Capture 43 unique observations about my sweetheart man

I don’t have a fancy schmancy title for this, because I am still semi-speechless after my holiday surprises today.

21. My sweetheart man is an effective and compassionate learner.

Last year, I felt neglected and somewhat disappointed on this hallmark of romantic holidays (enough said).

This year, I had hoped that by now, my sweetheart man and I would have figured out a way to bridge the distance and be TOGETHER on this holy of romantic -shrines- nights. It was not to be.

I had planned on spending tonight being catatonic, curled up in a ball on my bed, crying for my man that was not here.

Instead, I am happy and here to tell you why: my guy really surprised me with his forethought AND thoughtfulness. He had a lovely card and a large balloon bouquet sent to my office, without a hint that I would be getting anything …. eeeeeeee!!!!

The best part was this morning he was all casual, as the conversation went something like this:

I’m worried about how you’ll hold up if you go to work today.

Why, dear?

Well, I know how your allergies and breathing can bother you. All the other women in the office and their big bouquets of flowers, it’s bound to trigger an attack, God forbid.

(I have allergies and asthma….)

I stifled a giggle before trying to reassure him.

Honey, I think I’ll be just fine, really. I don’t think the bouquets will outnumber me at all.

Really? he asked incredulously.

Then, I deftly switched the subject. No need to corrupt him so soon, is there?

As a rule, I try not to burden my sweetheart man with my troubles. We both lead busy and challenging lives, and I like to think of myself as a positive and life-affirming person.

However, sometimes—especially lately, this has not been the case.

20. My sweetheart man is my favorite kind of firefighter, the emotional kind.

We got to spend a blissful vacation together over the Christmas and NYE holidays. However, toward the end of this time, it started to be marred by some physical symptoms of mine that I tried to ignore.

I can’t ignore them any longer.

I am in pain, and I am afraid.

My man was already scheduled for a visit to see me this weekend, for some much-needed R&R (the R-rated kind, giggles). I feared that if I told him how I was really doing, he would want to postpone the visit for another time. I mean, who really wants to be around for all of that, anyway?

My sweetheart man does.

I have an appointment with my doctor tomorrow afternoon. I’m still going into work, then I had planned to leave and check myself in for the tests that I have a feeling will immediately ensue.

I took a risk, this morning, telling him how things really were. I said quietly, I really need you here. I’m angry that you’re not here, and I know that’s not fair.

Then, I went about verbally trying to convince myself and him that I would be all right, doing this alone. I guess he didn’t buy it, because I got a surprise email via proxy, from the airlines. He paid for a last-minute upgrade to move his flight so he will arrive here right before my doctor appointment.

He’ll be here.

As needed.

Right here.

For whatever comes next….

It was a particular entry that inspired me to write on this topic. It caused me to reflect on 2007 as the miraculous year that it was, especially in regards to my relationship with my sweetheart man.

19. He reacts positively and undefensively when I tell him that my love for him is a choice.

My guy and I (for those who don’t know us or have been living under a rock for the past 20+ months) are in an LDR (long distance relationship). For reasons of TMI, I choose not to reveal where and when we met, or who he is—but the inner circle knows. :)

Recently for the holidays, I got to spend an uninterrupted 12 days with him at my home, amid the Christmas carols and wintry weather. It was delightful!

_mostly

I learned that despite my nearly two years of denial, he has … HABITS! He leaves the butter and the bacon bits out overnight. He has unpredictable hairs and toenail clippings. He has a snore that he gets when he has a cold or when the humidity isn’t just right in the bedroom where he sleeps. He won’t remember what I said five minutes ago but can tell me the number of fat grams in the blueberry muffin I am holding to my lips, as he suggests I eat only half.

It is at these times that I look at him, with what I hope is a withering, long-suffering look, and say:

I love you, I choose to love you.

Then, I usually kiss him or tweak his nose or give him some kind of indication that, at least for now, his soul is spared. :)

In this past year, we have weathered financial troubles, career challenges, mechanical failures, travel-related disappointments and colliding itineraries. We’ve each been in the hospital twice for various emergencies, and we’ve grieved each other’s losses.

When I am ill, he says I am an angel.

When he is ill, he is … an angel … a forgetful, sensitive, clinging angel who cannot get enough tea or petting.

He is my man. I hope to one day be his wife.

And I choose to love him.

