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.