Month: October 2008

by any other

jade446 wordsLeave a comment

I like to have a cup of tea in the mornings. It helps me to start my day off right. Daniel makes my cup of tea just how I like it. And part of how I like it is “made by Daniel”.

A while ago it started that the girls wanted to help. So they were allowed to stir the tea after he’d made it. Then they wanted to do more, Abigail wanted to swish and dunk the tea bag around in the cup. So she started doing the “teabagging”. (Her word, not mine!) They then had to be told they could take turns each day for doing the tea bag and the stirring, because otherwise they were arguing over who should get to do it.

Then our kettle was getting on a bit. It started to leak out the bottom. Since it sits on the base which is plugged into the electric, this is not so much a good thing. So I went to see about getting a new kettle and ended up with a Tefal Quick Cup. It gives you hot water in 3 seconds without having to boil first, and it dispenses from a tap type thing instead of having to be poured like a conventional kettle.

So then the idea was established that Stephanie would be able to make the tea by herself without need of Daniel’s assistance. Theoretically this should work fine. In practise, not so much. I don’t know what she does but it just doesn’t taste the same. One thing is that it’s way too weak. But the other is that it’s not made by Daniel. Both girls think they are doing something very important and get most upset if they’re not allowed to help with the tea, but I don’t really want them to.

Part of what makes my cup of tea in the morning special is that Daniel made it for me because he loves me. That is why it makes my day start properly, because it’s been started with a simple gesture of love by my husband. They seem to think that it’s about the tea and that anyone can do it as well as anyone else. But it’s not just “a cup of tea”. One of the essential ingredients is Daniel’s love. (There is a movie I saw once with Sarah Michelle Gellar where she is a chef and her emotions go into her food, maybe it is a little bit like that.) That is something that neither girl can replicate no matter how hard they try.

The problem is that I don’t think it would be possible to explain this without them becoming very upset.

by any other

i can’t remember

jade, , , , , , 830 words2 Comments

I can’t remember what I was going to write about. I wanted to try (again) to get back into the habit of writing more often. I was considering this week what I wanted to do with my blog, what level of detail or audience was appropriate and I am comfortable with. Part of this was prompted by a short little note I wrote to Daniel this week which I was particularly impressed with and felt it a shame that he would be the only one who could appreciate my masterpiece.

Regarding that particular piece of prose, in the end I think I decided that it’s a bit too explicitly personally intimate for me to feel comfortable with a wider audience. (That makes it sound like some kind of hard-core porn but it really wasn’t.) I really don’t know where this train of thought is going.

I have been feeling very lovey and mushy this week. It was just one of those types where there is nothing specific extra cool happening but everything runs smoothly and everyone is (for the most part) nice to everyone else and I felt very happy and appreciative of my family and my life. Then on Thursday it was our wedding anniversary (9 years) and that made me feel good. Daniel wrote me a love letter which I have wished for him to do for so long. I read it standing in the laundry out of the way of everyone else who had just gotten up and wanted drinks or breakfast or whatever else and when he turned around and saw me crying over it he laughed at me.

I also felt a certain amount of pride in our wedding anniversary. As we have been together for longer and become more and more accustomed to each other’s habits and moods and needs I feel more desire to be with him.. not just in the sexual sense but just being together, both doing things together and doing our own things while in each other’s company. He is what gives me comfort and and security and a sense of an anchor or lifeline that I can always return to when everything in the outside world becomes too much. And the pleasure in returning to the inner world of just us is also enhanced by the connections and glimpses I get of the greater universe and realms that I see for but a brief flash when we are joined. It doesn’t get boring after a long time, it just gets more comfortable and easy in the mundane moments and more intense and exhilirating in the moments of pleasure in each other.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, The probability that a marriage will end in divorce has been increasing over time. Based on the nuptiality tables, around 28% of marriages entered into in 1985–1987 could be expected to end in divorce. This proportion increased to 33% for all marriages entered into in 2000–2002. We got married in 1999, so I suppose that excluding all other factors, the general population chance that we could end up divorced is ~32%. I know people who began their relationships after we did and have already ended them and even moved onto others – more than one! How can people think that someone is right for them when they are not? How do you make that error multiple times? And if it’s not an error, if people know that the person they are with isn’t the right one, then why are they wasting time in that relationship or marriage when they could be finding the right person instead? How do people fight with their spouse? Not disagree, or even annoy or anger each other, we do that.. I mean real fighting where people yell and throw things and say the most horrible things to each other. How do people manage to get so caught up doing other things that they forget to “do” (not that kind of “do”, just actually giving time to them) their spouse? For me at least, if I don’t keep coming back to Daniel and cocooning and rejuvenating I start to feel lost and listless and alone and unable to manage the strain that interacting with the world takes on me.

I don’t understand how such a significant portion of the population can get it wrong. And since that 32% is not an insignificant number, are we actually going to be part of that group and are at the moment just deluding ourselves that we are any different? I don’t think we are, but how do you know you won’t when presumably most or all of the people who get married enter into it assuming that they will be part of the 68% rather than the 32%?

So. I feel good and encouraged that we have got this far and are still just as excited about being married to each other as we were when we got married. It is an encouragement that we will stay in the 68% group.

i can’t remember

bits n pieces

jade348 wordsLeave a comment

I’m feeling really sleepy this morning. It would be nice to go back to bed but the offspring can’t be trusted to all behave themselves yet. I imagine sometimes when they are all a bit older and don’t need immediate and constant supervision all the time. I could have a bath. Or a nap. And not have to worry that they will have killed each other or redecorated the house with their lunch (or worse, post-processing “lunch”) or decided it would be a good idea to take down every single toy from the shelf. It seems almost impossible, doesn’t it.

Kristian has been going through a bit of a funny stage the last couple of weeks with regards to sleeping. He’s also really exploding verbally, so maybe the temporary backslide in the sleep department is the price of the verbal development. Or it could be that he’s almost 2 and thinks he should be able to do/get/have whatever he wants. After going down to bed perfectly without any fuss for .. ever, he suddenly started mucking about in a big way at bed time. He gets out of bed. He tries the sobbing but I think he’s realised that I’m an unsympathetic audience. He has also been waking up earlier than usual. The last couple of days he’s woken at about 5am. He seems to prefer to have the door shut when he goes to bed, he is much calmer and doesn’t give the same performances as when it’s open, so this morning when he woke up he couldn’t get out of his bedroom. “Mummmeeee, mummmeeee!” I sleepily called out to him to get back into bed and go to sleep. He got a bit grumpier yelling for me and then all of a sudden stopped. “Daddeeeeey!” Silly sucker that he is, Daddy got out of bed to get Kristian and he came and snuggled with us until it was time for Daniel to start getting ready for work. I found the whole episode a bit cute because it’s very reminiscent of a story about a young me.

bits n pieces