While browsing Walmart’s Valentine card selection the other day, I kept coming across variations on a theme: “They say that the longer a couple stays together, the more they start to look alike. Good thing we’re both so good looking!” Apart from the fact that this trope is not particularly funny, I eschew cards emblazoned with it because it’s simply not true of Mr. Burt and me. (Though, come to think of it, I do wear a lot more t-shirts and hoodies than I did when I met him eight years ago…)

Now, if there were cards that said, “They say that the longer a couple stays together, the more they start to think alike. Good thing we’re both so exceptionally intelligent and clever!” I’d be all over those.

Then again, that truth may be self-evident without its being expressed on a greeting card.

We don’t go overboard on Valentine’s Day in the Burt house, but we do celebrate it. I mean, why wouldn’t you take advantage of an excuse to exchange silly cards and eat candy and have sex? Not to mention it’s such a cute holiday–and you know a holiday’s legit when it’s got its own kitchen towels and dishes. (I’ve got the dishes, but will be hitting Target or Kohls tomorrow for clearance decor.)

And sock monkeys.

When I saw the sock monkeys at Walmart, in Valentine pinks and reds (or robin’s egg blue or jailbird stripes for the men in your life) with hearts stitched on their chests, I caved to consumer pressure and bought a pair for Mr. Burt and the Burt Squirt. (Monkeys are a bit of a thing in our house, what with Mr. Burt being a code monkey and the Burt Squirt just being a plain monkey and owning a bit of monkey paraphernalia. But I won’t pretend that any other thought than Must have Love Monkeys! influenced my decision to buy.)

Friday night, Mr. Burt went out to do a bit of Valentine shopping for me. Before he left, I told him he didn’t have to make a big deal of it.

“I just got you something little and silly,” I said. And lingerie. But I’m not so into being Even Steven that I wanted Mr. Burt to come home from Walmart with silk boxers or, God forbid, a banana hammock, so I kept that part to myself.

As it turned out, our Valentine gift exchange was a little more Even Steven than I’d imagined. Actually, I had imagined that Mr. Burt might be taken with Walmart’s Love Monkeys (that’s kind of a disturbing phrase, and I will never use it again) as I had been, and wouldn’t it be funny if he got me one, too? But I didn’t really think he would, as just a few days prior I’d remarked about how much I’m missing that gene that cares about stuffed animals.

Anyway, Mr. Burt opened his Valentine present from me and drew out a black and white-striped Love Monkey.

I opened my Valentine present from Mr. Burt and drew out a red Love Monkey.

(And when a boy Love Monkey loves a girl Love Monkey very much…)

If the Love Monkeys alone didn’t prove just how similarly Mr. Burt and I think, there was also the little issue of our Valentine date destination.

Earlier in the week I’d emailed my mom to ask if she’d be free to babysit Saturday, and when she wrote back to ask what time she should come over, I asked Mr. Burt, who was at his computer, when he wanted to go out.

“Noonish,” he said.

“What do you want to do at noon?”

“Hang on, let me check.” He started clicking around with his mouse.

“Check what?”

He didn’t answer my question, just said, “Yep, that’ll work.”

“What’ll work?” I asked, confused and intrigued, because we hadn’t even discussed what we might do for Valentine’s Day, not having secured Squirt care until the moment before.

“It’s a surprise.”

A surprise would be fun–except that I had this not-so-surprising feeling that Mr. Burt was going to take me ice skating. I had no good reason for suspecting this. We hadn’t discussed ice skating, not in relation to Valentine’s Day; a few weeks earlier the Groupon had been for ice skating, but when I mentioned it to Mr. Burt he was in the middle of a computer game and it’s a crapshoot whether he’ll hear you or not when you talk to him while he’s gaming.

Sure enough, Saturday rolled around, and when Mr. Burt asked me if I had any idea where we were going and I told him I thought he was taking me ice skating, his mouth fell open and he said, “How did you know? I didn’t give you any hints at all.”

It was true. We hadn’t discussed our Valentine date at all. And I hadn’t seen his email confirming his coupon purchase, because we have separate email accounts on separate computers. And the coupon he’d purchased hadn’t even been the Groupon one I told him about before.

“That’s not fair,” Mr. Burt whined as we drove down the tollway toward Stonebriar Mall. “I wanted to surprise you.”

I patted his arm consolingly. “You couldn’t have done anything differently. There’s just no accounting for ESP.”

We’re just a couple of Love Monkeys, with two hearts that beat as one.