I’m sitting here at my desk, at 11:00 AM, sorely missing my man. I’m trying to conjure up some happiness, and I’m trying to focus on all the things that are right with my life, my home, my day spread out in front of me like a great picnic. However, I fail, until I remember #18.

18. My sweetheart man provides my allergic nose safe flowers, fit for a princess.

This morning, my eyes fall upon a vase of flowers. These are not ordinary flowers (and I would take a picture if I hadn’t misplaced my digital camera, dang it!), for flowers of the pollinated varieties make me wheeze and sneeze, sadly enough but true. I adore flowers of all colors, shapes and sizes, but the more I like them, the more they torment my sensitive respiratory system.

Therefore, my sweetheart man came up with a solution. One of his trips, he found some antique blown glass flowers. He brought four of them, perfect specimens, unbroken for thousands of miles until they landed safely in my lap – as I opened the box of them in the airport on one of the nights I picked him up from his trips. These were beautiful, rare, unique and most of all, safe – no allergies!

We spent part of the weekend looking for just the right setting for these flowering beauties, and we got glass pebbles and a lovely little vase. Together, we poured the pebbles and sank each fragile glass stem into the vase. The arrangement sits on my desk, where the filtered light from my large windows illuminates the planes of delicate glass from behind.

Even with asthma, pneumonia, whatever respiratory evils come my way, I can enjoy my resurrected love for flowers that my sweetheart man nutures like a tender gardener.

17. My sweetheart started singing this to me today over the phone, in a delightful sing-song tone as he does so often to amuse me with his serenades:

I’m marrying a princess!

She comes equipped with a rotating ponytail!

She speaks 14 languages, some of which are human!

A genuine American Princess!

Complete with installed contrariness!

Nothing less than a genuine Princess will do!

Something my sweetheart man just said tonight inspired this entry.

16. He both likes and fears my “scary potatoes”.

I used to hide the fact that I could cook from those that I dated, for I feared that I would never see the inside of a restaurant again. Now, I revel in cooking for those that I love, or even merely like, LOL!

Early on in our relationship, I was making a traditional Sunday dinner for my sweetheart guy—tenderloin filets and potatoes with all the trimmings. When it came time for me to arrange the meat and do the other hundred things I needed to do to serve dinner, my man was in the kitchen, trying to “help”. His helping consisted of moving all the items I had carefully placed within my reach, letting the animals in to run roughshod, and bumping knees and elbows with me at every turn. Oh, he meant well, he always does, but I have a small kitchen, and I move quickly and with purpose when I am putting together a meal.

As I was removing the perfectly baked potatoes from the oven in order to dress them, again my man was like, “Can I do anything else to help, dear?”

“Actually yes, dear, you can. Please back up now,” I said, not wanting to get jostled from behind whilst reaching into a 400F degree oven.

I removed the foil-covered potato beauties from the oven and let them rest for a few minutes while I readied condiments and side items to be brought to the table. Again, my sweet guy bumped heads with me and I almost dropped the vegetable platter.

“Honey, why don’t you sit, in there”, I said, motioning to the dining room table. “I’ll be in there in just a second.”

I said this as I was also preparing the potatoes to be dressed. The way I do this is I take the rested, freshly baked potato still in the foil and I SLAP! it hard, on the counter. One fine-placed slap, and it makes the potato split down the center and fluff up from the inside out, before the foil is even opened.

My guy froze. I then picked up the second potato, and before I completed the second slap—quick as a bunny, he sat down faster than the dog.

Ever since then, he calls my baked potatoes, scary potatoes.

_giggles!

It’s been too long since I’ve contributed to this goal, but tonight I think qualifies my sweetheart man yet again.

15. I say he must like them, meaning his women, crazy. And he agrees with me!

Tonight, I had a movie theater shop. The good part is that my shopping company pays for me to see a movie, get refreshments at the concession stand, as well as a shop fee for a completed report. The bad part is that after my movie (I saw “Evan Almighty”), I have to race home and do a lengthy report, before its midnight deadline.

Tonight was unusual because I saw a rather early (7:30 pm) movie for my tastes, so I had plenty of time to come home and finish the report before it was due. Then, my sweetheart man casually makes a comment about the high prices of food, since he is on his mobile doing his grocery shopping with me as I write. I am sure he does not realize that when he tells me that where he is, a gallon of milk is selling for between $4.25 and $7.00, that it makes me panicky and anxious.

