My perfect Valentines.

I’m up at 6 a.m. My eye still hurts from the unwelcome sty that began to form late afternoon of the day before. Though it is not my most recognized feature at the moment, I feel like maybe wearing a pirate eye patch would be better than hiding my wince every time I blink. I shower and get dressed. This is not my normal routine. I have a root canal scheduled at 9 this morning. Why did I schedule it for this time? 4 of my kids need to be at school at 9 and one of my kids is a baby who will need to be babysat while I get this tooth killed. (We don’t need a do over of the teeth cleaning I had done over the summer where I planned on the baby sleeping and instead the baby woke up and was crying in the corner for the last 15 minutes of the procedure, therefore ruining the closest thing I’ve seen to a spa experience in some years.). I remember why I scheduled it at 9a.m….it’s because I had already cancelled and rescheduled this event twice and every time I did, it got pushed back another month and the available time slots seemed less and less accommodating. So here I am. Waking up and juggling.
I am fortunate that Chris is self employed and to an extent, he can work with me when my inherently horrible teeth become a nagging priority. He went to work for a few hours in the morning and came home to drop the kids off at school while I dropped Max at my friends house on the way to the dentist. Max was a darling when I dropped him off and my friend had her vacuum out when I arrived which only eased my sneaky exit (he loves the vacuum). I pulled out of her driveway looking like I was going to be…EARLY! This is not common in my life, but I was willing to accept it, in all of its goodness and “grown-up” feeling splendor. I plugged in my phone and played something I felt like listening to while I enjoyed one of my guilty pleasures…driving somewhere alone and just listening to music…of my choice.

I was 10 minutes from my dentist when our 2000 Suburban…purchased from the side of the road off of a Mennonite guy…begins sputtering and threatening to not cooperate. I ignored its behavior, cause frankly…aside from my pirate eye and even though I was headed to get a root canal, we had a date planned that night and my morning was going well and I smelt clean and it was gonna take more than a little vehicle shimmying to bum out that vibe! Within moments I was pulled over, on the phone to Chris who really didn’t have time for an emergency morning detour and then a call to my dentist who said I could be a half hour late and still receive my long coveted root canal. Ironically, I broke down right next to the billboard that welcomed me to “The Sweetest Place on Earth.” Thank you Hershey. Chris swooped in and gallantly escorted me to my root canal. Due to my tardiness, my very capable and exceedingly talented (except for that time that she stabbed me in the lip with the novocaine syringe) was only able to complete half of the root canal. I didn’t know that this was normal, but she acted like it was. I was sent away with a temporary filling and some preventative antibiotics (I would love to say I’ve never felt more like a dairy cow…but I immediately had a flash back to nursing twin babies and realized that statement wouldn’t be true which begs me to wonder if I have perhaps felt like a dairy cow more times than is normal in a 32 year life span…geez, now I’m thinking of a lot of other times that I’ve felt like a dairy cow…I’m gonna abandon this rabbit trail right now 🙁 ) and some painkillers, for any mild discomfort.

While scheduling my next appointment, dragging out the several month long process of getting this crappy tooth dealt with, I called Chris to let him know I was done. He seemed a little slap happy. He had gone back to the Suburban to see if he could figure something out…he got it started (over and over again.) At one point he realized he might want to get off 322 and pull down a side road to wait for the tow truck. With his eyes fixed on traffic out his side mirror he backed up and thoroughly slammed into a telephone pole that was positioned in a blind spot behind the vehicle. He made it away from the busyness of 322 and proceeded down a side road when he considered that he shouldn’t go too far from the road that the tow truck would be coming from. That was when he tried to turn around but instead ended up leaving the Suburban sideways in the middle of the lightly trafficked thoroughfare. Once he explained all this I recognized the tone of his voice and his state of mind as that thing that happens to Chris when life starts to build to an undeniable, soon to erupt, highly pressurized existence. I also knew that he most likely still had adrenaline coursing his veins from the Tourette’s syndrom-esque fit of rage that was just directed at the steering wheel or the dashboard or the stereo. You see, while Mr.Krouse is by far the most gentle man I have ever met in my life, DO NOT put him in a room with an inanimate object and a reason to perhaps feel like destroying it. Tools, vehicles, electronics, furniture that won’t fit through doorways..you best watch YOSELF! My desire to hang out with this man had increased exponentially after that phone call. We really are our best when things aren’t going well.

