A Year of Changes

I'm a terrible blogger.

There, I've said it. I get distracted, forget to write, and then come crawling back. But nevertheless, I am going to continue, because I figure the only way to get better is to press on.

This is me, pressing on.

Anyway...

The last year has been quite a year of changes. I found myself pondering this last night, as Husband and I drove home from my employer's Christmas party. The Christmas party got me thinking about last year's Christmas party, and then that started me off thinking about how different my life is this year compared to last.

I made a list of where I was at when I attended the School District Christmas Party of 2011:

1. I was the unmarried Miss K,
2. I was with my lousy then-boyfriend, long-distance,
3. I lived in a little hovel in Population 635, where I teach,
4. I was teaching middle and high school English,
5. My horse was two hours away from me, 
6. And no one (no one with any power) was interested in my writing.

Considering this list now:

1. I am now Mrs. M, due to the marriage in October to Husband, 
2. I dropped the lousy, long-distance boyfriend (obviously),
3. I moved to a gorgeous little house on the historic QS Ranch in the Owl Mountains, then moved to our little 20 acre Roost when I married Husband,
4. I only teach High School English now,
5. My horse is out my back door, 
6. And there is someone (with some power), interested in my writing. 

In reflecting on all this, I don't have anything really profound to say, other than I am profoundly grateful for all the changes in my life. The Lord has blessed me so richly, in ways I never imaged, and completely amazed me. It seems all it took was trusting him enough to let go of the things I was so desperately clinging to for security, so that he could fill my empty hands with gifts of much greater price. 

It hardly seems real, at times, this life of mine. Of course, there are still struggles, and I still feel anxiety and worry about finances and my job and being a good wife, and if I'll be a good mother when the time comes. But regardless of these silly worries, I know and rest in the contentment that I am living the life I am supposed to, with whom I am meant to be with. 

What a year of changes. 

Thank God for all He's done, and for Husband, who just arrived home with the groceries I needed for dinner ;-) 

Girls' Night

I am so thankful to have some great girlfriends.

When I was younger, I wasn't sure that I saw a lot of value in having girlfriends. I thought, "girls can be a lot of work; catty, mean, sensitive--boys are more straightforward." And for a lot of years, I hung out with guys. My mother always told me that women were important, and that I should never neglect to make girlfriends.

"They will be the ones who hold your hand when you cry, support you when you need someone, stand up with you at your wedding, and be with you when you have babies. You need girlfriends."

I always said, "okay, Ma," rolled my eyes and thought no way, no how!

But at this point in my life, I am thankful for the advice my mother gave me. And thankful for the girlfriends that God has so wonderfully put into my life.

I went to dinner with a few tonight, and we had a great time (of course). We always do. We met for pedicures at the little place we love, then headed to a restaurant where we exclaimed over the food and wine in gusty breaths of awe and excitement. We have all decided that one of the best parts of our friendship is the fact that we all LOVE FOOD. A LOT. A LOT, A LOT. But that's not really the point. The point is that we took a little time to be together; to chat, to hang out, to laugh and tell stories and sometimes commiserate over work.

It gave three of them a night to themselves away from husbands and children; it gave me a night to spend with three of the most put-together, lovely women I know. And now that I am home, it got me thinking about the beauty of girlfriends.

I love Husband more than anyone in the world. He is my best friend and the first person I want to talk to, laugh with, cry with, or lean on. He understands what I need and how I think (most of the time) and loves me for just exactly who and what I am.

Yet there is something about girlfriends that is priceless. Our wedding taught me that as well. As I was getting ready for the ceremony, I remember thinking that I had chosen my bridesmaids well, because these 4 women were the women that I really, truly wanted with me.

And after the ceremony, as the four of them (plus my aunt, mother, and mother-in-law) helped me remove the skin tight shape wear I wore for the ceremony without me having to get out of my dress, I had this revelation: Girlfriends who love you this much are worth their weight in gold.

