little regret that her jest ended in breaking a brand new purchase.  Tonight when this memory came flooding back as I spied my own splatter screen tucked in the cabinet, I recognized that look as one of a mix of all these things, but also pride and love.  Pride because she had been so witty on her feet (Dad is usually the jester in the family).  And love because it was a laugh she shared with Kid Sister. 

*Or words to that effect.  I don't recall exactly how old I was when this happened.  If I was closer to the teen end of that age spectrum, it is regrettably more likely that I asked her, with all the haughty disdain and world-weariness of a Superior speaking to an Inferior, if she was aware that she had bought a defective product. 

Be With the One You Love

I'm traveling! Again!  Oh, how I love airports. (<-may read facetious but totally sincere)

I was invited to speak at a conference in SFO this month.  The conference ends on Friday so, since I'll be on the West coast already, I'm hopping a jetliner to PDX to visit my kid sister and her posse.  Giddy doesn't begin to describe me!

My SIL and BIL are on vacation at the same time, which means My Beloved and I are on cat-sitting duty.  They live quite far away, however, so cat-sitting include overnight stays.  It just worked out that between my trip out West and My Beloved's o/n stay with the cats that there will be 6 nights and 7 days when we are apart.

This may be a new record for us.

We fell in love long distance which stoked a craving for each other's company that borders on the unhealthy.  Since we have been married, we have tried to stick to a 2-night rule, meaning we're never apart more than 2 consecutive nights.  Sometimes that turns into 3 or even 4, but this is definitely on the outside of comfortable longing.

My Beloved adores his sister and her cats, and I, of course, bleed for my family, too.  We got the "love the one you're with" part down fine.  It's this "be with the one you love" part that we will struggle with this month.

GPOYW

Lunchtime on the trail!

Mmmm....three day old PB&J on a whole wheat wrap.  Moist.

What those of you with a keen eye will note in this photo is the excruciating pain in my feet.  My bunions have blossomed in the intervening years since I last wore my boots.  That custom fit I worked so hard to achieve is for a much younger woman's last, no longer mine.  I ended up hiking out in my sandals.  Good times!

GPOYW

For my 16th anniversary, My Beloved* gave me 16MB of memories

in the shape of R2D2 and C3PO.

*He so gets me.

And Then There Was This...

Sixteen years ago today we said our "I do's".  It was a wonderful day, an amazing party.  Yet that day we felt no different than we had on the day before or on the day before that or on any of the previous two years of days than we did on the one day that started with a sunrise on the Appalachian trail and ended with the gobsmack of certainty in the quickening dawn that our respective compasses had finally found their Norths.

This year, we will honor that special event by heading back into the woods to be alone with that feeling for a few days.  Nothing says "true love" like a man still crazy for me when I'm covered in bug bites and have twigs in my hair!

Free image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

46 Times

My parents celebrate their 46th anniversary this weekend.


(skip to 0:38)

There is No Greater Love

My Beloved did two loads of dishes today and cleaned up the homemade pizza explosion in the kitchen so I wouldn't have to face the mess after a 10hr day and round of grocery shopping.

Are you kidding me?  I so got it made, y'all, and forever glad I locked that down.

The Hole in My Chest

cannot be filled with chocolate
cannot be filled with sleep
cannot be filled with mindless reading/movies

The hole in my chest can only be filled by the company of my family and the love of a 3yo-soon-to-be-4 Spiderman in training who thinks my name is Jennifer.

I Got In For Free

Marriage to My Beloved is like I found a coupon for love.

Memory Decay

My Beloved and I have just returned from a belated Valentine's sojourn to Charleston, SC.  I've been there twice for business in the last 5-7 the years, both times in February when the camellias are in bloom and everything is heavy with spanish moss and romance.  I wanted to share that with him, so we cashed in some travel points and got away for three days.

It was bliss, as is every moment spent with my true love.

It was also deeply, deeply disturbing because, by the second day, I realized that I have never been to Charleston, SC.

When looking at hotel options when we planned the trip, I showed My Beloved photos of the hotel where I stayed the second time I was there, but recommended we find a location closer to the Hyatt I stayed in the first time because it was closer to the historic homes.  I recommended we not linger along the waterfront because I had found it too touristy and commercial.  I told My Beloved that I looked forward to showing him the fountain where I spent so much time collecting potential names for my niece, who was due in a few months, from the bricks engraved with the names of donors who paid for the fountain's restoration.

It was this fountain I was trying to find when I realized that I was in the wrong city.  It was terrifying, frankly.  This was not on the order of misplacing my keys or forgetting my high school mascot.  This was dangerously like getting lost and not knowing how to find my way home.  In fact, that was exactly what it was.  This was a "no fooling" kind of memory loss.

At first, I was panicky with disbelief that I am experiencing failures of this magnitude already while still 30-something.  Then, I was bereft by the aplomb with which My Beloved accepted this lapse and the brief glimpse of what lies ahead for us.  Or, more specifically, what lies ahead for him.

