Trade Off

For all intents and purposes, my relationship with Nick is one of fairness and equality.

If I make dinner, he does the dishes.

If he makes the bed, I empty the dishwasher.

Neither of us ever has a chore that we feel like we “have” to do; we just like keeping as much of a balance as possible.

So when Nick offered to return our Redbox movie last night, I offered to heat up something for dinner. Easy trade off, fair and square.

Until he walked in the door ten minutes later with a goofy grin on his face and these in his hands:

Just my favorite flower. NBD.

Gotta give the guy credit for the element of surprise, right?

Nick also came home with a box of brown sugar that I’d ask him to pick up because, for some reason, I had cinnamon buns on the brain all weekend. I have no idea where the craving stemmed from, but it grew to the point where I was looking at cinnamon bun food porn on Pinterest (and that’s the point where you know you have a problem) and Googling recipes for a no-yeast recipe.

I finally settled on this one because it sounded the easiest/looked the tastiest, and, keeping in tradition with our fair and square trade offs, Nick had these guys waiting for him when he woke up this morning:

I know that neither of us does sweet things for the other hoping to get something better in return; we do them because we like seeing the other person surprised and a little bit happier than they were just minutes before.

And sometimes, like today, keeping the balance feels a little bit sweeter than usual.