swimming with turtles and some guidance

[zig]

side note:

so a couple of days ago, got a phone call from the gas company. our bill was not paid. i was spaced out and thought it was the electric co. and that it was the bill for h's house.

one of those odd things in our sitch - when h started renting that house and signed up for the electricity - he put the billing address for our house, so all those bills were coming here. in the beginning i handed them to him - and then the last 3 or 4 months just threw them out. he never asked for them - and i figured he was paying them on line.

so i thought this was for the electricity and when i told him about it yesterday - he pointed out that no, that was the gas bill, and we were supposed to pay it on line. then i realized that i had messed up, and it was indeed my bill and i had forgotten to take care of it because it was not an automated payment. when i tried to call and pay it, they wouldn't let me because only his name was on the contract.

so i emailed him yesterday and asked if he could add my name and that he'd have to call and pay it. so he took care of that. i apologized and said that i had messed up

but interesting response from him. saw a return email from him this morning , just before he came - it wasn't the usual completely terse abrupt ones i always get:

"Ok, I paid online. We had not paid that bill in four months woops. How do you spell woops?"

another small significant thing - which if joann hadn't pointed out i would probably have missed. we've had a spelling thing in our family from the beginning. h is slightly dyslexic, and always felt very vulnerable about the fact that he can't spell the simplest words. huge pressure for him to write even the simplest emails. he always asked me non-stop to spell things - and here's where it got difficult for him -i think it mad him feel more vulnerable with me. I am an ace speller - and i always just casually told him, not making a big deal out of it. well, when i read that email i realized - [censored] he hasn't asked me how to spell something for 10 months. WOW

s is also an amazing speller for his age (he could read all the dr.suess books when he was 3!!) - ooh was that proud mom showing off??)- the three of us used to have tons of fun with the dictionary - s and h would pour over the pages looking for the most bizarre words for me to spell and all three of us would laugh and relish the fact that i barely ever got them wrong.

so i'm taking that as a little positive here

to acknowledge what may have been him allowing himself to be a slight bit vulnerable in the email - i let him know this morning that i've been having a hard time sleeping all week. we've both spent the last 10 months trying to give the very strong impression to each other that we are doing great, that we're on it that we're getting everything right. i think it's time for us to show a little that we aren't all that strong. he's doing it lately - so i'm going to reciprocate.but just casually, not making a big deal out of it.