When you have women around you who are willing to love you, laugh with you, buy a bridesmaids dress at the drop of a hat, travel to your wedding, risk freezing to death in chiffon in October outside in Wyoming, get teary when you say your vows, exclaim over every silly detail of your wedding day, AND help you shimmy out of the Spanx sucking you in without your having to take your dress off: You are a lucky woman.

Truly. Never did I ever think I would find myself in that situation (ps-as my father says, spanx are something NO man should ever see), but since I did, I couldn't be more thankful that I had someone there to help me.

Girlfriends can be a lot of work sometimes. Because we can be sensitive and catty and hurtful and petty. But we can also be loving and tender and joyous and gleeful and profound. And we are so needed. It's so easy to get busy and wrapped up with jobs, boyfriends, husbands, children, or just the never-ending pile of laundry. But making time for that much needed interaction is so good and delightful.

So here's to girls' night, and all my wonderful girls: thank you for being a part of my life, and for allowing me to be a part of yours.

Laundry

I don't know why I ever thought I maybe even liked laundry. Because now that I live in a house where there are two people contributing to the laundry pile, I hate it. And I am truly horrified by the notion that our household is, in all likelihood, going to get bigger eventually, which will mean that the laundry pile will get bigger.

GAAAAHHHH!!!!

But while Husband and I have been doggedly laundering our massive mountains of fabrics like crazy-laundry-doing-fools, something happened today that made me hate laundry just a little more.

SERIOUSLY?!?!?!

Isn't laundry bad enough without clothes coming out looking like they were washed in a tumbler with Wolverine's claws?!??!?!

This is my favorite dress shirt, almost de-limbed by the washer that we have been saying we should probably replace. After this, Husband decided that he would move up finding a new washer machine to the top of the to-do list.

For this, I am glad.

I don't think shredded is a look I can pull off.

Just saying'.

Wedding Rings

I don't know if any other women feel this way, but I feel a need to admit this tonight:

My husband is irresistable with his wedding ring on.

Am I the only wife who finds her husband's ring to be some kind of strange aphrodesiac?

I LOVE Husband's wedding ring. And I LOVE Husband's wedding ring on his finger even more. I'm not sure what it is about it:

Yes, it's fairly unique. Yes, I put a lot of time and energy into picking it. And yes, I kept it a total surprise until the day of our wedding (My ring was a surprise too):

 But there is just something so...wonderfully attractive about that ring nestled on his left hand. Maybe because it means that he's all mine, maybe because I'm a warm and fuzzy newlywed...I don't know. But I love that ring :-)

You see, my ring was something of a saga. I am going to tell a brief (very brief) version of the story:

Husband and I decided that we wanted to get married in April, and he took me ring shopping. We looked at LOTS and LOTS, picking out things we liked and didn't like. In the process, I discovered that I really loved chocolate and champagne diamonds. So Jon took everything we liked in a ring to heart, and set out on a mission to find one.

A month later (Memorial Day weekend), he did. And he purchased it.

5 days, the store assured him. It will take 5 days to get the ring put together with the special ordered chocolate diamonds. We'll call you. 

5 days turned into 25 days, and it was the beginning of July before he ended up with the ring in hand. Of course, I knew none of this at the time, but have since learned of it.

Anyway, he proposed on July 4th, giving me the most gorgeous ring I have ever seen (that one above!!!). The center and halo diamonds are all chocolate diamonds, giving the ring the most beautiful, warm look.

So, when I started looking for a ring for Jon, I first began to research my metals. Being a welder/machinist, he likes metals, so I looked at tungsten and titanium and cobalt. But fearing for my husband's fingers, I wanted to make sure and find a metal that would be as safe as possible.

Then I saw a wood inlay ring.

And I flashed on a conversation between husband and I from when we were first dating. Husband is a gun collector, smith, and lover. And I remember asking him about this when we were first together, and his response was about rifles. He told me that he loved rifles because of their symmetry and lines, the clean way that wood and metal work together--he found that gorgeous.

