On the weight front, things are moving slowly. I’m not really sure how to give you an accurate weight update, because the body varies by a couple of pounds depending on what time of day you weigh yourself. I currently weigh 146.5 pounds, but have been as low as 143 a couple of times this week. Also, I’m feeling a bit better about my body in general. Part of that is the working out, and part of it is the tan I’m getting (I haven’t had a tan in about 5 years, but decided to work on one this summer).
Another part is that I’m spending a lot of time at the pool. I see a lot of really, really skinny girls, most of whom are about 16. I also see some fairly overweight people. I’ve noticed that most women my age wear one-piece bathing suits, not bikinis. I think this is a clever way of hiding the few extra pounds that they don’t want to show off. On the other hand, sure, I’m not a lingerie model, but I don’t look all that bad either. I think this is a good realization. Being at the pool has given me a bit of perspective about my own body. Yay for that.

I’ve been swimming all but two days in the last 10. I’ve only done yoga and my dance workouts once in the last week. This is because I only do them when I’m in the mood. I think I need to start making myself do them even if I don’t feel like it. Also, I’ve been trying to limit my food intake. When I start to get full,  I stop eating, even if the food in front of me is really tasty. All of this is conspiring for what I think is some really slow progress toward being in better shape and losing some weight.

In other news:

• I finally broke my computer so badly that I cannot fix it myself. Viruses stink.
• We got a kitten a couple of weeks ago. Did I mention that?
• I’ve been doing a lot of research for my book.
• I’m reading Les Miserables because it’s my favorite book and the musical is coming to town in March.

It’s been a pretty boring, lazy week since my last Tuesday update, and I haven’t been online a lot. I’ve got lots to say, but am just very brain dead. I’ve got a couple of posts in my draft queue though, so keep your eyes open for those later this week.

I’m really, really bad at sticking to things. Blogs, jobs, hobbies, plans, etc. Often, I just don’t want to do anything. Sure, I was really excited about that book talk when I heard about it, and I might’ve danced around the kitchen talking about how I was going to get my copy of  That Really Great Book by Tom Greatauthor signed, but now that I have to leave in 20 minutes? I’m kind of tired, it’s not that big of a deal really, and if I go I’ll miss Wheel of Fortune.

I don’t know why I’m like that. I consistently sabotage myself that way.

In any case, this happens often enough that I’m really surprised when it doesn’t happen. Like with yoga. I started doing yoga, at a friend’s insistence, back in March. I checked out a yoga book at the library, learned some poses (many of them were stretches that I learned in gym class years ago), and started doing yoga. I didn’t go to yoga classes, because that would be a commitment. But several times a week, usually while I’m watching tv, I sit down on the floor with my yoga book and work my way through as many poses as I can before I get tired or bored. I skip anything that doesn’t feel good or is too difficult. I probably don’t do the poses or the breathing perfectly, and sometimes I forget to do it for a few days at a time, but I do it.  It’s amazing.

I’ve even gotten to the point that if I try to climb into bed at night without having done yoga, I often have a hard time. My body feels stiff and sort of ungainly. On more than one occasion I’ve actually had to get out of bed, turn on the light, and do some stretching before I can fall asleep.

It’s awesome.

We’ve also recently gotten a swim membership, and I’m trying to go to the pool every day to swim. My ankle is still healing, so swimming and yoga are just about all of the exercise I can do at the moment. I weighed myself today, and I currently weigh 144 pounds. My ideal weight, which I maintained through most of high school and college, is about 125 pounds. As of three weeks ago, I weighed 147 pounds. I’m aware that the three pounds could very well be a coincidence, as our bodies fluctuate a little from day to day and week to week, but I’m going to mark it down as a success.

Apparently, a healthy amount of weight to lose in a week is 1-2 pounds. So my goal in the next 8 weeks (which puts me at mid-August) is to lose 16 pounds. That would put me at an ending weight of 128 pounds, which is certainly acceptable. Even while writing this, I’m sort of shaking my head, doubting that I’ll reach my goal. However, I have a mental picture of how happy I would be to reach that target weight, and I’m hoping that my new healthier habits, combined with that mental picture, will help me reach my goal.

