‘Morning Lover


Back in our LDR days, Rob always wrote me a morning greeting email which, if I wasn’t too impatient and peeked for the night before (I was up late, late in those days with insomnia), I would find first thing when I logged onto my computer at work. There was always an endearing greeting and though some people pooh-pooh email as inferior to real pen and paper letters, I have saved every email that Rob has every penned to me, and they are as dear on the screen as any letter in my hand could be. 

We hardly email each other these days. Now that we are physically together, our mode of communication has switched to a phone call in the afternoon and, of course, we eat lunch together nearly every day. Still I love getting an email from him out of the blue like the one I got a few Wednesday’s ago. 

‘Morning Lover is how it began and though it was only a link to a powerpoint on asthma, it reminded me of what were essentially our “courting days” of yore. Only we were already engaged and yore was just a year ago. It seems to me though that I have known Rob forever. That he has been a missing person in my life – all my life – and these little missives are just one of the many small ties that bind us now as they did in some other time I can’t quite remember but know existed.

Rob’s greeting of a year ago today was “Simply and plainly. I love you.” He went on to compliment a recent blog piece I’d written and tell me that I was talented and how much he loved being my muse (and he was and still is beyond all other people or influences to a point that astounds me daily). Then he gave me a list of quotes because back in the .Mac blog days I always tried to have an inspirational quote to go along with my entry. I foolishly believed I might be helping those at the YWBB who peeked at my blog. I am past the idea that I did much good there (or much damage either) and believe that my stay there was orchestrated for Rob and I to reconnect, and for us to meet up with a select few people who would bless our lives with wisdom or encouragement. 

These mornings he greets me with kisses and nose rubs and his beautiful smile. His eyes are bright blue orbs that even the sky up here cannot match, and I love the way he looks at me in those first moments when I awake (because I seldom beat him to consciousness though when I do it’s a treat to watch him sleep).

I know it probably seems as if I spend an inordinate amount of blog space on my husband and how wonderful I think he is, but in my mind I have yet to write something that truly does him justice or describes perfectly the way I feel about him. So even though today isn’t an anniversary or an out of the ordinary day, I am going to take the time to say,

“Morning Lover.”

And be glad that I can.

The Hobbit’s Life for Me


An interesting post by a fellow writer, Damyanti, led to a blog piece about a man who has escaped the gerbil wheel of modern life to concentrate on himself and what he loves. Rob and I often discuss what it would take at minimum to have the kind of life that allowed us the freedoms to pursue what we loved and still keep a roof over our heads, food in our tummies and raise a child. We have dreams but the plan to the right path hasn’t quite materialized. Not yet anyway.

Where would you “run away” to if money were not the object?

The Love Doctor


We watched Hitch with Will Smith Friday night. It was a romantic comedy about a man who sold his services as a “love doctor” to the geeky men of Manhattan who were in love with women that were clearly out of their league in the appearance arena.  Hitch (Will Smith) merely taught these nice, but lacking in confidence, gentlemen relationship skills that helped them gain confidence and allowed the women of their desires to see them as the really wonderful people they were.  It’s wasn’t magic.  In fact much of what the Will Smith character says to his clients is basic: Listen to what she says and respond in kind, be yourself, don’t treat a women like an object.  But while he is helping these men be genuine, he is using what he knows to scam himself into short-term sexual relationships because he is afraid of falling in love after being hurt by a girlfriend who cheated on him.  Of course he runs across and is attracted to a woman who has the same problem and they implode all over the budding relationship of one of Hitch’s clients who is in love with a celebrity heiress.

I didn’t like the movie aside from the side story of the accountant in love with the heiress.  I thought the story lacked subtlety and it was too easy to guess what would happen next.  And there were a few clichés about women I found vaguely insulting puzzling.

Eight out of ten women think they will learn all they need to know about a man and where their relationship is going from the first kiss? If that is true then I am deeply ashamed of my gender. My late husband was not the best kisser at first.  He learned quickly but if I were to have judged him solely on that first kiss I would be someplace completely different now.  And the first time Rob and I kissed was after we’d told each other “I love you” and Rob didn’t even know what I looked like prior to making the declaration.  So much for needing to kiss to determine future action. The whole idea is such a high school girl ideal and who wasn’t naive and Disneyfied at that age?

Women relate dancing to sex. We’d never have sex if that were true.  When I was in college all the really great dancers turned out to be still in the closet gay men.  I have only rarely run across men who can really dance.  Now Rob can dance.  He taught me to two-step, though my Catholic school education makes it hard for me to follow and not lead, but this was after we got married.  I have no complaints and think the whole dance/sex thing is some man neurosis.

A women’s best friend has to sign off on her love interests. Not in any reality that I have observed. Women love who and where they will and no one, not even a best friend, can keep a woman from jumping off a cliff with or for a guy if that is what she wants to do.  I myself don’t live my life by committee, and I am hardly atypical in that respect.

There is a happily ever after that is also telegraphed well in advance, but as Rob observed, “Nobody died.” For us that is a good night at the movies.