Ten

Ten.

Ten years feels like a mountain. So much can happen in ten years that people had to come up with a name just for ten, a decade, a monument to the sheer force of that which changes. Tens of millions of babies are born, children grow up, people fall in love, people die. Ten years ago E and I decided to go out, but ten years before that I was a little girl in Kindergarten wondering if my Minnie Mouse glasses and eye patch made me different. Ten is so big that it's sometimes hard to wrap our heads around, and then poof, it's gone. You're still listening to Fleetwood Mac while everyone else is talking about Nirvana and come on man, where have you been the past ten years?

 

The past ten years with E have been an incredible collection of moments, the wonderful and the not so wonderful. Holding hands as we walked along the Venice canals to arguing over a croissant until we're blue in the face and ready to tear out our hair. Moments where we were at our best and rose to the occasion, and moments where we reached new, and previously unknown, lows.

Somewhere along the line our relationship evolved. "Yes Ma'am" as he helped me make the bed, let me open that car door and putting on cologne every time we went out became whoops I farted into your seat. Can you help me rip this blister off?  Not remembering what privacy is.

A year in, I still don't know if marriage changed the intimacy of being with each other. I know it made things more real, more clear, like cleaning smudged fingerprints off the glasses that you were already wearing, even if they were too cloudy to see out of. It's given us a drive towards a future that has become so close I can almost touch it and changed the last bit of "me" to "us". 

 

We joke all the time that our honeymoon phase ended in year three.  We moved past the starry eyed, never arguing phase into a place I don't think either of us expected to find ourselves. Who really thinks that they're going to marry their high school sweetheart, that the person you are at 15 will be just as attractive and compatible as the person you are at 25?  That the person you take to prom in his rental suit and grocery store corsage will be the one who waits for you in his tailored suit at the alter?

  

What's even more incredible to me is not that we've changed, but how it happened. Neither of us is the same person we used to be. Our hopes, dreams and goals have evolved. Our strengths and weaknesses adjusted, our sense of humor more refined (or so we'd like to think). We're not the same children we were when we first fell in love, we're not even the same adolescents we were when we reevaluated our relationship with all it's flaws and imperfections and decided we wanted to try and make it work.  But like the elusive word that you just can't find on the tip of your tongue, one breath of the terrible cologne E used to wear at 17 can bring everything crashing back down like it was yesterday.

 

E still makes me laugh like he used to when I was riding in his beat up, oil leaking station wagon. A smile and sweet word still carries my heart into the back of my throat. It was sad to see the days of blushes and hidden bodily functions fade into the past. Everyone likes to be wined and dined, to breathe in and savor that moment of anticipation before he tells you something new or you divulge a special secret. But then you wake up one morning and realize that you're working towards the same future, that you're playing for the same team and no matter how you screw up you have each others back because you have each other and that's all that matters. You become each others secret keeper and story teller and even though you know the words, the ending is just as exciting as the first time you heard it. That's more precious than I could have ever imagined and even though my seat will probably smell like farts tomorrow, I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

Happy First and Tenth Anniversary E. Here's to the next ten. Here's to our future.

Valentine's Day, First and Ten Style

We have done just about everything for Valentine's Day in the almost 10 years we've been together. There were dinners at various low-key favorite restaurants, intimate meals at home, all out splurges on some of LA's finest meals, some years where we just sat around in our PJs, and other less memorable years where we got into teenage fights and spent the night pouting.

Roses <3

 With all that history, Valentine's day tends to not be quite as exciting when you've already celebrated 9 of them.  We tried to celebrate together in Santa Barbara the weekend before, but ended up spending the trip with E's father. We weren't going to make a big deal out of it at home, but since it was our 10th Valentine's together, and our 1st Valentine's married, we decided to go out and brave the Los Angeles Valentine's day traffic and dinner rush.
 
In keeping with our relaxed theme, we gave each other our Valentine's gifts last Friday. I got E a new aftermarket battery for his 2006 Macbook Pro, which is sadly on the verge of dying and probably worth less than the cost of a legit apple battery, and he got me a 2 pound box of chocolate and sea salt carmels that I had been admiring on woot.

