Do things REALLY happen for a reason?

Friday: I arrive in Milwaukee for a friend's bachelorette weekend (Congrats again, Alex if you're reading this). The group of us girl pedal-tavern our way through the downtown streets of the Third Ward getting drinks and cover charges paid for all the while. A pair of guys in particular took a liking to us.I had  to keep reminding one I was married (apparently guys don't have the same instinct girls do to first glance at a girl's left ring finger before approaching). Anyway, SUPER fun night, after which we promptly slept in until almost noon.

Saturday: When homemade breakfast burritos bettered our belly pain, we packed up and went tailgating at Miller Park before the Milwaukee Brewers game. We shotgunned beers until we ran out -- and then traded brats for more beer! It's nothing short of impressive that we were able to even cook brats: One bridesmaid had bought a new grill for the occasion and we packed it with everything else, but all of us girls, Creighton-educated mind you, failed to realize the grill wasn't yet assembled (HA!) Another bridesmaid, and apparently former Kinex junkie, along with the help of the MOH, Mac-Guyvered the thing together (also with the help of some tools from nearby tailgaters) in no time at all! #GirlPower  We made lots of friends at the time and even came away with a foul ball, thanks to our awesome third-row, third-base line seats -- another SUPER fun night!

Sunday: A nice farwell lunch at a local place and then off to the airport for me. The fun ended there. I did successfully make it to my layover stop in Denver, but only to hear that my flight had been delayed three hours. I tweeted my rage to the airline and my so-far weak following.  The delay was bad enough, until two hours later they CANCELED my flight! No explanation!
"Sorry, the reason hasn't been coded in our system." "
No, I'M sorry, but you're going to have to do better than that!"
Other flights through the same airline and others were off to Omaha without a hitch, but no, not mine. Another hour was wasted in the customer service line where I was rebooked on a different carrier's midnight flight to Lincoln. It was supposedly the closest they could get me and I just wanted to be home. Upon arrival at the new airline's gate, they had no record of me or my reservation. Of course not. So back to square one and the original airline who screwed me over. This time, I refused to wait in line and cut everyone to complain about what happened. Now said midnight flight, which was only a decent option at best, was full and not an option anymore anyway. Now supposedly the soonest flight home to Omaha that wasn't full with other rebooked passengers was Tuesday morning (HA!) Surpringly, I remained calm. I also did some side glances for the candid cameras, ending with me shaking my head. Just my luck this happened on the first trip I ever had to fly alone.  Anyway, I guess I asked the right questions because 'all of a sudden' (OR, all along and she was just unhelpful - whichever) a 10 AM flight Monday appeared and I took it. I mean, my only other option was to rent a car and drive the eight hours, which I never really considered. Can you imagine what would've happened to me on an overnight trip down I-80?!

Monday: I get a call first thing in the morning from my boss, on my personal cell, so I knew it was urgent. A sponsor needed ASAP a key piece of paperwork that only I had saved on my computer, which was of course at my house. We went back and forth trying to come up with a temporary fix to please the sponsor or find some other solution but nothing was panning out. When I texted Matt to inform him of the latest, "WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME?!" happening, he simply replied: "What can I do?"
Not "sorry babe, that sucks," but "what can I do?" It caused me pause. I have a good one, everyone. He had already rearranged his work day because he had to come get me 45 minutes away in the middle of the day, but the guy also agrees to race home before that to do a search for a file on my work computer and call my boss, whom he has met just once in passing, for me. He may not be a real romantic, but I have to give it to him - he's always there when it matters, however ridiculous the situation - my knight in shining armour! So I was grinning in appreciation when it was my turn to board, but the grin quickly turned into a panicked frown when the attendant said my boarding pass wouldn't actually work and that I was not in their system.  It was 15 minutes from takeoff so I once again cut everyone in the service desk line so someone could fix this for me. And luckily, they did. I made it safely to Lincoln where my hubs and dog were there to greet me. But of course, 20 minutes into the drive home, Matt says, "Why are we going west?" -- that's opposite of home. We end up in Crete, out of our way and I am about 60/40 flattered and annoyed that he was too excited to see me to see any of the road signs!  But I allowed myself no other choice but to focus on the positive.  I wasn't in a hotel room by myself anymore, this nightmare was [almost] over and I seemed to learn some things about myself along the way. So I say again as I've said before, I DO think things happen for a reason. If nothing else, this whole experience gave me some writing materials for the blog - it'd almost been a month since last post! :)

