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To my husband, You are the love of my life. You make my life richer, fuller, more interesting and so full of love. When we decided to join our lives together I had dreams of flowers and romance and making each other happy. And there have been days like that. But the reality of our marriage has been so much more complex. We challenge each other and take on big challenges and lifetime commitments together. We make life changing decisions together. Marriage involves an intimacy that takes my breath away when I allow myself to think about it. You have seen me at my worst and you love me anyway. You have been so incredibly mad at me and still you love me so much. The intimacy of that love year after year is astounding. At every juncture there is a choice to keep committing to our love or to get annoyed, give up and stop. Every time, you choose love. I know you love me because of how you care for our lives. The evidence of the love you have for our family is all around us. It is clear in the way you care for our children and make time for them. It is in the grass you cut, in the swimming pool you maintain, it is in the white picket fence that lines our 2-acre property that you repair and replace pickets for each year. A couple of years ago someone recommended we replace that fence with something that would require less maintenance. I couldn’t imagine trading it in–it is a symbol for me of the love in our lives. Your love shows when you give me the car with the gas tank full and make sure the oil gets changed. We haven’t chosen an easy life, but one full of love and care. You show me that love every day. When we got married, I thought marriage was about love and kisses but what I know now is that being...
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4 countries 6 currencies 38 days 4 backpacks 3 rental cars 1 car loaned by friends 2 ferries old friends new friends 2 amusement parks 3 medieval villages 1 mountain climb to a chateau daily scrapbooks fresh baked bread old cheese, salami, french wine, Danish snaps, Danish beer, bubbles, 4 swimming pools, 2 hot springs, 2 beaches, and a whole lot of sunshine… It has been a week since we returned from our 5 week trip to Iceland, France, Denmark, and Sweden. I have had a hard time reintegrating back into my life. I have had difficulty writing. Not because I don’t have anything to say but because I have been on some kind of sensory overload for several weeks now and I have had a hard time forming a thought of my own. I have been awash in varied and intense emotions. I have had my fill of beautiful places and interesting visual stimulation. I have had my fill of re-connection and connection with people I have known, and people I have gotten to meet in the last month. I am physically spent. I can feel the physical exhaustion hanging on even though I have taken it easy this week and haven’t tried to do too much. I am sated by the time on vacation with my family and have been enjoying some time alone this week. Being in close quarters with my family was so warm and we have shared a real sense of connection that was sweet and special. Now we are all disconnecting just a bit so we can go on with our individual lives. People want to hear about our trip and I am not ready to talk about it much yet. It is like a new lover, something to savor that is greater than words. If I talk about it, I tie it down, I accidentally commit to giving it a meaning instead of letting my feelings exist on their own in a land without words. I want...
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“I am ashamed of you.” I can hear it rattling around in my head, feeling my face get hot. The feeling of not enough.
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Note: This article is long and has several fun video clips. I recommend you get a cocktail, take your time, and prepare to laugh. The Question: I was never very keen on Mrs. Kindt (our high school history teacher), but I also have to admit I wasn’t a particularly good history student. However, she said something one time that really stuck with me. She was discussing two political principles that are commonly presented as polar opposites. (I’ve forgotten the exact topic, unfortunately.) She argued that while the two were, indeed, opposing viewpoints, one could actually become the other if taken to a far enough extreme. Rather than thinking of the two things as a bar magnet, she suggested a clock instead. I thought that was a fascinating idea. Let’s say, for example, we wanted to use the clock model to describe whether something is good or bad. Assume that 12:00 PM represents the absolute best. 3:00 PM would be good, but not great. Things that are perfectly mediocre would be plotted at 6:00 PM. 9:00 PM would be crappy, while things that are horrifically terrible would be found at 11:59 PM. Bad, of course, is diametrically opposed to good, but viewed through the clock model, something could be so bad that it becomes good (The clock would roll over to 12:01 AM and suddenly fall into good territory). That bizarre area would be a counter-intuitive subversion of good and bad: gad-bood. I’ve thought quite a lot about this, and I’m sure people can come up with many examples of gad-boodness. This clip, in my opinion, is a wonderful example of gad-boodness: It’s a promotional video for a neti pot. I’m disappointed to report that it has been edited; the original ended with the creepy non-blinking robot doing stretching exercises to ensure that all of the snot gets out of her head. True story. The video is so bad it is actually good. Importantly, gad-boodness has to be created by accident. Satire, for...
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After deciding to try being in a relationship with Mel, I had to try to figure out how I wanted to “be” in the relationship. I know the rules are different for us, but I didn’t know how I wanted to “be” with those rules. Also, we were in a new relationship and I wasn’t ready to tell everyone I knew about us because I wanted to keep him to myself. After we had been together about a week, we went to an event I have come to recall as my “One Day in the Closet”. This was an event put on by our church and ironically, it was an informational event for congregants about the church becoming a “welcoming congregation”. Being a “welcoming congregation” is a Unitarian Universalist designation meaning the church is GLBT Friendly. The church has a series of information sessions and then votes to become “a welcoming congregation”. Mel and I go to this and pretend for the whole day that we aren’t together, that we aren’t a couple. We know most of the people there and we try to “act normally.” It is agony. I want to hold his hand, I want to sit next to him. I feel physically sick from the deception. The event goes from 9am-3pm and when the end finally comes, I realize that if I am going to be in a relationship with Mel, then I am not going to hide. I am going to have to be brave enough to come out of the closet and tell everyone I know that we are together. Even though I am sure I don’t want to be closeted, I am also sure that I want to be safe. I become acutely aware of the special attention we get if we hold hands in public. I learn to ask myself whether it is safe before I grab Mel’s hand. I look around–usually for conservative looking rednecks–before offering a kiss. I am a rebel, so I like the...
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