Day 47: The Things We're Scared Of

I'm scared of bridges. No, seriously, I am terrified of bridges. Not the kind of diagnosed phobia that comes with pills and recovery steps. It's more of a white-knuckled loosening of the bowels each time we cross a bridge. Add to that my husbands tendency to drive toward any body of water he sees, and I'm a wreck. Sometimes I just creep down in the seat and hide until it's over. This is unfortunate, considering we often travel over the Piscataqua Bridge, a high ramped up structure with signs advising drivers to beware of dangerous winds on the bridge. I'm scared of bridges because I don't want to die and I especially don't want to drown. And I can't wrap my mind around a structure that extends half a mile through the air with silly little steel beams holding it in place. I'm also afraid of scary movies, scary music in movies, crime shows, and this one book my sister made me read a few years back about a killer who ends up being in the house the whole time. It was a short story and I still think about the way he clears his throat as the story ends.
Rich is afraid of NyQuil. He thinks he won't wake up again. He'll force himself to stay awake and listen to the beating of his own heart. Me, I love a chemically induced slumber that takes away flu-like symptoms and leaves one feeling better, if a bit groggy, the next morning. But he'll be coughing and stuffed up to the ceiling before he'll take even a sip of the medicine. I know this is related to a childhood experiment where he drank an entire bottle of NyQuil in order to catch a buzz and then forced his fifteen year old self to stay awake, convinced if he fell asleep he'd never wake again.

These are the tangible things we fear. The funny bits that others find amusing. But there are others I fear. Like failure. The look of a disappointed mother. Being alone. Most of all I'm afraid that love will find my house too cold to stay and will move inside another.

But I know that the only way to get over my fear of bridges is to go over that bridge again and again until it becomes so familiar I don't even notice the wind and the water. Maybe it's the same with love. We hold onto the people who love us. We tell them a thousand times... after every phone call... as well fall asleep each night. Because they need to know, but also because we need to know what we have. That we are loved, that we are not alone.

Day 46: The In Laws

It's true that when you marry someone you also inherit a family. Overnight, all of their history and drama, photographs and tales of survival become yours.

For us, my family has been incredible. I suppose any wife might say this of her own side of the tree, but it's as though Rich has slipped seemlessly into the fabric that is the DeGeorges. This is partially due to the welcoming nature of my parents and my father's ability to recognize a kindred spirit and extend himself graciously. It's also due to the fact that Rich is a country boy at heart who found himself at home on their twenty acres of woods, beside a warm wood stove. I knew he would fit and I remember being so proud to have this family to offer him. Sometimes In Laws really sweeten the deal.

And sometimes they don't. I once heard someone wise say that a wife should never speak ill of her husband's mother. They said that husbands will always choose their mother over their wife, in an argument. I don't think there's much truth in this, but I remember it often when I'm speaking of my own in-laws. Rich's father died eighteen years ago, but his mother is very much alive. She calls often, leaving angry voicemails in a coughing voice laced with emphesyma. She wants to know why he's not moving home to take care of her. She wants to tell us she's on disability again, she's taken another employer to court to pay for another banged elbow. And she's going dancing on Saturday at the Fifties Club where the rum and coke's come easy. She says "kidsss, why don't yous cawl me back," her native New York and misguided plurals seeping through the phone lines, and I'm embarrased. What's worse, I know other things. I know about his unfortunate childhood. When backhanding a child was ok and a dark closet was suitable for timeout.

I want to love his family as I love him. I keep looking for a good piece to grab onto, something sturdy. But it's like I'm reaching toward rotted wood and the trunk of his family tree mushes in my hands. I know every tree is worth saving, but this one I don't want to touch.

How do you forgive the people who hurt your most beloved? How do you love them and make them your family when they are so different from your own?

Day 45: Haircuts and Such

"Just pull your scarf a little bit higher and no one will notice."

We're at the the company Christmas party and all the gel in my handbag cannot hide his new haircut. Or half-haircut. I've managed to nicely clip most of the shaggy hair, leaving only one unfortunate clump on the lower left side. It pushes past his ear like a sideways ponytail, looking obvious and uncomfortable and he pulls the plaid scarf up around his ears. It's seventy degrees and we stand together, me in a strapless dress, him with a scarf bundled around his head.

