You will never believe what I got for an anniversary present! Better than a trip around the world. Better than a diamond ring. Better, in fact, than sex. Ok, I won’t go that far…but it’s close.

Oh, where was I? Yeah, that anniversary present. A bonafide house cleaner. Once a month, tasked to do the stuff that needs to be done regularly, but not weekly, that I simply hate to do. Baseboards. Mopping. Nooks. Crannies. I’m getting giddy just thinking about it.

I am so glad my husband is capable of reconsidering his stance on some things.  High ground is highly overrated.  And in my case?  It’s dirty ground, too.  Welcome to the dark side, Tim.  My guess is that once the cleaning folks wash the windows, it really won’t be so dark anymore.  In more ways than one.

Tim and I have never been ones to celebrate Valentine’s Day. We both think it’s a rather absurd holiday, and, at the risk of sounding all sour-grapey, I really don’t care all that much about it. Every once in a while we might go out to eat on the 13th or the 15th, or we might make a trip to Target to read each other corny Valentine cards, but we really don’t make a fuss about it. The last two years, in fact, Tim’s been out of town on Valentine’s Day, and such is the case this year, too. Valentine’s Day, quite simply, isn’t a big deal in our house.

Which is why I was a bit surprised last night to find a plastic Target bag on top of the fridge with a note attached to it. Do not open until Valentine’s Day, the note reads. Aww, you shouldn’t have. No, really, he shouldn’t have…because, um, I didn’t.

Not to be one-upped — because that’s really all Valentine’s, and our marriage, I must add, is all about — I called the hotel where he will be staying tonight through Thursday. I arranged for a piece of chocolate cake and some strawberries to be delivered to his room tomorrow night, with a card attached from his loving wife. Aww, I shouldn’t have.

And, in reality, I didn’t. Because, you see, when I went to pay for the room service, the woman indicated she couldn’t take a credit card payment over the phone. I paused for only a moment before I responded, “Eh. Just charge it to his room.”

Happy Valentine’s Day, Tim. And, please, don’t forget to give ‘em a tip.

41 minutes ago, a scrappy older man with a greying, curly pony tail stepped into our home to give my husband his first guitar lesson. Merry Christmas, Tim.

2 minutes ago, I did an auditory version of a double-take, realizing it was my husband banging out an old Wilco tune in the room next to me.

The man I love now plays Wilco? Pinch me.

The other day, Zoe brought home a drawing from school. It was a drawing of her family. In the foreground were three two-legged figures — Mom, Zoe, and Evan — and a four-legged figure, presumably Cal. And, up in the sky was an airplane, labelled for clarification by her teacher, “Daddy flying in a plane.”

Daddy is not a pilot. Daddy has been travelling a lot for work recently, much to everyone’s frustration.

I cringed a little bit when I saw that picture. And when I asked Tim if he’d seen it, I did so hesitantly, not wanting to draw attention to it further. “Yes,” he said, “It made me feel like crap.”

I tried to offer him some solace, but I knew the drawing was an unwanted reminder of the stress he’s been enduring these last few months. Zoe’s innocent observation — not at all loaded with anger or sadness — reflected a sad reality.

I got a little taste of the same today. Zoe’s art project today was a pair of outstretched hands, presumably a hug-on-paper. On it, there was a prompt, which was completed by Zoe and transcribed by the teacher. It read “I love my family because…my daddy is my best friend.”

Another innocent observation, this time reflecting a warm reality, and surely destined to put a salve on my husband’s heart.

As for what it does for me? I’m just choosing to ignore the unwritten implications of her statement. I’m not a big fan of chopped liver.

A
vintage box of Legos — carefully stored since a father’s youth and
finally deemed suitable for an eager little boy — retrieved and
opened. Father immersed in pleasant reverie. Son swelling with
excitement.

But the strongest emotions came from the mother, the
wife. Unearthed after twenty years, the set was remarkably and
inconceivably complete despite a childhood’s enthusiastic use. As she
poured over the pieces her husband had toyed with so long ago, she saw
a window into the child who became her soulmate. Sturdy. Classic.
Imaginative. Strong. And careful enough to keep it all together.

Raleigh, NC: 73 degrees and sunny.
Gillette, WY: -10 degrees. MINUS TEN DEGREES. Who cares what the sun is doing?

Too far from home, in so many ways.

Come home soon, Tim. And hurry. Looks like we’re getting snow tomorrow.

Years ago, before Zoe was born, my husband and I went to a Lonely Heart’s Valentine’s concert at a hip local club. Local soloists were set to sing cheesy ballads and gut-wrenching tunes for the Valentine’s grinch in all of us. It promised to be an amusing and entertaining “school night” — Valentine’s Day, you see, fell on a Tuesday night that year.

