birthday lunch

"Babe, now that its your birthday, we've entered that part of the year when you are two years older than me. Now I get to brag about bagging an older man, and you can talk about your trophy wife."

"Babe, you are not a trophy! You are my equal."

[whines] "Baaaaaabe! I'm not your trophy wife?!?"

"You are seriously two different people. You are one person with me, and a completely different person with everyone else, especially in your profession."

"Well, of course I'm different with you. My relationship with you is totally different than my position in relation to all other men."

"Ha! See? I didn't want to spend 15 minutes of my 45-minute lunch listening to a barrage of feminism."

"Awwww! So you DO think I'm a trophy wife; you just didn't want to offend me?"

"Duh."

"HOORAY!"

he gets it!

I am a big fan of a book called The Five Love Languages. The book argues that different people show love in different ways. For example, you might show love by spending quality time with someone, giving gifts, or through physical touch. If you're me, you show love through words; if you're Husband, you show love through acts of service. Usually, the way that you naturally show love is also the way that someone can make you feel most loved.

Different love languages mean that people feel loved in different ways. The most amazing example of this was the time when Husband told me that when he loads his dirty plate after dinner (an act of service), he does it to show me he loves me. To me (words girl), loading your plate is just what you do when you get a plate dirty. So, I have to work hard to try to do acts of service for him (and recognize when he does them for me), and he tries to use words to show love to me.

These kinds of discussions about love languages can crop up in the strangest moments. Over the fourth of July weekend, Husband and I went to see the film Public Enemies. In the movie, Johnny Depp plays a bank robber who falls in love with a French girl who checks coats at a night club. The first night they spend together, he gives her a beautiful fur coat. As I'm totally mesmerized by the movie, Husband leans over and whispers in my ear, "I think his love language must be giving gifts."

when he walked in on me watching The Bachelorette

"These guys are ridiculous."

"You have NO idea. A guy earlier totally locked up. He got out of the limo and couldn't even say anything."

"If I was on that show--"

"WHAT?!?!"

"If I was on that show, I would--"

"WHY ARE YOU ON THAT SHOW?"

"Babe, if I'm on that show, its because I'm a Bachelor."

"WHY ARE YOU A BACHELOR?"

"I'd just walk up, lay one on her for like 10 seconds, and be like, 'You won't forget me now.'"

this is what happens when your wife has a blog

"My love for you is like a pine tree. It is always in bloom."

"Did you hear that on a movie?"

"No, I just made it up."

"Why?"

"So you'd actually write something nice about me on the internet."

so... we did it

I feel like I owe it to Husband to give him props for all the support he's given me in the past few months, a dark period known as LOOMING COMPREHENSIVE EXAMS/PhD APPLICATION MADNESS. In our house, we recently lived through a perfect storm of crazy, nearly four months of tears, screaming at laptops, and pacing in front of the mailbox that finally came to an end yesterday afternoon. For any graduate student, two most horrific times in your life are applying for your next program (a process I compare to standing naked in a room full of admissions officers who are poking you with sticks and telling you that you are not good enough) and taking your comprehensive exams to finish your current program (for me, this involved writing 37 pages in three days and then defending those 37 rambling pages to my unhumanly brilliant profesors). Unfortunately for me (and really, who am I kidding, for Husband), these two events happened simultaneously. Thus, the crazy.

I know its hard to believe that I would need emotional support during something like this because I am such an even-tempered, rational person, but I can honestly say that for me this has been one of the defining moments of our marriage because I don't know that I really knew what it meant to be someone's partner until Husband taught me what it means over these past few weeks. His support has been unflinching. Sometimes I imagined him standing outside our house with a shotgun to keep Those Mean People away from his wife because SHE HAS HAD ENOUGH and just needs a break already. He brought me Taco Bueno and took me to get ice cream and massaged my head when it ached, and if you know me, those things are the equivalent of a million dollars plus a really good hair day.