I remember some of the stores in Florida, before the storms, stopped selling milk altogether when the prices reached $6.00 a gallon. Then, when the storms came in 2004 – 2005, I am sure it was very tough on food retailers. FEMA and the state got real tough on price gougers, and everyone complained so much about food prices. Some places would just stop selling certain types of food altogether; dairy, produce, meat, and just about anything fresh became difficult to find a lot of the time.

This news motivated me to hoist myself out of my comfy chair and, instead of panicking for a midnight deadline on my shop report, I was racing to the store to get milk on sale before midnight when the sale prices changed. I got three gallons of milk for $2.39 each, and a few other stock items on sale that I enjoy. The dark panic started to settle, until I started walking down some of the other aisles, looking at shelf-stable items I used to rely on, like the prepacked Dinty Moore meals in a plastic tub. They can be boiled in water vs. a microwave in a pinch, as long as you don’t reuse the boiling water for drinking (it will make you very sick to the stomach).

I started remembering all the things I used to have to do to survive, that I no longer take for granted—even things like milk. I started fixating on the idea that I need to also have some powdered milk in the house like I used to have in Florida, for when milk is unavailable for long periods of time. I was racking my brain trying to remember this little metal can of pretty decent dry milk I used to buy, a Spanish brand. I was trying to recall all this while racing down the grocery aisles and speaking with my man on my mobile.

Anyway, after I got home and put my precious dairy bounty up to safety, my man and I started cruising the internet, trying to recapture my milk memory. Until I benefited from this research, all I could remember is that I used to buy this product at Wal-Mart, when it could be found, that is. We finally figured out the name of the brand, Nido, by Nestle.

Yawning, I tell my man how I should go to Wal-Mart tonight to see if they have my precious Nido milk. He says I should rest, especially since it is nearly 1 AM here. The conversation goes something like this:

Him: Where is the off switch????

Me: If I call Wal-Mart and they say they don’t have it, I will want to go because I won’t believe them.

Him: Tell you what… if I can intsall a RAM dump switch on you, YOU get to install a CPU shutdown switch on me.

Me: But if they say they do have it, I will want to go because I will want to buy it all up. But if I don’t call, I will wonder….

Him: Who are you kidding… you’re going!

Me: But I am tired, honey…. (pouts)

Him: If you don’t call… you will be up all night worrying about if you had been and they had some and then they sold out.

Me: Am I driving you crazy yet?

Him: So how about this. YOU’RE GROUNDED! Blame me…. :)

Me: ok, under one (crazy, neurotic, demanding) condition.

Him: I call Wal-Mart for you.

Me: uh huh :) – I want to know the size(s) and price, is that ok? (in a small voice)

My sweetheart man calls his local Wal-Mart at nearly 1 AM, and gets a rather bemused grocery manager to comb the store for the coveted Nido canned milk. The most ironic thing is that the store manager asked my guy if he was a mystery shopper!?

Anyway, that is this installment of my sweetheart man story. I figure if his Wal-Mart has it, then mine may have it, and I will check after I have had a long restful sleep.

Yes, my gentle readers, I did use that term: terrorist. Read on, if you dare!

14. My sweetheart man is indeed a laundry terrorist.

Usually, my sweetheart man is the most considerate, proactive person I know. Especially since my recent injury, he took on the task of always keeping up with my laundry. My laundry room is in the basement, down a steep flight of stairs. I was physically unable to take the stairs, even slowly, for any reason—until recently.

A few days ago, I decided that as part of some extemporaneous PT, I would carry down some laundry to the basement and get going back into my usual routine, albeit more slowly than status quo would permit. I happened to see a clean load of clothes in the dryer, so I figured I would start sorting and folding them.

Slacks, good.

More slacks, great.

Denim, super.

Cotton panties, hmm, I paused in thought. I hope these weren’t dried on high heat?

My musings were answered when I pulled out what used to be a generously cut pure silk sleeveless tank top blouse, which now would struggle to fit the eight-year old girl across the way.

This fuschia silken wonder, which used to make me feel so pretty and sexy, is now about as useful to me as a hanky, with buttons no less.

A free pass I should give him? Sure I should, and did! Oh, did I not mention the DOZEN high-end brassieres that honey-pie put in the dryer and cooked dried until they were suitable for a prepubescent girl vs. the mature woman that I am? (However, he did make good and offer to replace some of them, the next time my preferred clothier had them on sale.)

