It's Sunday morning, there's a dusting of white stuff on the ground thanks to Friday's "you thought it was spring? Ha!" snowstorm, and I'm downing my second mug of coffee after a frustrating night with a very stuffed-up Anika. I'm trying to figure out if her sniffles are the warning signs of a cold or just the effects of a drier-than-DC climate, but either way I think we're both sick of that blue bulb thing from the hospital that's designed to clean out babies' noses and freak out parents who are afraid that they may lodge the contraption too far up that delicate flat little baby nose and suck out some of baby's brain (ok, that may be a bit dramatic, but the thought has crossed my mind in the middle of the night). What IS that thing called, anyway?
Poor Armando is working - again - and I had spent a better part of the morning yesterday feeling sorry for myself, what with entertaining baby alone on what should be, in my Disney mind, Family with a Capital F day. As usually happens, I was sucked back into life-is-pretty-dang-good mode, this time with stomach-socking news from a good friend that her marriage is over. Nearly a decade and a child together, and yet her less-deserving half decides that he's no longer in love with her anymore. Although my friend has an amazing resilience along with a large support system that will help her get through this, I can't help but wonder: why is it that in making the whole "for better and for worse" promise, in more than 50 percent of marriages we tend to forget that it takes work to make it through those worse bits? I've always thought that marriage can sometimes be likened to having a roommate that you can't kick out. And when you add kids into the mix, it can resemble a business arrangement at times: duties are assigned, deadlines are imposed, and some inevitable nit-picking of each other's work and management styles ensues. Making the partnership work can be, well, work. Duh. Someone please send a memo to my friend's soon-to-be-ex.
(On a side note, has anyone checked out Seinfeld's new show, The Marriage Ref? Me neither, but part of me thinks he's on to something.)
For Mando and me, it's always been more fun than work, altho at times we've both wished for an interpreter. He is continually frustrated by my Midwestern assertiveness (that is to say, total lack of a backbone) and faith in humankind (read: gullibility) while I sometimes get irked by his South American charm (drama, anyone?) and his engineering-trained mind (at times, insufferable insularity). Yet we both wake up each morning thankful to be where we are, and that's as good a barometer as any for a solid relationship.
Oh, and also, I can wake him from a deep sleep, cursing my three a.m. head off, and he will silently rise to retrieve the blue bulb brain-sucker and not laugh one bit as I try to get those pesky bats out of Anika's nose cave so that she can nurse and I can start bitching about how much my neck hurts. Now that, my friends, is love.
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