Father's Day

This has not always been one of my favorite holidays. My dad is gone, after a long struggle with alcohol, substance abuse, bipolar depression, and neurological illnesses. Our relationship was fractured over the years, almost broken, but not quite.

On the other hand, I have a wonderful step-dad. I hate even calling him that, using the word "step-dad", because that's a term, for me, that evokes someone who's in your life not by choice, but by a decision of your mom's. He's more like a dad to me; he's known me since I was a small child. And I love him just as much, if not more, than if he were my biological dad. So, from now on, I'll refer to him as Michael.

But today I want to talk about Matt. I'm not going to write him a letter here, but I just want to describe our day yesterday and all he does for Audrey and me. Yesterday was supposed to be a fun, carefree day, where my biggest concern was going to be which Father's Day card to choose for Michael.

When I woke up, though, I had a headache. Not anything unusual, since I'm allergic to practically every substance known to man. It didn't go away, though, because it was a migraine. And my migraines don't go away. They linger, like the smell that you can't find the source of, and then you discover it was a rotten baked potato way in the back of your pantry (that's never happened to me, of course).

After I realized it was a migraine, I started tearing the house apart for a Relpax. Because my last migraine was a doozy, and I could not go through that again. But I had nothing, nothing but Excedrin Migraine. And you suck, Excedrin, I just want you to know that. You're useless.

Of course, Matt joined in the search, and then he remembered that he gave me the last Relpax I had during the May Migraine Marathon. So he got on the computer and researched natural remedies. He read that you should take a shower, 5 minutes of the hottest water you can stand, then 5 minutes of the coldest you can stand, etc. He came in the bathroom and told me when my 5 minutes was up, using the kitchen timer. He couldn't stay in the room with me because of Audrey and also, because I had the space heater in there and it was boiling hot.

Near the end of my 30 minute shower, he came in and said that Audrey had a poop-splosion. Except it was diarrhea, and he said it was everywhere. Bless his heart, he still said he could do whatever I had asked for, but it needed to be the last request for a while so he could clean her up.

Matt spent the rest of the day doing all of the following:

1. going to Publix to search for ginger root, which I was supposed to chew to alleviate my pain. No ginger root, but he did come back with some Canada Dry ginger ale. Close enough.

2. cleaning up the diaper mishap. This involved taking clothing, the swing seat cover, and other items outside to the patio table to scrub and spot. Brilliant, really, because who wants to try that on the kitchen table? And our washer/dryer was covered with dirty laundry from the beach anyway.

3. designing a "button" for my blog, which goes on the siggy of the message boards I frequent.

4. and so many more things that I can't remember, because I only got about 3 hrs. sleep last night.

Oh yeah, he also took care of a 6-month-old all day. Did I mention that? Suffice it to say, Matt is one incredible man. AND HE'S MINE. SO BACK OFF.

I truly hope that all of you have awesome husbands as well. Have a great Father's Day, and tell the man you love how you feel about him.