Love Notes

Valentine's Day is a day filled with landmines for guys. They never are quite sure what to get their girl so they fall back on the old standards: cards, flowers, candy, perfume, jewelry, lingerie. They never do figure out what is the "just right" gift. Any of those can have a negative connotation for the girl depending on her hormone level that day, or the length or stability of the relationship as a whole.

Sometimes, though, it's the little things that show how much a guy loves a girl. Things a guy might not think about.

Case in point:

My sweet hubby has never failed to delight me with some little something on Valentine's Day because he is a big ol' sweetie. I'm assuming he will order flowers because I love flowers, carnations specifically (I hate roses.) He may even remember to get a card too.

But this year, it really doesn't matter if he buys me anything at all. You see, I stumbled upon a testament of his love for me quite by accident.

I was rummaging around in his desk the other day and found an envelope stuck way back in the back of the drawer. The front was labeled, "Notes from Speck." Obviously it didn't say "Speck", but you get the point.

I opened it to find little stick 'em notes I've left for him around the house, in his lunchbox, stapled to his briefcase handle. There are more saved in his papers here and there. I run across them from time to time.

The fact that hubby thinks these little notes are treasures worth saving made my heart fill with love for him. He must love me real much to save such mundane stuff as this.





I think I'll keep him around a while.

Happy Valentine's Day Honey Bunny.
I heart you real much.
Love 147.

Sunday Morning

The cat woke me up this morning. He was making kitty biscuits on the back of my leg in a dreamy-eyed kitty orgasm rhythm. The other two kitties were big furry lumps piled up on the other side of Hubby.

Hubby was asleep beside me, all snuggled and spooned to my body with an arm draped across the small of my back. He was snoring softly like a big jungle cat purr.

I looked at the clock; 12:00. The sun was shining brightly outside and here we were, all five of us, asleep in a heap at high noon. It was cold outside the quilts, the benefit of living in an old house...good sleeping weather. It was warm under the pile of covers and I was not in a big hurry to move from my spot. I turned over and snuggled closer to Hubby and watched him sleep.

Little gray flecks are starting to appear in his hair that weren't there last year. Likewise there are wild gray hairs in his moustache that quirk around funny and tickle his nose. I knew behind the sleeping eyelids were a pair of crystalline blue eyes that made me fall in love with him all those years ago.

I could smell his skin all warm and male. I marvelled at his maleness, so different than my femaleness, that made my teeth sweat. I watched him breathe oh so softly.

He roused a just a little when I turned over. He is vaguely aware that I am here beside him along with all three of his kitties and is happier at this moment than any man should be allowed. The beginnings of a smile are curling up at the corner of his mouth.

I laid there watching him, all full of love for this warm, snugly human being who thought sharing himself with me and the cats was a Good Thing.

I thought: These are the magic moments in life, the times that make life worth living. Let me remember this moment because there might not be another one.

Life Rule #37: If you wake up on a cold Sunday morning and find a warm, naked man under the covers with you, STAY THERE. The best is yet to come.

Old Boyfriends, Old Memories

I was in the same room as my old boyfriend Tony on Thanksgiving day, a mere one table over, and missed him completely. The next day a friend clued me in that Tony had been there with his wife. Dang! We live just 20 minutes apart and had both driven over 100 miles to be in that same room Thanksgiving day and failed to find each other. Just two ships passing in the night. Sigh.

Tony was the first boy I was sweet on. I can't say that I was in love with him because I was just five years old at the time. He was in my first grade class and I thought he was cool. He was the only boy I deemed worthy enough to invite to my sixth birthday party. He knew he was going to be the only boy there among seven little girls and he came anyway. That alone tells you what a sweetie he was.

Here we are at the party. Aren't we cute????? My sister boofed my hair for the occasion.


After first grade we went to separate schools but were in the same Junior High and High School until we graduated. But alas, by 7th grade our paths were divergent and would not cross again. Tony was a young JFK, a member of everything and president of most, loved by the teachers, and destined for great things. I hung out with the stoners. Tony went on to become a lawyer and run for Congress. I...um...did not.

