Dear Lashell Collins posted today about being a romance junkie and our need to indulge in fictional boyfriends.  A new blogging and fan fic friend Rachel J Lewis was also lamenting the need for the fictional boyfriend recently.  I sympathised with her plight when she highlighted all the ways that her Significant Other wasn’t quite matching up to those between the page Princes that we know and love.  But I have to admit, that after the week month from hell, my experience was somewhat different and when life smacks me in the face, my fictional boyfriends don’t quite cut it.  Don’t get me wrong, I love a romantic fictional alpha as much as the next girl but not as a replacement for the real thing.  More as an enhancement of the real thing because when it comes down to it, the prince in your arms is worth two on the pages.

So here is my Tribute to SuperGeek.

First, I have to tell you about my life at the moment.

My work is more stressful than it has any right to be but mostly it is that way because of a system that quite frankly likes to fuck with people’s minds and lives.  Consequently, I have been working 14 hour days for most of the past four weeks (because these things come in waves) and pretty much 7 days a week.   In fact, I deliberately snuck off for a mini-break in the first week of June because I knew it would be like this with very little let up before November.  Every year for the past four has been like this and I don’t know why this year should be any different.  Oh, hang on, yes I do, more students enrolled, more timetabling headaches, more resource dilemmas, more staff to manage and somehow, less time to do everything.

So last week I got to the end of another, particularly stressful week and I broke.  Quite literally.  When you find yourself sitting on the floor of the shower at 10pm in your good work clothes crying because you can’t get the shower screen clean, then you know there is something seriously wrong.

And this is how I know that I married a prince.  First, he wrestled the cloth out of my hand and took me to the couch to wipe my tears and hold me while I cried.  Then he made me tea, sent the kids away, turned everything off and talked with me.  Listened to all the shit things that were overwhelming me and best of all, helped me make a plan. He helped me to see that I could put one more foot in front of the other but we would do it together and even better, we would do it in the morning.  Then he tucked me into bed and he held me all night.

The next morning he brought me breakfast in bed and then my computer so I could start working on those steps. All through the day he checked in, reminding me gently what they were, which order they had to happen and cheering me on until they were done and I could breath again.  Oh, and he also made me take regular breaks and got me out of the house to feed me.

That is the way of the Prince.  But it isn’t always about those big moments cos that is when you hope that your partner will step up.

No, it is the little every dayness that makes him a true prince.  The way that he has taken on the cooking in our household and therefore the shopping.  The way that he apologises for being late home if he gets held up past 6pm.  The way he knows what deoderant I use, my brand of feminine products, my favourite meals to order out and my brand of tea (even though he never drinks the stuff).  He doesn’t complain when I spend money and he takes me out to lunch or brunch on weekends just to be alone with me.  He taxi drives the kids on the late night pick ups because he knows I don’t like driving at night.  And, I never have to ask him to help out around the house.

Then there are those special things between the two of us.  The way he spoons me every night before he goes to sleep.  The fact that he still thinks I’m sexy even though I am twice the girl he married.  The pride he takes in the fact that I have a doctorate (apparently I am the smartest person he knows and I married beneath me) and I gained it after he wrenched me and the kids away from family and friends to relocate to Australia (I hope he has forgiven himself for that one). The way he touches my face and kisses me goodbye every morning before he leaves for work and the way he greets me with a kiss and makes me a drink in the evening when he gets home to remind me to stop work for a while.

If I had to say what makes him better than my fictional boyfriends?  He grounds me, reminds me that nothing is ever really as bad as I think it is and he makes me laugh, every day.  That, ladies and gents,  is the sexiest damn thing on earth.