This led to a sobering and decidedly un-romantic discussion about end of life decisions over fried pickles and green tomatoes.  We had discussed this before, but more in terms of options when we're incapacitated due to general frailty and weakness, not completely physically viable but mentally incapacitated.

My uncle just moved his MIL into a full-time care facility due to her Alzheimer's.  She is only 64.  I can be glib and joke that I'll be looking for homes for the under 50 crowd, but the truth is I am reeling a little bit.  The natural impulse is to do "something"...but there is nothing that can be done for this, aside from continuing to blog and record as much as I can.  I feel like this is a signal that we have crossed the rubricon from general to specific and that Plans need to be made like buying in to long-term health insurance or notarizing an advance directive.  In the days to come, it will be this story I relate when asked "how long have you noticed these symptoms?" It feels much like the beginning of my ending.  Granted, its (I hope!) a long novel, but, well, welcome to Chapter 1.

GOPYM

These are for My Beloved.

You make my heart melt.

Merry Christmas, my true love. 

Had Me at Hello

Goosebumps!  I am *such* a sucker for The Fairy Tale.
And, no, that's not a double entendre.  I mean the True Love kind, you boob.

You So Get Me

Last night discussing Jane Eyre (cuz that's how we roll), My Beloved re-told the story of the time in college when we went toe-to-toe with his lit prof at the incomprehensibility of Jane choosing what was proper over love.  (I suppose this is where English Majors and book lovers divide:  you either get the straight-laced Victorian culture or you don't.)  But, as he explained it, true love is not a convenience, not a choice.  (My Beloved would want me to say here that his is not the same as saying it gives a person carte blanche to behave like a cad. Cheating, temptation, etc. are all still wrong and cannot be excused.) Yet when presented with True Love, you must love back and be in love in spite of all else. It is a law of nature, like gravity, and must be obeyed. (Think Buttercup and how she had "less choice than the sun rising in the East".)

I was going to write that it would've been fun to have seen My Beloved's 19-year-old self arguing the philosophy and law of love with an honors college professor.  But I bet he looked a lot like he did last night, holding my cold feet in his lap, reminding me once again how very lucky I am to have found someone who believes in fairy tales like me.

For Blake

 See how the wind moves the water from the fountain?  There was no "safe" place to stand!  Is that why they call it the "windy" city?

Tanned & Sated

It was like a honeymoon every day.

Except with my parents and half my family there.

Go: http://www.gohawaii.com/kauai.  You'll thank me.

Traveling Alone

Like the end of a house party or the day after week-long house guests, the departure of My Beloved for home has left a thunderclap of empty in his wake. we had such fun together exploring San Francisco again! Our first day was overcast and foggy, so we disappeared up Coit's Tower. At night, we walked along Fisherman's Wharf and got an up close and personal visit from a huge sea lion. The following day, we walked from the wharf across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and saw dolphins and seals hunting in the waters below. They were memorable vacation moments.

Now, I am on my own preparing for the rest of the week and the first face-to-face meeting with a new client. Nervous. Homesick. Cold.

I forced myself out of the hotel room today to lookabput on my own, although I'd much have preferred to sit moping in bed. But my parents didn't raise no wallflowers and the adventure is still an adventure whether shared or alone.


/time warp

I'm now back at the hotel after an afternoon of shopping, acupuncture, and a polish-free mani. I'm watching the Tostitos bowl game waiting for my colleague to arrive so I can finally get some dinner. Our hotel is in Industrial Way, Anytown,USA so it'll be an evening of room service unless she wants to cab it to downtown for some sushi (half hoping?). The want to curl up in bed never quite goes away; but I usually feel better for not caving in to it. I've practiced my slides and laid out all my accoutrements for an early early start. I am fearless. (say it with me, folks!) I am fearless....



GO DUCKS!

6hrs Deeper

We're time traveling again for a weekend in Sausalito.  Work is sending me out west, and I'm bringing My Beloved because this is just the kind of pick-up-and-go sexy thing that couples with no kids can do.  Of course, it also helps that he is self-employed and is willing to burn the midnight oil for a week straight to put 48hrs of free time into his weekend, rather than pacing his workload to incorporate the weekend.  In my book, that's love for you right there.  To do this, he has to work for the next seven days from 8am to ~2:30am with 1/2 hour for lunch and 1 hour for dinner.  That's less than 6hrs of sleep a night and 16hrs+ spent in front of a computer or hunched over a drawing table.  I would fail at the "less than 6hrs of sleep a night" element in this equation.  But My Beloved?  He just keeps digging that well a little deeper and never misses an opportunity to show me he loves me.

Somedays we love like this...

And somedays like this...

But it's always Love.

Ouch.

Day One of Attic Restoration:

Sore knees, fiberglass-filled forearms, cramped stiff fingers, respirator-rash face.

Re-discovered pictures from early years of marriage, giggly exhaustion, Happy Wok & sesame chicken.