I don't know why he asks me to cut his hair, my reputation with scissors is memorialized. When my sister was in high school, she wanted a cute new short haircut and I managed, completely unintentionally, to snip one spot completely bald. It had nothing to do with the fact that she's always been much cuter than me, although this was seen by many as an attempt to even the score. The truth is, I thought I was layering and angling, and it all got out of hand. She cried and then she yelled and then I cried and I promised to stay away from other people's hair. Several years later she had me dye her platinum blond hair a chestnut brown. Again, why me? It's hard to tell what's been dyed and what hasn't, and in the end she ended up looking like the calico kitten downstairs- a messy combination of blond and brown and orange.

So, I don't understand why anyone, especially the ones who know me best, will come up to me with scissors in hand and asks for "just a little trim." But he does, and I did. The front is too short and the back is too long and the wings by the ears won't stay tucked. I say, go spend the twenty bucks on a barber, but now he's too embarrassed to show his head to a professional. So we'll wait a week or two and he'll probably ask me to try again.

Is this love or promiscuity? It must be love, because when you love someone- whether it's a sister or a husband, you put your very self in their (scissored) hands. You say that you trust them to take you and trim you up a bit. Knowing that it may not turn out pretty, knowing that every other time it's been a disaster, you still risk it all. Because one of these days it's going to be a sweet haircut, one that makes up for all heart breakers along the way.

Day 44: The Love of a Dog that Hates the World

I love dogs. I love big goofy dogs who wander up to strangers and nuzzle them for treats. Dogs who groan and roll over when a stranger knocks, annoyed only to have their nap interrupted.

But the dog that loves me hates the world. Micky has always loved us, from the moment we pulled up to his puppy home in Grants Pass, Oregon. He abandoned his brother to trip over himself as he explored our laps. The first night at home he cried and cried these lonely howls in our bathroom. Rich got out of bed and lay beside him on our side of the gate. In the morning I found Micky curled against the gate, as close to Rich as he could manage. He shows his love for us in demonstrative ways. If he sees me crying, he'll hop onto my lap. When I get up in the morning he dances good-morning circles around me. And whoever feed him gets a sloppy thank you kiss, whether they want it or not. Sometimes we come home from work to find him cuddled up against my ratty college sweatshirt.

But he barks the angriest snarls at our neighbors. We can only walk him on cold and stormy days because if he sees anyone outside on his road, headed toward (or away from) his beach, he will try his best to drag us, barking and growling in any human or canine direction. Once, Micky saw a man getting his mail and he dragged Rich nearly 30 yards to the mailbox, barking and growling and promising a disaster. The man ran up his driveway as fast as his slippers would take him. It's embarrassing and we've tried everything from classes to training to electric shock therapy.

Having an ill-behaved dog is alot like being married. The idea is considerably more romantic than the reality, and it seems like everyone else has the perfect version of both mutt and marriage, while we are left with the behaviorally challenged. The truth is, most of the time it takes work to love- both dog and husband. But we don't love because of what we get, we love because somewhere along the way we chose- this dog, this spouse. While it might seem easier to drop the two of them off at a farm somewhere and wish them the best chasing rabbits and squirrels, we don't. Instead we wake up to their good morning twirls and we love them for their sloppy kisses and we work through the rest.

Day 43: Yes, dear

The older man smiled at us and said, "In all my years of marriage, I've discovered the secret to success in two small words; yes, dear." I was waiting for what would turn out to be a disappointing glass of sauvignon blanc. The bartender continued to speak as he perused through the bottles before him. He went on; "in fact, there was a study some years back, and it showed that 80 percent of marriages are successful when the man just says yes, dear. That's all it takes."
I took the glass of white and smiled, saying "I suppose that depends on your definition of successful."
"Where both partners are happy," he concluded, then tossed his Santa tie over one shoulder and popped the top on Rich's Amstel.