Also, a friend of mine is out of the country for the summer, and I’m excited to see his response when he returns and sees that I’ve lost weight. That would be awesome. In any case, I’ll plan on posting here every Tuesday evening and alerting you to my progress (or lack thereof, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed). I don’t want to commit to anything yet (ah, the hilarity!) but I’m thinking of making a bargain with myself that at the end of the 8 weeks, I’ll post a picture of myself in a bikini, regardless of whether I’ve reached my goal or not. The potential embarrassment would certainly be a good motivator.

What do YOU want to accomplish this summer?

We all go through life in a delicate balance of power. In order to have relationships with others, in order to function in the world at all, we have to put some power into the hands of others. We give our bank account information to our mom so that she can deposit money when we’re stranded in the middle of nowhere. We accept a favor from a friend. We like someone, and share our secrets in an attempt to create a relationship.

On the other hand, we know that every time we give up a little bit of power, we’re opening ourselves up to the possibility of pain. Who knows what the person will do with what we’ve given them! Maybe they’re totally trustworthy, and wouldn’t ever want to hurt us. On the other hand, maybe they’re inconsiderate or downright mean. You don’t always know, when you give up that initial bit of power, what will happen because of it.

This is especially true in the world of friendship and dating. It’s really easy to find ourselves in the sort of situation described below (from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love), with little idea of how we got there and even less idea of how to get out.

The fact is, I had become addicted to David (in my defense, he had fostered this, being something of a “man-fatale”), and now that his attention was wavering, I was suffering the easily foreseeable consequences. Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you never even dared to admit that you wanted — an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy, and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore — despite the fact that you know he has it hidden somewhere, goddamn it, because he used to give it to you for free.) Next stage finds you skinny and shaking in a corner, certain only that you would sell your soul or rob your neighbors just to have that thing even one more time. Meanwhile, the object of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. He looks at you like you’re someone he’s never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You’re a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes. – Eat, Pray, Love

At one point, I found myself in just such a situation, and I was at a complete loss for what to do next. I had no power in the relationship. There were many things that I wanted from the relationship, and I wasn’t getting them in any kind of consistent fashion. I had no way of getting them. I had no power. All I could do was ask for the things I wanted, and that wasn’t getting me anywhere. In fact, the constant “let’s talk” and “why are you ignoring me” emails were actually driving this person away. I had, as the Hatter says in the new Alice in Wonderland movie, lost my muchness.

At some point, I finally realized that the problem wasn’t going to be solved with talking. The problem wasn’t going to be solved by the other person suddenly deciding to give me the things that I wanted. I’m still not sure exactly how I managed to pull myself out of that hole, but I’ve got an idea.

You see, I realized one afternoon that I had no power in the relationship. The only actions that I could take were to continue with things as they were, or to walk away completely. The first was unacceptable. I was in too much pain, and there was constant turmoil, confusion, and anger. The second was unworkable. This person was (and is) enmeshed in my life in ways that meant that even if I tried to walk away, I would still have to see and interact with him on a fairly regular basis. So, if I had no power to do anything about the relationship, couldn’t let it continue as it was, and couldn’t walk away, what on earth was I going to do?

The answer, it turned out, was surprisingly easy. I just decided to stop caring. If things went well, fantastic. If things didn’t go well, it wouldn’t bother me. I would still feel the same about the person in question, but I would stop expecting anything from him. That way, my happiness would no longer depend on him.

Oddly enough, it worked. If I knew precisely why it worked in this particular situation, I’d be a millionaire, because there are people all over the world who want to stop caring about how someone treats them. Unfortunately, I don’t really have a clue. I think it was probably that I suddenly saw myself as described in the passage above, and I didn’t like it. So I thought, what can I do to make this better? And the answer was to stop caring so much.