However, lessons learned sometimes are worth repeating … they must be, and I have the evidence languishing in my laundry room, with everything but the crime tape surrounding the scene. And that is why I call him a laundry terrorist!

“Lucky” thirteen deserves a unique entry, and this one is special because it just occurred a few days ago.

13. My sweetheart man is a murderer, and for his punishment I blinked at him till he crumpled.

This past weekend, one of the wonderful things my sweetheart man did for me was to mow my lawn, both front and back. Also, I have some lovely flowerbeds that frame the house on nearly every side, and they are flanked by stone and raised high. Right now, they are overgrown with weeds, and I’m not really able to weed them out myself. In the past, I have paid the neighbor boy who mows to do the weeding, but he only snips them and leaves the roots.

Anyway, it was just lovely what he did, mowing the entire yard—and as a bonus he decided to not bother me at all while he did it. He encouraged me to sleep (which isn’t hard with an extra hydrocodone, I might add!) while he labored in the morning sun.

The unfortunate part is that he decided to also whack down the so-called weeds in my overgrown flower beds. What he didn’t realize is that he also obliterated about two dozen gladioli shoots that were struggling to live again another year. I had planted these all when I moved here over a year ago, with my own two hands. I was so proud of myself for fostering new life in my new home – this was my very first gardening project.

Double misfortune occurred when this realization became learned by me in front of M. and her ladybug daughter A. I was struggling with emotions, trying to be calm but also to communicate my feelings to my sweetheart guy, all under M.’s watchful gaze which seemed to be brimming with glee.

Wow, you really mowed those down, all of them, huh? M. said to him, studying my face for reaction.

I was trying not to cry, or raise my voice. My sweetheart guy looked crushed. I’m such an idiot, I’m so sorry, he said in a low voice, head bowed.

You didn’t know, I know, baby, I said, stroking his hand. But I was right inside, you could have asked, I said with a sputtering sigh.

I was trying to ignore M. watching us, but it was difficult not to get distracted. A. was watching too and immediately came close to me. What’s wrong? What happened? she asked, clutching for my hand.

Oh, I explained to A., I’m all right. I’m just sort of sad because he accidentally mowed down my flowers. I said.

My guy looked downright dejected. He knew there was nothing he could do, and now three sets of disappointed eyes were laying heavy upon him.

Well, I said, as I surveyed the shorn green stalks, maybe they will come back next year.

His eyes brightened. Yes, they still look quite green. I bet they will come back, for sure. Maybe even this year. And we can plant more, anything you want, anywhere you want, dear. What flowers would you like, that don’t make you sneeze?

I laughed, Oh honey, all of them do! But I love them so! grabbing his hand and sliding it to my waist.

I rested my head on his shoulder, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw M. take A.’s arm and lead her away. I snuggled into his neck and said, As your punishment…. and I paused, to look him in the face.

He opened his eyes a little wider and tensed his lips. I blinked slowly and deliberately, three times, making him wait. You will take me to Red Lobster. We will start with lobster bisque, end with chocolate cake, and have yummies in between. And I will drink Coke till I float! I proclaimed.

His eyes relaxed in relief. He helped me into the car and off we went, for a lovely meal, with my murderous sweetheart!

My honey has an aggrandized sense of guilt, without even trying – doesn’t he?

12. My sweetheart man says he feels as if he is cheating on me, if he has an opportunity to enjoy himself without me.

Yesterday, my guy had to go on business travel. When we spent the weekend together, he shared lots of things with me: sweet nothings, jokes, kisses, songs—and a budding cold. Monday morning as I drove him to the airport, he winced every time I swiped at my reddening nose or cleared my throat.

He’s been on travel on Monday and again today, and I worry about him flying when he’s feeling poorly. Tonight, he called me when he landed to let me know he was safe. He was describing the plush suite his company acquired for him, with every amenity imaginable.

I feel like I’m cheating on you. I should be there, with you, he sighs. I have no right to a place like this, without you. You would enjoy all of this so much, dear.

I tried to reassure him, but he continues to worry. How are YOU feeling, dear? he asks, as he tries to get me to rat myself out.

We have a several hour time difference, so I had to convince him to hang up with me to get some dinner at a reasonable hour and hopefully get a good rest tonight.

Isn’t he delightful?!