Tuesday, July 27, 2010

The day the world started over



It was just shy of 6 months after our wedding. I was home sick.  P had just bought a motorcycle.

**crickets**

Say what now?

We needed a second form of transportation, and a motorcycle was the cheapest and most efficient form at that point.  He brought it home this day.  Little did we know I would only go on one ride with him!

So, I'm home sick.  Something just doesn't feel right.  And (plug your ears boys)  I hadn't had a period in about 6 weeks.  I really didn't think I was pregnant, though.  After all, I had just gotten off of birth control.  Every test had come up negative (and I had taken a lot.)  I asked P to come home a bit early so misery could have some company.

As per usual, he called when he left work, asking if I needed him to get anything.  I wanted another pregnancy test, but then I realized I still had one at the house.  I voiced all of this, of course.  We hung up, and I headed to the bathroom.  I was truly expecting to have just flushed another $7 down the drain.  I was not expecting a second pink line.  But almost immediately, there it was. Bright, bold, and beautifully pink.  My drea of being a mommy was going to come true!

I had to tell everybody right away.  I had to tell P first. Shaking, I called him- and asked him to pick up more pregnancy tests.  He got that voice- that scared, terrified, man voice- and said "What did it say?"

I said, "I'm pregnant!!" (Note: he was driving at the time.  On the freeway.  Probably not the best time to tell a man he's going to be a daddy for the first time.)

This marked a huge change in our relationship.  We went from talking about the future to living it.  We wanted to do so much before the baby came.  We wanted to travel.  We wanted to have money saved, have our own house, have more time just us.  We had to cram as much as we could into 10 short months.

Our marriage changed forever.

Monday, July 26, 2010

D-Day.

I promise this blog isn't a chronicle of our 'love story'. I just feel everyone deserves a little background, then maybe you can understand a bit more of what I'm talking about later on down the road, right?

So, D-Day. The day when we said goodbye to being single.  And took on a whole mess of responsibilities to each other.  It was pretty awesome.  I married my soulmate, after all. We had a small ceremony in a little park across the street from our house:
See? Houses!
And then the reception IN our tiny house, on a June Texas day with a broken A/C:
Nothing mattered then except WE WERE MARRIED!

I had a blast.

Now, I got a comment on Facebook earlier this week about 'real weddings'.  And I want to say, the wedding isn't the part that matters.  As a girl, I love them (as stated previously).  I loved my wedding, but I don't even feel like it was what I expected, or wanted originally, or whatever.  To me, it wasn't a 'real wedding'. (We didn't get to dance much at all!)  I think most women have this picture in our heads of how we want our wedding to go, of all the frills, decorations, what the dress should look like... and it wasn't that.  I still loved it.   loved him, and I kept telling myself the rest did not matter one bit.  Guess what?  It didn't!

All that to say, I look back on that day and think how insignificant it's been in the grand scheme of it all.  And it's only been 3 years!  Can you imagine how I'll feel in 10? 20?  There has been SO MUCH MORE that has taken up the forefront of our thoughts.  We talk about doing it up 'right' for our 5 or 10 year anniversary... and we might.  But then I think, we're so glad that we didn't blow all our money on all the fuss... It was relatively low-stress... why would we want to do that now?  With a kid? and jobs? and school?

Just send me on a cruise.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Weddings. Or, what it means to be a girl.

I love weddings.  like, really.  I luuuuurv weddings.  I get disappointed when I can't make it to any one of my friends' wedding, because they're just so beautiful and sentimental and... gosh, I'm getting teary eyed just thinking of it.  Plus, I usually get to dance like a fool.  Yeah I'm that lady, out on the floor shaking my groove thang and throwing my arms in the air for YMCA.

Seriously, y'all.  My love for weddings is intense.

So when P asked me to attend a wedding with him occurring just a week and a half after becoming an item, I didn't think twice about it.  I jumped at the chance, actually.  I was a +1!  To a wedding!  It didn't matter that I hardly knew the bride and groom, much less my date, I was gonna be a WITNESS OF LOVE.

P's roommate saw trouble.  And said so.  Loudly.
"You know she's going to want to get married now, right?" I laughed.  Because really, gals, it's true, right?  We see a wedding, we get all mushy, we want the same.  Hell, I get jealous now of people getting engaged and married... it makes me want to go through it all over again (the horror!).  Of course, I didn't admit as much then.  I didn't want to scare him away.

So anyway, fast forward.  We're in the car with the roomie and headed out to the middle of nowhere for this wedding, when we realize how hungry we are.  Sure, there will be food at the wedding, but who knows when that will be?  So we all decide to pull over and grab a bite.  We need gas, too.

So we find a Taco Bell.  And P's love for Taco Bell goes beyond understanding.  He sees the sign and gets hungry, no matter if he ate 5 minutes ago or not.  It's quite disgusting.  So we order his $15 worth of food (damn fast food is expensive these days!) and the roommate and I get ours.  And you know how at Taco Bell, they have those hot sauce packets?  With the sometimes funny, sometimes baffling little sayings on them?