So I thought I would try this yes, dear mentality and it lasted all the way through one grocery shopping expedition. But as my carnivorous husband piled on pounds of protein- all natural cage-free chicken, pork loin, fresh ground sausage, and steak tips, my yes, dear turned threatening and I pushed the cart a little too hard, fighting not to use my grocery-store veto powers. Instead I picked out generic brand everything else and (mostly) let it go.

A yes, dear mentality might make a marriage simple, but it doesn't make it stronger.

Most of the muscle in our marriage has been forged from our fights. Early on he would avoid all conflict and I would go looking for it. I remember standing in the kitchen of our first apartment throwing anything I could find at him; dish towels, a pizza box, an empty ketchup bottle. I wanted a reaction. You see, there's nothing more aggravating than trying to wrestle a statue.

The first time he yelled back at me, I threw my arms him gushing, "I'm so proud of you!" He wasn't proud, he was livid and we proceeded to argue about why we couldn't save money or why he had to drive Boston-style all the time or why I didn't know by now that you can't flush a clogged toilet twice without waiting for the water to refill. And how it's not ok to use his clothes to sop up the mess.

Maybe for some people it's enough to just keep the peace. Maybe a successful marriage is a quiet one. Not for us. For Rich and me, this marriage is not about being successful or surviving. It's about growth. It's about pushing each other to be bolder, to be kinder, to forgive. And so we'll never be a yes, dear couple. But we'll always be a couple, and we'll always speak the truth.

Day 42: The Nature of Love and Food

Desire is a bowl of macaroni and cheese. Homemade with sharp cheddar and a buttery crusted topping. But love, love is a spinach salad and three miles on the treadmill.

The first two years of marriage, I was full of desire. We snuggled and napped and were pleasantly inactive together until I woke up one September to realize I was thirty pounds heavier with nothing (like a baby) to show for it. I joined a gym, cut myself off from cheese and learned to eat that nutty dirt-flavored raw spinach. Fifteen months later I've managed to shed forty pounds, and this is not about my weight loss plan, but there's something to be said about the nature of love and food.

I always thought that love would be a continuous plate of comfort food. Lots of flavor and fat and simple carbohydrates. This was a love I wanted, one that would always feel good. One that I could imagine taking shape and bubbling in an oven somewhere. A love that would adjust to me. That would know exactly what I craved and deliver with flavor. What I wanted was desire, maybe passion, perhaps romance. But a diet of romance will pack on the pounds. If there's only passion, the stomach may be satisfied, but it won't be healthy.

I'm learning that love is more like a spinach salad. It doesn't taste as good as I hoped, but it sustains. Sometimes I look at the salad and I want to eat everything else on my plate first. And I have to make a decision to eat each bite. Just like I sometimes make the decision to love my husband when the bubbly feelings are nowhere near. Add to that the perseverance of exercise- and sacrifice- and a healthy marriage begins to take shape.

Don't get me wrong, love- or even a solid marriage- is not about what we look like or how attractive we are. But the nature of love and food are similar in that it's not about what tastes good (or feels good) so much as how this person (this food) adds nutrients and balance into our life.

Day 41: The Winter Days

Walking on the beach this morning is a paradox. I'm bundled up with goose down and layers, so warm I can feel the sweat on my back. The sun is bright, it's twelve degrees of clear salty air and the tide is going out, leaving slabs of frozen sand. Mickey slides across them, his legs going in all directions. Rich runs ahead, my two boys bouncing their energy back and forth as they weave across the sand to the rocky cove that we've claimed as our own. I poke at the frozen sand, pulling bits of nature from the ice. A smooth piece of sea glass, mottled and pocked with texture. A baby starfish, no bigger than a nickel. He is frozen and curled around himself, poor guy. There are shattered shells and sticks of driftwood. I want to gather them up, like we did in college, and hang them on a net. Forgotten pieces that will be remembered. But there's something about the beach in Winter that keeps me from stuffing my pockets. Maybe it feels like a crime scene, and I feel guilty tampering with the evidence of the Ocean's crimes against her inhabitants. Perhaps it's more like main street after a Hurricane and I don't want to be the one caught looting the grocery store. More likely, my hesistance to gather these strange and broken pieces is because they belong here. I want other people to walk through my cove and peer into these frozen sands. I imagine children holding up the starfish, asking how and why. We don't have to pocket every cool thing we find.

