Open Diary - TwoHearts

The Boy: Four Years On (and One Plus...)

Wed, 13 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

It's been a while since one of us has written - I'll nudge The Girl to write at some point soon, since it supposedly is her turn.

It's four years since we got married. That's really a scary thought, when one puts it in that sense (even scarier than realizing that, at this point, I think that our relationship is longer than the sum of all my prior relationships, and even longer than any individual job I've held in my life). But things are going strong, still, and that's a Good Thing.

In the four years since we got married, I think we've made one of the 'classic blunders' that's unavoidable for most married couples at some point or another. It's something that, like many decisions, cannot be taken back, cannot be undone or redone, and simply must be dealt with on the face of it.

Two hearts under one roof are now three.

Yes, shock and horror, we've had a kid. Our son is now a year old - just turned that year old on Saturday - and it's scary to see, as time passes, how he's increasingly looking like the combination of our personalities. (He still, very much, looks like The Girl's side of the family, to the point of looking like her brother at the same age. Though, he does definitely have my eyes...)

I keep reading articles these days that talk about how children are a stressor on a marriage - that they either strengthen it if it's a good marriage, or they tear it to pieces if it's a shaky one. The fact that the marriage is still here, still going strong, I think lends credence to ours being one of the former...

The Boy: ... and Three Years...

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 00:00:00 GMT

There's something funny to when everything in a relationship just seems to happen on easy-to-remember dates.

Like our first date, November 15th. (We went to see Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.) Easy enough to remember a date that's in the middle of the month, and a payday. Or the date we got engaged, February 29th, which would be because of my sense of humor. (Okay, so our wedding anniversary - April 3rd - isn't exactly a 'memorable' date in and of itself...)

So, obviously, for humor's sake, it would have to be Halloween that Jocelyn and I met, just because that would be appropriate. It's hard sometimes to think back the three years to when we met to remember what it was like.

I can still remember the bits before the party, wandering around Mount Washington and just waiting for it to be "time" for the party, not wanting to be the first there, not really wanting to be there at all, but more trying to humor my grandmother who felt I wasn't doing enough to make friends. And mostly trying not to feel like an oddball since I was not in costume - my workplace kind of frowns on it.

I can remember slowly relaxing once I was inside and talking to the familiar faces that I knew, folks who were in the same boat as me, with parents/grandparents/families trying to push them this way and that. I can remember meeting Jocelyn, talking, trying to reassure her about things that were bothering her (it was her first night out since her fall, and I remember talking with her about being jobless, about being out of college, even though I'd not been a student for years and years...)

I remember going downstairs for the costume contest and holding her purse while she strutted her stuff. (And that was odd, someone I just met trusting me with her purse.) I remember getting her phone number and email address on a torn slip of paper, at the same time she gave it to someone else.

And I remember thinking she was too young for me, but that it would be nice to at least make another friend.

Amazing how three years changes things....

Amazing how three years can seem like no time at all, and like centuries, seconds apart...

Amazing how I wouldn't want it any other way...

Until next time,
The Boy

The Boy: Six Months Already?

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, all. Sorry for being so quiet, but we've been busy offline. ;)

It's scary to turn around one afternoon and realize that it's already been six months since we got married. Or that the end of this month will be three years since we met. Where does the time go, really?

I'd like to think we've settled in nicely for a married couple, though we're still stumbling over odd things now and again. I suppose you just don't realize sometimes until after you're married about where you differ at times... from odd food tastes to how you arrange things for later retrieval... yeah.

But we're doing fine together. And that's what matters most.

On my side, I'm still going to the office every day to make a living. It beats anything else, I suppose, and keeps me out of trouble. I've taken some of our experience with the wedding and put it back into our friends' weddings, mostly by helping the grooms get their acts together faster and assisting with their bachelor parties. (We have too many weddings, though, in the coming year or so - two this month, seven in the next twelve.)

Jocelyn, on the other hand, has been busy with redecorating the house. We're going beyond simple "moving furniture" kinds of things into real sweat-and-blood kind of things - she's decided to paint. As I type this, she's nearly finished the upstairs hallway and is about half-way done with the guest bathroom, while our bedroom and the other half of the guest bathroom are stripped down to bare paint. The carpeting's slowly being removed as well (room by room as the painting is done, though the hallway's already down to hardwood), and she's ordered new blinds for the bathrooms, so everything's going apace.

Strange, that now that the wedding's over, we're still working on projects...

Be back soon!
--The Boy

The Boy: Let's Go To The Videotape!

