The definition of love

The posts have been a little sparse, dear readers, and due to an influx of local readers, as of late, I have been reticent to explain why at the risk of sounding like a bitchy whiner. But if you are friends enough with me to know about my blog, then you will quickly learn I can be a bitchy whiner and you will either break up with me or learn to deal, as my non-locals have.

So remember last year when I signed up for the PTA? Remember how easy I thought it would be with al those committees in place and all? Well, I was seriously wrong. It seems every four years, each school gets a turn putting together the almost 200 page district directory and who gets the booby prize this year? Me? Of-fucking-course. In the defense of the woman who talked to me about this position, she had no idea either, but it doesn't make gathering the personal information of every student, from kindergarten to senior in high school, and all the faculty and Board of Ed info, converting it from Excel to Word to pdf any easier. Especially since I'm almost computer illiterate.

When I took on this job I was asked if I was familiar with Word and Excel. Um, yeah, sure. I can do a numerical and alphabetical sort. Well fast forward nine months, and I'm having to do things like multiple sorts, that I didn't even have to do when putting together my senior Chemistry thesis in college, and things called "mail merges". Cue panic and call in my IT department.

As you all know, H is the computer expert around here. I lack the skills and interest and he also claims I'm a witch, being able to crash any piece of electronic equipment in a five foot radius. Many's the time I have called out to H from the computer desk, "MAKE THIS WORK!", practically banging my fists on the keyboard like a perplexed orangutan. So over the past three weeks, the poor guy has come home from work, thrown down food down his throat and spent two hours with me working on this beast. He has saved me countless hours by teaching me how to use search functions in spreadsheets, rather than combing through data. He has taught me how to auto-fill cells instead of using the computer like a glorified type-writer and doing everything manually. Basically, he made this thing work.

As we approached the end of this tortuous ordeal, I finally merge all the documents we have worked on and gotten from various people, and the document crashes. Neither of our home computers will allow us to make any more changes (which H chalks up to my evil powers). H can't figure it out, which means it is seriously NOT GOOD. So what does the guy do? He has me email it to him at work, and in between board meetings and conference calls with the CEO, he has been making sure the night custodian's name is spelled correctly and that the mother with a four-term hyphenated last name fits into the fourth grade spread sheet. And not just once - FIVE times, this thing has gone back and forth between us in the last two days.

And not a peep of complaint out of him.

I have written before about the under-appreciated male expressions of love, but this one takes the cake. I have never felt so loved, my friends. To go the extra mile when you yourself are exhausted and stressed, for no benefit, other than to help the one you love, who sits next to you rocking, in tears, asking "why isn't it working?"(which is, I'm sure, very helpful when trouble shooting software), is better than any card of gift I have ever received*. H knew how much was riding on this project, as no one likes to complain more about how a project at school was done, than the 90% of parents who do absolutely fucking nothing**, so he didn't question me when I forced him to do another exhaustive proof with me at ten thirty on a Wednesday night*** to prevent me being chased down by some irate mother whose kid's name I spelled wrong (even though it was "Jak", instead of "Jack" which I thought HAD to be a typo.). His reformatting the table of contents was like a love poem, reminding me, love is not in the grand gesture, but in the daily grind. And I have that in spades.

So H, let me put it out there. You are the most incredible husband, and I am a lucky woman to have you. Bacon for dinner and you get the remote for six months. Ok, not really about the remote, but the pork products are a go. You rock my world.

*AND he sent my flowers two weeks ago. Really!
**Hence my reticence about the locals. All y'all keep your traps shut about my bitching. I dont need any school-yard confrontations.
***Also adding to my addled mental state is the fact I am sleeping only six hours a night, not my minimum required-to-function eight, putting me seriously in sleep deprivation and giving me the mental and emotional stability of a schizophrenic. The kids really enjoy playing "which Mommy do we get today?".