'Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday'

Marriage is amazing. My husband and I have been together a little more than 11 years, married for six, and there are a lot of days when we do everything together all in fluid motions. It's like a ballet of housework and yard work and parenting. Or we hardly see one another and I'm stuck dancing alone through the daily grind. Or I punk out entirely and don't go do things on my own because I'm a giant chickenshit and want to phone a friend in the game of Life, and he's the one I call. What do you mean I'm an adult? Psh.

June 21, 2008: Oh hey, we got hitched.

Since we are individuals and, despite my sometimes neurotic tendencies, I like being an individual, there are some things I don't share with my husband, at least not always in their entirety. Not Earth shattering "I'm hiding bodies in the woods" kinds of secrets, but little tricks of the momming trade that help me get through the money/emotionally overwhelmed/too much going on struggle that I deal with constantly.

Like the fact I haven't used laundry detergent in any of the wash loads for three days. I wash a lot of laundry. Instead I've been tearing through the box of baking soda that I also use for cookies and on occasion in the kids' bath. Our clothes smell like cotton and the washer doesn't stink. I think that counts as a win. Unless he reads this, he's not going to have a clue!

Regardless of me being "home" all day, a lot of times I leave part of the mess our children make so that every once in a while he and I have to pick up together. It's not that I want to lighten my load, but it gives us that 10 minutes now and then to regroup, away from the computers, once the girls are in bed. And we're doing it together.

I try to plan meals that are less carb heavy when I'm expecting my period. I already deal with bloat, I don't need a carbohydrate coma, too.

Now that we have the new bedtime routine in effect, and it's been going extremely well, I sometimes wish he wasn't home when they do bath/teeth/quota and get into bed. It seems there's more bellyaching when Daddy is home than not. For instance, last night, he went to a nerd get together thing and I had the whole routine to myself. Everyone was through the bath and into bed by 8 p.m. and sleeping soundly no later than 8:30.

I also wouldn't give up him being home every night for the routine. When Josie won't stay calm, she'll usually listen to him. He's the more patient parent. I don't put up with too much nonsense when we finally get to the end of the day and that can be bad when dealing with an exhausted preschooler who likes to be overly dramatic about how the shades are fitting on her window yesterday.

If he hangs clothes or makes the bed ... I fix it. It doesn't matter if everything is facing the right way or not, I still fix something. I've established over the last 18 months of this here blog that I'm a little OCD. It's worse since the girls were born. Don't worry, every once in a while I do these things in front of him or he purposely messes up the quilt on the bed and he laughs about how irritated I get and then I throw shit at him and all's well. But still, I compulsively fix things when I get in a mood.

Oct. 2008: Wine tour stop at Miles Wine Cellars on Seneca Lake.

I know, I know, I said I do a lot of laundry. But there are weeks when it stays in the baskets. Or baskets that are only half full get added to when a load finishes drying. All the clothes are folded. I just haven't put them away. This is also why we end up with piles - of clothes, of junk mail, of towels on the bathroom floor - it's the first part of the job we have no problem doing. Finishing the task (putting the clothes away, sorting the junk mail from the stuff we need to keep, moving towels from the floor to the basket in the closet) is apparently the hardest thing ever to accomplish in this house. Ever. Until I'm hit with "the compulsion." This isn't exactly something I keep from the Boy; I just don't scream and yell so much anymore about how pissed off it makes me that I'm usually the only one to take care of the laundry, or that I leave it all thinking maybe someday he'll stop liking the idea of living out of laundry baskets when we have more than enough closet and dresser space. Generally once I tackle the baskets and get everything put away, we're back on track and taking care of clothes each time I wash a load.

Charlotte hasn't napped in her bed in weeks. Maybe even months. Most days if she naps, she passes out in the living room chair. No way am I going to try to lift and carry 40 pounds of sleeping toddler. She's mean when she gets woke up too soon.

I open the cupboards looking for something to eat at least six times a day. I never find anything I didn't already know was in there.

There's almost always at least one argument with a child over opening or closing the curtains to the bay window. Always. Every day.

I enter no fewer than 15 Goodreads giveaways a week. Why? I'm a book whore. I love to read. I love to write. I consider this research. I don't have the money to spend on all the books I want, so I'll try to win them. It's like the lottery minus having to pay for a ticket.

July 10, 1976

Books. I read sexy books ... for his benefit. Sure, I benefit from it, too, but every time I read another steamy novel I tell my close circle of mommy friends or the bookworms in my group that my husband is really going to benefit from my newest book boyfriend. Never will I expect my husband to live up to the perfection of a book boyfriend, though. He's real and tangible, not the work of a literary mind who can create perfection, so I can't be upset that the Boy isn't Archer Hale or Christian Grey or Ridge Lawson. He is, however, coming out in bits and pieces of Brian Stratford, probably because I'm the one writing him.

October 28, 2008

I rearrange furniture and clean when I have a lot on my mind and need to decompress away from the computer, away from my books, away from reality. Over the years, he's stopped asking why I moved that chair, the reason I need to put the bed against the opposite wall RIGHT THIS SECOND and when I moved the coffee table from the front room to the back porch. At least I've left his underwear and T-shirts in the same drawer. For now.

If you've read this far - and this has gotten quite lengthy - you're probably wondering what the point is. Until last night there really was no point to this post. It was going to be space filler. It still is. But now, there's a little more meaning behind it. Today is my parent's wedding anniversary. They have been married 38 years, and it's been 32 years of me watching their marriage - the ups, the downs, surviving diseases and deaths and births - that give me a reason to take into account how not perfect my marriage is, how flawed we really are. Not just me and Ron, but every marriage. Because marriage isn't meant to be perfect. It is a constant process of learning and growing. Sometimes you have to act as an individual, and other times, you're the crutch holding up your other half, but always ... always there is love.