It’s not a perfect solution. When the friend in question treats me particularly well, I sometimes forget to not care. Then, the next time he messes up, it hurts a little. But I pick myself up, remind myself that I don’t care, and move on. Maybe it’s not the healthiest way of doing things, but it means that I have my power back. I have my muchness back. (And I didn’t even have to cross a moat full of decapitated heads to do it!)

What about you, readers? Have you ever been in a situation where you’d lost your power? How did you get it back?

I read a few weeks ago that you should include pictures in your blog posts, and it got me thinking. I’m a photographer, but I normally don’t include pictures with every post. If I don’t have an appropriate picture in my own library, I have a hard time using a stock image. It just feels like I’m taking the easy road out. On the other hand, I obviously can’t take an appropriate image for every single post. (The next post actually will contain a stock image, in a departure from the norm).

In any case, I realized that I hadn’t mentioned anything about my photography on the blog yet, and I wanted to take an opportunity to do that. But I didn’t just want to come out and shout “Me photographer! Clicky clicky!” Instead, I decided to do a “Year in Review” and showcase some of my favorite images from the last year. [NOTE: there are two PG-13 images below, so if you're at work and have a particularly grouchy boss, wait till you get home to read this post.] So, here goes, in no particular order.

This first image was taken pretty recently, at a wedding that I shot for an internet friend. I loved the light in this venue, and it was placed beautifully for this image with the cake and toppers.

This was taken in a hotel room while Joseph and I were out of town at a friend’s wedding. When I pulled these two Big Macs out of the bag, I was so amused at the visual they presented that I spent 10 minutes in hysterical laughter before taking the picture, and then our dinner was cold. Whoops.

This is a picture that I took of my cousin while I was in town last fall. Her mom asked me to take some senior pictures, and it turned out to be a great way for the two of us to reconnect, since we hadn’t seen each other in years.

Captain Amos is the resident pirate at our local renaissance faire, and I absolutely adore his hat. This is a great shot of the hat (and the Captain) and I love the red in the feathers.

Many of the weddings that I shoot are for friends of friends. That was the situation with Casey and Kelcy. I knew both of them through different friends, and was thrilled when they asked me to shoot their wedding. What I love about this picture of Casey getting ready is that it really looks like a scene from a ballet. Also, it’s a very visual representation of the people who are closest to her and have helped her the most.

This was last fall, when we had a sort of family day at the zoo. My mother brought the two girls she was fostering, and they had an absolutely fantastic time. This is Angelina (and Joseph) enjoying the Lorikeets. I’m probably a bit biased about this picture because I love this little girl so much, but I really think it’s wonderful.

I’m really unphotogenic, so it’s really tricky to get a good picture of me. I’ve been actively trying, for the last year, to take some good self-portraits. So far, I like them better than most of the pictures other people take of me, but I also only like about 3 out of the hundreds I’ve taken, so maybe it’s just frequency. In any case, this is one of the best.

This is Hannah. Hannah is beautiful. This picture was taken during a ridiculous photoshoot we had at Joseph’s grandparents’ house last Christmas. Everyone got dressed up in vintage clothes from the attic (Joseph ended up wearing a suit with a receipt in the pocket from 1952) and we had an absolute blast. The next image is also from this shoot.

The reason we were doing the crazy photoshoot in the first place is because of the outstanding woman in this picture. She’s putting out an album, and needed some images for the album artwork. I don’t think any decisions have been made about which pictures she’s going to use, but this is my absolute favorite.

This picture isn’t technically wonderful, and it isn’t even anything particularly exciting to look at, but I’m still proud of it. My dad organized a motorcycle rally in my hometown last summer, and asked me to be the photographer. This picture was in the front page of the local paper and in a monthly motorcycle magazine.  This year at the rally, my father noticed that a group was selling t-shirts to raise money for a young girl with cancer. People all around town were wearing t-shirts with this picture on the front. My dad bought me one, and I’m really excited to get it in the mail!

This is another picture from the renaissance faire. I love that I’ve captured the flying water here. It was probably 90 degrees outside and that water was icy. If you’re desperate for an explanation (which I would be, if I was seeing this with no context), what’s happening here is that Philip, the town drunk, is getting a bath to make him less smelly. That’s the bottom half of Joseph that you see holding the bucket.

