The first time I met Melanie she was coming into class late. I would randomly sit in on occasion in classes where I ran labs. In this class the professor was known for being strict with class punctuality. He called her out and told her not to be late again. It was the first day of class and she had some things that happened and caused her to be late. I thought she was cute but was an idiot. She ended up being in my lab and ended up with one of the highest marks in the class. As she was a neuroscience I ended up getting to know her more and then started helping her out more. After a while when she was no longer my student we eventually started dating but kept it a secret to everyone at the University. She had a boyfriend when we met, but eventually broke up with him. The point of keeping things a secret were because I did not want to think that her success had anything to do with me. If people knew that she was dating me they would suspect that she had an advantage. I would help guide her, but she was not allowed to use any of my resources unless someone asked for or used it first. When she did struggle I would give her a range of 100 pages where she could find the answer. Normally for a lot of the assignments the students break up the work into manageable sections to find the answers to their part. The exam at the end of the semester was basically random choice of the questions in the assignment. I told Mel she could share her answers, but that she should answer the questions on her own. I treated her the same as I did other students at school and she did not like that. If I was working in the office and it was not office hours and I was working I would not always help out the students. There were times where I was offered to teach the class or mark her work, but I always came up with a reason to not do it. That was tough on a lot of occasions because I really wanted to do it. No one ever noticed that she was the only student I had never graded. By the end when we told people, no one was surprised that she finished with some of the highest grades because of her work ethic. They were also not surprised that I did not help her out much and said I should have helped her out. My friends did not think that she existed because we never went on dates or anything. We just sat and worked and took breaks to do random stuff like make spaghetti sauce from scratch at midnight or go for crepes.
One of my close friends was having an engagement party and I said I was bringing Mel along. He did not think I was going to come with someone and was surprised when I brought along Mel. There are times when there is food that might have alcohol in it. I ask Mel to test it out for me and she is really bad at telling if there is alcohol in it. My best friend is the only that has can do it well and is good at it. He is the only one that I trust to sample for me. Mel has been wrong too many times. The problem is that we do not go to events or things together as we get older.
Around the house we use to split chores fairly evenly. I cooked and did the dishes and cleaned the washrooms twice a week. Melanie was responsible for laundry, vacuuming, mopping and dusting. Each morning with the kids, I would start the prep for the kids lunch by getting the snacks and accessories for the kids. Melanie would make their primary meal. Outdoor work Melanie did all the gardening and making the yard pretty. My responsibilities were mowing our lawn which included our neighbors front lawn as they join. In the winter I was obsessive and would make sure our driveway was completely bare. Since the cancer diagnosis, Melanie has taken over most of it except for the cooking. She has cooked more and will assist me with cooking as it really fatigued me to cook. I am lucky that she took on a lot of the work, it has made the transition much easier. It is quite understandable when relationships struggle because of this. When all of the work is loaded onto one person it can be overwhelming. This is when the support of our family and friends really comes in handy. Our family would come and help out whenever we needed some assistance. My parents would make us dinner every day if they could. Today my mother managed to control how much food to give us because she is going to give us food tomorrow as well.
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