{"id":244,"date":"2011-05-15T09:10:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-15T09:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2011\/05\/i-love-my-husband\/"},"modified":"2017-03-09T23:44:36","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T04:44:36","slug":"i-love-my-husband","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2011\/05\/i-love-my-husband.html","title":{"rendered":"I Love My Husband"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I just love my Ogre. I really do. Sure, he picks on me and teases me and endlessly laughs at my romance with chocolate, but he is such a gem of a guy.<\/p>\n

On Friday, I woke up feeling awful. I\u2019ve had either some sort of lingering, evil cold or (weirdly, for the desert) pretty severe allergies for about two weeks now, neither of which are particularly conducive to packing. But the Ogre needed to study, and the house needed to be packed, so I croaked out a hoarse \u201cgoodbye\u201d and kissed him out the door and slogged my way through the day. He planned on being home around 4 so I could take the car and go to the store to get a few things for dinner, so you can imagine my surprise when he walked in the door at 3:45, carrying a cute little vase with my favorite orange gerbera dasies in it!<\/p>\n

The Ogre doesn\u2019t get me flowers often. It isn\u2019t that he\u2019s not thoughtful, it\u2019s just that his mind is so occupied <\/i>with philosophy and poetry and things that make me sleepy when he begins to talk about them that\u2026he doesn\u2019t think about it. But today, he did. \u201cBecause you were feeling bad, and you made sure I had time to study anyway,\u201d he said, by way of explanation. <\/p>\n

Then yesterday. Yesterday, we racheted up the packing to a new level. We attacked the living room.<\/p>\n

Up until then, the packing I was doing was the unobtrusive kind. I\u2019ve been packing drawers and closets, leaving out only the clothes we need for three weeks at a time. I\u2019ve been rifling through old papers, tossing out broken knick-knacks, and generally doing small stuff. I had thought, all this time, that I was packing up the things that it was easiest to live without. <\/p>\n

But yesterday we packed all the books in the living room. We\u2019ve got two large bookcases in the living room, each two or three rows deep with books. Books are our life, and they surround us. Every home we\u2019ve ever lived in has never felt like home until the books are unpacked. <\/p>\n

After a few hours, I sank down onto a stool in the kitchen and looked at the living room. The floor was littered with books to donate and old cooking magazines to throw away. The books we were keeping were in neatly labeled boxes. The shelves were empty.<\/p>\n

It hit me all of a sudden, as I was sitting there, that this is why I\u2019ve been packing away closets and drawers. I didn\u2019t want to see this. We are really leaving this place, and I\u2019m sad to go.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t that I\u2019m terribly attached to this apartment, or this town, or this state. I\u2019m not. I\u2019m attached to who we\u2019ve become here.<\/p>\n

This is the apartment we moved into when Charlotte was just a few months old. Liam was born in this apartment, right on the living room carpet. This is the apartment where I made peace with being a wife and mother. This is the apartment where we became a family of five, and much better family than we were before. <\/p>\n

And now we\u2019re going to be apart for a while, and I\u2019m not ready for it. I won\u2019t be ready for it, no matter how much time I have to prepare myself. I\u2019ll just have to deal with it.<\/p>\n

And I will deal with it, hopefully with some grace and good humor, because it\u2019s what my family needs at the moment.<\/p>\n

But yesterday it all seemed overwhelming. And when I get overwhelmed, I tend to short-circuit and feel that the immediate task in front of me is impossible. And at 5 pm, that task was cooking dinner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t cook dinner,\u201d I said to the Ogre. He offered to go to Trader Joe\u2019s to pick up some steaks, but I didn\u2019t want steak. \u201cWell, what would you like?\u201d he asked me, seeming to sense the teetering of my emotional see-saw. \u201cPizza\u201d I said without hesitating. \u201cAnd chocolate.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve gone back to sugar and grain-free eating this week, so pizza and chocolate were definitely not appropriate answers. So my husband said, very gently, \u201cCalah, do you really think that that pizza will make you feel better right now?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes!\u201d I shouted emphatically. And so my husband went to the store and bought a pizza and a brownie mix, and after dinner we put the girls to bed and watched Dr. Who.<\/p>\n

I woke up this morning with a stomach-ache, knowing that my husband was right all along but loved me too much to insist that we not eat pizza (and perhaps wanted some pizza himself). And even though I know I\u2019ll be fine, and that we will all survive the next few months, all morning I\u2019ve been asking myself, how am I going to make it for six whole months without this man<\/i>?<\/p>\n

Because I really, really love him. \u00a0 <\/p>\n

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I just love my Ogre. I really do. Sure, he picks on me and teases me and endlessly laughs at my romance with chocolate, but he is such a gem of a guy. On Friday, I woke up feeling awful. I\u2019ve had either some sort of lingering, evil cold or (weirdly, for the desert) pretty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nI Love My Husband<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I just love my Ogre. I really do. 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