07May
Can’t post. Â No time. Â Graduating Sunday. Â Thesis killing me. Â Bought a house. Â Work sucks. Â Chris found a job. Â Family coming to town Friday.
Will post next week if I’m alive.
You know you’ve been living as a student for too long when you tell your real estate agent that your basic criteria for a house is 3 bedrooms, 2 bath with washer/dryer hook ups and a parking space. I actually said this this weekend and our agent laughed out loud at me. “Where would you live that didn’t have washer/dryer hook ups?” she asked, laughing her head off. Obviously this chick has not lived in student residential areas before where washer/dryer hook ups and a parking space are equivalent to living it it up Vanderbilt style.
This weekend we met our real estate agent for the first time and actually went looking at homes. I had so much fun! If you find shopping of any kind amusing -dress shopping, shoe shopping, grocery shopping – house shopping will put you over the edge. I wanted to make offers on every house we saw. Including the first house, which in hind sight is just plain insane.
The first house she took us to was this adorable cape cod in a great neighborhood. The landscaping was perfect, the backyard was perfect, the back deck was perfect. The inside? Not so perfect. But I saw potential. When I originally spoke with our agent and told her what we were looking for, I mentioned that Chris was a carpenter and so we were not afraid of something that needed a little TLC. This house was the poster child for TLC. It was owned by what one could only assume to be a crazy old couple who were professional yard sale shoppers. The entire contents of their home looked like one giant yard sale in backwoods Alabama. There were paintings of every president from Abraham Lincoln on up stuffed in one corner. There were three fake fire places that hung on the walls by a nail and plugged into the wall so that they glowed like a real fireplace. There were baskets handing from the ceiling in almost every room.
But being the HGTV addict that I am, I reminded myself to look above all of this junk and see the real potential in the house. And I saw it. Despite the fact that there were about 1,000 rooms in a little over 1,000 sq. ft. Despite the fact that the only entrance to the half bath was through the garage. Despite the fact that the front door opened into a tiny, private office instead of oh, say, the living room. Despite the pink tile bathroom and avocado green shag carpet. I saw potential.
I walked around saying things like, “We could just knock these two walls out here and make this one giant room” or “We could just close this doorway here and add sliding glass doors to the other wall” or “We could easily finish this attic and make it a nice reading room if we just put down a floor, added walls and insulation, and put in a couple windows.”
Once we walked out of the house, we stood on the front lawn and the real estate agent asked if we wanted to keep this one on the list. “Definitely,” I said. “I think it has lots of potential.” At which point Chris turns to me and says, “Then I’m leaving you.”
In the end, Chris was right. Why go through all that effort when we could just buy something that’s ready for us to move right into? I guess I got all caught up in the excitement of looking at houses. I have to say though, Chris was a rock star. He asked all kinds of questions that made me feel like a 10-year-old kid. I would ask something like, “Where are the grocery stores around here?” while Chris would ask something like, “When was the roof replaced?” He suddenly seemed so much older to me. At one point he asked something about a property line and I had to literally fight to urge to laugh out loud and punch him in the arm saying, “OOoohhhh….PROPERTY LINES…. Aren’t you smart…”
I looked at him instead and thought, “This is the same person who used to steal his dad’s car and sneak out on school nights to see me and now here we are talking to a Connecticut real estate agent about property lines and recessed lighting.” Its funny that I should realize today that I am actually married to a grown up because tomorrow is our 9 year dating anniversary (not to be confused with our June wedding anniversary). 9 years ago tomorrow we were sitting on his dad’s porch swing and he asked me to be his girlfriend. We were 16 years old. And, ironically enough, tomorrow, 9 years later, we will be meeting with our mortgage specialist at the bank for approval to buy a home. Time flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it?
We’re going out again later this week to see more houses. At the end of the email that our agent sent us, she made sure to note: “And every one of these houses has washer/dryer hook ups and parking.” Boy am I glad. I mean, I do have my limits.
20Apr
There are lots of decisions that young, married couples get to make together. There are decisions that we make when I really love having someone to help decide – I like if we want beef or chicken for dinner, if we should get the generic oil at the Jiffy Lube or if we should get the good kind, if we want to go see a movie or watch one at home. Then there are the decisions that I wish I could just make by myself and not have to consult someone – like if we should go to Subway for lunch instead of McDonald’s, if we should renew our AAA membership or not (I say no, he says yes, by the way), or if we should lay around napping on Sundays or work in the yard.