And it's the same with each other. Sometimes we need to love each other most through our Winters. Through the messy times, when there's spinach stuck in our teeth and whiskers sprouting from our (multiple) chins. When the pants don't button anymore and there's more gray than not. These are the Winter days, our Winter days. And I'm not going to mess with them either.

Day 40: Survival of the Both

I said; "It doesn't feel like you're trying to be a better husband."

I hate these words. These are the words that wives don't want to say because it means we've given up on his voluntarily changing and am now relying on the basic elements of peer pressure and guilt to get our point across. And what happened next is what always happens; he launches into his defensive list of acts of improvement and I counter with my own. He rubbed my back, I made him cookies, he picked up my laundry off the bathroom floor, I let him buy a humongous tree, he let me decorate it in (what I am learning this instant) what he thinks is tacky gold and silver. I (still) don't complain about the freezing temperature in our house. He raised it five degrees a week ago and I didn't even notice. What started as a well-meaning opener has turned into a binge of boasts and thinly veiled complaints and I feel bloated with a self-righteousness that has turned bitter as I swallow.

Maybe I've got it all wrong. I want to cram enough love into these one hundred days hoping it will completely redefine my marriage. I want to see measurable change and results so drastic that other people stop and stare. I want to be the glowing ones. But I didn't consider the truth of it all. That underneath our shiny faces and good intentions, we remain the same people we always were. Humans. Faulty, selfish creatures of survival. And who do I think I am to try and change a thousand years of humanity with one hundred days of love? It's not enough to alter my habits and frame of mind. If this experiment is going to amount to more than a dozen bottles of cranberry pills on my bathroom sink, then I must look at my husband and pull him underneath my shiny smile and (mostly) good intentions. If I make him my own, then perhaps my own survival will be tied into his and in our very living we will become more of one.

I just haven't the slightest idea how to do that.

Day 39: The Things We Ought to Say

I wonder why it is we don't say the things we ought to say. I've been practicing with Rich. Whenever something pops into my head to say to him, instead of sending it through a jumble of should-I-keep-this-to-myself filters, I just spit it out. Yesterday it worked out well when I blurted out, "I think you're really handsome," blushing like a school girl with a crush. But last week he handed me a sample of some dish he'd made for work. Filters away, I said, "Yeah, it's not that good," and smiled my honest grin. This time he was the one crushed and he might not be as excited about my filter-free approach.

Why do we wait until we have to write recommendations or sympathy cards before we say what is inside us? Why are we so fearful to speak our love out loud?

I want to tell my Alaskan brother that I am so proud of his accomplishments. He's this incredible writer who's now a pilot and a father. He's intelligent and he's kind. But I can't even pick up the phone to say a single word. Why is that?

I want to tell my roommate from college that she is so brave to create a life on her own, while the rest of us have gone the way of boyfriends and husbands and constant companionship. She is independent and beautiful and she's never settled for anything but the best. I want to tell her I love her for who she is, but I can't be bothered to even remember her phone number.

There are a hundred people, scattered across this country, people who I love and respect and admire because they have touched my life in some way. And they probably have no idea. What would happen if we picked up our phones, our pens, our laptops and scribbled out the words that we ought to say?

Perhaps our somewhat empty hearts would begin to fill again, perhaps the people around us would know their own worth.

Day 38: Hope

We decorated the tree tonight. I let Rich pick out the tree this year and of course it's too tall to strand straight. We saw off the top and wedge it up against the ceiling, the branches waving in funny directions and filling up our tiny living room. I love it. It's wild and prickly and has bald spots in embarassing places, but we chose it, so it is ours. And it is ours, so I love it.