Yeah, this is what I got...

*not original packet.  I thought we had it in our memory box, but it appears to have gone missing.  I bet he stole it for its deliciousness.


I mean, talk about destiny.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Dating, or lack thereof

Thanksgiving 2006, or The Night We Became an Item
As I've mentioned previously, we got married pretty quickly.  Okay, insanely quickly.  Sometimes we look at each other and say, "Did we really do that?"  Oh yes, m'dear, we sure did.

When we met, we didn't intend to even really be exclusive.  We were just looking for... well, honesty, for one.  For someone we could get used to dating again with.  We met on October 30th, 2006.  The night before Halloween, the night after his 25th birthday.

Now, I want y'all to look at the picture above.  Go on now, I'm waiting... You see that caption?  The one that says Thanksgiving?  Yeah, we threw all that non-exclusive, dipping our toes back in the water nonsense right out the window.  The car window, that is.  Going about, oh, I don't know, 50 mph.

It all happened so fast.  He was such a gentleman (or so I thought!)  and really made me laugh.  He cared deeply about his family and friends.  He was a hard worker, and, damn... did I EVER find him sexy hot attractive.  OK, so maybe I thought all of those things.

He took me to meet his friends.  All at once.  Not just friends, either... people he had gone to high school, then college with, and then subsequently transported all of them out to where we live now with him.  He made me let him buy things.  Ate every meal I cooked for him (**swoon**).

He didn't make a move, at all.  I held his hand.  I kissed him.  I was the forward-momentum.  Yet we both felt it.  That spark, I mean.  You know the one. Where you're not sure exactly what it is, but it's something, and by golly it's something special.  Over the course of 5 weeks, we fell in love and realized that it didn't matter how or when, we were going to be together for the rest of our lives.

We didn't say it, not at first.  We each refused to be the first one to say those three words.  We'd look at each other and grin up a storm, though.  We got to the point where we had this... this nod.  We knew what it meant.  It was an understanding, that we got the feeling.  That it was mutual.  But still, we played chicken with the vocabulary.  It was awesome.

I don't remember who said it first, or when.  Which, in a way, saddens me.  It hasn't even been 4 years since we've met and I can't remember that? Maybe he can remind me.  I remember the sheer joy of it, though. I mean, yeah, we had the nod.  I knew that much.  But nothing compares to the words, the publicizing of those emotions, right?  So, we were in love.

love-a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person

About the video blog...

Yeah, so, I wanted to do this as a video blog.  Originally. But then I realized, who the hell has time for that stuff?  To schedule 10 minutes or so, 2 nights a week, on a steady basis, just to put my thoughts out there to the world?    Not me.  No siree bob.

You see, I'm a mom.  And a wife. And a full time student. And I get grumpy if I don't have my sleep.  Did I mention I'm a mom?  My (almostbutnotquiteyetandmyhusbandrefusestoadmititsthisclose) 2 year old takes away quite a bit of that.  Not to mention the school thing.  Yeah, I pull all nighters sometimes.  They suck.

And then there's the wife thing.   As if it's not bad enough that I'm barely able to move when I crawl into bed at night, I'm supposed to do WHATNOW?  That headache excuse really doesn't work for me...

So anywhoo.  What was I rambling about?  Oh yes, a video. Now, I may still do a video blog occasionally, as an accessory to this here FINE LITERATURE.  Y'know, when I feel pretty and all.

But otherwise, I'm sorry, you're just gonna have to deal with this. But, hey, show a gal some love and follow me!

Friday, July 23, 2010

The Meaning of Wife

This is me and my husband on our wedding day- June 30, 2007.  We got hitched 8 months TO THE DAY after we met, and boy, has it been one wild ride.
He likes to say he got me off Craigslist.  I hate the way he says it, it sounds terrible, but it's true.  We met online.  Through a personals ad.  And honestly?  I did NOT see him coming.  I thought, ok, I'll dip my toes in, start dating again, have some fun.  Then I met him.  I think, even from that first night, I was done for.

He, on the other hand?  Not so much.  It took him a little longer (though still not long at all) to realize what we had.  That we were going to be a forever kind of thing.  About 5 weeks later, however, he took a dive and asked me to become his wife.  We're here, so obviously I said yes...
At any rate, it's been three years now.  I know, that's not a super long time, but that's why I feel the need to write.  Because we've got a long way to go, sure, but in 3 years, we've been through one hell of a lot.  Considering we didn't know each other all that well when we got married, this may as well be an arranged marriage, at least in how hard we have to work at it.  We've learned a lot.  We're learning every day.

And I'm discovering just what it means to really truly, be a wife.


wifea woman joined in marriage to a man; a woman considered inrelation to her 
husbandspouse.
 
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