There's One in Every Family....

I love Matt so much. Because he's my best friend. Because no one can make me laugh the way he can. Because he loves me - spoiled little rich girl attitude and all. Because no matter what we're doing, we're having a good time as long as it's together. Because when Matt really wants something he begins his sentences with, "BABY....I LOOOOOOOOVE YOU" and if the conversation is in person instead of over the phone, he rubs his head against my arm like a cat. It's so friggin' cute, I simply cannot resist it. He's just too damn silly!

I am the less frivolous of the two of us - not necessarily because I spend less, but working in accounting has taught me to keep track of where my money goes, so I spend less on unnecessary commodities. Matt, on the other hand, will spend it if he's got it. Thus, I am in charge of paying the bills and budgeting our money and will only let Matt have his debit card if he needs to make a large purchase (i.e. the concrete we're pouring for our walkway tomorrow). Last week I let Matt have his debit card because we were supposed to pour the concrete over the weekend and he needed the card number. He kept the card for a whole day and ended up spending $30 on sausages because they stopped in a deli. SAUSAGES!! What in God's name are we going to do with $30 worth of sausages?!?

This afternoon I got the "baby....I loooooove you" phone call at the office. We're going out to dinner with one of Matt's coworkers and his girlfriend tomorrow night. They're a little bit country (we're a little bit rock and roll), an older couple in their late 40s, and I have no problem going out to dinner with them, so I know there must be more to this plea. Oh we're not just going to dinner, we're going to a country dance club here in town. Pure Country. I don't dance. No, I can't dance. We're not taking ballroom dancing classes before our wedding for Matt - we're taking them for ME - and country line dancing? Yikes! That's a disaster waiting to happen. But there's more. Matt wants to DRESS country. I'd like to clarify here that I have no problem with people who dress like cowboys and cowgirls, it's just not MY personal style. I'm trying to be a good sport about this. I have a pair of riding boots from when I used to show horses and I'm sure I have some country looking things left over from when I worked at a ranch when I was 19. I'm sure I can dig up SOMETHING country.

But none of this is why Matt is calling up and being cutesy. He wants me to stop at a western wear store after work and buy him: a cowboy hat, a belt buckle, and a pair of cowboy boots. We are at a point in our life where we need to be extremely frugal because we need to save up for a wedding and honeymoon that's costing US a 5 digit amount (not to mention what my parents and Matt's are contributing). We both have good jobs and make good money and if he'd called up any time after August 5 and asked for such items, I would've said yes in a heartbeat, but when it comes to money, my mind is very single-tracked: SAVE FOR WEDDING. But the thing is, I can't say no to Matt, and when he points out how much I spend to get my nails done biweekly and how much I'm spending to get my hair colored this weekend (and how much I just spent on Arbonne tha, I feel like a big gloopy piece of crap. I've figured my hair and nails into our wedding budget, and I give Matt a hefty amount of cash at the beginning of every week to spend on whatever his little heart desires, but he wants a cowboy hat and boots and a big ol' ugly belt buckle for tomorrow night. ONLY for tomorrow night.

Strangely enough, this is one of the reasons I love Matt so damn much. He lets me bitch at him for a while about our budget and saving money and how totally ludicrous it is for him to spend money on a pair of boots he'll only wear ONE night and he tries to convince me that he'll wear them more (it's like the little kid who tries to talk his mom into getting him a dog by promising he'll always take care of him), but the fact of the matter is, I don't WANT him to wear them more because I'm somewhat of a superficial snob. I talk him down into just a cowboy hat (which he talked me into going to buy for him when I get off work today because I'm such a sucker) because he said he'd get lots of use out of it at work. Okay. I love this about Matt because he always lets me lecture him about money because it's the part of our relationship that I handle. Matt and I fight and bicker over a lot of stupid things and a lot of not-so-stupid things, but the one thing we've never fought about is money. If it's true that that's the biggest problem in relationships, we're off to a good start (and it'll play an enormous factor in our lives when we start our business in a couple years and I have to manage our personal money and the business accounts). Anyway, I'm off to go buy a cowboy hat for my silly (albeit loveable) fiance.

