Best of Marriage

Less than one month out from my wedding - THIS is what I want our marriage to resemble:

Danny & Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

Best of Pep Talks

Man, I needed to read this (and possibly print it off and show it to my counselor):

ARIES (March 21-April 19): How well are you capitalizing on this year's
unique opportunities, Aries? Since we're halfway through 2010, let's take
an inventory. I'm hoping you're well underway in the heroic task of
conquering your past. It has been and will continue to be prime time for
you to wean yourself from unresolvable energy-drains. So exorcise
irksome ghosts, please! Pay off ancient debts! Free yourself from
memories that don't serve you! You're finally ready to graduate from
lessons you've had to learn and re-learn and re-re-learn. The coming
months will bring you even more opportunities to finish up old business
that has demanded too much of your time and energy.

PS Can you believe the year is half over? And I'm getting married in just a few months (a little over three)!

Best laid plans...

So far the wedding planning is teaching me lessons that I know will be helpful in our marriage. If you know me, then you know I have a tendency to make a plan for something, and then I really do not want to deviate from the plan. At all. Because it was part of the plan, so why would we change the plan, when we took the time to come up with the plan in the first place? (Maybe I’m not super sure what the word “plan” means, especially versus “actual.”) I hope you’re picking up on my control issues.

The first lesson after our engagement? I thought through all the factors for our wedding – cost, weather, travel, etc. My plan: a wedding in Annapolis (less expensive than DC, close to the easiest-Oklahoma-arrival airport), in the fall (because I LOVE the fall, which wouldn’t be during high season in Annapolis, making it less-less-expensive than DC, with brisk weather), on October 9 (Audrey’s birthday), on a boat! It was perfect! We announced the DATE, we announced the LOCATION, we shared it with family who were excited to reserve rooms and buy plane tickets!

Except so much of that plan was out of my control. Do you know what else wants to happen in Annapolis on October 9, 2010? The world’s LARGEST boat show. And apparently the world wants to stay in Annapolis during the world’s largest boat show, making hotel rooms approximately $350 a night, if you can get one at all. And all the venues might be booked. And if you wanted to, say, have your wedding on a boat, that boat could not get to the dock to pick you and your guests up because of all the world’s other boats.

[NOTE: I also forgot to tell you that when my plan doesn’t go exactly as planned, I have a tendency to want to scrap the whole thing.]

When we found out October 9 wouldn’t work, I wanted to scrap the whole thing. The positive side of me: Let’s just elope! The negative (which honestly has more sway): This is a sign you shouldn’t get married! Luckily, one of players in this relationship is sane, and he talked me off the cliff, telling me, “I’ll marry you TODAY! That’s the important thing!”

Wedding=back on! But when? Where?

After doing a blackberry check to see if there would be another boat show on October 2 (good thing, because the OTHER world’s largest boat show is in Annapolis on October 16), we thought it might work. Then I thought to check football schedules, to make sure it was not a home Navy game (driving up those costs again) or on OU v. TX. Check! Check! Except I was wrong about one of those.

The boat didn’t work out, either, after they up-charged me $2500 finding out that our “event” was a “wedding.” I scrambled to find a venue, hearing rude event planners ask, “October second OF THIS YEAR?!?!” like I was getting married the next day. But I found the perfect place – St. John’s College – which will once again incorporate books into our story. And it’s been hard for me to ask bridesmaids, wondering if they will be able to make the trip from Oklahoma and me being scared about rejection. Wedding websites that didn’t let me change colors and limited my word count (not my strong suit, obviously)! Venues that didn’t allow candles! Hotels that wouldn’t do wedding blocks! We don’t have a photographer! My planned food provider now won’t return emails! Oh my!

But I get to marry Grant Thompson, surrounded by my friends and family, in one of my favorite places, in my favorite season. We get to continue our life together, which was hard for me to even imagine a year and a half ago. I couldn’t even formulate the plan that would get us to this point. And maybe that’s the point. I lived my life day-to-day, because that’s all I could do. That’s all I could handle and digest.

I have a plan for our marriage – a happy and healthy one – but I can’t control it. I can’t will it into being. I can shape it, day by day, loving Grant, taking care of myself, and finding ways of letting go.

