bring joy

11 years: What is love, anyway?

marriage

My $20 wedding dress! (I bought it at Desert Industries.)

Marriage is hard, they say. Marriage is lots of work, they say. Your marriage is doomed to fail if you marry young, if you have kids too soon, if you aren’t established in your career, they say.

Tomorrow marks 11 years of marriage.

11 amazing, awesome, wonderful, mindblowingly packed years.

According to the experts, we did all the wrong things–we dated for a week & half, we were engaged for 5 weeks, we got married in our early twenties. We weren’t done with school, we had no established careers. We were broke.

But we loved each other.

As in, we wanted to be with each other every day, from that point on, for the rest of our lives, & well, forever.

So we got married.

How could we know such a thing while still so young,...

first impressions of the island

personal

The first thing I noticed was how balmy the air feels here. Humid doesn’t quite describe it. Because the humidity that I have felt in places like San Antonio, or elsewhere, just feel humid. But here, you feel the sea in the air.

We live off-base.

Yes, we have a few American neighbors, but I live in very much a Japanese neighborhood. Nearly every night there is a neighborhood announcement that blares over the public intercom system they have (something that I don’t think exists in the states, & exists here primarily, I think as a warning system for tsunamis, typhoons, etc.).

Though I worked very hard & learning as much Japanese as I could before we came (including both of their syllabaries–hiragana & katakana), it became obvious just how little I know the language when I was at the...

taking flight (or, the grass is always greener)

personal, the good life

I hate cliches.

“Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” is up there with, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going,” or “The grass is always greener on the other side.” Let me roll my eyes at the triteness of it all.

Let me clarify.

Cliche phrases have their place among wall art (live, laugh, love is a crowd favorite), in passing conversation, when making casual observations about situations or life.

But when a moment calls for some deep introspection, there must be a bit more analysis involved. In other words, yes, my summer could be summed up in the three cliches I just shared, but why exactly? What’s the story behind the trite statements?

Well, if you’re asking, let me tell you.

I can do hard things. Here’s how I know.

Tomorrow I will board a plane & fly...