Every Single Day

The beautiful peachy pink roses sitting on my kitchen island are slowly beginning to turn brown and are dying a little more with each day. Soon the counter will be littered with fallen petals, edges curled and wilted. The candy hearts and odes of true love are all on clearance and the boxed chocolates are getting stale while the sickeningly sweet television commercials that insist real love is measured in carats have been shelved until next season.

I came to bed last night pretty late, around 1 am. As I often do I relished in a bit of quiet time while the rest of our normally loud house was fast asleep. When I finally did allow my head to rest on my bedroom pillow to sleep my I tossed and turned until a strong arm pulled me back and allowed my nestle into the warm body beside me and tangle my feet in the blanket with my husbands. This is our unheralded, less-than-lovely, perhaps not so marketable, tribute to what real, everyday love looks like.

This past Saturday the boys stayed with their Grandma while Mike and I road tripped out to Pittsburgh, eager to get out of the house and into the mix of the real world after being bogged down with day after freezing day full of snow. It was amazing.

During our road trip we were bombarded with lots of kissing teenage drivers, billboards that sang of a woman's true desire to have their love bought from them with expensive jewelry, signs advertising fancy restaurant dinners for two, cheesy Journey songs on the radio, and roadside vendors selling roses to people through their car windows. All of which just scream I Love You. (Sarcasm people ... well except for maybe the Journey songs)

So how did the husband and I spend our relaxing and romantic day? Mike went to Sears and bought tools and other assorted "guy stuff" and not once did I whine or beg for him to please quit dragging me though endless aisles of wrenches and compound miter saws. I combed the sales racks at many many stores and tried on tons of different outfits while Mike graciously held my coat and my purse. Together we then had a very unromantic and messy dinner at Joe's Crab Shack which involved wearing bibs, taking funny cell phone pictures, and the consumption of mass amounts of seafood. Yeah, we are some classy people.


Sunday, Valentine's Day, was much of the same, only we stayed in our neck of the woods, did a bit of grocery shopping, and both went to bed early after a long two days.

While we were out grocery shopping I did throw a $5.99 box of chocolate covered cherries at Mike and told him that I was buying them for him for Valentines Day. Unfortunately I didn't have my debit card on me so he ended up buying them for himself. He reciprocated with a bunch of lovely, half dead grocery store roses.

In all our car travels over the weekend we talked about life, the kids, work, shared a soda, belted out those cheesy love songs ... "So now I come to you, with open arms....", and laughed. A lot.

This is our very real, and very unglamourous life.

Keep your pink creme filled chocolates, Mr. Stovers, because this is L-O-V-E.

Love for us is doing the dishes when it's not your turn, forgiving a cranky and sarcastic comment, putting the toilet seat down (this is a BIG one in a house full of boys!), and learning to cherish the things that make your spouse so different from you. Love is growing together, both individually and as a couple.

And knowing that -- or at least committing to live in search of the truth of it -- makes every single day Valentine's Day.