My father-in-law sent Joseph and I on a biplane ride last fall before our wedding, and we scheduled it right at sunset without even thinking about the photo opportunity that this would present. This was one of many fantastic pictures that I took of the river and the setting sun. It was a wonderful, romantic evening.

This is one of my favorite images from one of my favorite weddings. Lydia and Jeremy were so incredibly happy all day, and they made everyone around them happy as well. Also, Lydia is incredibly photogenic, and is currently trying to break into modeling. I think she’ll be fantastic at it.

This picture of a grouchy bird was taken on my honeymoon in New Orleans. While I have a lot of other fantastic pictures from the honeymoon, this is one of my favorites because of the composition and the colors.

This was from one of my favorite photoshoots this year. Alyssa wanted to do a pin-up style shoot, and almost all of the images were absolutely beautiful. This is my second-favorite image from the shoot. I love how vulnerable the usually-fearless Alyssa looks here.

This picture isn’t technically exciting (although it could be if reshot in a studio), but it makes me laugh nonetheless. Nathan had loaned $200 to Joseph and I when we were running short on money. It turned out that we were able to return it right around Nathan’s birthday, so we withdrew it from the bank, all in ones,  and used it to wrap the entire first season of Highlander on VHS. Once he got it all unwrapped, Nathan couldn’t resist tossing it into the air.

This was taken during our spring break this year (which actually turned out to be our “we’re moving and happen to be in between jobs and apartments” vacation). We visited the Chattanooga aquarium (which I definitely recommend), and I learned that I love jellyfish. They’re absolutely beautiful. I also love my Panasonic camera, which I normally use for backup, because it did a fantastic job with the low lighting. Don’t they look like they’re glowing?

This last image is a lesson in spontaneity. One night when my friend Bethany was at my apartment, she announced that she wanted to do a photoshoot. She borrowed some clothes, and I cleared as much background clutter from my tiny living room as possible. I ended up standing on a chair and leaning over a fan to take these pictures, which turned out wonderfully. I’d love to try again with my studio setup and more space.

So there you have it. My year in review. Some of these are beautiful images, and others hold sentimental value. Put together, they provide a decent storyline of where my camera has been this last year. Now I get to plan where it goes in the coming year. I’m excited!

What’s your favorite picture?

I have two blog posts (and a whole new page!) in the works. They’ve been in the works for two days, and still aren’t finished. Why, you ask? Well, meet Boomer:

We’d been thinking of getting a kitten for a while, because our cat gets sort of lonely if we’re out of the house a lot, which we have been for the last few weeks. She doesn’t get along well with the adult male strays that wander around our apartment complex, so we thought that maybe a young female kitten wouldn’t threaten her so much. I’d been hunting on craigslist for a kitten, but hadn’t found anything that stole my heart yet.
Then a facebook friend emailed me two days ago, saying that she had found two long-haired male kittens outside of her store, and did I want one? I told her that we’d much prefer a female, but would take one if she couldn’t find them homes. Yesterday morning, she emailed me again, and told me that she had found a female kitten on her way home. I jumped in the shower, drove the 45 minutes to her tea shop, and returned home with a very vocal, very dirty, flea-and-mite-ridden half-feral kitten.We spent our evening at the vet’s office, getting her checked over and coming home with a stack of medications.

She’s already settling in pretty well, though it’ll probably be a day or two before she stops thinking she’s a wild cat, and a day or two after that before our older cat stops hissing at her. She kept me up all night last night meowing (did I mention that she’s vocal?) from the enclosure we built her in the corner of the bedroom, so once Buzzy got up this morning, I made him take her to the living room and promptly slept for four more hours. She’s already using the litterbox, though, so I can’t complain too much.

She’s sleeping at the moment, and Buzzy is watching the U.S. vs England World Cup game (neither of us are sports people, but apparently the World Cup is a big deal, so he’s on the couch with a beer and a fair amount of excitement), so I can work on those other blog posts and have some breakfast. Yay!