And then there is the third category of decision-making as a young, married couple that can get a bit…tense. These are decisions like where are we going to live, should we buy a house now or later, or should we join Netflicks or Blockbuster? As a young, single person these are hard decisions to make. But as a young, married couple they become a wee smidge harder.
As a young, single person, you can be as successful as you want to be. You can go anywhere you put your mind to go. As a young, married couple, you still WANT to be as successful as you can be. You still WANT to go anywhere you put your mind to go. And you still can do these things, but it takes an extra step because you have to make sure that your successes and goals are within a reasonable commuting distance from your partners.
This might be the hardest part of being a young, married couple. And maybe its the hardest part of being any kind of married couple. Or any kind of couple, for that matter. Making the decisions that will balance each of you while still being able to come home to the same house at night. Much harder than it sounds. We are still trying to find the answer to this, but I am fairly certain that at the heart of whatever the answer might be is the simple truth that we chose to go on this ride together and at this point, the lap belts are securely tightened and we are pulling away from the platform. No turning back now. So we just grab eachother’s hands and get ready to scream, laugh, get flipped upside down, and maybe even puke along the way. As hard as these decisions are, at the end of the day there really is just one question to answer.
Is the person strapped in next to you the person you want to ride with for the rest of your life?
My answer is yes.
22Mar
(DISCLAIMER: This is a very gushy entry. I am allowed one of these a month, so just suck it up. Lovey dovey is sometimes just a part of our young, married confessions. Deal with it!)
Champaign, fireworks, diamonds, plaques. These are things that typically signify a major event in life. For me and Chris, it’s a 6-pack and a pizza.
The night we got engaged we were in New York City. Chris proposed on the ice skating rink in Rockefeller Center at 10:30 or 11:00 PM. We immediately called our parents (well, we called them immediately after I regained my balance on ice skates and was able to safely skate off the ice…). Then, we were standing in the middle of Rockefeller Plaza, beaming, in love, and not having the faintest idea what a newly engaged couple was supposed to do. We decided to stop at a deli and bought a 6-pack of beer and went back to our hotel. We ordered a pizza and sat up talking about our wedding and plans for the future.
(This picture is in our hotel room in NY the night we got engaged. We were still celebrating with our six-pack and I am clearly very excited about my engagement ring.)
The night of our wedding we drove off into the night after our picture perfect wedding and arrived to the honeymoon suite of the Hilton Hotel. The first thing we did? Order a 6-pack of beer from room service and a pizza from Domino’s. We were famished from our wedding and too excited about the honeymoon to sit still. Instead, we sat together on the floor in our hotel bathroom – Chris in his tux, me in my wedding dress – and ate pizza and shared beers, talking about what a great day it was and what a happy future we were surely going to have. (We also talked about how to get Chris’ passport which he had left in Orlando and which we needed for our 7:00 AM flight to the Caribbean, but that’s not the sweet part that I choose to remember…)
And this weekend was no exception. The festivities have been exciting and no doubt one of the biggest professional achievements for Chris so far. And how do we celebrate? With a 6-pack of Coke (we are beer’d out!) and a pizza from Domino’s in our hotel room. This time we watched March Madness on TV and talked about where to put Chris’ Golden Hammer when we get home, the bookshelf or the office.
While for most people, this whole “6-pack and pizza” routine is a complete waste of a romantic situation, for me and Chris it is just the obvious thing to do. And that’s what I love about our relationship. Through even the greatest of times, we still remember what it is that is great about us – our sheer love of being together – and that is how we choose to celebrate. Whether its over a $300 Valentine’s Dinner (a big “oops” that I made this year) or a 6-pack and pizza, we just enjoy each other.
I imagine this might shift a bit when we have children because it’s just awkward (and morally conflicting) to pop open a can of beer to celebrate the first ballet recital. But I have no doubt that no matter how old we get, how much our family changes, or what we are celebrating, we’ll continue to find happiness by simply being together. And who can ask for more from a marriage?
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