Joining the Ranks

Things have been rather melodramatic in my head lately. I have been feeling a little out of control waiting for the job thing to happen and trying to get the lose ends of school/state certification and wedding thank yous tied up. I think part of my problem is that for the last year my hair has literally been on fire with one project/deadline or another. I have been operating at full tilt for 13months. Now I have come to a nearly full stop. I am a "housewife". Not by choice either.... Anyway, I had a chance to spend some time with some friends of ours last night and it really helped me re frame my reality in a very helpful way.

On our wedding day the Man and I had some badly behaving family. It happens. It was such a minor part of the whole beautiful weekend that it barely warrants mention, however, on that day it seemed huge and it had me pretty keyed up. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what the proper etiquette was in this situation. I wanted to ask my Mother but I didn't want to burden her (or any of my 4 mothers for that matter) with the politics. I looked around at my maids and realized I needed some advice from an "elder". I curb sided my friend Liz. She gave me the following amazing advice "This is your and G's day. All of these people are here because they have accepted your invitation to come celebrate your day. If they can't handle themselves or be well behaved that is not your problem. Now get out there and enjoy yourself." It was really beautiful advice. It was not aggressive or disrespectful. It encouraged me to shake it off and enjoy the day. To prioritize my time and spend it with those who are fully engaged in the celebration, with those who have traveled thousands of miles to help us start our lives together surrounded with love. It saved my life!

When I say "elder" I don't mean old in years. I don't even mean that far ahead of me in experience though, mothers and aunties who have been married for decades are very handy to have around as well. I mean the women who's sisterhood I have now joined. The women who are just barely ahead of me in this whole wife thing. I am not by any means discounting my sisters who are un-partnered, I am merely writing about the other ones here. Liz, Andrea, Sara, all of them are just steps ahead of me in this new land. It sounds silly maybe but now that the wedding is over things do feel different. I feel "married". I feel presented to the world as part of this three legged race team called me-and-him. It is beautiful but it is also oddly more different than I had anticipated. Maybe in time I will be able to be more specific about what exactly it is that feels different but for now I will just say that it does.

Anyway, I digress wildly. Last night I had made stew and grudgingly watched the Man go back to work (still not entirely well). I knew that I was likely going to spend the night with my friends, the cast of Law and Order, have a few beers and fall asleep feeling upset only to wake in the morning just as upset as the day before. I texted our friends GW and KJ. They are another health care couple who have been through much of what we have been through and more. They are engaged to be married a year from now. I adore them both. KJ and I have very different personalities at first impression I am loud and outgoing. She is seemingly shy. It didn't take us very long to discover that we are actually very similar. Anyway, I invited myself over to their house last night offering to bring stew in exchange for company. I arrived to find them wide eyed sitting in the kitchen. They announced they had just put an offer in on a house. I was SOOOO excited for them. They have been living in a tiny little rental and I just think it would be exciting to see them blossom into a family in a home where they could really make it their own. Not to mention that if the Man and I can do it ANYONE can do it.

We spent most of the night talking about house stuff. We did a ninja drive by and stalked around in the back yard. When we got back to their house they had to sign the offer paper work. I told them about our realtor's advice that we write a letter to the sellers about us and how we saw ourselves in the house. I suggested it to them and they wrote a really lovely and enthusiastic letter. They sent all the papers to their realtor and he wrote back that he loved the letter. Today we sit around crossing our fingers that their offer is the one that is accepted and they will be on their way to closing and moving and on and on. It is a very exciting time to be sure. It wasn't until I was driving myself home last night that I realized I have joined the ranks of the "elders". Not just as a bossy girl with lots of opinions but as a woman who has walked through some fire over the past year and who has learned a shit ton about life in the process. I like the idea of my errors being of use to those I love. It seems like a terrible waste to be the only one getting anything out of them. I know that this is only the beginning of my adult journey but it is nice. It feels good to offer help and it feels good to see that help ease some of the tension lines around a friend's eyes now and again. I am honored to be here on the roster of elders.

Of things I thought I knew but clearly I do not....

I need to go away. I need to go on a trip. I need a honeymoon with the man. I thought that all of this wonderful wedding stuff would be "enough". I thought I would get to today, the last of my nearest and dearest dropped off at the airport, and I would just feel relief. I thought I would sleep. I cannot. I am homesick and overwrought with worry about jobs and mortgages and dirty bedrooms. I cannot stop. What's worse is that I feel like if I were to stop it would all crash down on me like a massive tidal wave and I would no longer be able to out swim it as I have for the past 10+ months. I need to be somewhere else. I need a mini break with the man. I hate to say it but I really do need to fall in love with him all over again. I love him in the ultimate sense all of the time every day. Right now I lack the relative sense. I feel like we are a pair of tea cups in the cupboard, set next to each other. I can't see if we match or not. I don't feel in touch with our shared usefulness. I feel like a roommate. I need a little romance and uninterrupted joy. That's not to say I want an escape...OK, fuck it! I need an escape! I want to take the dogs to the beach and see them running happily down the sand while I hold the man's hand and we talk about the next year in a not at all business like fashion. No lists, no trajectories, no schedules. Just dreams. I want to play cards and drink coffee. I want to go for a hike and come back to eat cheese and drink an entire bottle of champagne. I want to not be so exhausted that I fall asleep before getting the chance to lay awake talking for hours.

I thought I understood how I would feel when I reached this finish line. I thought I would feel lighter and brighter and at ease. In many ways I do, as I said, feel ultimately fulfilled. What I could not have anticipated were the tiny annoying as hell ways in which I feel worried and sad. I got to the other side of the mountain to find there are more mountains to climb and they seem equally appealing, beautiful, daunting and far off as the one I just climbed. What the fuck is all that about anyway? It doesn't help that the man is ill and that he has weekends off for the next month making it more expensive to go anywhere than during the week. Ahhh, my father would say. "The unsatisfactoriness of it all..." Maybe I need to find a yoga class this week....maybe I need to find three....

