The Present

Excuse me while I take a momentary break from the past to, well, complain about something in the present.

So for the past, oh seven years (since I learned how to knit), Chris has been asking me for a sweater.  And not just a plain, basic, run-o-the-mill sweater.  An every day, who cares if it gets dirty sweater, but an intricately cabled sweater.  A fancy sweater, an HEIRLOOM sweater. 

When he started med school, I thought to myself, "Maybe I'll make him that intricate sweater and give myself 4 years to finish it.  It can my my Med School project."  And I gave him fair warning, that I would make him said sweater, but I would take as long as I wanted to finish it.  Because, and this is the material point.  I'm not very good at cabling.  I seem to have a natural affinity for color work, it comes quick and fast for me.  But cabling?  Cabling is HARD.  I have to really focus on what I'm doing and I can't ever zone out, I have to keep reminding myself which row I'm on and look at the stitches that I'm knitting because some of them change and some of them remain the same.  So at the time, I thought this was a reasonable plan.

And then I started it.

Back in early May, I found this beautiful pattern.  It's an Alice Starmore (she's an AMAZING designer from the Hebrides in Scotland) and I have most of her pattern books, but I've put off knitting anything from them because I just didn't feel like I was a good enough knitter to try them.  But I thought, I have four years to figure it out!  It'll be fine!  So I knitted up a gauge swatch (and got gauge for the first time EVER), so I cast on.  I worked the cuff and got the cables started and was feeling pretty good about it, so I thought I'll pack it to Utah with me, we'll be in the car a lot, it'll be nice to have something to work on.  So I did that.

And the yarn...the yarn is this pine, muddy green, but looking at it in the sunshine out in Utah, it just came alive with flecks of emerald and gold and orange and teal in it and it was so pretty that I really was completely surprised by it.  So I kept working on it.  (If you follow me in Instagram, you'll have seen pictures about it.)

I got about 5 inches done on the front, and then started the back because I knew if I finished the front and had to start all over on the back then I would just dissolve into a puddle of defeated tears.  So I finished about 5 inches of the back and then set it aside while I finished the winter sweaters for the kids for this year (don't worry, they got plain, boring, run-o-the-mill sweaters).  And I lost the momentum.  And worse than that, my anxiety about working so many cables came BACK.  So then it just sat there, in my knitting bag, intimidating me.

I finished the sweaters for the kids and was worrying about Na Craga, so I just left it alone and I asked Chris what kind of socks he wanted for Christmas.  And you can probably guess what his reply was, "I'd rather have the sweater, it'll be more useful to me on campus...please?"  So I confessed that I was feeling a little intimidated by the sweater at the moment, and then I did what any slightly overwhelmed mother-home schooler-knitter would do and I cast on another sweater for Lilu.  It was a simple little pullover, it took me 2 weeks.

But at that point, I could avoid it no longer, so I went back to Na Craga.  I pulled it out, I looked at how much I had knitted and how much I still had to go.  I thought about the skills that I was going to have to LEARN before Christmas, because there are all of these things that I'm required to do that I've never done before, and back in May when I gave myself four years to knit it, it all seemed do-able, but now, in August, when I'm trying to finish by Christmas, it seems really scary!  But I've been working on it...and here's proof.

The bigger piece is the front, it's about 2/3 of the way finished, and the smaller piece is the back, it's exactly where I left it in June.  I still have all of the neck shaping, 2 sleeves and a collar to knit, and then I have to figure out how to assemble the whole monstrosity.  Before Christmas.


Pray for us sinners.


(I told Christopher on Sunday that I may never knit him anything else EVER again.  And he promptly said, "I'll ask for something simple next time!"  Hah.  As if there's going to be a NEXT time.)

Chris gets a New Coat

So at the start of every school year, the new crop of med students participates in what's known as a White Coat Ceremony.  They go up on a stage, group by group, and they are presented with their White Coat, the outward symbol that they're a med student.  It's a really cool ceremony, actually, because it celebrates their potential.  And it's a time for family and friends to gather and cheer on their med student.

So last year (that would be August 2014, if you're having trouble keeping up), Chris had read about it and thought it was the coolest thing ever.  So when he found out that he'd been accepted, he called his parents to invite them up and told them that this was a big deal and he would really appreciate it if they could be there.  As it turned out, his Mom was traveling that weekend and couldn't be there, and his Dad was non-committal.  So I braced him up as best I could and promised that the kids and I would be there with bells on to cheer him on.

So a week before the ceremony, his sister and I were texting back and forth and she asked when the ceremony was and for more information generally, so I gave it to her, but thought nothing else.  I just figured that she would call or text the day of, because she's very thoughtful that way.    A few days after this exchange (Wednesday before the ceremony to be precise) she called me and said that she and Dad (and maybe Chris's brothers) wanted to try to come up on Sunday, but wanted it kept as a surprise just in case they couldn't make it, so would I help them?  And I said, "Heck yeah, and nothing easier since Chris is never around!"  So we started plotting.

I planned a BIG family dinner for Sunday, to celebrate Christopher (of course), we made  a traditional NC barbecue and all the sides.  Chris said, "Isn't this kind of a lot of food?"  To which I replied, "It's a lot of people, and also shut up, it's delicious."  He had no argument for that.  I sent his sister details on when to show up and where to park and made sure that we would park in the same parking deck so that Chris could see his family BEFORE the ceremony.

So the day arrives and he and I are both a jumble of nerves, though for very different reasons.  We left Church a bit early so that we could make it to the ceremony on time.  At the last minute, Chris decided that we would drive together and then, THEN he tried to change where we were going to park.  And to that I refused in Diva like fashion.  He looked at me funny, but then headed for the parking deck.

As we drove up the road towards the deck, I looked up and saw his family (all but his Mom) standing on the second level watching for us and I pointed them out and said, "Who are those crazy people?"  He glanced up and said, "I don't know...WAIT!  WHAT?!"  And I started to laugh because the look on his face was PRICELESS and then he started to tear up and laugh all at the same time and he said, "Did you do this?!"  And I said, "Your sister and I make a MAD team!"  He was so touched that they drove all the way up here just to be with him to celebrate.

There were hugs all around and exclamations and lots of pounding on the backs and the kids were squealing with delight and jumping up and down because they got to see Paw-Paw AND Jenji AND Mike and Rusty AND Daddy all in the same wonderful day!  My father in law was thoroughly impressed with my secret keeping skills and Chris really was knocked off his feet.  I don't think I stopped grinning until we got our seats and got settled.

