Just a random thought...

I was sending The Hubster a return text tonight, telling him to have a good evening at work. As I was ending the text with our standard, "I love you", I inadvertently typed "live", rather than love. I corrected it and sent it on it's merry way; yet, hours later, I find myself thinking about it still.

You see, I do "live" him. What else would you call it? Our individual lives are melded into one. I oftentimes pick up after him, much like one of our children. I care for him when he's sick. I listen to him when he needs to vent over a current frustration. I prepare his meals, clean his dirty laundry, and make sure he wakes up with his alarm. Raise and care for his children. I trip over his shoes on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and grumble about the washing machine full of loose change that I always find when he tries to help me by doing some of his own laundry.

Along the same lines, when something is upsetting me, he is the one I turn to. I always know that he will be even more upset than me; my very own Champion of Justice. He tolerates my incessant desire to decorate our home - even jumping right in up to his armpits and helping when I'm sure he'd much rather be golfing. He takes the time to go grocery shopping with me, telling me that it's not fair for me to have to do it by myself and that there's nowhere else he'd rather be. When I'm having a girly, "fat", day he pulls me in his arms, kisses my head, and tells me that he thinks I'm beautiful. Even when I'm wearing his baggy sweatpants and a t-shirt three sizes too large. He tries, in his own manly way, to care for me when I don't feel well...and takes it on the chin when I whine because the cheeseburger he brought me is not my idea of a cure for the flu.

You see, way back when...almost two decades ago...we were "in love". I still love him, but it's transcended now. Now I'm in LIFE with him...and from where I stand it just doesn't get much better.

Sometimes a gal just has to give in to the evil...

Case in point, tonight in our little cottage. I've had a muscle cramp under my shoulder blade for three days that is PAINFUL. Thinking I'd soak it out I ran a hot bath, turned on my favorite Pandora station and relaxed. A little while later The Hubster poked his head in the bathroom to ask me a question ('cause, you know, taking a bath alone when you're the sole female of a household does NOT happen. Ever.), and mentioned that he liked the song that was playing.

I should have resisted, I know.

Good girls just don't DO bad things like this.

I knew how mean it was.

In the end; however, I couldn't hold myself back. Without missing a beat I got a confused look on my face and said, "Honey? Umm...what song? There's no music playing."

Did I mention that The Hubster has a tendency to get spooked easily when it comes to the paranormal. His eyes got saucer-sized, and that head popped back out of the bathroom as quickly as it had appeared. Of course, no before he heard my raucous laughter and realized that I'd made a monkey out of him.

Oh, and in case you were wondering? The song that caused the moment of panic is below. Enjoy!

Dear Son,

Contrary to popular belief I do not enjoy punishing you. I am neither trying to ruin your life, nor make it hard. When you choose to rage against the rules you are given, however, you leave me no choice.

Contrary to popular belief I do love you. Unconditionally and irrevocably. It is infinite, without beginning or end, and continues to grow as I watch you begin to morph into the man you will become.

Contrary to popular belief, as your mother, I am even more upset than you right now that you had to be punished. You may be on a school bus, grumping and grumbling over your evil witch of a mother (and, yes, I'm aware you're possibly using harsher language than that...but allow me this tiny bit of delusion, okay?); however, I'm trying to function through a mountain of work while nursing a broken heart. Broken because I was forced to break yours. Broken because being a good parent means you have to do the hardest thing in the world (i.e., cause your child heartache) in order to help your child learn right from wrong.

One day, far from now, you will understand the difficulties and intricacies of being a parent. You'll know that it is both the best and worst job in the world. Most importantly, however, you'll know that every grounding, every punishment was something far greater than Mom being mean and evil. It was Mom whispering, "I love you more than myself. I love you enough to cause you a little pain now, to prevent you from suffering great pain in your future. I love you enough to stand my ground, to teach you to follow the rules. I will gladly cry for hours after punishing you, if it means that you will be better for it. I will suffer through a thousand heartbreaks if it prevents one from coming your way in the future because of what I should have done."

