It’s really impossible to neglect me. You can’t forget me and move on. You can’t pretend I don’t exist. And you really can’t pay more attention to other people than me. I will be right there, knocking on the back of your head to pull you back.

Well, that’s how it works if you are married to me.

I’m not one to let my husband get away with things that hurt me. If he thinks he can be neglectful and inconsiderate, he’s wrong. Because I respect myself more than that. I know I deserve to be treated with love. I’m a great catch.

Oh- I’m not mean. I’m not a nag. But I am insistent and willful (Doesn’t that sound better than stubborn?). When I need more attention, I think up ways to get it.

I needed more attention.

I stumbled across a website that is about dating your husband. Yes, we should have been doing it all along. Every magazine article on marriage say so. I know. But one week something comes up, and the next week soccer practice starts and suddenly you realize it’s been three years since your last “date”. I thought the site was a great idea but Jeremy laughed at the idea of a contract for dating and I knew there was no way he was going to come up with dates on his own. I know my husband’s limitations and date planning is one of them. And of course, we live in the middle of nowhere, without a babysitter of any kind. Our dates needed to be at home every single week. That makes it a little harder to be original and fresh. I came up with an alternative plan.

Our first date was date planning. We sat on the living room floor with 52 pieces of paper and a pen and came up with dates. Once Jeremy realized he could think of anything that the two of us can do together and I was okay with it, he played along. We’ve got some typical Jeremy dates: Warcraft night, Tiger Woods Golf night, and poker night. But he also came up with horseshoes, Vegas night, and 80′s night. We compromised on a night that  neither of us had standing plans on and we decided that switching off who is in charge of date night should rotate weekly. At the end of our weekly date, one of us draws from the date jar and that’s next weeks date.

Here is example numero uno why we needed a planning night: Jeremy’s first thought was that we should plan on date night being Tuesday because then if something came up, he could switch it to Wednesday. Mother-fucker. I calmly (relatively) explained that whatever night we picked was written in STONE. He couldn’t change the night because something else came up with one of his buddies. That was kind of the whole point.

So, every Tuesday night we put the kids to bed early and they pretend to sleep while we have a date night. So far we’ve had a Wii fit night, an 80′s night (Caddyshack!), and a horseshoe tournament. And every week, he starts out thinking he doesn’t want to do whatever it is we have planned but is having fun by the end of the night. And last week he was explaining all our dates to my parents and actually sounded excited. He’s also coming up with a computer program that automatically randomly picks a date for us based off of a date database. Ahhhh… to be married to a programming geek.

My work here is done.