When I saw that wood inlay ring, I knew it was the ring for him.

So I began looking for one for him. And that's its own story. But I was always a little sad when looking for a ring for him, because he can't wear it at work, and I thought that he would never remember to put it on when he wasn't at work.

But when Jon saw his ring for the first time, his face glowed with pleasure.

He wears that ring all the time, other than when he is at work and is not allowed to.

And I find that ring to be irresistible on his left hand.

Good thing I married that man :-)

Who knew a man's wedding ring could be that exciting?!

Winchester

Meet Winchester: 

This was the first day that I met Winchester. He is a red/blue heeler boy puppy, brought to me in my classroom by two well-meaning students. With unabashed glee, they presented him to me with a little blue ribbon bow around his neck, exclaiming gleefully that he was an early wedding present (this was about two weeks before the wedding). 

For anyone who has ever raised a puppy (or not), I would guess you can imagine all the flood of thoughts that assaulted my brain in the few seconds of my initial reaction. And of course, I had an audience to my reaction, waiting on baited breath to see if I was joyful as well, hoping and crossing their fingers that they had pleased me. 

I think the first words out of my mouth were "Jon's going to kill you!" 

He wouldn't, of course--Husband is much too sweet for that--and he wasn't difficult at all to convince about the puppy. I'm not sure that I would even claim that there was any convincing required. 

But I had to do some mental convincing. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am without question a dog person. I love dogs. I love having dog. We had one when I was a kid, and when I was a young college student, I got my first dog. One that followed me everyone and became my little shadow and loved me the most. I love having a dog. When I got a wild hair and moved a 1000 miles from home in the dead of winter all by myself (that's a whole other post), it was my dog that rode shotgun with me. When I would ride out into the Wyoming wilds on my horse alone, it was my dog that went with me. As I slept under the pines in the Big Horn Mountains, it was my dog that slept curled up next to me. 

I was devastated when I lost Bandit to a brain tumor when he was only 3 1/2 years old, and cried for weeks until Sage found me (that's a whole other post.) My dog, I discovered, was a deep part of my sense of security, since I lived alone and far from my parents and family. 

My dog, it turned out, was an integral part of who I am and what I do, right down to my daily routines. 

Bandit

Yet I found myself holding this adorable little guy and thinking, "I'm not sure I want a puppy..."

Most would assume the reason for this had to do with the fact that my dog, Sage, had been killed just a few days before in an accident.

The Sage Brush Pup

But it wasn't. 

You see, I have always been a little skeptical of married couples who go and get a puppy right after they get married. I always thought to myself when I heard about or read about this on Facebook, If they want a baby that bad, why don't they just have a baby? This was not the most gracious thing I have ever thought, but it's true. 

So a few months ago, I read another post on Facebook about a couple getting a puppy immediately following their nuptials, and thought to myself:

Ha! I so am not going to be part of a couple like that. Jon and I already have dogs, so there's no need to get another one for a few more years, when I'm ready to train a new cow dog.

I am sure the rest of that thought followed in smug tones of aren't I clever, la-di-da, and then I didn't give it much more thought. Sage and Brown (my dog and Jon's dog) were famous friends and playmates, and we were a happy little merging family of owner-canine pairs. 

Then Sage had a run-in with the neighbor's pickup about two weeks before the wedding. In defense of said neighbor, he felt awful and certainly wasn't being careless or doing anything intentionally, but Sage's head and the truck's bumper collided. Thankfully, it was not a messy or painful death. Sage just slipped away, laying down by the creek and never waking up.

I was very sad, as was Husband. 

It's always tough to lose a dog, but when you grow up around farming and ranching, you do learn that death is a part of life, and dogs don't always have the longest lifespans. This is not much of a comfort in the moment, but it is part of what I know and believe. Ultimately, it's what let me be open to getting another dog so soon. 

Even if it meant being "that couple."

