{"id":503,"date":"2009-08-04T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-04T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=503"},"modified":"2009-08-04T04:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-04T08:00:00","slug":"reunion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=503","title":{"rendered":"Reunion"},"content":{"rendered":"

These past two weeks have been unusual for our household in that my partner and I have been more separated than together. I had to take a lengthy business trip. When I returned, my mother-in-law was there. My partner brings her to our house for a visit each summer. He arranged her visit to occur mostly while I was away. Her visit continued for two days after I returned.<\/p>\n

I care for my mother-in-law, but she is not easy to be around. As a product of her upbringing, she has developed bigoted attitudes which are difficult to hear. She is recognizing that her vocal statements bother me a lot and stops herself when she sees me grimace when she makes unreasonable comments about her neighbors back home. And her eating habits are, well, challenging to observe. I won’t go into more detail, but it’s not pretty.<\/p>\n

My partner drove his mother back home last Friday. He stayed the weekend and returned on Sunday afternoon. While I enjoyed some “me time,” and having a weekend reprieve from the long list of “honey do” projects, I was missing my man.<\/p>\n

Prior to his arrival back home, I changed the linens on our bed, dusted and cleaned a lot of the house, and even vacuumed. That is not something I ordinarily do in our division of household labor, but I know he likes a clean house and he cleaned it up before his mother’s visit, so I returned the favor by doing it this time.<\/p>\n

I also drained the water from our hot tub, thoroughly cleaned it, replaced the filters, and refilled it. I knew that my partner would be miserably sore from his long drive back home, and a relaxing soak in the hot tub would help.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I also got busy in the kitchen. My partner loves to eat whatever I cook, so Guido (my chef’s assistant, pictured) and I got busy and made a loaf of Italian bread, a pasta salad with fresh ingredients from our “deck garden” (cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers), and then prepared a zucchini casserole. We have tons of zucchini ripening, so a casserole would use a lot of it. Too bad I can’t eat it, but my partner loves it. It was all for him.<\/p>\n

When I heard his car pull into the garage, I went out to greet him. I winced as he was obviously in a lot of pain from driving — as I expected. I unloaded his luggage and got his clothes into the wash. He hadn’t eaten lunch, so I fixed him a sandwich with our fresh bread, then sat with him at our kitchen table and caught up.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Then we relaxed in our hot tub, and soaked for a whole hour. It helped him immensely with his pain. It did wonders for my spirit. We had a long conversation about our relationship, and how much we think of one another, and how much we remain deeply in love.<\/p>\n

We dried off, and went inside where my partner became amorous. He asked me to bring him a pair of boots and asked me to “get booted,” then… (big evil grin)<\/p>\n

Dinner was an easy fix, as a portion of the casserole was quickly heated with a zap in the microwave, and the pasta salad and bread side was all ready. I had a sandwich, as the veggies do not agree with me.<\/p>\n

After dinner, we kept the TV and computer off, and cuddled in each other’s arms. We didn’t say much — we didn’t need to. Just being there, holding each other… lovingly, closely, fondly. I had blogged before about the importance of touch<\/a>, and it’s so true. Soon enough it was bedtime, ending with a long snuggly back scratch. Ahhhh… perfect end for our reunion day.<\/p>\n

Life is short: show those you love that you love them.
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These past two weeks have been unusual for our household in that my partner and I have been more separated than together. I had to take a lengthy business trip. When I returned, my mother-in-law was there. My partner brings … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-life"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}