Day 38 - Countin' Pennies

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to buy cigarettes."

"With change?"

"Yeah, they don't take debit cards."

"I have cash."

"That's not the point.  Why don't they take debit cards in this day and age?  It's 2010.  Who doesn't take debit cards?"

"No really, I can give you money."


"It's the principle of it."

He does have a point.

Days 34-37: Been a little AWOL

Friday
Friday night started off with a bang...and not even in a good way.  Let's keep this as the Reader's Digest version and simply say that I should remember the Golden Rule.  I hate being rushed, so therefore, I shouldn't rush other people.  We left home around 8pm and got to NYC around midnight.  Not bad...we had a little rain thanks to Hurricane Earl, but nothing traumatic.  Sleep!

Saturday
Saturday began with such high hopes for the day.  We got dolled up, okay, I got dolled up and we headed out to Day One of Electric Zoo.  We discovered better parking this year and so that made the entire experience worth it.  We arrived on time to see Glenn Morrison, who it turns out was pretty good.  The highlights of the day were definitely Gareth Emery and Markus Schulz, who the New Husband even had an opportunity to meet, get an autograph and get a photo with.   We caught a little of ATB's set, decided it wasn't worth sitting around for two hours to see the next DJ we were interested in, so we left early.

We went out to dinner with my grandparents, which was nice, mostly because I don't think there's ever been a time when it's just been us.  Things like this are made more special thanks to the fact that we live 4+ hours away so this isn't an everyday occurrence.

Sunday
We had a little later start to Day Two of Electric Zoo, which was especially appreciated as we were severely sleep deprived.  We kicked off the day with Cosmic Gate, who we've never seen live, and who turned out to be really great.  We danced for, literally, hours, stopping only to wait in line for Armin van Buuren's autograph (that was a nice ninety minutes) and then finally inhaling lunch(?) dinner(?) around 7:30 PM before finally finding a spot to relax and wait for AvB's set.  All in, it was a great day.  The crowd was fun and energized and probably high, which I've discovered is way more fun for those of us in the crowd who are sober enough to remember the experience for what it was.

Monday
We headed to New Jersey to see my mom for a little while before heading home.  The house was quiet and it gave us a chance to go through wedding photos and catch up on what's been going on since the wedding.  It will probably be another month before I see my mom again, and it's been over a month since the wedding, so this was a great opportunity to just relax and BS.  We had lunch with my Stepdad and brother, who joined us on their lunch break from work.  I haven't laughed that hard in ages.

The ride home was, fortunately, uneventful.  We anticipated hitting bad traffic, which didn't materialize so we were home by 7:00 PM.  Then we both sat in opposite corners of the living room, catching up on our digital lives.  We uploaded our photos and videos of the weekend, chatted with friends and eventually made our way to our bed, which frankly, never feels as nice as anyone else's - even those with fancy mattresses that cost several grand.  Nope, our own bed is where we want to be.

Day 33 - Precious Things

"What are you reading?" he asked.

"Cleopatra's Daughter," I said, not looking up from my book.

He threw himself onto the bed next to me.  "Can I read to you?"

I laughed, "If you must."

He started reading and got stuck on a word.  "Vi..Vit..Vi...is this even English?"

"A lot of it is Latin, actually, but that shouldn't matter since so much of the English language is based on Latin."

He gave me a puzzled look, "What the hell is that," he asked, pointing out another word.

"Campus Martius.  The Field of Mars."

"Well what the hell is it?"

"It's an area that used to be just outside the walls of Rome."

"So?"

"Well it really doesn't have much importance until probably around the end of this book."

"What's it about anyway?"

I laughed, "You know, Marc Antony, Cleopatra, Selene and Alexander, Octavian who later becomes Augustus, Agrippa, Marcellus...You know, Roman history."

"Carry on," he said rather officially.

I read another 100+ pages before finally deciding that if I really wanted to be productive the next day, I'd better put the book down.

Day 32 - One of the Things I Love

I don't love that I'm only 5'2".  I do love that the New Husband is just shy of 6' tall.  This makes him very handy for grabbing those bowls off the top shelf and for getting me seltzer from the storage cabinet and for holding umbrellas. 

