How We Got to Here

So BabyA has contracted her first cold, and in addition to the endlessly runny nose and general clinginess, the worst symptom seems to be an inability to sleep at night. She'll go down for anywhere from 20 min to an hour, but then she's up and crying and snuffling and generally feeling miserable. Which leaves me feeling cranky and tired. This is, however, much better than the nasty flu which my nephew and neices have picked up. My youngest neice is two, and has had to visit the emergency room for an rehydration IV since she can't keep anything at all her stomach. I'm hoping BabyA hasn't picked this up, as we've been visiting with Seester and Junebug a fair bit. Fingers crossed.

On to other posting material. I've seen this relationship meme in various incarnations on Facebook and a number of websites, but I'm lifting this one from All & Sundry (Check her out - she rocks!!). I think it's kind of interesting, but I think it will be more interesting to revisit it a few years and see if any of my answers have changed.

What are your middle names?
Mine is Leah, his is Charles (same as his grandpa’s middle name).

How long have you been together?
8 1/2 years since we started dating, and a year and a half since we were married.

How long did you know each other before you started dating?
We met in May of 2000, and started dating in July.

Who asked whom out?
He asked me out, the cheeky kid (he was 18 when we started dating). I was kind of taken aback with how forward he was, but also flattered.

How old are each of you?
He is 27, and I’m 33. I know, I know, but seriously, he was the one chasing me!

Whose siblings do you see the most?
Right now we probably see my Seester and her family the most. My brother lives in Calgary, about 8 hours from us, so we don’t see them as much as I’d like. GeekDad is an only child, but he has a step-siblings, who we see fairly regularly, as they live in GP like us. And his step-sister and her family have just moved here from Atlanta, so I’m really looking forward to meeting them.

Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple?
The period right after I had BabyA was pretty rough, what with me having a C-section, and GeekDad having mysterious chest pains, and neither of us having much in the way of sleep. Things have greatly improved since then, though.

Did you go to the same school?
The only school we’ve both attended is Grande Prairie Regional College. He did his business program there, and I did the first two years of my Bachelor’s degree there.

Are you from the same home town?
GeekDad was born and raised in Grande Prairie. I’ve lived all over Alberta, but insofar as I have a hometown, it would probably be GP. Both my parents live here, my grandparents lived here, and all of my family have lived here for a significant length of time.

Who is smarter?
I’ve got the academic credentials, but I don’t really think I’m any smarter than GeekDad. There isn’t anything I’ve studied that I can’t discuss and debate with him at home.

Who is the most sensitive?
Again, I’m not sure that one of us is more sensitive than the other. I definitely would say I’m the more tempermental one, and that this was magnified exponentially during my pregnancy. My hormones were all over the place, and I’d go from ecstatic to tearful to furious in literally about 3 seconds flat. We called them my MDK (Murder-Death-Kill) moments. It totally drove me crazy to be so out of control with my emotions, but GeekDad was incredibly patient and understanding. He’d just let me have my crying or yelling fit, wait for me to figure out I was acting nuts, and comfort me when I apologized through my tears. I really couldn’t have asked for a more understanding guy.

Where do you eat out most as a couple??
Eat out as a couple??!! BWAAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAA!! Seriously, we have an 8 month old baby. We went out for our first meal as a couple since we had BabyA for Valentines, and it was to the Keg. I think it could have been KFC and it would have been wonderful.

Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple?
Vancouver, for our honeymoon. We’ve both been to New York since we’ve been together, but not as a couple. I went for work, and he went for school. We’d like to go together and visit Cindy and Junior and Sebastian, friends who live there.

Who has the craziest exes?
Neither of us, thank god.

Who has the worst temper?
Again, probably me, although in my defense I tend to get mad, yell, and the apologize for yelling and proceed to discussing whatever it is that is bothering me as a sane person.

Who does the cooking?
GeekDad can cook breakfast (bacon & eggs) and make decent sandwiches, but I’m the one who does the actually preparation of meals. The bonus here is that I love cooking. It’s a little bit of an escape for my brain, and there is nothing better than watching someone taste something you’ve cooked and see a look of delight spread across their face.

Who is the neat-freak?
That would definitely be GeekDad. He is the tidy one, the organizer, and I am of the whatever, leave-it-where-it-lies school. However, GeekDad’s neatness doesn’t necessarily translate into him cleaning up after me. Sigh.

Who is more stubborn?
I don’t really think either of us is that stubborn. We’re pretty good at discussing and compromising. However, I admit that once in a while I will get a bee in my bonnet about something, and be a general pain in the ass about it.

Who hogs the bed??
That would be BabyA. Before her, it was our cats. I guess we need to take ownership of our bed back.

Who wakes up earlier?
GeekDad, but mostly just because his work hours have started ealier than mine. On weekends, I’m usually up first. Not early, but first.

Where was your first date??
You know, neither of us can remember. When we got together, I were living 5 hours apart. The first weekend we got together we spent with our friends, and after that it wasn’t so much a date as spending whatever weekends we could together.

Who is more jealous?
I don’t think either of us is jealous. We certainly haven’t had any incidences where jealousy was an issue.