Alternative Lifestyles

We went on a vacation with another couple this weekend to Breckenridge, CO. As part of our ubber-touristy trip, we white-water rafted, rode a gondola to the top of a mountain, hiked and ziplined (is that a word?).  Pretending to be adventurous for a few days sure was fun! 

All the fun prompted Matt to ask the group a question: If we lived only 3 hours away (instead of 8+), do you think we would come all the time?

We took the conversation in a direction that had us all living in side-by-side plots in small town Colorado. We "dreamed" of possible careers for ourselves whenv we moved. Kristie was going to find a teaching job in the district, I was to purchasae the for-sale cupcake shop on Main Street, Matt was going to be a dealer (demand is HIGH out there for stuff to get high it seems) and Ross was going to win the state lottery. Because the entire plan somewhat hinges on one of us in fact winning the lottery to fund our future move, in reality, not going to happen. Not only can we not afford a home on Lake Dillon, but we seemed to learn this weekend that not only are we amazingly sycronized paddlers, but that we also just don't fit in in CO. Actually, us girls were even called "yuppies" by two locals (named Steve & Abram, mind you). They sited our hair and bags as evidence (we had washed and brushed our hair and our bags were not made of hemp, so...I guess??)

Better yuppie than hippie in my book. Or so I thought until I looked up the definition of each on Urbandictionary.com. In a nutshell, "yuppie "= Christian Bale's character from American Psycho and "hippie" = a Phish fan who loves acid -- and everything in general.

A life of love, peace, equality and simplicity. Doesn't sound so bad does it? The more I read about it online, the better it sounded, even to anal-ol' me. So in honor of the fun weekend and the adventurous Coloradan hippie lifestyle , I write this while listening to The Grateful Dead. If only the hippie lifestyle paid a yuppie paycheck....because I like being able to afford vacations to Colorado if I want.

15 ways to stay married for 15 years & then some

The moment I read this article after it went viral a month or so ago, I knew I had to both share it and write about it. It is hands down the best relationship of any kind I have ever received.

Here’s author Lydia Netzer’s 15 Ways to Stay Married for 15 years—and then my own commentary about each one. (You can click here for her full blog post explaining each point).

1. Go to bed mad.

Hahahaha – I was right the first time! 

2. Laugh if you can.

Laughing is my favorite thing to do. Making me laugh during a supposed fight is Matt’s favorite thing to do.  Approximately 99.9% of the time, I am not actually as mad as I am letting on. Having him there to diffuse the situation is always so great.

3. Don't criticize. Ever.
Even non-verbally?? Dang, I guess I should stop “subtly” poking Matt’s belly. Being married has not good for either of our diets. Super bummer coming into swimsuit season!

4. Be the mirror.
Mirror, cheerleader, same thing. Matt has been awfully busy at work for awhile now. His new position has required him to learn a lot of new things and perform in a much more fast-paced environment, so it’s my job as a good wife to tell him he’s awesome, he’s best employee ever, etc, etc. You’d be surprised what I come up with sometimes!

5. Be proud and brag.

Ok, so like, he IS awesome and probably at least among the best employees they’ve got. But also, even with his ever-growing midsection (haha, one last jab), he’s hot. And good at volleyball. Oh, and baseball. Even listening. Really, anything he does. J  He better be out there right now telling everyone how cool and pretty I am!