But I especially love when I ask him to run a quick errand like dropping off the rent check, and he does it without moving my seat and rearranging all of my mirrors in my car.

And I especially love it when I expect to have to rearrange everything and then discover that he didn't move them after all.  That saved me like ten minutes this morning, which is the difference between getting stuck in gridlock and not.

It's the little things in life, people.  Or the tall things.  Or whatever.  You catch my drift...

Day 31 - "Happy" Anniversary

I am a procrastinator.  I am a procrastinator with what perhaps works out to a 99% success rate - meaning that even when I wait until the last minute, I can generally produce a really good result from the Long Wait.  I am convinced that I'm not married to a similar person in this regard.

"I need to update this resume because I have to submit my renewal tomorrow," The New Husband said.

We'd just finished dinner.  I put the resume on the coffee table and grabbed a pen and started making some changes.  "These dates don't make any sense," I said, "Who did this?"
"I don't know," he said, shrugging.

"What do you mean you don't know who did your resume?  When was the last time it was updated?"

"A really long time ago.  I mean, I've been at my current job for almost three years and then the job before that was four years, so..." he paused, "I guess it's been at least seven years since I updated it."

"Are you insane?"

"Possibly."

All of the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put this resume back together again.  Let me tell you...he had end dates that were well before start dates and I discovered times where he'd worked a job for like a month and then went to another one for a month.  This is very much not the person I married, who has stayed at jobs for years.  Then, I realized, that a lot of the job hopping was right after his senior year work-study program ended. 

"I can't make sense of this," I said.  "We have to go through the entire thing and work to find these dates.  Just know that you'll come up with discrepancies on your background check, so you can 't just make up dates."

"But I don't know them!" he yelled.  I could tell this wasn't going to go well.

"I don't know what to tell you.  You can't not update your resume for seven years and then hand it to me the night before you need it and expect it to make sense when it wasn't done correctly in the first place."

Needless to say, the rest of our evening was him freaking out about the dates and me opting not to deal with it and reading a book.  "I'm not going to help you if you're going to yell at me.  This wasn't my fault.  Go yell at whoever did this to your resume."

In the end, he decided to ask his boss for the copy he submitted the last time he needed to do a renewal since we know that passed the background check.  Hopefully he has it, and we can use it to revise his resume so we don't have to go through this again.  Short of that, he may need to contact the employers himself and verify employment.  I can tell you, that's not going to be any fun for anyone involved.

Day 30 - Chefs!

The text simply said hamburger meat.  Considering we've been together for over two years, I know that was meant to be a reminder.  Shorthand, if you will, for please stop at the grocery store and pick up some hamburger meat for dinner tonight.  You see, after this much time, we skip many of the formalities and cut right to the chase.  While stuck in horrid Cambridge traffic, I responded, Will do.  Heels are messed up so may stop off for sandals first.

I ended up not stopping at home first.  Instead, I decided to skip the grocery store altogether and go to the butcher instead.  Lately I've been on a kick for the best ingredients; I'm starting to realize that if you start with better quality ingredients then you (a)don't need as much and (b)it's better for you.  So, off to the butcher I went.  I ended up finding beef ribs on sale and ground sirloin for less than I'd pay for regular chuck at our local grocery store, so I picked up both.  $10 and we'll get 3-4 meals out of it?  Not bad!

When I got home, The New Husband was being particularly lovey.  "What's wrong with you," I asked.
"Nothing," he exclaimed, with a gleam in his eyes.  "Let's cook!"

"You don't ever cook with me," I said cautiously.

"I know, but I'm so excited about dinner, I want to help you cook."

I eyed him suspiciously.  "Okay then....get the tator tots from the freezer - the Trader Joe ones - and please wash the mushrooms so I can saute them."  We quickly got to work.  I was slicing and sauteeing the mushrooms and frying up the bacon - all for his monstrosity of a burger.  I don't eat mushrooms and I've cut all pork from my diet.

