Sunday Early Evening

Will It Ever Stop?

That seeing the man I love across the room and getting weak-kneed and forgetting what I was saying 'cause I mean LOOK AT HIM!

Virtually 15 Feet Away

This is an interesting article about an article about a Buddhist couple who are never more than 15 feet apart. The article about that article, penned by the witty Slate writer David Plotz and his witty Atlantic writer wife Hanna Rosin, chronicles a day that they underwent a duplicating experiment. They spent 24 hours balancing two jobs, two kids and and two very individual and usually separate personalities within 15 feet of each other. While the descriptions of David waiting outside the ladies' room 10 times a day were entertaining, it was their observations on what was gained by living the same day that I've thought about the most. It put me in mind of the way that Zebulin and I carry out a modified version of that attempt to stay connected throughout the day. We use Google chat. We work away from each other for 10 hours of the day. We chat for 9 of those hours. We give each other a play by play of the events, thoughts and feelings of our day. We plan our evening. We email each other articles or pictures we like and we discuss them on chat. If one of us inexplicably doesn't answer a chat for more than 20 minutes we know to dial 911. We've even worked through the nitty gritty of the previous night's fight on chat so that all we have to do when we get home is make up. In the evening when we face each other over dinner I've actually been known to be out of words. Aside from my favorite benefit of enabling our co-dependent relationship to continue uninterrupted by responsibilities like work, we've noticed other benefits as well. When I find something on Craigslist I can instantly derail Zeb's plans for a nice quiet evening at home, rather than springing it on him when he's tired and hungry at 6 o'clock. We tend to get more and better information from each other when we share it as we go along rather than trying to remember and sum up at the end of the day. And when my boss asks me to do something hard like open Word and print something, Zeb can instantly teach me how to do it and she never has to know how inept I am.
I'm curious to know how other couples keep in touch/stay connected in this cruel world that forces us to be apart sometimes. I remember my parents used to do it with semi-hourly phone calls. Do you still do that Mom and Dad? What about the rest of you?

Birth, Marriage, and Death

You could say this week was significant. I entered my late twenties, the boy and I entered our second year of marriage, and his dear grandfather passed away. To celebrate the first we spent a lovely day in Virginia wine country, to celebrate the second we dined at a top-notch local steakhouse (courtesy of our landlord who shoved a large gift certificate under our front mat this week), and to celebrate Grandpa Scevers life we'll be in Oregon this weekend. Thanks to all of you for your comments, emails, texts and phone calls for each of these events.