Chocolatey Carmel Goodness

  With most of the niceties observed, I wasn't expecting much yesterday but was looking forward to spending some one on one time with E.  I had work all day but E was off, so while I was gone he cleaned the house and bought me a beautiful bouquet of roses (from him) and an adorable stuffed bear with kisses (from our puppy). He also scheduled dinner at one of our favorite, laid back Italian restaurants and got dressed up in the shirt he proposed to me in, complete with the cologne he used to wear when we first started dating. 

Milou's Valentine's Bear

When I finally got home about half an hour late (thanks LA traffic), he presented me with his goodies and I gave him his other Valentine's gifts, a sweet card with puppies whose tails wagged, a giant See's truffle and a bag of his favorite Lindt truffles. We then hauled ass into the car, sat in lots of traffic, and finally made it to the restaurant which was packed to the brim with hungry couples. Since E had been snacking on nothing but goldfish all day in preparation for our dinner, he was famished and on the verge of eating the steering wheel so I wanted to get us seated fast. The soonest available table was one outside under some heat lamps instead of the warm tables inside the restaurant, but we took it and I figured my coat would keep me warm.

Spumoni in Santa Monica

We had been expecting to get our usual, and much loved, pasta dishes to keep the bill low, but as soon as we sat down the waiter presented us with one of those lovely pre-fix Valentine's menus with conspicuously absent prices. This put a bit of a damper on the evening, since my favorite dish wasn't there and we figured we'd end up dropping at least twice our budget. Resigned to our changed plans, E ordered his usual lobster ravioli, which was thankfully on the menu, and I ordered a fillet, which would have been my first choice at any other restaurant had I not been dreaming of spaghetti bolognese. They both came with bruschetta, a marinated pepper salad, and tiramisu or a cannoli.

Mmm Cannoli

About halfway into our salads, the adorable little red sandals I was wearing began to become less adorable and more impractical since all the cold air was blowing up my pant legs. After inquiring about turning up the heaters, which were already at full strength, E slipped off his warm dress shoes under the table and let me wear them for the rest of the meal. I had to keep my toes jammed in the front to keep them from falling off but they warmed me up almost as much as his sweetness did.

Not surprisingly, the food was absolutely delicious and to our happy surprise, turned out to be ridiculously cheap. We could have easily spent more ordering our pasta and Caesar salad without appetizers or desert, so I think Spumoni may have been the only restaurant in LA that didn't hike up their prices for Valentines.

All in all, it was a very successful Valentine's Day and I loved sharing it with E. Even with the changing plans and freezing ankles, I'm really glad we went out and can't help but look forward to another 75 Valentine's Days with my sweetie.

A New Job

I have a new job. Yes, let me say that again. I. Have. A. New. Job. Those are not words I was expecting to type out for awhile but I admit I am excited about it.

I have worked for this company a few years ago doing database work and very much enjoyed the experience. It's a solid company with genuinely good people and the work environment was always positive.

This time I am returning not as a computer tech but as a researcher and consultant on an Education and Community Development project. It's really exciting stuff, the kind of material I review on my own time for my own personal enjoyment, but this time I get paid for it! It's confidential so I can't discuss much but it is cutting edge research that I'm hoping will have a positive impact on the world.

Thus far I've only committed to part time work but as long as I can fit my classes in with my work schedule  I'll add more hours. If I continue it should be enough to help me save for graduate school and hopefully lead me towards one of my desired careers. Fingers are crossed, I would love to be able to make up my mind!

Also, I will be in an office. With a window. While it's not an exam room, at least it's not a cubicle!

(Source)

3 Month Anniversary

Sunday, as E and I were getting ready to drive our kids our junior bridesmaid, N,  and junior groomsmen, S, down to camp, E realized that it was our three month anniversary. I'm not surprised that I didn't realize it sooner, E has always been a wiz with dates and numbers and the time has passed so quickly. I'm not sure where these last nine years of our relationship have gone but these last few weeks where we've been raising Milou and hosting N and S have zoomed by at light speed.

Milou is already 26 pounds!

Last Thursday we picked N and S up at the airport and went straight to the Aquarium of the Pacific. They're in that place where they're not quite teenagers yet but they're not really children anymore, one moment they're ohmygosh30yearsold mature and the next they're closer to a tantruming 6 year old. Luckily, we had a great time at the aquarium with no meltdowns and much appreciation for the tropical birds, puffer fish and moon jellies. I only got minimal complaints when I told them I wouldn't buy $3 one ounce cups of nectar for the birds and although I could tell S wasn't happy, he was able to be resourceful and use nectar flowers to attract the birds. They worked better than the cups anyway (what bird would be attracted to a plastic cup??) and I got approximately 284329874634 pictures of them holding the birds. 

