After 23 years of marriage it’s more challenging to come up with something special for my spouse. By special I mean that wow experience – the one that takes her breath away and gets me one or two husband points. Special is going above and beyond fixing the display on her dual monitors, debugging her Outlook installation or setting up a darknet so she can communicate with other CEOs about issues and topics well above my pay grade.
So today’s Tech Tip is not techy at all. It’s more just a pre-Valentine’s Day life tip and any Certified Legal Nurse Consultant reading this might want to print two copies and place one in your spouse’s lunch box and the other in your own.
Every day when you wake up, take a moment and find something that you can do for your significant other that’s just a bit out of the ordinary. Today it could be slipping a note into her purse reminding her how much you love her. Tomorrow it could be a card, bringing him a cup of healthy green tea in bed or arranging a special event.
Special doesn’t have to cost much, if it costs anything at all. Sometimes special is just making your spouse laugh like you laughed together when you were dating. It might be taking the kiddos out for the day and running her a candle-lit bubble bath before you leave. It might even be cleaning the garage, meeting him for a surprise lunch or smuggling a bag of her favorite potato chips into a movie. What’s special about special is that it’s different for each person.
My favorite extravagant special was taking Vickie to see the Dalai Lama and then afterwards to a private reception where we met her favorite movie star (guess who?). That special turned out to be a perfect day and a perfect evening and will be a forever special, or as we call them a lifer. An example of a smaller special was yesterday when, without persistent repetitive encouragement, I touched up some scratched paint on a cabinet that had been bugging Vickie (I still think she was the only one that could see it). Special is sometimes just doing something without being asked and without asking for a song and dance for doing it.
With Valentine’s Day coming, find your own versions of special – you probably already know what it is (and may have been putting it off). If you don’t, start thinking, think hard and think outside the box. To paraphrase a simple but wise man, “Special is as special does.” Why not get started on it?
Keep on Techin’,
Tom
P.S. Comment and share how you delivered “special.”