At which point Maggie decided that she had had ENOUGH.  Enough of dresses, enough being quiet, enough sitting still, enough not napping, enough enough ENOUGH.  So I took her out and tried to nurse her to quiet her down and tried to rock her and cuddle her, and she would calm down for a few minutes.  Long enough for us to go inside and see where they were in the program, and then it was more screaming and more out in the hallway.  I went back and forth with her until it was time for Chris's group to go up.

Then I handed her off to Mike and I took the big kids down to edge of the mezzanine to see their Daddy.  (Lilu had been crying for him basically since we sat down.  I think she thought he'd be sitting with us.)  So they saw him walk onto the stage and Lilu chirps up, "Hi Daddy!"  And I started to giggle because (of course) it echoed through the whole theater!  So then they call student by student and one of the faculty puts the coat on the student, and Chris was the second one, so they call his name and both kids shout "YAY DADDY!!"  And the whole theater erupts in cheers and applause, and that right there is where I lost it and started to cry and cry.

Because here's the thing.  Chris has wanted to be a doctor his whole life.  It's the only thing he's ever really wanted to do.  And not because he likes the lifestyle or wants to show off and drive a fancy car or anything, but because he likes to help people.  And when he didn't get in (years ago, when we were fresh out of undergrad), we talked about different career paths where he could still help people, but it just wasn't what he really wanted to do.  He tried different paths and different jobs, but he was never happy, and I think it was because he only ever wanted to be a doctor.  And here he was, getting his white coat at long last.  He had worked so hard and here was his dream of what he wanted to do and to be and he had made that happen.  I could not have been prouder of him than I was in that moment.

(Oh, and when I turned around to take the big kids back to their seats, Maggie was sound asleep on Uncle Mike's shoulder.  I should have handed her off an hour ago!)

So we sat through the rest of the ceremony, and then joined the masses to try to find Christopher.  We met up and went to shake hands with a few faculty members, and everywhere we went, Chris was greeted with cries of "YAY DADDY!"  by his classmates.  It was sweet and endearing and so many people told us what a great moment it was.  And it was a great moment, but for more reasons than just the kids.

We took some pictures (Jenn's turned out MUCH better than mine), and then headed back to the house where we were met by my parents and Sherry and Jeff and my nephew Joshua.  We ate and talked and laughed and had a wonderful time together.  And Chris looked at me and said, "This is why you made so much food!"  And I said, "Yes!"  He was still completely surprised and it was thoroughly fun to tell the story over and over and over again.

(BIG thanks to Jenn for taking such great pictures!)

Med School Begins

So August saw the start of Chris's med school adventure.

In short.  It sucked.

He was in class for nearly 8 hours every day, and he had signed up for the Spanish language program (extracurricular, mind you), so he would be gone for 3 days every week without seeing the kids AT ALL.  So my entire August experience can be summed up in 2 words only:  Meltdown City.

Think I'm exaggerating?  Being melodramatic?  Yeah, I took pictures...

It took me the better part of the month to figure out that the kids have only ever known Daddy on Demand--essentially, they got to have him whenever they wanted, as long as he wasn't working.  So the very act of going days and days and not seeing Daddy at all was like the end of the world as they knew it.

It was just a hard month.  But, as I tell my kids nearly every day, we can do hard things.  And we learned...we learned how to do school and work and take care of each other without Daddy.  Meanwhile his heart was breaking because he just wasn't physically able to do it ALL.

Suffice it to say, it was a miserable month, but we learned a lot.  So that was good!

My Mountains

Rather a possessive title, no?  I love mountains.  Give me mountains and you'll find me in a perfect state of happiness.  I love the jagged edges, the abrupt beginnings and endings, I love trees and rocks and rivers that run through them.  So when Chris suggested that we spend a week camping in the mountains (July 2015) I jumped at the chance.  I knew it would be tricky with the 3 kids, but even if you do nothing at all in the mountains, it's my happy place.

So we loaded up the kids and the dog and headed West.

Chris's Mom keeps a trailer over in the mountains west of Asheville, so that's where we stayed.  It was hot over there, but who cares?  You're in the mountains!  We settled in and the kids had to share a sleeping space, which they weren't wild about, and Chris and I shared our sleeping space with still, very wee Maggie.  It was cozy...or would have been if it hadn't been 90 degrees every single day.

Still we hiked, and may I just say?  Cameron blew me AWAY.  He was a champion.  He hiked the whole length of the upper and lower falls of the Yellowstone river, and didn't complain, not once.  I think he rather enjoyed himself because the trail offered lots of variation.  Sometimes it was an easy boardwalk, sometimes it was a smooth dirt path, and other times, it was a stone staircase carved into the mountain itself.  Lilu rode in the backpack with Chris, and Maggie was in the sling with me.

Highlight of the trip?  We got to the top and stopped to snack before heading back down the trail, and Maggie started to fuss, so I loosened the sling and latched her on and we continued hiking, Chris turned around and saw me and said, "We can stop!"  And I said, "Naw, I'm good, I'm a Mama and a canteen!  Life is good!"  Though, some of the other hikers looked at me a little strangely.  I just smiled and said, "I love my little ones!" 

Other highlight?  Chris NOT careening over the edge of the precipice with our middle child.  So we were headed down said trail (this was before the breastfeeding) and Chris stepped down wrong and his ankle turned, his knee buckled and Lilu is heavy enough that the forward momentum pushed them both down.  The edge of the trail was only 12 inches from the side of the mountain, so I immediately thought they were going right over the edge.  But he stopped them and then hobbled back down the trail on a completely sprained and quickly swelling ankle. 

Kids best highlight?  The s'mores in the rain!  We had promised them s'mores.  REAL s'mores, over a FIRE s'mores.  So even though it rained every night, Chris dutifully built a fire, with lovely oak wood, and we roasted marshmallow after marshmallow after marshmallow until the kids were so sticky that no amount of wiping would clean them EVER.  So we took them in the showers and hosed them off before putting them to bed.  That was really fun.

Eleven

So I've been thinking about the Anniversary in Burnstopia lately, and all I can hear is that guy from Spinal Tap saying, "ours go up to ELEVEN."  I don't know why, I'm pretty tired, so maybe that's it.