6. Do your own thing.

Speaking of baseball...that’s Matt’s “thing” – as long as he can, that’s what he’ll drive drive more than hour to twice a week to play. I have my own leagues of softball, too. Our interests are shared but we still have our own time away from each other to be ourselves. It gives us something to talk about for the brief periods of time between sports that we do get to hang out.

7. Have kids.

Next, please.

8. Get really good at sex.

Also skipping this one.  

9. Move.

Does travelling count? Because we have done plenty of that.  In fact, we went to the Kentucky Derby this year! [The fact that I had too many mint juleps and passed out in the infield during the actual Derby race is beside the point].  Back to the point, unless something *CRAZY* happens, we’re not going anywhere in terms of actually moving away.

10. Stop thinking temporarily.
I couldn’t have said anything better than what Lydia did, so enjoy: Marriage is not conditional. It is permanent. Your husband will be with you until you die. That is a given. It sounds obvious, but really making it a given is hard. You tend to think in "ifs" and "thens" even when you've publicly committed to forever. If he does this, I won't tolerate it. If I do this, he'll leave me. If I get fat. If I change jobs. If he says mean things. If he doesn't pay more attention. It's natural, especially in the beginning of your marriage, to keep those doubts in your head. But the sooner you can let go of the idea that marriage is temporary -- and will end if certain awful conditions are met -- the sooner you will let go of all kinds of conflict and stress. Yes, you may find yourself in a horrible situation where it's absolutely necessary to get a divorce. But going into it with divorce in the back of your mind, even in the way way way back of your mind, is going to cause a lot of unnecessary angst. Accept that you're going to stay with him. He's going to stay with you. Inhabit that and figure out how to make THAT work, instead of living with the "what if"s and "in case of's."

11. Do not put yourself in trouble's way.

My ex-boyfriend of five years, from about 10 years ago, recently tried to add me as a friend on Facebook out of the blue. It didn’t even cross my mind to accept because of this very point. If Matt played with social media, I’d expect the same from him.  I don’t want to be in a place to even  be able to touch temptation with a 10-foot pole.

12. Make a husband pact with your friends.

I don’t do much criticizing of the hubs, but ok, friends, if I do – don’t judge him for it. It’s probably me that’s the problem.

13. Bitch to his mother, not yours.

“To,” huh – not “about?”

14. Be loyal.

‘Duh.  

15. Trust the person you married.

100% without a doubt. If any doubt, don’t do it. Call it quits. If you can trust each other, not just in terms of being unfaithful, but simply trust yourself around each other to not say that mean thing you’re thinking, that’s not a good sign. If you’ve got trust, then you’ve got loyalty in the bag, too. Now, I’ve never climbed up and then jumped off a 6-foot ladder with my eyes closed and asked Matt to catch me, but I do still trust the guy.

By no means is this a end-all-be-all of marriage advice, but I found it pretty comprehensive from what I know so far--though I couldn't believe saying "I told you" as often as possible didn't make the cut. In fact,  reading Lydia’s version made me smile and think about things in a different light, and I even made Matt sit through my reading her article aloud, as well as my on the spot live commentary. We had some good laughs and discussion that way. I hope my version allows you the same self-realizations and smiles. If not, go "bitch" to your mother about me then, I guess.

It's a Boy!

It's no secret that I've never wanted kids. That's not to say that I'll never have kids, I've just never felt the urge that every female around me always seemed to have. I think it stems from me not thinking I'd be good enough at raising them. As it turns out, that last part may not be true after all.  Last week, Matt and I adopted a dog! We had been working with a local rescue shelter (check it out: http://www.grrin.org/) for several months now. There are various steps we had to go through to get the dog--phone interview, home visit from the dog's caseworker and then finally a supervised meeting with the dog and his current foster family (not kidding).  They told us at the beginning that we may have to meet many dogs before finding "the one" but we fell in love with the first one we got to meet! He has been a great addition to our little family.