The real low point came a few weeks ago at my parents house. If you know me well enough to read this blog, then you probably know this story already. Even so, I feel the need to put this out there because I think sometimes we have to admit our vulnerabilities. That day at my parents' house, I had what I believe was my first clinically-diagnosable panic attack. I still had no idea if I would get into any PhD program and I was swamped with work for my exams, and then I found out that I needed to have yet another procedure on my toe which would involve NEEDLES IN MY TOE. For some reason, this new development exceeded the amount of Things I Can Handle and I absolutely lost it. I was crying hysterically and having trouble breathing and leaning over the toilet because I thought I was going to vomit, and then Husband was there. He pulled me onto the floor in his lap and held me against his chest and took long, slow breaths. Once I was breathing evenly, he just held me like a child and let me cry. I had never felt so completely torn apart, but I had also never felt so completely loved.

Thankfully, it got better in the following weeks. I was offered a spot in a PhD program with great funding and a department full of people I really like. Last week, I wrote that crazy exam over three horrific days, and yesterday I officially passed my examination defense. I called Husband on my way home and he told me to get home quick because he was on the driveway and ready to celebrate. When I got home, I actually found him streched out on the bed, and while he claimed to just be tired from his day at work, I understood that on some level he was exhausted from weeks and weeks of holding me together. I climbed into bed and burrowed into his chest and asked, "babe, are you excited its over?". His face buried deep in the pillow, I heard him offer a relieved little "Yay!".

And then, we celebrated.

cheeky little bugger

I may have mentioned here before that one of Husband's favorite pasttimes is Provoking My Wife. Apparently, its always good for a laugh. In the early days of our marriage, I could never understand why Husband would bring up subjects that I considered sensitive, and continue to beat that horse until I collapsed, breathless from all my screaming.


In his defense, when I say he brings up "sensitive subjects," I'm not referencing Western apathy toward genocide in Africa; I mean those really important social imperatives, like "cooking is women's work" and "careers in the liberal arts are meaningless." The really impressive thing, though, is that even though I should know that he does not hold any of these views, he convinces me so thoroughly with his delivery in that moment that I seriously feel the need to argue with him. Loudly.


Eventually, I learned to notice, mid-rant, that he was smirking; after hitting him a few times, I could go on with day. At least this way, I only spent about half the energy I would have exhausted in CONVINCING him that teaching is a profession that is completely devalued.


Even better, I have finally reached a zen place where I can recognize his scandal-mongering for what it is and refuse to respond. Like Ghandi. Or Yoda. I had been doing really well at rejecting his games until this past week when we were visiting his parents. I don't remember exactly how it came up, but Husband, his mother, his aunt, and I were all sitting around talking about laundry. [I know, right? You WISH you partied with us.] And Husband said, AND I QUOTE, "Yeah, I never have clean laundry. If I want clean clothes, I have to wash them myself."

[!!!!!!!!!!#&!&$*!%*!&&@**@!*#!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

Again, I knew he wasn't being serious. I knew he was just playing Provoke My Wife. But he said this IN FRONT OF MY MOTHER IN LAW. Could I possibly let MY MOTHER IN LAW think that I wasn't taking care of her son? That was a low blow, even for Husband. He KNEW making this kind of statement in front of his mom was the one thing that could set me off. The inner battle raged on as I fought to keep my expression neutral. You know, breezy.

"Wow, she is going to kill you."

"Look at her face. Its turning purple."

"I can't believe she's not yelling. Seriously."

[Breezy. I'm breezy. BE ONE WITH THE BREEZY.]

"I usually have to vacuum and clean the bathroom, too."

And that was the day the breezy died.

Pillows, a follow up

"Husband, I want my pillow back. You stole it, and I want it back."

"You gave it to me."

"No, I didn't give it to you. YOU STOLE IT. You KNEW my neck hurt when you tried to give me your pillow. That is MY pillow. MINE. Motha! bought it for me right before I left for college. She and I bought it. TOGETHER. So, not only are you stealing neck comfort from me, you are also stealing A MEMORY."

"You gave it to me."

"I DID NOT. I realized one night that my neck hurt, and that you had taken my pillow. I made you give the pillow back, but you only stole it from me again. This happened again and again, the stealing and the reclaiming and the complaining and the stealing and the whining, and despite my best efforts to annoy you into leaving me alone, YOU KEPT STEALING MY PILLOW. Finally, out of sheer exhaustion, I just stopped making you give it back. I gave up. You wore me down to my last shred of dignity."

"Right. You gave it to me."