The next day was spent at play dates and a friends BBQ, where they ran themselves into exhaustion with a pack of kids I've watched be born and grow up. Some are now taller than I am and other's have changed so much that they're nearly impossible to recognize as the soft,  bow mouthed newborns and bright eyed toddlers they used to be. I did a double take when I saw a little boy I used to watch at 5 as a grown up 12 year old with a mop of shaggy hair and a "Death to Humans" t-shirt. His little sister who I watched as a baby is now a little girl, running around and playing rough'n'tumble with the boy. As an adult, you don't realize how much can change in 7 years until you look at a child.

Beanbag Battle

Captain Australia

Ziggy watches N and S battle

S and T battle for the fort

Saturday ended up being a lazy day, although we started out with grandiose plans for visiting the LA Science Center. I think the BBQ the day before wore them out a bit, so instead we watched movies, went to the mall, and went out to our favorite mexican restaurant. Although I was hoping to get them into bed early, they hadn't seen the 1980's version of Batman so E, S and N piled into our bed and watched batman kick butt until midnight when we foisted them into their own beds and spent a good half hour giggling back and forth through the wall. When N called from her bed in her squeakiest sci-fi voice "Do you know who the fiend is? ....it's the LAXATIVE!" and we all burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter at this nonsense while S called "In Bed!" (thank god they still don't know why this is funny), I realized we had reached the that time and it was time to sleep.

N and S's awesome camp

Dropping them off at camp was a kind of bittersweet experience. I know they'll have a fabulous time although we'll miss them while they're gone. S acclimated pretty much instantly as soon as his friends got there but N took a little bit longer. We walked around the camp with her for about 2 hours and she still wasn't quite ready for us to go. I think it's going to be a hormonal summer for her and I felt like a giant meanie leaving her there when she wasn't ready to let go. We made up the secret word "pumpernickel" for her to write to us in letters if she was having a tough time, like "man they served us pumpernickel bagels for breakfast" instead of saying "i hate it i'm having a terrible time". Home sickness usually comes in bouts so hopefully hers are few and far between and they both have a great time.

Beautiful Gazebo

After dropping off the kiddos, E and I went to visit his stepdad G at his house where we got married. It was a little surreal to see it looking like a house instead of our wedding, but he kept up the gazebo we had our ceremony under and has a little table and chairs beneath it.  I really can't believe it's already been three months since we said our I do's. E says it feels more like a few weeks, but we've been together so long he doesn't really count in months anymore. I keep thinking of all the things we still have to do like send more thank you notes, lose the few pounds we gained so we can take our day after photos, choose photos for our wedding album, etc etc. If life goes this quickly without kids, I can't imagine how it will fly once we have our own! For now I want to try and focus more on enjoying each other and our surrogate children N and S. Oh, and getting out those remaining thank you notes >_<

Pupdate

It's been two weeks since Milou came into our lives and man has she shaken things up. There isn't a room in this house that doesn't have puppy paraphernalia all over the floor, be it toys, beds, crates, blankets, bones etc. She's everywhere and it's hard to remember what our house looked like before we brought her home!

Lap Dog

Despite my desperate love of sleeping in, I am now up at the chipper hour of 7:30 to take her out to pee and begin defrosting her breakfast. We've decided to go with raw food for her and it takes a little bit of extra work, though it's totally worth it. Thus far we've been making our own since our freezer seems to have a never ending supply of frozen chicken but I think we'll order it from a friend's breeder once we've used up our stash.

Who could resist that face???

Every Saturday she goes to puppy class where we attempt to make her into a well behaved social butterfly. She's picking up on commands really quickly but is still a little distracted by all those other pooches in the room. Today was better since the instructor let them have some off-leash playtime/meet'n'greet but she still needs to work on being tethered and she might have accidentally peed on another puppy's towel. It seems we're constantly being told to keep her in her crate/tethered/locked up somewhere which is tough since I we want to spend time with her. Next Saturday class is cancelled so we'll have a whole two weeks to get her used to being tethered so she doesn't run back and forth like a ping pong ball when we tether her in class.