Ok, now that I've said that, I'll say this--he's a handful! Bundle of joy, sure, but also "of energy!" That guy has to be playing constantly, and I am left with the bulk of the work in playing with and taking care of him by default, because I can work from home sometimes and even when not, I get home before Matt does. The disproportionate work load has already given me a small glimpse into what it must be like to be a new mom--covered in drool, cleaning up "accidents," getting on a feeding schedule and new routine in life in general. The silver lining? Throwing the dog's tennis ball to him 1,987 times a day is going to get my biceps in shape in no time! [Note for any parents who may be reading this: yes, I understand an actual child is much more difficult to care for than this dog ever has been or will be].

I guess all I mean by all of this is that while it's only been a week of this new life, I'm adjusting to my new duties easily. And happily I might add.  A comment by the vet at our visit the other day really triggered all of this self-reflection--he said, "you're being very maternal with him." Now, the vet didn't necessarily say it in a tone that implied that the extent of my "maternal, protective" behavior was a good thing, but still. I guess I HAVE had a maternal instinct all along.  And if you ask Matt, it'll be $250 in adoption costs well-spent to give me the confidence and mothering skills for a real, human kid someday!

6-Months

This weekend marked our six month anniversary of being married! I've said it before and I'll say it again--neither of us are romantic people, and normally we'd let something like a six month anniversary, which is not a real milestone, pass us by. (In fact, to this day, we have no idea when we even started dating!) You can imagine my surprise then when I got home Saturday night to a card and a pretty bouquet of flowers. [I also got home that night to Matt passed out on the couch with a beer in his hand, somehow not spilling a single drop. That's more like it, like us]. The flowers were a super sweet gesture, especially considering I didn't remember the occasion and thought they were "just because" blooms at first. I'll skip the middle part of the story about how I completely overanalyzed every word of the card and took offense to it, offending Matt in the process and I'll just say the story ended with hugs and kisses at least.

But I also got something else for my 6-month anniversary--an email from The Knot.

Subject: It's Been 6 Months since your wedding...
Body: ...So we'd like to introduce you to TheBump.com

For those of you unfamiliar (or bad at context clues), The Bump is "The Knot's sister site dedicated to all things baby."  Their email goes on to so very kindly invited me to click on links offering must-have tools for getting pregnant faster and even a 24/7 chat room for other women trying to get pregnant right now . Thank god one of the other options they gave me was to also forward this email to a friend!

If I could stop rolling my eyes or somehow figure out how to reign in my frustration at their inferences about where I should be in relationship, I'd tell you how I really feel about it. Needless to say, Matt didn't get baby news for his present on our 6 months anniversary.  Ok, now I promise to never say "6 month anniversary" again -- or at least until we do actually have a child and that child reaches dating age.