Always & Forever,

Mom

Yesterday

Today The Hubster celebrates his 41st birthday. To commemorate the occasion I wrote him a little story centered around our first meeting on Facebook and tagged him in it. You can see it below.

I posted this video along with it. 

That song perfectly sums up our relationship. I'd marry him yesterday, today, and tomorrow. No hesitation, no doubts. Now we sound like newlyweds, huh? Nah. We've been together for just shy of 17 years now. Pretty much conjoined twins from our first date to the present. Has it always been easy? Umm....NO! I can't tell you the number of times that it would have been easier to throw in the towel and call it quits, rather than fix what was broken. The Hubster and I don't think like that, though. We're fixers. We got married determined to grow old and gray together. It'd be kind of stupid to throw all of that away just because you're both too stubborn to work on yourselves.

ANYWHO....I'm off track here. Writing that little story for him has made me wax poetic about the passage of time in our lives. Whether we're on this earth for a second or a century it's still just a blink of the eye. You see, to me, it feels like just yesterday that he barked out the order for my phone number. When I look at his face, now starting to show the lines of aging, I can still see the smooth skin, crooked grin, and dimples that are forever stamped on my heart from our first meeting. I still feel like the young girl who repainted her nails 4 times the day of our first date, because I couldn't decide on which color I wanted.

Just yesterday I was wrapping our youngest son up in his hooded towel after his bath, heading to his room to get him diapered and dressed. We had a ritual, you see. As he was getting lotioned and powdered we'd sing "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes". Then, as soon as he was dressed, we'd sing "Ten Little Indians" on his itty-bitty fingers. A quick brushing of his sweet smelling hair and it was off to the recliner to read Please Try To Remember the First of Octember, which was always sure to get a giggle. 

That sweet little baby will officially be a teenager in 2 short months. He's spent his day evenly divided between playing PS3 and taking care of me, as I'm down for the count with a bad cold that's trying its best to turn into bronchitis. He made me a bagel and bacon for breakfast. He's brought me glass after glass of ice water. Heated up some leftover chili for my lunch. It seems so unbelievable that he's already almost grown, that our time as parents is almost over.

See what I mean? Yesterday is just chock full of things that just happened...even if the reality is that they happened almost two decades ago. That's how fast it passes. You blink and it's over. I guess I could allow myself to feel maudlin about it. I'd rather feel anticipatory, though. I'd rather look forward to the next blink...the next breath...the next yesterday, because I have a feeling they're going to be just as special as today's yesterday is!

Abracadabra, Presto, KAZAM!!

Utter Clutter, Batman!

Around this time last year we redecorated our living room. The Hubster moved his gargantuan television to the wall above our fireplace to help make a feasible floor plan, and I built melamine shelves in the little niche beside the fireplace to house all of the electronic must-haves that attach to the television. We were delighted for the shelves, save for one aspect. Board game storage was below the shelves and, while we always keep it neat it just made everything look cluttered!

Then, around June last year, the retail store The Hubster works for was doing a HUGE drapery reset. This meant that all of the floor samples were being replaced. Rather than throw these samples away the store decided to hold a silent auction on all of them, with the proceeds going to a children's charity. Ummm...all that fabric? Yeah, I drooled a bit (okay, more than a bit, but I have some pride!) and begged The Hubster to bid on my behalf. He did. We won. I was the proud owner of hundreds of drapery samples. The possibilities were infinite! To date these samples have made a panel for an odd, octagonal window in my bathroom, been shared with, and inspired a living room and dining room redo, for my mother and father; and, now, utilized to hide my tidy yet cluttered board game storage area!

This is REALLY about to happen!