In the end, we made the juiciest burgers and crispy tator tots.  He slathered his with cheese, mushrooms and bacon.  Thankfully we don't eat like this every night or we'd both be dead of heart attacks in a matter of months.  "This," he said with his mouth full of food, "is the best burger.  You could put Fuddruckers out of business."

"Thanks," I said and laughed.  "I'm not quitting my day job."

"But you could.  You could is all I'm saying."

"I liked cooking with you tonight.  We should do that more often."

"Definitely!"

And so began the Era of Couples Cooking.

Day 29 - Neighbors

Not long ago, I wrote a post about The New Husband hanging out with an acquaintance in our building for whom I don't especially care.  

"What's the matter, baby," he asked me early this morning.

"Don't you hear that," I asked.  We paused and listened as the sounds of people being loud echoed from the walls of our courtyard.  "I hate this fucking place.  I can't wait to buy a house and get away from these people."

He pulled an old trick of mine, yelling out the window for them to quiet down.  We waited.  It didn't happen.  We thought the noise was coming from the playground at the end of our courtyard.  The New Husband got dressed and went outside to address the issue.  After about 20 minutes, when he hadn't returned, I called the cops.

Eventually he made his way home and explained that it was a group of friends of this acquaintance I don't like.  For the sake of character creation, let us call him Mustard - as I so often do behind his back anyway.

"What do you mean it was a friend of Mustard's," I said.  "Why doesn't he take them up to his house and hang out on his balcony and wake up his wife and kid?  Why does he need to have them hanging out in front of our building disrespecting people?  This is bullshit."  I was furious.  This is a very common problem and something that aggravates me because we pay quite a bit for rent - or at least more than either of us have ever paid for rent - and it bothers me that there are some folks here who seem to not give a crap about the fact that other people live here too.


"When I approached him about it, he got all in my face and shit.  Whatever, the cops took him away."


"Are you fucking serious?"  I was furious.  "You know, my mom always told me that when you hang out with a pieces of shit, it makes you look shitty."


"I saw Mustard, and he apologized."


"He should!"


"He should have his pieces of shit friends wake up his family instead of the rest of us!  I'll tell him that myself."


We just kept going around in circles.  Although Mustard isn't a friend, The New Husband still felt the need to defend him in my anger.  I ended up not being able to even attempt to sleep until 2 AM and then since I opted for the couch, I didn't sleep well.


Later this morning, we apologized to each other and agreed that we need to do whatever it takes to get out of here and into our own home - NOT a townhouse or a condo, but a H.O.M.E. - when this lease is up next summer.

Day 28 - Errands

For some reason, our weekends are generally either spent traveling (hello, Labor Day!) or running errands.  Of course, I also have a tendency to overextend and over-schedule myself.  Saturday was no exception.

We started the day by stopping at a local jeweler so I could drop off two rings I wanted swapped out.  I wanted to take the diamond from my engagement ring and put it in another setting and then take my birth stone from the other ring and add it to my engagement setting.  I actually wanted to use the other ring as my engagement ring, but The New Husband is quite traditional and felt he needed to get me my own ring.  Trust me, it's very appreciated, but it's much bigger than the wedding band I wanted and so it sort of overpowers it.  We should have them back in a few days and I'm super excited about it.

We then attempted to get The New Husband's haircut.  The girl we go to wasn't working, though, so we decided to come back.  Instead, we went to Trader Joe's so I could look for some gluten-free foods since I'm doing a two week experiment to see how I feel when I eliminate certain foods from my diet.  I digress.  Then it was a trip to Target and then on to the grocery store. 

For dinner, I made butter chicken - an Indian dish.  This was well received, much to my surprise as The New Husband is incredibly picky when it comes to food. I explained what was in it and once he raved about how delicious it was, then I dropped the news about it being Indian.  We must approach these things in baby steps.  You see, he loves grilled meats and yet he's refused for two years to come to a Brazilian grill with me, assuming (I can only assume) that he's not going to like it.  I know better, though.  This may be next on the list.

Days 26-27: Short and Sweet

I love that when I'm totally overwhelmed with life - ready to seriously take a step back and re-examine the choices I've made and how I got here in the first place - that I can send a simple message like "I need to come straight home.  It's been a long day and I really just need a hug".