Hair Color: Having it Done vs. Doing it Yourself

Bridal beauty is by far the most important kind of beauty. Weddings have been set aside as one of the most important and defining days in a woman's life; to look subpar is absolutely unacceptable and it goes so much deeper than the perfect dress paired with the perfect hair style and the perfect make up. It reaches as deeply as the shade of your hair, the length of your fingernails, the clarity of your skin. Make up and hair style are things you worry about a month before the wedding when it's time to run through the practice rounds, but NOW is the time to start fretting over everything else - with more than 3 months till the BIG DAY, if some beauty method doesn't work, there's ample room for errors and for said errors to be fixed.

A few months ago I read an article in one of Matt's issues of Maxim that natural blondes will become extinct within the next 200 years. Regardless of whether or not it's true, blonde has been a head above the rest as my favorite hair color to be (on a side not, I am a natural blonde - when I was a kid, my hair was so blonde it was practically white, but circumstances - growing up, moving away from alway sunny Florida to a place more seasonal like northern Nevada - have slowly darkened my hair. My natural color is like that of Gwyneth Paltrow's long hair in Sliding Doors).

When I was in high school, I never ever dyed my hair. In fact, I was quite impartial to the whole "beauty" thing - never wore makeup, thought it was sacrilege to do anything unnatural with my hair. It wasn't that I was a "hippie." I just didn't care. My senior year is when I started coloring my hair. Literally coloring - I dyed it ORANGE. I thought it was spectacular - until I found out I wouldn't be able to attend the JROTC Military Ball with my colorful 'do and had to spend in excess of $200 to get it lifted out of my hair and become a normal color again.

My freshman year of college I picked up a bottle of hair color at Hot Topic with the intentions of giving myself some sweet candy apple red highlights around my face (I don't know...I went through this phase in my late teenage years....I think now of the spectrum and roll my eyes. Matt likes to tease me about it too). Unfortunately since my hair is naturally blonde, "candy apple red" turned out NEON PINK. It was awful. For the longest time I was known in the dorms as "The Girl with Neon Pink Hair." Humiliating. But nonetheless, a lesson learned. :)~

After I moved out of the dorms is when I decided to shy away from such bold colors as orange and candy apple red and stick with the naturals. When I was 18 and 19, I was a redhead. I enjoyed being a redhead, but the thing is, redheads were definitely meant to have blue eyes. It was too obviously fake to be a redhead with brown eyes, not to mention that when my dark blonde roots started growing out, it just looked wrong. I did thoroughly enjoy my crimson strands while I had them, but they were shortlived.

After my stint as a redhead, I went brunette right before I turned 20 (I know, my poor hair, suffering all this coloring - it was like one big frizz ball). The brunette I went with was very blah - or maybe it just looked very blah because I'd tortured my hair to no end and it had no shimmer left to give - and as if looking a little silly with shineless brown hair wasn't enough, I decided to go ahead and chop it all off. I told the hair stylist to cut it like Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama which is not even CLOSE to what I got. I looked more like Ann Marie - the cartoon orphan in All Dogs Go to Heaven - except with no bangs. This is what I looked like when I met Matt, which to me just goes to show that looks don't mean everything: blah brown hair with a bad cut from an apparent student stylist. UGH. It took over TWO YEARS to get my hair back to its original length.

For the wedding I've decided I want to be blonde. And not my natural dirty blonde, but really truly blonde. When Matt first deployed, I had a girl living with me paying rent so we could save up money and as luck would have it, she was a hair stylist. Living with a hair stylist when you're a change addict like me is a dream come true. She kept up on my highlights for me during the duration of her stay and I thought she did a great job with my hair (until she cut layers in my hair and didn't tell me she was drunk until after the fact...oh it was apparent in my cut....luckily layers grow out quicker than cartoon orphan cuts). But then she moved out, and I'm cheap so I decided to start coloring my own hair again with $10 boxes of Herbal Essence Hair Color.

I've come to this conclusion: when you want to LIGHTEN your hair, you should never ever do it by yourself (especially if the ultimate goal is your wedding). I was reluctant to bleach so I picked out "Pale Light Blonde" as my color. Pale Light Blonde + naturally dirty blonde hair with highlights makes for a very interesting combination. My hair turned a very interesting golden shade of orange. YIKES. So I dyed again, this time with EXTRA Pale Light Blonde (I still hesitated over the bleaching). This really did nothing more than add yellow to the mix - my hair is a very interesting golden organish yellow color. It hasn't been enough to totally irritate me - and Matt seems to think it looks normal enough - but the other day when I realized I couldn't wear my corduroys because they brought out the YELLOW in my "blonde," I got really upset. Your HAIR COLOR shouldn't dictate what you can and cannot wear (I sound like a commercial). I threw a bit of a tantrum as Matt - bless his soul - tried to reassure me that my hair looks fine. Needless to say, this week found me in the waiting room of a color specialist pleading for the salvation of my hair. The color it is now is NOT the color I want it to be for my wedding, and though the cost of getting it done by a professional is a good deal more than my $10 boxes of Herbal Essences, I can't put a price on my hair looking perfect for our wedding.

