Day 9--A Hairy Situation

My plan for today was to offer a service to my husband with a cheerful disposition rather than the begrudging attitude of obligation or resignation in which the service is usually performed.  I am referring, of course, to the rather dubious requirement that I somehow have to trim his neck about once a month.  I hate trimming Barney's neck for two reasons: 1. it is super messy and 2. he is super picky about it.

The idea was to offer to trim his neck this evening after the kids were in bed, but before I could even offer, he made the request himself.  While I was disappointed that I didn't get to offer up the idea, I at least was able to cheerfully agree rather than putting it off for several days with one excuse or another, which is more of our normal routine.

However, despite this gesture, today felt more like a day of receiving rather than a day of of giving for me.  Barney was very sweet today, bringing me Chick-fil-a for breakfast, going shopping with me for last minute Christmas items, and, best of all, allowing me about 30 minutes of rest time on the couch this evening while he played with the kids upstairs.

This project has had interesting and unintended side-effects regarding the concept of being on the receiving end of a gift of kindness from Barney.  Sometimes, like the day when I asked to sleep in, I feel like I am somehow "owed" by Barney because I am trying to do things for him on such a regular basis.  Then, I can start to feel resentful that something didn't go my way.  Other times though, I become uncomfortable when he does something nice for me because it feels like I should be always one step ahead of him in terms of being sweet.  I told you that I'm a competitive person, and I think that somehow I imagine that there's an invisible tally being kept that records the number of nice things he does for me per day against the number of nice things that I do for him.  And I have to be on top at all times.

I know that there is a lesson to be learned here, and I can only hope that as this expirement progresses that I will start to have a clearer understanding of what it is that I need to learn.