The advertised door-opening was at 8 pm. Knowledgable that no self-respecting band would begin at such an early hour, we showed up “fashionably late” at 9 pm. Not a soul was there. We stayed, though, with the encouagement from the bartender saying that the band would start any minute. Soon, a young, ultra-cool crowd in hip fashions began to gather. Still, no band, though. And we were clearly beginning to be out-hipped by the crowd around us. By 11:00 pm, with no immediate promise of a band beginning its performance, surrounded by a crowd of people far cooler than we ever could hope to be, and burdened with the prospect of waking up early the next morning to trudge to work at our jobs, we admitted defeat, hung our heads in hip-less shame, and went home to our square house with the wicker chickens in the kitchen. How far we had fallen.

Live bands at local clubs have been rare birds in the lives of the Hansens ever since. They’ve gone, not quite the way of the Dodo, but certainly akin to the way of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

But, last night! A sighting!

Deep in the backwoods of North Carolina, there they were, Tim, Kristy, and a band called Kickin’ Grass.

The locale had changed significantly, from a hip, urban nightspot to a back-roads country store. The crowd, too, had changed. Aged, significantly, with the flair of hip and cool taking a decided turn toward the adorably quirky and slightly baffling. And the music? A different genre, yes, but otherwise, still the same: great music by local artists with talent bigger than their hometowns can hold. But the biggest change? An 8:30 pm show time. And the band started on time.

Dinner out. A great band. And home to roost with the wicker chickens by 11:00 pm. A great evening, indeed.

My Husband. Duh. No Brainer, huh?

I’m grateful for him for all the usual reasons, sure, but I’m grateful for him for a couple not-so-usual reasons, too. Thanks, Tim, for enlightening me to the wonderous taste of broccoli on pizza and for showing me that Velveeta really does make a far superior grilled cheese sandwich, even for this cheese snob. I thought of you today as I made one for myself and for the kids at lunch. You walk on water, you do.

(Next time, though? Let me make the grocery list. Thankful, too, I am, for the very rare opportunity to chide your ass. Seasoning and tortillas sure would be nice with that taco meat, wouldn’t it?)

Twice in one week, I’ve found myself startled into a distinct time in my past. Periphescence.The first time, I probably saw it coming. After sitting on a floppy disk for over ten years, the advent of The Switch (from PC to Mac), made the task of transferring those files to a less format-bound medium impossible to ignore any longer. Those files? The bundle of emails that make up the entire beginning of the relationship between my husband and me. Just the act of exhuming that floppy disk — itself a relic — uncovered memories and emotions raw and real. Of course I would read a few of the emails in the process of transferring them. Of course I would.We were so young. 23. 24, maybe. He was in graduate school; there, probably, because he didn’t know where else to go upon graduation from college. I was in college, again; there, definitely, because I didn’t know where to go while I was in college the first time around. We were 800 miles apart. We’d known each other, as friends only, in college, but had only begun to date two years after graduation. Ours was an online relationship before there was such a thing. Too poor to afford many phone calls, we burned up the fiber-optics cables along the eastern seaboard with our email for the better part of a year. And in my hand this week I found myself holding the floppy disk containing those emails. Of course I would read them. And of course I would be transported back.The second time I found myself startled into that past came much more as a surprise. I hardly recognized it. And then, when I did, what a warm feeling it was. It came the other night, as I was watching television alone. Tim is out of town, you see. The phone rang. It was Tim.”Can I call you right back? Prison Break is on. I’ll call you at the break.” Three minutes later, when the show went to advertisement, I hit redial on the phone. Tim picked up immediately, and we resumed our conversation. As soon as the television show came back on, we hung up again, only to repeat the insanity once, twice, three more times throughout the course of the television show. Somewhere in the midst of that insanity, it struck me. We used to do this, back then. No, we didn’t have much money for phone calls, but when we did? We’d do something completely insane like watch a television show together over the telephone. I don’t know what kind of love I’d call it.It’s startling, in a way, to be pulled back into a time in your past and be able to see things so clearly, to feel things so real-like, to be there once again. It’s startling, too, to feel that reality and compare it to the reality I live today. God, it’s almost comical, how different our lives are. We were so young, back then. And for a few moments this week, I was there, once again. And yet, our lives aren’t so different now as they were back then. Sure, there’s the kids and the house and the dog and the Crazy. And there’s none of the time that we had back then. But there’s still us. And so, I still stand by my claim that, though there are a lot of doubts in my life, the one thing I’m certain about is my husband. Flashbacks are nice. Warm Fuzzies are nice. But I’ll take the Here and Now.

(It’s almost destined to be a series, but I’ll resist, at least for the time being. I will, however, let this story slip in.)I don’t know about you, but this child-rearing thing is maddening. I catch myself losing my temper at little things, knowing full well it’s decidedly not the empty soap dispenser that’s at the root of my rage — it’s the 4,263 other things that have piled up just before the soap dispenser emptied out. But that clarity only serves to worsen my mood. If I’m so smart, god damn it, why can’t I take this soapless bump in the road?And then I watch my husband this morning at breakfast. My solid rock of a husband. My smooth as a glassy lake of a husband. My water off a duck’s back of a husband. As Evan purposely drops the 3,425th cinnamon life cereal square on to the floor, directly disobeying his father’s 3,424th command, my husband positively loses it.And I positively smile. I’m not crazy, after all.Schadenfreude.