F-ing A!

Just noticed that I am the one-and-only link on Meg's new section "Reclaiming the Word Wife" on A Practical Wedding!

This makes me very very happy and very very nervous. Because people might actually come here now.

Guess I gotsta step up my game.

If you've found your way over from A Practical Wedding, welcome! Let's be internet friends, yes?

Can't get a read on this...thoughts?

Today while I was at work researching immigration policy and being alternately enraged and enheartened Pandora kept interrupting my Busta Rhymes jam sessions to advertise this website:

*sorry for the terrible screen shot - the internet gets the better of me a lot. Also I have no actual image programs on my computer

I tried to ignore it for a while but then curiosity got the best of me and I HAD to check it out. Apparently it is some sort of website for married people? To help with them with their married lives and offer resources?

I dunno, I suppose I should be really excited about this but something about it weirds me out. I made D$ do some internet-sleuth work to figure out if it was some sort of veiled "Pro-Marriage as in Anti-Same-Sex-Rights" propoganda or secretly done by a religious group, because it has that weird uber-normal-not-really-saying-anything kind of ad that usually means "we secretly want to take your rights away." But as far as he (or I) can tell it is part of a Health and Human Services Program called The National Healthy Marriage Resource Center (NHMRC) which is "a national resource and clearinghouse for information and research relating to healthy marriages."

As you can see from the screen shot the website features pointers on communication, "how-to"s on finding time for your honey, and other tips. It all seems pretty innocuous, so why am I so weirded out by it?

I mean, think about it. I started this blog to process my own marriage, and I would love for there to be more people talking about marriages (or commitments) instead of just weddings. So why am I not excited about this website? I think it might be the squeaky-cleanness of it, or maybe the intense hetero-normativity (why shouldn't it address all committed relationships? Why married and engaged couples and not just couples? Where is the section on domestic same-sex partnerships)? I can't help but thinking there is some sort of hidden message that I would find offensive - if I could only figure out what it was

So what is it? Am I just a cynical naysayer who can't appreciate an honest effort to support marriage? Or is there something fishy here?

Things I can't wait to have # 1

TWO BATHROOMS.

Or one bathroom that looks like this.

I would settle for dual sinks, but I'm hoping I won't have to. And since the world where we no longer live in our current apartment is but a far-away dream, I can fantasize-up whatever I want.

2 months

We've been married for two months. Neither one of us realized it was our "monthaversary" until about 8 p.m., which could have something to do with the fact that we were accidentally out until 1 a.m. last night celebrating a friend's achievement, which led to a very foggy morning for the both of us.

The evening's anniversary activities included drinking our favorite cheap wine and eating pizza from the place next door. In our sweatpants. While we watched Project Runway and Psych. Now D$ is off to a party and I am off to bed so I can actually get some homework done tomorrow.

Before we realized it was our two month mark I was watching NCIS (don't hate) in my PJs while D$ goofed around on our computer. I had a momentary moment of "oh no! We are ignoring each other on our Friday night" - but then I realized that we were both doing exactly what we wanted to be doing after a long week of school and work. And I was just glad to be in the same room with him while we each relaxed in our own way.

And then I convinced him to go buy us pizza so we could snuggle and watch PR together.

It really was the best kind of night.

"So how is being married? Is it different?"

I've been asked this many many times since the wedding, and my response is normally something like, "Oh well, you know, it's great! Not really that different, blah blah blah." To be honest, I never really know how to answer, because:

1) This is one of the those questions that people don't really want the answer to. Like if someone asks how you are and you say "Fine" because it would be weird if you said "Ugh, I have had the farts all day like you wouldn't believe." Even if married life was terrible (and it totally isn't) it would be super awkward if I said that.

2) The people who ask seem to expect me to say it isn't that different; they make a face like that is what they expect me to say and it is easy to comply. I do feel different, more stable and quietly happy and rooted in a way that I didn't expect, but I'm not going to tell that to my old co-worker on the bus.

3) To be honest, up until a week ago, after the honeymoon ended and our normal lives commenced again, it didn't seem all that different (aforementioned feelings excluded).

Up until a week ago.

About two weeks ago I got in a huge fight with some close family members. The biggest in years...we're talking angry letters (in the mail! With stamps!) huge gaping emotional wounds being opened, etc. Normally this would have broken me for days but this time I felt much calmer than normal. Not that was I wasn't upset, I definitely was. I didn't even realize what kept me so calm until after the fact, but then someone asked me that stupid question and I went, Aha! It felt different to be going through it with my husband. It wasn't that D did anything any differently than he would have done two months ago (in fact he was barely involved in the whole thing) but for some reason the knowledge that he was there on my side made the whole thing easier. I guess it felt like, hey, I am making my own family now, and that made the ordeal with my parents and siblings all that much easier.

Figuring this out made me really happy but it also sort of weirded me out. It gave me a good answer to the question, for one thing. What is weird is that I would never EVER argue that marriage is the key to anything, much less stability or emotional balance, but it does seem to have increased both of those things in me.

That is all the analysis I have right now. Yes, it is different. But I am still figuring how and why, and I am damn sure that the "difference" marriage makes is different for everyone (and not something that marriage has a patent on, to be sure).

D$ would like you to know

That not only did I go to a restaurant for brunch while he went to the laundromat, I went to his favorite restaurant. oops.

I mean, really

This morning, D$ got up early to help me clean (including vacuuming the cat hair off the couch), then went to the laundromat and did our laundry while I went to brunch with a friend.

And then later he made me dinner. Tofu curry, to be exact.

Someone please remind me of all this next time I am mad at him for something stupid.

So here we go

Hello, internets.

How does one start the very first blog post of one's very first blog? Does one introduce oneself, even though one knows that there are no readers (mostly because one has hidden the blog from view)?

I guess I'll just jump right in. After a year and a half of reading (the awesome and non-panic-inducing) wedding blogs and developing secret crushes on the wise wedding ladies of the internet I got married a little less than two months ago. I've been thinking about starting a blog for a long time, I fancied myself a writer in earlier years, but I have always hesitated. I wasn't sure what to write about, or to whom I would be writing, or if it all wasn't just a little bit silly. But since the wedding, since starting out in the brave new world of married life, I have been feeling the urge to write more and more. Because there is all this talk about weddings and not as much about marriages. And so far I think that marriage is pretty darn great, and definitely worth thinking and writing about. I've heard that the first of marriage is one of the most difficult, and frankly I'm prepared for that. If it is then I wanna talk about it - really think about what makes it so difficult and how my husband and I can work through it together and come out on the other side hand in hand.

And if it isn't hard, well then I would like to gloat. (I kid!)