sunny side of life

5 years ago, this month, I met you. I can vividly remember seeing the back of your head as I walked down the aisle toward the pew you were sitting in. I remember your chin and your eyes, and your smile. You smiled at me. I don’t remember a single thing about the sermon that Sunday, I only remember you.

I remember thinking that I’d never see you again; that your shadow would never again cross the threshold of those church doors. I was wrong.

You came back, and we became acquainted with one another, and I remember being stunned at how quickly I began to fall for you. I kept waiting for something to go wrong, anything that would take you away from me. But on our relationship progressed.

In the 5 years since that first wonderful day, we’ve had to struggle through some dark times and float through happy times. We’ve spent time together and time apart. We got married, lived together and loved one another. They have been 5 wonderful years. 

God made you for me. He picked you out of millions for me, long before I was even conceived. I am yours and you are mine.

I am so thankful for the path that has lead us here. I am so thankful that you didn’t go to college where your parents and siblings before you chose to go. I am so thankful that you chose that Sunday to come to my church. I am so thankful that I was there. I am so thankful for meddling friends.

I am so thankful for you.

5 years isn’t that long, and I hope that there are many more where this 5 came from.

I love you. I miss you. I can’t wait to see your face again.

I miss you so much.

Ok, first things first.

I do not think I’m fat.

But I am not happy with how I look. Below the neck. I don’t think I got such a rotten deal from the neck up. Okay, I know I didn’t get a rotten deal from the neck up. That is not conceit, it’s just the facts man.

Anyway, my BIGGEST goal while hubby is gone is to get into hawt body shape. (please note the intensity)

I feel that since he’ll be gone for so long, he deserves the hotness upon his return. Here’s the conclusion that I’ve come to, I cannot be unrealistic. If I’m unrealistic, I’ll never acheive my goals. I know what I’m capable of. And so, with the combination of a fabulous diet and some semi-strenuous workouts (designed by my brother Jake, who at the age of 17 has a sick body) I want to look like this:

I know this isn’t the greatest picture, but it was the only one I could find of her with clothes on. Ahem.

Anyway, why I picked Jessica Biel:

-She’s tall (5′7″ to my 5′9 1/2″)
-She’s not a bean pole
-We have sort of the same build width-wise

That’s it so far.

So myself and some women at my church are going to be meeting every Thursday (morning, during work hours!) to report our weekly progress.

But wait, there’s more!

I’m going to be reporting to you every week as well, and once a month, I’ll post a picture! How’s that for dedication?! So, without further ado, here are my stats:

Height: 5′10″ (we’ll just round up)

Weight: 180.5 (lbs)

Goal: 145 (lbs)

Current pictures: (UGH)

Here goes nuthin’!

Hey guys, guess what? Are you ready?

I finally got an iPod.

Since the introduction of the new full screen guys, the price of the 80 gb is about $100 cheaper. And since hubby’s iPod broke like 2 months ago, I bought him one too. (because hello, he’ll be taking his with him when he’s deployed) I’m so excited, I’m treating it like a child infant. It’s fragile you know. And so much more sleek than the old ones. I love it.

Um, so that’s it, I just thought you all should be rejoicing with me!

My brothers. Well, 2 of them anyway. I’m writing this for 2 reasons.

1.) I am super-proud of the one on the right (We call him Jake, you can call him the one on the right). Well, I’m proud of all of my siblings, but the one on the right tore it up today. I’ll explain momentarily.

2.) The one on the left (We call him Zach, see instructions above) asked me to write about him. Again, I’ll explain momentarily.

So, Jake (isn’t he adorable?) plays for his high school football team. When I say he’s really good, I hope that you can look past the big-sister pride and truly believe it. He’s really good. As in, he was bumped from the freshman team last year to varsity this year, good. So every summer after try-outs and conditioning, each team member is “tested” on a number of things:

Timed 40 yard dash
Height and weight
Bench-press
1-mile run

Last year, Jake did the 40 yard dash in a 5.0 (that’s seconds, I can’t even think about run 40 yards in 5 seconds much less do it) he weighed 145 lbs and was about 5′8″, and did the 1 mile run in about 7 minutes. This year, or more specifically, today, Jake ran the 40 yard dash in 4.73 (again, seconds), weighed 179 lbs at 5′11″ and did his mile run in about 6.5 minutes.

This might not mean much until I tell you this:

NFL linebackers only have 1/100 of a second on my little brother and he’s 2/100 of a second faster than most NFL linemen. In fact, only 3 people on his entire team are faster than him.

I know, impressive.

So, on to Zach.

Zach’s single ladies. Available. Yours for the taking. If you are between the ages of 17 and 30, and well, local, hit me up and I’ll hook you up.

