So, I just read a friend’s thoughts on her being an “old married hag.” She and her hubby have been together 6.5 years (married for 2); Rich and I have been together 5.5 years (married for 4.5). She talked about spending a few days with another two couples, one engaged, one dating, and seeing the stages of the relationships. It made me think a bit, because I sometimes still step back and am amazed that Rich and I have been together as long as we have! For me, it’s an honest surprise that he’s put up with me for that long and STILL tells me he loves me. He’s put up with my exercise addictions, my health-food crazes, my moodiness and crankiness, my inability to generally take good care of myself — just all of my MANY drawbacks, and he STILL tells me he loves me.

He’s crazy.

But it’s really amazing to realize the stability that a good marriage gives you. The recent move to a new city, new company, new job, would have just killed me if I had done it all on my own. Yeah, I would have found my way, but the stress would have known no bounds! I’ll never forget Rich’s comment to me that hit me hard as we were both in the Tri-Cities still, and I was working myself up into a frenzy trying to figure out how I’d fit everything in that still needed to be done. He said simply, “You don’t have to do it all by yourself.” I couldn’t believe how much I’d been doing myself – looking for places to live, stressing about the budget, how were we going to get the house in sell-ready condition, etc. Now, I don’t know why, after 5 years together, I still was trying to do it all by myself, but, I was. And his words kind of shocked me. First, they shocked me because I realized I WAS doing it all by myself. Second, they shocked me because I realized I had someone who was supporting me, and all I had to do was let him help.

I’m also amazed at my husband because of his willingness to quit his job in the Tri-Cities and move here! Everything that entailed for him was a sacrifice in my book, and a scary one at that. And he supported me all the way. It still amazes me.

Having that constant best friend is just incredible. There really aren’t words to adequately describe it. But it’s comforting for me to realize I’ve been incredibly blessed with a man who knows me, helps me, is my best friend, and loves me deeply.

It was amazing to see our lives get packed into boxes.

It’s equally amazing to see our lives get UNpacked out of boxes!

Among the amazing nature of it is seeing how much junk is IN those boxes! WHY did I, when cleaning the bathroom, decide I was going to keep the sample sized half-empty bottle of bubble bath? Did we REALLY have that much loose change….loose? Honestly, it seems like there’s either a quarter or a dime in each box at the bottom of the box. Did we have that much loose change lying around among those items, or did the packers find that loose change in one spot and have fun just throwing one coin in each box? I’d like to think they had a sense of humor and did the latter, because the former theory is just sad.

Also amazing is where things ended up. So, if I were packing my own house, I might be inefficient in the number of boxes used, but I’d probably put everything of a certain type in one box. In other words, all of the piano books would be in a few boxes, not mixed in with random other odds and ends. The TV remote would probably be either attached to the TV somehow, or MAYBE in the same box with the DVDs and TV antenna. That’s not to say that everything is randomly thrown together, but it’s been both amusing and frustrating to find all of the pieces to things in various boxes.

And, if you looked at how our house is being unpacked, you would know something about our priorities. For example, guess what was unpacked FIRST and FOREMOST? Games. Guess what room is actually nearly complete? The GAME ROOM! And, as Rich worked on that room, what room did Z work on? The master bedroom! Next came the bathrooms. We still have no food in the fridge (unless you count hummus, carrots, lettuce, and milk – technically it’s food, but YOU make 3 filling meals out of that!), and we have LOTS of random glass bottles (again, WHY did we keep the jar that held the pickled asparagus and move it across the state?!) with a few actual Mason jars in there. We have our eating utensils, cooling racks, and a couple plastic cups…but we will haven’t found our plates, bowls, etc. So, the kitchen is KIND of done, but not really. But hey, we have a place to sleep, a place to play games, and our bathroom needs. Technically, I guess the living room is done – couch, loveseat, and coffee table. I’m still trying to find where all the piano books went, though. Oh, and as of yesterday, the entryway closet is done – all the shoes are nicely arranged. Apparently, we could care less about eating…

We still have a bunch of stuff at the apartment that we need to bring over – I’m hoping we get that all done tonight. It’d be nice to be able to do laundry in our house. We have the dirty clothes; the apartment has the detergent.

In other news – we learned NOT to drive to IKEA on Saturday. Bad idea. It didn’t rain this time, though; both times we’d gone before, it was dark and pouring rain after being dry all day. We were wondering if we’d ever make it to IKEA without it being dark and pouring rain! And we met some people that play games! We hung out with them Saturday and Sunday evening; it was nice to play a few games with people. And we actually are finding our way around Seattle without the GPS on occasion! Now THAT’S exciting stuff!

Happy birthday to Z – well, a week late, but still. 🙂

I feel like my life is a little cliche now. Upper 20’s, living in Seattle, working downtown, for Microsoft. One of my brothers-in-law mentioned that as he wished me happy birthday, and I didn’t realize how true it was! Cliche though it may seem, I’m having fun.

We found a house, and our stuff is now out of storage! WOOHOO!! We slept in our big, comfy, KING SIZED BED last night for the first time since the end of August. What an incredibly large and comfy bed. I’d like to still be there, but, alas, I have work to do.

