Year One: Marriage

Yesterday Brian and I marked one year of marriage. I have many things to learn yet, but I've gathered a few gems along the way.

• Men are better at housekeeping than women give them credit for.
• The storied "honeymoon phase" is fiction. The whole first six months, if not the whole year, is an extended adjustment period. I went through plenty of negative but necessary emotions: fear, grief over the loss my former self as I knew her, anger, confusion. It was all part of transforming from a single individual to a married team member.
• The change that I didn't expect to have such an impact: sleeping in the same bed with another person every night. It seems so insignificant. But after 32 years of sleeping alone, it was quite a shock to my mind and body.
• It's frighteningly easy to forgo all social life in lieu of just slumming it at home with your spouse in front of the TV.
• Getting married does not, in fact, cause a supernatural mind meld that seamlessly merges your two sets of ideas, hopes, tastes and values. Intellectually, I knew this. But in my subconscious, where all the world's subtle suggestions about what women should expect from life are buried, I felt we would automatically snap to the same page beginning Aug. 23, 2008. Not so.
• It's cliche because it's true: If both spouses don't actively participate in frequent, open, honest communication, the marriage is either doomed for misery or for failure.
  

And that's why I'm glad Brian is willing more than any man on earth to work against the grain of his sex: he tries his blessed best to communicate, and he does the dishes. While we still battle the realness of marriage from time to time, these two qualities let me know everything's going to be all right.

Love you, babe.

Hither and yon

Saw most of a DVD tonight w/ my sister called
Across the Universe. A musical set in the '60s to Beatles songs. So over the top, so musical, so angsty and dramatic. It's overwrought and they know it and rock it. Which I love. A little slow in parts, but other parts are fah-ree-ken TRIP-ay!!@#@ I was seriously like "WTF!" but in a good way. They got my favorite Beatles song in there, "Strawberry Fields," so that's all I cared about. Visuals were brash and yummy, too.

A gauge if you'll like it or not: You'll probably like Universe if you like Moulin Rouge ("Spectacular SpecTACular!!"). If you don't like Moulin Rouge ... stay far far away. Moulin Rouge is better, though.

You know ... my sister and my niece Janiece talked around the kitchen table tonight — me with a glass of boxed wine, them cracking me and each other up. It was a little on the magical side for me, since that's not a usual Friday night for us.

BLUH .... That full, week-old basket of clothes over there isn't going to fold its contents on its own. Then again, apparently I'm not going to, either.

I picked up extra-extra freelance at work, on top of the freelance I already do. It's just compilation kind of stuff for the primaries, but ugh, so time consuming. I refuse to do any of it this weekend, so next week's going to be busy.

Brian and I have one of our many here-and-there pre-marriage counseling sessions tomorrow afternoon. I keep meaning to take along an actual list of stuff that could use discussion. We usually just wing it, then it's over, then I'm lying in bed in the dark every night afterward like, "Gah! I forgot to bring up that!" Rull grrr.

My ::baby:: niece Keena turns 18 on Monday!! I can't believe it. The family will celebrate Sunday evening at mom and dad's by pigging out on tacos that mom and Brian make and smearing our faces with mom's chocolate birthday cake icing. That's what I'm talking about. GET THIS. Keena's turning the magic number that makes her all grown AND my other niece, Janiece, is the age of my favorite number .... ::drum roll please:: 23. Ka-pow.

Ugggghhhh. I'll be wallowing in self-hate tomorrow morning. I suppose them's the ugly, insomniac breaks.

universal truth: loved ones will hurt you

A buddy just told me about his sister, how she just found out a couple of days ago that her husband had been sleeping with another woman for a whole year. She'd had no idea.


She's still, for lack of an adequate descriptor, reeling.

What do you do when this happens? What do you do when that bomb of nausea explodes inside your ribcage when you discover news like this?

Some of the responses that seem appropriate at the moment aren't real-world options, like murder, assault, arson. But all of the other responses you're left with feel so inappropriately passive — crying yourself to sleep, praying, confiding in a friend, Christian forgiveness, moving on.

She confronted him. Caught, he now wants to work things out.

What do you do.