The Sweetest Things

Today I am grateful for my DrH and all the little things that he does for us. I thought they were little things, until all those little things were mine to do alone.

My husband is the first person to tackle the dishes. I make the mess, he cleans it up. Dinner could have been over hours ago, but the dirty dishes usually stay until .... well, truthfully, they stay there until he does them. It doesn't matter what time he gets home, he heads for the kitchen and starts the dishes. I don't intend to leave them for him, I just get busy trying to get the kids ready for bed and forget about them. And I've grown accustomed to our arrangement. I don't mind unloading the dishwasher and loading it, but washing dishes by hand doesn't appeal to me at all. If there are dishes left to do after the dishwasher has been loaded I leave them until the next load. DrH, on the other hand, will just wash by hand any dishes that won't fit and be done with it. Dishes done! It really is like magic. I make dinner and then put the dishes by the sink and when I come back they are done. Presto! Now that he has been gone for 5 days I am doing all the loading, unloading, clearing, soaking... but I still will not wash by hand. I don't like the feel.

And then there is laundry. I sort, wash, dry and bring upstairs. I didn't realize we did this, but we have a little system going:-) At the end of the night when he is finally home (and the dishes done), and the kids are in bed, we sit up and fold laundry together. With a family of 6 this happens quite often. I am going to sound really lazy here. Most of the time I sit on the couch watching TV and he folds the laundry. When I talked with him last night I told him I was watching a movie and folding laundry. His answer to me was "just leave them, I'll take care of them tomorrow". I couldn't do that to him! It was a tempting offer, but I couldn't live with 5 loads of clean laundry waiting to be folded and put away.

Garbage and recycling. This must be some unspoken ritual we have. I put the trash and recycling in the containers and he takes them out when they are full. I rarely have to take the trash out and I despise the job of taking down the recycling. Our city asks us to sort everything so once the recycling makes it out of the kitchen it has to be sorted. My husband would much rather just throw everything into the trash and be done with it, but it makes me feel good to recycle and so he sorts it. This man must really love me.

Emergency trips to the grocery store. When I need something he is the first person to either volunteer to go out and get it, or, if he isn't home (which is usually the case) he calls to see if there is something I need and offers to stop and get it. I love that about him.

When he is gone for a day or two these little things aren't noticed nearly as much. But in 5 days there is a lot of dishes, laundry, garbage, and grocery shopping to be done. He may not be home much but, when he is, he is a big help. I can't wait for him to get home tonight. Maybe I'll surprise him and have the dishes done.