This year marks 11 years that Chris and I have been married.  Or as he so romantically puts it, "that I have been putting up with his crap."  Which is true, but still makes me laugh.  What really cracks me up and exasperates me all at the same time is his superhuman ability to SNEAK enormous things into our house without me noticing.  I went down to clean up the basement on Monday, and there was this huge storage cart on wheels just sitting there.  I called him to come down and said, "Dude.  What is THIS and how long has it been in our house?!"  At which point he laughed and said, "I didn't want you to think I was taking advantage of you being incapacitated post-c-section."  At which point I laughed and said, "But you totally WERE!"

Anyway...

We've been having an Honest Week around here, wherein he and I are probably a little too honest about our levels of stress, lack of sleep, frustration and discouragement.  But for all that, it usually brings us closer and makes us appreciate each other a little more.  I have to say, he's much more persistent and tenacious than I thought he was when I married him.  Maybe that's why I expected him to leave me for so long.  I figured, Life would get hard and he would leave.  But he hasn't.  And I haven't.  We stay and we keep working and we keep trying and after 11 years we've built a life together.  Some days it feels like it's built out of straw and the big bad wolf could come along any minute and blow us to smithereens, but I also know that if that happens, we'll dust each other off and build the Life again.  Which, now that I think about it, is what marriage is all about.

 

I tried to find a picture of us together, but there really aren't any.  All of our pictures are of the kids, or one of us with the kids.  Which, in a very genetic sense, is a picture of us together.

Snow...week

Two winters in a row!  What will I do with myself? 

You all know how I love snow, and winter, and all things COLD.  And yet, I live in the South.  I live in the South because I love beyond all reason a deeply southern man.  A man who is so much a part of the south, he may as well be one of those ancient, gnarled old oak trees that are covered with Spanish moss.  So North Carolina is our compromise.  I couldn't live anywhere further south because I would melt in the heat, and he probably couldn't live anywhere further north because the frozen depths of winter would probably kill his soul.

So the last two winters where we've gotten actual SNOW have been positively delightful.  Of course, snow is a lot more fun when you aren't hugely pregnant, but who's complaining?  The kids had a BLAST, and the fact that Chris stayed home from work (there was a car skidded out and blocking the exit to our little neighborhood, so no one could get in or out) and played with them just made it all the better.

Get this...the three of them built their first ever snowman.  My 35 year old husband had never built a snowman before.  It might have been the sweetest thing I'd seen for quite some time.

 

We shall not discuss the laundry...

The News

Poor Chris.  He carries all of his stress in his stomach.  After 10 years of marriage I've learned this:  the first thing that goes is sleep.  And this from a man who could sleep through a TORNADO, when he stops snoring, I know he's worried.  The second thing that goes is eating.  He goes from eating sort of normal meals to 1 meal a day and then his stomach goes all rancid and he grimaces a lot.  I resort to baking only white bread and trying various kinds of soup to appeal to him.

The physician he interviewed with had told him that notifications would be made in 8 weeks.  So we knew we were looking at right before Baby Girl was expected to arrive.  But we were still really hopeful it would be BEFORE that so that we could start financial aid paperwork, and well, so that Chris could go back to eating and sleeping like normal.

Now, Chris doesn't usually call me from work.  He's been short-staffed for a year, so I know that he's always incredibly busy.  Normal techs that work during the day have 4-5 operating rooms that they are responsible to clean, stock and service in the course of the surgical case.  On second shift, IF they happen to have adequate staff that number goes up to 8-10.  For the past year, Chris has regularly had the responsibility for 12-16 operating rooms.  TWELVE to SIXTEEN.  It's absurd.  So our habitual sharing of information usually takes the form of me emailing him updates as to what's going on at home, and IF he has a spare moment he'll email me back, but that really only happens when he has sufficient staff.

So when he calls me from work it's a big deal.  And we had a pre-arranged deal that he would CALL me if he heard from UNC while he was at work.  So the week of his birthday when my phone range and it was him, I got really excited.  Alas, he was just calling to ask me to double check on something for him.  I told him that I loved him very much but he was not allowed to call me from work again unless he heard from UNC.  I just about had a heart attack.  He chuckled and apologized and went back to work.

Fast forward a week.  I was reading to, cuddling with and tucking in the Babies.  The Girl was already snug in her bed, and the Boy and I were settled into Bed Sweet Bed reading Harry Potter.  (He and I have been wending our way through the entire series at bed time since last October, and we were up to the exciting conclusion of Book 6: The Half Blood Prince.  The Boy was hiding his head under a blanket on my bed because I do all the voices and can be quite scary sometimes.)  When my phone rang.  Now, generally speaking, I don't answer my phone when I'm doing school with my Boy, or bedtime with either child.  But it was CHRIS and he was calling from WORK.  So I picked up on the second ring.

All he said was "Check your email."  And I said, "Um, not so much, TELL ME NOW."  So he said, "I got a voicemail and an email from Dr. R________.  I'm in.  They let me in!"  And I took a deep breath and told him how very, very proud I was of him.  Hearty Congratulations!  I told the Boy who came out from under the blanket and cheered and yelled, "Good job, Daddy!"  I told him how much I loved him and then he went back to work and I hung up the phone and tried not to cry.

I know, it's horribly selfish, isn't it?  All Chris has every wanted to do is practice medicine in some capacity.  And I am super happy for him.  It's been TEN years in the making.  He's tried to do other things, tried to work in other fields and explore other options, but there was this constant pulling at his gut that wouldn't be satisfied or put off until he had accomplished this particular goal.  I've seen him work and be miserable and unsatisfied and unhappy for years now, and more than anything, I just want him to be happy.

But...he's my best friend.  I don't mean that in the trite way that a lot of couples say it.  I mean he really is my best friend.  Because he works evenings, I don't get to go out at night with the girls and do fun things.  So I don't get to cultivate friendships like I did before we had kids.  I'm not complaining, I have my sisters and my Mom and a few girls at church, so I'm ok.  But Chris really is my very best friend.  I tell him everything and always feel better when he's near.  So the prospect of him entering into this incredibly arduous course of study and THEN disappearing into a residency holds very little appeal to me.  My parents raised me to be tough and hard working, so I'm not at all worried about carrying the bulk of the domestic life of our family, but I really am going to miss him horribly.


