Life, Post-Wedding Style

In this week’s episode, Hannah finds out that being an adult is not a box of chocolates.

Adulthood is more like dumping all of your money into buying the world’s most expensive, hand-crafted, artisan box of chocolates using the world’s oldest recipes from the birth of Historic Record, and having someone eat them, when you’re not looking, on the bus.

For the bum who ate them, they were fantastic, but it’s just not at all the fate you imagined for your precious dreams.

Marriage is excellent. Between the happiness and wholeness it brings and the cost of ending, it’s hard to conceive why people could even dream of divorce. But I know everyone has their reasons.

Moving was great. After college and my family home being sold and living out of suitcases most of the past four years, it was so refreshing to come back from our honeymoon to a home. Our stuff was in it, our cars were in the driveway, and our mail found its way to the box at 2:30 p.m sharp.

Working minimally from home was great until a woman realizes how bored she can get and how much money this “adulthood” thing requires. Thus, a job (part-time) was found.

Bills and loans are the devil’s coloring book.

Being a Stein? Probably the best move I could have made as an outdoorsy, adventurous lady. I’ve got my hunting license and a tree stand and I got my two extra doe permits. I’m helping to conserve and control wildlife populations while eating like a queen. Plus, the wood stove and a hot cup of coffee after waiting in the rain two hours for no ducks makes the whole experience complete. Beards are in.

So thus far, it’s all checking out okay. The Ideation Post-Marriage Update is a winner.

 

Oh yeah, and then being asked to leave your new home because you asked for a repair that was three months late… That part was not so much fun.

But finding a newer, better, warmer home a week later? We’re back on the blessings list.

The house which we had found for the first two months of our marriage was nice enough. It was an old house with no central heat, slanted floors, cracking ceilings and a few mice, but it was colorful, cozy, and had a backyard that overlooked cows. However, after the brief and dwindling heat of a New York summer starts to fade and the residents can see their breath inside in October, a chill (far more than literally) starts to set in and you realize that the justifications you made for loving this house so much don’t apply when you have to keep from freezing all through a long and unsympathetic winter.

To avoid divulging more information than would be proper for this circumstance, all I will say is the lack of insulation had been overlooked by all parties connected to this house. Then, when we needed that warmth most, we were thrown out into the cold.

With 30 days notice and bills and loans to pay, there was brief panic. I had just finished adding a tapestry over our bed and putting up our movie cards to bring some life to the living room. It seems that only a day after I begin to truly feel like the house is our home, we’ve been told that not only is it no longer our home, but we’ve brought this upon ourselves. Fighting feelings of immense injustice, we pushed on with the search for something better, owned and maintained by better people.

Less than a week later, we find a place we like. A day after viewing it, Matt and I had a conference and realized that in our own separate times, we realized we loved this place. It was smaller, but newly renovated, quiet, warm and right in town. It is (quite literally) a thirty second walk from the place I’m working for now. And the people who own it are sweet and on the ball.

Put a rambunctious tortoiseshell foster kitty named Tinker, some good friends and some great culinary adventures, and you have two Stein peas in a cozy center-of-town pod 😀

That’s the moderately brief, mostly upbeat summation of 5 months of married life. On one hand, I feel like we’ve just settled in, and on the other hand, I can’t believe we haven’t been here forever. We’ve dealt with our share of sorrows, frustrations, confusion and chaos, but it’s all been tangled together in a nest-web-ball-tangle of overall blessings and good.

So after a long time away and a few nudges, I’m back. I can’t make any promises about my consistency, but at least I’m still around.

And that’s enough for now.