There, now he can’t say I didn’t try.

On Sunday, I’m leaving for vacation with Husband’s family.

This vacation follows moving day (today) where we help mom and dad in-law move into brother and sister in-law’s house. Not that I’ll necessarily be doing much moving, I am a girl. And Saturday, when we will make a trip up to Dorney Park on brother in-law’s company’s buck.

We’re going to Ocean City, NJ. Not my idea of a good beach (actually, not my idea of a good US State) but it’s free! so I really can’t complain.

I’m concerned that everyone’s idea of a beach vacation could differ from mine. See, when I go to the beach, I live there. On the sand. From 8:30-ish in the morning until about 4:00 in the afternoon. That’s what you do at the beach. All other activities are second in importance to getting a tan, listening to the relaxing sound of the ocean, reading a book while listening to the relaxing sound of the ocean and having little Johnny, whose mother obviously cannot control him, kick sand all over your freshly (sun-tan) oiled body. But, with 4 children under the age of 5 present, I doubt this is what everyone else has in mind.

Oh well, you can’t please everyone, right?

“Are you ok, babe?” I asked.

When I looked at my husband initially he just looked really drained. Exhausted, like he’d been working in the coal mines all day or something.

“I dunno” he replied “I do feel kind of weird.”

“Oh my goodness, is your face (insert long pause in disbelief here) blue?!”

“Blue? Why would it be…..you know, I think it is.”

Upon further inspection we discovered that my husband’s face was in fact blue. Blue! You know, one of the primary colors?

In typical me fashion, I panicked and strongly suggested (you can interpret this whichever way you please) that he immediately go to the emergency room. Since, to me, this qualified as an emergency. Normal human beings are not blue, you know.

In typical husband fashion, he suggested that we calm down and not panic about this, it could be something little.

So what did I do? I did what any self-respecting, mature, adult would do; I called my mom.

“He’s blue?” 

“Yes mom, blue. Don’t you think he should go to the emergency room?”

“Well, no. Why don’t you call your Dr. first and see what she says.”

Oh. Right. The voice of reason speaks. I could have thought of that.

“He’s blue?”

“Yes, it’s just around his eyes, a little on his forehead, and on his cheekbones. Do you know what it could be?”

After answering 80,000,000,000,000,000,000 questions and confirming his very minor symptoms, she says to me:

“I’m completely stumped. If it gets worse or he gets a fever or faints or something, I would suggest you go to the emergency room, other than that I would just ride it out and see how he’s feeling tomorrow morning.”

Yeah, because I can sleep while my husband is on the verge of death.

“Alright then, we’ll keep you posted.” Click

Shortly thereafter, he went to take a shower, he thought it would make him feel better. Surprisingly, after he emerged from the shower, he wasn’t as blue anymore.

“I think maybe, I was just cold, it is freezing in here, you know.”

“I’m sure being cold wouldn’t make you turn blue.”

“Yuh-huh, you know those extreme mountain-climbers? They turn blue all the time from the cold.”

“Ok, well whatever.”

After an hour or two:

“Hey babe, can you fix my dinner plate, I do have blue-man’s disease and all; I could die.”

Yesterday, I decided that I needed to re-feminize myself. I used to have my nails done, my eyebrows waxed, and in the summertime, get a pedicure, every two weeks. After the wedding, I just didn’t have the initiative to do all of that. It’s slightly on the high-maintenance side, you know?

But considering the sadness that swallowed my day whole yesterday, (embrace the dramatics for my sake, k?) I figured I’d give it a go again.

As soon as I arrived, the owner made a fuss about how much she had missed me, asked how my mom was doing, and so on. Another lady, one who had “worked” on me before, sat me down in the waxing chair and immediately set to work on my eyebrows.  I just wanted them cleaned up a little. I like to keep them on the thicker side, with a nice, subtle, arch. I was, however, on the verge of a uni-brow, not to mention my eyebrows are naturally very thick, so this girl was thrilled to take some wax to my caterpillars.

After some very mild pain and a quick, but not so good glance in the mirror, my eyebrows were done and she sent me off to have my nails done by my favorite guy.

Finally, an hour and a half after walking in, I was leaving to go home.

Once home, I greeted the husband and made my way to the nearest mirror to get a better look at my brows.

“Oh NO!” I yelled

“What, what’s the matter?” asked Hubs

“My eyebrows, they’re so thin, they’re like hooker eyebrows.”

“Hooker eyebrows? What are they? Well, I think they look really good.” husband replied

“You would think hooker eyebrows look good.”

“They’re not hooker eyebrows babe, they look nice, you needed that.”

“Yeah, well.”

