Filling up with warm fuzzies before relationship hibernation
December 27, 2008 3:14 AM Subscribe
Ideas for things to do with my husband before he goes off for three months of job training? He's leaving in two weeks.
Besides lots of quality time, does the hivemind have suggestions for things I/we can do to prepare for the long quality time drought? We'll only be able to write (paper and stamps) letters, and have never been apart for more than three nights, much less out of phone/email/im/texting contact that long.
We're both artists in our mid-twenties, together for 2.5 years. I'm not big on scrapping types of crafts
Current plans:
- Taking lots of pictures with my film camera... enough so I can develop a roll each week he's gone.
- zipping up a couple shirts of his in plastic bags to preserve "husband smell"
- try to record the sound of his heartbeat/breathing while he's asleep for my mp3 player
Restrictions:
- We're being extra frugal to save up for the move we'll be doing after he's done with training
- I'm flying cross-country to spend the 3 months with friends, so nothing to "create together" that might be bulky or difficult to transport
- I don't want to put a lot of pressure on him to do things for me, so suggestions of things I can do the heavy lifting on would be best.
Advance thanks!
Besides lots of quality time, does the hivemind have suggestions for things I/we can do to prepare for the long quality time drought? We'll only be able to write (paper and stamps) letters, and have never been apart for more than three nights, much less out of phone/email/im/texting contact that long.
We're both artists in our mid-twenties, together for 2.5 years. I'm not big on scrapping types of crafts
Current plans:
- Taking lots of pictures with my film camera... enough so I can develop a roll each week he's gone.
- zipping up a couple shirts of his in plastic bags to preserve "husband smell"
- try to record the sound of his heartbeat/breathing while he's asleep for my mp3 player
Restrictions:
- We're being extra frugal to save up for the move we'll be doing after he's done with training
- I'm flying cross-country to spend the 3 months with friends, so nothing to "create together" that might be bulky or difficult to transport
- I don't want to put a lot of pressure on him to do things for me, so suggestions of things I can do the heavy lifting on would be best.
Advance thanks!
My sweetie and I were long-distance for a couple of years before being in the same town. A tradition for us was "Wednesday Mail," a package full of goofy, sentimental, or completely random stuff that we'd send each other via USPS Priority Mail. You can fill and mail a box about the size of a hardback book for 4-5 bucks. I'd snag things like menus from a restaurant I wanted to take her to, picture collages, napkins, zip-locked tshirts I had worn, whatever worked, and she'd do the same. We live together now, and we both STILL miss Wednesday Mail.
posted by apollo at 11:35 AM on December 27, 2008 [1 favorite]
posted by apollo at 11:35 AM on December 27, 2008 [1 favorite]
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I made a bunch of strips of paper, one for each day I would be gone. On each strip, I wrote a memory or an inside joke or something I really loved about him. I folded them up and put them all in a pint-sized canning jar. I glued a label to the jar that said "Your Daily Dose of Jenny" with instructions to open one each day. Then I hid the jar somewhere in our house and when I got off the plane at my destination, I called him and told him where to find it.
It was a total hit and had the pleasant side effect of giving us a nice conversation point when we talked on the phone. (Because, and I don't know why this is, but I found that, after a week or so, talking on the phone can get hard and you're like "well crap i didn't do anything interesting today" but you feel like you have to have something to report on, so the daily dose is always good for a little reminiscing.)
posted by missjenny at 5:33 AM on December 27, 2008 [1 favorite]