Every year we choose an ornament that represents something about our year. The first year is a bell, to signify a wedding. Next was the year we (and by we I mean Rich) became insanely addicted to Starbucks Lattes. We have a little ceramic double tall nonfat hazelnut latte from 2007. Last year I convinced Rich to skip the Christmas Tree (our apartment was basically one room) and we decorated our ficus tree instead and choose an ornamental Christmas tree to commemorate his great sacrifice and the one year that I am allowed the use the "no-tree-this-year" card. It's never easy to find one ornamental piece of metal and plastic to represent a year's worth of living. This year our ornament is simple. A small bit of tarnished metal, it spells out the word hope with a toss of glitter across the lettering. This is our year of hope. You know, I once heard someone say that hope is the cruelest of all emotions, and I've never forgotten that. Hope is all in the waiting, it promises nothing in return and requires everything to continue on. When you strip it down, hope is little more than a wish that we cannot forget for the intensity of our desire. Hope is not the promise of a new and better day, no. Hope is the desire for something that seems it will never be. But without hope, we are left with the bleakness of reality. With no possiblity for change. This year we are embodied with hope. Hope for a child. Hope for a deeper love to grow between us and around us and through us.

It's Christmastime. And I wonder what your ornament might be. I wonder what will you hang on your tree, what will you hold in your hands and say this is what I am, this is what I have this year. For us, it is hope.

Day 37: Wayside Soup Kitchen

Tonight I'm sitting outside the Wayside Soup Kitchen here in Portland. Somewhere in there Rich is cooking for everyone, part of a class project for a course he's taking. I'm early to pick him up, so I sit at watch.

It's cold outside but the street is crowded with mostly men, sipping coffee from paper cups and smoking cigarettes. They're loud as they circle each other, talking over the next one, and younger than I expected. Some are clean shaven, others sport scruffy beards and I feel a bit like I'm at a bar just after closing, the sort of drunken revelry and loitering makes me nervous.

Two girls walk out of a nearby building and the men start to call out suggestions and ask for money. I want to roll down my window and tell them to knock it off, but the girls have moved on, and I have nowhere to go. So I sit and stare. What started as a casual persual is now a downright stare. They break off in small groups. A woman joins two men and one pulls off his winter hat and puts it on her head. The kitchen is closed by now and a latecomer pulls on the locked doors. Someone nearby presses a paperbag of bread into his hands. He sniffs inside, then tosses it to the street uninterested. A father, walking swerves up the street is followed by two little children. He introduces them around the circle and the stand there, two toddlers without hats or gloves, watching the adults smoke circles in the cold air. One by one they move in different directions until I'm left with nothing to watch; just a discarded bag of bread and a lonely line of half empty paper coffee cups.

I think of how close we are to being on these streets. I wonder what the difference is between my life and the thirty year old woman who was just hobbling with a walker down the middle of the street, her face bandaged and worn. Is it about love or is about choices? Is this about addictions or is it something more? Is it enough to gather our people close to us and love them straight from our bones? Or is success and happiness the direct result of decision making and simple planning; an algebraic formula or a metaphysical bond? The truth is, it's probably a lot of both.

Sitting in the car, I'm lonely for my husband. Watching other sad souls, my heart double skipped when he walked through the doors and crossed to me. He slides into the warm car and I pull away, holding tightly to his warm hands, loving him straight from my bones.

Day 36: Napping

The wind is incredible today. We live on the edge of the snow line, close enough to the coast to get mostly rain. Rain and blistering winds. The kind that squeal. On a snow day turned rain day, we are camped out on the couch, dozing under a down comforter. My feet are cramped and I wish I could just unscrew my left arm and put it under the coffee table, the way it's trapped between us like a foreign object. Rich's hand is flung over our heads and his legs are twisted all pretzely and stiff. It's the best we've been in days. I mean, we are literally this shelter in a storm. The rain is sometimes sleet and sometimes snow and it's slamming all four walls around us. I'm afraid the glass is going to blow in on us. Outside, trees are bending and if I looked up, I would see the waves sending surf over the rocks and down our street. But trapped inside, closed into each each other and half asleep we are together. We're not flirting or fighting or whispering, in fact we're not talking at all. Flopped in uncomfortable positions, we are together. I can hear the slow thump of his heart against my smooshed ear. This is the good stuff. Today is Day 36 and I know that a nap on the couch next to the man you love, while a storm is raging fifteen feet away is a precious thing. The best ever.