The house we found is right off of I-5, so we get lulled to sleep by the soothing sounds of the freeway. Last night, those soothing sounds were masked by the fan in the room, thankfully. We’ll probably be getting a white noise maker this weekend to help with that. But, honestly, it’s not that bad, just takes some getting used to. What’s really nice is how close it is to I-5 and the express lanes, so getting to and from work takes only a few minutes – HURRAY! And it’s pretty close to everything while still being a nice residential area. It’s also a more modern house, so it’s pretty updated, and the master bedroom fit our bed AND dresser – bonus!! It seemed like very few of the houses we looked at DID have a bedroom large enough. It also has a bathroom attached to the master bedroom, which is another bonus. The living areas are smaller than our house in Pasco, but roomy enough to still be comfortable. It does make me miss our house, though. Moving from temporary housing to not-so-temporary housing gives the move to Seattle a bit more of an air of finality to it, and I’m surprised at the effect it’s had on me. As much as I’ve been enjoying Seattle, I miss home, and last night, I really missed our house, the yard, the familiarity of it all. Being in temp housing in downtown, I guess I felt more like I was playing – now it’s like everything is “really for real.” We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

Last weekend was my birthday, and we had friends visit from Tri-Cities. It was a blast having them and their kids here, especially on my birthday!! We had a FABULOUS dinner of crab and seafood at the Crab Pot. I think it’s going to be a tradition while we’re here – I haven’t had that much fun eating in a long time! And it was GOOD food – fresh seafood! Seriously, you can’t go wrong with a dinner of clams, crabs, and shrimp! (At least, not if you’re a big seafood fan like I am!) Someone in the group had mentioned that it was my birthday, so our waitress came out while the table was being cleaned off and asked if we wanted dessert. We kind of just looked at each other, and then she said, “Since it’s your birthday, it’ll be on the house, so you might not want to pass up a chance to try something…” I voted for the strawberry rhubarb cake. Of course, we were expecting a single serving, that we could probably share. But, instead, we got a WHOLE CAKE!!! It was baked in a loaf pan, yellow cake with strawberry rhubarb topping, served with ice cream! We were VERY impressed, not just with the cake, but with the fact it was a WHOLE loaf cake! And the waitress came out, had lit a candle for the cake, and, all by herself, started singing, “Happy Birthday to you…” I was surprised she even started singing by herself! Rich and our friends all joined in so she didn’t continue singing by herself, but it was GREAT. That will be a dinner to be remembered!

This weekend will be internet-less and full of unpacking boxes – here’s to finding places for all our stuff this weekend!!

I’m 28 today! WOOHOO!!! Friends of ours came up to visit this weekend, so we’re going to be celebrating with them – yay!

So – happy birthday, Z, you have a place to live for the next year starting next week that’s updated and has space for you, your husband, and your stuff!

Well, Rich is HERE!!! I almost titled this, “Long-distance marriage is OVER!” but then I realized that didn’t sound right. The truth is, Rich’s last day of work was today, and he’s now HERE – no more depressing end-of-weekend goodbye’s. No more tears on the phone every night saying goodbye. My best friend is here, so now we can drive each other up the wall worrying about him finding a job he actually wants and finding a place to call home. Yes, we have a place reserved, but there’s always this…”what else is available” thing that lurks in the background. That, and we have a “rental tour” to go on tomorrow; the relocation company set us up with a rental specialist who has our laundry list of items we want and need in a place we’ll live in. That specialist has scoured the listings and will be taking us to various places to view the properties. We’ll see if anything ends up beating the house we applied for last weekend. I think it might be tough to beat the convenience, at least.

So, I meant to blog earlier about this, but I finally took a spin class at the gym. In short, I don’t think it’s worth the money and should be offered free.

Here’s the thing – I was at a gym where the spin class teachers wore cycling shoes, cycling gear, and sounded quite out of breath with you as they taught the class. Yes, maybe at times the fact that the classes were based on a prescribed formula might seem a little old, but it was always consistently a fantastic workout.

The class I went to here was taught by a girl who I think is probably a good aerobics instructor, but had no cycling experience. She had no gear on – no, not necessary, but I’m used to the cycling instructor at least having the cycling shoes. Most of the people in the CLASS wore the cycling shoes that clipped in. It was an hour long class, and it didn’t even remind me of the occasional “spin-only” class I had done! We pretty much went either 80 rpm or somewhere over 100 rpm on the bikes (equipped with gadgets that measure distance, rpm, etc.). No “reach out to race,” a little climbing, but no “give me more if you’ve got it!” No intervals, either. The teacher never seemed to break more than MAYBE 110 rpm – this guy next to me probably never went UNDER 110 rpm. I finally started doing my own thing, then decided I’d never go back.

The two free classes at the gym actually seem to be better than that spin class – one’s a 25 minute ab class (I did that Monday, after spin, and my abs STILL ache!!!), and the other is a step class. The guy that teaches the step class is AWESOME. He’s gay, he’s hilarious, he’s energetic, and he keeps the beat. The ONLY thing is that, though he keeps the beat, he’s sometimes off on the 8-counts. But, hey, he’s ON the beat, and that’s good for me. I told him after the first class that I actually had done BodyStep, and he commented that the class he’d just taught was probably a walk in the park, then! Well, not quite – I gave it my all and had aching calves for the weekend. I did his class again this last Wednesday, after doing my own RPM (a little scaled down, since I wanted to do the step class), and still enjoyed it. I think it might be a keeper.

So, that’s the gym right now. I’m actually getting into an evening workout groove, though I think I’ll need to change back to mornings again with Rich here, so that he and I can actually have time together in the evenings.

I’ll have to write about my Metro Transit adventures later…let’s just say it wasn’t bad, sure beat having to deal with traffic, but I got so confused with all the routes and stops! And when it’s getting dark, and you’re in downtown Seattle, of the female persuasion, you’d rather you knew what bus was going to get you home.