How long did it take to get serious?
Not very long at all. We started dating in July, and moved in together unofficially by December. This was due in large part to my moving back to GP when my father had a nervous breakdown. Not only did GeekDad stick around through that, but he was an incredible support to me and my family. After our relationship survived all of that crap, I knew we could make it really work.

Who eats more?
GeekDad probably eats more at meals, and I tend to be a snacker. Especially late at night. It’s a bad habit, and one that I am working on changing.

Who does the laundry?
Mostly me. I was going to say that this is because I don’t trust GeekDad to do my delicate stuff, but that isn’t really true. GeekDad tends to pull the “I don’t know what I’m doing. Isn’t it easier to just do it yourself?” card here, which is just malarky and he knows it. While I’m at home with BabyA, I’ve taken ownership of the household chores to a greater degree, but I think once I get back to work, we’re going to have to have a chat about this.

Who’s better with the computer?
I spend more time on the computer, and definitely more on the web. I have computer control issues, and watching other people computing drives me crazy. The itch to just do it myself is overwhelming. I think this comes from the same place as my impluse to finish other people’s sentances for them. I know it’s a bad habit, but I seem to have very little control over it. That said, GeekDad is definitely better with design and photoshop programs.

Who drives when you are together?
Normally that would be me – again with the control issues. GeekDad says I get too critical of what he’s doing, and it’s less stressful if I just drive. I am learning to change this, however, because with BabyA’s carseat, we have to move the passenger seat forward in our car, and GeekDad doesn’t fit (he’s 6’4”). And he’s probably the better driver anyway, just less assertive than I would like at times.

I'm a little late, and a lot anti-valentine...

As everyone knows, this last weekend was Valentine's Day. Now I'm in a happy and healthy relationship, and have been for a number of years, but I'm still more of the school of anti-Valentine's parties and Valentine's sucks cards. One year I made anti-Valentine cookies with a friend - they were cookies decorated with broken and bleeding hearts and messages of hatred and gloom. It was one of my favorite Valentine's Days ever.

However, that sort of thing is less appropriate when one is happily married, so GeekDad and I celebrated our Valentine's with our first dinner out without BabyA. I've written here before about how much work it is to eat out with a Baby, but I really had forgotten how NICE it is to be able to eat an entire meal without handing out crackers and making funny faces and wiping mush from a little face. I love my daughter, but I REALLY enjoyed my meal out. This was the first time in a long time GeekDad and I were able to have a conversation, and not just talk, and I was reminded how lucky I am to be with someone who gets me.

Which brings me to the actual topic of this post. It's been on my mind quite a bit lately, probably because of all the Valentine's hoopla, and also a conversation I heard on CBC radio, and another I had with my Seester. We were talking last week about relationships, and marriage, and babies, and one of the things we discussed was how I found it very frustrating in the churches I attended was this annoying emphasis on finding THE RIGHT ONE. There's this whole movement where you are supposed to pray that God will bring the right person into your life, which I think is really problematic. First, I'm not a believer in the whole idea of soul-mates, which is really what THE RIGHT ONE means. I don't think there is one person with whom you are compatible. There are people with whom you are more compatible, and people with whom you are less so. But relationships, and marriage, if that's for you, is about finding one of those compatible people, and then working your ass off at becoming the RIGHT ONE for them.

Because relationships are work - a lot of work. You start with getting used to co-habitating with someone, with all those things that are fun, but also all those annoying habits, and differences in handling meals, and chores, and even in how you communicate. And then you add in all those stressful life events, like the death of loved ones, and moving to a new house or a new city, and losing a job, and finding a new one. Throw a kid or two into the mix, and things get even tougher. And you start to see how this person handles stress, and whether they remember to keep talking to you, and sometimes you talk to each other, and sometimes you just let each other rest, so you can actually handle talking to each other again. You get angry, you get frustrated, you get sad.

But you also work at finding ways to take care of this person, this partner. You learn when to make them talk, and when to just let them be, to sleep, or think, or get their mind to a different place. You think about ways to show them you love them, whether it's little or big. You find ways to make their family happy, because you know it makes them happy. And you talk and fight and make love and compromise and WORK. And if you're lucky, they do all those things for you too. And somewhere down the road, you discover that you haven't found the right one, you've become the right one, and this person has become your right one, because of all the work and love and talking and fighting and compromise.

I think this is why I'm not such a fan of Valentine's Day, because it seems more about infatuation than love. The gestures of Valentine's Day are nice, but they are peanuts beside all those things that really make a relationship work. And the truth is that you don't find a Valentine, you make one. Don't get me wrong, I totally get that even finding someone with whom you are compatible and who feels the same way about you is hard, and not really fun, and can absolutely suck alot of the time. But I think if people were allowing themselves to look for someone they could work at a relationship with, and not magically have a relationship with, it might be just a little bit easier.

I am so lucky, because my partner in geekdom, my GeekDad, knows from work. He does all of these things, the love and the talking and the work, for me, and inspires me to do these things for him. And I hope that with alot of work and a little luck and just buckets and buckets of love, we will continue to work at being the right one for each other. So I won't wish him or you a happy Vaalentine's Day. I'll say to my GeekDad - I love you, and thank you for everything. And I will wish all of you the joy of a labour of love!