Everything I write about him is a love poem. Like this. And this. And this. And this.
Everyday love song
02/14/2012 By 7 Comments
Love and squirrels
02/13/2012 By 7 Comments
Last night, she was nervous.
What’s wrong? I finally asked, after watching her pace around silently for fully five minutes, wearing a dramatic frown.
Her brow crunched and twisted. I’m worried… Because I haven’t gotten you or Margaret Valentine’s Day presents yet.
Margaret is my ex Jamie’s girlfriend, who he’s been seeing for a few years.
A Month of Love: On Love and Money
02/07/2012 By 24 Comments
Just three years ago, I was a full-time stay-at-home mom. I had no real job or income, and I hadn’t worked outside the home in any proper sense in almost ten years.
Saying that just boggles my mind, on many levels.
That I’ve been able, in three short years, to take what was then a hobby – all of this blogging stuff – and so rapidly turn it into something vaguely resembling a viable career is kind of astonishing. Time travel back to late 2008 and you’ll find that the sum total of my income from blogging then amounted to maybe enough to cover groceries every week. Some months, not even that. But then I wasn’t in it for the money, and since my husband made more than enough to cover all our expenses and meet all our needs, my contribution seemed sort of, well, irrelevant. And in all honesty, I thought about it in just those terms. I was, in a word, an idiot.
Here he comes to save the daaaaaaay*
02/03/2012 By 16 Comments
This morning was the kid’s High Honor Roll ceremony at school. I wasn’t there.
She’s had a couple of these before – something to be expected when your kid is a Mad Scientist Super Genius (I’m raising her to use her powers for good, don’t worry y’all) – and needless to say I make a point of attending the ceremonies, always brandishing my giant MY KID IS NUMBER 1 foam finger while wearing my MY KID’S AN ACADEMIC OVERACHIEVER BUT ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT AND OF COURSE THE STRETCH MARKS AND LOSS OF BLADDER CONTROL tee (the latter’s a bit wordy, but POINTED, I think you’ll agree).
However, this time around the days got confused (a flier sent home said the ceremony was yesterday, not today, so I’d planned my week around that), and by the time I figured out the flier-related FAIL I had my entire Friday morning scheduled out and couldn’t reconfigure things at the 11th hour. Major, major parental bummer.
I sheepishly told her last night I wasn’t going to be able to make it, and she of course took it like a champ – I was the one pulling the hairshirt on and giving myself leather whip lashes. THANK YOU MOM GUILT MAY I HAVE ANOTHER?
A Month of Love: Should marriage be “work”?
02/02/2012 By 49 Comments
You hear it all the time – on TV, in magazines and books, and of course on the internet. So much so, that it’s become assumed wisdom. Marriages take work. Hard work. Lots and lots of work. Every day, you have to work at your relationship. Work, work, work. To hear people discuss it, being in a marriage sounds like a second, unpaid job. But should it be like that? Does it have to be like that? And if your marriage is really so much hard work, might that not indicate that something is in fact wrong – that perhaps the fit just isn’t a good one, that you’re not compatible with your spouse and might never be?
On my post introducing this Month of Love series, Jim commented:
I may be in the minority opinion here, but over the years I have concluded that love is or love isn’t. You read and hear so many experts talk about working at relationships and things couples can do to strengthen their understanding of each other blah blah. My philosophy is if you have to work at it, it’s not gonna work. 99% of anyone reading this will disagree. Experts will disagree. But to me, you fall in love. Falling is an uncontrollable thing. So is love.
And indeed, many voiced their disagreement in comments, supporting the marriage-is-work idea. I, however, wasn’t one of them.
A Month of Love: Making it Good, Making it Work, Making it Last
01/31/2012 By 29 Comments
Over the past several months I’ve had a number of friends ask me about my relationship with Charlie, about how we do it.
Oh, get your mind out of the gutter – not THAT kind of “do it” (though, to an extent, that’s relevant)! No, they mean ”do” the relationship. They want to know how it is that after a few years together we’re still so absurdly, stupidly moon-y and in love. How does that work – in practical terms and otherwise? How do we navigate problems and issues and make our relationship healthy and happy on a daily basis? One dear single friend wrote:
TEACH ME. Please please please tell me how you guys make it work… what frictions you have, how you work through crapola, how your daughter gets on with him. In short, tell me that there is Someday Hope, or that it’s all an appalling ruse and you are horribly malcontent.