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 00:00:00 GMT

Yes, it's been a while since one of us has said something. ;)

As of this writing, Jocelyn and I have been married now for about four and a half months (or "nearly five months, shocking as it is" as she put it to me on the car ride home last night). Things have found a little bit of a steady state now as we're moving out of the "getting used to it" phase and into the normal humdrum of real life.

I'll eventually write something about what else is going on. Don't you worry. ;) But in the meantime, something much more fun.

We got back the draft of the video from our wedding.

Let me start by explaining that Jocelyn's parents hired a videographer for the affair - I know this isn't terribly strange in the modern day. And the videographer shot the entire affair - six/seven hours - with two cameras, so you can just imagine how much there was to work with when the resulting video is a little bit shy of two hours. But, since this was the draft and more eyes make life easier on editing, the two of us joined her parents last night for a viewing of the video with pen and paper at the ready.

My thoughts, aside from technical issues:

It was a lot more fun to mock some of the things that were going on, now that the wedding's in the past. I have a tendancy to take myself too seriously, and moreso when it's in public. So rather that the boring "oh, let's watch the wedding video" stuff, it turned into an MST3K-like experience, with a constant commentary track from the peanut gallery. Just like with anime - much more fun to watch in a crowd. Best comment of mine of the evening - The video was showing the two of us under the chupah, with her looking on the verge of tears and me trying (apparently) to figure out what to do with my face. "You're thinking, 'Bite my tongue. Bite my tongue.' I'm thinking, 'PLEASE, PLEASE, GIVE ME WHAT'S IN THE BAG!!'" (If you don't recognize it, it's from an old commercial for Beggin' Strips, a treat for dogs.)

We have some really nice shots of our family having fun. I think at various points, we actually have shots of almost everyone dancing or just goofing around.

The videographer managed to make it look like I know what I'm doing on the dance floor. That alone is scary. The fact that they caught the under-arm turn that I put my mother through during the parent-child dance (and her immediate reaction - "That was really neat. Don't do it again." - complete with the headshake) was even better. The great angle on the dip at the end of the first dance, complete with the slow-mo, was perfect.

The blunders and bloopers are in there too. I have no problem with those kinds of things - it's part of being human. From the microphone on my jacket picking up some amusing comments here and there, to my dropping the garter before the toss... it's just something we'll laugh about when we're older.

But it was all good. I can't wait to see the finished product.

The Girl: Why I Love...

Wed, 6 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMT

Following is the essay I had to write for our rabbi before TJ and I were married:

There are many reasons that I love and want to marry T.J., not all of which I quite know yet. What I do know is how he makes me laugh, his warm brown eyes, his patience, his commitment to us, his individuality, his warmth, his intelligence, how he loves to hold my hand, his quick mind, how grateful he is for what I consider little things, his pride in me and his respect. He still always opens doors for me and helps me with my coat. When I met him, I wasn�t looking for a relationship, just a friend, and TJ seemed like a really nice guy.

Twenty-eight months later, he has become my best friend, and I am his. I love that he�s just tall enough that he can look me in the eyes before kissing me. I love how he writes poetry and paints, which is such a juxtaposition to the computer programming he does for work, but was actually the means of his proposal. He shows me his love with a simple touch and a smile. He thinks I am and makes me feel like the most beautiful woman there is. He loves to make me blush. He knows how to (and does, quite often) say "I like to swing my dancing legs" in German. He knows what makes me me. He knows all my quirks and still loves me for it. He is truly the puzzle piece that I was missing before I met him. He supports me in everything I do, dream, or accomplish. We can talk about anything - even when we fight, we are always able to talk it out. He will always be there to back me up - when I get stressed about something, he tells me, �You jump, I jump, and at least one of our parachutes will open on the way down.�

He inspires me to be better than I am and I try to do the same for him. He compliments me and he complements me in every way. We share all of the same core values about sharing our lives and raising a family together. We teach and expose each other to new things � he took me skiing for the first time and to my first (and second!) anime convention, and my love of music inspired him to take us to the opera and to get season tickets for the Broadway series. He agreed to take social dance lessons with me for the past year even though he claims to be rhythmically challenged (which he isn�t, at least in my opinion). There is no one else with whom I'd rather cook dinner, spend hours on the train or waiting at the airport, shop, clean, or share my secrets. I love that we can just spend time together. We don't even have to talk or be doing the same thing, but we're together and that's enough.

We have a similar sense of humor, love the same kinds of music, movies, books and silly reality TV shows (in spite of his very large collection of anime and graphic novels � ah well, they were there before me, and I am learning to appreciate them as an art form). But mostly, because he makes me smile and laugh, really laugh, and although he can be serious at times, I know that he will always do anything in his power to make sure that I am happy with him, our relationship, and myself as well. I can�t imagine what it would be like if he was not in my life.