The Kiss
You get up, you make the coffee (*here I genuflect), you rouse the kids and point them toward the shower…
…you pour the coffee and tell your spouse something only the two of you understand. Like, “..mm.” Which in SpouseSpeak means, “I see you barely slept all night. I know this because I barely slept all night. Because you tossed and turned and whipped around enough eletro-magnetic energy to trigger something up on the international space station and keep me amped up like a hamster hooked up to jumper cables.”
Then you stand there as she gets up out of bed two minutes before her alarm goes off. Meaning 4:58 a.m. And even though she tries to act like she hasn’t been up all night long, you know it’s a big fat giant lie. So to blow that construct to smithereens, you slip a finger through the blinds and take in what Mother Nature decided was a good idea. You know this will totally ruin her act and rip off the layer of I’m Calm. It’s on the cruel side but you do it anyway. It’s for her own good.
“Hm. It snowed.”
“It did?!”
“Yes.”
“Oh no.”
“It’s going to be fine, honey. You know how to drive in this.”
And then she gets up, dresses herself in the outfit she laid out the night before. The very same outfit I assured her (three times) was Absolutely Perfect. And then she sort of did her morning thing getting ready for the two-hour drive where she would be speaking to a few hundred other professionals in her field. Which is selling secrets to Russia or something like that INeverReallyPayAttention.
And try as she might to hide it from me (fail), I can tell she’s got enough This Makes Me Nervous to reshingle the roof before her second cup. But there’s nothing we can do about the snow, and inasmuch as she’d rather sit on the porch with a shotgun across her lap, her scientific mind slaps some sense into her and she makes her way to the door to leave.
And (this is the cute part) she goes, “Okay. Well. Alright. I’m going now.”
“lol okay, honey.”
“Alright. Well. Okay goodbye.” And then she gives me a kiss.
A kiss, people.
Okay, giving you this information alone is enough to have me offed by the Mafia, so if you never hear from me again I want you to know that it’s been fun and I love you all.
Cute Redhead isn’t entirely bereft of affections, but let’s be clear here: Public Displays of Affection are strictly forbidden. Strictly. Forbidden. It is only one half a degree above Admit Husband Was Right. About Anything. And even though this wasn’t exactly public it nevertheless was a complete and total breach of Cute Redhead Morning Protocol.
Cute Redhead Morning Protocol goes like this:
1. Wake up.
2. Throw covers off and stomp around room because there is no one else sleeping in the house anyway.
3. Open bathroom door.
4. Slam door shut because there is no one else sleeping in the house anyway.
5. Initiate Female Beautification and Reanimation Sequence.
6. Throw things around bathroom so that you sound like you’re taking out a wall, it doesn’t really matter because there is no one else sleeping in the house anyway.
7. Emerge from bathroom Beautified and Reanimated and go get coffee. Open dishwasher, cabinets, the refrigerator, the garage, the Ark of the Covenant, a bank account, the dryer, the front closet, whatever. Just make enough noise to wake the dead, it doesn’t really matter because there is no one else sleeping in the house anyway.
8. Clip clop clip clop clip clop around the house in high-powered girl shoes.
9. Initiate Full Professional Considerations. Active System-wide Core Dump of 1) Humor 2) Emotion 3) Patience
10. Leave house.
That’s how it goes. Every morning and in that order.
It’s actually very cute.
And that’s how it went today. Except that there was an 11. The kiss.
And you have to understand: this does not happen.
But it did and I know why.
Because she thought she might die. And if you think you’re going to die, you have to give your spouse One Last Kiss. It’s policy.
You see, it snowed last night and she had to drive south two hours to her high-powered meeting.
In her car.
In the snow.
And, friends, it has never snowed before in the history of Colorado and there were bombs and terrorists and plagues and pestilence and wild dogs and meteors falling from the sky and nuns and orphans held at gunpoint and houses burning down and cats and dogs living together and—
“Well. Okay. Alright. Here I go.”
*kiss
“lol you’ll be fine, honey.”
“I know. It’s just…”
“I know. But think of it this way: if you do fly off the highway in this 2 inches of snow and careen into a ditch and die? At least the cold will preserve you until we find your body.”
“Shut up.”
“Play nice with the other scientists.”
You’re a horrible man. :)
I am just going to pretend I don’t know sweet and adorable redhead….your writing is hilarious ;-)
You sound like my husband. I HATE with a passion driving in snow. I LOVE with a passion him driving in snow because he has a big manly truck and I have one of those smaller SUV I think machines. And we do the kiss every morning too because of the crazy people on the highway that might careen into my smaller SUV. :)
TC, isnt this the same woman who made you take separate aircraft to Hawaii…just in case? Why does this surprise you?
Too bad she doesn’t do it every day.
Because you never know.
Man, if she ever peeks at this stuff I’ll wager you are in big trouble.
I look at it this way- if you didn’t love her so much then you wouldn’t was the energy to write so lovely about how she gets ready in the morning. :).