Tit for Tat

I am one lucky girl.

Evan and I are splitting half-days today. This just means I take the morning shift while he takes the afternoon. These days are nice of course because really, who doesn't love working only half of a day? But there is another side to this story (there always is.) To be completely disgustingly annoying about it, we miss each other on days like today. Yes, that's right. The couple who works together, lives together, and does pretty much every thing else together actually misses each other when one is absent, even if that absence only lasts a few hours. I know, it's a little sick. I blame the co-dependence on spending four years in a long distance relationship. We surfaced from those stormy years like sponges, desperate to soak every last ounce of each other.

Evan arrived at work today to begin our switch-a-roo by passing me the keys to the car.
"No, I think I'll just walk. It's a nice day," I say.
"No, I'd like to walk when I get off. Take the car."
"It's okay, Love. Really, I'll just walk home." I can see it's a relatively nice day out and I'm thinking I'd like to take advantage of it, thank-you-very-much. Despite my instance he is more so.
"Take the car. I mean it," and with that he presses the keys into my palm.

Little did I know that the reason why I am supposed to take the car is waiting for me on the front passenger seat. As I settle in to the driver's seat I am greeted by a lovely bouquet of flowers, an obscene amount of whiskey, and an even more absurd amount of eggnog; my heart and head began to sing, "these are a few of my favorite things..." How well this man knows me!!!

I quickly rush inside the cafe and sweep this man into my arms.

"Have a nice afternoon, Baby." He whispers to the top of my head, seemingly to the hairs on my scalp and finishes this sentence with a kiss. (Yes, my husband still calls me Baby, a habit he formed when he was 18. And yes, I still can't get enough of it, a habit formed by someone who is head over heels in love.)
"I will NOW," is all I can think up to say, because there are other things on my mind. Like how on earth did I get lucky enough to marry this guy? Well, like that and like raking. Yes, raking. We have two extremely large and extremely messy birch trees out front. When we first moved into this house three years ago I loved them. Scratch that-- I idolized them. I have always wanted to live on a tree-lined street and I could not help but feel shamefully pleased that the two largest trees on the block now belonged to us--as if I had any thing at all to do with planting them in the first place. However, it only took about two months before I realized my idolization was really an idealization as I quickly changed my mind about the birch trees outside our home.

First came the aphids. While I say aphid was I really mean is an aphid infestation. The bugs lived in/on/and for the birch trees and at one point it became impossible for us to leave our house without walking through a sea of flying green mass. The inside of our car wasn't even safe. The little Houdinis managed to climb through the air shafts and make nests in our car. It was awful. A day wouldn't go by without a mention from our next-door neighbor about how terrible the bugs were. You see, our problem had become their problem too. Turns out there were no boundaries for these little pests. They didn't discriminate against whose car they inhabited and happily made homes in both of our vehicles. We introduced several ladybugs to our birch trees to help calm the aphid infestation but with little to no resolve. But the aphids were only the beginning of our problem.

Next came the sap, oozing its way down to our car, only to manifest an impenetrable shield of goo on the windshield, and a toxic, paint-peeling pus on top of the car. As the seasons changed my disdain for our precious birch tress grew. Fall brought the leaves, leaves like you've never seen. And then of course there are those lovely dead branches that peel off and cover just about everything down below during the wintertime. At first we were the neighbors who nearly expected congratulatory postcards for the admitted regal presence of our trees. What we became are the people who feel insufferably sorry for the amount of gunk our trees produce and spit out onto seemingly everyone in the neighborhood's lawn. No matter how hard we try to keep up it's never enough. While I really, truly had every intention of dusting off the rake and taking it to the streets yesterday, suffice to say it never happened. This is often the case.

But with this delicate beauty of a gift my husband just bestowed upon me I now have the motivation I need. I return home prepared to finally tackle our birch trees' Fall present, the leaves. But first things first; just as I always do, I head straight to the computer to see what I've missed during the last 6 hours. As soon as my screen-saver kicked off I noticed a note had been left for me on the desktop:

I LOVE YOU.
HAVE A GOOD AFTERNOON.
DON’T SPEND TOO MUCH TIME AT THE COMPUTER.
TAKE A BATH.
MAKE LOVE TO YOUR DOG.

LOVE,
ME

"Don't spend to much time at the computer." Ha! How well his man knows me!!! (This has been made apparent with every breath I pass through my lungs.)

If my husband can spend his morning off writing me love notes on the computer, cleaning the house, and picking out gifts for me, then I can certainly return the favor by spending my afternoon off taking care of business outside.

BEFORE

AFTER

Okay, Love. You win. Now that the I have emerged as victor during my battle with the birch trees, I will finish this blog post and walk away from the computer, draw a bath, and give our little pup the love he deserves. Now when you get home, your loving wife will be waiting for you, refreshed, relaxed, and ready with an eggnog and whiskey in hand. Thank you for your love, Mr. Dohrmann. You really do know how to make your wife feel like a million, that and a little school girl. Have you ever heard of that song, "Crazy in Love?" Well yeah, it's kind of like that.

*P.S.* This tag-team duo will also be using their whiskey in order to get fired up for this evening's Round Three of the Presidential Debate, just as you should be doing as well. Click here for tonight's schedule. Thankfully, there are only 96 days, 21 hours, and 42 minutes until George W. Bush is no longer our president. We were given the right to vote in this country so NOW is the time to get informed People, and let your voices be heard!