Day 35: Saying What We Mean

It usually goes like this:
I say: "I don't want anything for my birthday this year."
He says: "Really?" in a sort of high-pitched are-you-playing-games-with-me tone
I say: "Really. I mean, I'd rather just save the money anyway."
He says: "OK!" in a sort of over-confident I-just-got-off-the-hook tone.

And so when it is my birthday, our anniversary, Christmas, or whatever holiday it was that I suggested the lack of presents for, he doesn't buy me anything. And my feelings are always hurt and I end up crying on the phone to my mom or sister. I mean, everybody knows that when a girl says she doesn't want a gift this year, it means that she doesn't want to seem materialistic and self-centered. But, yes, she DOES want a gift. And she wants it to be beautiful and functional and a little bit expensive. It's taken me three years to learn that I need to say what I mean.

So this year for my birthday I said, "I'd like a Kitchen-Aid mixer, professional 6 quart, please. It needs to be red, and I'm going to pick it out this weekend."
He said: "Really?" in a sort of high-pitched are-you-playing-games-with-me tone.
And I got the mixer, and it's an incredible piece of machinerybut it didn't feel particularly romantic, seeing as I dictated my way through the ordeal.

It's Christmas time and it's not about the getting, that's for sure. But when he asks me what I want this year, I'm going to say that I want something beautiful and functional and a little bit expensive. I'll say what I mean, but I'll leave the rest to him... and hope I don't end up with a snowblower.

Day 34: First Snow

It snowed last night. A big heavy snow that left five inches in it's wake. We walked out this morning, sliding on the icy pavement, headed to the Ocean. The Ocean is incredible just after a snow fall. The tide had already changed, it was heading out, and so we were surrounded in a wonderland of white only to step on sandy shores that sparkled with the morning sun. It was like two realities one step apart. Today the snow was beautiful and we laughed and held hands and squinted into our camera. But it hasn't always been this way.

In Oregon we rarely saw snow. We lived in a basin and the snow would just blow right over us, trapped by the ten thousand foot Siskiyou and Cascade Mountains. In Oregon you pay five dollars and get a permit to cut down any live Christmas Tree on State Land. This was about the coolest thing we'd ever heard of, so we headed toward Klamath Falls and down a dozen windy roads to search for our tree. There wasn't any snow in the valley, but the mountains were just loaded. Like our beach, you could literally see the line in the dirt road where mud gave way to snow. And the snow went deep. We found a trail and released Micky to roam the woods in search of dragons or snowmen or whatever it is that puppies search so actively for. I saw about a dozen beauitful trees, but no tree was quite good enough for Rich. We were tossing snowballs back and forth, my feet were getting cold. And so I made a decision, one that we still speak of today, and in my slight annoyance, I grabbed a handful of snow and shoved in down my husbands back. I thought I was being cute. He didn't see it that way. He tackled me in the snow and what had started as an innocent snowball fight became an all-out brawl. He pushed my face in the snow bank, I smeared fistfuls of snow onto his face, pushing his glasses into his eyes. We went from having fun to having no fun, instantly. Micky stopped and stared at us, perhaps he'd realized that we were the dragons and snow men he had gone in search of. I was so angry I refused to wipe the snow from my face, I just walked back to the truck alone and sat in the cold that was now dripping down my own back.

We laugh about it now, about the only time we've ever really tried to hurt each other. But this weekend we're going to cut down a tree again, and I wonder if there will be snow. And who will throw the first snowball. This time, if I end up back at the car, I'm taking the keys with me.

Day 33: Protein Powder

My husband drinks protein shakes and it's making me crazy. This topic was supposed to be off limits, it's a sensitive subject between us, but if I'm learning anything in these 100 days, it's that you say the things that are important while they are important. While you aren't afraid to say them.