So we took the puppy. We got married on a Friday and picked up the puppy that next week. We decided on Winchester as a name because Browning the our older dog's name, and we like guns. Husband and I also like word games and themes, so we entertained gun names. And Winchester (Win for short) just fit him.

So here we are, married for 3 weeks now, with a puppy in the house. And he is totally our baby. It's ridiculous how much we love, adore, fawn, and giggle over Winchester. I can only image that when we have a baby sometime in the future, it will be a similar experience of loving, adoring, fawning, and giggling, just on a larger scale and with less sleep involved.

In fact, we laid on the couch watching a movie last night--I leaning against Husband's chest and Winchester sleeping on mine.

A happy little family. 

Oy. 

We are so that couple.

;-)

MESSES

Husband and I did not live together before we got married. This was a subject of much lip wagging for a while, it seemed--our parents loved it, we loved it, and some of our friends loved it.

A lot of our friends thought we were nuts. They thought we were crazy for not "giving it a try" before tying the knot (which we literally did at our wedding, but that's another post), but both of us felt strongly that we didn't want to half-ass anything when it came to approaching our marriage.

But this is not really my point.

All that really is just to say that I didn't move into Jon's house here in the valley until the week before our wedding. So you might be able to imagine what our house looks like. Since Husband is in his early thirties and I am in my mid-twenties, we each had fairly complete households (though complete in different ways: me, kitchen stuff and decor; Jon, dirt bikes and electronics ;-). So this moving thing has left us in, well, a mess.

And I mean, A MESS.

The basement is piled high with my things--here, there, and everywhere. Mom and Dad moved the majority of my things (THANK YOU!!!) but the bummer thing about having others move your stuff is that you don't move it. Resulting in a scary detachment from knowledge of where-the-heck-your-laundry-bag-of-panties are.

But the thing I am discovering in the midst of the mess:

It doesn't really matter.

It's true! It really doesn't. Now, it does drive me a little nuts, and the OCD part of me is a little crazed at times, but it really doesn't matter. Jon and I are working towards making the mess a little less, but the important thing is that we are doing it together.

Of course, it's probably easier to not let the mess bother me when I (and Jon) are in a heady state of newlywed bliss, but the lesson is one I hope I hang on to.

Don't sweat the small stuff.

It was a common piece of marital advice before we got married, but now I am beginning to see it action.

So, in some ways, I love the mess.

Because I get to be in it with my best friend--my husband :-)

J

Welcome to the Roost!

My name is Jill.

My husband's name is Jon.

We are the J-Birds :-)

This may seem like a strange piece of nomenclature, but it fits us. We were christened the J-Birds when we first began to date--Jon's dad's play on the title of "love birds." And as time went on and our relationship got more serious, the nickname grew into a full-blown extended metaphor. Jon's house became The Roost (the home we moved into last week when we got married), the ranch (Jon's parent's place) became The Aviary, and Jon's dad became either "sparrow hawk" or "The Bird Tender." We paid homage to this nickname at our wedding with some subtle touches (birdcage for the cards, anyone?), and we are now reveling in the fact that we are really, truly married J-Birds, and starting into a whole new adventure.

We got hitched on 10-12-12 (a week ago tomorrow!) and are loving our newly married life. Eight months and two days before that, Jon and I met and started this incredible ride. God has blessed us so richly in these past few months. Neither of us ever imagined that we would find a spouse so incredibly perfect for us.

I have been a writer for years, and never been a terribly successful blogger. Either I get distracted and forget to blog, or I don't feel like I have anything to say. But I have lots of things to say now, with all that's happened in my life the past several months. I want to share those things, and I want to push myself to write on a more regular basis. I'm a high school teacher, and while writing is my first love, teaching and coaching often take up so much time that I don't write regularly. But no longer.

Getting married has been a wonderful time to reflect on life and what's important, as binding myself to my husband was no small decision. As a Christian, I always want to live my life with purpose, and now is a good time to refocus.

So, I think. And I write. And hopefully, it will be interesting to read. To someone. Somewhere.

Welcome to my Roost!