(And we’re not too shabby on the ice, either.)

The Burt Squirt on the Diaper Deck, which, incidentally, was invented by his grandfather. Because the Squirt's daddy inevitably had a blowout whenever they were out, and in those days there were no such things as infant changing tables. A true family legacy.

I’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating that for my first Mother’s Day, the Burt Squirt gave me eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.  Mr. Burt gave me the day off from diaper duty.  And a new coffeemaker.  All such thoughtful mommy gifts that it’s impossible to say which is the best.

Yesterday was Mr. Burt’s first Father’s Day.

He got a shirt that didn’t fit.

He volunteered to change two diapers.  Both turned out to be horrendously poopy.

Three times he picked up the Burt Squirt and became the target of projectile spit-ups of atomic proportions.

Apart from sounding like the “The Twelve Days of Father’s Day,” this must be proof of something.

Is it that I’m the Burt Squirt’s favorite?  Or does he realize, even at this tender age, the wisdom in not biting the breast that feeds him? Maybe it’s just one more example of the gender disparity inherent in Hallmark holidays.

One thing I’m sure of:  I wouldn’t have had as good an attitude as Mr. Burt if any of these misfortunes had befallen me on Mother’s Day.  He takes the bad parts of parenting in stride, without losing his smile or getting annoyed at the Burt Squirt.  Because he knows that in life, crap happens.  Literally.  And you’ve just got to clean it up and move on without letting yourself get mired in it.

This from the man who swore, before the Squirt was born, that he’d never be able to change a poopy diaper without throwing up.

So Happy Father’s Day to my better half.  I learn more from you about how to be a great parent than I could get any parenting book.  Especially since I don’t have time to read parenting books.

And Liam may only be three months old, but with you for his example, he’s well on his way to being a great dad someday, too.

And, as the poops of the fathers are visited upon the sons, you’ll be vindicated on a future Father’s Day.  What better present is there than that?

My husband is a difficult man to buy gifts for.  You see, Mr. Burt is a content person.  If you ask him what he needs, he says, “Nothing,” and means it, and if you ask him what he wants, he can hardly think of anything, except for the occasional book, which, now he’s got an ebook reader, isn’t really the kind of gift you can buy on the sly and wrap.  Or he wants something big, like a new computer or electronic component, which generally exceeds the birthday or Christmas budget by quite a lot, and which he’d have to shop for anyway, because I’m no techie.

All these factors add up to Mr. Burt never getting a surprise gift over the course of our marriage.  The one exception was last Christmas, when I bought him a Nintendo DS, which would have been out of the budget if I hadn’t found a used one on Ebay.  Mr. Burt was completely surprised and completely thrilled to get a new toy he’d never thought to ask for, but what earned me the real wife points was the mod chip his brother persuaded me to buy with the money I saved getting the DS used. I don’t know if I can honestly say I find it “better to give than to receive,” as gifts are one of my love languages, but surprising Mr. Burt for the first time in our marriage was one of the best parts of that Christmas (and the lead-up; I couldn’t wait to see his face when he opened the DS and mod chip).  I got such a high from surprising him that I really want to do it again.

With Father’s Day and Mr. Burt’s birthday approaching in June, I have my chance. Up until the weekend before last, I thought I knew how I was going to do it.  A friend who shall not be named lest her husband read this post and have his surprise ruined said she was thinking about getting her husband a new camera for Father’s Day  (now all you husbands of my friends are wondering if you’re the one getting a camera for Father’s Day) and I thought this would be perfect for my husband, too, as he’s been using the camera quite a lot since the Burt Squirt was born and commented on more than one occasion that we should get a new camera sometime soon.  Not knowing much about cameras, I waited until we were at Best Buy shopping for a new dishwasher, and asked casually, as we browsed the electronics, if he’d thought about what kind of camera he wanted to get.  To my delight, he didn’t suspect a thing and happily browsed the selection of cameras until he found The One.

We’re deal shoppers in our household.  That’s never been a bad thing.

Until that day.

The One turned out to be on sale.  Mr. Burt declared he was going to buy it.

Now, if I was one to think on my feet, I’d have told him no, we’d had so many baby expenses lately and were buying a new dishwasher, that we really shouldn’t spend more money on a camera at that time, but I didn’t because I never talk Mr. Burt out of spontaneous big purchases like that because he never suggests making spontaneous big purchases if we don’t have money in the budget for them, and he’d have known something was up, anyway.  So I sighed and told him that was supposed to have been his Father’s Day or birthday present, and he laughed and said it could still be his birthday or Father’s Day present, but I told him to go ahead and get it because I knew he wouldn’t want to wait that long to use it to take pictures of the Burt Squirt and I could think of another surprise for him.

