oldly weds.

so apparently the common consensus is that a married couple is considered "newly wed" for a year. ah "newly weds"... doesn't the phrase conjure up thoughts of rose petals, giggles and holding hands and skipping down some path together while birds sing, bunnies hop everywhere and butterflies flutter about? ok... perhaps i am exaggerating slightly, but you get the picture. anyhow, i was giving this topic some critical thought the other night while i was reading this blog called "the dating divas"... cute little blog, and quite popular by the looks of it. i bet that a great many of you would probably enjoy it. let me just say right now that i like this blog enough to follow it, and i think it's interesting. i mean, i've got a husband, and we try to date (eachother, obviously), and isn't that what the blog is all about?

all that being said, apparently this blog is authored by a group of really creative women who have husbands who are also very creative... something that i am not, by default, and something that chris is very not, by nature. for instance: scrapbooking? curse word to me. nothing makes me more anxious than sitting at a table with piles upon piles of decorative paper, bows, glue, pictures and strange cutting contraptions. and chris? doesn't know what scrapbooking even is (i've tried to explain it to him, but his brain cannot grasp the subject). so anyhow, i am sitting here reading this blog about making handmade invitations to dates, dressing up for themed activities, scrapbooking, and using rose petals all over the place to be romantic... and inwardly feeling, let's say, less than inspired. my inner voice says: "now now, noel. you're being a cranky pregnant lady. ask chris for his opinion." so i asked him: "hey, uh... so what do you think about a written, handmade invitation to a date?"
 he goes, "um why would you do that? coudn't you just tell me about the date? i'm just gonna throw it away after i read it. seems like a bunch of wasted effort."
validation and releif! "ah, thank you honey, i was thinking the same thing!... hey so... what do you think about rose petals all over the bed, for 'romance'?"
he thinks for a second and says, "well... i dunno. i... guess... so.... but isn't that kind of a mess? i mean, it's not like they do much anyways...."
"THANK you! my thoughts EXACTLY!! oh i'm so glad i'm not the only one who thinks like this!"
"ha, yeah, i can just imagine me throwing rose petals everywhere and you coming in, getting all pissed off and saying 'great! who's gonna clean all this crap up tonight?' haha! why are you even asking me all this stuff?"
and so i showed him the blog. chris took a few seconds, furrowed his brow and said "whaaaat the heck? NO honey. what the... all of this stuff is uneccessary. how do these people have time for this? even looking at it is making me tired."
"so... it doesn't matter to you that i am unromantic and non-creative?"
"no honey. you're perfectly fine. don't even try any of that stuff- i'm not interested. just spend a day with me to go out and do something together like we already do- that is good enough for me. i like that. and who the heck knows what 'romance' is anyways? it's a stupid term, and people only pretend to know what it is."
we laughed together.

this isn't to say that we haven't ever done any "uneccessary stuff" when we first started dating... for instance, around halloween a couple of years ago chris spiderwebbed my car while i was at work, and then left a card and flowers on it. when i brought that to his rememberance he laughed, "yeah that was funny. but it makes no sense to do that now... i'd do it, and you'd laugh for a second and then you'd have spend a bunch of time cleaning it all off so you can drive to school early the next morning. i don't want to do that to you. we have a good relationship and we have other things to worry about." so so true, and i'm grateful for that. i used to think that couples stopped doing "cute" stuff for eachother when they "lost the spark". now i realize that those cute, outrageous things that were so fun early in the relationship are replaced by deeper, subtler, more meaningful things. like getting his favorite dinner on the table hot and ready the moment he walks through the door when i know he's had a long, rough day at work. like him doing the dishes for me after dinner because i'm sick and tired from being pregnant. like a voluntary back-rub when the other is sore and exhausted. i suppose one of the reasons why i love my husband so much is because we think similarly, appreciate similar things, and uphold eachother in our daily endeavors. sometimes life is hard. sometimes it's all you can do to get through to the end of the day. and when you get home and collapse on the floor, the other person is there to lift you up, heal you, and make it possible for you to make it one more day.

THAT is what i think matters, and that is what i know matters to him. and so somehow because of this i feel that deep down we are an old couple, even though we've only been married 8 months. :) i call us "oldly weds". not to say that we wouldn't hold hands down the aforementioned path with the singing birds, hopping rabbits and fluttering butterflies... we'd probably just walk instead of skip.

this picture is from our front porch. when chris and i first started seeing eachother we bought this plant in an effort to "beautify" his front walkway (in a masculine way of course). at this time we were not exclusive, and so it bothered him when i went to hang out with other guys... one of these nights i was on my way to do just that, and felt bad about it, so i bought him these manly figurines, placed them in the planter, and left chris a voice message to water his plants. later on that night i got a voice message in reply from chris, thanking me and saying that he'd never had anyone do something so thoughtful for him. he's since told me that it was at that moment that he knew he loved me. this was over two years ago. as you can see, the figurines are still there. :)