Let Me Count the Ways

Sometimes Mark wants to be all philosophical and meaningful about the truth about love and why there is love and why we love each other. I think that's great and all. A rare thing to find in a man. Heck (yes, heck) it's a reason I love him! But as I was cleaning the disaster my mother left in the kitchen (the apartment search is ON!) I was just thinking that the real basic 'Man Things' that he does are so important to me too. They make me happy. They make me feel cared for in the very basic day-to-day ways. I felt the need to list them:

Mark cleans up dead mice. This has such an amazingly high importance I can't even explain it to you (but I'm going to). For those of you who know Mark because of his Tahoe Life you will not be surprised. Mark was the man who had to clean up vomit and poop on a daily basis. It was his job. And he could be passionate about it.
I especially appreciate his talent at cleaning up dead mice whenever I come across that particular Sex and the City episode (com'on Blair!) when Charlotte is dating the Gay-Straight Man and a mouse gets stuck on the glue trap. For a hilarious moment Charlotte and her GSM are kicking the mouse back and forth to each other, squealing like girls, and begging each other to 'get rid of it'. That will never happen with Mark. If I come across a crime scene I simply have to remove myself and my gentleman will take care of it. There is no "you just left it there all day?" or "I did the last one it's your turn". Dead Mice = Mark's job.

Mark cares about my music collection. In the summer of 2005 my father suggested that for my birthday I get an iPod. He accompanied me to the Apple Store in Soho and there I realized he wasn't offering to get me an iPod for my birthday he just thought I should buy myself one and justify the purchase because it was around my birthday. I was pretty annoyed because I'm pretty sure I was perfectly happy traipsing around with CDs and probably would still carry around a Discman if it wasn't for that purchase. Either way that was my big step into the mp3 world and it has pretty much been my only. When it comes to items over $100 I absolutely stick to the school of thought "Don't replace it until it's very broken". Therefore even though my iPod is pretty much insanely outdated I don't give a (dead) mouse's tushy. I'm not buying another one. I don't need it. But that doesn't erase the fact that one day I'm going to go play some music and my iPod will not work. And all my music gathered from my own collection and from communal computers across Stanford Sierra Camp property will be gone! Gone and missed! I get sad just thinking about it.
But Mark to the rescue. A number of months ago Mark put all of my music on his hard drive. He sacrificed precious gigabytes for my music protection. Not only was that nice but it was necessary. Do you think I was going to dedicate hours of my time finding the right program, figuring out how to use it, loading, moving, arranging, filing. Whatever it all is? No. He did. Because he cares.

Mark does Man-nagging. He bothers me. About the important life things that I just can't get to in time. While a woman will nag about the pair of socks on the floor or the dish in the sink, this man nags about bigger things. My problem is credit. I have none. My credit is so non-existent that I was denied a credit card designed specifically for young people who have little-to-no credit. Huh? I was perfectly happy to shrug my shoulders and continue to live life with debit card transactions. But Mark said 'Nay'. He researched how to investigate credit issues. He scoured FAQ pages. He created a desktop folder with all the information I would need. And then he nagged me until I filled it all out and mailed it. And I only did that because there were like 3 lines to fill out. He had done everything else.
Our wedding. Ugh. I can't even think about it. In fact, I often don't. I don't like to plan. I'm not good at it. I get all worked up and can't breathe. Mark sat at his computer and created spreadsheets. Worksheets. Plan-o-grams. He completed his guest list. He saved it all on a desktop folder that is easy for Jamie to find. Everyday he asks me if I completed my guest list. What do you think the answer is?

Mark eats anything. I was raised in a house that has this man. We'll call him the Dad. And Dad likes three things. Rice, beans, plain meat. That's it. 3 things. That's boring. And if you try to 'mix it up' the Dad complains. He moans, he bitches, he whines. If, by some miracle, he actually likes whatever 'new thing' you've done, he's surprised. Wow! That was good! I don't really like that but it was good! He says it in a way that makes you wonder if he thinks that 'it' being tasty was an accident. That it was supposed to taste like crap because it isn't rice, beans, meat but by mistake you put something in it and it tasted good. This time at least. Anyway, my point is he's not very adventurous and gets upset when you mess his dinner time up with 'something different'. (Though will he cook? No. He's The Dad.)
However, Mark will eat anything. Learning to be domestic and cook dinner was fun for me when we had our own place in Tahoe. I could cook anything! Mark would eat it! And almost all the time he liked it. Even when I didn't. It was exciting to cook because he was excited to eat. I could complain that he doesn't exactly volunteer to cook. That the ratio of Mark cooking meals to the ratio of Jamie cooking meals isn't exactly equal but why bother? I have years of marriage ahead of me to do that. Also, Mark only cooks one thing. And he didn't know how to boil water until he took a cooking class. WHA? Hello! Is that warning enough that I don't necessarily want to be begging for the culinary creations of Mark? I mean, boiling water? In the words of Geico, It's so easy a Caveman could do it. And Mark couldn't... apparently. But I digress. This is about how I love Mark.

Mark has become an indentured servant for my happiness. TJs is his master. With TJs Mark will supply us with a nice-ish, Extreme Uptown Manhattan apartment (instead of middle-of-nowhere Brooklyn), food (for me to cook), privacy, cleanliness. Mark moved to NYC to make me happy. And how did I repay him? By finding a job fair for TJs where he went, wowed them, and was hired. Now he works 50 hours (or more) a week, spends the rest of his waking hours on the NYC Subway, is chronically exhausted, Vitamin D deficient, and chronically unhappy. It's all my fault.

Which is why when we have a space of our own where I am The Boss of the House (that's right Mark, me) I will do my absolute best to make sure it's a space where he can be happy for the 20 minutes he is awake eating food and the 4 hours he gets to sleep. And all the little snippets in between.