Generally speaking, obsessions are not good.  My dictionary widget defines “obsess” as: to fill the mind (of someone) continually, intrusively, and to a troubling extent.  Normally when I hear that a person is saddled with an obsession, I feel uneasy for him or her.  My sister, for example, is obsessed with never slowing down–even when she’s on vacation, she obsesses over packing, or tidying, or preparing food.  She never stops.

See?  Don’t you feel uneasy for her?

My husband, Poor Kyle, is obsessed.  And for the first time in my life, I don’t feel unsettled about a person’s problem, because his obsession benefits me.

Poor Kyle is the most die-hard dedicated person I have ever known–he’s obsessed with obsessing.  What I mean to say is…he doesn’t quit.  Anything.  Ever.

What’s that you say?  That’s just normal adult behaviour?  Not if you’re me, it’s not.  My normal adult behaviour is to look at something difficult, see that there’s an easier way about it (i.e. simply giving up), and generally take that route.  Of course if a thing is important enough, I usually stick it out–unless I can just talk myself into believing it was never all that important anyway.  Then I quit.  Think less of me if you like; I consider it working smarter, not harder.

But we’re talking about Poor Kyle, not me.  The man is obsessed with getting jobs finished.  Sure, it might take awhile (like 12 months) to get him motivated to take down the Christmas lights (which, of course, becomes completely irrelevant by the time Thanksgiving rolls around again.  Better just to leave them up. {Which proves that I have arrived at the lowest white-trash point in my life, but whatever}).

Once he decides that something needs to be done, however...watch out world. It’s getting done.  Sometimes it means I don’t see him all Saturday, if he’s put his mind to some task in the yard or garden.  Other times–like on road trips–it means I contract some sort of horrible bladder infection because he wants to get where he’s going by a certain time, and can’t be bothered with a wife’s need to…go. (Just kidding about the bladder infection.  Mostly.)

So how does this benefit me?  Well, bladder infections don’t–not at all.  But look around.  See this blog?  It’s beautiful.  It’s much better than it was last week, and I like it better than the old blogspot blog, too.

There are still a few kinks to work out, but the overall feel of the new Archives of Our Lives is quite how I intended it.

That’s because Poor Kyle became obsessed with my website.  Last week, he read all the comments that people made about the aspects they didn’t like (words too small, colours too ugly, the entire thing sucks), and set out to remedy each and every issue.

He decided he wanted to learn HTML, XHTML, and CSS (which I can only simply explain as the languages blogs are written in [that’s how it was explained to me, and that was the last I cared to learn of it]), and so…he just…did.  He learned all that computer mumbo jumbo so that I could have a self-hosted website and he could be my tech guy, just like Jon and Heather Armstrong.  He’s living his dream.  [Sort of.  If only I made enough (or any) money to allow us to both quit our jobs and just run a website…]

Back when I first wanted to have a website that was all on its own (i.e. no “blogspot” or “wordpress” connected to it), I priced out how much it would cost for my graphic designer e-friend, Angela Hardison, to design one for me.  It sounded like a great deal, and I absolutely adore every single thing–picture, image, sketch–she posts on her blog, My Little Corner of the World. I knew I could trust her to do it.  I was ready to take the plunge.

But when I told Poor Kyle about my discovery, I was met with a long face and big blue eyes full of sad.

“Okay…” he drawled.

Sensing something was wrong, I pressed to find out the matter.

“Hesitation?” I asked, implying that I knew there was more he wanted to say.

“It’s just…” he started, “I thought that was going to be my job?  You know…when we talked about it a few months ago…”

I realised I had cut him off of his part of my blog.  He wanted to learn HTML, to be a part of this venture, so in a sense it would be our blog–something we accomplished together.  I realised he cared.

Either that, or he wanted to feel super genius smart about himself (which he should, because I’ve seen computer code, and it is positively terrifying.  It looks like this:

<html ::bandwidth sidebar newsidebar layer,,,blah blah blah can life really be so dull xhtml css I hate technology>

Atrocious, right?)

Anyway, the point is that my husband’s current obsession is making this blog better.  See the little red square up by my address bar?  The one with a black “A” in it?  It’s called a favicon, and Poor Kyle made it.  He also increased the font size, figured out how to make the sides of my blog red, while keeping the middle white (and therefore more readable).  He put a box of grey at the bottom of each post, making it easier to distinguish between a whole slew of posts while scrolling down through the archives.  He helped me get all my pictures centered.  He made the top image of snow become a direct link to the homepage of this blog.

He’s done a host of other things, but most of all…

…he’s gained enough brownie points to last him a lifetime of forgotten anniversaries.  Smart man.

Share this post: on Twitter on Facebook on Google+