But it's still 5 months away.  So I'm trying to enjoy him now...in addition to putting him to work.  The real JOY from this news came the next morning, when we both woke up and lay in Bed Sweet Bed and talked about how we don't have to worry about a lease this spring, we don't have to pack and move for at least 4 years, we can really settle in where we are and enjoy our house now.  So Chris is painting the Boy's room, and we still have to fix the ceiling in the Girl's room, and set up some more bookshelves so that we can unpack the last of the boxes.  Then, I might go so far as to hang up curtains.

In Which Chris gets Older

Chris' birthday was as low key as mine was.  He took the day off of work.  We were really hoping that we'd hear something from the school of medicine, but alas, we did not.

The kids made him cards and woke him up bright and early because they take delight in cruel things like that.  

We learned our lesson from my birthday.  We left the kids with my folks and headed back out for lunch.  It was much more relaxing and just as delicious.  I swear they put crack in those steamed chicken dumplings.  YUM.

I made him a birthday pie, as per his usual request, and mostly we just hung out.  Trying not to gnaw our arms off in anxiety about med school.

We had a big family dinner the next day to celebrate Chris, but also just because we hadn't had a family dinner in a long time.  It was so nice to be all together.  And I genuinely love how much my family loves Chris.  He's a really good guy.  He deserves the Love.

***

We've both been feeling old this year.  I think it's probably just because last year was so hard that it really wore us down, and between that and the nerves about med school, we just feel old.  But I have to say, I'm grateful to be growing old with him and not someone else.  He laughs at my jokes...most of them.  He listens to me as I ramble about knitting or books or odd facts from history.  He humors me when I tell him, "I read about this thing on the INTERNET and I want to tell you about it just to see the look on your face!"

The Big Interview

I'm sure that most of you have read this news on Facebook, but Chris had a big fancy interview at UNC's school of medicine. 

Let's review:

He came up with this crazy, hair-brained scheme to try for med school one last time, last June when we were effectively homeless.  He had applied for 6 different jobs in 3 different states, all of them out west, and I wanted to be anywhere but HERE for a variety of reasons, and so I was desperately hoping one of them would come through.  And one by one the rejections came in, and Chris had this series of serendipitous and very encouraging conversations with various physicians that he works with.  Which meant that one night he came back to the house where we were house-sitting and sat down on the bed beside me and told me that he wanted to retake the MCAT and reapply to med school.

I honestly couldn't decide if I was going to laugh or cry.  But I try to be a good wife, and I whole-heartedly admit that I am very good at that part of my job which is to see in him the very best of himself.  So the next day I ordered him some MCAT study books and set about taking the kids out of the house, or at least away from him every single morning so that he could study before going in to work that night.

We revised our house-hunt from "small house out in the country where M can have a big fat garden and some chickens" to "small townhouse no more than 20 minutes from UNC and no yard to take care of" since UNC was our school of choice.  I continued to try to protect his study time and I'm sure he would say that I nagged and quizzed him within an inch of his life, and in the meantime, we found our townhouse and I learned the hard way how to organize the requisite paperwork for a mortgage. 

Chris sat the MCAT at the beginning of September and I was so nervous for him that I felt sick the whole day.  THEN, because the administrators of the MCAT are cruel overlords, we had to wait a MONTH for the results to come back in.  They finally came back, he did ok on the biological sciences, the physical sciences could have used more study time, but he got a perfect score on the verbal reasoning section.  It was quite funny because everyone he told about the results was impressed by the verbal score, and he would hang his head and admit that he felt a lot of pressure to do well on that because if he hadn't, his wife would likely take all of his Fun Books and make him read nothing but Classics until he brought it up.  (And he was right.)

So then he began working on his applications, now, Med School applications are expensive because you have to apply in 2 phases.  They charge you an initial fee and then the individual school decides if they want to see more of you and then they charge you another fee for another application.  I was all in favor of JUST applying to UNC, but Chris was reluctant to put all of our eggs in 1 basket, so he put together a list of 5 schools and I told him that would be his entire Christmas so he should enjoy it.

Then he set to work on the secondary applications that came in.  Of the 5 schools he initially applied to, we did 4 secondaries.  Once those were in, we had nothing left to do but wait.  That was all right before Christmas, so by "nothing left to do" I mean just on the med school front because we still had Christmas to deal with, a leaky roof, and another human being to grow.

Of the 4 schools that we submitted secondary applications to, we got exactly ONE interview, and that was with UNC.  So all of our eggs ended up in one basket anyway.  (And I would just like to go on the record as saying that I was RIGHT and we could have saved a lot of money if he had just listened to me to begin with, but that could also sum up the last year of our life together.)  Chris got a call about mid-January from UNC to set up an interview and the kids and I danced and whooped around the basement while he set it up.  Chris couldn't decide if that was funny or sad that his family was so anxious to be rid of him.  I smiled and said it had nothing to do with being rid of him, but rather with his being HAPPY.

The end of January came and he headed to campus for his interviews.  May I just say, the hardest part about marriage isn't the living together, it isn't the finances or parenting or time or any of that.  The hardest part of marriage is that my life is so bound up with him, and I live and die by his successes or failures, and there's nothing much I can do about any of it.  Oh, if wishing made it so, I would have gone to that interview with him, sat quietly to one side and then told them in no uncertain terms that HE WOULD SUCCEED.  Because he is smart and hard working and awesome in ways that standardized tests don't measure.  And also because he has me and when he is tired and discouraged, I look at him and say, "well, we suck it up.  Let's get back to work.  We're scrappy, we can tough it out."  But I can't go with him.  So I took the kids to my parents' house and tried to hide from the stress.

He joined us once the interview was over and he was so happy, it was positively infectious.  He felt really good about it, he felt like he did his best to address any concerns they might have about him having been out of a classroom for so many years, or his MCAT scores, or having a family, or whatever.  So all we had left to do was wait.

They told him it could take up to 8 weeks to hear about acceptance or not, which I thought was cruel and unusual punishment (and said so).  But there was nothing else to do, so we waited.

The Small Things

Time has been making a fool of me again.  I should just surrender any hope I have of carrying on a dignified relationship with such a fickle creature, but alas, I cannot.  And so, he plays the fool with me and I'm left looking like a dolt wondering what just happened.

Life carries on, in this hamster wheel of school and work and life, and accelerated by the nonsense of applications for medical schools.  (Am I the only one who thinks it's ridiculous to ask 22 and 23 year olds to write essays about "life changing" experiences?  They haven't LIVED enough to have any life changing experiences!  Luckily for us, we aren't 22 or 23 any more.)

