Love means keeping your mouth shut sometimes

Today I was looking through Valentine's Day ideas over at Martha Stewart and getting all excited about the possibilities. ("Why yes, I COULD make GH a special breakfast with a heart-shaped UFO, I could!") And then the second thought: "Huh. Except I could have been doing that any time, though, not just on Valentine's Day. Why haven't I been doing that? When was the last time I did something like that?"

And then take GH. He has always been the most thoughtful of men. Even when we weren't dating, he would do things like leave Toblerone chocolates on the hood of my car and cut out articles about Ioan Gruffudd from his Entertainment Weekly for me (I KNOW, RIGHT???). But lately there hasn't been a whole lot of those sorts of surprises.

I thought about it and have come to the conclusion that the thoughtfulness muscles are still getting used by both of us, they're just getting used in some different ways now. It's a little bit more about what we're NOT doing.

Like on the mornings when GH remembers not to wake me up in startling ways that are likely to get him killed (say, by turning lights on or dropping clothes on my face).

And the mornings when I remember not to get within 3 feet of his face without popping a breath mint first.

Or when GH does not complain about the deathly, deathly touch of my ice-cold hands and feet, particularly when he's trying to sleep.

Also all the times I refrain from commenting on his apparent inability to place a fresh roll of toilet paper on the dispenser. (Ask me about the time I found a soggy brand-new roll of toilet paper in the bottom of our shower because it had been left on the side of the tub. Not that I'll be able to discuss it on account of I'm One Who Refrains from Commenting.)

GH, in turn, doesn't say anything when I forget that I started a load of laundry three days ago and have done nothing to it since and all of our clothes are now rotting and producing mutated mold creatures that will rise up and kill us while we sleep.

I have stopped mentioning the peanut-butter-and-jelly-smeared knife he leaves on the kitchen counter after his post-work-before-bed snack. I now just pick it up and set it in the sink.

Nor does he comment much on my habit of spreading my knitting gear all over the couch so that it's impossible and often dangerous to sit down. (He did, however, have words the time he found scissors in his side of the bed.)

Note: Is anyone getting a (very correct) sense of the kind of death trap we live in? I promise we straighten up before company comes over--sometimes with the speed, guilt, and frantic nature of criminals trying to hide hard drugs and kiddie porn.

So it's kind of no wonder that the little thoughtful spontaneous gestures have taken a bit of a back seat--we're already working on quite a lot, and it turns out that it takes a bit of energy to not do or say something that just doesn't need to be said or done. (GH is much better at this than I am, by the way.) But I still really love me a thoughtful spontaneous gesture, so I'm going to see if we can't start working those back into the routine.

Posted in: a better way to live