The color specialist said my hair is "apricot." APRICOT. Incase you're drawing a blank as to the color of APRICOT, I'm putting a picture in this post. APRICOT. I'm in a bit of denial (if you check out my profile picture which is from Matt's reunion, you can get a pretty accurate depiction of my color). Anyway, I have an appointment on Saturday to get my color fixed, so expect some before and after pictures (and please, for the love of God, cross your fingers that I finally find the color I'm looking for!!).

Moving at the Speed of Life

I can't wait for our honeymoon. And not just to celebrate our status as newlyweds, to yap into the ears of anyone who'll listen that "we're on our honeymoon" in the hopes of free upgrades, but for a break from the rapidity of things, for a vacation from life and its sometimes alarming, nonstop forward pace. I'm eagerly awaiting the opportunity to s l o w. d o w n.

I was talking to Christy this morning about this - the oncoming freight train called Life - and how nice it would be to just...pause. It seems silly taking into consideration that I just wished away the last year of my life more vehemently than I wished for a pony when I was a little girl (which was pretty damn vehemently). But now that Matt's home, it's like everything's been a constant go go go, and I would love, just for a little while, for things to come to a screeching halt. Our schedules have been so relentless, I feel I haven't fully had the opportunity to get over missing Matt and having him absent from my life for so long.

Matt had been home barely two weeks before he started working again - he commutes about 45 minutes each way, leaving every morning before I do, getting home after I do, and having about a 14 hour day from the time he backs out of the garage to the time he pulls back in. During the week, I see him on average 2 hours a night while we unwind and eat dinner and watch the news and then it's off to bed so we can start the cycle over again. Undoubtedly, I'm grateful to have him home, but in some ways, it feels the only difference between now and when Matt was deployed is that now I don't have to sleep alone. I feel like I'm still missing him.

On the other hand, despite how little I see him, he is home and no longer in Afghanistan and it's selfish of me to complain about seeing Matt "only" 2 hours a night. I know what it's like to have to go 9 straight months without even so much as a recent photo and don't even want to imagine what it's like for those few who'll never see their loved ones again. I know my greediness with Matt will pass, but I'm going through a stage right now where I have this insatiable need to make up for all our "lost time," and need to come to terms with the reality that that's just not possible.

On Saturday night we went out to dinner to an Italian restaurant that neither of us had ever been to and afterward we were planning on going to see "Thank You For Smoking." We stopped in a piano lounge downtown - one of our regular haunts - and ended up having such a good time, we blew off the movie. I couldn't for the life of me tell you what we talked about, but we were laughing and having a good time, and at one point I remember thinking that if we had as much time together as I keep thinking we need, I wouldn't enjoy the time we do have together nearly as much. Because we're both so busy with work and friends and still trying to find time for each other, I never take for granted the time we do have together - I enjoy our weeknights lounging around in our pajamas watching Fox News or "House" as much as I enjoy the nights we get dressed up for a nice dinner and drinks at one of our favorite ritzy lounges and it seems terribly asinine that I should complain about the very thing that's given me the ability to cherish every single second we have together. Se la vie. Such is life. Such is human behavior. I believe I just had an epiphany :-)~

The weekend was extremely rainy and dreary. We were supposed to pour the concrete for our new walkway and patio on Saturday but were unable to due to a sudden downpour. All Friday night it rained, all Saturday afternoon it rained, and yesterday, I swear we had a monsoon. My brother flew in from Alaska which was really nice because I haven't seen him since his wedding in September 2004 (I told Matt the other night that it's funny to think since the last time I saw my brother, he had gone to war and come home). My brother stayed at our house last night (I was thrilled to finally be able to implement my beautifully decorated guest bedroom). I went to bed early feeling kind of sick (I think I ate some bad shellfish at dinner...yuck) and could hear my brother and Matt discussing the stock market late into the night.