Have I mentioned that we're having another wee girl?  I went in for the truly terrifying genetic counseling session, but the reward for surviving their laundry list of Everything that Could go Wrong with Your Child because You are SO OLD, is a high resolution ultrasound.  The techs didn't know if she would cooperate enough to let us check her out, but she was very amenable and also very beautiful, but I am her mother and so probably biased. 

The Boy is still sulking about it.  It breaks my heart a bit, but then, this is the kid that breaks my heart without even trying, so I'm also a little used to it by now.

I've been thinking about the small things and how they make the difference in times of remarkable stress between and happy marriage and a lonely marriage.

Chris made brownie brittle this morning for one of the physicians who wrote a recommendation letter for him.  She's also pregnant and he knows that she never bakes herself and that the recommendation letter was a greater hassle for her, than perhaps for the other physicians.  And while he was making brownie brittle, he made me vanilla pudding.  He knows that I love it and that I don't usually make it for myself (because my children hoover it obsessively until it is gone).  So he made up a pot of warm, comforting vanilla pudding.  And after lunch I sat down to have a cup.

There is this wonderful story by Isaac Babel, probably the last truly great short story-ist to live.  He wrote of a daughter who had gotten married and left her widowed father's house.  She returned once a year, and when she came back she always made him meatballs, and she used the recipe that her paternal grandmother had used.  So that when she gave the meatballs to her father, he would look at her and say that the meatballs tasted like a happy childhood.  I've always loved that idea.  That certain foods can evoke, not just a time, but an emotion within that time.

I love vanilla pudding, plain though it may be.  And when my mother makes it for me, it absolutely tastes like a happy childhood.  But today, knowing that Chris chose to make pudding for me instead of taking a shower before work, or working on his med school applications, it tasted rather like a happy marriage.

He really is a prince.  Not your traditional, white horse and shining armor and all that nonsense.  Those are hardly fit for holidays and special occasions.  He's much more your every day, work boots and clutter, inside jokes, Any Time I Want One Hugs, and vanilla pudding on a Thursday kind of prince.

There are a lot of people who think we're crazy for trying to go to med school this late in the game.  And they can think that.  They are absolutely entitled to their opinions.  But if they knew the Chris that I know, they would probably still think that we're crazy, but I can't imagine they would question why I stand behind him.  They might even join with me as I smack him on the bum and say, "Nothin' but strikes."

What we did with our Summer Vacation

Hello.

Is anyone still out there? 

I know it's been quite some time since I updated, but I think when you read everything that's happened, you'll understand why the blog was relegated beyond the back burner, beyond the stove, and out to the deep freeze of things on my priority list.

As you know, our lease ended at the end of May.  We house-sat for some friends of ours for 2 weeks in their beautiful home, the kids had a BALL playing with their kids' toys.  After that, we stayed with my sister for a week and then out to my parent's house for 2 more weeks while they were out in Utah visiting my lovely sister.  I posted pictures of my kids strip mining my Mom's berry bushes and playing in the hose.

All the time we were house hunting.  Or rather, I was house hunting.  Chris has been studying to retake the MCAT.  He's taking it tomorrow afternoon and reapplying for med school.  We'll see if we go.  I'm cautiously optimistic.

So I was trying to find us a place to live.  It was pretty stressful.  Housing is fairly expensive in Durham, but I wanted to plan as though he was already in med school, so I didn't want to be too far away.  On July 1st we looked at 3 bedroom townhouse just down the street from our old apartment.  It's a small, quiet community and it had everything on our wishlist except a yard.  Which I was willing to sacrifice to stay in the same general area of town we had lived in before.  So on July 2nd we put in an offer.  There was some dickering back and forth, which I am NOT good at, nor patient with and hadn't anticipated being in charge of, but when I say Chris spent the summer studying for the MCAT, I mean he completely checked out of everything else (except work) and focused on relearning everything he used to know 7 years ago.  Anyway, on July 3rd we reached a deal and started the whole Mortgage nightmare.

I would just like to go on the record as saying that having a BABY is less painful than buying a HOUSE.  And the mortgage company we're using, they are charming and absolutely bent over backwards to help us and to make the process smooth, but it was still an arduous experience.

Luckily for me, I started working out seriously in April and kept it up until we moved, it was a fantastic stress relief.  I lost 25 pounds, y'all.  I was quite proud of myself, and then...

I spent 2 weeks gathering up 98 pieces of paper and delivering them to the mortgage company and writing checks.  Finally, FINALLY everything on our end was done.  Our closing date was set, my amazing sister, who let us live in her house rent free for the month of July, kept the kids so Chris and I could go sign a novella of papers and take possession of 6 keys and a garage door opener.

5 days before we closed, we found out that we were pregnant.  Crazy, huh? 

So we moved in on August 2nd.  Chris continued to study and I slowly unpacked.  The kids ran around the basement which is our school room/play room and rediscovered all of their toys declaring that they had MISSED them so much and everything, absolutely everything was their FAVORITE.  It was pretty funny.  I put my kitchen in order and went back to cooking fairly regularly.  The kids are in separate rooms, which is GREAT for me.  They're still having a hard time at night, I think because it's dark and the dark makes them nervous.  Chris' stuff is still in boxes, and the boxes are neatly stacked in the rooms they belong in.  He told me today that he would unpack next week, and I laughed and said I was willing to bet money that the boxes would still be there next summer.

The Boy and I started back to school this week and it's been a long week.  Our school day is much longer, and I'm not sure if it's just because we've added material or that we've been out of the routine all summer long.

But my favorite memories of this summer all involve watching my kids play in the Eno river and hike together.  The Boy was particularly amazing, even when he was tired, and the Girl was DONE, he would hug her and say, "Come on, Lilu, we can do hard things!  And we can play in the river when we're done!"  It was the sweetest thing.  And they both walked into that river up to their necks (fully clothed), and I'm sure that there are parents out there who would cry NEGLECT because I let them do it.  But childhood is hard enough without asking kids to pass by a river and a muddy bank on a hot summer's day.  We shall not discuss the Laundry.  Both kids fell in the Eno river multiple times this summer, it was both terrifying and comical.  And everyone is still alive.

My Boy shrieked with joy at the fireworks on the 4th of July, but my Girl hated them.  They're both still missing their cousins and periodically declare that they want to go back to Aunt Sherry's to live with their cousins.  But one morning this week, the Boy declared that the townhouse is "starting to feel more like home, Mama."

