Do people do anything for less-than-a-year anniversaries anymore? I just realized that all we did for our 6 month anniversary was salvage the relationship. It was a busy weekend errand-wise for him, and I helped where I could, but we had no private time at all and I didn’t mind that. I guess I can romanticize it by saying, “On the precise day of the 6-month mark, we could have gone either way, but he gave me hope for the relationship and restored ‘us’ back to the way we were in the beginning. And that is the best gift I could have asked for.”

But the reality is, he got up really early Saturday morning to take his daughter to sing at an elementary school ball game’s opening ceremony, then they came back, collected me, the three of us went to his ex’s house to pick up his son, who was already uniformed and ready to start his high school baseball game, we stopped by a local restaurant for breakfast, dropped the son off at his game, went back to his place, dropped the daughter off at home, then he and I went back to the son’s ballgame, watched the son and his 2 nephews play on the team, left early to take his son (who had a fairly serious mishap) to the orthodontist, learned the office was closed, went back to his house to drop me off and make an appointment for urgent care, he took his son to sit in urgent care as I stayed home to hang out with his daughter, we watched “Friends” on DVD, he and son returned, he was messing with his fishtank so I took daughter to get her haircut, his ex came to pick up son, daughter and I watched Little Black Book on DVD while he planned his Alaska fishing boys’ expedition in June with his buddy, daughter went to bed, he and I sat up in the living room and talked out our problems. And that was just Saturday.

Sunday, he caught a renegade fish in his fishtank and we returned it to his fish store to trade it in for some shrimp and another different breed of fish. Had Japanese noodle house lunch by the fish shop. On the drive home with fish and shrimp prodding my lower abdomen through their bags on my lap, his daughter called and asked him to pick up a bite for her on the way back. He refused, said his fish needed to be taken care of pronto, but that he’d take her after he finished his fish-related errands. I offered to take her when we got back, so while he tended to acclimating his fish and shrimp, daughter and I went to McDonald’s where she, with great difficulty, filled her cup with Hi-C instead of soda because she’s going through sympathetic Lent and has given up soda until Easter Sunday. We came back, he and I went to another fish place to buy salt water and other supplies, and he cleaned his tank and put his newcomers in. We watched the interaction for awhile until we fell asleep, then I got up and went to my parents’ house. And that’s Sunday.

There’s a part of me that misses the marking of small milestones, and there’s another part of me that’s unconcerned enough about it to have forgotten about it over the weekend, since we were frying bigger fish. Maybe I’m growing up. Or maybe I’m growing into my inner guy.