I changed the comments on my page so you don't have to have a blogger account to comment, but if you have nothing nice to say, I'm not going to publish your comment, so don't even waste your time. This is my blog, so if you want to be an ass, please don't do it in my comments.

Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?

Happy belated Easter to all! We had a white Easter. Yup - on Thursday it was 67 degrees and everyone in the office was antsy with spring fever - by Saturday evening, it was dumping snow, but that's northern Nevada for you. We'd planned on spending the holiday with my parents who live in Tahoe and at 9:15 in the morning when we left our house it didn't seem so bad. In fact, it wasn't even so much as raining in Reno, but once we got onto the mountain pass that connects Reno to Lake Tahoe, we were in for quite an adventure. Snow was dumping on the summit and somewhere around the middle of the pass, the visibility got bad. Real bad. We were basing the curve of the road from one dark object to the next and constantly hoping those dark objects weren't cars. Nothing will make you lose your depth perception quite like a white out.

Thankfully we made it safely to Tahoe. We went to mass at the church Matt and I will be married in and the priest, worried about the safety of everyone driving, "streamlined" the mass from the typical hour into a half hour. We stuck around afterward so Matt and I could start filling out paperwork and get filled in on the requirements to get married in the Catholic church (there's a handful of 'em!) and when we were done with that, my dad practiced walking me down the aisle and Matt and I stood in front of the altar, grinning stupidly at each other. With just over 100 days left till the BIG DAY, it's really starting to hit home. On the drive home, I apologized to Matt in advance for what will become my inability to shut up the wedding in the months to come.

The truth of the matter is, I'm in heaven. This is my forte. I am an organized perfectionist and with the countdown to the wedding ticking down, I've shifted into overdrive and I couldn't be happier (though I don't think I can say the same for anyone who might derail my forward pace). One of my maids of honor (I have two...which is kind of a long, dramatic story...as it seems most stories involving crazy brides and their bridesmaids usually are) was still without a dress which had steam seeping from my ears and my head spinning. The dress shop said it usually takes 3 months for a special ordered dress to arrive and with just over 3 months left to my wedding and my numero uno maid of honor being the only bridesmaid who had yet to get her dress, I was about to lose my typically calm demeanor. After 2 months of pestering her that she absolutely could not get her dress any later than April 15, she finally made a trip out to Reno (she lives about 2 hours away, but don't let her being an out-of-towner let you believe that's any excuse for her to be dressless - one of my bridesmaids lives in Alaska). We got her measured and her dress ordered and as Murphy's Law would have it, she received a call today that the only way she'll receive her dress in time for the wedding is if we expedite the order. I offered to pay the expedite fees because I felt bad, but at the same time, I had been bitching incessantly in her ear for 2 months about getting her dress...Se la vie.

One of the requisites of receiving the sacrament of matrimony (or, simply, being married in the Catholic church) is that Matt and I attend an "Engaged Encounter" weekend. I haven't fully figured out what exactly this is - the brochure tells us it is "an intense weekend of marriage preparation" that will encourage engaged couples to "examine their own relationship" and "the focus of the weekend follows a natural progression from the individual - to the couple - to the church - to the world." It cost us $160 and will end up being a total of 25 and a half hours (on the Saturday of the "encounter" we have to be there from 8 in the morning to 9:30 at night!! That's a LOT of religion) and without the certificate we'll receive at the end of the weekend, we'll be unable to have a Catholic ceremony. We also have to meet with a "marriage preparation team." I know it probably sounds like overkill to non-Catholics (I'll be the first to admit that my religion is somewhat obsolete in certain aspects), but I think there's something to all this preparation - Catholics really drive home the part of the vows "TILL DEATH DO US PART." A good portion of the interview we had with the priest over Easter was verifying that we were absolutely certain we wanted to spend THE REST OF OUR LIVES together, that we understood all that entails, and that no one is forcing us into this union (i.e. a shot-gun wedding...LOL). A lot of people don't take the commitment of marriage as serious as they should - divorce rates don't lie - and I find it refreshing that Catholics are so hell-bent (no pun intended) on really stressing the finality and fidelity of marriage.