Which I'm taking as a good sign.

So what did you do on your Summer vacation?

Decade

Ten years ago today, Chris and I got married.

I confess that I look back on myself then and cringe a bit.  I thought I was so smart and I really thought that I loved this man.

But knowing what I know now, I realize that I was so dumb.  That feeling wasn't really love, it was a vague inclination.  After 10 years, 3 degrees, 5 moves and 2 major surgeries, I know that what we feel now is much closer to love than what we felt then.  My consolation is that in 10 more years, I know that the feeling will be deeper still, and that by the time we get to the end of our lives here on Earth we might actually get to that feeling we all so flippantly call Love.

For now, this just about sums it up, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you - especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame...I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly" (Charlotte Bronte).

Summer in Review

First, let's have a shout-out to my Mom.  It's her birthday today, so Happy Birthday, Mom!

We're still alive.  Here's a quick review of what we did on our Summer vacation:

• I finished the Red Sweater!  Pictures to follow.
• My sisters have been educating/scaring-the-living-daylights-out-of-me about Common Core.  Want to know what Public Education is teaching (or more accurately, NOT teaching) kids at a school near you?  Check this out!
• I got to see my friend Brett!  She was out here visiting her sister and the three of us had a really interesting conversation about books and why some people prefer Jane Austen, while others like the Brontes.  It go me thinking...
• And when I get thinking, I go back and RE read.  I didn't much care for the Brontes as an undergrad or a grad student.  And I haven't reread them since.  So I had Chris pick me up a cheap copy of Jane Eyre and I started rereading it, and holy cow, it's SO good.  I have to say, when you strip all the annoying and inaccurate criticism and pseudo-intellectual babble away from a text, it actually becomes quite enjoyable.
• I started sewing a dress for my Girl, but I still haven't finished it.  I was sucked into a vortex with the Red Sweater.
• I read and enjoyed Happy, Happy, Happy by Phil Robertson.  Go check it out!
• My Boy is awesome.  The swim lessons were BRILLIANT and easily the highlight of the summer.  In addition to getting to see my sweet niece once a week, my boy now just jumps into the pool without an hesitation or anxiety at all.  We took him to my sister's pool (and where we'll sign him up for more advanced lessons next year) and he jumped off the diving board!  MY BOY.  My nervous nelson of a boy jumped off the diving board!  More than ONCE!  It was 94 kinds of awesome.
• Chris took a whole week off of work and we were supposed to go to the mountains, but we ended up with some scheduling conflicts, and so we stayed home.  It was fun having him home all day every day, except that he really wasn't.  He's a newly minted member of the DRPC (it's a gun club) and he went shooting 3 out of 6 days with various people.  My bedroom is now filled with firearms that require cleaning and maintenance, but he had so much fun that I almost don't care.
• He did take me out on a sweet lunch date one day, and let me tell you, it was a beautiful thing.  I didn't have to cook or clean up.  My lunch companion used proper utensils and good table manners.  We had a quiet conversation about friends from Athens, the children, the firearms, and plans for Christmas.  It was a lovely, lovely treat.
• We had a family party to celebrate my 10 year Anniversary of being Back in the South.  Chris made pulled pork and macaroni and cheese, cole slaw and jalapeno poppers.  It was basically an excuse to get together and eat a lot of southern food.  My sister made me Pecan Tassies which are a highly addictive treat, that we usually only eat at Christmas time.
• My brother in law Jeff was laid off from his company in a conspiracy of corporate idiocy.  But then he got a new job at his old company working with much nicer people and for roughly the same amount of money.  We were sweating bullets there for a bit that they might have to move back to New Jersey, so now that they're firmly settled here in NC, we're all doing the happy dance.
• My nephew who's in school out west, is back for his "summer" break.  He goes to school January through July, and now he gets to be home through Christmas, and he's so funny and charming and my children absolutely adore him, which is also entertaining.
• There was also copious amounts of knitting, movie watching, cuddling, book reading, singing and attempting to balance two children in the same rocking chair, we did some finger painting which was fun until my Girl ate her finger paint and then there was the unfortunate technicolor vomit afterwards, we did swinging at the park and some dancing in the rain.  Don't believe me?

It was post-church and sometimes I can be a fun mom.

 This is just a gratuitous picture of my Girl, who has proven that she's not only tall enough to reach the counter, but smart enough to get what she wants when she wants it.

But she's also sweet enough to share.

Expecto Patronum

The Boy and I have been slowly wending our way through the Harry Potter series.  Chris and I have both loved the books (and the movies), and the Cousins (my nieces and nephews) all love the series as well, so my kids are surrounded with phrases like muggle, wizard, quidditch, hallows, hogwarts, patronus, Dumbledor, and animagus.  (The sad thing is, Chris and I are also great fans of Tolkien so the list of strange words our kids are exposed to, is rather more extensive than this list.)  We're currently in the first quarter of book 5 (Order of the Phoenix) and it's slow going (book 5 is my least favorite).  But we had read another chapter, and since we were all sick for so long, I let my Boy watch Order of the Phoenix one long, rainy afternoon.

It's spawned an on-going conversation in our household that runs something like this:

Boy:  Hey, Mama!  What's my patronus look like?
Mama:  Hmmm, that's a good question.  I bet your patronus is a rabbit, because you're a lot like a rabbit sometimes.
Boy:  Yes, and I LOVE rabbits!  (hops away like a rabbit)
Mama:  (wishes he would eat vegetables like a rabbit, but that's another story).

Yesterday in the car, the conversation went a little like this:

Boy:  Hey, Daddy!  What's Mama's patronus look like?
Daddy:  Hmmm, that's a hard one.  Because your Mama always wishes she could wrap people up and put them in her pocket, so I bet your Mama's patronus is a kangaroo!
Boy:  (laughs hysterically) Mama!  Your patronus is a KANGAROO!
Mama: (also laughing) Actually, that sounds about right.
Boy:  Hey, Mama!  What's Daddy's patronus look like?
Daddy:  Hmmm, what animal is grouchy and tries to scare people off by being grumpy...
Mama:  A SKUNK!
Boy (laughing hysterically)
Girl (also laughing hysterically)
Daddy:  Actually, that's plausible.
Mama:  I know.

Father's Day

People in this world talk a lot about women and how hard it is to be a woman.  And sure, it is.  But it's also hard to be a man.   Their choices aren't any easier than ours.  For my part, I'm grateful for good, honorable men.  Both the one that raised me, and the one I married.