Best of the best

Let me start with: this post has a very, very happy ending. A very tangible happy ending that fits on my left ring finger and that I can look down on during my day. An ending that is a beginning and a middle, and a thank you to the universe who is all about "life lessons" and "patience" and everything else I'm not really good at. (I'm also not really good at rephrasing "not really good at" so it doesn't end with a preposition.) But enough about grammar! I got engaged! To Grant! And it is worthy of a thousand exclamation points!!!!!! times infinity!!!!

Maybe you didn't notice, but I've had a rough go of it lately. I think that's part of my personality, when I get down or depressed, I draw into myself and spend more alone time when having people around who love me and make me laugh would help much more. And I do this crazy thing where I get through the actual hard part okay (see last year; moving across the country; major health issues; unemployment) and when I get to stable ground, I royally FREAK OUT (see the past few months; crying). I have a place to live in a city I love, I have a job, and I have the most wonderful, patient, and understanding man (that's still weird to say even though he's thirty-two) who loves me. But I still doubt it all, because that's what I do. I doubt if I'm good enough or deserve it or wonder what I will do to mess it up.

That brings us to Wednesday, March 3. It's a typical day in my life, I'm at work, and I'm crying (there have been many tears lately). I don't know exactly why I am crying, but I feel like a fraud, and I feel like I'm not learning fast enough, and I feel like a disappointment. If you were Grant on that day, you would have heard all of this several times on the phone, when I called him at his work, desperate. I hate feeling this way, and it's horrible, because it feeds on itself and gets worse and worse, and it's so hard to just stop. To try to bring reality back into the picture and not focus on my feelings. Grant helps me focus, and on that day, he got me to stop crying. He told me that maybe I shouldn't bring work home, because part of me being so overwhelmed might have something to do with working 24/7. He asked me if I wanted to go to dinner (we don't eat out much to save money), and he offered to pick me up from work. He reassured me and listened to me and it still didn't work. I walked back into the office and tried to get through the day and cried at/on Alaina. Then Grant called and he was there to pick me up.

I walked downstairs and across the street and made it into the car where I started sobbing uncontrollably. I told him that I just didn't know why I was so upset or how to start feeling better. He suggested that just having dinner and getting away from everything might be good. And he put on Jack Johnson so we would have something nice to listen to driving to Dupont Circle. We went to Taj Majal, where I had a Groupon (the new frugal me LOVES these). It was at this point that I had thought he might propose but two or three things talked me out of it: 1) it was a work night, 2) we were using a Groupon for our dinner, and 3) did I mention the crying? and the puffy face? and the incessant crying?

Grant doesn't usually go for Indian, so I was excited about that. And when we got to the restaurant, it gave me some time to just breathe. One of my favorite parts of Eat, Pray, Love is at the beginning, when she can't stop crying on the bathroom floor, and suddenly she divinely realizes that she does not have to make any important life decisions right. then. When I can remember that the same sentiment applies to me, I'm a much calmer person. When I'm with Grant, he helps me remember that I'm doing the best I can. That I can just get through the day and sometimes that's enough.

We order a delicious dinner, that, thanks to Groupon, is half off. The annoying and loud girls at the next table leave shortly after we get there. Grant is wearing an argyle sweater, and I'm wearing argyle rain boots (partly because I forgot to bring real shoes). I've stopped crying. He suggests we walk to Kramerbooks. Even though it's past my bedtime, I agree.

At this point, I know. Argyle + Indian food + books? Has to equal proposal.

We walk arm-in-arm through the circle to Kramers. When we walk in, I go immediately to my favorite table at the entrance (where I have never, ever picked up a bad book; in fact, it's where Dave Eggers first found me eight or so years ago). He tells me that he has to go to the back part of the store, where the restaurant is, to get some Kleenex.

I look down at the books, and I think how perfect this is, that he's going to (finally!) ask me to marry him and make it official and I can tell everyone and holy crap he is walking back from the restaurant WITH Kleenex because he actually needed Kleenex not because he was going to ask you to marry him Courtney get it together you cannot keep doing this to yourself.

And then I thought, "but Kramers would have been perfect."

