9 Years, Still Here

Nine years ago today, Chris and I got married.

And if I had to pick just one thing, one, single, solitary thing that is the most significant event of my life, it would be THAT.  Everything else that means anything at all, hinges on that moment.  But perhaps that's too simplistic a view, because a marriage isn't made in a day.  It's made every day.  It's made over and over and over again.

I suppose the occurrence of our anniversary has me feeling more sentimental than normal, because I took down Jane Austen's Persuasion to reread.  All of her novels center on characters who make mistakes, human mistakes, they rectify those errors and then move on.  But in Persuasion, you have perhaps the greatest acknowledgement and apology for those errors ever written in the English language. 

Now, if you'll recall, Captain Wentworth has overheard his long-time love Anne tell a friend of his that Men will always forget the women they love before Women forget them, and since he cannot speak openly to her, he writes her this letter (I'm truncating it, you really should read the whole book, if you haven't yet, it is perfection from beginning to end, a true masterpiece):

...Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever.  I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years a half ago.  Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death.  I have loved none but you.  Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant...

 I love that.  I suppose because I feel like that's how our marriage works.  We're two flawed, imperfect human beings.  We make mistakes.  We occasionally act selfishly, arrogantly, or blindly.  We are sometimes weak and resentful and unjust.  But we apologize, we forgive, we try again.  Never inconstant.  After 9 years, I am more certain of this one thing:  He is Mine, and I am His. 

Breakfast Cake

My sisters don't generally celebrate their birthdays.  They say it's no big deal, but I can't understand that.  It IS a big deal and I'll tell you why...

Breakfast CAKE.


My birthday is the one and only day of the year that I care not at all about calories or nutritional values.  My Grandma is declinging, so my parents weren't able to come down and see me (and bring me a birthday cake) for my birthday this year, so I made my own.

Want to know the best part about making your own cake?  You get to lick the bowl!

Anyway, the cake stuck to the pans--it's what I get for having delusions of grandeur.  I was going to frost it and decorate it and make it all pretty.  And while I could have chosen to be mad and sulky about it, instead I'm looking at my favorite cake in the world that's not pretty enough to Share with anyone else, so me and the babies get to eat ALL of it.  Straight out of the pan like the wild heathens that we are!

This morning we ate breakfast, then got down the candles lit them and the Boy sang to me and we blew it out together.  We got our forks and shared a charming piece of unfrosted marble cake.  I made him promise not to tell his Pediatrician that we do this once a year.

There were presents too.  My sweet husband bought me a grain grinder and a flannel nightgown.  Truly selfless gifts since he likes his baked goods made with refined white flour and his wife...not decked out in baggy flannel.

I think the reason that my Birthday is a big deal to me is not really the cake or the presents.  It's a day to celebrate my life...the part that's just mine.  And it is a sweet life.  I never expected it to turn out this way, but I'm oh so grateful that it did.  I get to spend my life with these amazing people.  I get to try new things and learn new things and see new places.  And best of all, when I screw up, which is inevitable, I get to try again.

And if those things aren't worth celebrating, I don't know what is.

36, Counted them myself...

It's been a weird week.

I kept forgetting that today is my birthday, for starters.  My poor Mother had to keep reminding me that Monday was indeed my birthday.

Of course, it didn't hit me until Sunday morning when I felt a little bit of self-pity that it's my birthday and I feel like crap.  Which, in the grand scheme of things, a sore back, aching uterus, and stiff and sore pretty much everywhere else, isn't that bad because I get to hold the squishiest, softest little girl in creation.  And my Boy keeps coming in to my room to say, "Mama.  I need to cuddle YOU!" 

He climbs up on to the bed and lays his head in my lap next to his baby sister and I rub his back as I nurse her and yes, it's pretty much moments like that, that make up Heaven itself.

I really am going to write my take on the Girl's birth, but not today.  Today is my birthday.  I am staying in my nightgown and nursing my wee one.  My mom is bringing me the most delicious cake known to man and I'm going to eat it with not one shred of guilt for garnish.

That's not to say there won't be some amusing posts going up this week.  With PICTURES!

Birthday Blast

My Birthday was Sunday.

It was a good one.  In spite of the unavoidable getting older aspect, I love birthdays.

My parents came up and took us all out for dinner and my mom made me cake and y'all, I ate cake All. Weekend.  Long.  It was awesome.

And I'm happy to announce that after six and a half years of marriage my sweet husband bought me birthday PRESENTS.  Usually, he just takes me out for dinner, but this year?  PRESENTS.  Wrapped and everything!  It was so great!   I totally felt like a kid again.

(My parents and my Grandma gave me money and let me tell you why I love money.  Because it enables me to rationalize things I would never normally rationalize--like audio versions of books I own and have read and loved!  Yay and YAY!)

And since it was Sunday that was about the end of the special...we had church and packing and so that's ok.  I've accepted that the best birthdays come when you're a kid and you get the day off from chores or whatever AND you get dinner AND cake AND presents.  Once you grow up, you never get a day off from work to be done.

And you know?  That's ok too.  Because this family of mine?  They're worth working for.

600

Well.

Who would have thought that my first post in 2011 would be my 600th?  Certainly not me.  When I started this little piece of crazy I was newly married, childless and temporarily professional while I decided on a PhD program. 

Since then, I've had a baby, made some new friends, lost some old (and good) friends, read a ton, learned a lot, made quite a few mistakes, but only some of them repeatedly, learned how to sew, knit, crochet, and make cinnamon rolls.  I've developed a boat load of new recipes, I've become obsessed with Battlestar Galactica, West Wing, and World War 2 documentaries.  I've moved twice.  I've bought a laptop and started a freelancing business.  Chris and I took trips to Boston, New York, Western Georgia and the Blue Ridge mountains and Savannah (more than a few times).  I flew out to Seattle and then to Santa Fe, NM.  I've been sick, I don't even know how many times, and only hospitalized once!  I've blogged about disappointment, frustration, anger (poorly managed), exasperation, but also humor, epiphanies, lessons learned and indescribable joy.

I've contemplated deletion and abandonment more than once.  A lot more than once.

But I've never quite been able to do it.  And I'm not sure why.  Half the time, I write, I post and then I forget what I wrote entirely.  I've had my own words hurled back in my face and have had NO recollection of having written them at all.  It's a strange relationship I have with this here piece of crazy.  I feel bad for spending time writing and posting, time that I could use to do something (anything) with a tangible outcome, and then I feel bad for NOT writing.

I've posted relentlessly, followed by long periods of unexplained silence.  I've seen my blog traffic rise from 3 to 300 and then plummet back down to...I don't even know.  I don't check the stats anymore.  I've decided it's too much like weighing myself.  I get obsessed with the number and forget about everything else.

I've regularly questioned my ability to churn out anything whatsoever that would be of interest to ANYONE to read.  And yet.  I get these amazing emails from some of you, some wonderful comments, reaffirming whatever I happen to have posted.  I can't tell you how much it's meant to me, and how many times you've pulled me back from the precipice of deletion.

I started this little piece of crazy, to be a window on our world--for our friends and family who don't live near, so that they can peek in and see what's going on.  And as I look back through the archives, that's exactly what it's become.  These wonderful fragments of our life together.  Not all of it happy, but honest all the same.