Yes, I was spotted feeding outside my habitat on Tuesday night by eagle-eye Merrick, who SO VERY generously gave up his own GREAT seats to the Yankees game so that I could surprise S. as a gift for having worked so hard to get our house ready (it's still not ready, but that's beside the point).
It was the first time we'd been out together in about 2 months, and I was the heroine of the world for having gotten the tickets and having fooled S. all the way to 161st Street / Yankee Stadium on the 4 train, telling him I was taking him to a Gardening at Night event at the New York Botanical Gardens, another 6-7 stops on the 4 up in the Bronx. He had been moping a little at all the Yankee fans on the train, and was trying to put a good face on it, all the while thinking about sitting around at the bot gardens while all these other people got to go to the Yankee game, and right before we got to 161st Street, I pulled his Yankees cap out of my bag and he lit up like a Christmas tree.
I got my PT in spades - he was all over me at the game, clutching my hand, putting his arm around me, kissing my cheek, having his hand on my knee, falling over himself to get me what I wanted... so i have to chalk it up to a major success. He was so happy!
That was a great night. Before that, however, ain't so rosy. I don't think we've been in such dire straits in our R before. It got so bad, and we were just in horribble shape. Even the T appointment week before last, which is usually an oasis of calm in a desert sandstorm, was terribly hard. We couldn't talk to each other, we were ready to give up on our R.
I am getting slower, but I haven't lost my ability to get up off the ground, thankfully. I tried something new, I tried the Yankees tickets and I tried the following, and something turned around. I took a day off on Saturday to go to the Brooklyn Bot Gardens with him, which is a favorite place of ours, and we made a day of it. It was nice, and we had nice talks. When we got home, I didn't want the conversation to degenerate into wasing the dishes, or turning on the radio, or picking up the newspaper or the computer.
So I initiated a What If conversation, just to shake it up a little. I poked around in my brain a little and asked what kind of business he would open if he had a lot of money and wasn't worried about turning a profit. The ensuing 4-hour conversation was spirited, enthusiastically received, and led to some R talk later that was somehow nonthreatening, easy, and productive. We both marveled at our ability to talk to each other in this way.
Wow. So now I've learned something new about S. He was so happy I asked him such a question, and responded better than I'd ever hoped. Even last night on the subway home from our childbirth education class, at which he was so attentive and sweet and full of PT for me that I thought aliens had abducted him, he mentioned my question and asked where it had come from, that we had never talked like that, that that was what he was looking for, that he felt we were finally scratching the surface of getting to know each other, that something had shifted, what prompted me to ask that question, that we needed to talk to each other like that more...
and now, I ask you, O wise members of the board, to help me come up with more of these questions! I'm in a quandary, because I love that it worked, but on the other hand his noticing what worked so specifically makes it hard for me to do it again without it seeming forced or hokey. Any advice on this front will be rewarded with lots of gold stars.
And I'll name our baby after your BB handle. So people like Gefeltsenheimer Bube or whatever it is are cordially asked to abstain.