Haji and Milou: Staring Contest 2011

Since we brought her home, Milou has gained 4 pounds, bringing her up to 26lbs. According to the GSD growth chart that puts her at about where she should have been two weeks ago, so she's not quite caught up. It's difficult to gauge whether she's growing correctly and getting enough food but I think she's okay. I'm not sure if she'll make it to 36 pounds by 4 months but as long as she's growing we're happy.

The Familymoon is Over

After the wedding, everyone settled into life in our multi-generational home as if nothing had happened. We had a few more boxes and lovely gifts taking up some extra space but aside from that everything was status quo.

Goofy photo from our wedding to break up the tension. I'm too lazy to email our awesome
 photographers, Ohana photographers, for the high quality versions right now.

However, now that we've been married for almost two months, I'm beginning to think that we really need our space. On the superficial side, we desperately want our own physical space to spread out our stuff and create a home together. They never mentioned a nesting instinct in all the marriage articles I've read but damn do I desperately want to create a little nest for us.  I hate having all our stuff in storage and we have no room to hang our ketubah or fingerprint tree and no room to put up prints from our wedding.

S: OMG We're married!
E: I know!! Yay!
S: OMG presents!
E: OMG Yes!
S: What do we do with it all????
E: ..................

On a more personal note, my family has moved from passive aggressive about my schooling choices (or lack there of) to downright hostile and I feel like I have no relationship with my mom anymore. She's no longer the mom I always got along with and rarely disagreed with in my 24 years. She's somehow become the pushy roommate, who badgers me on a daily basis about school, invades my personal space without knocking or guilt and who has no respect for our boundaries as a couple or as human beings. She comes into our room, the one space that's supposed to be ours, without knocking, sometimes while we're still asleep.  She throws things out, moves things, and complains about the clutter filling our tiny quarters. We no longer spend time together aside from passing in the hall and most conversations contain barely veiled hostility. It's quite unpleasant and is really stressful.

Goofy photo number two because this is getting depressing. I love weird socks <3

I can't even begin to describe how our conversations go.

M: What are you doing with your life
S: I haven't decided which grad program I want to apply to yet
M: blablahyou'reworthlessifyourenotadoctorblahblah
M: You'd better not get pregnant
M: You'd owe your grandma 10 grand
M: I'd kill you
S: Thanks

In addition, this pregnancy scare has really changed how I view our situation. While E and I do not want a babe now, I'd like to think that if we ended up expecting one my family would be supportive. If you've been reading my blog, now is probably where you'd point out how stupid that assumption is. My family has a friggin' 10 thousand dollar bet on whether we'll get pregnant this year and that should have been enough to warn us just how unsupportive they'd be. Still, I didn't expect this level of unsupportiveness, I feel like they see us as one of the screwed up teenage couples on "16 and Pregnant" instead of the mid twenties married couple that we are.

I also feel like we're constantly cleaning up after everyone. My sister left for a vacation this Thursday. She left the hose on in the backyard drowning the vegetables. I didn't find out till it flooded the driveway. The cat that's supposed to be hers was left with no food and no water, he clued me in when he came into my room crying and looking for Button's food. My mom left bad food on the counter and a thick layer of crumbs on the cutting board, her dirty bowls in the sink for someone else to clean up. Bleh. I feel like a stay at home mom in someone else's house with no babe and no space.  I also think I'm watching too much daytime TV in between schoolwork since I have an irrational fear that I'm gonna end up like one of those ladies who has her baby in a toilet on "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant".

Some sweetness to wash away the bitter

Bottom line, cold hard truth style, this is where we need to be. We need to save up as much as we can right now so even though it's painfully obvious we need out, it's more important that we stay. The truth hurts but we can't avoid it.

Ketubah and Fingerprint Tree

Fingerprint Tree Framed!!

We went with turquoise and purple fuzzy velvet, it was too colorful to do something boring! My bestie M painted the tree for us, she's an amazing artist. The frame is a solid black and the glass has UV protection. 

We ripped open the package!

E and I are the little owls in the heart of the tree <3

Double mat with a floating top mat and overmat mounting. My grandma just had to sign
all the way to the edge so we couldn't go with a traditional matting. 

Ketubah Framed!!

Since this is a more "serious" wedding document, we went with a traditional mahogany frame and 4" blue mat to match the hydrangeas. We also went with a museum quality glass that's glare free and has UV protection. 

It's way bigger than it looks here!