Over the weekend, I also got my shoes which were the missing element of my bridal ensemble - it is now completed, so today I set an appointment for my dress alteration. I'm excited for the alteration if for no other reason than to wear my dress again - I haven't put it on since February of 2005 when we bought it (though I do often pay it visits whenever I go see my parents) and God knows the damn things cost enough that you SHOULD be able to wear it for more than one day. Nonetheless, I do plan on trying to pawn it off on my daughter one day (who will inevitably crinkle up her nose and give me the same look and say the same thing I said when my mom suggested I wear her dress. "But it's soo obsolete and sooo not me").

And we booked our honeymoon - Cabo San Lucas, here we come! I know on my old blog, where I so shamelessly asked for donations, I said we were going to NYC. But then Matt came home for leave and he'd had to stop in Ireland so he said we just HAD to go to Ireland, and hey, I was up for it. How cool would it be to say we went to Ireland for our honeymoon? And then I started having second thoughts because honeymoons are for relaxing and relishing in our newly wed status. I had recurring nightmares of us driving around Ireland on the wrong side of the street with an inadequate rent-a-car and a map and the fights that would ensue (anyone ever seen the movie "Just Married"?). I didn't even have to mention to Matt that I was having second thoughts about Ireland because around the same time he mentioned to me that he was having second thoughts. Great minds think alike! So we settled on the beach honeymoon which is perhaps a little cliche, but there's a reason it's so popular, right?

I can't believe Matt's been home for a month now! I'm settling right into his nightly presence (though I still cry from time to time because I feel him curled up next to me at night and I remember how lonely I was while he was gone and how happy I am now...this post-deployment crying really is quite an anomaly); anyway, with the initial "HE'S HOME!" excitement simmering down, you can expect to be reading more wedding posts and perhaps they'll all be titled "Confessions of a Bridezilla." LOL :)~

Secret Laundry

I thought one of the hardest things to adjust to with having Matt home would be getting back into the habit of picking up after two, but in all actuality, it's been quite easy and I've rather full-heartedly thrown myself into the role of Domestic Goddess. I can't cook - well, I can in the lowest sense of the word, but he who eats the food I make is a brave, brave soul. I make a mean meatloaf which is a pure anomaly because everything else I make is God awful (I even burn boxed meals like Hamburger Helper). Thankfully Matt is an awesome cook - he makes the most fantastically moist chicken that melts in the mouth - so to keep things in equilibrium, I do the dishes, clean, do the laundry, etc. I'm a little bit of a nut in that I just LOVE doing laundry. What I lack in cooking, I make up in washing and ironing clothes - whites so white, perfectly ironed creases in Matt's Dockers, and no stain stands a chance against me. I'm telling you - I'm nuts.

For the 2 years we were together before Matt deployed, we'd miraculously managed to share a full mattress, but after sleeping alone on that bed for 14 months and then trying to squeeze both of us back onto it...well, it just wasn't going to work. God knows I love the man more than anything, but he is a bed hog, a pillow stealer, and has the world's sharpest elbows. How he managed to sleep on those tiny little army beds for over a year is a mystery to me; he sure had no problem getting reacquainted with sprawling out, elbowing, and just straight rolling over me. We needed a queen (hence the new bed featured in the post below), but that wasn't enough. We had blue walls that I had developed immense disdain for that I never imagined would occur when I had the brilliant idea to paint the damn things blue, so we had to completely redo the bedroom (yes, I admit I'm slightly high maintenance and somewhat of a spoiled brat).

I digress....Because of the painting, we had to spend a couple nights in our guest bedroom and because of the new bed, we suddenly had an extra mattress, so I was inundated with sheets to wash in the laundry and because I'm a little bit crazy, I decided to throw towels into the mix too, and on top of that, Matt was doing yard work, so every day he had stinky work clothes to add to the pile. I reveled in my mountain of laundry, but since I was also hell bent on spending every available second holding Matt's hand so he wouldn't magically disappear into thin air, I got really behind, so for the past week or so, I've been doing laundry every single night, trying to get caught up but continually being pushed back again by my fiance and his stinky work clothes.