Maybe.

The other night was one of the rare occasions the Burt Squirt has gone down before my bedtime without a lot of fuss.  (A welcome relief after the previous night had been one of the Burt Squirt’s worst nights.)  Thrilled with the prospect of unexpected couple time, Mr. Burt stretched out on the couch, and I stretched out on top of him.  (Don’t worry, this anecdote is rated G!)  We lay there, relaxing, for a few minutes before I noticed something.

“You’re patting my back,” I said, my voice lilting upward in question; I wasn’t sure if he was doing it to be funny, or if he didn’t realize he was doing it at all.

Mr. Burt stopped patting and laughed at himself.  “Wow, I am patting your back, aren’t I?  That’s gotten to be a habit!”

Then the Burt Squirt woke up needing his back patted…

…for so long that the next morning, it was a groggy Mr. Burt who, in the midst of doing our finances, asked, “What’s this twelve dollar check you wrote to your parents?”

I couldn’t remember writing a twelve dollar check to my parents, but I don’t remember a lot of things these days.  “What was the date?”

“The eighth,” Mr. Burt replied.  “But it wasn’t cashed till last week.  Actually, I can’t believe the bank even cashed this.  You just made it out to ‘Parents.’”

“What?” I asked, unable to believe that I, even afflicted as I am with Mommy Brain, made out a check to my parents as ‘Parents.’

Mr. Burt showed me the carbon copy of the check.

I burst out laughing.  “That’s Parents magazine!  Remember, I got an offer for twelve dollars for a three-year subscription, plus a gift subscription for a friend.”

“Oh yeah,” said Mr. Burt.  “I need sleep.”

***

Mr. Burt may have been too tired to do our finances, but he did manage to let me know what I should get my hard-to-shop-for husband for Father’s Day.  And his birthday.  And Christmas.  For the rest of his life.

Sleep.

***

Mother’s Day is Sunday, and I asked Mr. Burt to get me a new coffee maker.  That’s sort of the same thing as sleep, isn’t it?

You might think that in order to be a writer, you need a few basic supplies:  a computer, a typewriter (some people like the old-fashioned punch of the keys and the ding when you reach the end of the line), or even more old-fashioned pen and ink. 

I’m personally a big fan of Bic Round Sticks and a pretty journal (college-ruled paper only, please).  Especially for writing romantic and/or intimate scenes.  In my opinion, there’s something fundamentally wrong about typing a love scene.  The smoothness of the paper beneath your palm and fingers, the soft scrape of the pen tip across it, the gush of ink onto the page, the smudges of ink when you swipe your fingers across…it’s a sensual experience.  Typing is sterile. 

Also, I often find sitting in my office, even as great as my office is, a bit stifling to the creativity.  Some days I just want to sit in the chair-and-a-half and prop my feet up on the ottoman (as pictured below).  Or, especially in the fall and spring, spread a blanket out under the cherry tree in the garden.  Or, which may become a weekly occurrence for me, at Starbuck’s with a venti Green Tea Frappuccino.  All of which require me to leave my desktop computer behind. 

Alas, despite there being many reasons for me to write the old-fashioned way, publishers do not accept hand-written drafts.  Which is understandable.  Even I can’t read my own writing.  Let me tell you how difficult that makes typing up my drafts.  It’s terribly inefficient, even if it is sensual. 

So, in order to at least confront the problem of location, I have acquired a laptop, as a very early 27th birthday present from Mr. Burt. 

A beautiful, 17.5" HP. 

(Yes.  I, a life-long Mac user, have gone PC.  Can you blame me when it’s $700 for a computer, router, printer, and carrying bag vs. $1800 for a Macbook.  Okay, so you hardcore Mac users probably can.  You’re a hard lot to please.) 

The laptop’s equipped with Vista and Office 2007, and I can wirelessly access all my writing files from my Mac Mini from anywhere in the house.  Even from the toilet!  (Though I shall endeavor not to write while pooping.  The only sort of scene that could possibly inspire is a crappy one.)  Mr. Burt has set it all up for me in a way that is rather Mac-like to help me make the adjustment. 

And that is why the most important tool of the trade is a supportive spouse.  Thank you, baby!

Erm, for the record, I was not calling my husband a tool…