This has become a little catch phrase in our house. It makes me laugh, so much.

James fell into the .gif trap. I mean, he really loves them. I’ll randomly catch him laughing about something and ask to see what he’s looking at.. and it’s this, or this, or this.

Amongst the gifs, the other day, in particular, he came across this..

And he laughed. And I laughed. And it stuck.

We’re still learning how each other works.. I know we always will be, but sometimes I just need him to trust me (and me, him) and trust that I have thoroughly considered our situation and that I’m making an intentional decision and to please, just “grab a cactus” and I’ll explain later.

And now it’s funny. When we’re in a hurry to leave the house and I know that they’re doing construction on the freeway so we need to take the side streets, and I hastily ask him to turn right instead of left at the end of the street (because shoot, I forgot to tell him earlier!) and the light turns green and he wants to know “why?” I can say “grab a cactus, babe!” and we both smile, and I can explain once we’re on the right path.

Obviously, this could be misused. It could backfire. It doesn’t suit every situation. But, it’s helping us learn to trust each other “in the moment”, especially when we don’t have time to hash out the details.

We’re both capable adults. We both survived and made sound decisions before joining our lives together. This seems obvious, but it’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling like you know best. And while I know this “game” partially perpetuates the problem, I also think it takes the pressure off, and helps us remind each other that “Hey, it’s okay, I’ve got this. I’ve got you.”

And everyone needs that reminder every now and again