Happy Father's day.

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. 

Things only He would Choose

Chris had his 33rd birthday yesterday.  As many of you know, this was his Hobbit coming of age.  We're all very proud of him.

In celebration of this achievement, I convinced him to take the day off of work, and we would do whatever he wanted.  And as proof of the mystery and comedy that is my husband, I thought I would share the list with you.

For his birthday Chris wanted to:

• sleep in.
• eat lunch at the most elegant and supreme Chinese buffet.**
• Pie.
• The go to the Wake County firing range for a class.

And that was all.  He's an odd and simple man, my husband.  So his birthday dawned and I got up with the kids and kept them reasonably quiet so that he could sleep.  My parents came down because they wanted to take him to lunch, so they went to the most elegant and supreme Chinese buffet with us.

I made him a butterscotch cream pie (one of his favorites) in the morning and my sweet Mom brought him his very own peach pie (his other favorite), I also made a chocolate pie for the general assembly.  So there was chinese food, and there was pie.

Now, for the next part of our story, you must remember back to somewhere on this blog, I know not where, but I know I've talked about our dating somewhere.  Chris and I both went to UGA, and I would take morning classes and he would take mostly afternoon classes, so we would meet downtown for lunch, eat lunch, and then head back to his apartment.  I would study and he would nap until his classes started.  Then we would head back to campus, I would continue to work in the library and he would go to class, until we would meet up for dinner.  I know it sounds boring to most, but it was just right for us.  So naturally, after lunch, he wanted to come home and nap.  So we bedded down the children and I cleaned up the kitchen while he napped.

He must have had an awesome nap because he totally forgot to go to the firing range for his class until 5 minutes before it was due to start!  I felt so bad!  I should have put it on the calendar, but I didn't.  I just assumed that since it was at the firing range, he'd be so excited he wouldn't forget.  So he didn't get to go to his class, but we had plenty of pie for dinner (they are, every one of them, DELICIOUS).


In a somewhat related note, we talked about my increasing inability to sustain the whole of Burnstopia happiness while he sinks into an annual funk.  So he's been trying really hard this year to combat it.  And you know, he's doing a wonderful job.  And the thing is, I understand.  I know what it's like to look at your life on your birthday and feel disappointed that it isn't what you thought it would be.  I know what it's like to feel like you should be doing something different, or be somewhere else, or whatever.  I get that.  But I also know that at the end of the day, what matters is that we're on the path.  Not how fast we're going, or how far away the goal is, but that we're on the path and we're moving in the right direction.  And in spite of all of the inherent frustrations, the disappointments, the discouragements, I know we are on the right path.  And best of all, we're together.  And that's worth celebrating.





**We get these fliers in the mail on a weekly basis advertising their restaurant in this manner.  It cracks us up endlessly, and now we don't even know the name of the restaurant, we just call it the most elegant and supreme buffet.

This Christmas

I thought last Christmas would be the end of me.

What with all of the doctor appointments, and the needles and the blood sugar tests, and the fetal non-stress tests, and hassle getting ready for my Girl's imminent appearance.  AND all the holiday stuff on top of that, I just thought it would be the end of me.

But I was wrong.  It's THIS Christmas that's going to be the end of me.

I finished Chris' Christmas socks in, what can only be described as, a FUROR of knitting.  But they're done.  Washed, dried and ready for wrapping.  I've even finished my shopping.  I have pile of wrapping to do, but that's fairly easy to accomplish.  I'm working furiously on Other Knitting (a hat for my boy, mittens for me, a birthday dress for my girl, and a pile of small projects for my Sisters' birthday which will, in all likelihood, be LATE).

The end of me is being wrapped and delivered in Other Stress.

Chris had a job interview yesterday.  A job for which we had HIGH hopes, a job which did NOT require eleventy billion years of experience, a job which he could have done with his eyes closed.  He had worked his network and had physicians and educators alike contacting the people in charge to sing his praises.  And all to no avail.  There was an Excel "test" administered by a fellow analyst who, if he was displeased with any part of your person or the way in which you chose to accomplish the task he had given you, could and would fail you without explanation.  And this he did to Chris.

Chris came home understandably deflated.  He hadn't even had the opportunity to MEET with the managers, let alone TALK with them.

I'm trying to let it go.  Whatever.  They all suck, but life goes on.  Chris is having a harder time letting it go.

****

We've all had some sort of mild stomach bug, which hasn't been so bad for Chris and I, but has hit the kids...or rather their behinds in a hard way.  Which means that it's grossing me out beyond measure and I spend all the time I'm not cleaning up bums, in soaking and washing laundry.  Will someone please tell the Tummy Fates that I do not need this right now?

Also, send cookies.  (For ME, Rice for the children.  Please?) 

****

I had a lovely round of friends to visit last week, which was so fun catching up with them.  I've been really blessed in my life to know some amazing women.  And this week is my only down week to catch up on things before we start back with Hogan next week.  Which, I'm really grateful for given then expenses of this month--will someone please tell the Shoe Fates that it was not nice to break my last pair of Danskos in DECEMBER?

 ****

It's been the longest week...and we're not even halfway through.

****

My Girl fell off of our bed again on Sunday.  It was the third time.  I've been torn between lunging to catch her and just thinking, "Fall.  You need to LEARN."  But I lunge every single time.  This time, I wasn't in the room.  I was loading stuff in the car to take to church and Chris was getting dressed and she was in the middle of the bed when he went in to the closet to get a shirt and tie and when he came out she was screaming on the floor.  We think she bummed up her leg because she hasn't wanted to crawl on it and she adamantly refuses to stand on her leg AT ALL.   We were freaked out enough that we called the doctor and he said to give her a few days and some Tylenol and call him if it doesn't clear up.  Will someone please tell GRAVITY to leave my girl ALONE?!

****

I think I have seasonal depression, but in the reverse.  December is supposed to be cold and dark, cloudy and chilly.  And instead we have 4 days of cold followed by TWO WEEKS of 70 degrees and muggy.  My hair is inflating and what Christmas spirit I had is DEflating.  It is impossible to feel like Christmas when you don't even need to wear SOCKS.  I've reconciled myself to living in the South, being married to a very Southern man, so Snow is a dream and only a dream, but can't it at least be COLD?  Will someone please tell Jack Frost to swing back around and stay a while?

