Rekindled

When he said he was going to start running again I nearly jumped out of my chair I was so excited. This was the final frontier of our marriage, I told him, the one last thing that we could do together that I thought we were missing out on, running.

When we met over 14 years ago he ran on average four nights a week, ate fast food as much as possible and had a fridge full of beer, you know, the life of a bachelor. As time went on, all of the above have practically disappeared, you know, the life of a happily married man. Even he will tell you that. But for reasons beyond this post the running is returning and I am a happy woman.

Our first foray out onto the trail went something like this:

me: "I love this! This is so great, I'm so glad you're doing this again, I love having someone to run with!" I blurted, bouncing along as we went.

him: "Yeah. Great." huff. puff.

me: "I mean, I know you're doing this for yourself and all, but I'm so glad you're taking an interest again in something I like to do, this is so much fun!!" leap! leap!

him: "Humph." plod. plod.

And that's about how those first couple of runs went, but as he's gone more and more the ease and natural grace of a former athlete has come back, the stride has returned and today we ran in quiet unison, headphones on, through the trail. A few surprise Rocky punches into mid-air for effect and some backward running purely for my amusement were the clear indication that at 40 we are far from old, dated perhaps, but the spirit of youth remains as we refuse to let it go. The only thing that made it better was hearing this song, at just the right point in the run, and that yes, there was nothing holding us back. A happy woman.

Little things, big things

I was sitting in the office, in the window knitting away and I heard the tractor start up. Normal. I watched as he drove slowly by me and noticed the auger attached to the back. Not normal. The auger is for big jobs. The auger is for digging big holes. I ran down the household "to do" list in my mind and nowhere on it was dig...big...holes.

He's up to something....

Then I remembered our conversation about the raised beds he'd like to put in the garden for next year. Great idea, weeds grow like crazeeeee out here, must be help from the cows who used to graze here for years and years. I pictured tiny little plots maybe 6' X 6' or something like that. This just goes to show what I've learned over the years of being married to this man: 1. when he sets his mind to doing something he does it well 2. he does it completely 3. he usually does it much bigger, more organized and well planned out than I originally thought.

This, of course is in direct contrast to the way I jump into projects with both feet before looking, get sidetracked half-way through and am then on to the next thousand things that distract me. Which is maybe why I started cleaning out the refrigerator in a dress 5 minutes before we left for church. Yeah, that's right. He made me stop. When we got home he took over. He emptied it completely out, scrubbed it down better than an operating room after surgery and I had to pinch myself when it was all over.