At least now I have a new job prospect if nothing else works out by the end of the month.

Wanna see:

You know, this wife stuff is hard work.

I mean, there’s a lot of pressure involved in cooking a good, healthy meal.

I guess I just assumed that when I got married the cooking thing would just happen for me. My mom’s a freakin’ awesome cook, so why not me?

Thing is, my mom had a lot of practice. As the only responsible older sister (she has one sister older than her who was worthless) with parents who worked full-time, my mom, at a very young age, took over a lot of the duties that would have otherwise been her mother’s. So she was cooking full meals for 7 people long before she ever got married. Funny, she ended up having 5 kids and eventually cooking for 7 people again. Anyway.

Because my mom is the awesome [super]woman she is, I never really had to worry about cooking; she did it. I knew the basics:

-spaghetti and meatballs/sauce

-grilled cheese with soup

-salad

-maccaroni and cheese

-most vegetables

You get it. But I never cooked a blow-you-away meal. I never had to. Until I got married. Now it’s all, I have to cook and clean and do laundry and where the heck is my mom she would do this for me if she were here! Take a deap breath.

So I got this Rachael Ray cookbook as a shower gift. To be perfectly honest, I’m not able to find much that my hubby or I really like from her. I mean, I love watching her, she’s so entertaining! The fact of the matter is that she over-herbs and onions everything. I realize I can just cut back on that stuff, but even still it’s just not our style.

You can imagine then, what our grocery shopping trips looked like:

Me, having a nervous breakdown because I don’t know what to cook for dinner for the next 2 weeks and if I don’t know what to cook, how in the world can we go shopping, what will we go shopping for?! And oh, I’m just so terrible at this, what made me think I could get married in the first place?!

Husband, sitting in awe over the way the female mind works, and trying desperately to fix the situation to make me feel better. Ain’t he sweet?

Fast-forward to my birthday (yes, that cycle was going on for 3 months!) when my SIL gives me a binder filled with good recipes and, AND the grocery list to match it! I’m saved!

We used it for the first time on Monday night, and not only was it SO much easier to set up a list with, BUT! somehow our grocery bill was cheaper then it’s ever been! And we hadn’t been grocery shopping in a while.

Last night, I made a honey-baked chicken recipe that she gave me with my own little tweaks, served over white rice with asparagus on the side, and it was a hit, a hit I tell you!

My husband actually commented more than once on the meal’s goodness, which is something he’s only done with one other recipe I’ve cooked, and I’m tellin’ ya man, I almost cried!

It feels good, being successful and all at this wifely stuff.

In all of my snot-nosed coughing-ness the other day I neglected to post about what a wonderful wife I am.

You’ve heard about the PS3, right? You know, the gaming system that’s gotten everyone’s panties in a bunch? With its fabulous wireless controllers, 60 GB memory and Blu ray? I must admit that when the husband mentioned his desire for this machine in passing a couple of months ago, I chuckled on the inside.

What person in their right mind would spend that kind of money on a video game system? Money that would ordinarily pay the rent or the electricity and not take you away from the finer things in life, like human interaction?

Then, November hit and just like the the Tickle-Me-Elmo craze, I was sucked in. I just had to get one of those for my husband. What kind of wife would I be otherwise? Plus, this is our first Christmas, it won’t kill us to go a little overboard, right? (This, by the way, is in complete conflict with what our pre-marital counselors said. Their advice was to not go overboard on our first Christmas, but what fun is that?)

Anyway, I found myself searching constantly. I scoured sites like eBay and Best Buy in search for the illusive PS3. All to no avail of course, I mean, on eBay these things were going for upwards of $2,000.  My last name isn’t Gates, ya dig?

I resigned myself to the fact that I clearly wasn’t going to receive the Best Wife In the World award this Christmas, and went about my Christmas shopping.

Then: Jackpot.

On Thursday, December 21st our local Best Buy got a shipment in of about 60 (sixty!) of said gaming system and, so said my informant, (Hi Matt!) there were still some left in the store since they hadn’t advertised that they were getting them in.

Score!

I high-tailed it up to Best Buy all while talking to my mother, who was there to pick one up for my brothers, on the phone.

Well, 2 heart-attacks, 4 red lights, a nervous breakdown, and $700 worth of Best Buy credit card debt later, I had the coveted PS3 in my very own hands. I’ll admit, I almost didn’t know what to do with it, and the thought of selling it on eBay crossed my mind several times on the way out to the car. They are still going for around $1,200 you know.

Anyway, Christmas morning came and it was like that scene from “A Christmas Story” when Ralphie opens up his Red Ryder B-B Gun.

“How did you get this?” he asked

“Eh, I slept with a guy.”