A couple nights ago, Matt commented on my nightly laundry, which seemed a little insane on top of my incessant need to get the dishes cleaned the second we were done eating dinner. He said I needed to sit down and relax. He appreciates always having clean clothes and an immaculate house, but it wasn't the end of the world if I let things pile up a little. It's like a Virgo's personal hell. He basically forbade me from doing laundry Wednesday night, so I thought I'd be a little sneaky and secretly wash the laundry unbeknownst to him (I know, absolutely batty). He leaves for work every morning around 5:30 and that's painfully early for me so normally I don't get up with him, but he couldn't get his truck started yesterday so I had to get up and help him. After he left instead of crawling back into bed like I usually would, yup, you guessed it, I threw a load of laundry in the wash. I figured I could get it washed and in the dryer before I left so by the time I got home from work I could fold it and Matt would be none the wiser (he just started this fabulous new job, but he works about 13 hour days, leaving before I do and getting home after I do, which is a bit of a drain on both of us, but that's another post for another day).

When I got home, I turned the dryer on for just another 20 minutes or so to release any wrinkles that had developed from the clothes sitting in a bunch in the dryer all day and got them folded and put away just as Matt called my cell phone to let me know he was on his way home. Success!! And as a result of my secret laundry, I am totally caught up from the mountain that had formed.

Matt got home and we exchanged our usual how-was-your-day small talk, hugs, and kisses that we always do before he jumps in the shower and changes into his sweats to start making dinner. I curled up on our fantastic new couch to watch "Everybody Loves Raymond" while Matt showered and when he came back into the living room, sweat pant and t-shirt clad, he was pointing an accusing finger at me and giving me a scolding look. Uh oh. I was racking my brain for things I might have forgotten to do that day - after all, what you don't do is always more important than what you do.

"You did laundry, didn't you?"

All I could do was bust up laughing. I cannot keep things from Matt, yet I had been so sure that I could get away with secretly doing a load of laundry that morning so he wouldn't have to gripe that night that I never relax. He knew because I'd washed his sweatpants and when he went to put them on they were still warm from the dryer. I missed Matt immensely while he was gone, but I also missed us, our goofy interactions with one another, our silly unconditional love for each other. Matt is my best friend - unable to be substituted by even the best of my girlfriends - and I don't think it was until last night when I was busted for secretly doing the laundry that I remembered how unequivocally happy I am with Matt and how much I missed that feeling. In fact, I'd gotten so adept at "forgetting" certain aspects of our relationship to make the deployment less painful, I don't think I'd even fully realized it had been missing.

This morning before he left, Matt wrote me a note that he loves me so much and he'll see me tonight after work and rolled it up and put it in my key ring so I would find it when I went for my car keys. It really is the little things that matter the most; I must admit I'd outlandishly romantacized Matt's homecoming into impossible scenarios - something that, according to the FRG booklets we received in the mail, is totally normal and typically causes some level of discontentment - but I'm finally starting to get it. I don't need the retribution for the 14-months we "lost" that I've been waiting for and expecting. I'm just happy to have him home, safe, out of Afghanistan. I'm just happy to be whole again, and that's all the retribution I need.

Without You Here, This House Was Not a Home

It's funny how time is just trucking right along now that Matt's home. I sent an email to his mom this morning commenting that if time had seemed to go by this quickly while he was away, the deployment would've been a breeze. Nonetheless, now that it's over, it kind of feels like the deployment was a breeze. Strange how in retrospect 14 months can seem so minor.

We've started making huge renovations to our home. I met up with one of my girlfriends for dinner after work on Thursday, and the whole time I was acting like I was sitting on tacks. Matt had called me earlier to inform me that the new couch had arrived and that it looked great - that seeing in the showroom didn't do it justice and I really had to see it in the living room, so I spent all of dinner glancing at my watch just dying to see the couch. I know, what a great friend I am, right? But the couch looks spectacular. It's microfiber (AKA faux-suede) so after spending God knows how long on that showroom floor and being shipped to us wrapped up tightly in plastic, sitting on it had about the same staticy effect rubbing a balloon might have, but it was nothing a Bounce sheet couldn't take care of!

On Friday when I got home from work, we had a new driveway (which I must admit puts every other driveway in our neighborhood to shame), and our fabulous new Crate and Barrel bedframe had arrived. I assembled the frame on Saturday (all by myself 'cause Matt was finishing up the driveway. I'm still quite proud of becoming Miss DIY during Matt's absence), and on Sunday we had our walkway torn up for MORE concrete work that will be done this Saturday. It's really nice to be changing our house. We're transforming the house into "married couple abode" and moving away from "broke college student bachelor pad" which it was before I moved in, and in a lot of ways I feel like we're depleting the house of the lonesome memories I have in it from the last year. It's not a bachelor pad anymore and it's not a house where a lonely fiance of a deployed soldier spends her nights worrying and waiting - it's OUR house now. It's our home. Before I moved in with Matt, I'd moved 8 different times within 2 years, and I haven't felt this settled and comfortable in a house since living with my parents in high school. Now we're just lacking wall decorations....