Shortly after we were diagnosed as infertile, Rich became interested in protein powders and metabolism boosting products. I didn't think much of it, but eight months later he is spending every weekly allowance on expensive protein supplements. Sometimes he wakes up early and goes online, looking for better products. There's a tub on my kitchen counter of citrus flavored protein made from the dehydrated meat of animals and I don't understand why anyone would want to consume that, let alone pay for it over and over again.

I asked him to stop, I said I was afraid he would get tumors or cancers or a beat-up liver. And he agreed, like he usually does, and then I see him poking through an online all-organic supply that he says could never hurt his health, and we're back to where we started.

I'm trying to get to get to the root of this obsession. Rich's doctor said his testoterone was low. Saying that to my husband is like telling him he's less of a man. All of the sudden he believes that he's not as strong as the guy next to him. His muscles need to be bigger. He needs to trim more fat, get more definition. And then there's the idea that more testosterone will lead to a higher sperm count and the possibility of a child. So now I don't know whether he is popping protein and pumping iron in order to give us a child, or in order to grow bigger muscles. And either way it's making me crazy. I yelled at him today. I told him he was like an immature high school student who thinks that if he buys enough products he'll eventually get the homecoming queen to notice him. I told him he needed to grow up and act like the 32 year old that he is. His only reaction was to flex his biceps in a very goofy manner, but I know I hurt his feelings.

Rich already has his girl, so I don't understand the motivation. And I'm embarrassed to classify my husband as a meat-head wannabe who hits the gym everyday and grunts out loud when he pumps iron. I don't know how to love this version of my husband. And I will admit that I wish I could destroy this fascination of his, like I did all his oversized t-shirts and baggy jeans shortly after we married.

He says that it's about seeing results quicker. About speeding up the process of building muscle. It seems to me whether it's a body or a marriage, that building muscle is not a process that can be quickened. We gain strength as the months turn to years and the years to decades. And it's hard work. It's hours at the gym and hours side by side learning what it means to take and release. I just don't know if this is something I can let go.

Day 32: Being Sick

I'm never sick. And by never I mean less than once a year. Migraines, UTIs and Toothaches don't count. So imagine my surprise when I woke up yesterday feeling as though someone had knotted the airways to my sinuses and stirred up my intestines with a Kitchen Aid- on speed 3. Do you ever have pep-talk days when you self-coach yourself through the day. Just nine hours, Naphtali. All you have to do is stay coherent for nine hours and then you can come home and crash and eat whatever you want and watch TV until you fall asleep. A bargain is a bargain, so I made it through yesterday. But today I am couched. It's the afternoon and I'm still in pajamas. I'm sorry to say that there are a half dozen coffee mugs and oatmeal bowls and empty wine glasses scattered throughout our small living room. The mail is in a heaping pile and Micky has shredded a purple tennis ball; it's remains lie scattered in clumps. I try to turn my face into the couch, but I can't ignore.

There's nothing else to do but climb out of the Naphtali-sized indentation I've made in the cushions and turn up the Christmas music Rich has downloaded onto our laptop. I pour an egg-nog over ice and add a double splash of brandy to ease the Fa-la-las and start to put this home back together before Rich gets home from work.

This is not 100 Days of Love Wife sacrificing for her husband and feeling good about it. This is an annoyed version of myself realizing that the house is disgusting and it's not going to clean itself regardless of how I feel.

Sometimes we just have to get off the couch and gather up the dishes. It's not always about loving and giving and feeling like we are owed a golden star for our self-less performances. Maybe it's just me, but I think we're trained to believe that anytime we do something that is not directly related to our own pleasure, we are golden people. The good ones. But My mother cleaned our home for two decades, not because she wanted to prove something, but because if she didn't probably no one would.

Today I am sick and I am taking responsibility. I am getting up to clean and yes, I am taking the egg-nog with me.

Day 31: The Opposite of Love

Elie Wiesel once said that the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.

Do you ever let the phone go to voicemail when a friend calls, because you know they’re going to complain about something and you just can’t muster the energy to act like you care? The bills are spread across the table and you’d rather go through that painful process than take the call. It’s indifference.

You say you care about people in need. That poverty is the root of all evil, but you’d rather get the oil changed than spend a Saturday afternoon at the Wayside Soup Kitchen. Indifference.