He IS human afterall...

So the man has been sick MAYBE a total of 3 times since we met 3ish years ago. He has called in truly ill a total of 0 times since we met. He is not normal. I have seen him ill however, it is almost always self inflicted and usually secondary to him trying to keep pace with some large fire fighter who has an easy 100lbs on him. He doesn't drink that much that often so when he goes all out it usually doesn't end well. Anyway, today's post is not about binge drinking or drinking at all really. Today's post is about how my husband has a sensitive little girly stomach now that all of the wedding/school/ house buying stress is over. Poor thing has been intermittently nauseated and loose in the caboose for the past week. Yesterday night he went to work feeling a bit prodromal and upon arriving home this morning reported full blown grossness. Poor guy had been in and out of the bathroom all night. I got all maternal on him and forced some vitamin c and toast into him assuming that he was likely empty and putting a little something in that hyperactive angry pit would improve things. Not 5 min after I said "finish half of that toast and drink the vitamin C stuff" he was in the bathroom returning to sender. Poor kid!

This afternoon we woke up and he was requesting yogurt and ginger ale. Probiotics are good! Fizzy gingery love in a liquid form is good! He kept it in pretty well but it did not last long. I got up and headed to the store for reinforcements. I gathered the usual artillery OJ, Reed's Ginger Beer, avocado for the day after, coffee for me. Then I found myself in naturopath land. It is a strange and magical place filled with expensive supplements I find myself highly skeptical of. Two employees approached me and asked if I needed any help. I thought what the hell? Let's see what they think would work for (likely largely stress induced but also likely somewhat viral) GI upset. One girl started in on dietary things and adding more kale and barley to his diet and including psyllium husks to yogurt etc...etc... I stopped her and informed her that he was sort of unable to eat much of anything currently and that I was probably looking for something more along the lines of ginger tea or other soothing agents. She started telling me about aloe shakes and how important natural anti-inflammatories are to healing an angry stomach. The man is pretty darn liberated and pretty darn enlightened. He also happens to be a great sport most of the time especially when it comes to trying my whacked out food ideas. He once thought he didn't like beets until one night, too exhausted to look at his food, he ate 2 giant bowls of beet stew and L-O-V-E-D it. Anyway, I digress. The point is that no matter how good a sport he is he is not going to go for me grinding up an aloe plant and serving it to him over crushed ice when he is feeling WELL, let alone when he is broken at both ends. The other girl seemed to sense this and started showing me some ginger supplements. She showed me some pills and some gels and then showed me this stuff pictured above. It is about the consistency of maple syrup and has some honey in it. I put a tablespoon into a glass of raspberry fizzy water and as I sit here he is finishing the last of it. I will be anxious to see how he does trying some food food but he seems a little less green in the gills already. The store girl also said it is her favorite cure for hangovers. I'll keep you posted on that too.

I am not into spending oodles of cash on naturopathic remedies. I think homeopathy is largely psychosomatic (don't get all angry, I still insist on trying it EVERY time I get sick but it never seems to work and I always end up with a shit ton of sugar pills sitting next to the sudafed after a few days). I DO think that the supplements my besty was forcing down my hatch every day the week before the wedding were awesome and very helpful in preventing my usual stress related illnesses. I might even be sold enough to spend the cash (once I get a job that is) to get the chewy supplements and make a 3 month trial out of it. I do OK with fruits and veggies but damn I was feeling GOOD leading up to the wedding and it certainly wasn't because I was eating well and getting lots of sleep. What do you guys think? Anyone have a favorite supplement or favorite "cure" for the common cold or flu? Anyone have a favorite stress busting plan other than the age old sleep well, eat well and run around the block to burn down some of that cortisol?

I will keep you posted on the man's recovery from whatever the hell this thing is (all I know is that it is NOT sexy). I will also look forward to hearing any one's favorite tips and tricks to calm an angry belly. Hope you are all doing better than the man.

Hello and Welcome

I am very excited about this blog. I feel like saying to the world "Thanks for having me". It has been a whirl wind year and I am finally getting a chance to catch my breath and reflect instead of react to my life and my world.

I married my best friend one week ago yesterday in front of our family and friends in a heartbreakingly lovely ceremony here in OR. It POURED rain! If rain is luck we are set! I will post photos and reflections on that whole adventure as soon as I get some space around it myself. It was easily the most emotional weekend of my life and that is saying something for me as I am an emotional little monkey.

I am starting this blog with the intention to not only reflect upon my current station in life but to try to push myself to explore living more sustainably while remaining "mainstream". I want to learn better more environmentally friendly ways to clean my house and feed my family. I want to work on saving money and becoming more self sufficient in the home improvement department. My husband (henceforth referred to as "the man") and I are both excited to learn how to care for and maintain our new addition, a 1929 bungalow.

I intend to do some serious reflecting on the wedding in part as I have several dear girlfriends going through the planning year and I feel rather full of advice yet don't wish to flood any of them with my well intentioned yet largely unsolicited advice. I will use you dear blog witnesses as my sounding boards. I look forward to posting recipes and home tips as well as accounts of my **fingers crossed** new life as a paramedic and wife. I will process my friends having babies and adopting pets as well as personal family events and current world affairs. All I ask of you is to consider communicating with me. Post a link or pose a question. Disagree with me or cheer me on. If something upsets you please please please write to me. If not on the post then send me an email. Don't let something you read on the Internet drive an angry splinter beneath your thumbnail. That hurts and makes people cranky and unreasonable. Join me or just sit back and watch. Welcome to the stream and here goes my attempt at homesteading.