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!