And you know he’s worked 16 hours overtime this week and he’s carrying it in the knots on his shoulders but it’s just so much energy to give a back rub. I mean, you’ll do it if he asks, but you’re not going to offer. That’s not hate, but it just might be the opposite of love.

Look closely and you’ll see that many of us have patterned our lives after indifference. Maybe because it’s easier. Maybe it’s about survival. Like me, It’s not that I hate the people around me, I just don’t really care either way. Or at least I don’t care enough to do more than blog about it.

If we love our spouses better by loving the people around us, then we have to force ourselves to care. When I was training to be a teacher, one professor would always say, “Fake it til you feel it.” If you can’t love, if you’re feeling as blah as a tuna sandwich on white, then you must pretend. You must act excited. You must accept the call, push the bills aside and at least make the listening noises. This sounds ridiculous, I know. But if you act like you care, eventually you won’t have to act anymore. This is my plan.

Day 30: Money

I've never been much good with money. Even when I was a kid and we used to fill 5 gallon pails with rocks from the garden for a quarter a pail. I would make two dollars on a Saturday and have it spent and swallowed on bubble gum before Monday morning. In college, my roommate and I worked on campus- she saved all her earnings and deposited them into various savings and stock accounts. Mine were spent on gas and darkroom equipment and undoubtedly piles of bubble gum. After college, even with a decent paying job in a public school system, I couldn't save a bit. I had parking tickets that piled on top of each other, until the city police knocked on our door one night threatening to tow my car.

Imagine my relief when I found, in Rich, a man who was not only forgiving of my monetary ineptitude but even worse than I. The first year was spent spending what we barely had. And then I did our taxes and realized that we made nearly a hundred thousand the first year and had nothing to show for it. A few pairs of sneakers, 20 extra pounds from eating out every night and a 60 gallon fish tank filled with Oscars and Bettas and other fish we couldn't keep alive for more than a few weeks. There was nothing else to do but buckle down and learn how to create a budget. We started with a weekly allowance, opened a savings account and went grocery shopping together. Two years later we are a lean mean budget machine. While we bring home half the paychecks we once did, the money goes twice as far.

They say that more marriages end over money than anything else. I don't know if this is true but I know that when two people come together instead of apart to overcome something they grow together and forge a new bond- a stronger tie. And I know that if we can do this, if we can run together instead of away, we can make it through the big things. Because the big things are made up of the everydays.

Day 29: The Cavity

I've got a cavity. On the upper left side. I've known about this hole in my enamel for over a year, but it only bothers me occasionally-like when I chomp on cold green peppers. Sometimes a piece of deli meat will get wedged up there and I'll spend hours trying to work it out. Gross. Today I was munching on red grapes and a spear of pain shot right up into my sinuses. This is my third cavity. Each has resulted in six months of incredible pain and overdosing on Tylenol/Advil combinations until finally it's too much and I surrender to the dentist for a double shot of Novocaine and one quick yank.

One would think that by the third time I would have learned. By now I should be an old pro at scrubbing my teeth and flossing and staying away from the Good'n Plentys. But I'm not, and it is most likely that I will end up an old woman with only one tooth left and it will begin to form a cavity and I'll ignore it just the same. When it comes to tooth pain, my strategy is to ignore and disguise everything until the pain literally keeps me awake through the night. And then I go another week. I know this is shocking, but it's how I operate.

How many relationships are like my cavities? There are issues. There are cracks and holes. He forgets to pay the electric. She complains about him to her mother. He's fired from work. She spends their savings on Christmas. These pinpoint cracks chip at the enamel of our relationships. Why is it that we don't protect against them? Why do we wait until we are screaming in pain before we try to work these issues out? Because by the time we start caring enough to fight for our relationships, they've become abscessed and there's nothing to do but pull them out, stem off the bleeding and try to start again.

Rich and I aren't the perfect preventive couple. We don't floss our marriage twice a day. But I've learned that a bit of truth will go a long way. The words I'm sorry are stronger than baking soda, and an honest I'll really try to work on that can be fluoride to a weakened marriage.