I'm still adjusting to having Matt home. He started work today and had to leave at 5:30 this morning (I typically wake up around 6:30) and I got a goodbye hug and kiss while I was groggy and only half awake so waking up alone was reminiscent of the hundreds of mornings I had to do it prior to today. I had to go outside and check to make sure that our yard was still under construction, check to make sure our new couch was still in place, just to be sure that Matt really HAD come home and I hadn't imagined the entire thing. I'm a little on edge, like if I get too relaxed, he'll magically disappear into thin air. It's amusing how the subconscious works, and I know I'll see him when I get home from work today, but every step toward our normal pre-deployment existence (like Matt starting work again today) is just another thing that takes readjustment and assurance that he's not going anywhere. In a lot of ways, it's like the healing of an open wound. Soon enough, though, I know I'll finally get it into my head that he's home for good! Now it's just a matter of getting the stitches removed. ;)

Getting Back to Normal

I was somewhat melancholy about the end of my deployment life - I'd gotten so used to being in the role "The Fiancee of a Deployed Soldier," I didn't quite know what to expect of becoming simply "The Fiancee." Thankfully the official end has been nothing short of spectacular. You get so adjusted to deployment life, so used to being alone, that it's not really until your loved one comes home that you start to realize just how much you missed them.

It has been nearly 3 weeks now since Matt got home. Three blissful weeks of complete normalcy - well, almost. I took Matt's first week back home off from work to spend every possible moment with him and imagined us being indulged in US: drinks every night at our favorite bar, romantic dinners in our favorite dimly lit spots, and while we did manage a couple nights for dates, the rest of the week was just your regular, normal stuff - an entire morning at the DMV to get Matt's truck registered, cleaning out the garage, grocery shopping, and we even went and bought our wedding rings. I'm glad we did normal every day stuff - I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed grocery shopping with Matt; it's the simple things that really get to you.

On the 27th I went back to work and the feelings of disdain that accompany the end of any vacation (no one wants to go back to work after a week off!) were multiplied fivefold as I was still harboring some feelings of all the times I had to say goodbye to Matt. But I survived a week of work with Matt being home and with that we've officially been re-initiated to normal life. We still have our moments of disbelief - I still blubber "I can't believe you're home!" incessantly, I made Matt come pick me up and take me with him when he went to see his friends because the thought of spending a few hours alone in the house caused an enormous lump in my throat (I felt a little bad and slightly pathetic, but Matt was very understanding), and when we made plans to meet up for happy hour at "our" bar when I got off work the other night, Matt hung up the phone saying, "Alright, I'll call you tomorrow!" - but these are all things that will pass with time. Old habits die hard, and while we're back to our usual pre-deployment routine, there's still lingering feelings of what we endured these last 14 months.

We've started completely redecorating our house inside and out which has been a fun project. Matt's taken charge of the yard - a new wrought iron fence, new concrete work, and GRASS (when I tell tales of the days when I used to walk barefoot on our lawn - the days before we had our dog - people look at me like I must be nuts), and I've taken over the interior. We repainted our bedroom, got new bedding, and a beautiful new Crate and Barrel bed frame (an early wedding gift from my parents). We've given new meaning to Spring cleaning - really it's more of a "Total Roommate Cleansing" to rid ourselves of anything in the house that's not ours - we donated our old couches to a church (along with an extra TV, 6 bags of clothes, and an old La-Z-Boy recliner) and went couch shopping for a new couch (an early wedding gift from Matt's parents). After 7 furniture stores (I swear, couch shopping is about a thousand times harder than shopping for a new car) we finally found the perfect couch, so today we had our carpets steam cleaned (since there's no furniture in our living room currently) and tomorrow our new couch will be delivered!!

Everything is so normal - so wonderfully normal. I wasn't going to move to my new blog until after the wedding, but now that Matt's home, it seems more sense to leave Military Bride just for the deployment and to start fresh with our post-deployment life. After all, that was then and this is now :)