Part 2: NOT going to bed angry

I wrote the "part 1" post about how anything can happen at anytime. Ironically, that was not even 5 hours before the following happened:
I had another long day, leaving work late, and didn't feel like cooking the chicken I had defrosted. So I called Matt and after much discussion/deliberation, we'd finally agreed to hit up Joe's Crab Shack. What we didn't know was that it was "reservations only" that night because it didn't technically open until next week - back to square one. (UGH, why couldn't anything go as planned?!) We had driven separately and were both within walking distance of Cheesecake Factory so that's where we went. About 15 minutes into dinner, a dad at the table next to us grabbed his SCREAMING toddler (but old enough to know better) daughter to take her outside (thank god). Doing so set into effect an interesting set of events. First, the child monster's flailing arms sent a filled-to-the brim water glass flying into the air, giving Matt a little shower all over his face and half of his shirt, before the rest spilled on the floor. It was actually quite the scene. The family apologized profusely and because it was just water and Matt is so darn nice, he assuaged their guilt and just kept saying "it's okay, it's okay." We all moved on..somewhat awkwardly, because that restaurant packs in the tables like sardines; but nonetheless, our appetizer came and we refocused on our own conversation. That family left and then two older guys took their place, very obviously in town on business judging by their bluetooths and accents. My eavesdropping confirmed that fact.  For now, that's neither here nor there. We ate our main course and then the waitress twisted our arms into ordering dessert. After a fairly heated deliberation session to decide on a cheesecake flavor, we ordered what we wanted only to have the waitress come back and tell us they're out of it. Again, what.a.day. But, alas, my luck would soon turn around. We not-so-begrudging have a chocolate chip cookie dough slice brought out to us and the older of the two non-Omahans says, "WHOA, that looks great!" The waitress says, "It's their second choice," which the one guy heard as "piece" and turns to me and says "2 pieces - impressive- my kind of girl," simultaneously giving Matt a thumbs-up.  He takes our forced chuckles as an open invitation to conversation (his friend had to run off to take a phone call and apparently this guy can't stop talking for more 5 minutes). He was actually pretty interesting though..as we scarfed down our cake, he relayed the story about how he met his wife. Nutshell version: they met on a cruise in the Caribbean when he was drunk and told her he had to stop flirting with her because he heard she was only 17 years old (he was 26). In fact, she pulls out her driver's license and was 27. They've now been married 28 years. His version was better, as it included specifics of that's night drinks and gambling and dancing. We made some more small talk, and then corny jokes, about how Matt & I had been married now 6 months and hoped to tell our story to some unsuspecting couple at a restaurant someday; he all but crushed those dreams, as we could tell he found our "we met at sand vball" less than impressive. Anyway, talking to him got me in a better mood, and THEN the waitress comes with the bill and awwkardly says, "why don't you look at?" so I do -- all ZEROS. She says the family who flooded our table area had paid for our whole check. SO NICE, right?!  Really made my day. I forgot about anything and everything I was even halfway upset about. Matt & I said goodbye to our new friend from NY and walked out of there holding hands. In the parking lot, I said, "I'm instutiting a new rule for us at home." Matt promptly unheld my hand-- fair enough. "Let's never go to bed mad at eachother." He said ok and then did one of his adorable halfsmiles indicative of the fact that he thinks what he's about to say is funny, and said, "what about if you're just made at me, am I allowed to fall asleep or no?"  I shurgged, drove home and then we laid on the couch together cathcing up on our shows on DVR, perfect little night after a not-so-perfect day.  Life moves fast, so just enjoying it as I can!

Part 1: Going to bed angry

Three bad things happened to three good friends of mine this week. The tides can just change so quickly on people; It got me all self-reflective and existential.

For instance, Monday night I picked up Matt from the airport after his annual week away boys trip in Phoenix.  Absence truly does make the heart grow fonder because we were having a fun time that night, hanging out, making fun of "X-Tina's" cleavage on The Voice and looking through photos of the pretty golf courses in AZ.  Tuesday was more of the same, only this time our laughs centered around making fun of the "Schmidt"character on New Girl. [Side note: if you aren't watching this show, you should be. If you have watched and don't like it, we're not friends.]

Wednesday, however, was a different story. Matt didn't get home until 11:30 pm from a work function. I knew there would be a dinner, but did not know that would turn into a beer-fueld late night. Normally I'd have been in bed by 10:00 and been none the wiser to what time he may have returned, but on this day, I'd had such a long day at work that I came home and fell asleep on the couch from 5-9 PM so was in fact still bright-eyed and bushy tailed when the garage door opened late night. Even with it being a work thng, I was a little annoyed, though I'll admit I probably came off as A LOT annoyed. Anyway, after very little sleep, I woke up eeling guilty and thinking back to what I said at the beginning of this -- anything can happen and you never expect anything bad to. All things lately considered, why did I let myself go to bed angry?!  All I ever hear people say is that you shouldn't do that. It's easier said than done in my book. Do you all asleep at odds? Where does everyone else stand on this?