This past Saturday night…was a VERY good night. The hubster and I took our son out to dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants, had a couple cocktails and some pretty fine chow, made a quick stop at the grocery store for a much needed “personal care” item, and headed home to put our child to bed and enjoy a romantic Saturday evening together.

Hey, even married couples run out of those “personal care” items once in a while. I mean, we’re married, not dead! Right? I think that it is perfectly acceptable for us to have a little “fun” on the weekends, especially since both of us spend almost every second of every weekend catering to each and every need of our adorable little man. The grocery store trip was pretty quick and uneventful, so I’ll skip over that part for now.

Fast forward to later on that evening. My husband looked at me with a huge grin on his face and said, “WOW! (And then he sort of sighed a little) I’ve been wanting THAT for SO long!!” (He then followed with a series of oooohhhs and aaaahhhhs and ohhhh yeahhhhs).

Ok folks, don’t get too excited yet and don’t feel like you have to hide the computer screen from the boss if you’re reading this at work. Remember, as I stated above, we may not be dead yet, but we are in fact, married, and we do in fact, have a kid, before you jump to any soft-core porn conclusions.

Wanna know what the hubby was so excited about?? Do ya??

Ok, I usually am not the type to kiss and tell, but I’ll make an exception just this once and divulge.

For about a month now, the hubster had been reminding me to add Q-tips to my list of items to purchase at the grocery store, Target, Walgreens, or wherever else I happened to be running errands on any given day. And every time he told me, I forgot to write them down on the list, so I forgot to buy them, because for some reason I just cannot remember to purchase most items if they aren’t written down on my list. We’d been living in a Q-tip free environment for a good month or so, and things were starting to get pretty clogged up.

Well, that night on the way home from dinner, the hubby remembered those Q-tips and pulled into the Big-Y parking lot like he was a teenager running inside to buy condoms. My little guy and I stayed in the car, and I laughed out loud when the hubster returned, swinging that plastic bag back and forth like he’d absolutely bought something that required a fake ID that he really had no business purchasing.

We got home, he set our son up on the Wii, I went to the computer to check the blogosphere, and low and behold, the hubby started up some good old Q-tip lovin’, complete with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide for dipping. Ok, so it wasn’t exactly a turn-on for me, but I honestly think it may have been for him. I mean, he went to town with those things! I think he was more satisfied with those Q-tips sticking out of his ears than he’s been in quite some time. Actually, I think he was quite spent. I think he probably could have lit a cigarette afterwards.

As I sat there and watched him in his complete state of bliss, I thought back to the days before our son arrived…heck, even the days before we got married, and I thought about how absolutely and completely mortified I would’ve been to see him having his way with those Q-tips. And actually, he would’ve been absolutely and completely mortified to use those Q-tips in such an adulterous way in front of me. Yeah, I’m pretty sure back in the pre-engagement days, he would’ve reserved that kind of scandalous behavior for the privacy of the bathroom, complete with a closed door, yet another luxury that is nothing more than a distant memory for me these days.

While my hubby and I were doing the whole long-distance dating thing before he popped the question, I can remember just how excited I’d get each and every single time I hopped on a plane from Knoxville to Denver to go visit him. I always looked adorable and completely put together, and I was blond, and stick-thin, and cute as a button, and definitely didn’t have any dark circles under my eyes due to being up all night with a screaming infant whose eight-pound head had recently made its way out of my cha-cha. And my breasts certainly didn’t sag either. In fact, they were quite perky back in those days!

The plane would arrive in Denver, and I’d come up the escalator from the train on the lower level, and there would be this long line of people standing there waiting to pick up whoever it was that they were waiting for. And I’d scan the crowd and then I’d see the hubster, with a huge smile on his face, and most times he’d be holding a bouquet of flowers. And then I’d walk over to him and you would’ve thought we were reenacting the ending to some romantic comedy after the full on make-out session that we’d give the rest of the crowd the pleasure of viewing. (Gross)! That’s right…we were THAT couple. We were THAT couple who I see at the airport nowadays and immediately want to either, a.) run to the nearest ladies room and rid my stomach of all its contents, or b.) walk up to them and interrupt their game of tonsil hockey and make some snide remark like, “Yeah, it’s fun now, but just wait till you knock her up!” Of course, each time I do neither. Each time, I just sort of smile to myself a little and let those crazy kids have their moment. (Did I just call them kids)? Because each time I realize that it is only a matter of time before their Q-tip days begin too. It’s all just part of a package deal that goes a little something like this:

Boy meets girl, boy woos girl, boy and girl fall head over heels in love, boy and girl can’t keep their hands off each other for five seconds, boy pops the question, girl jumps up and down and screams and barely gets the “yes” out of her mouth before she is on her cell phone dialing her mother’s number, boy and girl have a fancy wedding complete with overflowing bottles of champagne and one hell of a good key lime wedding cake, a couple years go by and boy and girl still can’t keep their hands off each other for five seconds, and boom! Life as they know it is over and boy and girl inevitably become new versions of themselves, better known as parents.