Somehow I decided that this summer I was going to vastly expand my musical loves. Nearly every week I’ve added a new band to my list of must-have CDs, and I’d like to take the opportunity to share some of them with my readers. First, the things I was already listening to:

The Dresden Dolls, Amanda Palmer (of the Dresden Dolls), Vermillion Lies (now split into sisters Zoe and Kim Boekbinder), Rasputina, The Duhks, The Beatles, Vanessa Carlton, Great Big Sea, Rosie Thomas , Scissor Sisters, and a number of musicals.

Next, the new stuff.

Bitter Ruin. I discovered them when they opened for Amanda Palmer on short notice and were amazing.

Band of Skulls. I heard of this band when a close friend asked me, on the spur of the moment, to drive to Nashville with him to take pictures of him recording at House of Blues. While I was there, I took a tour, and the guy giving the tour suggested that I listen to Band of Skulls.

Regina Spektor. My friends, Pandora, and Last.fm all suggested Regina Spektor to me, but I ignored them because I thought she was some weird 80′s rock star, and I wasn’t interested (not that I don’t usually love weird 80′s rock stars). When I finally listened to her, I realized that I already knew and liked some of her songs.

Ingrid Michaelson. I think I got to her through Regina Spektor, probably by clicking the videos in the sidebar on Youtube. I’m seeing her in concert next week.

Mumford and Sons. They were recommended to me on a blog (oh, how I wish I could remember which one!). They’re not in my top-1o list yet, but I really enjoy them. I’m thinking of seeing them  in concert next week.

Some other musicians that I’m still deciding about: Birdeatsbaby, Dessa, Tegan and Sara, The Paper Dolls, Paramore, and Cat Power.

So, what music have you discovered this summer? What music should I add to my list of music to try?

UPDATE: STILL MESSING AROUND. NOW EVERYTHING’S BLUE.

I initially didn’t really intend for anyone to read this blog. Because of that, I didn’t do a bit of site design. Now that I’ve got a few readers knocking around, however, I feel the need to spruce things up a bit.

On that note, I apologize for the current craziness with the design. Please bear with me as I try things out. All construction should be finished tonight. Thanks!

P.S. I’m also working on spacing posts out better, so those of you seeing this in a reader should stop getting a bunch of posts all at once. Yay!

WordPress does this thing where it weeds out the spam commenters so that I don’t have to deal with them. Usually it works great, and I appreciate not needing to go in and delete comments containing links about Viagra every day. Sometimes, though, WordPress marks a perfectly normal-looking comment (Like “Hey! Great blog! I really enjoyed browsing it, and will subscribe.”) and I begin to wonder if maybe their screening process isn’t just a little too harsh.

Until today, when I clicked on the link for the commenter’s website. (NOTE: I don’t THINK there are any viruses or bugs on this livejournal, but please click through at your own risk.) What I found was hilarious.  The post appears to be telling us how to purchase a lawnmower. I think. Here are some choice tidbits:

When shopping for the perfect lawn, but questions such as:

How easy it is to first start the engine?

If the second knife, have you mow the lawn for several possibilities?

Since the third traffic light, lawn mower?

What is the guarantee of the Fourth?

Does this sound like some sort of weird existential poetry to anyone else?

Search for your lawn, you want to be sure that it is difficult.

If it’s difficult to find your lawn, I’m pretty sure you have a really bad real estate agent.

It should not be your lawnmower, because his job is to cut the lawn. Not prevent it. Second, we want to ensure that you safely and effectively in front of his lawn.

Safely and effectively WHAT? This is beginning to sound like some sort of passive-aggressive battle with your neighbors. Maybe because you can’t find your lawn?

Beware bookstore. If it is free, lasts!

Yeah. Definitely beware bookstores. All those books they sell totally make sense, and we wouldn’t want people to read those, and then read this, and then LAUGH THEIR FOOL HEADS OFF.

This blog also has hilariously hard to read posts on Christianity, motherhood, the China earthquake, blacksmiths, building your dream home, Buddhism, starting a business, astrology, astronomy, laptops, Portugal, filter pumps, etc. The major themes seem to be teenagers, religion, earthquakes, and product reviews. It definitely goes in the hilariously weird category.