He picked me up and we headed in the direction of the Suburban. About 5 minutes from the dentist, the receptionist called to tell me I forgot my travel mug of breath easy tea. I just got that travel mug in November and the tea was most likely still warm. I mentioned going back for it. Chris thought we should get to the vehicle in case the tow truck was waiting. I called my friend to alert her that my baby would not be picked up in a timely fashion. I am exceedingly grateful that Max was with someone who didn’t mind his light fussing and lengthy stay. He’s cute…but that can wear away after too long. When we arrived at the abandoned vehicle…I had to laugh. It was clear that someone had lost hope at this location. It was like a memorial to every car I’ve ever ridden in and been left sitting in. Turns out, Chris and I go back and forth all the time about what type of vehicle is best to own…the type that you make a payment on and take to the shop once a year for inspection and occasional oil changes or the kind you pay CA$H for that most likely has more problems than you want to know about. I grew up with the latter. I think I have more memories of being stranded somewhere in a car than of actually being transported by them. So here we were. Sitting in our van that we’ve been paying 299 a month on for three years…and we still have several more months of that payment ahead of us…looking at the vehicle we just (like in December) paid 5,500 cash for. We didn’t feel smart or good with money or any real positive feelings about the situation. But let me tell you something…we sat in that van, on a frigid winter day for 2 hours waiting for that tow truck. The midday sun was beaming in the windows, warming us with its light and we realized we couldn’t remember the last time we sat for 2 hours, uninterrupted…with nothing to do but wait. I should have been going to the pharmacy and picking up Max and cleaning my house for his Aunt who was coming to babysit and constructing a sad macaroni and cheese for the kids dinner and probably 100 other things. Chris had A LOT of work to do. When he isn’t doing something with drywall to support our family he has endless school work he needs to be doing while he works towards a degree in nursing. But there we sat…waiting for roadside assistance. We laughed and joked and killed my phone watching funny videos of the kids and the trailer to the movie Papillon (some really old Dustin Hoffman movie that Chris insists I need to see). Of course I mentioned that we could have retrieved my travel mug 20 times over by the time the tow truck actually came and of course by the end of it one or the other of us had peed in an anonymous location. Chris asked me if I remembered when we were teenagers and he put on tribal African music and we danced like tribal people his living room. I had no recollection but said “Wow, you were probably like…this girl will do anything…I think she’s the one.”

I guess what I’m saying is that in the thick of our lives right now, there is no way Chris or I would ever willingly agree to go sit somewhere for 2 hours doing completely, literally NOTHING except being together. And sometimes it’s exactly what we need. By the end of that 2 hours, I realized it was the Valentine’s date we never would have given ourselves. No hors d’ oeuvres, no wine, no chocolates or flowers or cards. Just us. 17 years of being one another’s Valentine has brought us to a place that only 17 years can. Comfort and trust and togetherness. The icing on the cake of that day was that for maybe the 3rd time since Max was born 11 months ago, we actually did go out on a date that night. My pirate eye was looking and feeling much better by that evening (maybe just in comparison to the root canal) and we were able to go out with some very dear friends. We ate food that seemed too good to be true and drank a few tasty, strong beverages and enjoyed a browse thru an otherworldly bookstore and absorbed some really nice art. And we enjoyed adult conversation. No pee pees or poo poos or “I know you aren’t sorry but you still have to apologize!” It was, my perfect Valentines.