1. tuck a love letter into Warren's briefcase
Would have been a lot more interesting if I had written "tuck a love letter into warren's briefs", but alas. This wouldn't have been my first pick for a first challenge, except that it turns out it was. It's not like the man doesn't deserve being loved on, lord knows he deserves all the good things. It's just that I was really hoping for the one where I make an alien business card. Or have to take creepy doll to a movie. Or serve dessert for dinner. Because dessert. For dinner.
It would have been simple to write out a "yada, yada, great Dad, yada yada, thanks for all the tea" sort of letter and be done with it. But people! This is not the challenge! Where is the spirit, the soul, the wild, in "great Dad, and thanks for all the tea"? Quite right. Hell and damnation to that.
So I thought about what would appeal to him, which would likely just be a picture, or pictures, of boobs. I can see the spirit, soul, and wild in boobs, though perhaps not in a way that is blog appropriate. Or work appropriate. Or appropriate.
Love, eh? What even is it? I don't think you can have a singular definition that covers all eventualities, but I do think that if you got out your metaphorical shovel and dug all the way through to the middle of love's abstract core, what you would find there is a strong commitment to someone else's best interests. One would hope that affection and sexual attraction would also feature strongly in a romantic partnership, but they're not love. They're kind of like love's fancy undies.
Fancy undies or not, love shows itself in the ordinary, in the everyday. In the in-joke giggling and the weeding and coming home late at night after another 15 hours at work and insisting on doing the dishes because you want to feel you've done at least one nice thing for your wife that day.
Love is in the vacuuming and the painting fences and putting up wallpaper and taking children to sports and in the dimple on his right cheek that is super, super, irresistibly ticklish. It's in all the good mornings, and in all the good nights, and in all the days of his being here. And being a home. And being my home.
And sure. In the joining and the staying, maybe there are holes and pain and bloody messes. And maybe the stitches are wobbly and uneven, weaker at some points than others. Perhaps it will be death that rends the one heart from the other in the end, perhaps betrayal, or sickness of the mind, or one god-awful decision on one god-awful day. Who can say? Life is predictable only in its chaos. What I know is that today, and so many past days, he's shown that he loves me because he's acted like he loves me.
And I love him too.
Also, boobs.