penelope and bumblebee

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Road Trippin'

An interesting question was posed recently over at Bub and Pie’s place: What do you talk about with your husband?

It’s a great question, one that, with a kid, work, a household, a waning social life and fatigue to deal with, can become difficult to answer. Often, after dinner, after bumblebee is in bed, Chris and me go our separate ways. I like to blog and watch tv in the evenings; he likes to play videogames or work on projects in photoshop or aftereffects. We’re cool with this; we both need time to decompress and relax, and chris always comes upstairs at various intervals to ‘check on me.’ This isn’t all we do; we also watch movies together, work in the garden/backyard or just sit out on the back porch on warm nights. But sometimes we realize that we’ve gone 5 days with little conversation beyond the regular musings about our daily grind.

That’s where the road trip comes in.

Perhaps it’s because we are trapped together in a box hurtling down the road at 100-ish km/hour; perhaps it is because we are both trying to prevent Chris from falling asleep at the wheel as we travel the 350km to/from Chris’ parents on about the most boring stretch of road you’ll find in Ontario; perhaps it is because we leave the house at 6am and bumblebee quickly falls asleep again her car seat and we need only to pay her passive attention. Whatever it is, in the car, on these trips is where our best recent conversations have occurred.

Take this past weekend, travelling to/from my in-laws; in no particular order, the conversation, flowing freely and enthusiastically, included but was not limited to:

· The need for an emergency kit to be stored in the cold cellar, in case of, well, an emergency (the Star must have been reading Chris’ mind, because today they printed this)

· Our concerns for bumblebee in the changing world: How to prevent bumblebee from one day becoming prey to an internet predator (penelope); How to prevent bumblebee from dating – anyone, at any time, ever (chris)

· What it would be like to hypothetically live in the small town that chris grew up in (chris – calm, quaint, cheap; penelope – boring, isolated, torture)

· More of the should we/shouldn’t we, when should we/shouldn’t we have a #2

· How my ‘issues’ affect Chris, and why he loves me anyway (this conversation was like a hug, and I was buried in his chest and his arms were around me, and I felt more secure and loved than I have in a long time)

· The crisis in the middle east

· What we would be when we grew up if we could do it all over again (chris – architect or biologist; penelope – archaeologist or forensic anthropologist)

· If we still have time to do it all over again

· Names for our second kid if we have one (I love throwing out names; this regularly peppers our conversations)

· Why some of our friends are so funny/ridiculous/deadbeat/clueless/kind/kindred, etc.

· How some of the stupid comments we heard that weekend affected us (Chris’ bro on our new car: Is that your piece of shit out there?)
Oh, wait; we didn’t talk about that one – I was just thinking about all the answers I should have given and didn’t.

· How we should just get a new floor for our 60+ year old kitchen since we’ll never have the money to renovate

· When we are getting our next tattoos

· How no one wants to bowl with chris because he kicks serious ass, so we should just join a league of our own

We laughed, we talked, we laughed some more.

And then we got home, and the day passed quickly, and I was tired and wanted to watch the emmys and chris was tired and wanted to play videogames, and we went our separate ways.

But we had sex later. And agreed that next weekend we’ll go on a road trip somewhere.

6 Comments:

  • At 7:39 PM, Blogger metro mama said…

    I hope I was the kind or kindred one and not the clueless!

    I need to start sitting in the front seat again for road trips.

     
  • At 12:05 PM, Blogger Her Bad Mother said…

    Road trips ARE tonic for lagging intra-marital discourse.

    Gonna need to get on that...

     
  • At 2:07 AM, Blogger crazymumma said…

    Hurtling down the road at 100K in a tin can with 2 demanding children is not my idea for a salve for the long married soul...but glad you had a good time....

     
  • At 10:36 AM, Blogger Bea said…

    This reminded me of the days we lived in Stratford - we'd have our best conversations on the hour-long drive home from any social event in London - and much of the conversation involved gossipping about the people we'd just spent time socializing with! Maybe next year's move to St. Mary's (small town 30 min. away from London) is going to be a good thing!

     
  • At 12:09 AM, Blogger lisalou said…

    We live in the west coast version of your world! It made me smile to know that we had similar weekends. We just got back from a road trip to Tofino. It was an awsome weekend of camping, surfing, and "rekindling the love" as we call it and now Mr. Himself is playing video games and I am on surffing the www.

     
  • At 1:16 PM, Blogger Sandra said…

    Nothing like a good road trip :

    And a big CONGRATS on the perfect post award ... so well deserved!!

     

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