The only problem was how to hang it. We bought a dowel rod, but couldn't figure out how to secure it under the shelf properly so that the brackets didn't show and there was no gap between the shelves and the curtain. This past week The Hubster and I were cleaning at my parents house and I was hanging things in a newly reformatted closet in their guest room. I saw the closet bars and had a EUREKA! moment. I asked my father if just the closet bars and brackets were available for purchase, as they were part of a kit. He wasn't sure, and I went about my cleaning with my brain hard at work planning on finding a time to head to the home improvement store and see what I could find. A few minutes later, bless his heart, he came downstairs and presented me with a package of the coveted closet bars and brackets! They were left over, and he had no use for them. Gee, you think I was excited?

The Hubster, hard at work on
his Honey-Do List!

Yesterday was the first day of The Hubster's first vacation of the year. We're heading to Cincinnati tomorrow morning bright and early for our first childless and petless anniversary trip since June of 1999! WOO-HOO!! Just a quick, weekend jaunt to a baseball game (Go, Reds!) and a nice hotel. We'll be back Monday, and are planning on spending the rest of the week getting some things done around the house that have piled up. You know the things I'm talking about...getting the fireplace cleaned up and the damper closed for summer, fixing squeaky doors and leaky faucets, some painting, and the doozy - moving our outdoor building to a lower location and fixing the floor. After we had an unexpected free day this morning, thanks to thunderstorms and a cancelled ballgame for our youngest kiddo, we decided to go ahead and tackle the curtain project. I headed to the sewing machine to cut and hem the drapery sample to the correct length, and The Hubster got busy cutting the metal bars to length and attaching the brackets under the edge of the shelves.

The whole project, from the gathering phase to the finished product, took about an hour. We're both absolutely tickled with the results, and unbelievably enough we did the entire thing without one loss of temper on either side! Now THAT is proof that it was a truly magical project!!

Abracadabra, Presto, KAZAM!!
Utter Clutter, you have been puttered!!!

A Cherished Visit

Anyone who knows me knows that I've been pretty darn sick for the last week. My hubby decided to share his cooties with me, and I have been down for the count. As is usually the case with a bad case of the cooties everything has now settled in my chest, making sleep a commodity that is hard to get my hands on. Last night I sat in my hubby's ratty recliner (why he loves that thing so I will NEVER understand) reading Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Battle of the Labyrinth until 3:00AM, praying the entire time for sleep to come to me. While reading I found my thoughts drifting to my grandfather, who passed away in 2007. We were very close, talking to one another every morning at 10:00AM, and 3 years later I still feel a pang in my heart every morning at that time when the phone doesn't ring. Finally feeling myself nodding off I dashed to my bed and got a fitful 2 1/2 hours of sleep before it was time to get the kids up and off to school.

My youngest got home from school at 3:00PM. At this point I was suffering from blurry vision, and had a pretty horrible headache. I got his snack, settled him into his homework routine, and returned to the couch. Finally, at 4:00PM I felt sleep, blissful sleep, settling over me. When I gave myself over to it I had a visitor waiting for me on the other side. My beloved grandfather was there! We were visiting, I was cooking him dinner, and we were planning his birthday party for later that night. He was SO excited about it, beaming and looking up at me with such love in his eyes. I awoke an hour later, and when I opened my eyes I swear I could smell the combination of Ben Gay and Black Suede that was his alone. I wanted so desperately to go back to sleep, to see him again. Had he lived to be 150 years old I still would not be ready to never see him again. My heart broke when I realized that I couldn't go back to sleep, that life demanded that I remain with it, rather than visiting with someone who had passed. Forcing myself up, I went over my youngest's spelling words and began cooking dinner.

Maybe my brain was giving me comfort that it new I needed. Maybe, just maybe, he did visit me for a time, knowing that I was sick and missing him more than normal. I'll never know, and I never want to. I just hope that he'll show up again someday, and that I can see that smile and the love in those eyes that I miss so much again. Oh, and just in case our beloved that have passed are checking in on us? Thank you, Papaw, for coming to see me. I love you!

1-11-22 to 1-27-07