****

I keep listening to that song "River" covered by James Taylor, you know the one...by Joni Mitchell  

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

But it don't snow here
It stays pretty green
I'm going to make a lot of money
Then I'm going to quit this crazy scene
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
I wish I had a river I could skate away on
I made my baby cry

I'm so hard to handle
I'm selfish and I'm sad
Now I've gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
I wish I had a river I could skate away on

Oh, I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I made my baby say goodbye

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
I wish I had a river I could skate away on

 I feel like that...I wish I had a river I could skate away on.  To somewhere cold and snowy and devoid of worries and cares, but really, it feels like a song about Chris.  And I don't know if it's some sort of sick compulsion, but I keep trying.  I keep singing Christmas carols, and reading Dickens, and wrapping presents in the hopes that somewhere in the midst of all of the stresses, I'll find a little bit of happiness.

My Prince

Knitting has done a lot for me in the 3 short years I have been working with it.  It gives me occupation, it's incredibly practical, it's a powerful reminder of one of my favorite truths: that little things matter, and most importantly it settles my ever-present anxiety. 

But Chris might have a slightly different perspective.  I think he likes the knitting, he certainly likes the socks, and I think he much prefers the mellowing effect it has on my, shall we say, concentrated temperament.  But I think he finds himself baffled by the presence of so much yarn.  Yarn everywhere.  Yarn stashed in a big bin in the closet, on the shelf, in the desk and occasionally left out just to rub like a good-luck-inducing charm on shelves or the dresser. 

And it might just be my own obsessive personality, but I have a tendency to talk projects with him.  I did the same thing in graduate school, when I was working on a complicated analysis, I would sit at his feet and talk the entire idea out, making notes and flagging quotes to use and he would just look at me with this bemused expression the entire time.  I still do this occasionally (though it's now in the car when we're going somewhere, and it usually involves minutiae from a novel I've read half a dozen times but only recently noticed).  And now I talk through knitting projects with him, yes, even his traditional Christmas socks.  I'm starting to wonder if he's not so crazy about this habit, since he specifically asked that his Christmas socks this year actually be a SURPRISE.

I've resisted buying a swift, partly because I'm cheap and partly because we have no where for it to live.  So when I need to wind hanks of yarn into smoothly, tangle-free balls, he usually holds the hanks for me and we have a nice chat while I wind the yarn.

So I spent the bulk of last Saturday winding balls for upcoming projects so that I could shift seamlessly between them when I felt like it.  The first ball (a charcoal grey alpaca that I've had for two years) I draped around a chair and wound while Chris was at work on Friday night.  Saturday morning he held the pinky-lavender wool blend (the Boy helped) while I wound it.  But then on Saturday afternoon he was watching a movie and he worked so hard all week that I didn't want to ask him to help me, so I laid out the hank of navy blue merino wool and started to wind it up.

Now, I love wool.  Hands down it's my favorite yarn to work with.  But wool sticks to itself, that's why it shrinks in the wash.  So as I was winding, the wool was sticking to itself and NOT staying in the nice wide circle I had laid it out in.  After about an hour, I had a big tangled heap of navy yarn.  And by big, I mean it looked like a big plate of navy blue spaghetti.  Or hair.  Very curly, tangled messy hair.

It was at this point that I asked for help.  I have since acknowledged that the time to ask for help was at the BEGINNING before making the enormous mess.

So Chris looked at me and said, "Um.  Yeah.  Is there a reason you didn't ask me to help you at the beginning?"  And I said, "You were watching a movie.  I didn't want to interrupt."  And he said, "Dude.  Before making an enormous mess of it, just ASK for help.  Ok?"  At which point we both laughed and agreed that I would ask for help.

And then he did something that I did NOT expect and remain awed by.  He took the whole mess and painstakingly over 2 days, spent SIX HOURS untangling the hank of yarn and winding it into a neat ball.  For me.  Just me.


How did I ever get so lucky?

8 Years, 8 Reasons

Happy Anniversary to Burnstopia!  It's been 8 years ago today that I married Chris.  I've toyed with different ideas of what to write today, and in the end, I'm stealing an idea from my friend Rae, but putting my own spin on it.

When we first got married we both realized something:  You don't really know someone until you live with them.  I find it ironic that people think that if you "live together" before you get married that somehow your chances of divorce go down, but they don't.  Sometimes they go up.  I think your chances of divorce go down when you determine to STAY MARRIED.

But I digress.  I was folding laundry yesterday and thinking about how very different life is now from what it was when Chris and I were married, and eight years just doesn't seem like that much time, but lo, life is REALLY different.  And that got me thinking about the things I loved about Chris when we were dating/engaged and then married.  And the different things I love about him now...

So how about a list?

Four Things I Loved about Chris when we were Dating-Engaged-Newly-Wed:

1. He was completely patient and understanding of my neurotic tendencies, one might even say vaguely amused by them.
2. He was curious about everything, about other countries, cultures, languages, arts, foods, everything.
3. He was always calm and settled (as opposed to my being always nervous and UNsettled).
4. He rarely argued, preferring peace to being right (very much like myself on that one). 

And Four Things I Love about Chris NOW:

1. He is an AMAZING father.  He loves the Boy and the Girl to distraction.  And he will go to almost any length to amuse and instruct them.  He's patient and loving, but he's not afraid to discipline and correct.  He's fun, but he balances the fun by also being strict.
2. He's turned into Mr. Fix-it.  When we were dating, and newly wed, he never tried to fix anything himself (granted we didn't have that much to fix), if the Beetle broke, he took it to the dealership.  But now?  Now he looks it up and buys the parts and the tools and fixes it himself.  And it cracks me up and impresses me all at the same time.
3. He's not afraid to pull me back from the Verge.  When I start to blow things out of proportion,  when my temper is starting to get the best of me, when I'm taking things too personally or veering off in irrational directions, he's not the least bit afraid to say, "Whoa, Nelly, come on back.  You are fine, all is well, settle down, that's not what was meant, come here and I'll rub your back."
4. He's adventurous.  When I married him, I joked that he was a 65 year old man in a 25 year old body.  But as the years pass he's more and more willing to try new things, new foods, new places, new experiences, and we always have fun getting lost together.  He might complain and grouse while we're in the midst of some things (I can think of a few hikes in particular), but it doesn't take long before he's laughing about it all and talking about what a great adventure it was.

So Happy Anniversary, Babe.  Thanks for 8 great years.  Let's hope there's 492 more coming...