That when I send such a message, it's received with "Okay honey" and not with a host of narcissistic or self-centered verbal diarrhea that shifts the focus so that my needs don't get met.  

That literally, what "okay honey" means is that I come home to a man who has already vacuumed, made the bed and cleaned up the living room, so that I can simply come home, kick off my shoes, get a hug and unwind.  So that I can leave the last two days where they belong - in the past - and refocus on the things I need to do versus the things I'd like to do at the moment.

I also love that this also means that for once, budgets and financial goals aside, we can have Date Night like we used to - with some takeaway, tv, and snuggling in front of the television.

Day 25 - Synchronicity

"Synchronicity is the coincidence of events that seem to be meaningfully related, conceived in the theory of Carl Jung as an explanatory principle on the same order as causality.  The concept of synchronicity -- when seen in a wider context -- raises strong questions concerning the existence of "coincidence" at all!  Before the concept was known by this name, people often referred to such synchronistic events as portents or omens." - DK Matai

I had dinner with a relatively new "friend."  I hesitate to take this word out of quotes because I'm not sure where we are in terms of building a friendship.  We met while taking a course together a few months ago, but this is the first time we've met outside of that space.  In any case, I have found that during the time we were in the course together, Ina presented a very good opportunity to view myself from a different perspective.  We are very much alike in some ways and polar opposites in others, however, in the context of the course, I found that I learned a lot from the experiences she shared and I hope that she found that likewise with me.

In any case, last night we met for the first time in this new capacity.  We caught up on life since the wedding with my filling her in on all of the fun details and then flipping through the album.  We oohed and ahhed and even when the food was delivered to our table - delicious Mexican food, something that was once commonplace in my life but has since been relegated to the Rare Treat category - we were remiss in even wanting to eat it so that we could finish looking at the photos.  We lingered on some, flew past others, and I reminisced the way a woman married a decade or longer might - with some nostalgia and with the insistence on only remembering the fantastic things and letting the mediocre and negligent slip away.

This is the way it should be, I thought to myself.  There's no need to let the small things turn into these large and unwieldy 'things' that can never be undone.  The more we talked, the more I realized that this was a lesson I could apply elsewhere in my life.

We caught up on her life and the relationship between she and her husband.  She's a relative newlywed herself, being married for perhaps just over or under a year.  I discussed the notion that I sometimes feel like a character.  To some of you, I'm just a series of words that magically appear on a daily basis.  In truth, I'm a wife.  A sister.  A daughter.  A co-worker.  A friend.  An enemy.  A real pain in the ass.  A confidante.  A psychologist.  A nurse.  A mentor.  An example of what to do.  An example of what not to do.  A survivor.  I can go on, but the point is that I am not just a simple, calm, rational being who sits around meditating and hoping for the best. 

I'm not just one of these things.  I'm all of them.  Sometimes when I sit back and look at the people I admire, it's generally because they're able to be all of these things, but generally not at the same time.  The more I think about it, the more scattered and disjointed I feel, especially lately with the expansion of certain areas of my life.  I've realized that the inability to keep certain things under wraps has hindered me in some ways.  It's helped to shape this ham, this character that I feel I've become.  It's been great for the narcissist in me, but it's definitely holding me back from being truly authentic. 

I used to think 'authenticity' meant certain things.  Like not giving in to The Man (thus, why I kept my nose ring through battle after battle with a certain boss).  Like saying exactly what I thought, unfiltered, at all times.  I throw my hands up and blame it on my cultural idiosyncracies when in reality it's because it's simply How I've Always Done It.  I'm loud, raucous, insubordinate and for as much self-awareness as I have, it's always couched with the edgy attitude of a person who will no longer be held down.

It's gotten me here, but it's not going to get me there.

I believe that the Universe delivers to us exactly what we need when we need it.  We may not know it at the time.  We may not realize what a blessing certain challenges truly are at the time we're going through them.  We may not understand how a chance gathering of a group of women can thoroughly change our lives, and in my case, provide me the opportunity to see myself through another lens.  This is the synchronicity of the universe and today, I am grateful.