I go to the fiction wall to look at a Margaret Atwood book, Oryx and Crake, that was apparently the prequel to the book I just read, the Year of the Flood, and I'm frustrated because I want to read it, but I've already read what comes after, and Grant comes over and is looking at books next to me. I'm looking at Atwood, and he starts looking at... Austen? Grant pulls out a Jane Austen book and gets the giggles.

And that's when I really know.

He turns to me and asks me if I'll marry him. And then he says he doesn't know what to say.

I ask him what he wants to say.

He tells me that he loves me, that he'll work harder at our marriage than anything he's ever worked at before, and that we'll have babies.

I'm crying. Again. But in a good way! I say yes, and he starts crying, too.

Then he asks if he has to get down on one knee, and I say yes again, and he gets down on one knee and puts the most beautiful and most perfect ring on my finger, and he almost knocks over a bookshelf standing up. We kiss and hug and get a stranger to take our picture.


He tells me that he wanted the proposal to be a surprise, which is why he did it on a Wednesday and on a Groupon. He tells me that he wore argyle because he thought I wouldn't say no to it. He tells me that he's been on the phone with his family all day telling them what he was going to do, and that he thought of Kramers, and how much I love it, and how I brought him here when we first visited the city, and how much he is liking reading now especially when we read next to each other before bed. He tells me he loves me, and I feel it.

We go back to Afterwords, the restaurant, to get coffee and dessert and to call our friends and family and announce our plans for our life together.

One of the best parts? He'd had the ring for several days and decided he wanted to ask me that Wednesday. He said he didn't get much work done, that he was so excited, and that even after the phone calls and the tears and the not knowing what to do, he still wanted a life with me.

It was a horrible day and a wonderful night and that's life and it is perfect.

It is what it is.

It is what it is!!!!

Best of Seth, Volume Three

When Seth came to visit me in DC, he came to the office one day so I could give him a tour of the Capitol.

And he took of his shoes to go through security in my building, which I would have paid to see.

Best of Messages (and Responses)

Grant starts to chat with me a bit this evening, while I am still working, and tells me that he “got my message” and cleaned the bath. The message: one morning, I was taking my bath and noticed how grimy it was getting (gross, I know), so I used my fingernail to scratch the words “CLEAN ME” to remind me to clean it. Only I’ve been taking baths just in the morning when I don’t have time to clean it, so THAT’S WHY I HAVE THE BEST BOYFRIEND IN THE WHOLE WORLD.

Best of 2009

Man, this year just kicked my ego in the pants. (See all the posts about wanting a job but not being able to find one.) It was hard, and then it was worth it, and then it was hard again, and then it was worth it, and so on. I came out on top in the end, but listen up twenty-ten - I'd really like a year of coasting and enjoying rather than growing and fretting. Ahem.

What I did in 2009:
January - Attended (kind of) the inauguration of a new President (!!!!!!), packed up and moved an office, and started driving to Louisiana every other weekend.
February - Packed up my house and put it in a pod, took many trips to LA, and gave up drinking. Permanently.
March - Moved to DC (FINALLY!), and turned 28. Twenty-freaking-eight, people.
April - Grant arrived in DC!!!
May - Baked, read, and looked for a job.
June - Baked, read, and looked for a job. Got depressed about not finding a job.
July - Baked, read, and looked for a job. Gave up on finding a job. Found a job!
August - Tried to find footing in my new job, thankfully during recess, and watched two of my best friends tie the knot.
September - Grant turned 32.
October - Lost someone dear to me and worried about the health of my relatives.
November - Wrote a first draft of my novel, officially dated Grant for over 2 years, and celebrated Thanksgiving for the first time in DC (another first: cooked the entire meal myself).
December - Went back to Oklahoma, and celebrated Christmas for the first time in DC.

My resolutions for 2010 - edit my novel, exercise more (with my new Nike+ system), keep in touch with my friends, tackle more recipes that intimidate me, and make an important relationship official (hoping you can read between the lines on that one). Is it cliche to resolve to update my blog more regularly? Eh, I'll try to just post when I have important news to tell you. Or when I can make it funny. You know, the usual, but a tad more frequently.

Much, much, much love in the last few minutes of the aughties, and even more for the upcoming teens*!

(*Is that what we're calling it yet?)