So now, I want your theories. What’s the purpose of such a blog? Why spam other blogs? What IS the guarantee of the Fourth?

People seem to have a desire to pin down the best and worst days of their lives. Best days are often weddings, the birth of children, or other victories. Worst days are often deaths, accidents, and failures. Of course, as we go through our lives, we revise our bests and worsts based not only on new things that happen to us, but on new worldviews and priorities. Your elementary school baseball championship starts to look a little unimportant when you’re a doctor who saves lives every day, and the time you broke your arm pales in significance next to the death of a child.

The worst night of my life so far was just a few months ago. My grandmother, who practically raised me and was the most important person in my life, was very, very ill. She had been in and out of the hospital for several years, but the doctors had finally said that there was nothing more that they could do, and that her family needed to come spend time with her as much as possible, because she had somewhere between a few hours and a few weeks left.

By the time the night in question came around, I had already been in town over a week, spending as much time at the hospital as possible. The whole family spent one long night sitting awake (or sleeping on the floor, when we couldn’t stay awake anymore) just watching her breathe, because her respirations were so few and her pulse so hard to find. That night qualifies for the second-worst night of my life.

My grandmother was always the nicest, sweetest, funniest woman that I knew. But as she grew sicker and sicker, that faded away. She was in pain, confused, and wanted to go home. She often yelled at us (or at people who weren’t there) to let her get out of bed. We couldn’t do that, because she was too weak to walk. It was so hard to sit there, knowing she was so miserable, and be unable to do anything.

If anyone reading this has ever had an ill loved one, you’ll know that it’s nearly impossible to rest or relax while taking your shift sitting with a person who is so ill. Every single noise jolted me from my half-sleep. My grandmother often couldn’t find or press the call button for the nurses, so I had to be alert in case she needed or wanted anything. This resulted in a state of hyper-awareness that is one of the most unpleasant things I’ve ever encountered.

The night in question was the second night in a row that I’d taken the overnight shift at the hospital. I was lying on a cot next to my grandmother’s hospital bed. The room was boiling hot because my grandmother was cold, and the only space in the room for the cot was parallel to and almost touching the heating vents. I was covered in sweat. Also, in the month before her death, my grandmother’s hearing took a sudden turn for the worse. You practically had to shout at her to make yourself heard. This meant that the volume on her tv, which she always left on while sleeping, was set at the maximum. It hurt your ears after just a minute.

Throughout the night, after everyone else went to bed, I tried turning the tv down or off every couple of hours, especially since the doctors and nurses who came in during the night would always get angry that the tv was so loud. Within a minute or two of the lowered volume, my grandmother would wake up, reach for the remote, and turn it back up. It was unbearable (though a little amusing).

Even worse than this is that my grandmother only watched one channel. And on that channel, for the entire week I was sitting in that hotel room, one episode of Nancy Grace kept repeating and repeating. Every now and then another show would come on, but I watched that episode of Nancy Grace at least 19 times before I lost count. For those of you who don’t watch Nancy Grace, her show is about crimes, and usually violent crimes. So I sat, for a week, and watched her talk over and over about Joran Van Der Sloot (who, it appears, recently confessed to another murder), and about Chelsea King and the sex offender who had probably killed her and several other girls. The show infuriated me.  As a victim of sexual abuse, I hated the topic. I hated Nancy Grace’s assumptions, her smug attitude, her desire to gain viewers by rubbing our noses in the worst of society and telling us all the gory details.

By 4am, lying on that cot in the stifling hot room, jolting awake every couple of minutes to Nancy’s shouting, my grandmother moving, a nurse coming in, or nothing at all, I began to lose control. I was so angry, so scared, so uncomfortable. I couldn’t stay in that room one more minute. I gathered up my things, kissed my grandmother on the cheek, told the nurse that someone would be in to sit with her in a few hours, and drove half an hour back to my grandmother’s house, where I slept in her bed because all of the others were taken.