But Tony remained near and dear to my heart all those years, even after I was married. You see he gave me a very special present on my sixth birthday; one I cherished for years and years. It was a white teddybear-looking cat with pink ears. I named him Bear because I already had a real cat. That's Bear in his box at the bottom of the photo.

Bear had a hard plastic nose and whiskers which fell off almost immediately. The poor thing had only a glue smudge for a nose for the rest of its life. I loved all his fuzz off and a good bit of the stuffing fell out of a hole in his arm. Mom sewed up Bear many times trying to keep him alive.

I'm not and never was a big stuffed animal fan. I thought hugging around on stuffed animals was rather silly even when I was a little kid. I had a live cat to hug on so stuffed animals didn't do much for me. But Bear was different. I loved him special just because Tony had given him to me.

When I left for college I packed Bear away in Mom's attic in my box of special treasures. He was one of my few childhood possessions that made the cut. Everything else got trashed because I was now a "grown-up."

I found Bear a decade later cleaning out the attic. He had become hard and crunchy from the heat. I grieved to part with him but he had become a fire hazard and had to go. I silently asked Tony's forgiveness for throwing away his gift when I tossed Bear in the trash bag.

sniffle

I miss Bear.

Tony not so much.

25 Years of Wedded Bliss, Maybe Not

Today is my 25th wedding anniversary. Hubby and I have been kinda, sorta together for 26 years if you count the year we dated before we got married. There was a nasty little episode of an eight-year sabbatical to Texas, but we won't speak of that.

Hubby says his greatest joy in life is having me by his side. I think the boy is a little more than crazy. I'm no saint to live with, but he married me twice so I have no reason to doubt his warped sense of happiness. I have no idea why he enjoys living with an old curmudgeon like me but he does. Maybe it's because he's an old curmudgeon too. We think alike. We put up with each other. We get each other's jokes. We can have intelligent conversations, or laugh at the fact we killed a few brain cells along the way and can't remember all the words to have an intelligent conversation. There's something rather comfortable about living like that. Kinda like slipping into your favorite pair of jeans. They fit you perfectly and you only. Just right.

Tomorrow we will start on Year 26. It will be a little faded at the knees, a little ragged at the bottom, and it will have a little hole here and there. But it will be just right.

Date Night

My hubby of 25 years and I go out each week for "Date Night." This is a time for just the two of us to reconnect with each other and escape from the world. There is no TV, no Internet, no phones, no people, just the two of us. Sometimes we do something interesting, but most of the time our adventures are pretty tame....dinner out, then a shopping trip to Wal-Mart for dog food and toilet paper. Woo Hoo! Exciting stuff.

Whatever we end up doing, we do it together and that's the important part. We talk about how our day went, what bothers us, what we found funny. We talk non-stop. We hold hands. We nuzzle and give each other little kisses in the check-out line at Wal-Mart. (Don't gag here, it's really very romantic.)

Tonight we decided to eat dinner at a restaurant in the neighboring town, about a 40-minute drive. En route hubby commented, "You know, I miss visiting your mother." I was surprised at this revelation. Most men don't really enjoy visits with the mother-in-law, much less miss them. I replied, "I'm sure I can find us a little old lady to visit who lives halfway across the state. She would probably be tickled to death to see us." [Sidenote: My mother was in poor health for two years before she passed away and we visited her every third weekend. The trip was an arduous trek of 1.5 hours each way over bad roads, then later, after she moved to assisted living, the trip was three hours each way.] He said, "It's not the visiting I miss, it's the trip. I got to be with you six hours during the drive....just us."

Wow!

That comment made me realize that after Mom died last Christmas, I was all too happy to stay holed up in my little house and go nowhere and see no one. We had spent far too much of our lives over the past two years driving around the backroads of Arkansas and home sounded like a great place to be. Unfortunately, our little nest has far too many comfortable distractions for us as individuals. We don't take the time to be "us" as a couple when we're there. That's Not A Good Thing.

So, this spring Date Night will be observed in a neighboring county. We will try all the little hole-in-the-wall restaurants Lower Arkansas has to offer. We may even drive two counties away. If my baby wants to spend time with me in the car, who am I to deny him that togetherness?