Hydrangeas close up

The mahogany frame has really rich tones :)

So what do you think? I think we did pretty good with the framing. We had everything done at Aaron Brothers when they had their 60% off custom framing sale.

Wedding Shards Mezuzzah

After careful consideration, E and I decided to have a mezuzah made out of our broken wedding glass. Since we're not glass artists, we contacted Enid Traisman to have our gorgeous mezuzzah made and she went above and beyond our expectations. Because we didn't have that much glass from the champagne glass we smashed, we sent along a broken blue mason jar as well.

Enid Traisman's Etsy Shop

Item: Wedding Shards Mezuzzah

Price: $45 + $4.95 shipping + ($5.00 shipping for the frame + $7.00 shipping the glass to her)

Little known fact: you can't fuse glass from two different sources together without them cracking. So no champagne-glass-mason-jar-mezuzzah. Boo.

Luckily, we had just enough glass to make the mezuzzah. Because we love blue, she added some tint and beautiful little jewels to spice it up. She sent it to us packed in a beautiful little box with instructions on how to hand it but somehow the post office managed to break it, right down the middle.  We were pretty broken up about it since we'd been anticipating its arrival but Enid was able to fuse it back together for us with little lasting effect.

Mezuzah and frame before fusion 

Throughout the process, Enid sent us progress photos so we could see how everything was coming together. Since we couldn't use the mason jar glass in our mezuzzah, Enid used the extra glass to make us a gorgeous photo frame.  She only charged us shipping for it and included a little acrylic holder at no charge :)

Frame with Enid's doggy in it!

Our Mezuzzah, Before it Broke

Top Down View

I love how the little jewels are raised! A few got slightly skewed when she fused it back together. 

The back depression where the scroll goes

So what does everyone think? I love our mezuzzah and think its a perfect way to make your wedding glass something special that you'll see everyday :)

A Guide to Name Changing

When I decided to go ahead and change my name, I never gave much thought to the amount of paperwork it would take. When you think about it, your name is pretty much on everything you touch and you have to change it on everything. It sounds worse on paper than it actually is, but I thought it might be helpful to put a guide out there so people can prepare.

Step 1: Get Married! You'll need to apply for a marriage license and pay the fee to do this. It was $90.00  in Los Angeles.

Step 2: Submit your signed marriage license to your local courthouse in person or have it notarized and mail it in.

Step 3: Pay $14.00 per copy for a certified marriage license. We got 2 which I'm hoping will be plenty.

Step 4: Wait 6-8 weeks for them to mail you your certified copies. Depending on your DMV, you may want to make an appointment during this time if it has a long wait period.

The First (Year) Is The (Hardest)

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the first year of marriage is the hardest one. Even if you lived together before, marriage brings some subtle little problems with it that you probably didn't have previously. I'm discovering some of these little things as they crop up and in the interest of full disclosure, I'm sharing them with you.

This is the picture that came up when I searched "First year of marriage". Isn't it appropriate???

Obvious changes you knew to expect but somehow didn't (aka slow, creeping changes):

1. You can't just break up. Duh.

E and I have been together for eons and would never break up, but whenever we were having a hissy fit there was always the little voice in the back of my mind saying "HA I COULD SO BREAK UP WITH YOU IF I WANTED TO". Now that we're married, the little voice is saying something more like "HA I COULD...wait....I can't? Shit". It's not that I want to leave my annoying as shit charming hubby, but the pissy fit arguments do seem to mean a little more now that I can't kick him out since, you know he kinda officially lives here. And since we're mostly confined to a single room, there's no where "here" for me to kick him to to get some space. You can't even holler and talk about breaking up because divorce is some scary shit. The result of this? Tonight I ended up sitting in bed with my back to him because there was no where for either of us to go to get space. PATHETIC I tell you, which brings me to...

Happy Birthday E!

Happy 26th Birthday E!

(E dancing in a hotel room at my 18th birthday party)

Today marks E's 26th year of life! That also means that I've kissed him from ages 16-26, which is kind of mind boggling.  Since E made breakfast in bed for me on my birthday, he wanted a special breakfast to start his day as well. I wasn't able to wake up before him since we have some minor construction going on here that ended up waking us both up, but I was able to whip up some delicious chocolate chip pancakes in my nightgown sans glasses. Not bad if I do say so myself, though I'm not sure our construction workers appreciated the unkempt view.