It was, without question, the worst night of my life.

The next morning, she came home for the last time (making it home just about the time that I woke up). She was awake, feeling better, and glad to be home. I was able to spend a few wonderful hours with her, talking and watching tv (thankfully NOT Nancy Grace) before I had to drive back to Kentucky. That was the last time that I saw her. She died two weeks later, about 12 hours before I was supposed to arrive back at her house for another visit.

What was the worst day of YOUR life? The best?

Sometimes being married is hard. Like when your husband takes a job in another state while you’re off caring for a dying relative, even though the two of you agreed that you weren’t moving until your current lease is up. Or when your husband agrees to live into his grandmother’s spare room for an undefined amount of time (again without consulting you). Or when he comes home from work, takes off his socks, DROPS THEM ON THE FLOOR IN THE ENTRYWAY, and never gives them another thought.

Being married can be hard. I didn’t really expect this, because we dated for just over four years before getting married, and we almost never fought. In the five months that we’ve been married, we’ve had more fights, and I’ve wanted to throw shoes at him more often (What? That’s what women do when they’re mad. I’VE SEEN IT ON TV!) than we have in the entire rest of our relationship.

At first I was thinking “well, crap. Apparently marriage sucks, and we should have just kept living in sin forever.”

But then I got to thinking about it. This was still the same man that I had loved for four years. The same man that I’d fought to keep at several points in our relationship. What was different? What I realized is that all of a sudden we were making a lot of very “adult” decisions. We weren’t college students whose most important decision was what class to take or whether to live further from campus and have to take the bus. We were deciding about careers, about where to live, about how often we would visit his parents now that we live so close. We both had strong opinions on those subjects. We didn’t always agree. Now that the great You-Got-A-New-Job-And-We’re-Moving-And-You-Didn’t-Even-Tell-Me debacle is finally concluded, however, things are starting to settle down. And I’m finally starting to see the benefits of being married.

1) You get to sleep in the same bed when you visit relatives. This doesn’t seem like (and really, isn’t) a big deal, but it’s a nice perk. Especially when the relative in question only has one spare bed or couch, and one of you is going to have to rough it. And then you have to have that awkward “No, YOU take the bed. I’m fine on the floor.” dance, when both of you secretly want the bed.

2) People take you a lot more seriously. Apparently, being married means that, in the eyes of other people, you have become an adult. It’s possible to be an adult without being married, but being married automatically makes you an adult. It’s nice. When I stop at the bank and say “My husband pointed out that these fees should be taken off of my account because they’re not my fault, they’re YOUR fault*,” the manager smiles and nods and treats me like a real person, rather than like some idiot college student who doesn’t know what she’s talking about and can be pushed around.

3) You have a cushion. If you’re feeling sick and can’t make it to the bank to deposit your check, your spouse can do it for you. If you lose your job and have to spend six months looking for another, your spouse will still be working, so at least you won’t be out on the street (though you may be eating Ramen and buying clothes at Goodwill). Having a spouse means that you have a built-in safety net, someone who will be there no matter what and will back you up when needed. Of course, I had this before we got married, but it’s nice to have it solidified. I don’t know how many times in the last 5 months I’ve heard “Of COURSE I’ll do blah blah blah, I’m your husband!” Knowing that I have that is a huge relief.

4) The stuff. I’m not a material girl. I didn’t get married just for the stuff. BUT. But but but.  It’s SO nice to have nice silverware, nice plates, a wok. It’s fantastic to look around and see evidence that our friends and family went to the trouble to pick out things to give us to help us start our lives together (what an awkward sentence!). It’s nice to have enough of everything, to not be using a coffee maker that we got at Goodwill and only sort of works. It’s nice to have real things like real people.

Of course, there’s also the love, the silliness (did I mention that he put shaving cream in my hair last night? Sigh), the companionship, and the knowledge that we’ll never again have to deal with first dates, breakups, and the related baggage. Yep, it’s nice being married. I think I’ll keep it up!

*There’s a post in the works about how much I hate my new bank. Be on the lookout for that.