Reason 3947593 why my husband is the best man in the world

My kid is having a Halloween Slumber Party in a couple of weeks. I capitalize it because for a 10 year old little girl, it’s THAT important. And trying to be a decent mother, I make it a priority in my life. This weekend we decorated the house and began rearranging the living room to accommodate a little girl stampede. We made the entertainment center over to an appropriate spookyness. We’re picking out creepy pictures to put in all the picture frames. You might say we’re trying to keep up with the Adams’ in our own humble way.

In years past we would decorate the front porch with spider webs. However clean up on that brutal. The spiderwebs looked great, but try picking the cotton out of brick work after a good rain or two. Plus all the real bugs that get caught in it. By the end of October the white spiderwebs are grey and full of ladybugs. I’ve read far too many teachings of Buddah to feel completely ok with lining my front porch with ladybug quicksand. What a terrible way to die. So I started tying twine spiderwebs on the pillars of my front porch. Not quite the same effect but still spooky in it’s way. This year I used the skene of glow in the dark rope I got with the intention of making a lovely glowy rope flogger.

What in the hell does this have to do with my husband? I’m getting there.

Whilst tying this, more intricate than it looks, knot I inadvertently stood amidst a swarm of biting midges. Every so often I would feel a sharp stick and slap my arm expecting to have a mama misquito squished (ok, no soo bhudist) only to find a teeny tiny black dot, now dead. From the prick I estimate that the creatures mouth was approximately 9/10th’s it’s body size. Suprisingly the bites did not itch.

At least not that day.

Cut to 2 days later and I look like I have the mumps. Red swollen mounds all over. Ye gods did they itch! And in some of the most inconvenient places possible. Back of the knees, back of the thigh, neck, elbows (inside and out), top of the foot. I was going out of my mind because they all started itching at the same time.

Without being asked, without me even doing more than just itching my bites a few times, my husband puts away his comic, gets out the bite itch relief stuffs and a pair of tweezers. He applied the bite stuffs onto each bite and then used the tweezers to squeeze out the midge spit or whatever was causing me to itch so badly. The process took over 2 hours to complete.

And that, Charlie Brown, is the meaning of Love. It may be unglamorous. Hell, even a bit gross. But I have no doubt that that man loves me. To do something so tedious without once giving any kind of sign that what you are doing isn’t exactly what you want to be doing. Beyodn that to find joy in the fact that you are helping your partner. That is love.

And it is also reason 3947593 why my husband is the best man in the world.