If you’re a regular reader of these posts, you know that although Suzanne and I have been a thing since 1985, we took a break from each other for a few years– during which time we made our biggest relationship mistakes on other people, instead of on each other. (That’s sort of a joke, but not completely.) I spent most of my break on the other side of the country.
I ended up teaching in Maryland in the 90’s. (I’ll explain how that happened in a future post.) While I lived there, for a year or two I had the long hair you see on these ID’s. I should have been wearing Bow Ties o’ the Day back then, which would have made my whole look more hip, but I hadn’t had the complete neckwear conversion quite yet. Despite what you see in the pix on these ID cards, my hair actually looked nifty. I wore it in a ponytail, which made me blonde from the back. I have no idea why my hairs weren’t ponytailed in these photos. Kinda scary, eh?
That extra poundage of fat you see on my face in the ID snapshots is the kind of weight I call the-extra-ten-pounds-of-fat-you-gain-when-you’re-living-with-someone-you-know-you’re-going-to-leave-soon-but-you-haven’t-yet-been-able-to-extricate-yourself-from-their-evil-tentacles fat. Yeah, that kind of fat.
Circles and browns. That’s Bow Tie o’ the Day. Shirt o’ the Day is seeing the state of the planet more clearly with its zillion pairs of glasses. In this photo, we are hanging with Suzanne in her office for an hour. It’s time for lunch. It’s cold outside this time of year, so our usual lunching at the park is not an option. This place will have to do until spring temperatures show up.
Suzanne eats yogurt for her meal. For my meal, I watch Suzanne eat yogurt. I’m never hungry at that time of day. I like to hang with Suzanne at lunch because I can make sure she takes the time to eat. I like to know she hits PAUSE from her duties for a bit, and also for a bite.
The other reason we lunch together is because we need to right now. This has been a tough year for us, relationship-wise. No worries. We are more than fine, and we will continue to be more than fine. We’ve just had some tinkering to do.
Before we sold the Delta house, it was necessary for me to split my time between both places. Now that we’re in one house, I’m in Suzanne’s face and space all the time. Even though living in one house is exactly what we’ve always wanted, we have both had to make adjustments to our daily routines. The more time we spend together, the more the tinkering pays off.
I also think my summer surgery made last year more problematic, in terms of our relationship. In some ways, it’s made us closer. But recovering meant I had to mostly be a slug, which meant Suzanne had to take over the house and outside errands. She also got a hoity-toity promotion, which means she got handed a long list of more responsibilities, which means longer hours at the office. For a few months, I was just one more job she had to do. And I felt incredibly guilty about that. I still do. Suzanne said she was happy to do it, and even happier that I let her. It’s almost impossible for me to accept help with anything. (Except the computer glitches. Suzanne is welcome to fix my computer issues at any time.)
In the context of these things, can you feel the occasional tension popping up?
With fashion, I always try to achieve dis-harmonic clash. In relationships, clashing is not ideal. Suzanne and I are on the same page on pretty much everything, but there is always a torn page or two in any relationship. There’s always relationship work to be done. You can love someone– as in, you can feel love for someone. But for that love to be “real,” you have to commit to doing the verb of love too. You have to actively love, by doing things to show the love you feel. Sometimes we forget that fact.
